Posts Tagged ‘2016 Election’

Rick Perry Suspends Presidential Campaign

Friday, September 11th, 2015

Former Texas governor Rick Perry effectively ended his second campaign for president Friday, becoming the first candidate to exit the race as his attempt to mount a do-over of his disastrous 2012 run fell short.”

Snip.

“Perry had struggled to rise in polls and failed to qualify for last month’s prime-time debate in Cleveland — a major setback. He appeared in the undercard debate, only to see Carly Fiorina, a former technology executive, have what many observers considered a breakout performance.”

While I like Perry better than at least 2/3rds of the GOP field (and even made the case for him back in 2012), he couldn’t overcome his gaffes enough to get voters to take a look at his record as Governor.

I bet Evan at Perry vs. World would like that prediction back…

Do You Know More Foreign Policy Than Donald Trump? Take This Quiz

Saturday, September 5th, 2015

I got six of six. And anyone who doesn’t know who the Kurds are since no later than 1991 shouldn’t be President…

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)

Hillary Clinton’s Email Server: Worse Security Than Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart

Tuesday, September 1st, 2015

So Hillary’s Super Secret Secure Server was actually hosted on the same server as the not secret and not particularly secure Clinton Foundation email system.

Which means any hacker that could pwn the Clinton Foundation server (and why wouldn’t they?) could almost certainly pwn Hillary’s private e-mail server, chock full of illegal classified national security information, through any number of exploits or privilege escalation attacks.

And evidently she was running her emails off an Exchange 2010 Server, which meant it was running on top of Windows, which means there were no end of exploits by which a dedicated hacker could gain control.

“Oh hey! I’m hosting this list of ISIS secret agents on my Doom III deathmatch server! I’m sure there’s no way that could possibly backfire on me!”

Or to put it in non-computer terms, she was storing classified information in an unlocked tin box under her bed that everyone in her neighborhood also knew contained bundles of unmarked $100 bills, and she was just hoping no one broke in.

She’s a major security risk that should never, ever be in the oval office…

Wallace Hall/Joe Straus Update

Thursday, August 27th, 2015

Got a bunch of links building up concerning Wallace Hall, Joe Straus and related topics that I’m just going to shotgun out here:

  • UT reforms admissions process so it can only admit unqualified, well-connected students if it really, really wants to.
  • Wallace Hall was not impressed with the reform. “This memorializes bad acts from a hidden admissions policy.”
  • Hall says that Joe Straus came after him to make an example of him.
  • Hall sues University of Texas chancellor McRaven for access to all of the Kroll report, not just the expurgated version.
  • Meanwhile, the UT system is sueing Attorney General Ken Paxton in turn, to keep their dirty laundry secret.
  • Former Texas Public Policy Foundation President Jeff Judson is running against Joe Straus for his state house seat. Here’s his website.
  • VP Joe Biden Meeting With Top Democratic Fundraisers

    Monday, August 24th, 2015

    Hmmm, I wonder what that could possibly be about…

    Also, according to Ace, Biden has reportedly offered Elizabeth Warren the VP spot and promise to run a one-and-done Presidency.

    That would make things very interesting indeed.

    LinkSwarm for August 21, 2015

    Friday, August 21st, 2015

    Small LinkSwarm this time.

  • “Hillary Clinton is the contemporary poster child for special privileges for the rich and powerful.”
  • Latest Iran deal revelation: Iran gets to self-inspect their own nuclear site. But Kerry did get them to agree to pinky swear they’re telling the truth…
  • Obama and his party. “No president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics.” Caveat the first: Although I think the phrase “there’s neither a Great Depression nor a criminal conspiracy in the White House to explain what has happened” is probably false on both counts. Caveat the second: Notice how the article carefully omits any mention of the specific Obama policies that have made his party so unpopular…
  • From back in June: Karl Rove lied about Ted Cruz. (Hat tip (tangentially): Perry vs. World, where Evan seems to have woken from his summer slumber…)
  • I really want to believe this Atlantic piece on how Russia is losing in Ukraine, but I just don’t. This one sentence has so much wrong with it I have trouble trusting the rest of the article: “Shale, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and renewables—three areas where Russia is extremely weak—are ascendant and are dramatically altering the market.” Shale’s a solid play if you’ve already tapped out more easily-extracted hydrocarbons (I doubt Russia has), LNG is a profitable byproduct if you’re already extracting oil, but at today’s market prices (which have sucked since 2009) it’s not worth pursuing on its own, and renewables? Hippie, please
  • Muslim beats wife in front of police, saying they can’t arrest him because she’s his property.
  • Slovakia to the EU: Screw you, we’re not taking any Muslim refugees. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Movement in Spain tries to erase Salvador Dali from history. You’ll get my Salvador Dali from me when you pry the melting clocks out of my burning hands!
  • Could Google rig the next election?
  • It’s a Goldman-Sachs world. We just live in it…
  • Three students at the “Homestead Job Corps” murder a fourth. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that program isn’t working…
  • Missed this from earlier in the year: Arkansas cops attempt to plant malware on a lawyer’s computer, fail miserably.
  • Joe Straus is backing Jeb Bush. I don’t imagine that this will come as a shock to anyone…
  • Larry Correia Predicts Cruz/Clinton Contest

    Tuesday, August 18th, 2015

    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…”

    LinkSwarm for August 14, 2015

    Friday, August 14th, 2015

    Austin had a very, very wet spring, but August is shaping up in normal fashion: Bone dry and hot as hell. Try to keep cool and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • “There is no real distinction between today’s Democrats and socialists.”
  • Democrats have an America problem.
  • The email scandal could very well sink Hillary:

    Politicized or not, the DOJ will be increasingly boxed in by the FBI and intelligence community investigations. Normally, when the intelligence community finds classified materials in unauthorized locations, it seeks felony prosecutions. Gen. David Petraeus was sunk for keeping his own personal calendars in an unlocked drawer at home. The calendars were deemed classified, even if they lacked an official stamp. President Clinton’s CIA Director, John Deutsch, lost his job and security clearance for using his portable computer at home. It had classified material on it. Those violations are trifling compared to Hillary Clinton’s exposure.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin may be joining her in the big house
  • Bernie Sanders up over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire? #WhiteVotesMatter
  • Ohio Democrats continue their youth movement by recruiting 74-year old Ted Strickland for a Senate race.
  • Someone spilled millions of gallons of toxic waste into a river! Call the EPA! Oh wait, it was the EPA.
  • Islamic State executes 300 electoral civil servants in Iraq. Good thing we’ve got Nobel Prize winner Barack Obama sowing peace and stability to the Middle East rather than that warmongering bungler Bush… (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • So why did the Obama Administration pretend Taliban-head Mullah Omar was still alive when he’s probably been dead 2 years? (Hat tip: Prairie Pundit.)
  • And why is the Obama Administration siding with the terrorists and against the Americans who have already won legal judgments against them?
  • A whole bunch of gun myths debunked. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Just why did the University of Minnesota think it needed grenade launchers? (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • China devalues the Yuan. This is Big Freaking News, but hard to conceptualize, since China’s economic statistics are have not even a nodding acquaintance with reality, and haven’t for at least a decade. So is China’s current bubble bad, or super mega world-shatterling bad?
  • Your guide to global black market pricing.
  • Islamic State Worse off than Greece?
  • Brazil: Super-Duper boned.
  • Great Cthulhu emerges as surprise front-runner in Labour leadership contest.”
  • Tianjin, China Blows Up Real Good.
  • Jihadis kill four, kidnap six from hotel in central Mali. That’s really going to crimp your vacation plans. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Cop-killing inmate dies in prison riot. Alas, my electron microscope is being recalibrated, so I won’t be able to find the proper sized violin to commemorate this sad occasion… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Social Justice Warriors continue their war on comedy on campus.
  • Man arrested for shooting at police in Ferguson was completely unarmed. Except for his guns.
  • Cool World War II radio intercepts story, via Instapundit.
  • Florida Man has been busy.
  • Ted Cruz Makes Bacon With a Machine Gun

    Thursday, August 6th, 2015

    OK, now he’s officially the front-runner…

    (Although to my sight, it looks a lot more like an assault rifle like (Maybe an HK MR556A1? The glimpse is pretty brief.) than a machine gun.)

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

    Not News: Hillary Clinton Unpopular. News: Among White Women

    Wednesday, August 5th, 2015

    This doesn’t sound like good news for Team Inevitable:

    Many Democrats have long hoped that Hillary Clinton might expand Barack Obama‘s electoral coalition by drawing in more white women voters.

    A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests she may have a tough time pulling it off. Mrs. Clinton is losing ground with white women and many other important slices of the electorate, the poll shows, amid a spate of reports about her email practices, speaking fees and foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.

    In June, 44% of white women had a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton, compared to 43% who didn’t. In July, those numbers moved in the wrong direction for Mrs. Clinton: Only 34% of white women saw her in a positive light, compared to 53% who had a negative impression of her, the poll found.

    Gee, turns out women voters aren’t wild about an inept politicians with anger and entitlement issues who consistently breaks both ethics guidelines and the law for personal gain. Who knew?

    Good thing for Hillary that white women aren’t an important part of her voting coalition…