The big story this week has been the Children of the Corn running amok in Missouri. I hope to have a longer piece on that by and by. In the meantime, enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm:
Maryland’s “bullet fingerprint” database cost $5 million to set up and maintain. Number of criminals caught by it? Zero. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How much money each state is sending to the Presidential race. Texas is number one in SuperPAC money, and number two (behind California) in hard money.
Kafkatrap vs. Honeytrap. “If you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference.”
Woman starts making documentary about Men’s Rights Movement. Funny things happens: When she starts making an actual, even-handed documentary, the funders who wanted a feminist hit piece drop her like a hot potato, but Kickstarter backers step up to the plate after a plug from Milo Yiannopoulos.
What’s Obama’s strategy in Iraq and Syria? He doesn’t have one. “Without a clear overarching strategy to resolve the conflict.” Say what you want about Bush, he wanted to win in Iraq. Obama wants to do just enough to not get blamed for losing.
Speaking of Islamic refugees, shotguns (which don’t need a permit) are selling like hotcakes in Austria. Whatever could be the reason?
“The Democratic party is mainly a coalition of interest groups, and the current model of Democratic politics — poor and largely non-white people providing the muscle and rich white liberals calling the shots — is unsustainable…Democrats gleefully predict that demographic changes are going to give their party a permanent majority. The unspoken corollary to that is that white liberals think they’re going to remain in charge of it.”
Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a blistering critique of Republican leadership Thursday, just hours before lawmakers held what he described as a “show vote” attempting to end Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding.
The Texas Republican summoned a handful of reporters, including The Daily Signal, to his Senate office to blast his own party for surrendering on the issue before even attempting to fight President Barack Obama and Democrats.
“The reason why Republicans always lose these fights is because Republicans assume Barack Obama is the Terminator—he will never stop, he will never give up—and Republicans surrender at the outset,” Cruz said.
Snip.
This isn’t the first time Cruz finds himself amid a fight with leadership over a government shutdown. Two years ago, he rallied conservatives in their quest to defund Obamacare. The government closed for 16 days.
Cruz said Republicans failed to learn from that experience. The following year, he noted, many Republicans campaigned against Obamacare, and the GOP won a landslide election to take control of the Senate and expand its majority in the House.
“In 2013, when we were fighting against Obamacare, all the Washington graybeards went on television and said over and over again, ‘This is a catastrophic mistake. This will hurt Republicans.’ The Wall Street Journal opined that Cruz is the minority maker,” he told reporters.
“Not only did it not happen, it was exactly the opposite. It was one of the most overwhelming tidal-wave victories in history. And the No. 1 issue … was Obamacare,” Cruz said. “And it does not occur to Republican leadership there is any possible connection between energizing and mobilizing millions of Americans across this country and then winning a tidal-wave election on that exact issue in the very next election.”
Republicans want representatives that will fight for conservative principles and stop the reckless growth of big government liberalism, not preemptively surrender to Democrats so they can stay in office as tax collectors for the welfare state. That’s why Boehner was pushed out as speaker, and that’s the Tea Party will keep primarying incumbents until they start voting like Republicans when it actually counts.
My contract technical writing position ended, so I’ve been busy looking for a new job (if you know of one, drop me a line). As such, this LinkSwarm is a bit out of band. I’ve been busy.
“Free of the pension costs and union contracts that weighed down its previous owners, Hostess has nurtured retail sales of its products nearly back to their pre-liquidation level of more than $1.3 billion in 2012, with a fraction of the workers. The old Hostess—which included other brands—employed some 19,000 people. The Twinkies purveyor these days has just 1,100.”
Larry Correia fisks that idiot Lorraine D. Wilke piece about how writers shouldn’t write fast, where Correia discusses greedy desire that his children wear shoes.
Heh: “Extension Cord On Stage Steals Spotlight From Jeb Bush During Campaign Rally.”
If you had asked me six months ago who would get the nomination, I’d have guessed Scott Walker had the best chance as a candidate acceptable to both movement conservatives and the GOP Establishment. I couldn’t imagine the possibility that Walker would be polling less than John Kasich. Such is the wild, woolly nature of the 2016 race, partially due to Donald Trump widely surpassing expectations of early popularity, and partially due to signs that voters on both sides are Tired Of The Same Old Bullshit.
Who benefits most from Walker dropping out? Maybe Ted Cruz. With Walker out, Cruz has a bigger claim on being the race’s true conservative candidate, one who (unlike Marco Rubio) hasn’t stumbled on the hot button illegal alien amnesty issue. It also looks like Cruz’s decision to jump in early was much sounder than Walker’s decision to jump in late.
Latest Iran deal revelation: Iran gets to self-inspect their own nuclear site. But Kerry did get them to agree to pinky swear they’re telling the truth…
Obama and his party. “No president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics.” Caveat the first: Although I think the phrase “there’s neither a Great Depression nor a criminal conspiracy in the White House to explain what has happened” is probably false on both counts. Caveat the second: Notice how the article carefully omits any mention of the specific Obama policies that have made his party so unpopular…
I really want to believe this Atlantic piece on how Russia is losing in Ukraine, but I just don’t. This one sentence has so much wrong with it I have trouble trusting the rest of the article: “Shale, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and renewables—three areas where Russia is extremely weak—are ascendant and are dramatically altering the market.” Shale’s a solid play if you’ve already tapped out more easily-extracted hydrocarbons (I doubt Russia has), LNG is a profitable byproduct if you’re already extracting oil, but at today’s market prices (which have sucked since 2009) it’s not worth pursuing on its own, and renewables? Hippie, please…
Muslim beats wife in front of police, saying they can’t arrest him because she’s his property.
Slovakia to the EU: Screw you, we’re not taking any Muslim refugees. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Movement in Spain tries to erase Salvador Dali from history. You’ll get my Salvador Dali from me when you pry the melting clocks out of my burning hands!
I missed this when it went up last week, but Larry Correia put up interesting post predicting the 2016 Presidential nominees:
“My prediction is that the republican nominee will be Ted Cruz.”
“Barring the highly unlikely event that Hillary gets arrested by the FBI for one of her multitude of scandals between now and the primaries, Hillary is it.”
But the glory is in the details:
“Bernie is nuts, but he’s honest. He skips right over all the typical democrat feel good, heart string tugging reasons why they think the government should control everything, and gets right to the government controlling everything. He is economically illiterate. Those Occupy Democrat memes going around Facebook where they are quoting Bernie fucking up some basic economic principle are literally painful. Every time you share one of those, an accountant dies.”
“A lot of people are thinking it would be a good match up because Fiorina is a woman and Hillary is a sort of woman shaped carbon based life form.”
“Once people get tired of the Trump show, that hunger for bucking the establishment and telling the media to bugger off will still be there. And this is why I think Ted Cruz will move into the lead. He’s been a pain in the establishment’s ass. The left wing media hates him. ”
“Lindsey Graham… Holy shit, just shoot me now.”
Jeb!?
Ain’t gonna happen. He was the media’s initial pick, and it was even more painfully obvious than when all the democrats showed up in our open primaries to “cross the aisle” to nominate McCain, and then promptly ditched him for Obama on election day. But Jeb’s got zilch. Actual conservatives don’t like him, the Tea Party hates him. On the issues, he’s mumble mumble amnesty and mumble mumble that’s not what Common Core was supposed to mumble. Seriously, do you know any actual voter who likes Jeb? Can you think of one? I can’t. Jeb has all the suck of the old, dying, big government GOP, so the conservative base will be even less enthusiastic for him than they were for Romney and McCain, with the added benefit that his last name is Bush, so automatically half the country hates him.
Is he right? I want to believe him on Cruz, and that’s always a dangerous reason to believe something. But as he notes “At this early point in the campaigns I got Dole, Bush, and Romney right. McCain surprised me, but I think I was just blinded by my dislike for him. I predicted Obama as soon as he got done with that first original DNC speech, and sadly got that one right…”