Posts Tagged ‘Guns’
Friday, March 29th, 2019
The aftermath of [rock DJ voice] NO COLLUSION WEEKEND dominates today’s LinkSwarm.
It will take years to undo the damage of Russiagate:
Millions of Americans have been led to believe that President Trump committed treason, and any day he could be led out of the White House in chains. They wake up every day thinking this could be the day that Mueller gets Trump. These poor souls should be facing a tough reality this weekend. But hold the Xanax, at least for now. The media and Democrat Party have dug themselves so deeply in a hole, they must keep on digging. That’s absolutely terrible for this country, as has been this entire endeavor.
If our country is ever to recover from this mess, we can’t forget how we got here. Russians were attempting to hack both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee in late 2015. Whether the DNC was ultimately hacked or suffered an internal leak, the truth remains that the DNC documents and emails obtained by WikiLeaks showed the entire country that Hillary Clinton, and those around her, were corrupt and would bend the rules (or worse) for power. There was never a real and fair contest between her and Bernie Sanders.
As soon as the Clinton campaign realized its misdeeds toward Bernie had been made public, they blamed Russia. They immediately began putting out a narrative that attempted to say Russia had acted to favor Trump, which included paying Fusion GPS—a notorious propaganda outfit with ties to loads of so-called journalists—to create ties between Trump and Russia.
Snip.
In short, the Hillary campaign peppered the Obama executive branch with allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. The Obama intelligence apparatus, pushed on by Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, was only too happy to run with it. Jim Comey’s FBI then used those Word documents to get a warrant from a secret court to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide, which allowed the FBI to spy on the rival political party’s presidential campaign.
The FBI’s involvement allowed Fusion GPS and the journalists it was working with to put out all sorts of stories before the election, meant to damage Trump’s candidacy. These stories alleged that the ties between Trump and Russia were so serious, the FBI was investigating them. For example, CNN and others ran stories about the FBI looking into Trump because there was supposedly a computer in Trump Tower that was communicating with a Russian bank.
Snip.
Once Trump won, all hell broke loose. There was talk of stopping him with the Electoral College, and protestors wrecked parts of DC. Obama’s deputy attorney general Sally Yates sent FBI agents to entrap Mike Flynn, at the time Trump’s national security advisor, using a 200-year-old law that is never enforced, unconstitutional, and routinely violated by every incoming presidential administration.
The mainstream media was just as deranged. For the entire year of 2017, anything that could damage Trump, no matter how outlandish, was published. Journalistic standards collapsed.
To MSNBC and CNN, every spurious and anonymously sourced report, which was always called a “bombshell,” was a sign that the “walls were closing in” on the Trump presidency. CNN famously reported on a Trump Jr. email, which could have shown collusion, until they realized they got the date of the email wrong. ABC News anchor Brian Ross produced a false report that caused the stock market to drop, and was eventually let go by ABC over the issue. These are but a few examples.
It’s a nice summary of the whole “Russian collusion” madness. Read the whole thing.
“50+ Journalists, Politicians, Celebrities, and Grifters Who Peddled the Russia Collusion Hoax.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Matt Tabbi of Rolling Stone is even more damning of the media that hyped the Russian collusion fantasy, and those partisans trying to ignore Mueller’s conclusions:
The report’s most-quoted line read, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
In essence, Mueller punted the question of obstruction back to Barr, who together with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has already decided the report didn’t provide enough evidence to support a criminal charge in any of the “number of actions” committed by Trump that raised the specter of obstruction.
This isn’t surprising, given that Barr is a Trump appointee. The Atlantic is one of many outlets to have already cried foul about this (“Barr’s Startling and Unseemly Haste” is the name of one piece). But Barr’s letter includes a telling detail from Mueller himself on this issue (emphasis mine):
In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction…
In other words, it was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime, so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into what even Mueller deemed non-crime.
Snip.
MSNBC HOST Chris Matthews said something very similar. First, he recounted his dismay as he learned over the weekend there wouldn’t be new indictments of Trump family members, his inner circle, etc. From there, Matthews deduced, “There’s not going to be even a hidden charge…. They don’t have him on collusion.”
Members of the media like Matthews spent two years speaking of Mueller in mythical tones, hyping him as the savior who was pushing those “walls” that were forever said to be “closing in” on Trump. Mueller, it was repeatedly said, was helping bring about “the beginning of the end.”
Over and over, audiences were told the investigation had hit a “turning point,” after which Trump would either resign or be impeached, because as Brian Williams put it, “Donald Trump is done.”
This manipulative brand of news programming preyed upon the emotional devastation of liberal audiences, particularly the older people who watch cable. It told them the horror they felt over Trump’s election would be alleviated in short order. The median age of the CNN viewer is 60 and MSNBC’s is 65, and these people were urged for years to place their trust in Santa BOB, who knew all and whose investigation would surely lead to impeachment and “the end.”
All you had to do was keep turning in, because the good news could come any minute now! The bombshell is coming! Never mind that this is causing our profits to soar. Don’t wonder about our motives, even though outlets like MSNBC saw a 62 percent bump in viewership in the first full year of Russiagate coverage. Just keep tuning in. The walls are closing in!
That was bad enough, but now that the Mueller dream seems to have died, news organizations are acting like they didn’t hype Mueller as savior.
“Robert Mueller was never going to end Trump’s Presidency,” says Vox.
Matthews, in a tone that suggested he was being the sober adult delivering tough love, completed his thought about how “they don’t have him on collusion” by saying, with a shrug of undisguised disappointment:
“So I think the Democrats have got to win the election.” He added, “There’s no waiting around for uncle Robert to take care of everything.”
I know no one cares how this sounds to non-Democrats, but this is a member of the media looking sad that Democrats would have to resort to actual democracy to win the White House back.
Given that “collusion” has turned out to be dry well, to the ordinary viewer it will look a hell of lot like the MSNBCs of the world humped a fake story for two consecutive years in the hopes of overturning election results ahead of time. Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that “elites” don’t respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It’s hard to imagine what could look worse.
(Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Even the New York Times‘s Bret Stephens says Democrats and the media blew it:
The fiasco was to assume that the result of Mueller’s investigation was a forgone conclusion. And to believe that the existence of dots was enough to prove that they had to connect. And to report on it nonstop, breathlessly, as if the levee would break any second. And to turn Adam Schiff into a celebrity guest. And to belittle or exclude contrarian voices.
Last July, I wrote of the special counsel’s inquiry: “The smart play is to defend the integrity of Mueller’s investigation and invest as little political capital as possible in predicting the result. If Mueller discovers a crime, that’s a gift to the president’s opponents. If he discovers nothing, it shouldn’t become a humiliating liability.”
Instead, as Matt Taibbi perceptively observed last week, what we have is a W.M.D.-size self-inflicted media disaster, which ought to require some extensive self-criticism before we breathlessly move on to Trump’s latest alleged idiocy. Assume for a moment that Trump’s odd Russia behavior, including the obsequiousness toward Vladimir Putin and the routine eruptions against Mueller, was merely a way of baiting journalists for years.
If so, he could hardly have played us better: He’d be the Keyser Söze of media manipulation. To adapt a line, perhaps the greatest trick Trump ever pulled was to convince the world his brain didn’t exist.
(Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Lee Smith in Tablet was even more critical of the media:
The media criticism of the media’s performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne—OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff going on and now let’s all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.
Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.
The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country’s most prestigious news organizations—including, but not only, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible because the institutions sustaining them are credible.
Michael McFaul was U.S. ambassador to Moscow—he knows everything about Russia. He wouldn’t invent stuff about national security matters out of thin air. Jane Mayer is a national treasure, one of America’s greatest living journalists who penned a long profile of Christopher Steele in the pages of the New Yorker. Susan Hennessy is a former intelligence community lawyer, who appears as an expert on TV. And how about her colleague at the Lawfare blog, Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution fellow and a personal friend of James Comey? You think he didn’t have the inside dope, every time he posted a “Boom” GIF on Twitter predicting the final nail just about to be hammered in Trump’s coffin?
Many more jumped on the dog pile along with them, validating each other’s tweets and breathless insider sourcing. The point was to thicken the echo chamber, with voices from the right as well as the left in order to make it seem real. Hey, if this many experts are saying so, there must be something to it.
Except, there wasn’t—ever.
American democracy is premised on a free press that does its best to provide the public with information. Misinforming the public is like dumping toxic waste in the rivers. It poisoned our democracy—and it continues to do so. In fact, the most important thing for the public to understand is that Russiagate is not unique. It’s the way that the expert class opines on everything now, from immigration to foreign policy.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The report showed that the so-called Trump Dossier, which was compiled by a former MI6 spook, Christopher Steele, and funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, is a total work of fiction. There was no collusion. There was no blackmail or any of that innuendo. If anything, this operation executed on behalf of Democrats shows collusion between Russia, Steele, DNC, and the Clintons.”
Scott Adams enjoys the media freakout over the Mueller report’s total vindication of President Trump.
It turns out that lying to your viewers constantly for two years is not a great business model.
Speaking of the media getting it wrong: “USA Today Blacklists The Federalist For The Crime Of Getting The Trump-Russia Story Right.”
“Mueller Orders Trump To Sit On Scale To See If He Weighs The Same As A Duck.”
President Trump held what appeared to be a very well-attended rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan:
I keep thinking I should do an update on Brexit news, but there isn’t really any. Parliament, having stripped Prime Minister Therese May of the power to negotiate Brexit, will neither shit nor get off the pot.
“Transgender “Women” Bully Rape Crisis Center, Get Funding Pulled.” What’s real rape compared to the crime of using the wrong pronoun?
“The REAL Collusion, Part 2: What Is the Connection Between James Clapper, Victor Pinchuk, and CTO of Only Company To Work on Hacked DNC Server?”
“Green New Deal” defeated in the Senate, with 0 votes for and 57 against, most Democrats voting “present.” Because actually calling your insane, economy-wrecking resolution for a vote is just a dirty trick…
Ilhan Omar Has Been Holding Secret Fundraisers For Groups That Support Terrorism.”
Omar recently spoke in Florida at a private event hosted by Islamic Relief, a charity organization long said to have deep ties to groups that advocate terrorism against Israel. Over the weekend, she will appear at another private event in California that is hosted by CAIR-CA PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR a group that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive terror-funding incident.
Hmmm: “Gerald Goines, the HPD officer at the center of a botched drug raid, retires.” “Goines’ retirement came a day after Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo confirmed that he expected more than one officer to be criminally charged for their actions in the ill-fated raid.”
Hmmm Part II: “Houston police investigator probing failed drug raid relieved of duty.” “Angel August was taken off duty with pay on March 13, according to a Houston Police Department spokesman. Officials have not yet publicly divulged the reason for their decision to bench August, who joined the department in 2011. August was the officer who filed the initial report a day after the Jan. 28 shooting at 7815 Harding Street that left two residents dead and five police officers injured, according to a police report obtained by the Houston Chronicle under the state open records law.” (Hat tip (for both): Dwight.)
“Video shows fired Paterson [New Jersey] police officer brutally assaulting hospital patient.” A patient who was flat on his back on a stretcher at the time.
Even the Illinois Prosecutor’s Bar Association condemned the Jussie Smollett dismissal as “abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State.”
Two Mexican drug cartels clashed in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, just over the border from Roma, Texas. “Both cartel factions used numerous grenades and incendiary devices in order to disable the other sides armored SUVs. The clashes left several burned-out vehicles throughout the city and the surrounding areas.” A nearby Mexican army base did nothing to stop the violence. (Hat tip: Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton on Twitter.)
Criminal pro-tip: When looking for a potential victim, try not to pick an off-duty policewoman:
“92 percent of illegal immigrant families ignore deportations.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Homeland Missile Defense System Successfully Intercepts ICBM Target.” (Hat tip: John Bolton’s Twitter feed.)
A quicker Navy plan to get to 355 ships. But many questions remain. (Hat tip: CDR Salamander via The Other McCain.)
New Zealand bans guns. Result? “Of the 1.2M gun owners registered there, 37 have turned them in.”
Liberals are increasingly shocked that Joe Rogan has interesting people on his show and allows them to speak their minds. Link goes to the Althouse comments session rather than the article she’s linking to, since the comments are far more interesting. Today’s SJW-riddled liberals seem terrified and outraged by anyone allowing even the slight shred of heresy from their orthodoxy. I forget what the first Rogan interview I stumbled across was (probably one with Bill Burr), but he’s someone that actually let’s his guests just talk and express their ideas without trying to argue or interrupt.
Andrew Sullivan: “Maybe Hollywood should stop depicting working class white Americans as racist bigots if they want to avoid reelecting Trump.” Hollywood liberals: “Silence, blasphemer!” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
“Microsoft takes control of 99 domains operated by Iranian state hackers.”
BOOM! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Sick And Tired Of All This Prosperity, Nation To Try Socialism For A While.”
Stephen Jay Gould fell pray to the same bias he thought he was condemning.
The scourge of fake wasabi.
Unwrapping a Gutenberg Bible.
Tags:2016 Election, Adam Schiff, Andrew Sullivan, Angel August, Benjamin Wittes, Bill Barr, Border Controls, Bret Stephens, Brexit, Brian Ross, Brookings Institute, CAIR, Cartel Del Noreste, Chicago, Chris Matthews, Christopher Steele, CNN, Crime, data security, DNC, Donald Trump, Eddie Johnson, Foreign Policy, Gerald Goines, Gulf Cartel, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Houston, Houston Police Department, Ilhan Omar, Iran, James Clapper, Jihad, Jussie Smollett, Lee Smith, LinkSwarm, Matt Taibbi, Media Watch, Mexico, Microsoft, Miguel Aleman, Military, missile defense, MSNBC, Navy, New Jersey, New Zealand, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Roma (Texas), Russia, Scott Adams, Social Justice Warriors, Tamaulipas, USA Today, Victor Pinchuk, Zeta Drug Cartel
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 15th, 2019
In one of the more important but confusing stories this week, UK’s Parliament rejected PM Theresa May’s Brexit deal, rejected a no-deal Brexit, and rejected a second referendum, but voted to delay Brexit until June. Whether the EU will consent to this delay or not remains to be seen. Borepatch thinks not, mainly due to EU elections coming up.
Enjoy a complimentary LinkSwarm:
Democrats have a race problem:
In the Trump era, Democrats are so intent on appealing to immigrants and minority voters they will tolerate insults to Jews, a constituency that voted for Clinton by better than a 3-to-1 margin in 2016. This is not inconsequential, as Jewish conservative Jeff Dunetz pointed out last week: “According to the FBI, almost 60% of the hate crimes in 2017 based on religion were against Jews.” Liberals would like us to believe that Trump supporters are responsible for this, but who is to blame when, for example, Somali immigrant Mohamed Mohamed Abdi is charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to run over two men outside a Los Angeles synagogue? How can liberals claim Trump is responsible for three black men attacking Jews in Brooklyn? Police are alarmed by increasing anti-Semitic violence in New York City, which probably has a lot more to do with the “progressive” politics of that Democrat-run fiefdom than it does with who’s occupying the White House. Meanwhile, 11 white people were attacked in New York over the weekend, and a black transgender suspect has been arrested in what police say was an apparent hate-crime spree. Such is the toxic racial climate in the city that sends to Congress such Democrats as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spent her weekend trashing Ronald Reagan for a capacity crowd of liberals in Austin, Texas.
Democrats and their media allies have spent years building this bonfire of racial resentment. CNN devoted hour upon hour of coverage to the “Black Lives Matter” movement that provoked riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and by the time of the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland, anti-Trump protesters were marching with Communist posters advocating revolution. Barely six weeks before Election Day 2016, a “Black Lives Matter” riot erupted in downtown Charlotte, N.C., and does anyone still wonder why Hillary lost North Carolina, a state that Obama had carried twice? Trump got 63 percent of the white vote in North Carolina, carrying the state by a margin of more than 170,000 votes. Is it likely that Democrats can reverse that verdict by doubling-down on identity politics? Yet liberals continue intensifying their incendiary rhetoric that has sparked incidents like the smearing of the Covington Catholic boys, the Jussie Smollett hoax, and a spree of attacks on Trump supporters across the country. Democrats and their media allies have done everything in their power to demonize the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016, and what does that foreshadow for November 2020?
Certainly by now, working-class white voters must be tired of deranged Trump-haters getting in their faces and shouting, “RAAAAACIST!” Perhaps that’s why the latest Iowa poll shows Democrat primary voters favoring two old white guys, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. However, the crowded field of Democrats contending for the 2020 presidential nomination, cheered on by their Greek chorus of left-wing journalists, will probably make it easier for Trump to get re-elected. The more white voters become alienated from the Democrats, the more extreme the Democrats become, and the media are so out of touch with voters in places like Iowa that Democrats are caught in a sort of feedback loop of extremism.
The left-wing crackup:
The constituent elements of the American left have radicalized and they are tearing the Democratic Party apart. Meanwhile Donald Trump has delivered on a growing economy, deregulation, strong borders, the rule of law, and he is apparently going to leave the cows and their diapers for later.
The radicalized Democrats are now running as socialists. In the middle of a growing economy they are casting their lot with Venezuela. They expect to win in 2020. Call it the left-wing crack-up.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Is Corbynism coming to America?
Less than four years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was an obscure backbencher in the British Parliament. In his 30 years as a member of the Labour Party, his greatest legislative accomplishment was paradoxically the lack of any: From 1997 to 2010, when Labour was last in government, Corbyn was the MP who voted against his own party more than any other. Despite his perpetual insubordinations, successive Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown declined to expel Corbyn from their party. “There was no threat,” a deputy Labour chief whip told the Financial Times about Corbyn and his small band of hard-left rebels in 2016. “These people were tolerated because no one had ever heard of them.”
Today, everyone in British politics has heard of Jeremy Corbyn, who, as leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, has utterly transformed the Labour Party. Once a broad-based movement that could command large parliamentary majorities, today it is a sectarian personality cult, offering meager resistance to a shambolic Conservative government. Once the party whose leaders created NATO and stood stalwart against the threat of international communism, today Labour is led by people who sing the praises of anti-Western despots and terrorists. And once the natural political home of British Jewry, Labour today is mired in an anti-Semitic morass, to the point where 40 percent of Jews say they would “seriously consider” leaving the country were Corbyn to become prime minister. Indeed, Labour has become so toxic that, last month, nine MPs quit the party, calling it “sickeningly, institutionally racist,” “a threat to national security” and “a danger to the cohesion of our society, the safety of our citizens, and the health of our democracy.”
How Labour reached this deplorable condition is one that should seriously concern liberals in the United States, where a similar dynamic is playing out in the Democratic Party. An insurgent progressivism favorably disposed to socialism, hostile to Jews and openly admiring of Jeremy Corbyn and all that he represents is steadily making inroads against an aging, centrist Democratic establishment. Here, a constellation of elected officials, media personalities, and activists are mimicking the tactics of their ideological comrades in Britain to take over and transform the Democratic Party into a vehicle for their extreme agenda.
Related: Jexodus.
“Migrants Use Almost Twice The Welfare Benefits As Native-Born Americans.”
According to a report by Breitbart, in recently released research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), analysts discovered that about 63 percent of non-citizen households, those who live legally and illegally in the U.S., use some form of public welfare while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare.
“Five adults arrested at compound in Taos County indicted on terrorism charges.”
“Twice-Deported Illegal Alien Charged With Raping 12-Year-Old Girl.”
Illegal alien arrested for murder of 59-year old woman. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents tried to deport Carranza nine times before, but their detainer requests were not honored in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties, both so-called ‘sanctuary cities.’ In every occasion, local authorities declined to cooperate with a federal request to hold Carranza in jail due to his immigration status — as is often the policy with “sanctuary cities” and counties — and he was released back on the street.”
“At a 10-year high, wage growth for American workers likely to keep accelerating.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Meanwhile, some manufacturers can’t fill open jobs. (Hat tip: TPPF’s Cannon.)
Never Trump Bulwark writer attempts to take down Victor Davis Hanson. The attempt goes very, very badly for him.
[Gabriel] Schoenfeld only fuels the popular perception of The Bulwark Never Trumpers as an angry, coastal elite who are anguished that their warnings about Trump were ignored by both hoi polloi and their conservative “grifters and trolls.” In careerist fury, he now damns others for his own self-immolation — as if the country must suffer for the sins of not listening to his own genius, which would probably have given the country a 16-year Obama-Clinton regnum.
That Never Trumpers at The Bulwark were wrong about the Trump nomination, the general election, and the first two years of the Trump administration seems only to have fueled their spitefulness. If Schoenfeld is representative of this rump movement, then they are engaging in projection.
Read the whole thing for a detailed, comprehensive takedown.
Another big money Democratic donor caught up in the college admissions scandal.
The CDC’s “gun violence” numbers are useless, says that well-known pro-gun outlet, 538.
How China is screwing Vietnam out of energy opportunities.
Another week, another UK Muslim rape gang.
SPLC founder Morris Dees fired, though evidently for sexual harassment rather than smearing innocent conservatives.
“California Veterans Home Threatens to Eject 84-Year-Old Widow for Bible Study Group.”
Some of the power has been restored, but Venezuela’s water runs black.
Venezuela’s premier university destroyed by socialism. A sad photo essay. (Hat tip: Wretchardthecat on Twitter.)
Related tweet:
“Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt.” Can’t imagine why such a fine specimen of academic scholarship would need a leg up in their college admissions. (Had tip: IowaHawk via Andrew Wimsatt.)
“Media Matters President Wrote Blog Posts About ‘Japs,’ ‘Jewry’ And ‘Trannies.’” Political correctness for thee, but not for me. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Democratic Governor of overtaxed New Jersey wants to hike taxes even more.
What if Ayn Rand was right?
“The Army’s Next-Generation Combat Helmet Has Arrived.”
“To Avoid Confusing Words, Ilhan Omar Will Now Respond To All Questions With ‘I Am Groot.'”
You know, Hayek’s Nobel Prize would look good on my mantle.
Random tweet:
Tags:#NeverTrump, Ayn Rand, Border Controls, Brexit, California, China, Crime, Democrats, Economics, economy, EU, F. A. Hayek, Guns, Ilhan Omar, Illegal Aliens, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, LinkSwarm, Media Matters, Military, morons, Nancy Pelosi, New Jersey, oil industry, Phil Murphy, rape, San Jose, sanctuary cities, Sheffield, Theresa May, UK, Venezuela, Victor Davis Hanson, Vietnam, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 22nd, 2019
Enjoy a 2/22 LinkSwarm!
“Trump Is On Solid Legal Ground In Declaring A Border Emergency To Build A Wall.”
A review of existing federal laws makes clear that President Donald Trump has clear statutory authority to build a border wall pursuant to a declaration of a national emergency. Arguments to the contrary either mischaracterize or completely ignore existing federal emergency declarations and appropriations laws that delegate to the president temporary and limited authority to reprogram already appropriated funding toward the creation of a border wall between the United States and Mexico.
When lawmakers want to talk to President Donald Trump, they just pick up the phone. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Andy Ngo helpfully provides an extensive list of fake hate crimes in the Trump era.
“Covington teen Nick Sandmann sues The Washington Post for $250M.”
Shocker: Washington Post tells the truth about guns:
Gun homicides have dropped substantially over the past 25 years — but most Americans believe the opposite to be true. Why? Perhaps in part because of the media focus on multiple-victim shooting incidents in recent years. Perhaps, too, because of the number and deadliness of those incidents. We’ve noted before that the number of fatalities in major mass-shooting incidents has increased dramatically in recent years; it’s possible that people are conflating increases in frequency and deadliness of mass shootings with the United States getting more dangerous generally.
New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez adapts quickly to the ways of Washington, puts her boyfriend on her congressional payroll. But that’s not all! She also featherbedded him on her campaign payroll by laundering the funds through a third party.
The fight between Second Amendment activists and Michael Bloomberg’s money:
The time for division is not now. We need a strong NRA. If you quit NRA over bump stocks or red flag laws, you aren’t helping. I’m not saying we can’t have disagreement, but we all need to be rowing in the same direction and understanding what’s important. Miguel notes that activists in Florida are concentrating on Open Carry. I would advise concentrating on stopping the ballot measure Bloomberg is going to foist on you in 2020. NRA has to have money to fight that. We cannot write off the third most populous state. We will never be able to outspend Bloomberg, but we sure as hell can out-organize him. We have a blueprint, and last I heard the dude who pulled off defeating the Massachusetts handgun ban is still alive. The odds were stacked against him too.
Forget about the fucking bump stocks. It’s not where the fight is. That’s over. The fight is preserving the right to own semi-automatic firearms. That’s ultimately what they want, because they are well aware no state’s gun culture has ever come back from an assault weapons ban. Gun bans are a death blow to the culture. If you want to get the hard-core activists worked up over saving an impractical range toy, or in some misguided effort to (badly) get around the machine gun restrictions, you’re not paying attention to where the actual fight is.
“Government report reveals CBO was scandalously off in Obamacare estimates.”
The Supreme Court unanimously rules that there are limits to civil asset forfeiture under the Eighth Amendment. Good. Now congress should tackle such abuse legislatively.
Note the obvious truth that the media is overwhelmingly liberal? Expect to be attacked.
Nicolas Maduro would rather let his own people continue to starve rather than let foreign food aid reach them. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
His army evidently relies on Cuban military personnel. Too bad for him that Cuba’s military intervention in Angola showed the world that Cuban troops sucked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“Even the UN IPCC says we’re not headed for climate disaster.”
The boy who inflated the concept of wolf:
Suppose that instead of one shepherd boy, there are a few dozen. They are tired of the villagers dismissing their complaints about less threatening creatures like stray dogs and coyotes. One of them proposes a plan: they will start using the word “wolf” to refer to all menacing animals. They agree and the new usage catches on. For a while, the villagers are indeed more responsive to their complaints. The plan backfires, however, when a real wolf arrives and cries of “Wolf!” fail to trigger the alarm they once did.
What the boys in the story do with the word “wolf,” modern intellectuals do with words like “violence.” When ordinary people think of violence, they think of things like bombs exploding, gunfire, and brawls. Most dictionary definitions of “violence” mention physical harm or force. Academics, ignoring common usage, speak of “administrative violence,” “data violence,” “epistemic violence” and other heretofore unknown forms of violence.
Ditto “Gas-lighting.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Pro-top: Try not to steal guns from the SHOT show.
The English-language narrator of Islamic State execution videos has been captured.
Gay magazine takes the Mullah’s side to own Trump:
Former women’s tennis champion and out lesbian Martina Navratilova vilified for daring to point out that men shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
“Medical examiner barred from Travis County courtrooms amid Rangers investigation.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Stafford: the Texas city without property taxes.
B-1s to be retired before B-52s.
Followup: But they’re buying more F-15s. (Hat tip: The Political Hat.)
Philadelphia’s stupid soda tax has not reduced consumption, brought in less revenue than expected, and has cost Philadelphia over 200 jobs. Also, corrupt union officials helped push it through as a “screw you” to the Teamsters. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick bitchslaps some shoddy journalism from the Houston Chronicle so hard they had to retract the story. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings, though the Scribed link is broken.)
Giant “nightmare bee” previously thought to be extinct found alive. Pleasant dreams:
A new football league, the Alliance of American Football, just debuted. Their main bread and butter isn’t ticket sales or broadcast rights, its refining technology to help boost sports gambling.
Trump-supporting comedian Terrance K. Williams recovering from a car accident:
Speaking of Williams:
Instant classic:
“Atheist Requiring Evidence To Believe Anything Knows For Certain Trump Colluded With Russia.”
La zzzzOOOOOMMMMMMMzzzz Le schzzzzzzcchh-Mmmmmmmmmwaaaaaaahh!
Tags:Air Force, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Andy Ngo, Austin, B-1, B-52, Border Controls, border fence, civil asset forfeiture, Covington Catholic, Crime, Cuba, Dan Patrick, Democrats, Eighth Amendment, F-15, Football, Global Warming, Guns, Houston Chronicle, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Martina Navratilova, Michael Bloomberg, Military, Nick Sandmann, Nicolas Maduro, NRA, Second Amendment, Social Justice Warriors, Stafford, Star Wars, Terrance K. Williams, Texas, Travis County, Venezuela, Washington Post
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 25th, 2019
How much of the vicious, fact-free attacks on the Covington kids were just baseline floating animus against Christians and Trump supporters on the part of the media, and how much are battlespace preparation over a possible nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg?
True tales from border enforcement. “I also had multiple cases where convicted child molesters were arrested illegally reentering the United States.” (Hat tip: Director Blue. )
Over at American Thinker, E.M. Cadwaladr is not a fan of recent immigration policy:
The northeastern part of Columbus, Ohio used to be an unpretentious, unremarkable part of America. You could go there if you wanted to. It is now an unofficial colony of Somalia. The business signs, grimy and grey for decades, are now in Arabic. Somali women, grown fat on an American diet doled out by the public’s confiscated largesse, waddle along the street in their abysmal burkas. Somali men are something other than Americans with funny accents. Something has gone badly wrong.
While I can still drive through this part of Columbus, I notice the Americans who used to live there, white and black, are fewer and farther between. I notice when I hear on the local news that a “refugee” has run his car into a group of students at Ohio State, then chased others down the street with a knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” I notice when another “migrant,” a Muslim from Ghana, enters a restaurant owned by an Israeli and proceeds to hack at the customers with a machete. America’s earlier minorities didn’t do these things. This is something new. I may be in Ohio, my dear Toto, but something tells me I’m not in my own country anymore. I’m in the middle of a pre-industrial, semi-literate, dystopian Islamic theme park.
Unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I cannot simply tap my heels together and get back to the imperfect but largely harmless familiarity of home. One more part of America has been allocated to another alien population – squatters who have been brought here to feed on us and to drive us out. But where do we have left to go? This isn’t progress – though it is progressive.
This situation did not occur by accident. It is the product of a premeditated and deliberate social policy. When immigration is talked about on what sneeringly masquerades as news, it is always painted in fatalistic phrases that make it sound like an unstoppable force of nature – as though the people surging into America were a swarm of Mexican butterflies or a herd of East African wildebeests that had somehow overwhelmed the TSA.
Snip.
They did not aspire to be Americans in any remotely meaningful sense of the word. We have seen them, and we are not that stupid. The African populations seeded in Columbus, Minneapolis, and many other places did not come here to learn our culture or our values. They were not blown here in some unavoidable freak storm, nor did they wander here in search of missing livestock. They were certainly not brought here centuries ago as hapless and unwilling slaves. People from Washington, Boston, San Francisco and New York have sponsored this invasion – people who staff committees and think tanks, people who show the residents of the heartland the same loving concern that the Jackson administration showed the Cherokee.
Human smugglers: extortion and death threats. (Hat tip: Governor Greg Abboyy’s Twitter feed.)
Are Democrats wavering on a border wall?
Luke Rosiak’s book on the Awan case, Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats, is out next week. I intend to pick up a copy.
How National Review stepped in it in the rush to denounce the Covington kids:
It seemed way out of character for [Nick] Frankovich to author an angry post about the Covington Catholic High School incident just as the details were emerging. His article—”The Covington Students Might As Well Have Just Spit on the Cross”—went online in the middle of the night on National Review’s portal for short posts by contributors. Frankovich harshly condemned the students, referred to their actions as evil and sadistic, and questioned their Christianity.
“They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. Bullying is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here,” the deputy online editor wrote. He included accusations that had not yet been confirmed.
On Sunday afternoon, as the media’s narrative fell apart and the reality of the situation came into view, National Review quietly removed Frankovich’s article from its website. Rich Lowry, the outlet’s editor, explained in a very brief post that he and Frankovich had been duped by a “hoax” and that Frankovich’s “strongly worded post” had been taken down. Lowry also deleted a few of his own tweets that inaccurately portrayed the incident.
That was it. Rather than acknowledge that the editor and deputy editor for a once reliable and thoughtful conservative magazine were complicit in mob-shaming teenage boys attending a pro-life rally, they quickly excused their behavior as nothing more than gullibility. There was no apology, save for this quasi mea culpa. There was no “calling out” other conservatives who also had participated in the viral assault on innocent young boys.
Two NRO articles addressed the the media’s malfeasance in the matter. In particular, “Nathan Phillips Lied, The Media Bought It,” wrote Kyle Smith.
But the fact that editors for National Review also bought into the various lies escaped mention. This also included senior editor Jay Nordlinger, who deleted a January 19 tweet that read, “the images of those red-hat kids surrounding and mocking that old Indian are unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. An American disgrace.” Jonah Goldberg hand-waved away Frankovich’s vicious post as just “different people reaching different conclusions or having different opinions.”
Snip.
When confronted with evidence, there is no real apology or soul-searching. The public and the maligned families are just supposed to accept their vague, “oops, my bad” tweets and move on.
Further, the same crowd of call-out conservatives, the nags who constantly are telling us which Republican lawmaker or presidential aide or Fox News anchor must be reprimanded for one imagined offense or another, have been silent on calling out their own tribe for joining the Covington High School outrage mob. Where is David French “calling out” his pal, Bill Kristol, for his two (deleted) tweets about the kids, including calling them “MAGA brats”? Where are the Referees of the Right demanding that Ana Navarro or Ben Howe or Jennifer Rubin apologize for vilifying innocent kids? Where are the conspiracy trackers like Jim Swift condemning Jim Swift for peddling this fiction? And why isn’t one conservative demanding that S.E. Cupp be fired from CNN for slandering these kids on her program? (She unconvincingly apologized on Twitter on Monday.)
To be fair, French did address the issue in this piece. (Hat tip: Evil Blogger Lady via The Other McCain.)
It turns out that openly wishing for the deaths of children who hold different political views than you do is a career-limiting decision. Who knew?
MSM lies about Trump supporters again. Clip and save this sentence for reuse…
Let the lawsuits begin! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Press That Sicced Mob On Teenagers Based On 10-Second Video Clip Unsure Why Some People Call Them ‘Fake News.'”
Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and other media outlets announced layoffs. Maybe those outlets should consider, oh, I don’t know, not treating half their potential audience with naked contempt?
Ace of Spades had some pungent observations on journalists and Twitter:
As Mollie Hemingway has said several times, Twitter did improve transparency, and that transparency in turn reduced trust in media.
You showed yourselves for what you really are. We noticed. We adjusted our estimates of you according to the new information.
The thing is, what twitter exposed was not that you were leftwing. We already knew that.
What Twitter exposed was that you were also dumb, easily duped, eager to believe self-justifying conspiracy theories, thin-skinned, arrogant, incompetent, disgracefully lazy, psychologically (and almost certainly physically) inadequate, dunderheadedly unimaginative and unwilling to consider any idea not within the braindead leftwing Incela Corridor Conventional Wisdom Bubble, prone to the most cowardly go-along-to-get-along sort of groupthink, and weak.
Before Twitter, you were removed from us. Anyone who’s removed seems exalted. We knew you were leftwing political operators, but, and I hate to admit this, your remoteness made you seem like you were… elite.
Now we’ve seen what you really are. You’re C- minus students and fat-assed pencil pushers with a nose for sniffing out the right dicks to suck.
Stop holding back and tell us what you really think!
The six axioms of Social Justice Warrioring. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott on Instapundit.)
“Ilhan Omar Endorsed Somalia’s New President. Four Days Later, Omar’s Brother-in-Law Had a Powerful Job in His Administration.” Naturally Nancy Pelosi has given her a seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thanks to Intersectionality, Democrats are exploring bold new frontiers in graft! (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“What if the FBI Had Probed Obama for Collusion with Iran?”
The Supreme Court has agreed to review New York City’s draconian gun laws.
David Kopel has more on the case: “Since the Sullivan Act in 1911, New Yorkers must obtain a license to own a handgun. As will be detailed below, the New York Police Department’s enforcement of the Sullivan Act was abusive from the very start, and has generally remained so ever since.” (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
In China, it’s not enough for Communist Big Brother to know you’re in debt, he has to let everyone around you know you’re in debt as well.
Germany catches an Iranian spy.
This just in: Shelia Jackson Lee is still a scumbag. And no longer leader of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Cahnman is a big fan of Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s committee assignments.
Powerline has a nice meme roundup of last week’s news. I’ll swipe a couple:
Could Alzheimer’s be caused by…gum disease? (Hat tip: David Shirpley on Twitter.)
Facebook is building an orbital death ray. Because they just weren’t evil enough before…
The fraudster behind the Fyre Festival.
Feel good story: A Puppy Saved From A Fire Becomes A Firefighter. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Tags:87th Texas Legislature, Abid Awan, Alzheimer's, Border Controls, Buzzfeed, Catholics, China, Covington Catholic, Crime, David French, Democrats, Dennis Bonnen, dogs, E.M. Cadwaladr, Facebook, FBI, Foreign Policy, Guns, Huffington Post, Ilhan Omar, Iran, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Luke Rosiak, Media Watch, National Review, New York City, Nick Frankovich, Republicans, S. E. Cupp, Scott Adams, Shelia Jackson Lee, Social Justice Warriors, Somalia, Supreme Court, Texas, Twitter, War on Catholics
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, January 17th, 2019
Remember that lawsuit against the city of Austin over barring a legally armed citizen from City Hall in violation of state law I mentioned two days ago? Well, State District Judge Lora Livingston just ruled against the city:
A Travis County judge has ruled that the city of Austin violated state open carry gun laws for blocking a licensed firearms holder from entering City Hall on multiple days in 2016.
State District Judge Lora Livingston fined the city $9,000. Her ruling came down Thursday, a week after the judge presided over a two-day trial centered on a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
The suit stated security guards at City Hall blocked local gun activist Michael Cargill, who has a concealed gun permit, from entering the building on multiple occasions. The building had a sign etched in glass prohibiting the presence of guns even though, according to the suit, City Hall was not exempt under the law the same way that a courthouse would be.
Cargill told the American-Statesman on Thursday that he complained to the city in July 2016 after he was denied entry to the building. When he returned to the building days later and was again told to leave, he alerted Paxton’s office.
“This means that every city and county, municipality and property, needs to follow the law,” Cargill said Thursday. “This means we absolutely were correct since we won in Travis County — a blue dot in a sea of red.”
Also this:
The AG’s office had asked the judge to make Austin comply with the law that states only certain government buildings, like courthouses and those that have school functions, are gun-free. The judge denied that request, saying that there’s no reason to believe Austin will not abide by the law going forward.
Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Austin, Guns, Ken Paxton, Lora Livingston, Texas
Posted in Austin, Guns, Texas | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2019
Been a while since I did one of these, so let’s have at it:
The Trump Administration’s bump-stock ban is a legal abomination:
The new rule represents the most sweeping federal gun control effort since the so-called assault weapons ban, which was passed in 1994 and expired in 2003. Even the Obama administration, which was overtly hostile to Second Amendment rights, rejected the logic of Trump’s bump stock ban.
As a matter of both law and physics, the Trump administration’s gun control rule banning bump stocks is an abomination. The Department of Justice (DOJ), which formally issued the rule, not only ignores underlying federal statutes that precisely define what constitutes a fully automatic “machine gun,” it also ignores the mechanics of how guns are fired and how bump stocks increase the rate of fire. Even worse, the faulty logic of the new gun control rule could eventually be used as a basis for a presidential administration unilaterally banning and confiscating all semi-automatic weapons.
Another concern about the bump stock ban: It doesn’t just ban them, it make those already legally purchased before the ban illegal to own:
“A current possessor may destroy the device or abandon it at the nearest ATF office, but no compensation will be provided for the device. Any method of destruction must render the device incapable of being readily restored to its intended function.”
Get caught in violation and prepare to have your life destroyed through arrest, prosecution, incarceration and a lifetime ban on owning guns. All brought to you by a “pro-gun” president taking his lead from NRA’s plea to regulate instead of legislate.
This is, to my mind, an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment, and if allowed to stand, would pave the way for future gun confiscations via regulatory mandate.
Borepatch makes his position clear: “Gun control is unconstitutional. All of it. ALL OF IT.” Further: “I would roll it all back past the 1934 Gun Control Act. No lists. No watchdogs. No limits on design or rate of fire.”
Speaking of unconstitutional, “red flag laws” are bullshit.”
Just in case it was unclear, Democrats really do want to ban all modern sporting rifles. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
City of Austin: Don’t think you can bring your foolish “gun rights” here. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Here, have a lawsuit:
Austin could face punishment for infringing on the citizen’s rights: state law allows for a $1,500 daily fine for blocking licensed citizens from entering city hall with their permitted handguns. According to Paxton’s press release, the city has been barring the resident for more than 500 days, and the attorney general’s team asked the court to impose a total fine of over $750,000.
Tags:Austin, bump stock ban, Democrats, Dianne Feinstein, Fifth Amendment, gun control, Guns, Ken Paxton, Modern Sporting Rifle, Regulation, Texas
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Guns, Regulation, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 11th, 2019
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! At least those of you not among the millions dead from the shutdown, assuming you already survived the tax cut and the end of Net Neutrality…
If you ignore the MSM-generated drama, 2018 was a great year for America:
In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer
Since Trump took office, the United States has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers.
It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead.
In addition, the United States remains the largest producer of natural gas and the second-greatest producer of coal. The scary old energy-related phraseology of the last half-century—”energy crisis,” “peak oil,” “oil embargo”—no longer exists.
Near-total energy self-sufficiency means the United States is no longer strategically leveraged by the Middle East, forced to pay exorbitant political prices to guarantee access to imported oil, or threatened by gasoline prices of $4 to $5 a gallon.
The American economy grew by 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, and by 3.4 percent in the third quarter. American GDP is nearly $1.7 trillion larger than in January 2017, and nearly $8 trillion larger than the GDP of China. For all the talk of the Chinese juggernaut, three Chinese workers produce about 60 percent of the goods and services produced by one American worker.
In 2018, unemployment fell to a near-record peacetime low of 3.7 percent. That’s the lowest U.S. unemployment rate since 1969. Black unemployment hit an all-time low in 2018. For the first time in memory, employers are seeking out entry-level workers rather than vice versa.
The poverty rate is also near a historic low, and household income increased. There are about 8 million fewer Americans living below the poverty line than there were eight years ago. Since January 2017, more than 3 million Americans have gone off so-called food stamps.
Abroad, lots of bad things that were supposed to happen simply did not.
After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, the United States exceeded the annual percentage of carbon reductions of most countries that are part of the agreement.
North Korea and the United States did not go to war. Instead, North Korea has stopped its provocative nuclear testing and its launching of ballistic missiles over the territory of its neighbors.
Despite all the Trump bluster, NATO and NAFTA did not quite implode. Rather, allies and partners agreed to renegotiate past commitments and agreements on terms more favorable to the U.S.
The United States—and increasingly most of the world—is at last addressing the systematic commercial cheating, technological appropriation, overt espionage, intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusions, and mercantilism of the Chinese government.
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
President Donald Trump visits the Texas border.
“The longer Donald Trump wrangles with his two superannuated cartoon antagonists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the stronger the president’s position becomes.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“If the Dems Want to Lose the Wall Fight, All They Have to Do Is Keep Talking.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Secretary of State Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notes that Obama’s Cairo speech was full of shit.
Nobel Peace Prize secretary admits that giving the award to Obama was a mistake. In other news, Peter Dinklage will not be the starting center for the New York Knicks. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
“There is one thing that Palestine obsessives never seem obsessed with: the opinions of Palestinians. There’s no mystery here—asking what Palestinians believe exposes a fundamental problem with the liberal approach to the peace process, which is based on the belief that Palestinians are willing to live peacefully beside Israel.”
Flashback: How a Boris Yeltsin trip to a Randall’s in Clear Lake helped end the cold war.
The very first bill pushed by House Democrats takes aim at the First Amendment:
House Democrats are up and running, and their first bill is instructive. Couched as an anti-corruption and good-government measure, it is really an attempt to silence or obstruct political opponents.
A central part of H.R. 1 is “campaign-finance reform,” no surprise given the progressive fixation with money in politics, which oddly turns to mist when Tom Steyer or Mike Bloomberg are spending. The House bill requires some advocacy groups to publicly disclose the names of donors who give more than $10,000, even if the groups aren’t running ads that endorse candidates but merely inform voters about the issues.
The goal is to identify donors who don’t genuflect to progressive views, then bully or harass them to stop giving. Recall how the Mozilla CEO was driven out after he donated to California’s referendum opposing same-sex marriage.
(Hat tip: MQ Sullivan on Twitter.)
“WaPo’s embarrassing indulgence in hyperbole describing the attendance at Democratic candidates rallies.” Remember: Trump filling arenas is nothing, but when 200 Democrats turn out, it’s “filled to the rafters.”
Second dead black man found in the home of prominent gay California Democratic donor Ed Buck. I guest the first was just a “gimme” under California law.
“Hey officer, I have a dead body in my apartment, along with a bunch of illegal drugs.” “It’s cool. No worries.”
Tam suggests that people do not need to clean their gun as frequently as the old military guys suggest.
Laws are for the little people: “He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November.” (Hat tip: Snowflakes in Hell.)
Woe unto those who own a house inadvertently mapped as a default location for unmapped IP addresses.
Being anti-communist is now evidently a hate crime in Seattle. (Hat tip: Gail Heriot at Instapundit.)
Twenty-one bodies found in north Mexico after gang clash near Texas border.
Media Matters head and Hillary Clinton crony David Brock says that Bernie supporters must be silenced in 2020.
Brazil:
Jair Bolsonaro is “far right” and the media means that as a pejorative.
Turns out he favors the private sector and wants to get rid of government owned industry.
He favors expansive gun rights as a way to combat crime and let people protect themselves. This has led to massive media backlash in the United States.
He favors conservative social policy including a rollback of the LGBT agenda in Brazil. Again, this has led to massive media backlash in the United States.
Most damning in the eyes of many in western media, he favors abandoning restrictions on private property that could threaten Amazonian forest growth, i.e. he’s bad for climate change.
The media has focused a lot on Bolsonaro talking favorably about Brazil’s American backed military dictatorship that ruthlessly exterminated communists and other dissident groups from the 1960’s into the early 1980’s. They suggest Bolsonaro might bring it back.
So far, the only thing Bolsonaro seems to be doing is keeping his campaign promises to fight corruption, roll back progressive social policies his socialist predecessor supported, and expand gun rights. But the American commentariat can do nothing but see everything through the lens of Trump and if you hate Trump, you must hate Bolsonaro apparently.
Cahnman says cut Will Hurd some slack on some meaningless political posturing. I tend to agree, especially since here he might actually be voting the way his constituents favor.
Dan Crenshaw seems to be settling into his new job nicely:
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke Instagrams his trip to the dentist. Because that’s what voters really want to see.
Related snark:
Open office plans suck. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“I’m attacking the Death Star…and I’m not wearing any pants!” (Link corrected.)
Tags:Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Border Controls, border fence, Boris Yeltsin, Brazil, Cairo, China, Chuck Schumer, Cold War, Communism, Crime, Dan Crenshaw, David Brock, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ed Buck, Ed Burke, Eqypt, Guns, Instagram, Israel, Jair Bolsonaro, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Media Matters, Media Watch, Mexico, murder, Nancy Pelosi, Palestinians, Soviet Union, Star Wars, Tamaulipas, Texas, Washington Post, Will Hurd
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas | No Comments »
Saturday, January 5th, 2019
Borepatch and co-blogger ASM826 have been trading off talking about the massive pile of failure that is the War on Drugs.
Start with Borepatch’s piece on the similarities between gun control and the war on drugs:
Let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the “we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home” perspective. The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.
Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? This is intended to accomplish five specific things:
- Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc. It’s caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money. It’s an anti-tyranny goal.
- Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths. Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn’t be the equivalent of bathtub gin. His gin isn’t adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn’t be either.
- Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.
- Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
- Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.
Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today. Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not “victimless” crimes.
Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Let’s break these down by the five points above.
- No doubt some agencies will resist this – police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them. However, this is more of a hinderance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation. In any case, I don’t see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.
- This seems a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one. It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products. I’m not sure you’ll see Superbowl advertisements for “The Champagne of heroin” but I don’t think you need to for success here.
- This seems like an absolute no-brainer. You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc). Not sure how big this is but it sure isn’t zero.
- We saw this with the end of Prohibition. Today’s Al Capones are drug king pins.
- Tax money is notoriously fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado).
I endorse this line of thinking. I cannot, however, endorse Borepatch’s heinous use of two spaces after periods in the computer era…
See also his bit on how the war on drugs has made things much worse for people in chronic pain.
My own two cents (familiar to regular readers) is that federal drug prohibition is unconstitutional on Ninth and Tenth Amendment grounds, being neither necessary nor proper for the federal government to enforce, and thus should be left to the states. This is especially true of federal prohibition of growing marijuana for personal use, as only the warped, grossly expansive interpretation of the commerce clause endorsed in Wickard vs. Filburn would give the federal government standing to determine what can and can’t be grown on a person’s private property for their personal consumption. Elimination of federal prohibition would allow states to experiment with the right mix of policies for narcotics. Let Utah try total prohibition, Portland complete legalization and deregulation, Maryland decriminalization and drug treatment, and Pennsylvania state owned drug dispensaries, and see which aspects of which approaches work best. That’s what federalism and subsidiarity are for.
Anyway, there’s a lot more over there, and a lot of links to all sides of the debate, that are worth pursuing.
Tags:Borepatch, Crime, Guns, marijuana, Regulation, War on Drugs, Wickard vs. Filburn
Posted in Crime, Regulation | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 4th, 2019
Welcome to the first LinkSwarm of 2019! If things seem a little thin, I worked most of the week and threw a New Year’s Eve gathering, so things are a little discombobulated right now. Hopefully next week I’ll be back in the groove faster than you can say “Antidisestablishmentarianism.”
“Jobs Blowout: December Payrolls Soar By 312K As Wages Jump Most Since 2009.”
More on that jobs report:
Democratic Party “charity” in action:
The caucus of black New York state lawmakers runs a charity whose stated mission is to empower “African American and Latino youth through education and leadership initiatives” by “providing opportunity to higher education” — but it hasn’t given a single scholarship to needy youth in two years, according to a New York Post investigation.
The group collects money from companies like AT&T, the Real Estate Board of New York, Time Warner Cable and CableVision, telling them in promotional materials that they are “changing lives, one scholarship at a time.”
The group — called the Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators, Inc. — instead spent $500,000 in the 2015 – 2016 fiscal year on items like food, limousines and rap music, the Post found.
The politicians refused to divulge the charity’s 2017 tax filing to the Post despite federal requirements that charities do so upon request.
Its main activity is holding and selling tickets to an elaborate party each year intended to raise money for its stated mission of providing scholarships for youth. But year after year, essentially all the money simply seems to go to festivities.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
President Trump’s Iran sanctions are destroying their economy. “In the fallout, the Iranian rial has lost more than a quarter of its value against the dollar, sending the prices of food and other basic commodities soaring.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson says that the newspaper is indeed obviously biased against President Trump.
She also says publisher Arthur Sulzberger “drafted a letter ‘all but apologizing’ to the Chinese government for a tough investigative story about corruption in the country.”
“Over a decade, police investigated more than 520 cases of juvenile sexual assault and abuse in Chicago’s public schools.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“Stoneman Douglas commission calls for arming teachers.
Related: I think I missed this is 2018:
AKA “the resource officer who infamously failed to confront the Parkland shooter.”
“A California congressman is introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday — the first day of the new Democratic majority in the House.” Because evidently they learned nothing from the Clinton impeachment…
A Democrat also filed a bill to eliminate the Electoral College. Priorities.
Apple iPhone phishing scams are getting cleverer at fooling people.
Speaking of Apple, their stock just lost the value equivalent to Facebook’s market cap after announcing they would miss iPhone targets.
Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher dead at 87.
Cracked takes on health care sacred cows. Worth a read. (Hat tip: Ashe Schow on Twitter.)
UT makes Campus Reform’s top five crazy stories list.
Outgoing Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill disses incoming House Democrat and “shiny thing” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“State Rep.-elect Mayes Middleton has filed priority legislation, House Bill 281, to end tax-funded lobbying.” Good.
Convicted felon and Democratic state representative Ron Reynolds released from prison just in time for the legislative session.
Facebook temporarily bans Billy Graham’s son for having the unmitigated gall to say that men and women are biologically different…back in 2016.
The Babylon Bee takes on Mitt Romney’s criticisms of President Trump. You know, I’m getting the impression here that the Bee is not a big fan of Mormon doctrine…
Tags:Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Apple Computer, Arthur Sulzberger, Austin, Chicago, Claire McCaskill, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, economy, Electoral College, Foreign Policy, Guns, health care, Herb Kelleher, impeachment, Iran, Jihad, Jill Abramson, jobs, LinkSwarm, Mayes Middleton, Media Watch, Mitt Romney, New York, New York Times, rape, Ron Reynolds, Scott Israel, Southwest Airlines, Texas, University of Texas
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 26th, 2018
Sometimes law enforcement officers use poor judgement. This week’s examples:
Buying cocaine for the prostitute you’re having rough sex with may be a career-limiting move. Especially if you’re an Austin police officer.
From New York, an officer that failed to heed Jeff Cooper’s rules. If he had, he wouldn’t have had to fire 27 shots, including those that hit two bystanders. (Hat tip: Dwight, for both.)
Meanwhile, Baltimore gonna Baltimore:
Right at the top of the department’s struggles were the racketeering convictions of eight members of its once-elite Gun Trace Task Force. Two sergeants and eight detectives robbed citizens under protection of their badges and claimed massive amounts of overtime for hours they did not work. In November, a ninth officer, former Baltimore and Philadelphia cop Eric Snell, pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to sell drugs with the GTTF members.
Also this: “The city surpassed 300 homicides for the fourth year in a row. It has earned the grim designation of having the worst homicide rate among the nation’s 50 largest cities last year, according to FBI data released in September.”
The Los Angeles Police Department, on the other hand, is dealing with a revenge porn scandal:
A Los Angeles Police Department employee is accusing her co-worker of releasing revenge porn.
According to KABC, Ysabel Villegas is a detective with the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division. Villegas filed a temporary restraining order against LAPD senior lead officer Danny Reedy.
Villegas is also married to former LAPD Assistant Chief Jorge Villegas. Eyewitness News has learned he suddenly retired earlier this year after a sex scandal involving a subordinate officer.
According to the restraining order, Ysabel Villegas claims she had a romantic relationship with Officer Danny Reedy for five years.
She alleges in the restraining order that after their relationship ended, Reedy distributed explicit photos of her, without her consent.
They all sound like such wonderful people.
Caveat: Lisa Bloom is Ysabel Villegas’ attorney, so don’t assume she’s telling the truth…
Tags:Austin, Austin Police Department, Baltimore, California, corruption, Crime, Danny Reedy, Guns, Jason Dusterhoft, Jorge Villegas, LAPD, Lisa Bloom, Los Angeles, Maryland, NYPD, Texas, Ysabel Villegas
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