Posts Tagged ‘Guns’

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Nice First-Person Defensive Gun Use Piece

Sunday, September 1st, 2019

This is a nice long, sympathetic account of a man who used his gun defensively against two people robbing a convenience store:

When he arrived, the 37-year-old headed to the fountain drink machine, paying little attention to the din of chatter inside the South Newtown Road store. After pouring his favorite strawberry-melon flavored iced tea into a cup, he walked toward the cash register on the other side of the counter.

“I’m sipping on my Big Gulp, and this red beam cuts into my drink,” said the man, who agreed to tell The Virginian-Pilot what happened July 25 on the condition he not be identified.

“I look down and I’ve got a pink drink with something orangish-red in there. Then I look up and there are two guys pretty much standing on top of each other with two guns pointed in my face.”

The gunmen, on what police say was the last stop of a spate of robberies around 2 a.m. that Thursday, had hoods pulled over their heads and bandannas covering their faces. The red spot in the man’s drink was a laser light from one of the guns aimed in his direction.

Still clutching his Big Gulp, the man followed orders to raise his hands and move to the side. Two other customers, a woman and a man, stood frozen in front of the cash register.

While one robber stuffed his pockets with money, the other leaned over the counter with his gun fixed on the store clerk.

“The clerk was arguing with them, saying, ‘You don’t have to do this. Just leave,’” the man said. “The situation just started to escalate, and I was worried he was going to shoot the clerk.”

While the robbers focused on the cash and the clerk, the man touched the 9 mm handgun hidden in a holster under his T-shirt with his pinkie. No one noticed. He knew he had about 10 rounds in the clip.

As he stood there, still clutching his Big Gulp and occasionally taking a sip, the man now found himself facing a tough decision: Should he draw the gun?

He ran through the possible consequences: Will I go to jail? Do I have a clear enough shot that no one else will get hurt? Is anyone else in the store? Will someone else pop in? If I don’t do it, is the clerk or someone else going to get shot?

“I’m thinking about all of that and at the same time thinking, you’re supposed to have the right to bear arms, the right to protect yourself, the right to protect others if need be,” he said.

“I’m like ‘Man, you say you believe in the Second Amendment. You say you believe in America. You know God’s got you.’”

Still holding his drink in one hand, he fired first at the robber behind the counter. He aimed for his shoulder, he said, but ended up hitting him in the neck.

“He hollered, and I think that distracted (the other gunman) because he wasn’t thinking that was going to happen,” the man said. “Nobody thought that was going to happen. He’s probably emotional and distraught because he was in control up to that point.”

The robber behind the counter fell. The one who’d had his gun pointed at the clerk turned to see where the shot had come from. With that weapon now turned in his direction, the man fired two more shots. Both hit the second robber in his torso, killing him.

After kicking the gun away from the dead robber, the man told the clerk to call police, then checked on the one behind the counter to take his gun away and see if he needed first aid.

“He was like, ‘How’s my brother?’” the man said. “I remember answering him pretty coldly. I told him, ‘You don’t got a brother no more.’

“He looked at me like he wanted to do something and I immediately lost it. I was like, ‘(Expletive), no one points a gun at me and gets away with it.’”

The woman at the register had dropped to the floor after the first shot was fired. She was still on the ground shaking uncontrollably, with her hands covering her head, when he went to help her up.

The man, a divorced father of a teenage son and an employee of a medical transport business, was also shaken but tried to remain calm.

He’d never shot anyone before.

He is, however, experienced with guns and has had a concealed handgun permit since he was 21. He enjoys going to a shooting range a couple of times a week and believes all gun owners should be properly trained.

As he waited for police to arrive that night, the man began to worry about how the officers would react.

“You just shot and killed somebody in 7-Eleven. You just told these people to call the cops and they’re coming. You got to stand here and wait for them. Of course, you can’t be standing here with a gun in your hand. You’re a black man with a gun. You’ll probably get shot.”

Keep in mind that a lawyer or carry instructor would probably advise you to avoid saying some of the things the many in the article does in the aftermath of the shooting.

Read the whole thing. And if you haven’t already, read the terrific follow-up piece on Stephen Willeford, the man who stopped the Sutherland Springs shooter with his own AR-15 I linked to a while back.

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

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LinkSwarm for August 23, 2019

Friday, August 23rd, 2019

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Why evangelicals support Trump:

    Recall that Trump was running after eight years of President Obama. Those eight years saw the federal government attempt to force nuns, literally the Little Sisters of the Poor, to violate their consciences and fund birth control. Obama took ’em to court over that. The eight years of Obama saw activist leftists haul Christian cake bakers to court and destroy their livelihood. The eight years of Obama saw a very emboldened left vent its hatred for everyone to their right, and evangelicals knew we were in their crosshairs. They went after Christian-owned Hobby Lobby, they used our tax dollars to fund abortion, they made their disdain for our faith abundantly clear. The Democrats’ 2016 appeal to us amounted to “Vote for us, you stupid, racist, bucktoothed haters!”

    That’s terrible marketing anywhere outside the New York Times newsroom.

    Their 2020 message is worse. They’re pushing failed 19th-century socialism paired with anti-Semitism (while calling us “racist”), along with the policy plan that just finished killing Venezuela. They want to erase our borders and take away our guns. They’ll betray Israel at the first opportunity. Remember — Rep. Eric Swalwell (D) threatened to nuke gun owners, fellow Americans! Plus: they still hate evangelicals and want us to pay for abortion on demand.

    Hillary Clinton did not offer a break from any of that. She called us “deplorable” and relished cranking Obama’s hostility up a notch. The third-party guy, Evan whatever, also spent too much time attacking to his right, not his left. That’s not a good look. Ditto for the NeverTrumpers.

    Snip.

    Speaking for myself and the evangelicals I know, Trump earned our votes by articulating many of our ideals fearlessly. This suggested he might actually follow through, unlike many who have called themselves “conservative” for their entire lives but “grow” left once they get to Washington. If we got some policy wins out of him, all the better.

    Trump has been strongly pro-life, strongly pro-American, strongly pro-Israel, strongly pro-capitalism, and he has pushed back against the freedom-robbing regulatory state. He cut taxes and he left evangelicals alone. He didn’t sue the nuns. He doesn’t want our guns.

    Voting for Trump is not “trading Christian values for political power.” It’s voting in self-defense against the radical, evangelical-hating left and hoping for the best – and getting more than expected.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Why did we get Trump? Because he fights the battles no one else would.

    First, he alerted us to a media no longer impartial but zealously preoccupied in manufacturing fake news on behalf of a radical-left wing agenda.

    He then exposed us to the dangerous reality of a vast government bureaucracy, akin to a shadow government, operating on behalf of its own interests and concerns and not those of the American people. The deep state, operating confidently and without checks and balances, ignores representatives elected by the people while pursuing a globalist and self-serving agenda.

    Now Trump is challenging the unofficial rule that people dare not criticize those whom the liberal community considers icons, personalities who may never be questioned or probed due to their liberal credentials.

    Well, it’s about time!

    It started when the president tweeted about the deplorable conditions in some of our major urban areas. He began pin-pointing what we have all seen, namely, how Democrats have run these cities for decades, contributing to their degradation and decay, and causing severe harm to their inhabitants. The liberal “icons” that have controlled these municipalities for decades have allowed urban centers, through their enforced and sanctimonious liberalism, to devolve from once-great cities to districts akin to war zones and rubble. It’s not about the race of the leaders, but their left-liberal policies, as may be seen in parts of New York City under Bill de Blasio and in Chicago until recently under Rahm Emanuel.

    Once-untouchable liberal icons, such as U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), are a major part of the problem. Trump points this out. Grandstanding about conditions along the U.S. southern border, Cummings has stood idly by as his own West Baltimore district has fallen apart. His only purpose seems to be to demand more money for the district’s power brokers.

    Similarly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continually shrieks about the southern border. She might pay more attention to the inferior conditions in large swaths of her Bronx and Queens district. President Trump is spotlighting these conditions as well as the actors involved.

    No person is above criticism. Not Cummings, not Al Sharpton, nor “squad” members Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), or Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). If they can dish it out—as they do daily, often by tarring their opponents as racists and white supremacists—they should be able to take it.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Man goes to car dealership, finds it booming:

    “It’s the Trump economy man. You can say what you want but he wants to help all of us. I’ve never made more money than I am right now. We don’t even work with wealthy buyers. It’s almost all working class people. These people who hate Trump are dumb.

    He continued…”they’re mad he wants to build a wall? I always say to them, do you have a fence around your house? He’s trying to protect the people who live in America!”

    If the Democrats heard this man talking, they’d have called him a white supremacist. Lol!
    The MAGA economy is REAL. It’s not slowing down. It’s actually picking up.

    The wealth and easier credit have FINALLY made it into the lower socioeconomic levels and I got to witness firsthand the action.

  • The Trump Administration ends catch-and-release.
  • The liberal elites who think they are so much better than us are mainfestly worse:

    Never before have so many snobs had so little to be snobbish about. It’s not like the ruling caste that turns up its collective snout at the people who actually make this country work has a CV full of achievements to back up its arrogance. Our elite is anything but. It’s a collection of pedestrian mediocrities who inherited our civilization from the people who actually created it and fought for it, and like every spoiled child who was handed free stuff by his doting mommy and daddy, our elite is resentful and obnoxious.

    We’re ruled by a bunch of Veruca Salts.

    Snip.

    In what way has our garbage elite proven itself capable of doing anything right, much less overseeing our doctors, protecting our newly-disarmed citizenry and controlling the weather? In no way – which is why they hate accountability, and why the elite’s lapdog media is entirely unconcerned with the elite’s constant screw-ups and utterly focused on the invented flaws of those of us who refuse to be serfs of incompetent elitist twerps.

    They figure that if maybe if we can be shamed into subservience, they can get on with their civilizational pillage unimpeded by us Normals demanding accountability. Calling us “traitors” didn’t work, so they figure maybe trying to hang slavery around our necks will.

    But it won’t.

    It’s all a lie and a scam.

    And we know it.

  • How Boris Yeltsin defeated the 1991 Communist coup. (Hat tip: Evil Blogger Lady.)
  • “The Department of Justice says one of its own “repeatedly” helped the Bloods street gang protect its interests by identifying and exposing informants and cooperating witnesses.”

    Tawanna Hilliard works in an administrative role for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, court documents say. According to the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, over a period of more than two years, Hilliard used her access to information to help her son Tyquan Hilliard, 28, and his gang, the 5-9 Brims set of the Bloods.

    If any of them got whacked by the Bloods, she should be tried as an accessory to murder.

  • Americans don’t trust the media. “78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened.”
  • Israel reportedly hit a Hezbollah arms depot in Iraq. According to Wikipedia, Israel has 16 F-35s total.
  • Hong Kong’s leaderless protests:

    Just as they are doing with seemingly every obstacle in their way, Hong Kong protesters innovated around the need for a strong leader. They are using communications technology to be both highly organized and leaderless, leaving the authorities unable to take out any key elements that would cause the effort to collapse.

    Where a strong leader would make strategic decisions, the protesters are using a Reddit-like forum called LIHKG where ideas can be upvoted, allowing the best ones to rise to the top. Hong Kong’s largest citywide strike in decades, and the city’s only general strike in 50 years, originated from a post on this forum. Translated from Cantonese, the post read, “Skip work, you may lose your job. But if you don’t skip work, you will lose Hong Kong and your home! Freedom is not free, I beg you, let’s recover Hong Kong.” The ideas that are most representative of the desires of the participants end up going forward, giving the movement a greater degree of legitimacy and likely winning more support from the Hong Kong populace.

  • WeWork gets ready for an IPO, despite never having earned a profit. In fact, the more money they pull in, the greater their losses.
  • Liberal women: “Respect #MeToo!” “Hey, want to talk to serial harasser Mark Halperin about how to beat Trump?” Also liberal women: “Sure!” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Still true: “Red-light cameras undermine rule of law.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • This is a half-interesting profile of Joe Rogan that’s harmed by the writer’s blinkered SJW-biases. The subtext (sometimes overtext) is “How dare Rogan not condemn non-liberals for wrongthink?” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate-based scam that nearly caused me to be murdered.”
  • “Trump Executive Order Cancels Student Loan Debt for Disabled Veterans.” Bet none of them have degrees in feminist critical theory, either…
  • Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager the media is nakedly boosting to pimp climate change, is the manufactured dupe of corporate green energy shills. “Someone’s looking for a payday, and sure enough, that someone found exactly the useful fool he wanted for a get-rich-quick scheme to line his own pockets.”
  • “Robert Mueller crushed their dreams, so Democrats pivot to race.”

    They had invested so much in their fantasy that President Donald Trump was a treasonous agent of Russian boss Vladimir Putin. But when special counsel Robert Mueller’s report came out, and there was no collusion, no crime charged, their fantasy collapsed.

    And so, after a brief spasm of despair, the left pivoted to their default position: race.

    Race. Race. Race. Race. Race.

    With Americans working and with money in their pockets again, with the 2020 election approaching, Democrats are reaching for the race card the way a sick man reaches for the waters of Lourdes. Desperately. Their allies in media followed suit, with Trump called everything from a white supremacist, to a Nazi, and on and on.

  • “Bodyguard for CNN’s April Ryan charged with assault for forcibly removing journalist from event.” A free press for the overclass, but not the peasants…
  • Reporter discovers, much to her surprise, that, yes, you do have to pass a background check before buying a gun. She fails.
  • The army wants microwave weapons against drones.
  • “Man Accused Of Shooting 6 Philadelphia Police Officers Was Federal Informant.” (Hat tip: Kurt Schlichter.)
  • Gregory Benford says that the Epstein smear against Marvin Minsky is baseless. (Hat tip: Instapundit, which is a backup source if you can’t get to Greg’s Facebook page.)
  • Borepatch says that red flag laws are malicious:

    False Positives are a hard problem to solve, and requires diligence to keep bad things from happening. This is why you get a second opinion if your doctor tells you that you have a disease that is expensive and painful to treat. Few diagnoses are 100%, and you don’t want to go through that if you’re one of the 15% that didn’t actually have the disease.

    But it costs money, time, and effort to get rid of these False Positives. The government employees clearly didn’t care one bit that the guy didn’t remotely fit the description. Protecting the guy’s rights wasn’t a priority for them.

    This is a type of malice that has been well documented in literature throughout the ages. Pretty much everything by Franz Kafka covers this, as well as more recent works like Catch-22. The callousness of uncaring governmental employees is legendary.

    To those who would say that this isn’t really personal malice on display, the question is how is this functionally different from malice? OK, so the guy will get his day in court next month, but that’s on his dime. The government has neatly shifted the cost of their False Positive to him.

    And quite frankly, this is what we see every time new gun laws are proposed. The restrictions may not be very big or very expensive, but they always fall on law abiding gun owners. Every time. People proposing these laws simply don’t care about that. There’s a word that describes someone who wants his fellow citizens to suffer inconvenience, expense, or worse.

    Malice.

  • Italy’s government falls. The Northern League/Five Star coalition government lasted one year and 81 days, which is about par for the course for Italy, which has had some [counts] 65 governments since World War II.
  • President Trump may have failed to buy Greenland, but we can all learn from the failures of Greenland’s public housing.
  • Lt. Governor Dan Patrick frowns on Bonnen’s shenanigans. (Hat tip: Cahnman.)
  • Republican John Lee wins seat on LA City Council, beating Green New Deal supporter.
  • What it’s like to be a roughneck in west Texas.
  • Miss Nevada banned from competing for Miss America over supporting President Trump.
  • First picture of light as both a wave and a particle.
  • “When The Founders Wrote The First Amendment, They Never Imagined There Would One Day Be Things I’d Disagree With.”

    I’m a reasonable, tolerant person. That means when people say things that I disagree with, they are being unreasonable and intolerant. How does it benefit society to have such things said? It does not.

    As someone who has carefully thought through every issue, social and political, it’s offensive to hear things I disagree with since I know how right I am, and there is no room for having another view. And that is what the First Amendment has been perverted into: a weapon to offend people—me, for the most part. Thus it’s time to get rid of that outdated amendment and finally crack down on hate speech, or at least speech I hate.

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for August 19, 2019

    Monday, August 19th, 2019

    Hickenlooper is Out, Sanders slams the press, Gabbard comes out for legal pot and serves joint duty, and Biden just keeps chug-chug-chuging along. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • Fox News: Biden 31, Warren 20, Sanders 10, Harris 8, Booker 3, Buttigieg 3, Yang 3, Klobuchar 2, O’Rourke 2, Castro 1, de Blasio 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Gillibrand 1, Williamson 1.
  • Gravis Marketing (New Hampshire): Sanders 21, Biden 15, Warren 12, Buttigieg 8, Harris 7, Gabbard 5, Yang 4, Steyer 4, Castro 2, O’Rourke 2. First for Sanders to top Biden, first recent poll with Buttigieg over Harris, and first poll with Gabbard or Steyer that high.
  • Post and Courier (South Carolina): Biden 36, Warren 17, Sanders 16, Harris 12, Buttigieg 5, Booker 4, Gabbard 2.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets

    • Pundits, etc.

  • Politico has an analysis of candidate fundraising cycles, based on ActBlue data. It’s interesting data, but it’s not the whole story, as candidates have non-ActBlue avenues for fundraising.
  • Are Democrats jumping off the cliff? “I’ve been doing political consulting for over 30 years, and I can tell you that if the 2020 campaign is viewed as Freedom vs. Socialism, we Democrats are in deep trouble. Furthermore, giveaways vs personal responsibility is not a winning argument either.” A lot of the writer’s proposals are less popular than he thinks they are, but they’re clearly less insane than those most of the clown car has been putting forth. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Castro, Gabbard, Gillibrand and Steyer scramble to try and make the debates.
  • It’s another “drop out of the race and run for the senate” piece. “Senate bids by Hickenlooper, O’Rourke or Bullock are no guarantee that Democrats would win either those specific states or the broader majority come November 2020. But it would sure improve their chances.” As you can see below, Hickenlooper took the advice.
  • Guy polls his family BBQ to see who black voters prefer.
  • Here’s sort of a tedious thumbsucker exploring the shocking idea that some Democratic voters actually consider electability.
  • Heh:

    • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Threatening To Get In. Lots of Avenatti news, but its all about his impending trials. (Avenatti appears to be a slimy, dishonest creep, but it wouldn’t bother me at all to see him take the NAACP and Nike down with him.) Now it’s been two weeks since his “I might get in” outburst. Unless I see something this week I’ll drop him back down to the Out of the Running list.
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Get’s a WBUR profile. “I don’t think banning private insurance and putting a $23 trillion tax on the American people is going to be something that people are going to want to sustain as the price for getting universal health care coverage, which we desperately need.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden’s support doubles between the youngest and oldest black voters. “Grassley, invoking ‘Uranium One,’ probes Biden-linked sale of sensitive tech company to China.” That’s going to rustles some jimmies. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) Speaking of rustled jimmies: “Joe Biden heaps praise on GOP during Massachusetts fundraiser.” “Voters Care About Biden’s Age — Not About His Gaffes.” Sort of a package deal, isn’t it?
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Cory Booker’s plan to fight intergenerational poverty, a cornerstone of his presidential bid, includes a novel proposal: a trust fund for every American child seeded by the federal government that could eventually provide up to nearly $50,000 for college tuition, buying a home or starting a business.” This just in: There’s no shortage of ways for Democrats to spend federal money we don’t have. Oh, and he wants a White House office to fight “white supremacy.” “Social Justice Warrior Powers Activate!”
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. Says Democrats are blowing it by going too far left. Asked if Warren and Sanders could beat Trump, he said “I don’t know that they can win places like Montana or Iowa, Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.” Bitches about Steyer buying his way into the debates.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He lags in Iowa:

    Pete Buttigieg burst into the 2020 presidential race by building national excitement on social media and cable news shows. Now, pork chop in hand, he’s playing catch-up in the all-important first caucus state.

    The 37-year-old mayor has yet to snag a single in-state endorsement in Iowa, and while his campaign has 57 staffers on the ground, it expanded to that number only recently. It’s a sharp contrast to other top Democratic candidates, who made investments in Iowa last winter to try to identify supporters and build a foundation for 2020, knowing the results here will shape the rest of the fight for the Democratic nomination.

    All Buttigieg’s money will buy a lot of campaign infrastructure there. He doesn’t like Trump’s China tariffs.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. His Obama moment that wasn’t:

    The night before Julián Castro delivered the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention for President Barack Obama’s re-election, he had eaten by himself at the T.G.I. Friday’s not far from the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C.

    No one recognized the 37-year-old mayor of San Antonio. As the other delegates party-hopped around Charlotte, Mr. Castro studied his notes over dinner and went to bed by 9 p.m. He wanted to be well-rested before giving the biggest speech of his political career — a speech that he and his family now remember as transforming everything.

    “The next morning, when we walked down the street, he was just mobbed,” said Mr. Castro’s twin brother, Joaquin, who is a United States congressman. “It was this instantaneous example of how things can change so quickly.”

    Mr. Castro’s speech, in a prime-time slot, burst him onto the national stage, just like the one that had catapulted Mr. Obama to superstardom in 2004. Mr. Castro symbolized a new moment in American politics: The grandson of a Mexican immigrant with a fourth-grade education, the young mayor talked about his family’s story, one so common for millions of Latinos and yet almost nonexistent at the highest level of national politics. “My family’s story isn’t special,” Mr. Castro said. “What’s special is the America that makes our story possible.”

    The applause was raucous. The reviews were overwhelmingly glowing (“A Political Star is Born” and “A Latino Obama?” the headlines read). People started to recognize Mr. Castro, even if they often confused him for Joaquin. On the way back to San Antonio, a fan stopped him in a men’s room at the Atlanta airport to shake his hand. (“He wanted to shake my hand in a men’s room!” Mr. Castro said. “I couldn’t believe it.”) Political pundits declared the Castro brothers the future of the party.

    “He was this kind of phenom and, you know, was this symbol of the growing diverse country,” David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, said of Julián.

    Party leaders waited for him to seize on his “Obama Moment.” And waited. And waited. And waited.

    The keynote, as it turned out, became a turning point that didn’t quite turn him.

    Yeah, it’s another Failure To Launch piece. He’s having a big birthday party September 16. Maybe all those people his twin brother doxxed will show up…

  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s lying about his record:

    Falsehood No. 1: “I’m proud to say in New York, we’ve divested $5 billion” in pension-fund assets “from the fossil-fuel industry,” Hizzoner bragged in Iowa.

    Uh, no. As Politico noted, the city’s pension funds have divested exactly zero from fossil-fuel companies.

    Yes, there are plans to study the idea, but no such study has even begun. And even if, at some point, the pension funds do divest, de Blasio won’t be able to take credit because he doesn’t control their boards.

    Gets bashed by the NYPD police union (again) for being off in New Hampshire while cops were getting shot at.

  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. He refuses to label Trump a white supremacist, because, unlike the rest of the Democratic field, he hasn’t gone completely insane. He plans to stay in the race even if he misses the September debates.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. On the next two weeks, Gabbard is on active military duty, but before she went she came out for an end on federal marijuana prohibition. “The Hawaii Democrat announced in a news release earlier this week that she will be joining the joint military exercise.”

    Did Gabbard’s post-debate ads get taken down due to a Google exploit? Maybe Google will blame “Russians.”

  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She wants to put gun owners in prison. I’m just annoyed that we have to keep pretending she’s an actual candidate…
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Want to know which celebrities are supporting Harris? Me neither, but here it is: “Eva Longoria, Elizabeth Banks and Empire director, Lee Daniels…Jane Fonda, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Charlize Theron and a long roster of studio executives.” Also Spike Lee, who held a fundraiser for her. She launched a Spanish-language organizational push.
  • Update: Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: Dropped Out. Says he’s mulling a senate run instead. A successful moderate governor of a purple state would be enough to be considered a contender in previous election cycles, but he’s old, white and male, and only Biden is evidently able to overcome those disadvantages in the age of the Democratic Party’s hyperpartisan wokescold hysteria.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Speaking of old, white and male governors. “Three Strikes offender on the run after twice given clemency by Inslee“:

    The Washington state Three Strikes You’re Out law holds that felons who have been convicted of two serious violent offenses in the past — such as murder, rape, or child molestation — must go for jail for life with no chance of parole after a third such conviction.

    At that point, the only way for the offender to walk free would be with a pardon from the Clemency and Pardons Board, along with the governor.

    Tracy Hoggatt, 59, had a long list of offenses — first-degree robbery, second-degree assault, second-degree theft, and on and on.

    How is he on the loose today, you might wonder?

    In January of 2017, Governor Jay Inslee and the Clemency Board approved Hoggatt’s request. Inslee wrote that Hoggatt had “taken steps to turn his life around and developed a strong sense of empathy.” So after being put in prison for life without parole, he was granted clemency.

    Three months later, he went back to jail for violating the terms of his release. He had consumed alcohol, he was living at an unapproved address, and he was hanging out with known criminals. So they picked him up again and put him back in prison for life without the possibility of parole.

    Guess what happened then?

    This past Tuesday, Inslee let Hoggatt out on clemency for a second time, with the condition that he go to a halfway house in Kelso.

    However, he got off the bus in Seattle without going all the way to Kelso. He told the Department of Corrections that he missed the bus, but that his fiancée would drive him to Kelso.

    That was Tuesday. This is Friday, and nobody knows where he is. This Three Strikes offender is still on the loose.

    Man, that decision would surely haunt him in the general election he won’t be the nominee for…

  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. “In Iowa, Amy Klobuchar looks for room to grow.” Hey, when you’re polling at 3%, you have plenty of room to grow.

    Six months ahead of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, that centrist message of electability at the heart of Klobuchar’s long-shot presidential bid has yet to pay off in the polls, adding urgency to her pleas to a Democratic base that has lurched markedly to the left.

    With much ground to make up, and the days of summer growing shorter, Klobuchar’s path to the party’s nomination is dotted with Iowa road signs, each town a stop in a long game to outlast a field of bigger names with more fulsome campaign coffers.

    Over four days in early August, in a state crucial to her presidential hopes, Klobuchar courted Iowa Democrats in cafes and private homes, union halls and farms, at fundraising dinners and the Iowa State Fair. She asked them to look past her low poll numbers and support a fellow Midwesterner as their best hope against Trump in 2020.

    “I think it is pretty important, Iowa, to have a candidate from the Midwest,” Klobuchar told hundreds at the State Fair in Des Moines. “And someone that just doesn’t have a bunch of policies written down on a piece of paper but has a track record of looking out for rural America.”

    Her “I’m the most Midwest of the Midwest” campaign strategy hinges on Iowa Democrats being less insane than national Democrats. Probably, but are they less insane enough? Speaking of less insane: “On judicial nominations, Klobuchar’s bipartisan votes put her out of step with the Democratic field…Apart from Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Klobuchar has voted with Republicans to confirm many of President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments, more than the other Senate Democrats running for president.”

  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Onion: “‘And Then There Were 23,’ Says Wayne Messam Crossing Out Hickenlooper Photo In Elaborate Grid Of Rivals…’Another foe vanquished, and another step taken toward Messam’s glorious ascent…My plan is continuing apace. First Swalwell, now you, and soon all these fools who stand before me will begin dropping like flies, and then the era of Messam will be nigh.'”
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Seth Moulton’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer vacation.”

    Seth Moulton has been a busy man.

    The North Shore congressman has been crisscrossing the early presidential-primary states like any of the viable candidates. Just last week, he hit Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, before heading to Weare, Exeter, and Hillsborough in New Hampshire. He ate corn dogs and ice cream.

    And America ignored him — as it has, resolutely, since he announced his candidacy in April.

    In poll after poll after poll, Moulton has registered at zero percent. Yes, zero. The same number your dog or cat would poll. Yet the Harvard-educated US Marine Corps veteran soldiers on. He has not approached any of the benchmarks for getting onto the overcrowded Democratic debate stage.

    Snip.

    Why not pack it in? Or, rather, when does he pack it in?

    “My experience working with candidates is that they’re the last ones to know,” said Democratic strategist and pollster Brad Bannon. “They’ve invested all their time and energy and money into running for president, and they have a hard time admitting that they’ve failed.”

    Another piece asks why Moulton is still running for President:

    Moulton is frustrated there hasn’t been more conversation about national security in the presidential primary. “The Democratic Party is failing to have a clear national security strategy. We’ve got to show America how we will make our country strong and safe. How we will stand up for patriotism, for our values. We’ve got to stop letting conservative Republicans own the flag,” he said.

    With his campaign barely registering in the polls, Moulton wasn’t on any of the debate stages to make this case. Barring an unprecedented upheaval in the race, Moulton won’t be the Democratic presidential nominee. So what is he doing?

  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. O’Rourke tries to relaunch his campaign. I’m sure this one will explode on the pad as well. Can he get back into the race?

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Swears “I will not in any scenario run for the United States Senate.” Yeah, if you’re doomed to lose, why not lose nationally?

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tim Ryan jokes he’s having ‘dance-off’ with Andrew Yang.” That’s really the only Ryan news this week…
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s proposing a massive criminal justice system overhaul. “The plan calls for banning cash bail, solitary confinement and civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to seize people’s homes and other property even if they are not convicted of a crime. The plan also looks to legalize marijuana and abolish the death penalty, a practice Sanders has long opposed.” Ending civil asset forfeiture and ending federal marijuana prohibition I can get behind. (And why is it that only this week are Democratic candidates coming out for legal marijuana legalization? Hickenlooper and Inslee should have made that their themes week one.) The rest don’t seem like federal jurisdiction. “Bernie Sanders South Carolina crowd size one-third of Elizabeth Warren’s.” (300 vs. 900) Sanders also slammed his treatment in the press:

    Bernie Sanders Monday gave a speech in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. He took shots at the press, mentioning coverage of his campaign against Amazon:

    I talk about (Amazon’s taxes) all of the time… And then I wonder why The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why.

    Employees of the Post were put out by Sanders’s comments. They insisted they hold no ill will against him for regularly bashing the man who writes their checks as one of earth’s most obnoxious plutocrats, and moreover that Sanders is wrong to make the media a “boogeyman” the way he’s turned “billionaires and corporations” into boogeymen. This “doesn’t add up,” noted the Post, going so far as to put the term “corporate media” in quotation marks, as if it were a mythical creature.

    Perhaps the negativity toward Sanders isn’t over Amazon. After all, Sanders gets similar treatment from the New York Times, CNN, the Atlantic and other outlets. Still, the Post’s Bernie fixation stands out. The paper humorously once wrote 16 negative pieces about Sanders in the space of 16 hours (e.g. “Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else,” “Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals,”etc).

    The Post in 2017 asked readers how Democrats would “cope” with the Kremlin backing Bernie Sanders with “dirty tricks” in 2020. In April of this year it described the Sanders campaign as a Russian plot to help elect Donald Trump. They’ve run multiple stories about his “$575,000 lake house,” ripping his “socialist hankering” for real estate. “From each according to his ability,” the paper quipped, “to each according to his need for lakefront property…

    Apart from being described as a faux-Leninist Russian stooge who wants to elect Trump and mass-release dangerous criminals, what does Sanders have to complain about?

    It’s not just about Sanders.

    The public is not stupid. It sees that companies like CNN and NBC are billion-dollar properties, pushing shows anchored by big-city millionaires. A Vanderbilt like Anderson Cooper or a half-wit legacy pledge like Chris Cuomo shoveling coal for Comcast, Amazon, AT&T, or Rupert Murdoch is the standard setup.

    This is why the White House Correspondents’ dinner is increasingly seen as an unfunny obscenity. The national press at the upper levels really is a black-tie party for bourgeois stiffs who weren’t smart enough for med school, and make their living repeating each other’s ideas and using Trump to sell Cadillacs and BMWs. Michelle Wolf was on the money when she ripped us for only covering “like three topics”:

    Every hour it’s Trump, Russia, Hillary, and a panel of four people who remind you why you don’t go home for Thanksgiving… You guys are obsessed with Trump… He couldn’t sell steaks, vodka, water, college, ties or Eric. [But] he has helped you sell your papers, books, and TV.

    That was too much truth for Correspondents’ Association, who decried Wolf’s lack of “commitment” to a “vigorous and free press” and “civility.” They scrapped the comedy idea, and this year brought in a self-described “boring” speaker, who made light of Trump’s complaints about the press by reading from Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People.”

    He’s holding a rally in Sacramento.

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Meet the intriguing presidential candidate you haven’t seen on the debate stage.”

    “I don’t want to be president if I have to win by outrage,” he explained. “I don’t want to just win. I want to govern, and not just by executive order. I understand the outrage people feel right now. But real leadership is taking two different needs and elevating them to one single want.”

    Arguably, Sestak knows a thing or two about this topic. He commanded an aircraft carrier battle group conducting combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq with 30 US and allied ships and more than 15,000 sailors and 100 aircraft. He’s also considered the qualities of a good leader while teaching ethical leadership courses at the historically black college Cheyney University and at Carnegie Mellon.

    It’s sort of like the Jim Geraghty piece on Sestak in last week’s Clown Car roundup.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. DNC rules make it possible for Steyer to buy his way onto the debate stage. Live in Texas? Now’s your chance to be Tom Steyer’s State Director! He’s loaded, so ask for the sky…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren: The choice of college-educated white people:

    The latest round of polling shows Elizabeth Warren gaining ground in the presidential race, but she still faces some critical obstacles to winning the Democratic nomination. She’s dominating among white progressive voters and, relatedly, is building support among white college-educated Democrats. But she continues to lag among working-class voters and has demonstrated minimal appeal to African-Americans.

    Unless she builds appeal outside her core constituencies, it will be challenging for her to pull ahead of front-running Joe Biden, who has built his own beachhead of support among moderates, working-class whites, and African-American voters.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Among Elizabeth Warren’s anti-gun-owner proposals: mandatory gun registration and a tax on guns and ammo. “A voter who could be key to Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 hopes? Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” Because he thinks Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Marianne Williamson says ‘powerful forces’ on the left out to end presidential campaign.” Mainly over her questioning various medical orthodoxies. “Marianne Williamson is a danger to feminism — and her ideas could get Americans killed.” Eh, it’s just calling out her New Age power of positive thinking as bullshit and pouting because she’s not Warren or Harris. She spoke to some 350 people in California’s mission district.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Promises a mass pardon for non-violent marijuana offenses. While I suspect this is a crowd-pleasing line, I don’t think there are that many federal felons, and I’m not sure there are that many at the state level where the offender has no other criminal convictions. Gabbard and Yang slightly buck the Democrat’s open borders line. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.) Hey, I could ace this test as well.

    • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: This week she made it official that she’s not running for President.
  • Actor Alec Baldwin. No presidential run news, but he did say Jeffrey Epstein was killed by the Russians.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey

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    LinkSwarm for August 9, 2019

    Friday, August 9th, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! It’s been both super busy and super-hot here at BattleSwarm headquarters…

  • Leftward ho:

    Ah, the good ol’ days of . . . April, or so, when conservative critics of the Democratic party could still count on being lectured to about the enduring moderation of Team Blue and chastised for paying so much attention to such figures as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and Senator Bernie Sanders (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and claiming that these self-described socialists are the socialists they describe themselves as being, who want to “abolish capitalism” (the stated mission of the Democratic Socialists of America) and the traditional family to boot (“democratizing the family to get rid of patriarchal relations,” in the words of the Democratic Socialists of America), all of which, the usual media scolds tut-tutted, was unfair. “The Democratic party is the party of moderates,” as Politico magazine editor Bill Scher argued.

    Somebody must have slipped some psilocybin into the Democrats’ potato salad at this year’s May Day picnic. Open borders? Check! Eviscerating the Bill of Rights? Absolutely, with one of those weird barbed Uncle Henry gut-hook knives! What else? I hope that whichever debate moderator finally presses this crew about the limits of late-term abortion is over 35, because Elizabeth Warren was pretty clearly ready to roll up her sleeves and perform an impromptu D&E right there underneath the Art Deco adornments and heavy brocade curtains of the Fox Theater in beautiful downtown Detroit.

  • Speaking of the Democratic Socialists of America, Stephen Green looks in on those lunatics. “No perfume in the quiet room, no misusing doors, no talking to cops, no talking to the press, always display your credentials, beware of right wing infiltrators.” Plus the usual lunacy about pronouns, and triggering, and singing “The Internationale.”
  • Border control policies start working:

    Monthly apprehensions of migrants in Mexico have begun to slow down, indicating that its government’s recent border crackdown is yielding results.

    Authorities in Mexico apprehended 18,758 migrants in July, according to preliminary data from Mexico’s immigration agency, reported by The Wall Street Journal. While this number is more than double the amount detained in the same month last year, it is a decline from the record-setting 31,573 apprehensions in Mexico in June.

  • “China Wants to Hit Back at Trump. Its Own Economy Stands in the Way.”

    China’s imports from the United States only a fraction of the trade going the other way, so it cannot match Washington tariff for tariff. Much of that trade consists of agriculture goods like soybeans, as well as specialized products like Boeing jetliners or the American-made chips for the smartphones China makes.

    There are several things China could do. It could call for a boycott of American goods or stop buying Boeing planes. It could devalue its currency, which would in effect partially nullify American tariffs. It could make life much harder for American business and executives in China, or it could exercise its power over key parts of the global supply chain, like its dominance over key manufacturing minerals called rare earths.

    Some investors on Friday signaled they expect at least one of those moves. China’s currency, the renminbi, fell to its weakest point so far this year. Shares of rare earths companies rose, while Boeing’s shares fell more than the broader market on Thursday.

    But each of these measures has drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest among them is that China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in 27 years. Many of the arrows Beijing has in its quiver could ricochet and hit its own factories and workers.

    Plus the perils of weakening the renminbi. Also: “As they consider their moves, Chinese officials will also try to parse Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. Experts said his capricious style had flummoxed Beijing.”

  • How the media pick and choose which parts of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto to hype.
  • More on the same subject:

    The manifesto is insane. Part of it discussed commonly debated issues such as the environment and the economy in ways that are well within the boundaries of political conversation going on today — indeed, that might have come out of the New York Times or many other outlets. Other parts of it mixed in theories on immigration from far right circles in Europe and the U.S. Then it threw in beliefs on “race-mixing” straight from the fever swamps. And then it concluded that the solution is to murder Hispanic immigrants, going on to debate whether an AK-47 or an AR-15 would best do the job. By that point, Crusius had veered far from both reality and basic humanity.

    But the question is, was he inspired by President Trump? It is hard to make that case looking at the manifesto in its entirety.

    Crusius worried about many things, if the manifesto is any indication. He certainly worried about immigration, but also about automation. About job losses. About a universal basic income. Oil drilling. Urban sprawl. Watersheds. Plastic waste. Paper waste. A blue Texas. College debt. Recycling. Healthcare. Sustainability. And more. Large portions of the manifesto simply could not be more un-Trumpian.

  • Dayton shooter was indeed a “Pro-Satan Leftist Who Supported Elizabeth Warren.”
  • How President Donald Trump changes the political calculus.

    This is a colossal fraud, and it won’t work. The public doesn’t buy it; the candidates aren’t talking about it; when Congress returns in September, Lindsey Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee will grill the authors of the politicization of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other parts of the Obama Justice Department as well as the propagators of the false Steele dossier and the fraudulent FISA warrant applications. Graham (R-S.C.), will get the publicity, and the bare-faced liars who chair the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), will be talking to themselves about their “solid evidence” of the president’s crimes. Weissman and the lesser Democratic Torquemadas couldn’t find them; Nadler and Schiff can’t declare what their evidence is (because there is none).

    This is the last echo of this attempted rape of the Constitution and no one will be listening when the Congress returns in September. They will listen to the Graham committee’s exposés of the Democrats who acted corruptly, and they will notice the indictments when the special counsel, (John Durham, who unlike Mueller does have full retention of his faculties), starts bringing them down.

    The president deliberately has escalated the controversy by attempting to make the four extremist freshman Democratic congresswomen the real face of the Democrats, and by pointing out, in the case of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the inappropriateness of Cummings’ assault on the integrity of the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

    The president undoubtedly knows that he is playing with fire assaulting the most holy of the taboos of political correctness so explicitly, though his grasp of the political arithmetic is almost certainly correct. I assume he can reassure his own followers and whatever independent voters may be left in this fierce partisan crossfire that he is not racist. In sober times, it would be clear that no case whatever exists that he is a racist. But these are not sober times and he has contributed something to their insobriety, though—one must remember—in reaction to immense provocations.

  • Is the UK headed for a November 1st election the day after Brexit? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • How Trump’s legal team of “nobodies” defeated Robert Mueller’s team of credentialed elites.
  • Liberals just come out and admit that yes, they do indeed want to seize the guns of law-abiding Americans.
  • More on “Red Flag” laws:

  • Active shooters are a rounding error. “If you feel the need to take training to protect your life and the lives of your loved ones, take a Defensive Driving Course.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • “AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company’s network. DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
  • Two Amazon subcontractor drivers stole an estimated $10 million worth of goods over several years, selling many items through pawn shops.
  • “Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices.”
  • Washington Post writer goes through Sugar Detox.

    But here’s the part that blew my mind: I started to lose weight. Before the detox I weighed 166 pounds. Twelve weeks later, I hit a new low adult weight: 155. I’ve cinched in my belt a notch. My bloodwork looks much better (my triglycerides dropped by half in six weeks). And as my belly fat has reduced, I do feel better and more energetic.

    The weight-loss and triglyceride reduction mirrors my own experience when I first went on Atkins.

  • Speaking of meat: the vegetarians who became butchers.
  • New York Times revenues continue to decline. I’m sure that somehow this is all Russia’s fault…
  • Leftwing protestors call for the murder of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Naturally Twitter suspended the account…of his reelection campaign, for showing videos of leftwing protestors calling for his murder:

  • Lunatic tranny balls-waxing lawsuit filer Jonathan Yaniv arrested for brandishing a stun gun.
  • Uber lost $5.24 billion this quarter. That’s with a “B”.
  • At least two people on Joaquin Castro’s list of San Antonio Trump donors also donated to him. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • ”Democrats Propose Creation Of National Trump Voter Registry.
  • “Experts Warn We Have Only 12 Years Left Until They Change The Timeline On Global Warming Again.”

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    Borepatch: Red Flag Laws Are Stupid and Useless

    Thursday, August 8th, 2019

    Lots of “red flag” talk after the latest shooting panics, but Borepatch would like to remind us that such laws are stupid and useless.

    The Parkland shooter was known to be a nutcase, having been reported to the local police some four dozen times (and twice to the FBI). Nobody took action, because the local (and likely national) government agencies thought that doing so would screw up the crime statistical goals that they were trying to achieve. While it’s very early after the event, it appears that lots of people knew that the Dayton shooter was a nutcase. Nobody did anything. The Air Force dishonorably discharged a guy because he was, well, a nutcase – but forgot to update the NCIC database with this information. The nutcase was able to buy a gun and kill a bunch of people in a church.

    These are just the examples that come to mind; presumably a thorough analysis my the media or by social scientists would turn up many more examples. Of course, the media and social scientists don’t want to look into this because it would hurt their push for more gun control.

    Left unsaid: Red flag laws are not only a Second Amendment violation, but a Fifth Amendment violation as well, violating due process of law. Legal expert Alan Dershowitz argues that we don’t have the tools to make such laws work:

    Research shows that any group of people identified as future violent criminals will contain many more who will not be violent (false positives) than they will (true positives). More true positives mean more false ones. Such groups also fail to identify many future violent criminals (false negatives).

    We do not currently have the predictive tools needed to increase the number of true positives while reducing false positives. We may one day develop such tools, but how many false positives are we willing to tolerate until then to reduce the number of false negatives? Put another way: How many law-abiding people are we prepared to steal weapons to prevent another mass shooting?

    For those who favor strict gun control, the answer may seem obvious. They believe it is worth it for 100 or 1,000 non-violent people to lose their weapons to prevent mass shootings. But those who view gun possession as a fundamental right under the Second Amendment – as the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) – frame the problem differently. They ask: Can the government deprive a citizen of a constitutional right based on a prediction?

    Red Flag laws run the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. If the government can take your weapons based on a prediction today, what will prevent it from taking your freedom based on a prediction tomorrow?

    Indeed, everywhere on Twitter this week, the left have been saying two things:

    1. We need to remove guns from the hands of racists, and
    2. Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.

    So hell no, we’re not disarming now or in the future, especially not when Democratic Party partisans are in the grip of mass hysteria.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for July 12, 2019

    Friday, July 12th, 2019

    The Jeffrey Epstein child sex trafficking scandal dominates today’s LinkSwarm, as does other people getting arrested for the same offense. Some kind of crackdown going on? We can only hope so.

    Also, if you live in Austin, traffic on I-35 is going to be screwed up again this weekend.

  • The Jeffery Epstein scandal may be even worse than we thought:

    Even by the standards of stomach-turning celebrity criminal scandals, the bits of information about multi-millionare Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of an underage sex-trafficking ring are utterly bizarre, pointing to something perhaps even bigger and worse going on. Just the reports out this morning prompt at least ten big questions.

    One: How did Jeffrey Epstein make his fortune in the first place? One claim is a massive Ponzi scheme.

    Two: Could Epstein really have been connected to some sort of intelligence service? In yesterday’s press conference, labor secretary Alex Acosta offered a weird, vague, contradictory, meandering answer when asked about this. If Epstein was working for some sort of spy agency, which one? What was the aim, to collect blackmail on prominent figures? Who was being blackmailed, and what did they do?

    Three: Why did the office Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance try to keep Epstein from being registered as a top-level sex offender? “A seasoned sex-crimes prosecutor from Mr. Vance’s office argued forcefully in court that Mr. Epstein, who had been convicted in Florida of soliciting an underage prostitute, should not be registered as a top-level sex offender in New York.” The judge denied the request and declared, “I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this.”

    Four: After Epstein was labeled a “Level 3 sex offender” — meaning the worst — Epstein was required by law to check in with the NYPD every 90 days. He never checked in at all over an eight-year span. How did that not generate any consequences?

  • And speaking of Epstein, why is nobody talking about former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer.

    The former Palm Beach County State Attorney had made national news three times during his career. Once when he went after Rush Limbaugh, then after Ann Coulter, two Republicans, and when, after being handed the case of Epstein, a co-founder of the Clinton Global Initiative, he gave him a pass.

    Barry Krischer is a Democrat. Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire donor to Democrats.

    As Chief Prosecutor, Krischer had made his reputation with a zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting juveniles as adults. But after Epstein had abused underage girls, Krischer, according to the detective on the case, ignored police efforts to charge him with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and instead the billionaire abuser was indicted only on a minor charge of solicitation of prostitution.

    Interviews with over a dozen girls and witnesses were ignored.

    The victims were not notified of when they needed to appear before Krischer’s Grand Jury. Calls by the police to issue warrants for the arrest of Epstein and his associates were ignored by Kirscher’s subordinates. Eventually, Kirscher’s people stopped taking phone calls from the police.

    The Palm Beach police chief claimed that information was being leaked to Epstein’s lawyers and wrote a public letter attacking Krischer and urging him to disqualify himself from the case. Instead the travesty went on. State prosecutors allowed Epstein to skip sex offender counselling, and hire a private shrink.

    When the judge asked assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek if all the victims had signed off on the deal, she claimed that they had. The lawyer for the victims has said that was not the truth.

  • “Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta on Friday resigned from his post amid scrutiny over a plea agreement he cut with wealthy investor Jeffrey Epstein for sex abuse charges over a decade ago.”
  • Over on Althouse’s blog, many commenters are suggesting that Scott Walker replace him. To which I say: Bring it!
  • Even after pleading guilty and registering as a Level 3 sex-offender, Jeffrey Epstein is still mingled with the Hollywood elite.
  • Speaking of child sex offenders, singer R. Kelly has been arrested on 13 federal sex trafficking charges, including “child pornography, enticement of a minor to engage to engage in criminal sexual activity and obstruction of justice.” The only question is, after all the similar crap Kelly has pulled over the years, how is he not already in jail for the rest of his life?
  • “Epstein, Bean & Buck: The Democratic Donors’ Sex-Creep Club.”

    While serving as the highest-ranking elected woman in America for decades, San Fran Nan has chronically downplayed, whitewashed or excused the sleazy habits and alleged sexual improprieties of a long parade of Dem pervs — from former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner to former New York Reps. Eric Massa and Anthony Wiener to former Oregon Rep. David Wu to former Michigan Rep. John Conyers and current presidential candidate Joe Biden.

    Since the woke-ty woke Democrats are now gung-ho on undoing special treatment of wealthy liberal sex creeps, perhaps they will soon be revisiting the matter of two of their other “faves,” Oregon real estate mogul and deep-pocketed left-wing White House donor Terry Bean and West Hollywood Clinton pal Ed Buck.

    Here, let me help.

    Terry Bean is the prominent gay rights activist who co-founded the influential Human Rights Campaign organization. He is also a veteran member of the board of the HRC Foundation, which disseminates Common Core-aligned “anti-bullying” material to children’s schools nationwide.

    Like Epstein, Bean had a penchant for rubbing elbows and riding on planes with the powerful. Upon doling out more than $500,000 for President Barack Obama and the Democrats in 2012, he was rewarded with a much-publicized exclusive Air Force One ride with Obama. His Flickr account boasted glitzy pics with Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton.

    Buck, of course, is the Democratic donor who had two dead overdosed black men in his apartment on different occasions. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of our supposed betters raping children, “Ex-U.N. Worker Jailed for 9 Years in Nepal for Raping Two Boys in ‘Alarm Bell for the Humanitarian Community.'” Oh, now there are alarm bells over Canadian Peter John Dalglish raping children? But not so much when various UN peacekeepers did the same thing in Africa in past decades.
  • Dow-Jones Industrial Average hits record high of 27,000.
  • Meet the anti-woke left. The usual quotient of socialist claptrap, but also a fierce critique of victimhood identity politics and the dysfunction of the Democratic Party.

    Just as significant as Trump’s victory was Hillary Clinton’s loss, they tell me, in that it represented a rejection of an era of neoliberalism. ‘I’m from Indiana’, Frost tells me. ‘Bill signs NAFTA. That obliterated the towns where I’m from. People are extremely bitter about Bill Clinton for very good reasons. And she is married to that, literally and figuratively – she defends that legacy. How did we not see Trump coming?’

    What’s more, Trump represented a repudiation of the entire establishment – Democrats and Republicans. ‘There is a severe crisis of legitimacy in our institutions’, says Frost: ‘The Republicans did not want Trump to win either… He was nobody’s first choice, except the American people’s, apparently.’

    Snip.

    Three years on from the 2016 presidential election, Democrats are still largely in denial or in despair about Trump’s victory. The now-discredited Russia-collusion narrative provided an excuse to avoid any soul-searching. ‘The whole Rachel Maddow and the NBC crowd have infected the minds of boomers with this dystopian narrative’, Khachiyan tells me. ‘Even my mom, who’s from Russia, buys the collusion narrative.’

    ‘The narrative isn’t itself so interesting’, she argues, but it shows ‘the willful failure of the Democratic Party. Again and again, they fall on their face. There’s some kind of Freudian, masochistic thing they have where they get off on publicly humiliating themselves.’

  • E-Verify will do more to deter illegal aliens than the wall.
  • “Democratic lawmaker unloads on Ocasio-Cortez, chief of staff for ‘using the race card.'” The AOC-Pelosi tiff reminds us, yet again, that the primary purpose of “social justice” is to force in-group ideological conformity on the left. But when it comes to actually threatening a politician’s ability to get their beak into the trough, Rep. Clay and others still know which side their bread is buttered on. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democrats have tapped former fighter pilot Amy McGrath to lose to Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky senate race. In one day, she raised $2.5 million…and flip-flopped on whether she would have confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She lost her last race by 10,000 votes, and expect her to do much, much worse against Cocaine Mitch.
  • “The Data Shows Socialists — Not Sanctions — Destroyed Venezuela’s Economy.”
  • John O’Sullivan wonders if anyone can beat Boris Johnson for Tory leadership and the PM spot. Probably not, but it provides a light romp through Borismania…
  • David Scheller of Ammo To Go wrote to point out his deep, detailed look at suppressors. I was happy to see that Texas has more silencers owned than the next three states combined.
  • How bad is the cartel violence in Mexico? Would you believe a 30 minute shootout at Kindergarten graduation?
  • Greek conservatives win in a landslide over leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza’s party. Kyriakos Mitsotakis took over as Prime Minister on July 8.
  • Did the Russians who died aboard the A-12 Losharik submarine prevent a “planetary catastrophe?” Color me skeptical. Short of a Red Tide nuke launch scenario, it’s hard to conceive of any sort of accident, up to complete meltdown or even nuclear warhead detonation, that would result in “planetary catastrophe” on the Russian arctic seafloor. Assuming they were actually in the Barents Sea when the fire broke out, I don’t see how they’d be tapping undersea cables (as widely speculated), as the only one there is the Norway-to-Svarbald cable, which is hardly of crushing information importance. But the Russians have been known to lie before, and the fact that no less than seven first rank captains died aboard the ship (all but unheard of on a submarine) only fuels the speculation. And the arctic is way too far north for discovering either Cthulhu or Godzilla…
  • Seattle City Council candidate Brendan Kolding wants to clean up the homeless drug user problem.

    “It’s gotten worse under this entire current council,” he said. “Because we’ve practiced the policy — and I give Chris Rufo credit for this — the policy of false compassion where we’re not holding people accountable, where we’re not investing in adequate services, where we’re not allowing our law enforcement professionals to do their job.”

    “We just need a sea change at City Hall. We need to reverse the culture because it’s only getting worse … We can offer them treatment and shelter and then insist that if they don’t accept services, we will enforce the law unless they choose to move along. We need both carrot and stick.”

  • “I-95 proves that the government cannot provide services that don’t suck.”

    For those readers who blessedly have not had to drive I-95, it is a national disgrace. It has been congested for as long as I can recall (over 30 years of personal experience with the stretch shown, and what we drove yesterday). It has been congested in exactly the same locations for those 30 years.

    The same exact locations. 30 years. Offered for your consideration, the 20 miles on each side of Fredericksburg, VA. It was a parking lot in the 1980s; it was a parking lot yesterday. The reason then was that the highway lost a lane (more lanes in Richmond to the south and Washington to the north). The reason now is the same.

    So riddle me this, Big Government Man: how in 30 years is it not possible to widen 40 miles of Interstate to remove what everybody in the Northeast Corridor knows is a notorious choke point? And please don’t be so dim and predictable as to say “there isn’t enough funding” – we spent a cool trillion dollars on a “stimulus” that the President swore would be “shovel ready” projects. You don’t get more shovel-ready than widening I-95.

    So we see that it’s not possible for the government to provide services that don’t suck.

  • Prenda Law copyright troll John Steele sentenced to five years in prison.
  • “A traffic stop turns up whiskey, a gun and a rattlesnake, police say — and that was before they found the uranium.” The big surprise here is that it’s from Oklahoma rather than Florida… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Tankfest 2019. I visited the Bovington Tank Museum in 2014, and if you’re interested in tanks and in the UK for an extended period of time, I highly recommend it.

  • Tales from the Lunar Module Simulator.
  • Aviation Week and Space technology profile of the SR-71 from 1981.
  • Dwight celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Disco Demolition Night.
  • And speaking of unlikely events of mass hysteria: 300,000 people on Facebook swear to storm Area 51. Great, they’re going to kill off Alex Jones’ entire audience…
  • “Fun New Teen Vogue Quiz Helps Girls Find Out What Kind Of Hooker They Should Be.”

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Guns, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Welfare State | 2 Comments »

    Still More On NRA Troubles

    Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019

    This anonymous piece from a longtime lawyer and NRA watcher covers some of the same ground as my previous NRA pieces, but with a lot more background.

    It’s been an open secret for more than 20 years (since at least the 1990s) that an outside public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen Inc. (around NRA headquarters, commonly called “Ack-Mac”) enjoyed a favored and protected, if not inviolate, relationship with NRA. The owners of Ack-Mac were close friends and associates of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. He handed them major roles formulating, directing and performing many NRA operations for which Ack-Mac and its associated companies bill NRA millions of dollars annually — in 2017 alone, over $40 million. To ensure their position by enhancing his, Ack-Mac created a persona for LaPierre as NRA’s public face; his strident, increasingly right-wing rhetoric espoused in NRA’s name was shaped and scripted by Ack-Mac. In turn he fended off sporadic calls to reduce Ack-Mac’s penetration of NRA. LaPierre and Ack-Mac became practically indistinguishable.

    This special relationship and its financial intertwining were largely opaque, fully appreciated only within inner circles of the 76-member Board of Directors. Though payments to Ack-Mac accounted for a large chunk of NRA’s budget until recently Ack-Mac was unmentioned in annual reports or minutes of the Board’s meetings, it was as if Ack-Mac didn’t exist. The full extent of Ack-Mac’s influence, participation, and responsibility for NRA’s high-level management decisions remains, to this day, obscure.

    I knew Ack-Mac had been working for the NRA for quite a while, but I didn’t realize for how long, and how mention of Ack-Mac had been kept out of annual reports.

    As Executive VP, LaPierre’s annual salary is $1.4 million. It’s hard to identify the value a non-profit association receives for that kind of money. The President of the United States is paid less than one-third of that; the Secretary of Defense gets only $210,700, and the base salary of a U.S. Senator is $172,000.

    Also still on the NRA’s payroll is Joshua Powell, recently removed as director of General Operations (drawing nearly $800K) after being exposed in national media as a serial deadbeat. The most cursory vetting before he was hired would have disclosed his trail of failed businesses and bad debts. The architect of the crashed Carry Guard program and the spark that lit the legal fuse with New York sate, Powell is now a “senior strategist” and still LaPierre’s “chief of staff.”

    More information gleaned from the NRA’s IRS Form 990:

    This 100-page document, released by NRA only last November, was unusual; it contains unprecedented disclosures of where the money categorized as expenditures for “fund-raising” and “public relations” actually went. For example, it was revealed for the first time the Mercury Group, an Ack-Mac subsidiary run by LaPierre’s closest confidant, Tony Makris, received $5.8 million from NRA in that year; another Makris-run company, Under Wild Skies, got $2.6 million. Meanwhile, NRA has nearly exhausted its $25 million credit line (secured by a mortgage on its headquarters building), liquidated $2 million from an investment fund, borrowed close to $4 million from its officers’ life insurance policy and extracted about $5 million in office rent and overhead from the NRA Foundation.

    This, in the same year that NRA’s 10 highest-paid executives received compensation aggregating over $8 million.

    Snip.

    If indeed, as [current NRA President a LaPierre backer Carolyn Meadows] claims, “the entire board is fully aware of these issues,” the issue of managerial dereliction takes on a new dimension. To claim that these controversial contracts, transactions, and expenses were “reviewed, vetted and approved” by the board is to ratify and accept liability for them.

    It begs the next question: Is the Board doing anything to stop the financial hemorrhage? Does it even have a coherent plan? So far the membership has heard nothing but bland reassurances suggesting that “everything is on track”, coupled with whining about leaks to the press.

    Can directors with a fiduciary duty to a non-profit membership association justify sports-star salaries, uncontrolled and unaccountable vendors and $100,000-a-day lawyers? The membership deserves credible explanations and plain answers. If these are not forthcoming, who could blame it for throwing out the entire board and starting over?

    The author is particularly critical of William Brewer III’s legal briefs. “In over 50 years as a practicing attorney, I have never encountered a lawyer, or even an entire firm, whose services were worth $1.8 million in a single month — much less for ten consecutive months.”

    Finally, there’s the revelation that Woody Phillips, the NRA’s just-retired Treasurer for 26 years, broadened the now-all-too-familiar profile of NRA’s salaried executives. The prior norm seemed to be enrichment through extraordinary salaries, conflicts of interest, double-dipping, sweetheart deals, and extravagant retirement schemes. Woody has added the word “embezzlement.” According to a June 19 article on The New Yorker website, his former employer asserts that before Woody came to NRA, he was caught stealing more than a million dollars by generating and paying fake invoices. Unless this story is a complete fabrication, the evidence seems incontrovertible: when he was confronted, the story discloses, Woody immediately returned $500,000 of it and started paying interest on the balance. This comes on the heels of separate reports of questionable payments made by NRA to Woody’s “significant other.” Was his earlier modus operandi revived with a slight twist?

    The author ends, as I did, with a call for a forensic audit.

    The more we find out about how the NRA has been run, the worse it seems. The crisis started out looking like a case of lax management, but the deeper you dig the more it looks like a case of systematic looting. The more I read about the NRA, the more convinced I am that the current leadership has to go.

    (Hat tip: No lawyers – only guns and money. )

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    Posted in Guns | 3 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 28, 2019

    Friday, June 28th, 2019

    Man, it’s been a week. The clown car and NRA pieces have been blowing up my stats, and I’ve got a bunch of other things happening. I tried to watch the Group of Death debate last night, but the stream kept cutting out, so I’ll probably save the reactions for Monday’s Clown Car Update. This LinkSwarm features Dan Crenshaw, Google, and Dan Crenshaw grilling Google.

  • Pelosi caves, gets the House to pass the Republican Senate bill to address the crisis on the Southern border 305-102. The Senate bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a vast improvement on the House’s laughable effort. But the fact that 90% of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders are demonstrably to the left of Nancy Pelosi on the issue might give a more reflective party pause…
  • Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw says Democrats live in another world when it comes to the crisis on the border.
  • “In Emergency Bill, House Dems Vote To Send More Fake Tears To Address Border Crisis.”
  • Cuba runs out of other people’s money.
  • Trump’s latest accuser is loony toons.
  • But “David French Believes Her Implicitly, Because of Course He Does.”
  • It’s not all bad news on the gun rights front front: Gov. Abbott signed 10 pro-Second Amendment bills.
  • Kevin Williamson dissects Facebook’s attempts to float their own cryptocurrency.

    Professor Posner is correct in pointing to the rivalrous nature of political power and market power. What is less well understood is that markets won that fight in a knockout a decade or more ago. The new reality is that markets — not corporations, but markets — are more powerful than states, and much of the angry, angsty, mob-inciting politics of the Left and the Right in the past decade is simply the emotional noise and churn generated as societies and governments readjust their affairs to accommodate themselves to that new reality. Bill Clinton spent much of his presidency bitching about the bond market, which was his shorthand for the ways in which global markets (especially financial markets) limited politicians’ effective scope of action. He was, uncharacteristically for a man of such modest imagination, ahead of his time.

    The power of capital flows is a reality that has made itself known bit by bit to states both liberal and autocratic, from the members of the European Union to the caudillos in Beijing. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no regard for life or property, brutal and vicious — and constantly getting slapped around by volatility in the energy market. Mohammed bin Salman can command almost anything — except the commodity markets that rule his world.

    Much of the hysteria on display in the Democratic presidential primary is American progressivism’s shrieking protest of the new facts of life. Progressives such as Elizabeth Warren are intelligent enough to understand what’s happened: That just at the moment they were primed to take power, power was taken away from them.

  • Project Veritas reported on Google executives working behind the scenes to censor conservatives and prevent President Trump from being reelected. “People need to know what’s going on with Google, and that they are not an objective piece – they’re not an objective source of information. They are a highly biased political machine that is bent on never letting somebody like Donald Trump come to power again.” Result: Project Veritas was banned from Google-owned YouTube, then from ostensible YouTube competitor Vimeo. But you can watch it on BitChute.
  • Speaking of Google: “Rep. Dan Crenshaw grilled Google executives after an employee reportedly labeled Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Dennis Prager as ‘Nazis.’ ‘Two of three of these people are Jewish, very religious Jews. And yet you think they are Nazis,’ the Texas congressman said in reference to Shapiro and Prager. ‘It begs the question, “What kind of education do people at Google have?”‘” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Speaking of Big Tech censorship of conservatives, Reddit has “quarantined” The_Donald subreddit for Trump fans, one of the largest and most heavily trafficked groups on Reddit. You can still reach The_Donald by following that link, but you get a warning and you can’t search for the content anymore.
  • People continue to flee high tax states and move to low-tax states, something that has only been accelerated by the limitation of state and local taxes in the 2017 tax reform. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
  • What people actually die of versus what types of deaths the media cover. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • “Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Used To Hate Donald Trump. Now, He’s Kind of a Fan.” Also worries (if you listen to the podcast) about China’s rise as a techno-authoritarian hegemon.
  • Democratic congressmen Donald Norcross of New Jersey and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut hit with ethics violation charges for all-expense-paid trips to Qatar. You know, the same country that loves bribing people and bankrolling terrorists.
  • “Leaders Of Brooklyn And Manhattan Chapters Of The United Brotherhood Of Carpenters Charged In Rampant Admissions-Bribery Scheme.”
  • Colorado sees 4 to 10 inches of snow on Summer Solstice.
  • Huawei loses lawsuit against semiconductor designer CNEX (a fabless solid state storage firm), though it’s something of a pyrhic victory, as the judge awarded CNEX no damages. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Herbert Meyer, RIP. You may not have heard of him, but he penned a famous memo in late 1983 that outlined how the U.S. was winning the cold war.
  • Rosanne Barr and Andrew “Dice” Clay to do a comedy tour together.
  • Speaking of comedy: “Louis CK’s audience must be punished.”

    Stop laughing. This isn’t funny. Louis CK is now an unperson. You can no longer applaud him or enjoy his comedy hate speech. If you insist on supporting an enemy of the people, there will be consequences. You will be punished. Your life will be upended. If you care about your future, you will keep your excitement and happiness to yourself when presented with the verboten.

    “Well, if you don’t like Louis CK, don’t listen to him. You can’t tell other people what they should and shouldn’t laugh at.” We hear that a lot from fascists, don’t we? They think hate speech is free speech, and they don’t think they need to do what they’re told. But they’ll learn. They will be corrected.

    Today you’re cheering for an unapproved comedian. Tomorrow you’re marching with tiki torches and tweeting dank memes. The day after that, you’re annexing the Sudetenland. These people must be controlled before the fascism spreads.

  • Famed designer Jony Ive has has left Apple to form his own design group (but Apple will be a client). CNet looks at some of his most iconic designs, including the original iMac and the iPhone.
  • How many flatmates were there in the classic BBC sitcom The Young Ones? Five. If you count the creepy ghost.
  • “Major Cave-In As Democratic Candidates Rush To Far Left Side Of Debate Stage.”
  • A nice little compilation of train stunts in silent movies:

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Guns, Texas, unions | No Comments »

    More NRA Troubles: Wayne LaPierre And The Iron Law of Bureaucracy

    Wednesday, June 26th, 2019

    Lots more NRA turmoil has bubbled up since my previous piece, including the NRA filing two lawsuits against PR firm Ackerman McQueen and leaks of internal NRA letters expressing alarm over profligate spending. In addition to spending by Ackerman McQueen, a great deal of concern has been expressed over NRA’s outside attorney record Brewer Attorneys & Counselors, headed by William Brewer III. Then this week, NRA-ILA head Chris Cox was suspended and put on administrative leave and NRA-TV shut down production on new content.

    Lets tackle these in chronological order.

    As he was being shoved out the door, now-Ex NRA President Oliver North and NRA First Vice President Richard Childress penned a letter expressing deep concern about how much of NRA’s money was going to Mr. Brewer:

    As indicated in previous correspondence, we and others continue to be deeply concerned about the extraordinary legal fees the NRA has incurred with Brewer Attorneys & Counselors. The amount appears to be approximately $24 million over a 13-month period, $5 million of which apparently has been reimbursed in connection with the Lockton settlement.

    The Lockton settlement was the Lockton insurance company reaching an out-of-court settlement to the NRA over breaching a contract to underwrite the ill-fated Carry Guard program discussed last post.

    North and Childress complained about “lax management” of Brewer invoices in the past, and pushed for “an independent, outside expert to review the Brewer invoices immediately.”

    From April 2018 through February 2019, Brewer was billing the NRA $1 million to $2 million a month. North and Childress stated that “Invoices of this size for 12 months of work appear to be excessive and pose an existential threat to the financial stability of the NRA.”

    John Richardson of No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money suggests that Brewer was attempting to become a one-stop shop featuring legal services, public relations and communications, all in one big, expensive, billable bundle. One wonders whether the NRA authorized him to do anything beyond the legal work and, if so, why were they paying him to do some of the tasks they were already paying Ackerman McQueen so handsomely to perform. Richardson also wonders what the attorney of record for the NRA is doing sending political donations to such notable “pro-gun” luminaries as Beto O’Rourke, Patrick Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

    North and Childress aren’t the only ones dissatisfied with NRA leadership. Boards member Lt. Col. Allen West has called on LaPierre to resign. Says West:

    I do not support Wayne LaPierre continuing as the EVP/CEO of the NRA. The vote in Indianapolis was by acclamation, not roll call vote. There is a cabal of cronyism operating within the NRA and that exists within the Board of Directors. It must cease, and I do not care if I draw their angst. My duty and responsibility is to the Members of the National Rifle Association, and my oath, since July 31, 1982, has been to the Constitution of the United States, not to any political party, person, or cabal.

    The NRA Board of 76 is too large and needs to be reduced to 30 or less. We need term limits of four (4) terms on the Board. We need to focus the NRA, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization on its original charter, mission, training and education in marksmanship, shooting sports, and the defense of the Second Amendment.

    I will dedicate all my efforts to the reformation of the National Rifle Association and its members, of whom I am proud to serve.

    Rangemaster and attorney Tiffany Johnson’s letter to the board.

    I attended the NRA Annual Meeting of Members on Saturday morning, and I am writing about a contentious resolution that came to the floor. The resolution decried recent reports of fiscal mismanagement centered around one of the NRA’s primary vendors, Ackerman McQueen. Among other things, the resolution called for the resignation of members of the Audit Committee as well as the NRA’s Executive Vice President, Mr. Wayne LaPierre. In light of the pending litigation between Ackerman McQueen and the NRA, Secretary Frazer successfully moved that the resolution be referred to the Board of Directors for consideration in consultation with legal counsel.

    As a practicing attorney, I fully understand the NRA’s interest in limiting public discussion of sensitive matters that are currently being litigated. I agree that the Association is best served by addressing the resolution internally rather than in the public sphere. However, I also understand the arguments raised against referring the motion to the Board. The resolution cited allegations of financial misconduct, self-dealing, and conflicts of interest within the Board of Directors, the Audit Committee, and other parts of the NRA’s leadership team, based on their alleged mishandling of vendor contracts and other business relationships with Ackerman McQueen. In other words, referring the resolution to the Board would be, in effect, asking the Board to adjudicate allegations against itself.

    I want the National Rifle Association to succeed. At Saturday morning’s meeting, Mr. LaPierre himself warned of the mounting existential threats we now face, both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. Given the intensified scrutiny facing the Association right now, I fear that yet another maneuver of impropriety (whether real or perceived) could be a proverbial death knell. It would serve as perfect fodder for the media to publish yet another scathing exposé that paints the NRA as roiled in unsavory scandal. It would also incite even more resentment from within the organization and sow more division among our ranks. Although Mr. Frazer’s motion to refer the resolution did ultimately succeed, the fierce opposition voiced by many in attendance shows that members want this issue to be addressed in a more transparent fashion.

    I have a humble suggestion to help avoid public airing of private business while also quelling further cries of impropriety. When the Board addresses this resolution, I request that any Board member, officer, or staff member who has a personal, financial, or fiduciary interest in, or fidelity to, Ackerman McQueen (or its subsidiary and affiliate companies) — as an employee, contractor, paid consultant, vendor, client, etc. — be required to recuse himself/herself from discussing and voting on this resolution. That way, regardless of how the Board ultimately disposes of the resolution, at least the result will be less vulnerable to accusations of ethically dubious entanglements.

    Fast forwarding to the present, the removal of Chris Cox from NRA-ILA was quite unexpected, at least by me. ILA is generally considered not only among the most effective of NRA’s programs, but one of the most effective (if not the most effective) lobbying groups on Capitol Hill.

    The news yesterday regarding the National Rifle Association was headlined by a story in the New York Times that said Chris Cox, head of the NRA-ILA, was suspended and put on administrative leave. This followed a late Wednesday filing in New York Supreme Court (the trial level courts in that state) in which the NRA sought a declaratory judgment that Ollie North was not entitled to his legal expenses as a director of the NRA. Also suspended was Scott Christman who served as Cox’s deputy chief of staff at the NRA-ILA.

    Both Cox and Christman are accused along with NRA Board member and former Congressman Dan Boren of participating in a failed “coup” attempt orchestrated by Ackerman McQueen and Ollie North. Cox vehemently denies this.

    “The allegations against me are offensive and patently false,” Cox said. “For over 24 years I have been a loyal and effective leader in this organization. My efforts have always been focused on serving the members of the National Rifle Association, and I will continue to focus all of my energy on carrying out our core mission of defending the Second Amendment.”

    PA Gun blog wonders just just who can suspend Cox, since he reports directly to the NRA board of directors. Say Uncle wonders if LaPierre even has a plan. “Is this some sort of scorched-earth move?”

    Stopping production on NRA-TV is much less of a surprise, given that was yet another thing run out of Ackerman McQueen. I asked NRA-TV personalities Dana Loesch and Colion Noir on Twitter if they had been informed of the moves and have not received a reply. According to LaPierre the issue was one of “focus”:

    “Many members expressed concern about the messaging on NRATV becoming too far removed from our core mission: defending the Second Amendment,” Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s longtime chief executive, wrote in a message to members that was expected to be sent out by Wednesday. “So, after careful consideration, I am announcing that starting today, we are undergoing a significant change in our communications strategy. We are no longer airing ‘live TV’ programming.”

    Unlike some of LaPierre’s other flailing moves, this one can largely be written off as a straight-forward cost-saving measure and an inevitably byproduct of the Ackerman McQueen lawsuit. There’s also probably some truth to the “focus” angle as well, though from a self-interested “free blogging content good” perspective, I liked a good deal of what they were doing, such as Noir’s look at the astounding rate of homeless crime in Seattle.

    Ammoland is not impressed with the moves:

    Enough is enough. The National Rifle Association’s Board of Directors needs to act to get things under control and to focus the organization’s energy and activities against major threats to our right to keep and bear arms instead of internal squabbles. The current legal fight and internal chaos have to be resolved immediately.

    Virginia-specific paragraphs snipped.

    I have already been on record as suggesting that Wayne LaPierre leaves as Executive Vice President after the 2020 election. But recent developments, including the suspension of NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox, now make some changes more necessary than ever. While LaPierre and Cox have past successes, the current drama, and the failure to see the new threats from corporations and social stigmatization that were part of the other side’s long game, including Andrew Cuomo’s abuses of power rank as significant failures on their part, and in combination with the internal drama, and Wayne’s lack of proper basic business management all warrant their replacement.

    Who should replace Cox, who obviously no longer has the complete confidence of his superiors at NRA? Whoever it is should not be a lobbyist, but instead should probably have close ties to grassroots activists. With Cuomo’s attacks tying up financial resources, having the activists on the ground will be more important than ever.

    LaPierre’s replacement will also need to come sooner, rather than later.

    At this point, this replacement should come from outside the NRA so as to have no connection with the current drama.

    Richardson agrees: “Wayne LaPierre’s scorched earth approach to maintaining power may be good for Wayne but is horrible for the NRA as an organization. I acknowledge there are many good people on the Board of Directors. Some want Wayne gone and some still support him.”

    I have to concur. The Ackerman McQueen separation and lawsuit was a necessary corrective given a large vendor whose financial drain endangered the organization. The NRA-TV move is quite defensible as a necessary cost-cutting measure. But the Cox suspension, absent any additional information about why the move had to be made, reeks of circling the wagons and sheer vindictiveness on LaPierre’s part. Ironically, it is his out-sized overreaction to an alleged “coup” that proves why a move against LaPierre is both justified and, at this point, probably sadly necessary.

    Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there are two kinds of people: Those devoted to the goals of the organization, and those dedicated to the organization itself. “The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.” LaPierre’s NRA is clearly been captured by the second group. Or to put it another way: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” LaPierre’s NRA has become a racket. The NRA exists to serve its members and protect the Second Amendment, not to serve and protect Wayne LaPierre.

    As I said about the NRA previously:

    There are some that claim cleaning up the NRA would offer too much succor to the gun-grabbers. But the organizational dysfunction and self-dealing is already out in the open, and is already hurting the NRA’s effectiveness (and has been for several years). If not now, when? Better to do it now, the year before a Presidential election, with Republicans holding the White House and the Senate able to block gun-grabbing initiatives, than during it.

    Other than being a member, I am very far indeed from the center of NRA power. For all the grumbling over the NRA caving over bump-stocks, there’s no other organization with the size, scope and political power of the NRA to protect Second Amendment rights in America. But to do that, the NRA has to be on solid organizational and financial footing, and right now it does not appear to be on either. The NRA has to get its own house in order, this year, or expect forces hostile to it and its goals to do it for them.

    At this point, getting the NRA’s house in order necessitates Wayne LaPierre’s exit as Executive Vice President. This is not going to be easy, as (to quote Archer) “He’s dug in there like a tick!”

    But enough is enough.

    Update: Chris Cox has resigned. There’s also mention of NRA-ILA making a “substaintial” loan to the NRA, and refusing to do it again, followed immediately by Cox and Christman’s suspension. This is probably a good time to reiterate my call for a forensic audit of NRA finances…

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    Posted in Democrats, Guns, Media Watch | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 21, 2019

    Friday, June 21st, 2019

    Welcome to summer! It hit 100°F in Austin this week. Try to keep cool and enjoy this complimentary LinkSwarm:

  • “New Clinton Email Review Reveals ‘Multiple Security Incidents‘”:

    The State Department revealed in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that it had identified “multiple security incidents” committed by current or former employees who handled Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to Fox News.

    So far 23 “violations” and seven “infractions” have been issued as a part of the department’s ongoing investigation – a number that will likely rise according to State Department Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, Mary Elizabeth Taylor.

    “To this point, the Department has assessed culpability to 15 individuals, some of whom were culpable in multiple security incidents,” said Taylor in the letter to Grassley, adding “DS has issued 23 violations and 7 infractions incidents. … This number will likely change as the review progresses.”

  • “State Dept. Suspends $200 Million Enhanced Aid for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras Pending Illegal Migration Enforcement.”
  • Human Rights watch accuses Daniel Ortega’s Nicaraguan government of torture. Once a commie scumbnag, always a commie scumbag…
  • “The DNC has spent more money than it has raised this year.”

    The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020.

    In the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican counterpart was stockpiling cash.

    Snip.

    Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars by Election Day, but the party needs to spend early to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names, something it’s never done before.

    “It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us,” said Allan Berliant, a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open offices and get boots on the ground around the country. “All of that starts with fundraising,” he said.

    Party officials and fundraisers blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.

    “Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.

    But major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that the national party is disorganized – a hangover from the 2016 election. The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger, activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.

    By the end of April, the DNC had collected contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million, according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand, $1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt, including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election Commission records show.

    It seems like I link some variation of this story every year.

  • Democratic doxxer sentenced:

    The Democratic ex-staffer who doxxed several Republican senators after disapproving of their handling of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation will be going to jail for four years.

    Jackson Cosko, a 27-year-old former staffer for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.), was arrested last October for leaking the phone numbers and home addresses of Republican senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Mike Lee (Utah). The information was briefly posted on the senators’ Wikipedia pages before being taken down.

    Cosko was working for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) at the time of his arrest, and was immediately fired.

  • The case is actually much worse than you’ve heard:

    Jackson Cosko was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison. Prosecutors called his offense an “extraordinary” and “vicious” crime where the ex-Democratic aide stole a senator’s data, mined it for blackmail material and then published the home addresses and phone numbers of Republican senators during the 2018 hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Even after the computer administrator was caught in the act and arrested for spying on a senator’s office using his advanced technical skills, Capitol Police didn’t check the USB ports of nearby computers. Six different computers within steps of where he was arrested in the Senate had keylogger devices in them that continued to capture and beam private information over WiFi. They were only exposed through a confession.

    Police then got a search warrant on his home, but missed critical evidence because they didn’t check the oven.

  • A black man testifies against reparations:

    I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present. Think about what we’re doing today. We’re spending our time debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times but incarceration only once, in an era with zero black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners—a bill that doesn’t mention homicide once, at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men. I’m not saying that acknowledging history doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying there’s a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today.

    In 2008, the House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009, the Senate did the same. Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.

  • Kurt Schlichter on the hypocrisy of the left:

    “This is his worst treason since his last worst treason!” they thundered. “This is even more treasonous than when The Bad Orange Man called us ‘traitors’ for our treachery after we called him ‘traitor’ for two years!”

    They got really, really upset. Fake upset, of course, but they committed to the bit and kept straight faces. And you know that Trump pulled the pin on that hand grenade of truth on purpose in order to make the dummies explode just like they did.

    You have to wonder if the garbage elite really thinks their brand of blatant hypocrisy disguised as moral outrage works, or if this is just a reflexive response to a president who not only sees them for the useless slugs they are, but says so.

    My apologies to slugs. I am not slugist.

    Still, do any of them truly think that we Normals will listen to them sounding off about the perfidy of perhaps considering the possibility of maybe accepting dirt on their freak show candidates from outsiders and not recall that Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit famously did just that with the pee-pee dossier, or that Adam Schiff got punked by a couple of Russian Howard Stern wannabeskis offering him pics of the POTUS au natural?

    When Staggers O’Cankles does it, it’s cool? When Congressman Leaky does it, it’s fine? Yet when Trump says he might do exactly what they did, it’s the greatest betrayal of our Values, our Constitution and our Democracy since his last greatest betrayal of our Values, our Constitution and our Democracy, which happened last week?

    Snip.

    To the extent our modern elite had retained any residual credibility from back in the distant past when our elite wasn’t totally corrupt and incompetent, that goodwill has been squandered in the wake of its war to crush Trump, which is actually a war to crush us and restore the elite’s unchallenged power.

    We watch them do X as they tell us to do Y, and they expect us to accept it. Maybe that’s not a completely unreasonable expectation. A lot of goofy, submissive alleged conservatives from Conservative, Inc., have accepted that 2 + 2 =5. The whole cruise-shilling set loves Big Gender-Neutral Sibling and eagerly joins in the phony festivals of fake fury. Last week, social media was packed with these bitter pills fulminating about TRUMP TRAITOR TREASON. And, probably, the geebos at The Bulwark ran with it too, not that anyone would know except the donors Bill Kristol somehow suckered into funding that cesspool floater of a blog.

    Everything they tell us reeks of hypocrisy, like the ever-changing rules about our Glorious Public Servants. When some bureaucrat parrots the party line, we’re supposed to defer. When one fails to parrot correctly, we’re supposed to scream that he’s in contempt of Congress.

  • How Republicans can retake the House in 2020. “The Republicans need to flip only 18 seats in 2020 to regain control of that body — and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has already identified nearly twice that number of vulnerable Democrats in districts won by President Trump during the last presidential election.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Will Oberlin Learn Its Lesson? Short answer: No, they won’t.”
  • In fact, they’re already lying about the verdict.
  • David French brings the requisite amount of wood in stating how the Oberlin College judgment provides a blueprint to fight back. Maybe because Trump isn’t involved. But one wonders why neither the phrase “Social Justice Warriors” nor the word “woke” appears in the piece.
  • Iran shoots down U.S. drone over international waters.
  • President Donald Trump says no strike for now:

  • Both Iran and Trump are playing the long game.” “Iran’s recent attacks signal weakness and desperation, not strength and assurance…Most of the oil passing through Hormuz (about 11/17ths) is bound for the Straits of Malacca en route to China, Japan and Korea. If Tehran actually closed the Straits, by mining it for example, they would essentially be blockading China.”
  • The U.S. holds all the cards in the confrontation with Iran:

    The United States then ramped up sanctions on the Iranian theocracy to try to ensure that it stopped nuclear enrichment. The Trump administration also hoped a strapped Iran would become less capable of funding terrorist operations in the Middle East and beyond, proxy wars in the Persian Gulf, and the opportune harassment of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

    The sanctions are clearly destroying an already weak Iranian economy. Iran is now suffering from negative economic growth, massive unemployment and record inflation.

    A desperate Iranian government is using surrogates to send missiles into Saudi Arabia while its forces attack ships in the Gulf of Oman.

    Snip.

    Time, then, is on the Americans’ side. But it is certainly not on the side of a bankrupt and impoverished Iran that either must escalate or face ruin.

    If Iran starts sinking ships or attacking U.S. assets, Trump can simply replay the ISIS strategy of selective off-and-on bombing. The United States did not lose a single pilot to enemy action.

    Translated, that would mean disproportionately replying to each Iranian attack on a U.S. asset with a far more punishing air response against an Iranian base or port. The key would be to avoid the use of ground troops and yet not unleash a full-fledged air war. Rather, the United States would demonstrate to the world that Iranian aggression determines the degree to which Iran suffers blows from us.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • Instapundit on why social media sucks:

    It’s unfortunate that social media not only makes informed debate more difficult on their platforms, but also, it seems, rewires people’s brains in such a fashion as to make such debate more difficult everywhere else. This is made worse by the fact that Twitter in particular seems to be most heavily used by the very people – pundits, political journalists, the intelligentsia – most vital to the sort of debate that Emerson saw as essential.

    In fact, the corruption of the political/intellectual class by social media is particularly serious, since their descent into thoughtless polarization can then spread to the rest of the population, even that large part that doesn’t use social media itself, through traditional channels. Writing on why Twitter is worse than it seems, David French observes that even though its user base is smaller than most other social media, those users are particularly influential:

    But in public influence Twitter punches far above its weight. Why? Because it’s where cultural kingmakers congregate, and thus where conventional wisdom is formed and shaped — often instantly and thoughtlessly.

    In other words, Twitter is where the people who care the most spend their time. The disproportionate influence of microbursts of instant public comments from a curated set of people these influencers follow shapes their writing and thinking and conduct way beyond the platform.

    (That’s from his new book The Social Media Upheaval.)

  • Hong Kong stages huge demonstration against new communist Chinese extradition laws:

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott didn’t use a single line-item veto on any item in the Texas budget. There’s been a lot of grumbling that the recently completed legislative session didn’t hold the line on spending and failed to enact several conservative priorities.
  • Banning plastic bags won’t save the planet. “Research from 2015 shows that less than 5 per cent of land-based plastic waste going into the ocean comes from OECD countries, with half coming from just four countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.” Also: “You must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less environmental damage than a plastic bag.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Brian Cates asserts that social media didn’t elect Trump.
  • More on voting fraud in Edinberg:

    “Down here, voter fraud is not all that unusual,” says Monte, a city planning consultant in a brown suit jacket, sitting with other activists at a table in Coffee Zone on McColl Road. “It’s unusual when they get prosecuted.”

    Now, for this south Texas town, that unusual moment has arrived. A November 2017 mayoral election has been under scrutiny from local and state officials, and 19 arrests have been made over alleged voter fraud. The mayor—and winner of the 2017 election—was indicted earlier this month, along with his wife.

    Only 8,400 votes were cast in the mayoral election, and Mayor Richard Molina’s final vote count was more than 1,200 votes ahead of the No. 2 candidate, 14-year incumbent Richard Garcia. From what’s known now, the election result couldn’t have been changed by the number of suspicious votes identified.

    But Molina reportedly is the first elected official in Texas to face a felony charge under a 2017 statute against vote harvesting, casting the midsize city into the national debate over election integrity.

  • “A New Jersey man is facing up to five years behind bars for running a nearly $3 million food stamp fraud operation at a Connecticut store.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Longtime ATF guard admits to stealing thousands of guns destined for destruction. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Chattanooga VW plant rejects the UAW yet again. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Prenda Law troll sentenced to 14 years in prison.
  • Extensive technical analysis indicates that Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was probably intentionally depressurized and then flown a long ways before being ditched in the ocean by someone controlling the cockpit. (Hat tip: @davidjacksmith.)
  • Wallace Hall thinks that admissions cheating still goes on at The University of Texas. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Get woke, go broke, Hollywood edition. (Although I liked Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It wasn’t a good movie but it was a good Godzilla movie.)
  • Just as all the media Trump bashing has backfired, so will Hollywood’s condescension. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Not news: Breaking and entering. News: Gets ass handed to him by an 11-year old. Cherry on top: With a machete.
  • Schlitterbahn sells its its New Braunfels and Galveston water parks. That leaves them with parks still in Kansas City, South Padre and Corpus Christi.
  • In case you were worried that Democrats had a monopoly on all the bad ideas, the Tampa Bay Rays are considering spending half their time in Montreal. Because nothing says “well thought-out idea” like 1,500 miles between home games…
  • “Florida man says he had sex with stolen pool toys instead of raping women.” Uh…you can buy pool toys, dude…
  • The Edge wanted to live where the streets have no name, but thanks to the California Supreme Court’s ruling, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
  • Google busted stealing lyrics. Bonus: Morse code.
  • Attack squirrels on meth.
  • Happy ending story, with dog. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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