Posts Tagged ‘video’

ShoeOnHead Rips The Dems

Monday, November 25th, 2024

Back before I was suspended on Twitter (I’m still suspended, since the Twitter/X appeals process is broken), I followed ShoeOnHead, who frequently had sane things to say about the lunacy of the left. I think she blocked me because I noted she was wrong about transexism, but this nice rant showed up in my feed recently.

  • “New York was closer to flipping red than Florida was to flipping blue.”
  • Where she’s coming from: “I voted for Bernie in the primaries in 2016 and I watched as the Democratic party did everything in their power to destroy this man. Twice. So it is safe to say I am a little biased when it comes to the Democratic Party.”
  • “You idiots! You morons. You imbeciles! Kamala Harris? Really? That’s who you threw up there? The one who dropped out before Iowa? The one who got blown the out by Tulsi Gabbard. Why didn’t you hold a primary? Aren’t you the saviors of democracy?
  • “Oh, big congratulations to Tim Walz on being the first white male DEI hire. It didn’t work. The DNC completely neutered that guy, reduced him to this weird token white man. ‘Hello, fellow men. I do play football.'”
  • A nice slam on the Liz Cheney/#NeverTrumper idiocy.
  • A discussion of how young came out in force to vote for Trump…and of feminists openly wishing for them all to die.
  • “‘We need a liberal Joe Rogan!’ You had a liberal Joe Rogan! His name was Joe Rogan!” Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson (among others) have made this point as well.
  • “Democrats can’t have a Joe Rogan, because everything that makes Joe Rogan Joe Rogan is not allowed on the left.”
  • Plus a discussion of populism.
  • I’d advise watching the whole thing. You probably won’t agree with everything, but you might with a good 80-85% of it…

    Jaguar Stepped In It. How They Can Step Out Of It.

    Saturday, November 23rd, 2024

    Everyone and their dog has been commenting on Jaguar’s outbreak of woke idiocy.

    Initial reaction:

    Not only is it woke gender bending nonsense, its sins are compounded by the meaningless platitudinous nature of the generically rebellious message, a sad technicolor echo of Apple’s “Think Different” campaign more than a quarter-century after the original.

    I wasn’t going to comment on this, because I didn’t think I had a new angle on it. Then I realized I did!

    Ever see the 1990 Dudley Moore movie Crazy People? There’s no reason you should, as it’s not particularly good. In it, an ad executive snaps and starts producing ads that tell the truth. Including this gem:

    “Jaguar: For men who like handjobs from beautiful women they hardly know.”

    The thing is, if they had actually run that ad rather than the Colorform Gender Bending Extravaganza, they would have done less damage to their brand. Feminists would scream at it, but it wouldn’t offend its core male car-buying target demographic, who would just laugh at it.

    Because I’m a problem solver, I’m going to tell Jaguar (or, more accurately, Tata Jaguar Land Rover, as they’re now part of an Indian automotive conglomerate) how to fix their problem overnight with a new ad.

    Step One: Fire Jaguar Managing Director Rawdon Glover, the man who just tried to Bud Light your brand.

    Step Two: Pay Richard Hammond $1 million. You want Hammond because he’s a famous, well-liked car personality who happens to own a superb classic Jag:

    Step Three: Have Hammond cut a one minute ad. At the beginning he says “I love old Jags” and then natters on for 25 seconds about what he loves about his restored Jaguar XK150. Then he says “I love new Jags,” and natters on for 25 seconds about the latest F-Type or whatever sports car you’ve given him along with the $1 million. Then at the end he says “I love Jags. There’s nothing wrong with loving something that’s beautiful.”

    That’s it. That’s the message. Do that and people will stop talking about your idiot social justice stunt and you can get back to selling sports cars to slightly cadish, slightly affluent men who can’t afford a Ferrari or Lamborghini.

    What’s POTUS Packing?

    Sunday, November 17th, 2024

    If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, then you’ve probably run across the occasional Mark Felton video, most likely in a LinkSwarm. He usually covers interesting historical military tidbits, but here he veers into contemporary American territory to ask: What sort of gun does Donald Trump carry?

  • “Donald Trump was issued with one of the rarest gun licenses available in the United States: An unrestricted concealed carry handgun permit in New York City, well known for its very restrictive gun laws in comparison with many other parts of the US.”
  • “Trump was issued this very rare permit by the New York City Police Department, and it is usually only granted in New York City to retired police or federal law enforcement, or to a person whose need for such a permit is clearly demonstrated.”
  • “Very often these licenses also go to very wealthy and politically connected New Yorkers, and Trump has certainly been one of those for a very long time.”
  • “Did Trump prior to becoming president for the first time in 2016 actually conceal carry in the Big Apple?”
  • Trump: “The way I view it, if nobody has guns, then only the bad guys have them, and they aren’t giving up their guns.”
  • “He told an interviewer that he owns two handguns, one a .45 caliber Heckler and Koch semi-automatic, supposedly a USP, a German military service pistol made for the Bundeswehr and very popular worldwide.”
  • The USP carries 12 rounds and weighs “26.4 oz without the magazine.”
  • Felton suggests “the weapon is not easily concealed, however, and commentators have suggested that Trump’s USP is a nightstand gun.” Maybe, but if Trump purchased the gun in the 1990s, standard 1911s were considered an acceptable carry choice at the time because carry and ultracarry choices weren’t nearly as widely available as they are today.
  • “Trump, however, does own a weapon deliberately designed as a conceal carry piece: a Smith & Wesson 642 hammerless Airweight .38 Special, a five round revolver. It has a cylinder, and Trump uses .38 Special +P ammunition.”
  • “Due to having a fully enclosed hammer to prevent snagging on clothing, the 642 is double action only, with a fairly long trigger pull. It is a snubnose barrel, and can fit a variety of grips. Many off-duty NYPD officers carry the 640 or 642 as a conceal carry weapon, or as a backup gun, and it weighs around 22 1/2 oz, with the alloy version even lighter at just 15.8 oz.”
  • Felton’s search for evidence Trump actually carried the gun is inconclusive.
  • If you go to the comments sections of that video, his commenters note that it’s now much easier to get a carry license in the wake of the Bruen decision. Good.

    I’m now imagining Trump having a meet-up with every prominent gun YouTuber to test each other’s carry guns on the firing line…

    Secrets Of The Trump Ground Game

    Saturday, November 16th, 2024

    Here’s an interesting clip of Megyn Kelly interviewing Ashley Hayek about Trump’s ground game operation.

  • Ashley Hayek: “We are the sister organization to the America First Policy Institute, which is run by Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon and Larry Kudlow and many of the other former Trump Administration officials, and we were launched in November of 2021. And we really were focused on a lot of state policies. So working in target states, advancing policy at the state level advancing Trump America First policies at the state level.”
  • AH: “We started talking to different organizations. We started looking at how we can grow with Hispanic voters and women voters and black Americans and parents.”
  • AH: “I worked on the Trump 2020 campaign. I was the coalition’s director. We had over 45 different coalitions. We had 650 advisory board members, and I knew the inroads that President Trump and his message could make. So to be able to continue that mission was absolutely critical.”
  • AH: “Lee Zeldin is on the board of America First Works. He was really a key, integral part of this, given that he ran for governor and got almost 50% of the vote in a state [New York] that had only 23% Republican registration.”
  • AH: “We had a meeting in January of 2024…there was only seven groups that had met, it was a pretty small group, and from that meeting we realized this has to be so much bigger. You look at the data, you look at the numbers, this is going to take all hands on deck. So there was about 50 organizations that met on April 3rd at the Willard Hotel, and we had a briefing from Kellyanne Conway on polling.”
  • AH: “One of the biggest gaps that we saw at American First Works was a ground game. And that was when we realized this was our opportunity to step up and help.”
  • Some thought targeting low propensity voters was a risky bet.
  • AH: “In 2016, Hillary Clinton said you know husbands told their wives how to vote. Well now we need to tell moms: You need to tell your husband to go vote, and that’s exactly what happened.”
  • AH: “Leading up to the election, the weekend before, the media was completely gaslighting conservatives and the public, saying that Harris had historic support from women. There was, at that point in the battleground states, 112,000 more Republican women women that had already voted and 500,000 no and low Democrat women that had not voted yet. That’s a 600,000 vote swing not in favor of Harris.”
  • AH: “She had a massive a massive disadvantage amongst women, and we saw that play out on election day.”
  • AH: “You can’t say what is a woman, you can’t force men into women’s bathrooms, you can’t make women feel unsafe and have illegal aliens kill young girls on a jog at her university and think women are going to show up for you.”
  • They didn’t change the message, but they did change who was delivering the message. AH: “We had the Frederick Douglas Foundation that reached out to Black Americans. We had 20 Arabic door knockers in Dearborn. These young men knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Dearborn, and I believe they’re part of the reason that Dearborn flipped was because they were taking the Trump policies and delivering it to their actual community.”
  • AH: “We sent text messages from Riley Gaines. We sent videos with Hunter Nation, another C4 organization of Ted Nugent to hunters and Second amendment people, so you had to have the right message, but overall the message was the same.”
  • Megyn Kelly: “My understanding is it took an average of about three text messages to these low propensity voters to convert them. I guess you got about 40% of the ones you targeted to the polls. So it was two texts on messages, and then the third text on ‘let’s go.'”
  • AH: “The cool thing about the text messaging program was we had a team of 50 volunteers who would actually reply to the text messages. So if you got a text message from Riley Gaines, for example, and you replied back and, I’ll be honest, sometimes they were just like ‘f you,’ we would say ‘Oh, I’m so sorry that we bothered you, but we just wanted to make sure you had your polling place.’ And they were blown away that there was someone on the other end that was actually reading the text messages, and from there we could have a conversation.”
  • AH: “The day after the election, we started sending text messages out again to every low and no propensity voter who’s Republican, Democrat and independent, saying ‘Welcome to the American First Movement. What do you want to see on day one of a new administration?’ Because now we’ve built these relationships, we have to expand our base.”
  • AH: “We went up with black Americans, Hispanic Americans women youth. This is our opportunity to make sure that people feel heard, and that we connect them with these policies and make this the most successful first 100 days of any Administration.”
  • The MAGA brand, far from being toxic, is now cool among young voters.
  • AH: “I have four daughters and I have one boy, and this election to me, I think like a lot of moms, was personal.”
  • This election seemed personal for a lot of people democrats thought they could safely ignore or bully into submission.

    LinkSwarm For November 15, 2024

    Friday, November 15th, 2024

    Trump keeps winning, Democrats are screwed, more “questionable” Democratic vote drops, a couple of disturbing deaths (only one TDS-related), and a Disney princess dines on shoe yet again. Plus: Satan!

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Republicans retained control of the U.S. house of Representatives, albeit by a very narrow margin, giving Republicans control of the House, Senate, and Presidency.
  • John Hindraker: Democrats are screwed.

    There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth among Democrats, following Donald Trump’s unexpected (by them) victory. How could this possibly have happened? is the question newspapers, television hosts, and Democratic pundits are asking.

    It actually isn’t a hard question to answer. The Biden/Harris administration had an indefensible record, and Kamala Harris didn’t seriously try to defend it, absurdly presenting herself as the candidate of change, while at the same time unable to identify a single respect in which her administration would be different from Biden’s.

    Voters were unhappy about inflation, about the economy in general, and about the border. The Democrats, having created these problems, had no solutions to offer. Instead, they tried to tell voters that their concerns were imaginary.

    Also, Kamala herself was a lousy candidate.

    But the reality is worse than that. As the dust settles, I think Democrats will realize they are in a deeper hole than they thought. It was no coincidence that Harris refused to say what her position was on a variety of issues, earning the title of the “no comment” candidate–something that must be unprecedented in presidential history. The problem wasn’t that Kamala was tongue-tied, the problem was that the Democrats no longer have a coherent policy agenda.

    The one issue that Harris never refrained from talking about was abortion. That is, today, the Democrats’ signature–and arguably only–issue. Apart from a fervent devotion to abortion, up to the moment of birth and beyond, what do they stand for?

    A few years ago, the energy in the Democratic Party was in its socialist wing. Several of its seemingly up-and-coming representatives were members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Bernie Sanders is the grand old man of socialism. On one memorable occasion, Nancy Pelosi was unable to explain how a Democrat is different from a socialist.

    But the bloom is off that rose. Socialism was never a serious alternative for America; it is a discredited ideology that has been rejected around the world. And socialism is not a plausible ideology for a party whose core demographic is people who earn over $200,000 a year.

    The Democrats are the party of DEI and Kamala Harris was a DEI candidate, but DEI is widely unpopular. The United States has labored under affirmative action, of which DEI is the current iteration, for 50 years. But Americans don’t like race discrimination or sex discrimination, and they believe in merit. An unbroken history of polling, stretching back for decades, has found that race and sex discrimination in employment and education are unpopular. Despite the massive corporate, government and cultural pressure that has tried to force DEI on Americans, that remains true. DEI, now on its way out, can hardly be the basis for future Democratic campaigns.

    Opening the borders and admitting millions of illegal immigrants has been the core policy priority of the Biden administration, as reflected in Biden’s day-one executive orders. But it was a policy prescription that Democrats were never able to openly articulate and defend. Thus, as the 2024 election approached they were reduced to making the absurd claim that “the Southern border is secure.” Open borders are deeply and correctly unpopular, and do not provide a platform on which any future Democrat can run, although no doubt we will see plenty of tearjerking stories about illegals who are being deported.

    Etc. Democrats are on the loser side of pretty much every issue.

  • It’s confirmed that Trump won Arizona, completing his sweep of all swing states.
  • The most pro-Trump demographic in 2024 was…American Indians. Huh. Maybe they want jobs and oil and gas money more than “land grab statements” and changing the names of sports teams.
  • Just because Trump won an overwhelming victory doesn’t mean that Democratic Party vote fraud has stopped. “Bucks County Commissioners Vote to Count Illegal Ballots as Pennsylvania Senate Race Heads for Recount…”I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws anytime they want,” Marseglia said. “So for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.” I didn’t get the outcome I wanted so I’m going to break the law is quite the legal strategy.

  • Speaking of voting fraud: More mysterious democratic vote dumps in Wisconsin.
  • Texas Democrat Party Chair to Resign After Major Electoral Losses.

    The Texas Democrat Party Chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa, has announced his resignation after a significant statewide electoral defeat in Tuesday’s election.

    Hinojosa, a South Texas lawyer first elected to the role in 2012, has overseen a period marked by Democrat losses, particularly among Hispanic voters and in border counties.

    Despite ongoing claims that Texas was on the verge of “turning blue” for over a decade, Democrats have failed to secure a statewide victory in 30 years. In Tuesday’s election, President Donald Trump won Texas by more than 13 points, including victories in 12 of the state’s 14 border counties. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz also defeated his Democrat opponent by approximately nine points.

    Speaking to KUT News on Wednesday, Hinojosa attributed the party’s loss partially to its focus on radical gender ideology. For example, during the party’s convention in June, delegates were addressed by a female drag queen (a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman). When asked about “transgender rights,” he responded, “I think what the Democratic Party has to realize is that there’s some things that we can support and some things that we cannot. And when we’re pressed upon to take votes of these kinds, we need to be mindful of the long-term consequences of these choices.”

    Of course, then he had to issue a groveling apology to the alphabet people. And that’s why you continue to lose…

  • Republicans select John Thune as the next majority leader, beating out John Cornyn and Trump pick Rick Scott (another Floridian), who came in a distant third. Senate’s gonna Senate.
  • Confirms an educated guess:

  • CIA Official Charged with Leaking Classified Documents about Planned Israeli Strike on Iran. Asif Rahman, who worked overseas for the clandestine agency, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national-defense information.”
  • Nobody wants ranked choice voting.
  • “The mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, Antar Lumumba, has been indicted on federal bribery charges. Also indicted: Aaron Banks, who is a councilman, and Jody Owens, the county DA…another city council member, Angelique Lee, pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit bribery” charges in August. I get the impression she hasn’t been sentenced yet, and I’m wondering if she’s now a ‘cooperating witness.'” I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Lumumba is a Democrat
  • The wins keep coming. “Republicans Flip 23 Texas Appeals Court Seats. GOP judicial candidates won 25 of 26 contested courts of appeals races on Tuesday’s ballot.”
  • Violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is now operating in all major cities in Tennessee. Thanks, Joe Biden.
  • “Union Member in Austin Files Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of National Labor Relations Board. Dallas Mudd was prevented from holding a decertification election at his workplace.” Given recent Supreme Court rulings against the administrative state, this probably has a fair chance of success.
  • MSNBC hemorrhages viewers following Trumps win.

  • Speaking of Hollywood liberals who can’t help themselves, Rachel Zegler has, yet again, opened her mouth and inserted her foot, wishing hatred on Trump voters. There’s a brilliant strategy, alienating more than half the country in a fit of pique. Seriously, has any actress in all Hollywood history ever done more damage to a film’s prospects than Zegler has to the live-action Snow White reboot? Update: Disney forced her to apologize.
  • And speaking of Disney, they just came crawling back to Elon Musk to start advertising on Twitter/X again.
  • Costco recalls 80,000 pounds of butter because it doesn’t say it contains milk. They can’t define a woman or butter. Now enjoy a vaguely related Family Guy clip.

  • Some took Trump’s victory harder than others. “Wife Of Famed Trans Writer Charged With Bludgeoning Dad To Death With Ice Axe After Trump’s Win.”

    The wife of a well-known transgender writer has been charged with murdering her father with an ice axe the night of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. She then allegedly shattered the windows of the $800,000 Rainier Valley, Washington, home in which she and her father lived in what she claimed was an “act of liberation,” according to charging documents.

    Corey Burke, 33, who is married to transgender writer Samantha Leigh Allen, the author of “Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States,” was discovered after the death of her father, Timothy Burke, 67 — who had health issues — “smiling and clapping covered in her loved one’s blood, cops said,” according to The New York Post, which added that Burke “allegedly confessed to investigators the next day that she killed her father with the ax and also by strangling him. She also admitted to biting her father while choking him, the docs alleged.”

    Yikes. I guess a lesbian who married a guy pretending to be a woman isn’t the most stable person in the world…

  • Another disturbing death: “Man found dead in Planet Fitness tanning bed three DAYS after entering gym.”
  • “Three Activists Charged with Burning-Cross KKK Hoax to Benefit Black Mayoral Candidate.” “Derrick Bernard Jr. (aka Phoenixx Ugrilla), 35; Ashley Danielle Blackcloud, 40; and Deanna Crystal West (aka Vital Sweetz and Sage West), 38, are accused of conspiring to stage the phony hate crime and then alerting the media to prop up Mobolade’s ultimately successful campaign.” All this to support candidate Yemi Mobolade…who won.
  • “Hollywood Braces for a Woke Backlash in the Wake of Trump’s Election.”

  • Liberal users are leaving X in a huff in the wake of President Trump’s 2024 election victory over the support of its owner, Elon Musk, for the President-elect and the platform’s right-ward shift.” Why yes, when you just lost an election in which every single demographic group and region moved away from you and toward the candidate you hate, then obviously the problem is that you just came in contact with too many dissenting voices and the solution is to retreat further into your own echo chamber where non-leftwing/non-SJW thought cannot penetrate. Brilliant!

  • “Documentary alleges 21,000 workers have died working on Saudi Vision 2030, which includes The Line,” AKA Neom. Now the Saudis are scumbags, and I wouldn’t put shockingly poor work conditions and covering up worker deaths past them, but those numbers are absolute bullshit, since that’s around four times as many as died during the entire period building the Panama Canal, and I’m pretty sure 21st century Saudi Arabia doesn’t have as big a problem with malaria as late 19th and early 20th century Panama.
  • Remember how The Critical Drinker raved about The Penguin? Well, now that he’s seen the entire first season, he raves even more.
  • Why Hawaii doesn’t have regular ferries between islands.
  • A thief broke into comedian Brad Williams’ house and Williams chased him off with two samurai swords. Did I mention that Williams is a dwarf?
  • You too can own the giant spider from The Giant Spider Invasion. No, not the VW one, the other (still massive) one that was used for close-up shots.
  • Candidate Who Bankrupted Campaign Will Never Have Opportunity To Fix Nation’s Economy.”
  • “Newsom Assures Californians They Will Be Safe From All The Trump Administration’s Prosperity, Safety, Lower Prices.”
  • “Liberals Enraged At Border Czar Vowing To Secure The Border.”
  • “Democrats Warn Abolishing Department Of Education Could Result In Kids Being Too Smart To Vote For Democrats.”
  • “Ladies, Please Check The Mail As Your Handmaid’s Tale Outfit Should Be Arriving Today.”
  • Democrats Denounce Satan As ‘Too Moderate.'” “Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly confided in aides that Satan was being kind of a pest by continually asking Democrats to pretend to be sane just for a while so he could get some of them elected. ‘The nerve of that guy!'”
  • “Woman Not In The Mood For Comedy Turns On SNL.”
  • “To Improve Trustworthiness Of The Hosts, The View To Replace Whoopi Goldberg With Alex Jones.”
  • Man, despite that cool front, there still seems to be a lot of pollen in the air:

  • Team Personal Loyalty

    Thursday, November 14th, 2024

    In his Joe Rogan interview, President Trump said that his biggest mistake from his first term came from appointing “disloyal” people to important positions based on advice from career Republican politicians. So naturally this time around he’s picking people based in large measure on personal loyalty to him. The result is a much better cabinet than his first, but not a perfect one. I’ll go through the top picks with quick reaction on each.

  • Secretary of State: Marco Rubio. Meh. Marco has always struck me as an intellectual lightweight. He will doubtless be a much better Secretary of State than Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first choice, as well as all Democratic secretaries of state back to at least Cyrus Vance (if not further), but in terms of actual ability I’m not sure he’s better than Trump’s second Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. I would prefer someone like Victor Davis Hanson. Or even (dare I say it?) Rick Perry. This also starts the run of “Sure is a lot of people from Florida on this list.”
  • Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth. “Before joining Fox in 2014, Hegseth served as an Army National Guard captain in Afghanistan and Iraq and earned the Bronze Star medal for his service in the latter.” I don’t watch Fox (or network or cable news in general), so I wasn’t previously aware of him, but he wants to completely purge wokeness and DEI, so I’m firmly on Team Hegseth now.

  • Attorney General: Florida congressman Matt Gaetz. Boy, this one really has the left freaking out. As well it should. While I’m confident Gaetz has the steel to launch investigations of the Russian collusion hoax, the Trump assassination attempts, the lawfare waged against him, censorship efforts, January 6, etc., I worry that he hasn’t run a state attorney generals office, and thus won’t know how best to bring “resistance” staffers to heel. I suspect a seasoned Republican state attorney general like Ken Paxton might have been a better choice, but Texas conservatives won’t complain about getting to keep Paxton in his current job.
  • Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Meh. I liked Noem back when she kept her state open during the Flu Manchu panic, but then she went off tranny pandering by vetoing a bill banning men from women’s sports she had promised to sign. She later made amends, but the initial pander of caving to radical social justice pressure makes me worry that she doesn’t have the necessary gumption for such an important job.
  • Department Of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy. Putting aside why this isn’t simply the Office of Management and Budget (maybe to staff a new department from the ground up without “resisters”), this one Trump hit out of the park. Both Musk and Ramaswamy are going to bring outsider energy from two guys who simply don’t care what the MSM and the DC chattering classes have to say about them. Ramaswamy is the ideological firebrand that won’t be diverted from the task, and Musk is the radical innovator who’s not afraid to to make rapid, radical changes. Every Republican President since Reagan has said they’re for a balanced budget, yet somehow the goal has eluded every single one of them. Trump did not pursue a budget cutting agenda in his first term, but having been targeted by multiple tentacles of the deep state leviathan, I’m pretty sure he’ll come in with a newfound zeal for chopping the federal government down to size. And Musk has a talent for both management and radical disruption, which the federal government badly needs.
  • Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard. I’m skeptical this one works out. Tulsi is clearly sharp, and after this election she clearly needs some role in the Trump 2: The Venging administration. And she drive feminists crazy simply by standing there and looking pretty. But directing the national intelligence apparatus, especially one that will be institutionally hostile to reform from the git go, will take a very special, and very tough, director to fill that role, and I’m not sure Gabbard has the intestinal fortitude for the sort of brutal inter-agency knife-fighting necessary to defeat the Deep State. Very few men do, and even fewer women, and having served in the military isn’t sufficient to assure that. For a woman to succeed in this role, she’s going to need to fall somewhere on the Margaret Thatcher to Nancy Pelosi Iron Lady to Stone Cold Bitch spectrum, and I’m skeptical Tulsi meets that threshold. Maybe I’m wrong and she’ll suprise us all.
  • Robert K. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. No. Like Tulsi, you have to give him some role, and he probably has some good points to make about over-medication, junk food additives, and how the pharmaceutical industry has misled the public (especially over Flu Manchu vaccines and side effects) and commits regulatory capture of the people who should be overseeing it, but he has too many fringe, scientifically unsupported ideas, and he seems to support ObamaCare. There’s still a chance this selection works out, assuming the Assistant Director is someone who can keep Kennedy’s worst impulses in check, and having him as the designated bad cop may force the medial industry get its shit together (and give up its push to mutilate children for funny, profit and virtue signaling brownie points entirely). Then there’s this via Instapundit:

    But this could still blow up in Trump’s face. Rand Paul would have been a much better pick here, assuming he could be persuaded to leave the senate.

  • Border Czar: Former ICE director Tom Homan. Yeah, he’s got the starch.

    Let a thousand ten million deportations bloom.

  • So I find it a pretty mixed bag.

    Athena Thorne notes that all those selected were unfairly targeted by the very agencies they’re being tasked to oversee, and that probably does provide powerful motivation, as well as insight on the types of abuse that need to be rooted out. I’m just not sure that’s sufficient…

    Best Smug “Trump Can’t Win” Videos

    Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

    Tired of enjoying a nice heaping plate of schadenfreude at liberal dismay over Trump’s win? Well, I’m not! Enjoy some of the most confidently smug Democrats declaring that there’s no way Trump can win.

    Highlights:

  • The female “political analyst” who confidently told a liquor store clerk where she was buying champagne that Harris was going to win all the swing states plus Iowa due to abortion, only to cry “racism and misogyny” in the “after” video.
  • The Tik-Tok electoral votes map guy who confidently predicted Harris garnering 349 votes, including. “It’s gonna be a landslide.” Also: “Some people are telling me to turn Texas to blue.” Democrats have been getting high on the “Texas is about to turn blue” pipe dream for the last two decades…
  • Nikki Haley back during her Republican presidential primary campaign (Where she managed to win…Vermont. By 3,000 votes.): “If Donald Trump is the nominee, mark my words, we will see a President Kamala Harris.”
  • Bill Maher predicting Kamala winning the popular vote.
  • Some MSNBC talking head calmly asserting that “there’s no imaginable world in which Donald Trump would win a popular majority in America.”
  • Seems like Democrats lack imagination about a whole lot of things…

    Black Girl Redpilled

    Saturday, November 9th, 2024

    Here’s a short, interesting video of a black, female YouTuber with a punk rock haircut who goes by Gothix, who found herself inadvertently red-pilled.

  • “I never really was into politics at all, but I had a lot of opinions about politics. To give you some context, I had severe Trump Derangement Syndrome. I hated Trump. I hated everyone who voted for Trump. I actually cut off one of my best friends. I didn’t speak to her for like a year because I could not understand how my white friend would vote for someone who was against my people being black people. And so and so.”
  • “My political awakening pretty much happened over the course of, maybe, like, two years. It started when Disney announced that they were going to be doing a live action remake of The Little Mermaid. I was wondering why they made Ariel black. I was very confused by this, so naturally I go online I ask this question, and I started to get a lot of pushback from people who were my fans.”
  • “A lot of them were black fans, and they they couldn’t understand why I had such a problematic anti-black opinion.”
  • “I’m, like, ‘My audience just turned on me for a very reasonable question.’ And I also didn’t like how if anyone opposed Ariel being turned black, you were automatically a racist. And that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
  • “A few months later Covid starts, and we’re told to stay home and flatten the curve. Meanwhile, the BLM protest starts, and now all of a sudden you can go out as long as you are protesting to end racial Injustice or something like that. So that hypocrisy didn’t make any sense to me. Either Covid is deadly or it’s not. Either we stay home or we don’t. We don’t get to pick and choose.”
  • “Once again I brought up the question: What does stealing a 70 inch TV have to do with ending police brutality? And once again I got hate. And then it dawned on me: ‘Hold on! I keep getting pushback from black leftists. There is something going on about this.'”
  • “So then I started going down a rabbit hole, and I started literally researching ‘black people who stopped being Democrat’ and the amount of stuff that I got it was crazy. The first thing that I watched was the Uncle Tom documentary, and what I came to realize after watching that is that we have been lied to about history.”
  • “There’s something called the black card, and there’s sort of like this expectation that you’re supposed to behave in a certain way, and that trickles down all the way to who you vote for.”
  • “When you are born black in America, it’s sort of insinuated that you will be voting Democrat. Don’t ask questions, just vote Democrat. Which is exactly what I did when Obama was running. I voted for him because he’s black. Knew nothing about his policies, but he’s black and I need to help my people or something.”
  • “That process got me to start really considering all the things that I used to believe. One of the things was about Trump, and then I realized that ‘Oh, wow, the media is lying about him they’re taking these clips and they’re using clickbait and distorting it taking it totally out of context.’ And they’re emotionally extorting people who wear their identity on their sleeve. If you are black and you see a a video of some guy in office talking about, uh, anything racist, of course you’re going to oppose him, right?”
  • “And then that makes room for a political savior to come in who makes empty promises about ending white supremacy. I just came to realize that the media is not on our side, they’re not there to tell us the news, they’re not there to keep us informed, they’re there to get us emotionally riled up so then they can use that to get us marching to the ballot box. They don’t actually care about us.”
  • If you know a white liberal who reflexively calls Trump a racist, send them a link to this video.

    And I’ll have to track down that Uncle Tom documentary…

    LinkSwarm For November 1, 2024

    Friday, November 1st, 2024

    Happy Day of the Dead, AKA All Saints Day!

    We’re in the last stretch of the 2024 campaign, Joe Rogan did a great interview with J. D. Vance, all sorts of sketchy voting problems surface, IDF dirtnaps another Hamas terrorist scumbbag, Nvidia replaces Intel, and influencers prioritize selfies over survival. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Rogan did a really great interview with J.D. Vance. The Trump interview was good, but Trump did his usual looping and weaving thing. Vance comes across as not only smart and confident, but seems (unlike Kamala Harris) extremely comfortable in his own skin.
  • “Pennsylvania: Fraud scheme involving 2,500 voter registrations found in Lancaster County.”

    A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday’s deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney’s office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.

  • Shenanigans: “Kentucky County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth ‘Glitch’ Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala.”
  • A victory. “Supreme Court Allows Virginia to Remove Noncitizens from Voter Rolls before Election.”
  • More States Join Fight Against Biden-Harris Lawsuit Preventing Removal of Non-citizen Voters.”
  • Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold, the same official who tried to kick Trump off the ballot, “inadvertently” leaked voting machine passwords in public spreadsheet.”
  • Trump leads in every swing state.
  • More Biden-Harris economic magic: “US Manufacturing Survey Hits 16-Month-Lows.”
  • “The Harris Campaign Is Testament to the Toxicity of Woke Politics.”

    We’ve passed the peak of woke politics in the U.S., and the Harris for president campaign is the leading indicator.

    Of all the things that Kamala Harris wants you to know about her — that she grew up in a middle-class family, that she’s not Joe Biden, that she has a “to-do list” for the American people — perhaps foremost among them is that she’s not woke.

    She doesn’t have any rote line asserting this, but achieving distance from the fashionable left-wing politics that defined the Trump years and their immediate aftermath motivates much of what she says and does.

    That Harris now feels compelled to disavow so many of the ideas that she once embraced is powerful testament to their political toxicity.

    An idea has won or lost in American politics when both parties favor or oppose it, or simply don’t want to fight over it anymore. Ronald Regan’s economics truly prevailed when the Democratic Party, via Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, accepted his basic approach. Gay marriage won politically when Republicans decided to stop talking about the issue.

    By this standard, woke attitudes and policies are in marked decline, and Kamala Harris is Exhibit A.

    Except for her abortion radicalism, she’s turned her back on much of what she once professed to believe or sympathize with.

    Defund the police? Absolutely not.

    Abolish ICE? No way.

    DEI? Haven’t heard of it.

    Medicare for all? That was a long time ago.

    The Green New Deal? Let’s not get carried away.

    She has backed off her extravagant positions on the trans issue and the border. She now insists that rather than pushing the envelope on either, she simply wants to follow the law. You could be forgiven for thinking the only pronouns she knows are she/her and he/him.

    Harris doesn’t bring up identity politics at all. Not only does she not talk about the once-ubiquitous concepts of white privilege or “equity,” she doesn’t even talk about breaking the glass ceiling or the history-making nature of her candidacy. Listening to her campaign, you’d have no idea that the twin -isms, racism and sexism, have been consuming obsessions of the Left for years now.

    But if she gets elected, just like Obama, she’ll abandon all of her moderate positions and rush back to her radical roots.

  • Harris campaign pulls $2 million in ad money out of North Carolina.
  • “Donald Trump says he’ll task Elon Musk with auditing the entire federal government.”

    Former President Donald Trump says that if reelected, he’ll create a government efficiency task force — and that Elon Musk has already agreed to lead it. During a speech in New York on Thursday, Trump said the new efficiency commission would conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make recommendations for “drastic reforms.”

    I hope Musk gets out a big axe and that the Trump Administration actually balances the budget. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • The Green New Scam is dying. Color me skeptical as long as there’s graft to rake off…
  • Speaking of which: “Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds.” This is my shocked face.
  • Who watches the watchmen? “Eagle Pass Detective Sentenced to 10 Years for Hiding Illegal Aliens in Rental Properties. Hazel Eileen Diaz ran stash houses for a human smuggling organization.”
  • Al Qaeda just killed 600 civilians in Burkina Faso.
  • Analysis shows that Israel hit Iran’s former nuclear weapons test and missile production facilities.
  • Another Hamas bigwig dirtnapped:

    The IDF eliminated Hamas’s National Relations head Izz al-Din Kassab on Friday in Khan Yunis, Gaza, who was also one of the last remaining members of the terrorist organization’s political bureau still inside the Palestinian enclave.

    The strike that killed Kassab was completed based on IDF and ISA intelligence. His assistant Ayman Ayesh was also killed in the strike.

    He was also responsible for Hamas’s relations and cooperation, whether strategic or military, with other terrorist organizations within the Gaza Strip such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Ukrainian drones hit Spetznaz Special Forces University in Chechnya.
  • The IRS is still retaliating against the Hunter Biden whistleblower.
  • Poland shuts down a Russian consulate citing sabotage.
  • The rise and fall of China’s “mistress villages.” Bonus: The Hong Kong businessmen who used to keep mistresses in Shinjin are now evidently buying houses for a new generation of them in the Rowland Heights area of Los Angeles…
  • Another day, another released illegal alien killing an American citizen in a DUI.
  • Rapper and big money Cook County Democratic Party donator Lil Durk, AKA Durk Devontay Banks, has been arrested in a murder-for-hire scheme against a fellow rapper. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Sewage explosion turns Moscow into a literal shit show.
  • TGI Fridays closes 49 locations. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • In their ongoing quest to make YouTube completely unusable, they’re thinking of removing date, time and view counts.
  • Texas A&M sticks their money in Commie Chinese companies.

    Records show the investment arm of two major Texas universities bought shares in more than 50 Chinese companies.

    On September 23, the American Accountability Foundation exposed how the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company’s asset managers advanced leftist ideology through their shareholder resolutions.

    On October 17, UTIMCO President and CEO Richard Hall told state senators that he was “not happy with those votes” and the firm “would do better.”

    However, a deeper dive into the records AAF acquired also revealed concerning investments. According to records, UTIMCO has invested money in Chinese companies.

    UTIMCO allocated some of its assets to the following entities: Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management, and Acadian Asset Management. The three asset managers participated in shareholder votes in China-based companies, revealing the UTIMCO investments in these businesses.

    In October 2023, Connor, Clark & Lunn participated in a shareholder vote for Topsec Technologies Group, a China-based cyber security company. Reuters reported that Topsec provides “network security products, big data products, and cloud services to customers in various industries such as government, finance, operators, energy, health, education, transportation, and manufacturing.”

    There were shareholder votes for Huaneng Power International, Inc., a power company that boasts of being “one of the largest listed power producers” in China. Their parent company is China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd., which owns more than 50 percent of HPI shares. According to their website, the company is “a key state-owned company established with the approval of the [China] State Council.”

    In December 2023, the management company Connor, Clark & Lunn Investment Management voted 19 times for electing various individuals as directors or supervisors of the Chinese company.

    Snip.

    AAF records showed other investments into China by UTIMCO fund managers, including BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., Haier Smart Home Co., Ltd., Opple Lighting Co., Ltd., and LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd.

  • Teacher certification cheating ring exposed.

    A million-dollar cheating ring resulted in at least 210 unqualified teachers, including two sexual predators, receiving teacher certifications. The ring was exposed this week after the Harris County District Attorney’s Office filed charges against five individuals involved.

    The alleged ringleader is Vincent Grayson, the head boys basketball coach at Houston’s Booker T. Washington High School.

    Also charged are Tywana Gilford Mason, the teacher certification test proctor; Nicholas Newton, an assistant principal who served as the proxy test-taker; Darian Nikole Wilhite, another proctor; and LaShonda Roberts, an assistant principal at Yates High School who helped recruit would-be teachers.

    All are charged with two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity.

    Allegedly, candidates seeking certification would pay Grayson $2,500. He would then give a 20 percent portion to Gilford Mason, who would then allow Newton to sit for the test under the teacher’s name. The candidates would be given a testing time and location by Gilford Mason, then show up, sign in, and leave. Newton would then arrive and take the test for them.

    And now the unqualified teachers who got in on this scheme are out there teaching children…

  • Sony shuts down studio that released disastrous $400 million woke shooter Concord.

  • Speaking of which, Dragon Age: Veilguard has an unskipable cutscreen that lectures you on pronouns.
  • Dropbox lays off 20% of global workforce.
  • Big news for your portfolio: “Nvidia To Replace Intel In The Dow Jones Industrial Average.” Nvidia has certainly been on a tear as of late, but if Intel hadn’t screwed up their sub 10nm process, this wouldn’t be happening.
  • It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. “These influencers refused to wear life jackets on a yacht because it would ruin their selfies. They drowned when their boat sank.”
  • Jazz Shaw, RIP.
  • Wizards of the Coast is trying to rip off artist Donato Giancola.
  • Though Halloween is over, this is horrifying enough.
  • Speaking of Halloween, you can find all the Halloween posts on my other blog here.
  • “In Devastating Blow To Democrats, Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Following The Law.”
  • “Trump Holds Most Ethnically Diverse, Pro-Israel Nazi Rally In History.”
  • Ghost dogs!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Inside Ukraine’s Drone Units

    Tuesday, October 29th, 2024

    I don’t like to link to or embed stuff from CNN, but this look inside one of Ukraine’s drone units is pretty informative.

  • They move constantly, and launch drone attacks from different locations in the dead of night.
  • Despite the impression given by some videos here, they say that the Russian air defenses are “pretty good.”
  • They launch a lot of decoy drones at the same time for the Russian to shoot down.
  • The real drones are Antanov 196s, which can carry up to 500 pound warheads as far as 1,300 miles.
  • Naturally, they want the American government to give them permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike deeper into Russia…