Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’

LinkSwarm for May 28, 2021

Friday, May 28th, 2021

Like inflation and unemployment, crime rates are rising again. Biden is really the 1970s gift that keeps giving!

  • Democrats are weaker than they appear:

    Vulnerable red- and purple-state Democrats need some bipartisan cover if they’re going to vote for another massive spending bill. And Biden would prefer to have a unified Democratic Party blaming Republicans for the inability to come to a consensus than to have a divided Democratic Party with one side of the Senate caucus blaming the other side of the Senate caucus for the inability to come to a consensus.

    Chuck Schumer is largely bluffing when he says the Senate will pass an infrastructure bill in July, with or without Republicans. Democrats can go down this path, but it’s a risk that at least a handful of their senators don’t want to take, and when the Senate is split 50–50, the Democrats can’t afford to lose anyone. Those with long memories can remember when Democrats were convinced all the legislation they passed in 2009 and 2010 would protect them in the midterms.

  • Speaking of Democrats in trouble, rising violent crime rates are another thing that might doom them in midterm elections:

    A rise in violent crime is endangering slim Democratic congressional majorities more than a year out from the midterm elections and threatening to revive “law and order” as a major campaign issue for Republicans for the first time since the 1990s.

    Homicides in cities increased by up to 40% over the previous year, the biggest single-year increase since 1960, a trend that has not abated so far in 2021. Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw a rise in at least one category of violent crime, ranging from homicide and rape to robbery and assault, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Homicides and shootings have gone up for three straight years in Washington, D.C., and at least a dozen mass shootings were reported nationwide over the weekend.

    Democrats’ flirtations with defunding the police — a handful of lawmakers on the Left nearly scuttled a $1.9 billion Capitol security bill in the House — may make them ill-equipped to handle the reemergence of crime as a top issue for voters.

  • Speaking of rising crime rates, having Soros-backed Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner overseeing Philadelphia has helped create the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast:

    Mirrors are useful. A hooker walking down the street can easily fix their makeup. They can lean on them when they nod out too. In addition, when a heroin addict has no more veins left to inject in their arms, that mirror can help them find one in their neck.

    It’s kind of hard to inject a needle in your neck otherwise. Think about it.

    You’ll eventually get a sideview mirror ripped off your vehicle sooner or later. It generally happens as they nod out or “dip out” when the drugs kick in. When they slump towards the ground, they generally just take the mirror with them.

    You also become way to comfortable with people “dipping out”. It’s the local dance craze around here. As heroin takes effect, it’s almost like they fall asleep on their feet — slowly getting ever so close to the ground. Miraculously, they rarely hit the pavement. Many yoga masters couldn’t duplicate their prowess.

    Dippers are everywhere. It’s so common, YouTube has endless clips up and down Kensington Avenue; many have hundreds of thousands of views. A YouTuber named “HoodTime” has over 5 million views on a walk he captured through Kensington March of this year. Many others are following suit.

    Just walking through Kensington and filming gets you instant material. There’s always something to see here. It’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re in America or a third-world nation at points. But money hides in trash and addiction.

    As Mike Newall explains in his article for the Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the drug corners near where I work pull in over $20 million a year. He also quotes Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro as saying Kensington’s drug trade is close to a billion dollar a year enterprise.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.) There are ways to decriminalize drugs that don’t give a pass to widespread “quality of life” offenses. merely ceasing to prosecute people for open criminality doesn’t make the problems that open criminality engenders go away.

  • Even Ezra Klein says that rising crime rates are a threat to Democrats. Gee, I must have missed him expressing such concerns when antifa and #BlackLivesMatter were burning down large swathes of American cities last year…
  • In news of the Biden recession, both both inflation and unemployment picked up in April. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he opposes teaching critical race theory in the state’s public schools, calling the ideas pushed by its advocates as ‘based on false history’ and ‘teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.'” Good.
  • Kurt Schlichter: Bring on the ‘Asperger’s Republicans’:

    Far too many Republicans, for far too long, have found themselves distracted and/or enslaved by the elite consensus, restrained by norms and conventions that the liberal elite demands we observe, but that it itself flaunts when those rules limit its options. These Fredocons care what people who care nothing about them think, and they find themselves responding to the outside stimuli of the garbage mainstream media instead of focusing intently on conservative change while disregarding the slings and arrows of the haters. When it comes to fighting the establishment, political Asperger’s is indicative of awesomeness.

    And our next generation of Republicans needs to embrace their place on the Spectrum – the more inappropriate the liberal elite finds their reactions to its cues and signals, the better. No more tame, pliable sissies like Mitt (R-ish – Miracle Whip). No more of Nikki! Haley’s sucking up to the establishment while trying to grift the base by leveraging hack conserva-cliché’s from 2005 to present to us as hardcore instead of Jeb! in a dress. No more Kristi!s and Asa!s fronting as all tuff about men pretending to be girls to win races then folding the second the establishment disapproves. Instead, we need GOP politicians who are utterly immune to the siren song of a media and an establishment that seek to draw them in and crash them upon the rocks. Our pols need to ignore MSNBCNN and its hysterical horsehockey. They need to stop reading the NYT and WaPo and being scared that a bad write-up will get them uninvited to all the cool parties. They need to lock onto their target and take it out like an Israeli missile flattens a Hamas/AP frat house.

    Look at Ron DeSantis – he just doesn’t care what the bad guys say. Not at all. They scream that he won’t enforce face-diapering, that he’s too hard on election fraud, that’s he’s declared open season on those Antifa/BLM nimrods who trap normal citizens in their cars on public roads, and then DeSantis just goes ahead and does what he wants anyway. And it works – he’s super popular.

  • Also weighing in against Critical Race Theory: Austin Knudsen, Montana’s Attorney General.
  • How Democratic foreign policy “experts” are projecting their own failures on Jared Kushner:

    For the past four years, there was no greater laughingstock in the American foreign policy cognoscenti than Jared Kushner. A full-on consensus reigned that cast the previous administration’s Middle East policies as hopelessly ignorant and one-sided, a view that went unchallenged in the smart set’s Op-Ed pages. There was no easier laugh to be had, no quicker way to pull a nodding agreement, than to mock the intelligence and good will of the former president’s son-in-law, charged with crafting an American peace plan, and obviously in way over his head.

    But the Young Pretender in charge of the Mideast portfolio is gone, and the mommies and daddies are back in charge, their think tanks falling over each other producing glossy full-color booklets promoting policies that would bring to bear the priorities of people who actually understood a thing or two about Israelis, Palestinians, international law, justice, and most importantly, American strategic interests.

    And four months into the methodical implementation of all the bright ideas reflecting off those glossy booklets, the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories has taken a dramatic turn for the worst.

    Though Kushner is long gone, this latest conflagration has been laid at his feet. His name trended on Twitter for days as hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated. “They really put Jared Kushner, the slumlord millionaire who couldn’t properly fill out security clearance forms, in charge of Peace in the Middle East. Failure was inevitable,” read one viral tweet. “Kushner’s Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed” blared the headline to Michelle Goldberg’s New York Times column.

    This is not just wrong; it’s complete projection. Kushner-era policies—on Jerusalem, UNRWA, and regional diplomacy—were promised again and again to lead to an “explosion,” but didn’t. The return of the experts was supposed to improve lives and prospects for Israelis and Palestinians alike, but hasn’t. In fact, it was the foreign policy intelligentsia’s values and vision that have led to disaster.

    Back in March, mere weeks into the new Biden administration, a leaked internal State Department memo outlined the contours of a new direction on American policy toward the Palestinian issue. The document called for renewed diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority, restoring aid that had been cut, renewing American contributions to UNRWA, putting pressure on Israel for moves in Jerusalem that would make a new Palestinian Authority election possible, and pursuing a two-state arrangement based roughly on the pre-1967 lines.

    These were all priorities of the smart set miffed by a previous administration that was too close to Israel for their tastes. But they were also terrible ideas. Take the renewal of UNRWA funding. UNRWA is the U.N. agency dedicated to perpetuating, rather than solving, the Palestinian refugee problem. By cultivating the myth of a non-existent “right of return” rather than rehabilitating displaced persons and their descendants, UNRWA ensures that a negotiated two-state deal cannot be reached.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Drew Holden takes us on a trip down memory lane of various MSM talking heads declaring that the Wuhan coronavirus lab leak hypothesis was a “conspiracy theory,” including all the usual suspects (New York Times, CNN, etc.).
  • “Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine (D) filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Tuesday, alleging that the e-commerce giant has unfairly raised prices and hurt innovation.”
  • Glenn Greenwald: “A federal appellate court on Thursday invalidated the racial and gender preferences in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act as unconstitutional. The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit of Appeals ruled that provisions of that law, designed to grant preferences to minority-owned small-restaurant owners for COVID relief, violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.”
  • “Moms Demand Action [AKA another branch of the Brady Bunch Hydra] member-turned-congresswoman in hot water over bribe.” Allegedly newly-elected Illinois Rep. Marie Newman bribed opponent Lymen Chehade to drop out of the race, then reneged on the cushy congressional job.

  • “Support for Black Lives Matter Movement Collapses Among Whites and Hispanics, Drops For Blacks.” The only question is why it took so damn long, when it’s been obvious for a long time that it is radical marxist garbage.
  • Christian teacher suspended after opposing the district’s transgender doctrine. “The teacher, Byron “Tanner” Cross, made the defiant declaration at a Loudon County school board meeting on Tuesday, according to the nonprofit group, Parents Against Critical Race Theory.”
  • Ted Cruz gets Biden ATF director nominee David Chipman to admit under oath that he wants to ban the AR-15. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Speaking of Ted Cruz: Israel has a right to defend itself.
  • “Hunter Biden’s Ukraine salary was cut two months after Joe Biden left office.” What a curious coincidence!
  • China Warns Australia’s Military Is “Weak“, Will Be “First Hit” In Any War With Western Alliance.” Knowing Australia, this is far more likely to piss them off than make them cower. Maybe Australia should develop it’s own nuclear arsenal…
  • CNN hits new lows. I suppose I should clarify that’s new ratings lows… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Screwed up even by the standards of Baltimore.
  • Politifact tries to fact check The Babylon Bee yet again. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • IDF stats:

  • Interesting: Higher reasoning functions wake up first from anesthesia. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Enjoy the original video for David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”.” A very different sound mix as well.
  • If you’d told me 10 years ago that one day Windows would run Linux apps, I’d give you a funny look. But that appears to be happening. “New Windows 10 test build adds first preview of Linux GUI apps on WSL.” That’s “Windows Subsystem for Linux.”
  • Now you’ll finally get a chance to read John Steinbeck’s werewolf novel.
  • “Public School Teachers Issue Students Their Summer Book-Burning Lists.”
  • “Newsom Announces Sweepstakes Where 5 Lucky Winners Get To Move Out Of California.”
  • A vicious pack pulls down its pray:

  • LinkSwarm for March 5, 2021

    Friday, March 5th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! More Democrats behaving badly, and Orange Man Bad simply refuses to abandon the spotlight…

  • Americans are in favor of confronting China over heinous human rights abuses, even if it means risking economic ties.
  • Trump Eviscerates Biden’s Record in Blistering CPAC Speech.” Shotgun, meet barrel of pike. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Despite having the entire American political establishment against him, Trump’s agenda is more popular than ever. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • The Biden Administration is already a disaster:

    What has this desiccated, old weirdo achieved in his six weeks of semiconsciousness in the Oval Office? Well, there’s putting tens of thousands of Americans out of jobs, including union guys who voted for him. There’s telling the American people that their kids can’t go to school because public school teachers take priority over children because of science or something. There’s another war in the Middle East. Those are kind of accomplishments, but not really good ones.

    His administration had someone named “Ducklo” who was mean to women. He had another who wants to be a woman and who wants to let your little boys be surgically turned into women. And Neera Tanden’s confirmation was blocked because she was a woman and totally not because she was an inept loudmouth.

    If this is normalcy, what’s a freak show look like?

    Are you * voters starting to feel a bit of buyer’s remorse? Let me ask it another way. Everybody enjoying your $2,000 check? Oh well. On the upside, they impeached Trump…and failed. Again, after sucking up two weeks of the Senate’s calendar. So, what do you have to show for yourself, * voters?

    Failure.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • The Democrats’ pork laden “relief” bill includes massive health care subsidies for the rich:

    The massive coronavirus relief bill racing through Congress provides substantial new health-insurance subsidies to upper-income households. A 60-year-old couple with two kids making $200,000 would receive a subsidy of $12,000. In some parts of the country where premiums are high, families with incomes exceeding half a million dollars will qualify for thousands of dollars in subsidies to buy an ObamaCare plan. In contrast, a family of four making $40,000 receives an added benefit of just $1,600.

  • It also includes 25 weeks of paid leave for bureaucrats with children in closed schools. Meanwhile, parents with closed schools held hostage to teacher’s union who aren’t bureaucrats can drop dead.
  • The fall of Michael Madigan, America’s last machine boss:

    Newly minted as a committeeman, Madigan was sent to the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention as a delegate representing Daley’s interests. He voted for the most constricting “pension protection” clause in the nation, which guaranteed government-employee unions benefits the government couldn’t afford in exchange for their backing of the Democratic machine, tying the state to an anchor of massive debt in perpetuity. He also voted for changes in the property-tax system that would later make him a millionaire through his law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, which specialized in appealing the tax assessments of the most valuable real estate in the Midwest and skimming off the reductions granted by political allies who heard the firm’s appeals.

    Later that year, Madigan was elected state representative for the 22nd House District of Illinois. He would go on to be reelected 25 times, eventually being elevated to House speaker after he was made gerrymanderer-in-chief following the 1980 Census. The redistricting process had been expected to hurt Democrats badly, but Madigan’s cartographical cunning staved off a political bloodbath and earned him the title of “political wizard” from the Chicago Tribune. Many representatives now owed their seats to his pen, and they elected him speaker in 1983.

    For all but two of the next 38 years, he would hold the speaker’s gavel, wielding parliamentary rules that gave him more power than any other legislative leader in the country. His one-man rule was finally merged with the party power structure in 1998, when he became chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois. This made him a one-stop shop for special interests looking to pass or kill legislation. Commonwealth Edison, the state’s largest utility provider, last year was forced to pay a $200 million fine for attempting to bribe Madigan by providing no-work contracts and other perks to the speaker’s inner circle. Though he denied wrongdoing, the scandal ultimately hastened his downfall.

    The wreckage of Madigan’s decades-long reign is obvious. When he became speaker in 1983, Illinois had a perfect credit rating. Since 2013, it’s had the worst credit rating in the nation, just one notch above junk. The reason is that while Daley built his political army with federal money, Madigan built his with state money, specifically state debt. Political foot soldiers owed generous pensions, early retirements, and other perks to the speaker’s protection. His fingerprints are on nearly every bill that enhanced state pension benefits, borrowed money to cover their costs, or shorted contributions to the systems to avoid difficult choices over the course of his 50 years in power.

    The result of all those unsustainable promises is the most severe public-pension crisis in U.S. history, one with far-reaching implications for Illinois government. Since 2000, the state has cut spending on child welfare and other programs that help those in need by one-third after adjusting for inflation. Over the same time, spending on pensions and pension debt has increased 501 percent. The same story plays out at the local level, as Illinoisans are saddled with property-tax bills on par with their mortgages — bills that sap home equity out of once-prosperous Black communities, particularly — in exchange for sub-par services that get worse each year.

  • “Liberal elites are driving minority voters from Democratic Party“:

    If you haven’t read New York magazine’s interview with David Schor, an Obama campaign veteran and liberal data analyst, it’s worth your time.

    His post-mortem of the 2020 election shows how Democrats have increasingly become a party of college-educated whites, whose hard-left views aren’t fully shared by the black and Hispanic communities they claim to champion. His findings echo the concerns of older progressive analysts such as John Judis.

    Between the 2016 and 2020 elections, Schor finds, Democrats gained 7 percent among white college grads, but lost 2 percent of African Americans and 8 to 9 percent of Latinos, as well as about 5 percent of Asian Americans.

    Socialism and “defund the police” were the chief reasons, Schor says: “We raised the salience of an ideologically charged issue that millions of nonwhite voters disagreed with us on.”

    Even on immigration, “If you look at, for example, decriminalizing border crossings, that’s not something that a majority of Hispanic voters support,” Schor says.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Far-left Social Justice Warrior and Hillary Clinton toady Neera Tanden withdrew her nomination to become director of the Office of Management and Budget when it became apparent she didn’t have the votes to be confirmed.
  • Speaking of Biden nominations in trouble, Xavier “I Hate Nuns” Becerra’s nomination is no slam dunk either.
  • When I saw a headline on a deadly crash involving an SUV carrying 25 people, I went “Obviously it must have been full of illegal aliens.” Well, guess what?
  • Just as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lifted coronavirus restrictions month before Texas, so too he’s way ahead of Texas Governor Greg Abbott in proposing concrete election integrity laws.
  • Andrew Cuomo abused his power as Governor to sexually harass me, just as he had done with so many other women.” What, you’re saying it’s not perfectly normal for a governor to ask female aids to play strip poker?
  • Why is the media finally getting around to metooing Andrew Cuomo? To protect other Democratic governors from their disasterous coronavirus policies:

    In a just world not plagued by a fake and corrupt media, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) would be on the edge of resigning his office today, not over a handful of times he allegedly got aggressive with women, but over his sociopathic executive order that required nursing homes to accept patients still infected with the coronavirus.

    That, after all, is the real scandal here, the true scandal, an act so monstrous Cuomo knew he had to cover it up, which he did by falsely blaming the order on the Trump administration and then lying about just how many seniors died as a result.

    But instead of being pressured to resign over that, he’s being hit with perfectly-timed allegations of sexual misconduct, two involving former staffers, one involving a complete stranger he met at a wedding.

    As these things go, while his alleged behavior is inappropriate (especially in the workplace), it’s nothing compared to the credible allegations against His Fraudulency Joe Biden, which involve a full-blown sexual assault allegation. Biden got away with much, much worse, so…

    So what’s going on? Why is America’s corrupt media not at all interested in some 15,000 dead senior citizens while they tar and feather Cuomo over the allegations he made three left-wing women uncomfortable?

    The answer is obvious…

    Four other Democrat governors issued the same sociopathic nursing home order as Cuomo. Four other Democrats ordered infected coronavirus patients be admitted into nursing home facilities where 1) the most vulnerable live, and 2) they’re not set up to handle an infectious virus.

    What this means is that if the corrupt media were to do the right thing (like that will ever happen) and go after Cuomo over his deadly nursing home policy, it would open a Pandora’s Box against these four Democrat governors and the Democrat party as a whole, which is something our fake media will never do.

    Democrats must be protected at all costs, even if the cost is thousands and thousands of lives.

  • When a Cuomo marries a Kennedy.

    So welcoming was the Kennedy clan that the exes of either sex stayed on as friends. Andrew put a stop to that. For Kerry, that meant no more former boyfriends, not even those whom the Kennedys regarded as family. That was the word, and Andrew was dead serious about it. The new rule reinforced the doubts the family had had about Andrew from the start: he wasn’t fun; he didn’t get fun. He was, to put it mildly, a spoilsport. Unlike the Kennedys, too, he didn’t mask his ambition with charm, and no one, not even his in-laws, would stand in his way. And, as Andrew’s star at HUD rose, he seemed increasingly to regard those in-laws with disdain.

    He hated the gatherings in Hyannis; he always felt like the odd man out. The joshing around, the freewheeling talks—Andrew was just too tightly wound to join in. One night, as was typical, the family began singing songs, each member singing a favorite. “The Kennedys are terrible singers, but it’s one of the great joys,” explained Douglas Kennedy. “One time Joe [Jr.] is up there, and he sings ‘Danny Boy,’ and everyone is happy about it. Except Andrew. He’s on the couch with his arms folded, looking disgusted by the whole thing. Everyone is calling for someone else to sing a song. ‘Andrew, you sing,’ someone says. But he says, ‘No, I’m not Irish.’ So someone else says, ‘Sing something Italian.’ Andrew still won’t, so I sing ‘Volare.’”

    Andrew stopped going to Hyannis at one point, a family member recalled. But he made sure to be with the clan at any gathering covered by the media. Early on, the family noticed that at every visit to Arlington Cemetery to honor their father or uncle, Andrew situated himself just so. “He would always find the exact perfect place to stand so he could be in the newspaper the next day,” recalled a relative. “So if that meant grabbing [Ethel’s] hand and walking to the grave, or standing next to John or Caroline, he would get himself in the frame. That was his whole thrust.”

    His “thrust” seems to have changed a bit…

  • Pro-#BlackLivesMatter Portland city councilwoman Jo Ann Hardesty allegedly fled scene after hitting another car. Try to contain your shock. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of Hellhole Portland: “Defunded Police Were Too Busy With Shootings to Stop Antifa Rioters.”
  • Ninth Circuit Vacates California Magazine Ban Decision.” Good, though there’s still a chance for an en banc hearing.
  • Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy convicted of corruption and influence-peddling, and sentenced to a year in prison.
  • Why Arab armies suck:

    [Kenneth Pollack’s Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness] identifies key aspects of Arab culture relevant to the book: conformity, centralization of authority, deference to authority and passivity, group loyalty, manipulation of information, atomization of knowledge, personal courage, and ambivalence toward manual labor and technical work. One can see how these values and behaviors will negatively affect military performance, especially the most glaring problem for Arab armed forces: poor tactical leadership from junior officers. Consistently, these officers fail to show any initiative or creativity—they rarely if ever adapt quickly to changing circumstances in battle. This makes perfect sense, though, if one considers these soldiers were trained to conform and defer to authority. This stands in stark contrast to the Israeli military, whose soldiers were raised in the “Start-up Nation,” which encourages innovation from all ranks.

    The education system in Arab societies drilled in these values to the point that they became central to soldiers’ behavior. “Typical Arab educational practices relentlessly inculcated the values, preferences, and preferred behavior—the culture—of the wider society,” Pollack writes.

    Pollack also explains that Arab military programs are modeled on the educational methods of the larger society, reinforcing certain patterns of behavior and conditioning soldiers to act and think in “ways that reflect the values and priorities of the dominant culture.”

  • You didn’t really think that Google Chrome’s incognito mode would protect you, did you?
  • Fighting woke racists at Smith College.

    I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women! Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and “subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like race.

    Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.

    Although I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it. This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades Smith College.

  • “Baltimore HS Student Who Passed Only Three Courses in Four Years Ranks in Top Half of His Class.” It’s a real mystery why they have the highest VD rates in the country
  • One thing both Democrats and Republicans agree on: John Kasich is a worthless pile of nothing.
  • Sad news: Austin-based movie theater chain The Alamo Drafthouse has filed for Chapter 11. That’s reorganization, so most theaters will stay open. A good thing, too, since I’ll probably see Godzilla vs. Kong there…
  • Papa Johns founder John Schnatter vindicated. Laundry Service “the branding company hired which was hired by Papa John’s to improve its image, was caught on a ‘hot mic’ brainstorming ways in which it could use comments made by Schnatter to damage his image.”
  • In Soviet Russia, guitar shreds you! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Sanitizer”:

  • “Estimated 9 Billion Already Dead From Texas Mask Mandate Reversal.”
  • “Texas Governor Hailed As Conservative Hero For Ending Unconstitutional Mandates He Implemented.”
  • “G.I. Joe To Be Replaced With Genderless G.I. Pat.”
  • “Can You Find All 17 Instances Of Racism On This Page From A Dr. Seuss Book?”
  • “Report: Women In Hell Still Trying To Turn Up The Thermostat.”
  • “Lunchtime!”

  • LinkSwarm for January 1, 2021

    Friday, January 1st, 2021

    Congratulations! If you’re reading this, 2020 didn’t manage to kill you! Happy New Year!

  • “Ukraine Press Conference Explicitly Ties Hunter & Joe Biden To Corruption“:

    A video from a press conference in Ukraine is going viral. It is the follow-up to a video press conference that Ukraine released over a year ago, in which Members of the Ukraine Parliament demanded that President Zelensky and President Trump investigate billions of dollars of corruption in Ukraine that is tied to the U.S. The newly released video is meant to provide documentary and eyewitness information about the corruption – and the Biden family figures prominently in the story.

    Snip.

    At one of the first press conferences about a year ago, we showed bank transactions for hundreds of thousands of dollars to the family of former US Vice President Joe Biden, namely to his son Robert Hunter Biden. The latter was a member of the board of directors of the infamous gas production company Burisma.

    Burisma belongs to the fugitive Yanukovych-era minister Mykola Zlochevsky.

    The inclusion of Biden in the Burisma leadership and payment for his services is nothing more than a political cover that protected Zlochevsky from the Ukrainian law, namely from the criminal code.

    Two foreign witnesses whose identities are protected – Witness 1 and Witness 2 – came forward to testify about the facts of the case. Konstantyn Kulyk, the Head of the Group of Prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, explained what the witnesses offered:

    One quote from a statement by a Witness:

    “All the described financial transactions were fictitious. And a lot of money was paid in Ukraine so that the state authorities turned a blind eye to it.”

    [snip]

    In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the Witnesses noticed strange recurring payments that, at the direction of Oleh Nelin (Zlochevsky’s assistant in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), were sent from the account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD, which was opened for the personal needs of Mykola Zlochevsky, in the Latvian PrivatBank AS to the account of the American company ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC.

    The witnesses drew attention to these payments since about 20 times the same uneven amount was recurring – $83,333.33 as payment for consulting services.

    [snip]

    In the period from November 2014 to October 2015, the money stolen from Ukrainians, located on account of BURISMA HOLDINGS LTD with the Latvian PrivatBank AS, was transferred to the account of ROSEMONT SENECA BONAI LLC in the American bank MORGAN STANLEY in payments in total amounting to $3.4 million for consulting services.

    And this handy chart:

    The broad outlines of this have already been covered here, but the conference filled in some details.

  • Why the Hunter Biden scandal isn’t going away. “That is the problem with a bunker press strategy of denial and isolation. Like water, truth has a way of coming out.”
  • Five great Trump victories in 2020. Including Amy Coney Barrett and peace in the Middle East. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Want some brutal truth? Well, sorry, but that’s what’s on the menu:

    So I guess there’s going to be a rally in Washington DC on Wednesday, organized by https://stopthesteal.us/. There’s also going to be rallies (protests?) in many state capitols on Sunday as well.

    My question is, why? What, exactly, is the point of these demonstrations?

    If the purpose is to just gather like-minded people together for one last good time rock and roll bash before the awful, awful Harris-Biden administration sets in, OK, I can see that. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that something is going to change because of these rallies. No Democratic lawmaker is going to say “hey, look at all of those pro-Trump protestors out there. We’d better not certify the swing-state electors because maybe they’re right about election fraud.”

    They’re not afraid of us.

    Because we hold our rallies, listen to the scheduled speakers, clap politely, and march around carrying our protest signs in an orderly fashion, and then go home – after first cleaning up after ourselves.

    At these rallies, we don’t wear masks to hide our identity, we don’t slug it out with the police, we don’t assault random passers-by and shout at diners through bullhorns at outdoor restaurants, we don’t vandalize and loot small businesses, we don’t break windows and we don’t cover the place with graffiti. And we don’t walk away from 100 tons of trash, which is the amount the city of Seattle had to clean up when they finally got around to busting up the CHAZ sh*thole last summer.

    So why would they listen to us?

    I am by no means advocating we start doing any of those things. This is an advantage the other other side has over us that we have to live with: politicians and judges are afraid of their protests, but not ours. Because if a judge rules against them, they’ll show up at his house late at night and threaten him. Nobody wants to have to face that. And I wonder why many of Trump’s election lawsuits got dismissed without so much as looking at the evidence. Is it because of the fear of the consequences if they found in his favor?

    My point is, none of these rallies, and I don’t care if they get a million people, two million to show up on Jan. 6th, is going to move the needle in the slightest.

  • Kurt Schlichter has predictions for 2021:

    5. Woke Won’t Work

    Slowly but surely, I think people are getting tired of Woke. None of us signed up to be ruled by a bunch of lachrymose sophomores who burst into tears because we insist they use the right toilet. Even liberals are getting sick of constantly having to navigate a minefield of microaggressions – it’s tiresome to always be worried that someone is going to freak out by your perfectly reasonable behavior. Look for a major star of some sort who is too big to cancel to simply refuse to play along anymore, and that may open the door to others. The SJW emperor truly has no clothes, and the second someone points and laughs at his/her/their shriveled junk, the entire country will join in the well-deserved mockery.

    4. The Murder Turtle Will Be Even More Of A Hero Than Dick “The Savior of Saigon” Blumenthal

    He’s frustrating, sure, but Cocaine Mitch is the most skillful knife fighter/Senate Majority Leader in American history, and whether or not we win in Georgia next week (I think we will, but not enough to put money on it – just don’t be an idiot and refuse to vote if you dwell in the Peach State), he will be our bulwark against the Democrat onslaught. And by “bulwark,” I refer to a strong, implacable defensive fortification, and not that lame blog written by sexually inadequate sissies that is hoping that the end result of 2020’s election is that they can once again round up suckers to pay good money to take their insipid Conservative Inc. cruises.

    However, I doubt his number 1 prediction, that Biden won’t be president by next New Year’s Eve. As bad as Biden’s cognitive decline might be, I have a hunch that both Jill Biden and the DNC cabal that managed to install him will turn the reigns over to Kamala Harris anytime soon.
    

  • “Floodgates Opening? Student sues over Critical Race Training at Nevada public charter school”:

    A Nevada mother has followed through on her threat to file a civil rights lawsuit against her son’s charter school for refusing to let him opt out of a mandatory class that promotes hostility toward whites as a race.

    Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus forced William Clark “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments,” creating a hostile environment, the biracial high school student and Gabrielle Clark allege in their federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

    The senior’s statements were “subject to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators,” who are “still are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.”

    The suit also names Democracy Prep Public Schools, the New York-based charter network, and several officials in the local school and network as defendants.

  • The top seven myths of 2020. Including “Lockdowns work” and “The Presidential election was fair and clean.”
  • Chicago murders up 55% this year. And it’s not like Chicago was an oasis of peace before this year, either…
  • “Chicago Teachers Union Big Shot Says Unsafe To Teach Live…From Her Pool Side In Puerto Rico.”
  • The Great Exodus:

    One of the earliest signals that 2020 would be a year of mass homeschooling appeared in an April survey of parents conducted by EdChoice. It asked a variety of questions about how families were coping with school shutdowns and revealed that more than half of the respondents had a more favorable view of homeschooling as a result of the school closures. I remember thinking at the time that if families thought homeschooling was tolerable during the springtime tumult and isolation, then they would find it far more fulfilling under ordinary circumstances when they could actually gather with others, visit libraries and museums, attend classes and so on.

    In May, a RealClear Opinion Research survey confirmed that many parents were more satisfied with at-home learning than expected, with 40 percent saying they were more likely to choose homeschooling or virtual learning even after lockdowns ended. Around the same time, a USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 60 percent of parents surveyed said they would likely choose at-home learning in the fall rather than send their children to school even if the schools reopened for in-person learning.

    As summer began, parent actions reflected pollster predictions. Many parents began pulling their children out of school and registering them as independent homeschoolers. During the first week of July, so many parents in North Carolina submitted their online intent to homeschool forms that it crashed the state’s nonpublic education website. Homeschool applications were up 21 percent in Nebraska in July, and 75 percent in Vermont, while grassroots homeschooling networks and local Facebook homeschooling groups reported record increases in new members.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Los Angeles County prosecutors sue Gascon for not enforcing the law.” George Gascon is, of course, another George Soros backed prosecutor. We need similar lawsuits against all the other Soros prosecutors. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “California Doctor Fired After Writing Letter Criticizing Lockdown Orders.”
  • Louisiana Republican congressman elect Luke Letlow dies from a heart attack during a Wuhan coronavirus procedure. Dang, he was only 41…
  • Donald Trump Ends Obama’s 12-Year Run As Gallup’s ‘Most Admired Man.'”
  • Israel hits Gaza and Syria after Hamas rocket attack.
  • “Trump Administration Approves $290 Million Bomb Sale To Saudi Arabia.” That should about cover Cats and Dolittle
  • Just when you think 2021 couldn’t possibly be worse than 2020, scientists invent Ice 9.
  • Hungary: Christmas 1, Commies 0.
  • “Former public radio reporter charged with torching cop cars during BLM protests.” This is my shocked face. (Hat tip: Steven F. Hayward.)
  • Joe Rogan on Cabo Steve Adler:

  • Man charged with throwing large concrete blocks off Congress overpass above Ben White.
  • Who is the super genius at Walmart who decided it was a good idea to let their social media person snipe at a sitting U.S. senator and piss off half of America?
  • “But only Gatsby knew…”
  • “How author Farley Mowat smuggled a V2 rocket into Canada.”
  • A wine guy reviews Everclear.
  • Speaking of booze, a cool milestone (or why he won’t be having a nice Chianti):

  • Interesting map:

  • If you haven’t already done so, now would be a good time to uninstall Flash.
  • Heh:

  • Heh: Dog Division:

  • LinkSwarm for September 17, 2020

    Friday, September 18th, 2020

    Democrats are behaving badly (as usual), peace is breaking out in the Middle East (not as usual), how Soros and company are funding violent unrest, some Wuhan coronavirus shenanigans, and some unexpected stealth fighter news. Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Borepatch on how Democrat Party elites have screwed every single faction of their coalition:
    • The Elite has stiffed Bernie (twice), alienating his supporters.
    • The Elite has sent their (white) radical street muscle into Black neighborhoods, burning and looting black businesses.
    • The Elite hasn’t really done anything at all for the hispanic community. Their support for communists has hurt them in Florida where Donald Trump is outpolling Joe Biden among hispanics (!).
    • The Elite has pushed outsourcing (most recently the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty which Trump killed). Private sector unions have noticed.
    • The Elite has pushed the virus lockdown which has thrown millions of restaurant employees out of work. Many of these folks belong to SEIU. Now that emergency unemployment benefits have run out – and restaurants are going out of business because of the continuing lockdown – you have to wonder if these people will start to wonder why they support the Democrats.
    • Public Sector employees have done well, but the areas that locked down hardest are the areas where the government budgets are most in trouble. New York City is going to lay off 40,000 employees. The Elite has hoped that Biden will win and bail out the states and cities. Good luck with that.
    • Lastly, suburban women are hit with a Democratic Party double whammy: schools remain closed in many (especially Blue) areas. Women see their family lifestyles massively disrupted, and potentially are forced to consider giving up their own job to home school their kids. At the same time they see radical rioters entering suburban towns. Rioters are filmed telling people to get out of their homes which will be taken as “reparations”.
  • From The Department of Duh: “Up To 95 Percent Of 2020 U.S. Riots Are Linked To Black Lives Matter.” Further: “The data also show that nearly 6 percent — or more than 1 in 20 — of U.S. protests between May 26 and Sept. 5 involved rioting, looting, and similar violence, including 47 fatalities.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • House Democrats are not as keen as Nancy Pelosi is on committing political suicide by refusing to pass a Wuhan coronavirus relief package.
  • President Donald Trump: Cut it out with the Social Justice training. CDC: LOL. Trump: Don’t make me come over there.
  • The dark money network behind plans for mass unrest after President Trump’s reelection:

    The point person for the Fight Back Table, a coalition of liberal organizations planning for a “post-Election Day political apocalypse scenario,” leads a progressive coalition that is part of a massive liberal dark money network.

    Deirdre Schifeling, who leads the Fight Back Table’s efforts to prepare for “mass public unrest” following the Nov. 3 election, founded and is campaign director for Democracy for All 2021 Action, a project of Arabella Advisors’ Sixteen Thirty Fund. The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a dark money network that provides wealthy donors anonymity as they push large sums into the left’s organizational efforts.

    The connections suggest that post-election mobilization isn’t just the project of a liberal fringe, but that powerful Democratic Party interest groups are also involved.

    Created in 2019, Democracy for All 2021 Action includes more than 20 labor union, think tank, racial justice, and environmental groups that push for automatic and same-day voter registration, prohibiting voter ID laws, and removing “barriers” to naturalization, among other initiatives. While the Sixteen Thirty Fund does not report Democracy for All 2021 Action in its D.C. business records, the group acknowledges that it is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund at the bottom of its website. The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been used as an avenue for donors to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to state-based and national groups in recent years. In 2018 alone, $141 million was passed through the fund to liberal endeavors.

    A complete list of groups that make up the Fight Back Table is not publicly available, but Schifeling’s group appears to be an integral part of its efforts. Beyond being the point person for the Fight Back Table’s election war games, Schifeling has ties to two of the Fight Back Table’s founding groups, Demos and Color of Change, which are part of Democracy for All 2021 Action. Schifeling’s group is also a part of Protect the Results, a separate coalition that is collaborating with the Fight Back Table on mass mobilization to “protect the results of the 2020 elections” in more than 1,000 locations across the United States.

    The post-Election Day prep follows other doomsday planning scenarios by liberal activists. The Transition Integrity Project released a 22-page document that mentioned “violence” 15 times, “chaos” 9 times, “unrest” 3 times, and “crisis” 12 times. The Fight Back Table, likewise, is preparing for extreme outcomes, including violence and mass mobilization efforts following the elections.

    Snip.

    Schifeling’s group is just one of dozens that fall under funds affiliated with Arabella Advisors. The funds have facilitated more than $1 billion in anonymous funding since President Donald Trump took office.

    Funds affiliated with Arabella Advisors act as a “fiscal sponsor” to liberal nonprofits by providing tax and legal status to the groups. This setup means that the nonprofits do not have to file individual tax forms to the IRS, which include information such as board members and overall financials.

    Some of the most prominent groups on the left fall under these funds, including Demand Justice, which fights Trump’s judicial nominations, and numerous prominent state-based groups. Funds at Arabella are also used to push grants to outside groups not contained within their network, including David Brock’s American Bridge, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, the Center for Popular Democracy, and America Votes.

  • “Three Soros Campaigns to Further Advance the Left’s Radical Agenda“:

    Three new George Soros campaigns to further advance the left’s radical agenda have been uncovered in separate news reports published this week. Keep in mind that the U.S. government subsidizes the Hungarian billionaire’s deeply politicized Open Society Foundations (OSF) that work to destabilize legitimate governments, erase national borders, target conservative politicians, finance civil unrest, subvert institutions of higher education and orchestrate refugee crises for political gain. Details of the financial and staffing nexus between OSF and the U.S. government are available in a Judicial Watch investigative report.

    With the help of American taxpayer dollars, Soros bolsters a radical leftwing agenda that in the United States has included: promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts; fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist racialist organizations; financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other organizations involved in the riots in Ferguson, Missouri; weakening the integrity of our electoral systems; promoting taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand; advocating a government-run health care system; opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts; promoting dubious transnational climate change agreements that threaten American sovereignty and working to advance gun control and erode Second Amendment protections.

    The list extends even further, with Soros tentacles—money—reaching previously unknown domestic and foreign causes that promote a broad leftwing agenda at various levels. It turns out Soros donated $408,000 to a Political Action Committee (PAC) that supported Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, whose office just dropped felony charges against the actor who fabricated a hate crime earlier this year. The actor, Jussie Smollett, claimed he was attacked in Chicago on his way home from a sandwich shop at 2 a.m. He said two masked men shouted racial and homophobic slurs, beat him, poured bleach on him and tied a rope around his neck. Smollett blamed the crime on white Trump supporters. When the hoax was uncovered, prosecutors charged him with 16 felonies but Foxx dropped all the charges this week. Illinois campaign records provided in the news report show that Soros personally contributed $333,000 to Foxx’s super PAC before the March 15, 2016 primary was over and an additional $75,000 after she became Cook County’s top prosecutor. “Soros has been intervening in local races for prosecutor, state’s attorney, and district attorney — often backing left-wing Democrats against other Democrats in doing so,” according to the article.

    Another report published this week reveals that a Soros foundation gave $1 million to a nonprofit that favors choosing the president by popular vote. The group, National Popular Vote Inc., gets millions from leftist groups to push its purported agenda of ensuring that “every vote in every state” matters. Another group, Tides Foundation, that raises money for leftwing causes, also contributed to the popular vote nonprofit. Soros’ OSF’s have given millions of dollars to the Tides Foundation, according to records provided in the story. Based in San Francisco, the group envisions a world of shared prosperity and social justice founded on equality, human rights, healthy communities and a sustainable environment. The nonprofit strives to accelerate the pace of social change by, among other things, working with “marginalized communities.”

    The last article documents what Judicial Watch has reported for years—Soros’ huge influence in the U.S. government, specifically the State Department. The agency pressured Ukraine officials to drop an investigation of a Soros group during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Barack Obama’s U.S. ambassador actually gave Ukraine’s prosecutor general a list of people who should not be prosecuted. “The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev,” the article states. “Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.” The piece further reveals that internal memos from Soros’ foundations describe a concerted strategy of creating friendships inside key U.S. government agencies such as the departments of Justice and State.

  • “Legality Questions Plague Leftist Fundraising Giant ActBlue as New Analysis Reveals Over 48% of Its Millions of Donors Are Allegedly Unemployed.”
  • Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber: “Woe is to us! We’re a racist institution! We repent of our white privilege!” Department of Education: “Well, if you’re a racist institution, I guess we’re going to have to investigate you for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and possibly pull your federal funding.”
  • Nashville’s Democratic Mayor John Cooper caught trying to hide low Wuhan coronavirus infection rates from bars and restaurants. No wonder Americans don’t trust the political class anymore.
  • “Bureaucrats ‘deny the evidence, Hydroxychloroquine reduces death by 73 per cent.'”
  • If you want to know why the vast majority of initially Trump-skeptical conservatives have embraced the president, one reason is that he’s actually willing to name the enemy and take the fight to them:

  • Minneapolis city council members who voted to defund the police are now complaining that there’s not enough police presence to keep citizens safe.

  • You may not have noticed, since the media tried desperately to bury the story, but the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords, formally recognizing Israel. If Obama had done this, it would be the leading MSM story for weeks, with our ruling class insisting he deserved another Nobel Prize.
  • Speaking of the Obama Administration’s incompetence:

  • Other Arab nations are in talks to follow suit. “Those in advanced talks with the US over Israeli relations are though to include Oman, Sudan and Morocco.” And possibly Saudi Arabia.
  • Speaking of which:

    A recent sermon from one of Saudi Arabia’s leading clerics called for Muslims to avoid, quote “passionate emotions and fiery enthusiasm” towards Jews.

    It’s a marked change in tone from Imam Abdulrahman al-Sudais, compared to previous emotional statements he’s made about the plight of the Palestinian people.

    In the past the cleric had prayed for Palestinians to have victory over what he called “invader and aggressor” Jews — a nod to Israel.

    However, Sudais’ new remarks referenced a relationship between them and the Prophet Mohammad.

    “He treated the Jews of Khaybar equally and treated his Jewish neighbor well.”

    All by itself, the softening of the hard-line stance against Israel among leading Wahhbist clerics in “The Land of the Two Holy Cities” is huge, arguably a bigger shift in Muslim thought than all the Arab-Israeli peace treaties combined.

  • Democrats love Palestinians so much that they’re imitating their failed policies:

    The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir summed up the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East decades ago when she said: “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us. We can forgive them for killing our children. We cannot forgive them from forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with them when they love their children more than they hate us.”

    Prime Minister Meir’s sentiments 50 years ago were the result of numerous occasions where Arab leaders rejected very favorable territorial agreements and other peace settlements and opted for war instead. The very clear message was, and has always been, that the Arabs would rather die fighting the Jews than thrive while living alongside them. Just think about the seething hatred an entire group needs to have to sustain such a disastrous outlook. It truly boggles the mind.

    Are today’s Democrats much different? Their single-minded hatred of President Trump and his supporters knows no bounds. They oppose every policy he puts forth, contradict his every statement, and try to undermine his very humanity just like Islamic radicals regularly attempt to dehumanize Jews in Israel and all over the world,

    They don’t even like to refer to him as “President Trump,” as they immaturely prance around on TV and social media calling him “45” as if referring to him solely as the 45th president is some kind of serious insult. Palestinians and other Israel-haters pull a similar move when they refuse to call the land “Israel.” They instead opt for nasty Orwellian terms like “Zionist entity.”

    And now they are running a presidential campaign with the sole message of “get Trump.” There’s not one person really planning to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden; they’re all just Trump-haters. None of those voters can truly articulate the slightest argument for Biden without talking mostly or all about Trump. It’s the most hateful campaign against an incumbent since the pro-slavery Democrats tried to unseat Abe Lincoln in 1864, and that’s saying something.

    All of this hate has been in place of what could have been four years of deal making with Trump, who came into office with no real orthodoxies to maintain and without a long political career filled with masters to oblige.

    Like the wasted 72 years of Palestinian stubbornness in the face of so much Israeli success since 1948, Democrats have chosen a scorched earth policy rather than acknowledge their defeat in the last election or take advantage of any policies they could have pursued with this president on infrastructure, health coverage, and ending U.S. involvement in unending wars.

    Plus hoaxes and blood libels.

  • Department of Justice orders Al Jazeera Plus to register as a foreign agent of Qatar. Good.
  • The Kenosha riots did $50 million in damage.
  • Seattle Mayor May Face Federal Charges Over ‘Autonomous Zone’ Fiasco.” As well she should.
  • #BlackLivesMatter protestors take over a Trader Joe’s in Seattle to protest “lack of access to grocery stores.”
  • Aurora, Colorado police stand-down twice rather than trying to halt a violent felon on a rampage.
  • Two campaign team members for Lacy Johnson, the Republican running against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, shot, one fatally.
  • Comedian Chris Rock says that Democrats were too focused on the impeachment farce to properly handle the Wuhan coronavirus.
  • An F-35 fighter now costs less to build than an F-15 EX. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • But wait! A secret sixth generation Air Force stealth fighter already completed a test flight after only a single year of development?
  • Dispatch from the newspaper of record:

  • In the “old news is so exciting” category, I had missed that Tony Gonzalez has finally won the Texas 23rd Congressional District Republican runoff over Raul Reyes, and will face Democratic nominee Tina Ortiz for the seat Republican Will Hurd is retiring from.
  • Are Asian illegal aliens on illegal pot farms causing problems on New Mexico Navajo reservations?
  • More Google autocomplete shenanigans. It will autocomplete “Donate Biden” but not “Donate Trump.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • Lessons in Social Justice Warrior tolerance:

  • Rosie and Ellen shows featured toxic work environments where staffers were required to work 80-90 weeks.
  • Alan Dershowitz sues CNN For $300,000,000 in defamation lawsuit. “The Harvard Law professor emeritus is demanding $300,000,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from CNN for misrepresenting his legal arguments in the Trump impeachment trial.”
  • Life on Venus?
  • “New Netflix Movie Actually Murders Puppies To Teach That Murdering Puppies Is Bad.”
  • “Following California’s Plagues Of Darkness And Fire, Pacific Ocean Turns To Blood.” “I figured it was just a murdered hobo, but there was way too much blood. You’d have to have killed at least a thousand hobos, and that hasn’t happened out here since the ’90s.”
  • I chuckled:

  • LinkSwarm for September 11, 2020

    Friday, September 11th, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Nineteen years ago, radical Islamic terrorists carried out the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Today not only is Osama bin Laden dead, but what’s left of al Qaeda has been relegated to minor players in a handful of regional conflicts (Yemen, Syria, etc.).

  • Kurt Schlichter says to expect Democratic shenanigans, but don’t panic:

    The media is filled with stories about how the Democrats are planning to refuse to accept Donald Trump’s impending victory, with speculation about cheating, lawsuits, and the odd military coup. Leaving aside the bizarre notion that our troops are eager to risk their lives to kill their friends and family for the benefit of the liberal establishment and the military-industrial complex – which the Democrats have suddenly embraced as something awesome – in order to impose that creepy old weirdo from the basement upon America, the challenges are real but they are also overblown.

    Don’t panic. Prepare. Work to get out the patriotic American vote. If we’re ready maybe this won’t descend into the chaos I describe in my novel/unintended documentary People’s Republic.

    Now, they will cheat. That’s baked in, and they are fully committed to it. That’s why they hate hate hate voter ID – it’s harder to cheat when you have to prove who you are. Voting-by-mail gets around that and offers all sorts of opportunities for mischief. They fully intend to try to leverage voting by mail to 1) get China virus paranoids and their usual lay-about voters to vote instead of just sitting home watching “Judge Judy,” and 2) manufacture the necessary votes to swing the election. The turnout issue is important to them because all the numbskulls driving their cars alone with masks on are all liberal. The Dems could have gone with explaining that going to vote for Biden confers immunity, just like rioting, but whatever. Now, the cheating aspect is another issue, but how great an impact cheating might have is open to question.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue. )

  • “Scott Adams: Trump Is The Most Successful Stand-Up Comic Ever; Democrats Want To Burn Down The Country Because They Don’t Get The Joke.”
  • Senate Democrats have blocked the latest coronavirus stimulus.
  • The taxcut for the rich Democrats love.

    Mr. Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer don’t agree on everything, but on this specific issue they speak with one voice: the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local tax (better known as the SALT deduction) must go.

    The House of Representatives has already passed legislation removing the cap, allowing the amount of the deduction to rise. If the Senate turns blue in November, Democrats have promised to return to the issue. “I want to tell you this,” Senator Schumer said in July, “If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate” the SALT cap “forever.” It “will be dead, gone and buried.”

    The cap was introduced as part of the 2017 Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act…Almost 60 percent of the benefit of removal would go to the top 1 percent of households (of which 90 percent are white).

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • The Democratic Party and the Iron law of Bureaucracy:

    Think on today’s Democratic Party, withered by the Clintons and then the Obamas and now Slow Joe Biden. Think about the obvious lies. Think about how loyalty uber alles has shaved off bits of their partisans’ souls, burned as offerings on the altar of someone else’s political ambitions. Think of the small death that takes place each day among those (supposedly) most fervent partisans.

    It’s no wonder that the Democratic Party is being taken over by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Black Lives Matter, and Antifa rioters. The Iron Law says that they’re the ones who will rise to the top.

    You see, all paths other than radical revolution are closed, at least for advancement. Who even talks about John Kerry anymore? And the media covers for all of these people so there is no possible correction.

  • The Trump Administration has cross-depotized Oregon State Police troopers “assigned to help the police in Portland have now been cross-deputize by the federal government. This means that the US Attorney’s Office can lodge charges against those arrested by deputized troopers,” bypassing antifa-friendly DAs. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Among those Portland arrestees:

  • “Portland Overtakes Mos Eisley As Most Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy.”
  • “Journalism’s New Propaganda Tool: Using ‘Confirmed’ to Mean Its Opposite.”

    But what is clear is that the “confirmation” which both MSNBC and CBS claimed it had obtained for the story was anything but: All that happened was that the same sources which anonymously whispered these unverified, false claims to CNN then went and repeated the same unverified, false claims to other outlets, which then claimed that they “independently confirmed” the story even though they had done nothing of the sort.

    It seems the same misleading tactic is now driving the supremely dumb but all-consuming news cycle centered on whether President Trump, as first reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, made disparaging comments about The Troops. Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.

    So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story.

    Other media outlets — including Associated Press and Fox News — now claim that they did exactly that: “confirmed” the Atlantic story. But if one looks at what they actually did, at what this “confirmation” consists of, it is the opposite of what that word would mean, or should mean, in any minimally responsible sense. AP, for instance, merely claims that “a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of the remarks to The Associated Press,” while Fox merely said “a former senior Trump administration official who was in France traveling with the president in November 2018 did confirm other details surrounding that trip.”

    In other words, all that likely happened is that the same sources who claimed to Jeffrey Goldberg, with no evidence, that Trump said this went to other outlets and repeated the same claims — the same tactic that enabled MSNBC and CBS to claim they had “confirmed” the fundamentally false CNN story about Trump Jr. receiving advanced access to the WikiLeaks archive. Or perhaps it was different sources aligned with those original sources and sharing their agenda who repeated these claims. Given that none of the sources making these claims have the courage to identify themselves, due to their fear of mean tweets, it is impossible to know.

  • “Iran Caught Stockpiling Enriched Uranium Needed for Bomb.”
  • Good question:

  • A look at spolits between circuit courts on high capacity magazine confiscation.
  • Al Sharpton comes out against defunding the police. Just think crazy far to the left you have to go for Al “Race Hustling Poverty Pimp” Sharpton to call you out for your bullshit?
  • Kosovo, Serbia normalize economic relations in White House ceremony.” Is there nothing Nobel Peace Prize nominee President Donald Trump can’t do?
  • The Trump-brokered UAE-Israel peace deal is already paying dividends. Winners: Israeli airlines, and other Arab states moving to normalize relations. Losers: Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More on the same subject:

  • How the Greek and Turkish air forces stack up against each other. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Eric S. Raymond notes that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting lawfully as a member of the the general militia under federal law.
  • Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University since 2013, admits to running a systematically racist university. Sounds like he should be fired, doesn’t it?
  • Survey shows that professional sports is in big trouble. “Of all the sectors measured in the survey, professional sports suffered the biggest drop in support, falling all the way to 23rd on the list and settling barely above The Federal Government. The negative impressions by Americans now see sports underwater by double digits, with a 30%-40% favorable/unfavorable ratio.”
  • Speaking of getting woke and going broke, the Oscars are now implementing racial quotas.
  • New York City to allow indoor dining at a whopping 25% capacity.
  • Speaking of which is, is there any conceivable reason that all Texas restaurants shouldn’t be fully open for business?
  • Dwight should find this of interest: Smith & Wesson enjoys recording-breaking gun sales.
  • Speaking of Dwight, he forwarded this piece on would-be EV truck maker Nikola may have committed a wide range of shenanigans.
  • How Jerry Pournelle once plotted the overthrow of the communist government of Albania. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • There was a chemical fire in Williamson County yesterday. No one was hurt, but there was a 1 mile radius shelter in place order. It said “chemical plant,” but I think that plant makes aerial lift buckets and such.
  • The most dangerous walking path in Britain.
  • There was a chemical fire in Williamson County yesterday. No one was hurt, but there was a 1 mile radius shelter in place order. It said “chemical plant,” but I think that plant makes aerial lift buckets and such.
  • This is a parody:

  • Mouse problems:

  • Speaking of the mouse, would you believe that in 1981, Disneyland featured their own short-lived SciFi prog-rock band? (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • “Responding To Backlash, Netflix Clarifies Its Content Is ‘Mostly Pedophilia-Free.'”
  • “Hollywood Elites Rush To Normalize Pedophilia Before They’re All Outed By Ghislaine Maxwell.” “Nowadays, we’ve got so many letters crammed into the whole ‘LGBTQETC+’ thing, nobody even notices if we slide a ‘P’ in there somewhere!”
    

  • “Why White People Owning Dogs is Racist.” I think this is a parody, but it is getting increasingly hard to tell… (Hat tip: @txpoliticjunkie.)
  • Godfrey Elfwick: “Pretending to be black is a common side-effect of trauma, the official medical term being: Post Traumatic Ethnic Appropriation. I believe many white musicians in the early 90s suffered from it, no doubt due to the lack of trigger warnings on TV shows back then.”
  • Henry Rollins does acid.
  • “Upping The Ante: Protesters Now Attempting To Stop High-Speed Freight Trains.” (This is one case where The Newspaper Of Record is almost a year behind actual events.)
  • “Protests Erupt As Police Shoot Man Who Was Just One Gun Away From Being Unarmed.”
  • The mock Philip Glass is the perfect touch:

  • LinkSwarm for August 14, 2020

    Friday, August 14th, 2020

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Peace has unexpectedly broken out in the Middle East, the science behind Beirut’s big boom, and more Democrats destroying their own cities.

    It’s supposed to hit 105°F in Austin today. Stay frosty…

  • President Donald Trump helped broker a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that includes fully normalized diplomatic relations.

    If Obama had done this, it would be front page news on every paper in America proclaiming what a “historic” peacemaker Obama was. Since no Democrat can take the credit, newspapers that hate Trump and Israel have been downplaying the news as much as possible.

  • Since people are always talking about “October Surprises,” here’s a possibility: Saudi Arabia and Israel signing their own peace treaty and full diplomatic recognition. Israel and the Saudis have been secretly cooperating against the Iran-Syria axis for quite some time. And now there are public signs of a thaw, including positive depictions of Jews in a new TV drama shown on Saudi TV.
  • “Obama Horrified As Trump Undoes His Years Of Hard Work Bombing The Middle East.” “My drone strikes — all for nothing!”
  • Hydroxychloroquine cuts the death rate in countries that administer it early to Wuhan coronavirus victims. Why won’t the media report that?
  • Democrats cave on reopening schools:

    New York’s richest people have fled during the lockdowns. If their kids’ tony public schools don’t offer personal instruction or look likely to maintain the chaos of rolling lockdown brownouts, those wealthy people have better choices. They can stay in their vacation houses or newly bought mansions in states that aren’t locked down. They can hire pod teachers or private schools.

    And the longer they stay outside New York City and start to make friends and get used to a new place, the less likely they are to ever return. Cuomo is well aware of this.

    “I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You got to come back! We’ll go to dinner! I’ll buy you a drink! Come over, I’ll cook!’” Cuomo revealed in a recent news conference. “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I’ll pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge.”

    Reopening means swimming against their anti-Trump base and teachers union donors’ full-court press to amp school funding and slash teacher duties. That means the below-surface financial and political pressure Cuomo, Pelosi, and Schumer are under to make this kind of a reversal must be huge. It’s likely coming from not only internal polling but also early information about just how many people have left New York and New York City, as well as interpersonal intelligence from their influential social circles.

    This means three things. First, the pressure to reopen schools is on everywhere now that New York is doing it. Second, Democrats’ hard opposition to school reopenings has been politically devastating. Third, all the push polls and media scaremongering promoting the idea that most parents shouldn’t and wouldn’t send their kids back to school have failed.

  • More on New Yorkers fleeing the DeBlasio-made hellhole:

    Start spreadin’ the news, they’re leavin’ today!

    However, the people packing their bags are not coming to New York City — they’re fleeing it for good.

    Due to increasingly squalid conditions on the Upper West Side, including two new homeless shelters packed with junkies and registered sex offenders, longtime dwellers are departing the Big Apple with no plans to ever return.

    One of the Escape from New Yorkers is Elizabeth Carr, one of the area’s most vocal leaders in combating mounting crime in the well-heeled ‘hood. She was an administrator of the Facebook group NYC Moms for Safer Streets, and the face of a public-safety movement that has attracted thousands to demand better policing and city services.

    “In the best of times, NYC is a hard place to live,” said Carr. “Now you have all this other stuff. It’s a question for families … to have to see a guy masturbating on the corner or explain to my kids while I’m buying diapers at Duane Reade why this guy wearing no shoes is collapsed on the floor and they’re doing CPR on him.”

    She said she started planning to move before the COVID crisis and recent neighborhood developments, but officially put down stakes Sunday in North Carolina with her finance husband and three kids under 7.

    “We reached our New York expiration date,” the former nonprofit exec, who’d lived on the UWS since 2007, told The Post from her new home 600 miles away. “Things weren’t heading in the right direction. What we’re seeing now isn’t at all surprising.”

    Crimes committed over the past several days would’ve been unheard of a year ago in the quiet neighborhood that’s home to Lincoln Center and restaurants by Daniel Boulud. A 40-year-old woman was randomly stabbed in the 72nd Street subway station at noon Thursday; a 56-year-old man was sucker-punched while dining outdoors with his wife Wednesday night; photos were posted online of a man masturbating on the steps of the New York Historical Society; and onlookers witnessed an apparent overdose in the aisle of a Duane Reade across the street from the Lucerne Hotel.

    The Lucerne, at 79th Street and Amsterdam, and the Hotel Belleclaire, at 76th Street and Broadway, were recently converted into homeless shelters, with nearly 300 vagrants between them. Ten of the men are registered sex offenders, including convicted rapists, child molesters and child-porn possessors — all living a block away from a school playground.

    Now, with the thinnest of justifications:

  • As always, riots hurt the poor the worst. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Residents push “protestors” away from Chicago police station. “We refuse to let people come to Englewood and tear Englewood apart.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Minneapolis Forcing Riot-Wrecked Businesses To Pay Property Taxes Before Getting Permits To Rebuild.” Pay property taxes for what, since they voted to disband the police. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Update: Fortunately, somebody handed the City of Minneapolis a clue-by-four.)
  • “Florida Democrats aimed to register 1 million voters by now. They didn’t come close.”

    Florida Democrats have a problem: there were supposed to be more of them by now.

    Following narrow losses in 2018 races for Florida governor and U.S. Senate, Democrats emerged from the midterms with a new resolve to register more voters in the nation’s largest swing state as a path to victory in 2020. Former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, fresh off a stinging 34,000-vote loss, vowed to “flip Florida blue” by registering or “re-engaging” 1 million voters, including 200,000 new Democrats added by the Florida Democratic Party.

    But those initiatives fell well short of their goals. And with seven weeks until mail ballots go out in the Nov. 3 election between presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, Florida Republicans are closer to parity in voter registration than they’ve been in decades — a dynamic that may portend yet another hard-fought, narrowly decided presidential election.

    “We won the voter registration war,” Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters said last week.

    Voter registration — the grunt work of politics — sets the foundation for campaign season. For Florida Democrats, who historically have had a harder time turning out their voters than Republicans, it’s even more crucial.

    When former President Barack Obama first won Florida in 2008, he entered the final months of the campaign with an advantage of more than 500,000 registered Democratic voters. That lead has steadily dwindled, dropping to about 259,000 in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Florida by 112,000 votes.

    New data posted online Wednesday by the Florida Division of Elections showed that, as of July 20, when books closed on eligible voters for the upcoming Aug. 18 primary, Democrats led Republicans in the state by 240,423 people — about 5,000 fewer than at the same point in 2018.

  • South Korea plans to build F-35 aircraft carrier. Due late this decade. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Hezbollah linked to “spike in drug trafficking across the Middle East and Europe.”
  • Interesting piece on the physics of the Beirut explosion:

    The videos also show an unnervingly uniform hemisphere of white propagating outward from the blast site, a dome of vicious vapor that eventually hurtles toward every person filming and announces its arrival in the audio with a crash. This hemisphere is the pressure wave produced by the explosion.

    No, it’s not a shock wave. It’s a pressure wave, and that key difference affects the number of casualties expected. A shock wave goes from zero pressure to its absolute maximum pressure in literally zero seconds. The impact of a pressure wave is like hitting the ground after rolling down a steep cliff; the force of a shock wave is like hitting the ground after falling through the air and reaching terminal velocity. High explosives produce shock waves; low explosives, like ammonium nitrate, produce pressure waves, which have a bit of slope to their shape, a period of time over which the pressure increases more gradually.

    Shocks, because of their fascinating and complex physics, travel faster than the speed of sound, and they cause far more damage than pressure waves. Thankfully, we know this blast did not produce a shock because the speed of the water-vapor-filled white dome can be measured.

    The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Based on the viewing angle and distinctive red chairs pictured in some of the later frames, I traced one of the Beirut videos posted by The Guardian to its filming location on the rooftop terrace of La Mezcaleria Rooftop Bar, and measured it to be 885 meters from the center of the blast. From that vantage, the pressure wave can be seen neatly traveling from the center of the blast first to the point halfway between the end of the pier and the edge of the long, massive gray grain silo building, a distance of 151 meters, then to the end of the pier, 262 meters, then eventually to La Mezcaleria.

    By measuring the times at which the pressure wave reaches these landmarks on the video, we know that, as it blazed down the pier, its rampage occurred at a speed of only 312 meters per second. That’s slow for a bomb. Then by the time the audible crash and mayhem reached the formerly peaceful and picturesque outdoor bar, it had slowed to at most 289 meters per second. The pressure wave, slower than the 343 meters per second speed of sound, caused destruction, horror, confusion, shattered glass, torn-apart flat surfaces, and disorientation for onlookers as their ears were subjected to the rapid pressure fluctuations. But a shock wave could have caused them to drop dead from lung trauma as they watched.

    Snip.

    Thanks to modern technology that charge size can be calculated scientifically too, even while waiting for more complete information to trickle out, using the size of the telltale crater. Analysis of the aerial photographs of the pier shows a crater in the range of 120 to 140 meters in diameter; blast physics mixed with history tell us that to carve a chunk that size from the side of the planet requires a charge equivalent to 1.7 to 5.4 million kilograms of TNT (that’s 3.8 to 11.8 million pounds for any Americans dragging their feet on converting to metric). For reference, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 used the equivalent of 1.8 thousand kilograms of TNT. So, Beirut was at minimum a thousand times more boom than Oklahoma City.

  • Bank of Japan gives up on negative interest rates.
  • “Despite The Diplomatic Bluster, China’s State-Run Banks Are Quietly Complying With Trump’s Hong Kong Sanctions.”
  • DC comics decided it wanted to get woke, so it’s no surprise that Warner Media decided they needed massive layoffs.

    It’s a “bloodbath” at the WarnerMedia-owned DC Comics, with the Editor in Chief, the Publisher, and one third of the editorial staff sacked.

    Included in the sackings is — this is a rumor as of yet, not confirmed — leftwing SJW ideologue Andy Khouri, one of the absolute cancers killing the industry, who brought in GamerGate skel Zoe Quinn to “write” “comics” for DC, despite her having no comic book experience and no writing experience (outside Depression Quest and a failed kickstarter). Khouri filled DC’s Vertigo imprint with angry yet untalented SJW freaks; Vertigo was cancelled within a year.

    DC had already laid off people last year, and now has to cut even more. Co-publisher Dan DiDio was fired last year, leaving the other co-publisher, Jim Lee, supposedly in charge; now Jim Lee has been pushed out of that position, though he’ll probably be kept in some other role. (He’s a major comic book artist.)

    Why did this happen to DC Comics?

    Let’s ask Wonder Woman and see if she can tell us.

    Oh yeah, everyone involved in this deserved to lose their job:

  • America:

  • Driving back from a barbecue road trip Saturday, I saw a Trump 2020 billboard, which was simplicity itself:

    TRUMP: JOBS
    BIDEN: MOBS

    

  • This is pretty interesting:

  • Google puts its thumb on the scale yet again:

  • “I know just the thing to make him complete: Some bacon! I don’t know if it’s cooked, I don’t want to know if it’s cooked. All I need to know is that I get to give him some creepy bacon fingers!
  • Wants no part of the goat rodeo:

  • Trump Offers Bold New Peace Plan For Palestinians To Reject

    Wednesday, January 29th, 2020

    President Donald Trump has unveiled Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Let me summarize:

    Blah blah blah two state solution blah blah blah land for peace blah blah blah settlement building freeze blah blah blah $50 billion in aid.

    What, too cynical? So is the plan. In one way it (like all the previous Middle East peace plans) is a serious plan, in that if the Palestinians accepted and implemented it, it would bring enduring peace and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The cynical part is that there’s no way in hell the kill-crazy death cults in charge of Gaza and the West Bank will ever agree to it.

    And indeed, it’s worse than previous peace plans they rejected, including the 2008 Olmert plan where they got 94% of the West Bank and got compensated with another 6% elsewhere. But that’s what happens when you spend the last 12 years sucking, Israel completes a strong security barrier, and the entire Middle East landscape falls out from underneath your feet. Most of the other Arab countries are tired of the Palestinian bullshit, and Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and the Saudis have been dropping hints they should take the deal, or at least start negotiating based on it.

    I suspect President Trump offered it as a win-win-win situation, which is to say he wins no matter what the Palestinians do. If they take it, great! He brought peace to the Middle East! If they don’t, he can say he made a serious proposal, backed by Israel and supported by other Arab countries. (And he know Democrats will call him an evil racist trying to screw their pet Palestinians no matter what.) And if the Palestinians don’t take the deal but use it as a starting point, he’s provided Israel with a very strong opening position.

    Further, he got signoff on the deal both of the aspirants to the Israel PM seat, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz…

    Sorry, wrong Gantz

    …which would insulate him from charges of favoring Netanyahu if Democrats weren’t so reflexively hostile to Israel.

    Palestinians reacted to the proposal in the traditional way: By burning stuff.

    This peace proposal will be rejected by Palestinians because it’s a peace proposal, and it doesn’t achieve their “river to the sea” goal of the complete eradication of Israel. Other Arab countries will not backing the proposal will make noises about “returning to the 1967 borders,” which is about as likely as the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire.

    No matter how good Donald Trump’s persuasive skills may be, this peace plan won’t succeed because the Palestinians are led by crazy and/or corrupt scumbags, who will never make peace as long they continue getting paid not to.

    The Middle East peace process is all process and no peace.

    LinkSwarm for January 3, 2020

    Friday, January 3rd, 2020

    Start your new decade out with another LinkSwarm!

  • Iranian Revolutionary Guard Leader and Qods force commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in an airstrike in Baghdad.
  • Further thoughts from Graeme Wood:

    Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’s Quds Force who was killed in Iraq yesterday, was the most successful military figure of his time. One should grade success not in absolute terms, but by how much is done with how little—and on that scale, Soleimani was a prodigy. The end of his career is as pivotal in the region as the retirement of an athlete who has dominated his sport, or a musician whose sound, once unique, somehow has become imitated by every young crooner out there. One difference is that Bob Dylan is still touring and Michael Jordan has moved on to hawking sneakers and steaks. Soleimani has earned the only retirement befitting a man of his long and appalling record, which is to be vaporized in a U.S. air strike.

    Soleimani’s obituaries will note his involvement in numerous wars along Iran’s periphery (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen). But all these wars are in fact one war, the sole war he was fighting for his entire career, starting from his days as a young officer in the early 1980s fighting against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Consider Iran’s pathetic fortunes then: Its civilian population cowered in terror at Iraqi air raids; its military wasted itself in “human wave” attacks that generated “martyrs” at a startling pace. The territory Iran and Iraq traded, at immense cost, was minimal, and strategically worthless. Iran’s goal (and Soleimani’s) then would have been to avoid annihilation by Iraq—and then, only as a distant dream, to overrun its enemy and capture the Shiite holy places in Najaf, Karbala, Samarra, and Baghdad.

    Now the notion of Iranian control of these cities hardly beggars the strategic imagination. The Iran-Iraq War has lasted three decades longer than history supposed, and the machinations of Soleimani have been largely responsible for its outcome now looking favorable to Iran. (The other contribution to this outcome was the botched occupation of Iraq by the United States.) Because the Iraqi side of the war against the Islamic State was fought in part by Iranian-backed militias, Soleimani in 2015 could appear in the city of Tikrit while supervising a take-back operation. The power of that image to an Iranian audience that remembered the sorrows of the 1980s cannot be overstated—the most recognizable Iranian general striding confidently through Saddam’s hometown!

  • Reciprocity is the key to President Donald Trump:

    Reciprocity has been the key to understanding Donald Trump. Whether you are a media figure or a mullah, a prime minister or a pope, he will be good to you if you are good to him. Say something mean, though, or work against his interests, and he will respond in force. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be polite. There will be fallout. But you may think twice before crossing him again.

    That has been the case with Iran. President Trump has conditioned his policies on Iranian behavior. When Iran spread its malign influence, Trump acted to check it. When Iran struck, Trump hit back: never disproportionately, never definitively. He left open the possibility of negotiations. He doesn’t want to have the Greater Middle East—whether Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or Afghanistan—dominate his presidency the way it dominated those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. America no longer needs Middle Eastern oil. Best keep the region on the back burner. Watch it so it doesn’t boil over. Do not overcommit resources to this underdeveloped, war-torn, sectarian land.

    The result was reciprocal antagonism. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by his predecessor. He began jacking up sanctions. The Iranian economy turned to shambles. This “maximum pressure” campaign of economic warfare deprived the Iranian war machine of revenue and drove a wedge between the Iranian public and the Iranian government. Trump offered the opportunity to negotiate a new agreement. Iran refused.

    Mess with the bull and you get the horns. (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)

  • Remember the reckoning Donald Trump brought to our smug, out-of-touch elites in 2016? Victor Davis Hanson says that in 2020, he’s bringing it even harder:

    In my hometown near my central California farm, I spent autumn 2016 talking to mostly Mexican American friends with whom I went to grammar or high school. I had presumed then that they must hate Trump. Remember the speech in 2015 announcing he was going to stand, when he bashed illegal immigration, or his snide quip about the ‘Mexican judge’ in the Trump University lawsuit, or his expulsion of an interrupting Univision anchor, Jorge Ramos, from one of his campaign press conferences? But I heard no such thing. Most said they ‘liked’ Trump’s style, whether or not they were voting for him. They were tired of gangs in their neighborhoods and of swamped government services — especially the nearby Department of Motor Vehicles — becoming almost dysfunctional. I remember thinking that Trump of all people might get a third of the Latino vote: of no importance in blue California, but maybe transformative in Midwest swing states?

    During the last two weeks I made the same rounds — a high-school football game at my alma mater, talks with Mexican American professionals, some rural farm events. Were those impressions three years ago hallucinations? Hardly. Trump support has, if anything, increased — and not just because of record low unemployment and an economy that has turned even my once-ossified rural community into a bustle of shopping, office-construction and home-building, with ‘Now Hiring’ signs commonplace. This time I noticed that my same friends always mentioned Trump in contrast to their damnation of California — the nearby ‘stupid’ high-speed rail to nowhere, the staged power shutoffs, the drought-stricken dead trees left untouched in flammable forests, the tens of thousands of homeless even in San Jose, Fresno and Sacramento, the sky-high gas prices, the deadly decrepit roads, the latest illegal-alien felon shielded from ICE. Whatever Trump was, my friends saw him as the opposite of where California is now headed. His combativeness was again not a liability but a plus — especially when it was at the expense of snooty white liberals. ‘He drives them crazy,’ Steve, my friend from second grade, offered.

    One academic colleague used to caricature my observations in 2016 that Trump’s rallies were huge and rowdy, while Hillary’s seemed staged and somnolent — and that this disconnect might presage election-day turnouts. ‘Anecdotes!’ I was told. ‘Crowd size means as little as yard signs.’ If anything, Trump’s rallies now are larger, the lines longer. Maybe the successive progressive efforts to abort his presidency by means of the Electoral College, the emoluments clause, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller investigation and now Ukraine only made him stronger by virtue of not finishing him off.

    When I talked to a Central Valley Rotary Club in November 2016, I assumed on arrival that such doctrinaire Republicans would be establishment Never Trumpers. But few were then. When I returned this week to speak again, I found that none are now. These businesspeople, lawyers, accountants and educators talked of the money-making economy. But I sensed, as with my hometown friends, that same something else. There was an edge in their voices, an amplification of earlier fury at Hillary’s condescension and put-down of deplorables. ‘Anything he dishes out, they deserve,’ one man in a tailored suit remarked, channeling my grade-school friend Steve. I take it by that he meant he and his friends are frequently embarrassed by Trump’s crudity — but not nearly so much as they are enraged by the sanctimoniousness of an Adam Schiff or the smug ‘bombshell’ monotony of media anchors.

    It is easy to say that 2020 seems to be replaying 2016, complete with the identical insularity of progressives, as if what should never have happened then certainly cannot now. But this time around there is an even greater sense of anger and need for retribution especially among the most unlikely Trump supporters. It reflects a fed-up payback for three years of nonstop efforts to overthrow an elected president, anger at anti-Trump hysteria and weariness at being lectured. A year is a proverbial long time. The economy could tank. The president might find himself trading missiles with Iran. At 73, a sleep-deprived, hamburger-munching Trump might discover his legendary stamina finally giving out. Still, there is a growing wrath in the country, either ignored, suppressed or undetected by the partisan media. It is a desire for a reckoning with ‘them’. For lots of quiet, ordinary people, 2020 is shaping up as the get-even election — in ways that transcend even Trump himself.

    “Anything Trump dishes out, they deserve.” I should put that on a T-shirt. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • President Trump’s reelection committee goes in to 2020 with $200 million on hand, which is probably more than all of the remaining Democratic contenders combined. Ann Althouse: “The news this morning is making me think of 1984. Not the book. The election. Remember that? Biggest difference: The ex-Vice-President who got his party’s nomination to fend off the hated, show-biz, imposter President… was so fresh-faced!” Oh for the youthful excitement of a 56-year old Walter Mondale…
  • “The reality may be the very opposite of what Democrats planned. The more the Left tries to abort the Trump presidency before the election, the more it bleeds from each of its own inflicted nicks.”
  • What Boris Johnson’s win says about political realignment:

    The 2016 Brexit vote revealed that a large portion of the British population was unrepresented in Westminster party politics, and its aftermath exposed the fact that a large number of politicians would stop at nothing to keep that group unrepresented. To be sure, these MPs would not have put it in such words — they thought that attempting to stop Brexit for three years was acting in their constituents’ best interests. But constituents express their beliefs at the ballot box, and most of them simply did not think that their representatives knew what was best better than they did.

    There is plenty to criticize about Johnson and the government that he will now lead, but the same accusation cannot be leveled against them. Johnson ducks scrutiny, avoids substance, and can often seem entirely devoid of empathy. His campaign consisted of the three words “Get Brexit Done,” spun around like a broken play toy. But these words had more power than Labour’s message of social justice, just as the Brexit slogan “Take Back Control” held more sway than the countless predictions that Brexit would bring about economic doom in the run up to the referendum. Both phrases were fashioned by Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s infamous chief adviser, and their success point to a very simple fact: Voters believe in democracy, and they do not take nicely to politicians who don’t. No handout can compensate for the snobbery of those offering it, because voters disdain moral superiority more than they appreciate moral purity.

    The roots of this tension go back decades, as successive British governments implemented EU treaties and constitutional reforms without democratic assent. In 1992, when the European Economic Community turned into the European Union, John Major’s government refused to offer the public a referendum on the issue. And in 1997, under Tony Blair, monetary policy was placed in the hands of the Bank of England. The same Blair government pushed for executive asymmetrical devolution in Scotland and Wales, without considering its extreme constitutional implications for England’s representation in Westminster. Then came the 2007 EU Lisbon Treaty, a major change to the U.K.’s constitution that Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided he could ratify without asking for voters’ consent. This move effectively rendered any future promise on migration numbers a lie, because the United Kingdom’s borders were made subservient to Eurozone economics. Voters are not stupid: They realize that an open-borders policy raises problems for the welfare state. Ignoring this fact only made room for extremism when the Eurozone’s economy eventually fell into crisis in 2008.

    These were the beginnings of a political realignment that has found its voice in liberal democracies across the continent and beyond — a realignment based on the divide between democratic politics and technocratic politics, in which liberals turn to the courts in order to entrench cultural values for which they cannot not secure democratic consent. The Blair years might have seen continuous government, but they also saw a significant drop in voter participation. Labour’s 2001 and 2005 electoral victories saw turnouts of 59.4 percent and 61.4 percent, respectively — some of the highest levels of voter apathy recorded since World War II. This was rule under the primacy of law and economics masked by the pretense of political consent and temporary economic stability. Divides between the electorate and their representatives on questions of immigration, foreign policy, and national identity were buried under a centrist carpet.

    Brexit brought the divide into the open, because it gave voters an opportunity to reject the new constitution of a United Kingdom that had been radically transformed since it joined the EU in 1973. An unprecedented number of people did exactly that, and it is no surprise that this vote then took on the political and cultural significance that it did. Politicians across the Commons agreed to let the voters decide, only to explain away the referendum’s result as an aberration of common sense. Such arrogance meant that Brexit became a symbol of the cultural divide between those who had political control and those whose wishes were considered problems to be solved.

    Any politician unwilling to reckon with the scale of the referendum was destined to shrivel into electoral insignificance. Corbyn had no easy way out, because Labour was effectively three different constituencies mashed uncomfortably into one party: middle-class Remainer liberals, woke millennial students, and socially conservative workers. These groups hold irreconcilable views on Brexit and stand in different places along the democratic–technocratic divide. It is a split similarly represented by their Westminster MPs, albeit in distinctly different ratios.

    When Corbyn tried to win over Brexit voters, he could not deny that he had allowed a majority of his MPs to prevent Brexit’s implementation. And when he tried to win over Remainers, he was forced to face the fact that he had never been a Remainer (not to mention the fact that his anti-Western brand of foreign policy is antithetical to many Remainers’ liberal internationalism). The only group that truly stuck by him were the students, and anyone who knows anything about democracy knows that students don’t win you elections.

  • President Donald Trump is at 50% approval rating in the latest Zogby poll. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Top DOE official arrested for trying to set up sex with underage boy.” That’s de Blasio’s NYC Department of Education Deputy Chief of Staff David Hay.
  • Sex offenders, MS-13 gang member nabbed near border checkpoints.” You know, the same border checkpoints Democrats want to do away with…
  • “African Americans Are Taking Back Jobs Stolen By Illegal Aliens.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Two dispatches from Adler’s Austin. First: “Man allegedly made bomb threat then stood in traffic and threw himself at car.”
  • Second: “Austin attacker sentenced to 200 days in jail released two weeks later.” That’s the Congress Avenue Bridge attack case. (Hat tip: Austin_Network.)
  • Bad cop sentenced.
  • “Black Israelites” attacking Jews in New York is deeply inconvenient:

    The Jersey City murders are the culmination of years of incitement against Jews. But the perpetrators in that case were themselves minorities from the African American community. The perpetrators have been identified as coming from an extremist religious group called Black Hebrew Israelites, making them a minority of a minority. The perpetrators are seen as a “militant” fringe within that minority.

    The authorities are now looking at the case as domestic terrorism fueled by antisemitism. However major media have endeavored to dismiss the murders as unimportant and unique. The New York Times described the Black Hebrew Israelites as being “known for their inflammatory sidewalk ministers who employ provocation as a form of gospel.” It’s a bit more than that. In fact, the group and the milieu around it tend to view religion through a racial lens, such that Jews are described as “white” and “fake” and the “real Jews” are portrayed as black, along with all the prophets and religious figures. The ADL pointed out that this group views itself as the real “chosen people” and that it sees people of color as the real descendants of the 12 tribes. The group was in the media earlier in the year in Washington DC when they shouted insults at Catholic high school students.

    Mainstream society wants to view this as “provocation,” because if they viewed it as a burgeoning racist violent movement targeting Jews then they would have to confront it and ask tough questions of why it is tolerated in a community. Expert J.J. McNab told the Associated Press that in fact this group takes pride in “confronting Jewish people everywhere and explaining that they are evil.”

    In American society there is generally only place for one kind of racism. There are far-right white supremacists and everyone else. This Manichean worldview of antisemitism and racism means we are only comfortable with one type of perpetrator. An angry white man. Those are the racists. Dylann Roof, the racist who murdered black people in a church in 2015 is the most normal kind of America racist. The El Paso shooter or the Tree of Life Synagogue attacker are also the kind of killers that fit into an easy narrative. But when the perpetrators stray from that we have a problem dealing with it. In New York City, according to a post by journalist Laura Adkins, data shows that of 69 anti-Jewish crimes in 2018, forty of the perpetrators were labelled “white” and 25 were labelled “black,” the others were categorized as Hispanic or Asian.

    To keep the focus on the white supremacists, headlines need to explain to us that “right wing terrorists” have killed more than Jihadists, as Slate.com said earlier this year. Other types of terrorism are watered down a bit. During the Obama administration Islamist-inspired terror was even rebranded as “violent extremism” so as not to mention the religion of the perpetrators. For some reason even though Islamist terror is also a far-right ideology, it is portrayed as something else. For instance, when Jews were targeted at a kosher supermarket in France they were called “random folk in a deli.” They weren’t random, they were targeted, like the Jews in Jersey City, but they needed to be random or we’d have to ask about the antisemitism that permeates Islamist terror.

    In the wake of all the attacks in New York against Jews, culminating in the shooting attack at the kosher market, it became difficult to ignore the rising tide. But there is discomfort in looking at the depth of the perpetrators. The comfort society has with expecting perpetrators to be “far-right” and “white” even led Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to blame “white supremacy” for the Jersey City attack. Her tweet was deleted. When it wasn’t white supremacy and there was no one to condemn, it didn’t fit the narrative and was less important.

    Snip.

    How did we get here? The motivation behind the Jersey City attack is clear from social media posts one of the perpetrators made, according to a research by the ADL. This included claims that Jews are “Khazars,” and that “Brooklyn is full of Nazis-Ashkenazis,” and that the “police are in their [the Jews] hand now.” The worldview matches with the larger milieu in which Jews are portrayed as not merely “white Jews” but in fact as controlling the slave trade and police violence. In this new antisemitism Jews are reframed as both being “fake,” as in not really Jews from the Middle East, and also being “white” and running white supremacism. This replaces German Nazis with Jewish Nazis; it replaces white supremacists with a hidden hand of Jews controlling both the American far-right and also the police. Instead of pushing back against this there are attempts to excuse it or just remain quiet about it and hope this antisemitism goes away.

    Left out of this Jerusalem Post piece is the fact that blacks provide a disproportionate share of Democratic Party voters, while Jews are heavily over-represented among its big-money donor base. Pointing out that one part of the Democratic Party coalition routinely commits assault against the part actually paying the bills isn’t useful to the narrative…

  • Forced organ harvesting has happened in multiple places in the People’s Republic of China and on multiple occasions for a period of at least twenty years and continues to this day.”
  • “Major US Companies Breached, Robbed, and Spied on by Chinese Hackers.”
  • “Navy Saved Money with Touch-Screen Controls, Sailors Paid with Their Lives.”
  • Remember how people used to joke that we supported Israel, the only country in the Middle East that didn’t export oil? Well, guess what?
  • “Media Disappointed To Learn Armed Citizen Stopped Mass Shooting.”
  • Shoe company cheers gun control bill. Shoe company goes broke. (Hat tip: Stehen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of idiots cheering gun control: “Tom Nichols is an insufferable elitist prick.”
  • Ireland fast-tracks law banning all gasoline-powered cars within a decade.
  • MSM fact-checking doesn’t.
  • Charles Murray on the statistical differences between males and females in America:

  • A look back on Galaxy Quest on it’s 20 year anniversary.
  • Will Betelgeuse go supernova? Supposedly it’s “not likely to produce a gamma-ray burst and is not close enough for its x-rays, ultraviolet radiation, or ejected material to cause significant effects on Earth.” A good thing, too, since it’s only 640 light years away, which is practically next door in galactic terms.
  • Dad takes son to Mongolia just to get him off his phone.
  • Moderately amusing Texas signs.
  • Rip tire.
  • Tumblegeddon.
  • Brief Thoughts on John Bolton’s Departure

    Wednesday, September 11th, 2019

    President Donald Trump asked for National Security Advisor John Bolton’s resignation. While Bolton was too interventionist for my tastes, I liked having him in the Trump Administration:

  • Whatever his faults, he actually understood foreign policy challenges like few in D.C.
  • Every administration needs heterodox thinks among its ranks to avoid complacency.
  • Having Bolton as National Security Advisor no doubt scared countries like Iran and Syria to no end, making them easier to negotiate with and keep in line.
  • In many ways, UN Ambassador (the role Bolton held on an interim basis under Bush43) was the perfect role for him, allowing him to call BS on rogue regimes without enabling his interventionist inclinations. But Bolton doesn’t seem to have learned several important lessons from aftermath of the Iraqi war, namely that the Middle East is a horrible place to install democracy, that the aftermaths of regime change tend to take far longer and cost far more (in lives and treasure) than the regime change itself, and there are no U.S. military accomplishments there which cannot be undone by the feckless policies of a Democratic presidency.

    As far as maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the issue over which Bolton was reportedly fired, there are no good options, but the default (staying in and losing) is probably the worst of all. Unfortunately, without a willingness to directly confront nuclear-armed Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence is running and funding the Taliban, there’s no solution that doesn’t involve America eventually leaving in defeat.

    Joe Rogan Interviews Dan Crenshaw

    Sunday, August 25th, 2019

    Joe Rogan did a 2 hour and 36 minute interview with Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw:

    They touch on topics ranging from Crenshaw’s Saturday Night Live incident to overseas operations against jihadists to marijuana legalization.

    I haven’t watched the full interview yet, but I intend to.