Posts Tagged ‘New Jersey’
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.)
Tags:2020 Election, baseball, BATFE, Border Controls, California, China, Communism, Connecticut, Crime, Daniel Ortega, David French, Democrats, DNC, Edinburg, El Salvador, EmailGate, environmentalism, Florida Man, Foreign Policy, fraud, Galveston, Guatemala, Guns, Hidalgo County, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Hollywood, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Jackson Cosko, Jihad, Kurt Schlichter, LinkSwarm, Luke Rosiak, Media Watch, Military, Montreal, New Braunfels, New Jersey, Nicaragua, Obama Scandals, Oberlin College, Philippines, Prenda Law, Republicans, Rio Grande Valley, Schlitterbahn, Social Justice Warriors, Tampa, Texas, U2, UAW, unions, University of Texas, Vietnam, Wallace Hall, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, May 10th, 2019
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas we’re enjoying intermittant torrential rains, which means that walking your dog after one is like breathing warm soup.
Obama took Hillary’s loss as a personal insult:
Former President Barack Obama was unhappy with Hillary Clinton and her failed “soulless campaign” in 2016, saying he saw her loss as a “personal insult.”
The new details come from a recently released update to New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker’s book Obama: The Call of History.
The new edition, which includes Obama’s reaction to the 2016 election, said Obama compared himself to Michael Corleone, the titular character of “The Godfather.” Obama thought he “almost got out” of office untouched, like a mob boss avoiding a hit job.
Obama found himself shocked by the election results, thinking before Nov. 8 there was “no way Americans would turn on him” and “[h]is legacy, he felt, was in safe hands.”
The Midwest’s broken blue wall:
The president’s standing in the Midwest now is arguably stronger than when he nearly swept the region in 2016. Polling shows Trump’s job approval rating in the Midwest is in the mid-forties, and his overall favorability rating is highest in the Midwest. Trump’s approval rating in the region is roughly the same as Obama’s was during the same point in his presidency, according to Gallup tracking polls.
The working class, the nearly 70 percent of Americans without a college degree who have been ignored and even ridiculed by both political parties, is flourishing. Five of the top ten cities enjoying the greatest job opportunities for lower-wage workers are in the Midwest. “A majority of the metro areas with the highest shares of opportunity employment are located in the Midwest . . . after adjusting for cost-of-living differences, median annual earnings tend to be relatively high in that region,” according to an April 2019 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Finding enough workers “is a problem playing out in many parts of the Midwest, a region with lower unemployment and higher job-opening rates than the rest of the country,” according to an April 2018 Wall Street Journal report, citing hiring challenges by employers in Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Southwestern Ohio, solid Trump country, is in the midst of a warehousing boom. The construction industry is thriving nationwide, but the Midwest is leading the pack.
The administration’s attempts to secure the southern border are gaining popularity in the Midwest. According to a recent Washington Postpoll, 40 percent of Midwesterners say Trump’s approach to illegal immigration will make them more likely to support him in 2020, compared to 36 percent who say they are less likely. Further, 83 percent of Midwesterners called the situation at the Mexican border a crisis or a serious problem. It will take some smooth convincing by the Democratic presidential candidate to not only disabuse Midwesterners of their views, but to assure them that open borders are best for families in Racine and Grand Rapids.
After the Mueller report, former FBI Director James Comey knows he’s in trouble:
Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber, along with Barr’s promised examination, are completed, Comey’s mishandling of the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.
Ideally, Barr’s examination will aggregate information that addresses three primary streams.
The first will be whether the investigations into both presidential nominees and the Trump campaign were adequately, in Barr’s words, “predicated.” This means he will examine whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place.
The Mueller report’s conclusions make this a fair question for the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Comey’s own pronouncement, that the Clinton email case was unprosecutable, makes it a fair question for that investigation.
The second will be whether Comey’s team obeyed long-established investigative guidelines while conducting the investigations and, specifically, if there was sufficient, truthful justification to lawfully conduct electronic surveillance of an American citizen.
The third will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what’s causing the 360-degree head spins.
Oh, should we use the word “bombshell” or the phrase “the walls are closing on?”
Luke Rosiak is on the case of corruption in Flint, Michigan:
The company Flint, Michigan, hired to replace lead water pipes had no experience with the work, according to a councilwoman and a contractor, despite that the city has received more than $600 million in state and federal aid for its water crisis.
And the city ignored a model showing where lead pipes are and paid to dig up every yard, the vast majority of which had copper pipes, according to meeting minutes.
The city also prohibited contractors from using an efficient method of digging holes known as hydrovac excavation, Flint Councilwoman Eva Worthing told The Daily Caller News Foundation. That leveled the playing field for a contractor, WT Stevens, with no experience or the appropriate equipment — and let it bill far more to taxpayers, she says. All of these factors, she adds, needlessly led to more waiting for anyone who actually has lead pipes.
Huge amounts of aid dollars — including $100 million from the Environmental Protection Agency — have flowed to the small city of 90,000 residents to address lead in its water supply, even though it doesn’t have a chief financial officer and, until recently, its finance chair was a gun felon.
The federal money “should be a good thing for the city,” Worthing told TheDCNF, “but given the mismanagement of the pipe replacement program, I am concerned that it’s not going to get used properly.”
The city “chose to dig up yards that they knew were copper, and they decided to hand dig instead of hydrovac,” Worthing told TheDCNF. “That was because WT Stevens didn’t have the ability, and you get more money [digging by hand]. It costs $250 [to hydrovac] versus thousands” to dig a large hole without the equipment.
“What part of No Collusion is hard to understand?” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Democrat slips up, admits that “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this President, he will be reelected.”
Hey, remember when journalists reported on all the scandals among Virginia’s state leaders, until they noticed the (D)s after their names? “Northam, who largely won on anti-Trump anger, is now less popular than the president in the state.”
Alabama Democratic state representative John Rogers last week: “Some kids are unwanted, so you kill them now or you kill them later. You bring them in the world unwanted, unloved, you send them to the electric chair. So, you kill them now or you kill them later.” Rodgers this week: “I am now a candidate for United States Senate.” He’s primarying incumbent Democratic Senator Doug Jones, who only got in because of the Roy Moore fiasco.
Remember how sure all those economic “experts” were that Trump would tank the economy if he got elected? Good times, good times…
A lot of what you think you know about gun control in Australia, New Zealand and the UK is probably wrong.
Recent data show that the U.K.’s gun control experiments are actually causing more harm than good. Like its Australian counterpart, which also implemented draconian gun control in the 1990s, negative criminal trends have started to surface since new gun control laws were enacted.
Sexual assaults have seen an alarming rise from 1995 to 2006, specifically increasing by 76.5 percent according to Howard Nemerov’s book 400 Years of Gun Control. All the gun control in the world has not been able to save the U.K. from steadily increasing rates of violent crime.
The FBI’s New York office forms a squad dedicated to MS-13.
“The century-long relationship between American Jews and the nation’s elite universities has rotted away. Now is the time for all of the good people involved—students, parents, donors—to get out, and fast.”
Believe women…unless they’re raped by a homeless person. “Seattle’s activist class seems, then, to have more compassion for transient criminals than for the victims of their crimes.”
New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy raids fund for fallen firefighters.
Followup:
New York: No new pipelines. Gas company: OK, that means no more gas hookups for new buildings because we’re at capacity.
Leaked Trump Peace Plan? I’d sort of like President Trump to stay away from all peace plans, as they all seem to be asking for trouble. This one is interesting. It calls for a two state solution, some Egyptian facilities for Gaza, incorporating settlements into Israel, a lot of non-U.S. countries picking up the bill, and penalties for rejecting the deal. It make so much sense that Palestinians will surely reject it out of hand…
“U.S. Seizes North Korean Freighter Violating U.N. Sanctions.”
More on China’s play for technological dominance: “Huawei Technologies, the spearhead of China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), isn’t a Chinese company, but an imperial juggernaut that crushes its competition and employs their intellectual resources. By 2013 it employed 40,000 foreigners–mostly in R&D– out of a workforce of 150,000.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The New York Times had a story in which they breathlessly told us that Trump lost a billion dollars in the late 1980s and early 1990s. You know, just like Trump himself told us in his book The Art of the Comeback. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“Facebook co-founder says Zuckerberg ‘not accountable,’ calls for government break up.” Better idea: Make all social media companies publish clear, defined reasons for suspending or banning users, and make the processes by which those decisions are made transparent. Nah, they’d never go for that, as that would keep them from arbitrarily banning conservatives… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Facebook Allows Terrorist Who Beheaded Canadian Tourist To Keep Account & Actively Post.” That would be Bhen Tatuh of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines. (Hat tip: Charlie Martin.)
Jim Goad says Facebook should leave Louis Farrakhan alone…because he’s hilarious. “This cat is one of the most accomplished mind-fuckers in American history, and I’m glad to call him a fellow citizen.”
“Facebook SWAT Team Arrests Man For Illegal Possession Of Conservative Views.”
“Man Whose Headless Body Was Found Floating in Fish Tank Was Murdered.” That’s some mighty fine forensic analysis there, Lou… (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
“Nation’s Politicians Mock Trump For Only Wasting A Mere Billion Dollars.”
“That’s not a knife!” (Unleashes Hellfire missile with 100 pounds worth of blades.) “Now that, that’s a knife!”
Entire New Orleans Times-Picayune staff laid off after paper sold to competitor. Among other things, they did that fine story on the homeless Super Bowl player.
Speaking of football: “XFL Reaches Deal With Fox, Disney To Broadcast Games.”
How a World War II field kitchen worked.
The return of the giant knotweed.
The 106 greatest crime films of all time, as ranked by Otto Penzler (still in progress).
“Is that an alligator in your pants, or are you just happy to see me.” Bonus: Florida Woman.
“Ilhan Omar Blasts Israel For Refusing Palestine’s Generous Gift Of Rockets.”
Moving The Extending Arms of Christ: This probably won’t mean anything to you unless you grew up in Houston, but there was a large, striking mosaic above the emergency room entrance on Houston Methodist Hospital that had to be moved to an interior atrium under construction due to the hospital’s expansion.
Tags:2020 Election, Abu Sayyaf Group, Alabama, Bhen Tatuh, Border Controls, China, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, Facebook, FBI, Florida, Gaza, Hellfire missile, homeless, Houston, Huawei, Ilhan Omar, impeachment, Indiana, Iowa, Israel, James Comey, Jews, Jim Goad, John Rodgers, Justin Fairfax, LinkSwarm, Louis Farrakhan, Luke Rosiak, Media Watch, Middle East, Middle East Peace Process, Military, MS-13, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York, NFL, North Korea, Palestinians, Phil Murphy, Philippines, Ralph Northam, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, technology, Virginia, Welfare State, Wisconsin, World War II, XFL
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Welfare State | 2 Comments »
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, March 8th, 2019
Turning and turning in a widening gyre…
You would think a simple condemnation of antisemitism would be an easy thing for House Democrats to do. You’d be wrong. Like the UK’s Labour Party, the Social Justice Warrior rot has crept into the Democrats to the point where they are institutionally hostile to Israel and Jews. The need for Muslim votes outweighs forthright condemnation of one of the world’s oldest (and deadliest) prejudices.
So enjoy a LinkSwarm while you wait for the blood-red tide of anarchy to be loosed on the world:
The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism: “No educated human believes [Democratic Rep. Ilhan] Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.” (Hat tip: Sean Davis on Twitter.)
And the hits keep coming! New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for and end to the U.S.-Israel special relationship. I’m sure such a position could never negatively impact reelection chances for a congresswoman representing New York City…
“More than 76,000 migrants crossed the southern border illegally last month, the highest number in 12 years. So much for all those media “fact checks” arguing that there’s no emergency to justify President Trump’s wall.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Mexico is helping the Trump Administration enforce border controls. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
“Federal judge temporarily blocks Texas from purging voters in citizenship review. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery called the review “ham-handed” and ordered counties not to remove any voters from the rolls without his approval and “a conclusive showing that the person is ineligible to vote.” I know it will shock you to learn that Biery is a Clinton appointee. Can’t purge those precious illegal alien votes for Democrats off the rolls…
“Last week a new pro-illegal alien organization launched in the Lone Star State: Texans for Economic Growth. The group, which appears to contain more chambers of commerce than actual businesses, is directly tied to Partnership for a New American Economy, a “comprehensive immigration reform” (pro-amnesty) organization headed by two billionaires, the anti-gun former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch; a host of other media elites; big business CEOs; and mayors.” They oppose ending state subsidies for illegal aliens.
UPS stops delivering to Muslim no-go zones in Sweden.
India’s “cold start” military doctrine against Pakistan.
Is Pakistan finally doing something about terrorism? “Pakistan intensified its crackdown against Islamist militants on Thursday, with the government announcing it had taken control of 182 religious schools and detained more than 100 people as part of its push against banned groups.” Don’t believe it. As sure as the heat is off, expect those same militants to be released and go right back on the ISI payroll…
The government is approaching the opiod epidemic all wrong. “‘Today’s non-medical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients.’ Medical users usually do not become addicts.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
We have a winner for Stupidest tweet of the Year:
It’s ten years since Obama’s Russian reset. “By the time Trump took office, just over two years ago, a greatly emboldened Russia had effectively digested Crimea, was engaged on a rapidly expanding scale in joint military exercises with China, was energetically cultivating such clients in the Western Hemisphere as the USSR’s old comrade Cuba and Putin’s pals in Venezuela, and was militarily entrenched in Syria as a mainstay of the Assad regime.”
Speaking of Venezuela, the Magic Power of Socialism™ has reached the point where they can’t even keep the lights on.
F-35C declared ready for combat. The “C” designates the aircraft carrier variant, which was first rolled out 10 years ago. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Is Rep. Dan Crenshaw the future of the GOP?
Crenshaw might be the congressional GOP’s best answer to AOC, but he decidedly doesn’t want to be seen as a Republican version of the 29-year-old New York Democrat, who is “always trying to embrace radicalism,” he told me during a recent interview in his new office on the fourth floor of the Cannon House Office Building. He wants to take his party in a more traditional—not radical—direction. “We have to make conservatism cool and exciting again,” is how he described his mission in politics when I first met him a year ago. “We have to bring back that Reagan optimism.”
Crenshaw’s combination of traditional conservatism and rising popularity put him in an unusual position in Congress. He describes himself as a “plain old conservative”—he supports free trade, wants to reform Medicare and Social Security, and thinks American troops should stay in Afghanistan (where an IED took one of the veteran’s eyes) as long as they’re needed to prevent another 9/11. That puts him at odds with Trump, whom Crenshaw has been unafraid to criticize, going so far as to call his rhetoric “insane” and “hateful” during the 2016 presidential campaign. But Crenshaw is more “Sometimes Trump” than “Never Trump.” He is not pushing for a 2020 Republican primary challenge and is not trying to write off Trump’s wing of the party—hence, his warm reception at CPAC. In fact, Crenshaw has praised the president for his policies on immigration, even recently voting in support of Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall, a move many conservatives opposed.
Ignore the “dares to take on Trump” angle of the article. Crenshaw’s biggest advantage is a temperament almost completely opposite from Trump’s, which voters may look for in 2024.
New Jersey city agrees to pay $27M to lease property it sold for $1.” Corruption? In New Jersey? Try to contain your shock…
Follow-up: Police officer involved in deadly Houston shooting decides to retire. How convienant. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Guy behind Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was literally a paid KGB stooge.
Former Texas congressman Ralph Hall died at age 95. Hall was a conservative Democrat who endorsed George W. Bush for President in 2000, then switched to the GOP in 2004, one of the last conservative Democratic office holders to leave the party. “Hall had always been a thorn in Democrats’ side even before he changed parties. In 1985, he voted ‘present’ rather than support then-Speaker Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill’s, D-Mass., reelection. ”
How Buc-ees conquered the world (or at least Texas).
Eyeglasses are a ripoff. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Titania McGrath unmasked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
Captain Mary Sue:
Two years ago, Wonder Woman proved a female-led superhero movie could reach the highest levels of the genre, with Gal Gadot proving robust and redoubtable, yet also charming and feminine. I spent Captain Marvel waiting for Gadot. What I got was Brie Larson: charmless, humorless, a character so without texture that she might as well be made out of aluminum.
Captain Marvel might be the first blockbuster movie whose animating idea is fear. Every page of the script betrays terror of what people might say about the film on social media. Give Carol Danvers a love interest? Eek! No, women can’t be defined by the men in their lives! Make her vulnerable? OMG, no, that’s crazy. Feminine? What century are you from if you think females should be feminine? Toward the end of the movie, when a villain preparing for an epic confrontation with Carol, the fighter pilot turned Superwoman, chides her that she will fail because she can’t control her emotions, there is no tension whatsoever. We’ve just spent two hours watching her be utterly unfazed by anything. Giving Carol actual emotions would, of course, lead to at least 27 people calling the film misogynist on Twitter, and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are petrified of that.
Just to be completely, unerringly, let’s-bubble-wrap-the-universe safe, Boden and Fleck decided to make Danvers stronger than strong, fiercer than fierce, braver than brave. Larson spends the entire movie being insouciant, kicking butt, delivering her lines in an I-got-this monotone and staring down everything with a Blue Steel gaze of supreme confidence. Superheroes are defined by their limitations — Superman’s Kryptonite, Batman’s mortality — but Captain Marvel is just an invincible bore. The screenplay by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with a story by the three of them plus Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, presents us with Brie Larson’s Carol being amazingly strong and resilient at the beginning, middle, and end. This isn’t an arc, it’s a straight line.
Jerry Merryman, co-inventor of the pocket calculator, RIP.
“Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is.” “When I made the Green New Deal, I thought weather like storms and earthquakes were all caused by climate change, but now I’ve learned from Representative Omar that lots of that is actually from Jewish-controlled weather machines.”
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…
Tags:Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, amnesty, anti-semitism, Border Controls, Communism, Crime, Democrats, F-35, Foreign Policy, Fred Biery, Houston, Ilhan Omar, Illegal Aliens, India, Israel, Jews, LinkSwarm, Marvel, Mexico, Michael Bloomberg, New Jersey, New York City, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, Pakistani ISI, Ralph Hall, Russia, Social Justice Warriors, Sweden, Texans for Economic Growth, Texas, Titania McGrath, UPS, Venezuela, Voter Fraud, War on Drugs, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uncategorized, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 15th, 2019
There’s a much criticized spending bill with a lot of poison pill provisions and a tiny bit of border wall funding President Trump is expected to sign, and then declare a national emergency to get the wall built.
While that’s up in the air, enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Democrats don’t want to detain or deport violent felons. If that’s the hill they want to die on, bring on the shutdown. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd told Breitbart News Tonight on Wednesday that Congress had ignored the advice of experts when reaching a deal to provide less than $1.4 billion for border fencing.”
The ludicrous nature of the Democrats’ “Green New Deal” continues to haunt them, leading to a lot of walking back economically insane socialist goals. NPR has the original text of the proposal.
Jonah Goldberg on the subject:
These people think that they can adequately plan and run — for all time — an economic system from Washington that would guarantee: “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States” as well as “access to nature.”
But they can’t even plan the roll out of a non-binding resolution and some press-release materials? And, when confronted by their own words, their immediate response was to accuse their enemies of sabotaging them? Gosh, by all means, let’s give them control of the entire economy. That couldn’t work out badly. I mean “Mistakes happen when doing time launches like this coordinating multiple groups and collaborators,” when uploading FAQs, not when doing anything as simple as commandeering the bulk of the U.S. economy.
Republicans pull the dirtiest trick on Democrats ever: forcing them to vote on the Green New Deal lunacy they just endorsed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Bill Barr confirmed as Attorney General.
Amazon cancels it’s New York City HQ2 expansion plans. Government shouldn’t be throwing subsidies at targeted corporations (nor picking winners and losers). The decision is also rich, zesty schadenfreude for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez screwing over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who both pushed hard for the Amazon deal.
This story should be absolutely infuriating to everyone on all sides of the political spectrum: rather than preserving or processing DNA rape kits, Oklahoma destroyed them.
How do Democrats expect to get socialism to work nationwide when they can’t even get it to work at one Panera Bread location?
Twitter bias is real. “Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Democrats cause climate change. The science is settled!
Those pesky peasants are threatening the EU by daring to vote for parties of which the EU elite disapproved.
Brexit update:
“Migrants” banned from Finnish schools and daycare centers because of all the rapes.
Here’s a phising scam that targets not only credit unions, but the credit union officers in charge of enforcing anti-money laundering laws.
Pro-tip: If you’re a phone scammer, try not to target the former head of the FBI and the CIA.
Meanwhile in Australia: “$500 per family for a single day’s electricity. There’s your Green New Deal.”
Germany and Japan are teaming up to oppose American foreign policy. I’ve seen this movie before, and I don’t think they’ll like how it ends…
Islamic State executioner enjoys death by tank. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
More semi-informed speculation than insider knowledge: “The Notorious RBG…is not dead. But she probably soon will be.” (Hat tip: Doug Ross on Twitter.)
New frontiers in unconstitutional legislation: “The Los Angeles City Council voted yesterday to require companies who want to contract with the city to disclose their relationships with the National Rifle Association.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Disgraced former Democratic state senator Carlos Uresti sentenced to five years for bribery. Unfortunately it will run concurrently with his fraud conviction, and therefore result in no additional time in prison. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Don’t mess with Texas, Part 8,192. Doesn’t say whether the attackers were illegal aliens or not. (Hat tip: HeidiL_RN.)
There’s low, and there’s “constable stealing Hurricane Harvey donations” low.
Tesla’s Buffalo Gigafactory workers are not happy campers.
Jussie Smollett’s hate crime allegations fall apart.
New Jersey hates high school football.
I don’t keep up with celebrity culture at all, but this is freaking hilarious. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse, who provides context for celebrity-challenged.)
“Millennials Have Discovered ‘Going Out’ Sucks.” And they only discovered this after cities pushed densification policies to hurd them all downtown where the clubs and bars are… (Hat tip: Millennial Conservative.)
Tags:Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Amazon, Andrew Cuomo, Australia, Bill Barr, Bill De Blasio, Border Controls, border fence, Brexit, California, Carlos Uresti, Crime, data security, Democrats, EU, Finland, fraud, Germany, Global Warming, Green New Deal, Harris County, Hurricane Harvey, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Japan, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Los Angeles, Media Watch, New Jersey, New York, New York City, NRA, Oklahoma, phishing, rape, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, socialism, Tesla Motors, Texas, Twitter
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 6th, 2018
AZ, NV and MT Senate races all too close to call, but Republicans are leading in all three right now.
I’m out of gas and heading to bed. Analysis tomorrow.
Wisconsin Gov still too close to call.
Takeaways seems to be:
Republicans tighten grip on senate
Democrats take the House.
Dumptrucks full of outside money and a good candidate can almost make Texas competitive.
Claire McCaskill concedes.
Dems pick up Iowa 1.
John Carter still up.
Democrats pick up OK5.
PBS praising Bloomberg for airdropping outside money into races.
Scott Walker’s Gov race too close to call.
Culberson looking like he’s going to lose.
Never mind the election, Vincent Price is on the Carol Burnet Show on MeTV!
Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick wins by six points, AG Ken Paxton by 4 points.
McCaskill goes down, Heitkamp went down. “Just like the old Gypsy woman said!”
Ted Cruz victory speech. He sounds really horse. Compliments O’Rourke on a hard-run race.
“All the money in Hollywood couldn’t beat the good people of Texas!”
Charlie Baker (R) reelected Governor of Massachusetts.
Culberson behind in TX07.
Nate Silver’s algorithm has evidently gone rogue. He’s now having to pull glowing memory sticks out of HAL.
My state Rep. Tony Dale, currently behind John Bucy. Williamson County has gotten a lot more purple, alas.
All republicans winning Texas statewide races, but more narrowly than expected. That Bobby Francis money is having a real effect.
McMaster (R) wins SC Gov.
Dems have picked up most of the PA redistricted competitive seats, but Republicans just got one.
ABC projects Ted Cruz to win Texas!
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaking. Victory speech.
NBC thinks Dems take the House.
McSally up over MethLab in AZ.
My congressmen, John Carter (R) up, but only by 2 points.
Incumbent Democrats Sherrod Brown (OH) and Bob Casey (PA) projected as winners.
Bob Sleazoid (D) declared winner in NJ Sen.
Cruz now up 10,000 votes.
Cruz 6,000 votes behind O’Rourke, 73% in.
Cruz/O’Rourke virtually tied with 72% of vote in, with Midland/Odessa still out.
O’Rourke up with 70% of the vote in. It would obviously be a huge upset if it holds. But I’m not sure 70% of thevote is actully in.
Lindsey Graham (R-Like A Boss) on NBC.
CBS calling WV for Manchin.
Bob Schiffer says “The Senate is moving not only in Republican’s direction, but Trump’s direction.”
Marsha Blackburn (R) called the winner in Tennessee.
Cruz up by only 3% over O’Rourke. Hmmm.
Braun declared winner over Donnelly. The last Stupak Bloc Flipper goes DOWN.
They thawed out Tom Brokow.
Election watching Rich: “I haven’t been this excited since Hillary Clinton won the White House.”
Manchin (D) holding on in WV.
“For the first time in Georgia, we have a progressive Democrat running in Georgia.” And she’s getting WHOMPED.
They called KY for Barr (R) over McGarth (D), the candidate the MSM kept lauding. Suggests Dems won’t take house.
Dave Brat still up by 1 pioint, 86% in.
Stacey Abrams still getting walloped in Georgia,
Hugin up by 4 point over Sleazeball (NJ). 6% in.
DeSantis (R) up narrowly in Florida.
Hugin (R) winning narrowly over Sleazebag (D) in New Jersey, 1% in.
Hawley walloping Planetoid Claire, but only 1% in there as well.
PBS: “No blue wave.”
Frum Brooks has arms crossed on PBS. Not looking happy.
Wow:
Stacey Abrams (D) losing big early, but only 2% in.
Braun still up 16 points with 27% in.
Nancy Pelosi on PBS. Looks like she’s had another round of Botox.
Republican Greg Pence, older brother of VP Mike pence, has reportedly been elected to Indiana’s 6th congressional district. (via Twitter)
Florida Sen: Scott (R) 50.5%, Nelson (D) 49.5%, 4% in, via RCP.
Indiana: Braun 58% to Donnelly’s 38% with 10% in (via PBS)
No, delusional PBS host, O’Rourke did NOT run a negative-free campaign.
5:50 PM: First results from Indiana via Real Clear Politics: “Donnelly 34.7, Braun 61.3, Brenton 4.0” with 2% reporting (presumably some early voting results).
Just a placeholder for now, but I expect to start liveblogging/livetweeting the 2018 election starting at 7 PM CST.
Tags:2018 Election, Beto O'Rourke, Claire McCaskill, Democrats, Devin Nunes, Florida, Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana, Joe Manchin, John Bucy, John Carter, liveblog, Marsha Blackburn, Massachusetts, Nancy Pelosi, New Jersey, Republicans, Robert Menendez, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, November 5th, 2018
Election day is tomorrow! So here’s a brief roundup of the state of play:
Here’s the way Real Clear Politics breaks down Senate races:
They show North Dakota Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp as gone, which already brings Republicans up to 50 seats with victories in Tennessee (likely) and Texas (even more likely).
The races they have as tossups are:
- Arizona: The late John McCain’s seat. I expect former fighter pilot and Republican Martha McSally to beat Kyrsten “Meth Lab of Democracy” Sinema based on the latter’s baggage and blunders, and the importance of border control to Arizona residents.
- Florida: Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is in a very tough fight with Republican Governor Rick Scott, but Republican turnout seems to be surging. Keep in mind that in 2014, Scott beat the odious Charlie Crist by only 64,000 votes. It being Florida, it may not be decided until the recount.
- Indiana: Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly (D), the last of the Stupak Block Flipper still in office, has been in a virtual tie with Republican challenger Mike Braun. Trump walloped Hillary by 19 points in 2016, while Donnelly managed to eek out 50.04% of the vote in the very Democrat-friendly year of 2012. I think he’s toast and Braun wins.
- Missouri: Republican challenger Josh Hawley has lead polls against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ever since the Kavanaugh vote in a state Trump won by 18 points in 2016. Stick a fork in her.
- Montana: Incumbent Democrat Jon Tester should be in deep trouble in a state Trump won by 21 points, but polls show him with a small but sustained lead over challenger Matt Rosendale. Chalk this up as the toss-up Senate race Republicans are most likely to see slip away.
- Nevada: Polls show Republican incumbent Dean Heller slightly behind challenger Jacky Rosen. See the mention of big crowds at Trump rallies further down in a state Hillary won by just over two points. Heller eked out a two point win in face of Obama’s big 2012, and I think he survives by the skin of his teeth this year as well.
- West Virginia: You would think that Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin would be in deep trouble in a state where Trump walloped Hillary by 42 points, but he’s maintained a small but persistent lead over challenger Patrick Morrisey. The Last Blue Dog may survive 2018, but I suspect this one will go down to the wire.
Any “Likely Democrat” races Republicans can pull an upset off in? Maybe New Jersey where, despite substantial leads, Democrats have been pouring last minute funds in to save indicted sleazebag Robert Menendez. But that’s a pretty high mountain for Republican challenger Bob Hugin to climb.
Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root, who correctly predicted Trump’s upset win two years ago, similarly sees another GOP win in the offing:
Don’t look now, but it’s all happening again. Nate Silver says Democrats have a 80%+ chance of winning the House. Cook Report says Democrats will win the House by 40 seats. All the experts say it’s over- Democrats will win. I’ll go out on a limb and disagree again.
I see Florida Democrat Governor candidate Andrew Gillum holding a rally with Bernie Sanders and the whole place is empty.
Barack Obama could not fill a high school gym in Milwaukee.
I witnessed firsthand Joe Biden and Obama at separate events here in Las Vegas playing to small crowds.
Meanwhile I was opening speaker for President Trump’s event in Las Vegas last month- with 10,000 waiting in line for hours in a place where no one cares much about politics. This is a phenomenon.
Does that sound like the GOP is losing 40 seats? Dream on delusional Democrats.
National Review‘s Jim Geraghty sees Democrats pulling off an extremely narrow win to take the House.
One of the seats he see’s flipping is the Texas 32nd Congressional District, currently held by Republican Pete Sessions. The district went very narrowly (1.9%) for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but went for Romney by over 15 points in 2012. I tend to think Sessions barely wins reelection, based on a strong economy, the long-time Republican nature of the district, and incumbency.
My prediction: Republicans keep the Senate, and we won’t actually know if they keep the House until most of the recounts are done.
Tags:2018 Election, 32nd Congressional District, Arizona, Bill Nelson, Bob Hugin, Claire McCaskill, Dean Heller, Flordia, Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana, Jim Geraghty, Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Joseph Donnelly, Josh Hawley, Kyrsten Sinema, Martha McSally, Matt Rosendale, Mike Braun, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Patrick Morrisey, Pete Sessions, polls, Rick Scott, Robert Menendez, Wayne Allyn Root, West Virginia
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, October 5th, 2018
Welcome to the season where ugly monsters in lurid costumes go running around shrieking at the sheer delight at scaring other people. And those are just the Democratic protestors on Capitol Hill!
The Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote today, and the Supreme Court confirmation vote is Saturday. And Kavanaugh links dominate the top of this LinkSwarm:
Republicans are fired up after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the Democratic edge for the 2018 midterms has disappeared. Or so says that notorious Republican shill organization, NPR.
More on the same subject:
Let’s say you’re Joe Manchin in West Virginia. What you needed was for this nomination to be uncontroversial, and a sure thing for confirmation. A party-line contested vote the whole country is watching is a nightmare. Why? Because in a red state like the one Manchin represents, the majority will favor confirmation and find it to be a decisive issue in their vote — so Manchin voting against Kavanaugh will set him up to reap the wrath of the voters in a state which went 65 percent for Trump in 2016.
But it’s worse than that for Manchin, because he doesn’t have a good escape from the Kavanaugh confirmation. You’d say his easy way out is to vote yes, except what the Left has done is to so whip up their voters with the Ford allegations and the copycats who followed that Manchin will lose votes from his own side if he votes to confirm the judge.
This isn’t a theory, by the way. It’s what the polls show.
A new poll finds that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia think Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
The Public Opinion strategies poll commissioned by the Judicial Crisis Network found an overwhelming majority of West Virginians (59 percent) thought Kavanaugh’s testimony was more believable than Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the federal judge of sexually assaulting her more than 35 years ago at a drunken high school party. Those who believe Kavanaugh include 81 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independent voters.
Manchin is locked in a dead-heat race against Patrick Morrissey, West Virginia’s Attorney General, and his vote is now going to be the defining issue in that race either way.
Manchin’s conundrum isn’t unique. Claire McCaskill in Missouri is already a committed no on Kavanaugh, and her troubles have begun as well…
A new poll released by The Missouri Scout on Saturday shows that Republican challenger Josh Hawley has taken a two-point lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Missouri Senate race just days after she announced she will be voting against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Hawley leads McCaskill by a margin of 48 percent to 46 percent in the poll conducted by Missouri Scout over two days, from Wednesday, September 26 to Thursday, September 27.
McCaskill announced her opposition to Kavanaugh on September 19. The second day of the poll was conducted on the same day Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years ago at a time and place she cannot recall and with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Missouri Scout poll had worse news for the incumbent Democrat — in that what’s driving down her numbers is unquestionably the Kavanaugh vote…
Significantly, the poll found that 49 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while only 42 percent said it made them more likely to vote for her.…
Among female respondents, 47 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 42 percent said it made them more likely.
Among male respondents, 50 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 41 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Non-Partisan respondents, 46 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 39 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Republican respondents, 85 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them more likely.
Among Democrat respondents, 82 percent said the confirmation process made them more likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them less likely.
Also, a new poll commissioned by NBC North Dakota News showed the race between Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican challenger Kevin Cramer has the latter with a commanding 51-41 lead. That poll has the Kavanaugh nomination as the most important (with 21 percent) of nine named issues in the race, with 60 percent of North Dakota voters polled saying they support the judge’s confirmation against only 27 percent opposed. Heitkamp has publicly called herself a “no” vote, which amounts to more or less a surrender in the race. Without North Dakota, there is only a minuscule chance of the Democrats winning control of the Senate.
And still more:
Of all the cohorts measured by the poll (including Independent men and women), Democratic women are the only group to display less enthusiasm for the midterms this week than they did in July. Meanwhile, Republican women seem invigorated. In July, 81 percent of Democratic women said the November elections were very important, compared to 71 percent of Republican women. Now, Republican women are 4 percentage points likelier to view the midterms that way (83 percent to 79 percent). That’s a 14-point swing in female voters’ interest in the midterms—after the hearings, and in Republicans’ favor.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“Will the ‘Brett Bounce’ Unseat Bob Menendez in New Jersey?” Let’s hope so. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Accused doxxer of GOP senators allegedly threatened to publish lawmakers’ children’s health info.” I just can’t imagine why Republicans are so upset with Democrats in congress…
And unless Kavanaugh is confirmed, things will get worse:
There is no circumstance where everyone involved with those norm-breaking steps suddenly wakes up, has a crisis of conscience, and realizes that they were morally wrong. The only way they decide not to take similar steps in the future is if they conclude that those steps are not effective.
If these sorts of tactics work, we will get more of them. Right now, Kavanaugh could be a squish who wimps out on Roe vs. Wade and I’d still want him on that court, because this isn’t really about him anymore. This is about what kind of proof is needed before you believe a man is a monster. This is about whether decades of respected public and private life can be wiped away by an allegation without supporting witnesses. This is about whether anyone who ever knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind . . . or whether people who never knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind.
The Democrats’ war against the presumption of innocence:
Social justice presumes the guilt of certain people because of their politics, their positions, their races and their genders. It creates different rules for different classes of people with some entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence, even in the face of indisputable guilt, and others forced into an equally absolute presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any indisputable proof of their guilt.
America cannot operate under two systems of guilt and innocence, one public and one private. If the majority of Americans are to be judged by a system that presumes their guilt, that attitude will inevitably go on to permeate the courtroom. By eroding the presumption of innocence in public life, the left is eroding it as a legal right. Lynch mobs and kangaroo courts can’t be expected to stop at the courthouse door when they are celebrated and operate freely throughout the rest of the land.
Kavanaugh’s case is about more than the malicious exploitation of the #MeToo movement to destroy a political opponent. It’s the latest assault on the social presumption of innocence by shadowy forces whose ‘scoops’ dominate the media through cut-outs while their sources remain silently invisible.
If kangaroo courts and media lynch mobs succeed in overturning a Supreme Court appointment, they will have proven that their war on the presumption of innocence extends even to the highest court in the land. If a Supreme Court justice can’t be presumed innocent, what hope do the rest of us have?
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Let’s not put too fine a point on it: Christine Blasey Ford is a liar.
China used it’s supply chain to implant a spy chip in many of America’s top companies, including Apple and Amazon. This is why outsourcing so much of your technological infrastructure is a national security issue.
Apple and Amazon issue strenuous denials. I’m not sure they could do otherwise, even if the allegation is true, especially since Amazon currently derives the lion’s share of its profits from AWS. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
President Donald Trump’s approval rating hits 50%.
Including 35% of blacks. That’s disasterous for Democratic electoral chances. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Theresa May will change her Brexit policy, or the Tories will change their leader.
Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.
Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?
More pushback on the Linux SJW-inspired CoC change. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Saudi solar project flops. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
96 sheriffs endorse Ted Cruz.
Austin government needs an independent audit. Naturally the the city power structure is opposed…
“Kamala Harris: ‘We Would Apply The Same Fair Standards To Any SCOTUS Nominee Whose Life We Were Trying To Destroy.'”
A typeface to help retain memory? There’s just one tiny problem…
First edition of The Wealth of Nations to be auctioned.
“Bottle of whisky sold for world record £848,000.”
“Swedish road covered in herring after elk accident.”
Happy birthday, Wallace Stevens.
Tags:2018 Election, 2018 Texas Senate Race, Amazon, Apple Computer, auctions, Austin, Brett Kavanaugh, Brexit, China, Christine Blasey Ford, Claire McCaskill, Democrats, Dianne Feinstein, Donald Trump, Elections, Heidi Heitkamp, Jackson Cosko, Joe Manchin, Kamala Harris, Kevin Cramer, LinkSwarm, Linux, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Robert Menendez, Sheila Jackson Lee, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Ted Cruz, Texas, Theresa May, UK, West Virginia, whisky
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, July 13th, 2018
Happy Friday the 13th! FBI “Partisan Weasel” Peter Strzok smirked and slithered his way through his capitol hill testimony. “That Strzok could huddle with FBI lawyers while stonewalling a Republican-led committee speaks to the corruption of official Washington and the comparative impotence of Republican administrations. Does anybody think an FBI agent who had vowed to “stop” the candidacy of Barack Obama would have lasted a week at his job, let alone over a year, after the discovery of his bias?”
And when I say slithered:
Now enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
The U.S. Army has announced that Austin will be home to its new Futures Command. “The Futures Command center will focus on modernizing the U.S. Army and developing new military technologies. It is expected to employ up to 500 people.” Cool. My only question is: How do I get a job there?
“MSNBC Does Not Merely Permit Fabrications Against Democratic Party Critics. It Encourages and Rewards Them.” Also: “Anyone who criticizes the Democratic Party or its leaders is instantly accused of being a Kremlin agent despite the lack of any evidence. And the organization that leads that smear campaign is the one that calls itself a news outlet.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Three Democrats: “Here’s a bill to abolish ICE.” House Republican leadership: “OK, let’s put it to a vote.” Three Democrats: “Never mind, we’ll vote against it.” Hypocrite much?
“Fierce Gun Battle Erupts Between Mexican Troops And Cartel Gunmen Near Texas Border.”
President Trump on NATO: “Europe needs to pay it’s fair share for defense.” Eurocrats: “We have no idea what he’s saying! Stop speaking in code!”
Remember how socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated incumbent Joe Crowley in the 14th Congressional District Democratic primary? Surprise! Crowley is still on the ballot on the Working Families Party line. Read on for New York’s goofy third party rules (goofier than most). (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)
Problem: Residents of New Jersey are moving to Florida to escape high taxes. New Jersey’s solution: raise them even higher.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling class is falling in line with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Social Justice Warrior game developer goes all Social Justice Warrior on gaming company partner on company time. Pink slip ensues.
Stop fixating on the Russia-hacked-the-election fantasy, says his Russian political foes:
“Enough already!” Leonid M. Volkov, chief of staff for the anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, wrote in a recent anguished post on Facebook. “What is happening with ‘the investigation into Russian interference,’ is not just a disgrace but a collective eclipse of the mind.”
What most disturbs Mr. Putin’s critics about what they see as America’s Russia fever is that it reinforces a narrative put forth tirelessly by the state-controlled Russian news media. On television, in newspapers and on websites, Mr. Putin is portrayed as an ever-victorious master strategist who has led Russia — an economic, military and demographic weakling compared with the United States — from triumph to triumph on the world stage.
“The Kremlin is of course very proud of this whole Russian interference story. It shows they are not just a group of old K.G.B. guys with no understanding of digital but an almighty force from a James Bond saga,” Mr. Volkov said in a telephone interview. “This image is very bad for us. Putin is not a master geopolitical genius.”
The citizens of European nations balk at erasing borders.
The European Union has always been sold, to its citizens, on a practical basis: Cheaper products. Easier travel. Prosperity and security.
But its founding leaders had something larger in mind. They conceived it as a radical experiment to transcend the nation-state, whose core ideas of race-based identity and zero-sum competition had brought disaster twice in the space of a generation.
France’s foreign minister, announcing the bloc’s precursor in 1949, called it “a great experiment” that would put “an end to war” and guarantee “an eternal peace.”
Norway’s foreign minister, Halvard M. Lange, compared Europe at that moment to the early American colonies: separate blocs that, in time, would cast off their autonomy and identities to form a unified nation. Much as Virginians and Pennsylvanians had become Americans, Germans and Frenchmen would become Europeans — if they could be persuaded.
“The keen feeling of national identity must be considered a real barrier to European integration,” Mr. Lange wrote in an essay that became a foundational European Union text.
But instead of overcoming that barrier, European leaders pretended it didn’t exist. More damning, they entirely avoided mentioning what Europeans would need to give up: a degree of their deeply felt national identities and hard-won national sovereignty.
Now, as Europeans struggle with the social and political strains set off by migration from poor and war-torn nations outside the bloc, some are clamoring to preserve what they feel they never consented to surrender. Their fight with European leaders is exploding over an issue that, perhaps more than any other, exposes the contradiction between the dream of the European Union and the reality of European nations: borders.
Establishment European leaders insist on open borders within the bloc. Free movement is meant to transcend cultural barriers, integrate economies and lubricate the single market. But a growing number of European voters want to sharply limit the arrival of refugees in their countries, which would require closing the borders.
This might seem like a straightforward matter of reconciling internal rules with public demand on the relatively narrow issue of refugees, who are no longer even arriving in great numbers.
But there is a reason that it has brought Europe to the brink, with its most important leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, warning of disaster and at risk of losing power. The borders question is really a question of whether Europe can move past traditional notions of the nation-state. And that is a question that Europeans have avoided confronting, much less answering, for over half a century.
Snip.
Perhaps the drive to restore European borders is, on some level, about borders themselves. Maybe when populists talk about restoring sovereignty and national identity, it’s not just a euphemism for anti-refugee sentiment (although such sentiment is indeed rife). Maybe they mean it.
Traveling Germany with a colleague to report on the populist wave sweeping Europe, we heard the same concerns over and over. Vanishing borders. Lost identity. A distrusted establishment. Sovereignty surrendered to the European Union. Too many migrants.
Populist supporters would often bring up refugees as a focal point and physical manifestation of larger, more abstract fears. They would often say, as one woman told me outside a rally for the Alternative for Germany, a rising populist party, that they feared their national identity was being erased.
“Germany needs a positive relationship with our identity,” Björn Höcke, a leading far-right figure in the party, told my colleague. “The foundation of our unity is identity.”
Allowing in refugees, even in very large numbers, does not mean Germany will no longer be Germany, of course. But this slight cultural change is one component of a larger European project that has required giving up, even if only by degrees, core conceits of a fully sovereign nation-state.
National policy is suborned, on some issues, to the vetoes and powers of the larger union.
Snip.
European leaders hoped they could rein in those impulses long enough to transform Europe from the top down, but the financial crisis of 2008 came when their project was only half completed. That led to the crisis in the euro, which revealed political fault lines the leadership had long denied or wished away.
The financial crisis and an accompanying outburst in Islamic terrorism also provided a threat. When people feel under threat, research shows, they seek a strong identity that will make them feel part of a powerful group.
For that, many Europeans turned to their national identity: British, French, German. But the more people embraced their national identities, the more they came to oppose the European Union, studies found — and the more they came to distrust anyone within their borders who they saw as an outsider.
European leaders, unable to square their project’s ambition of transcending nationalism with this reality of rising nationalism, have tried to have it both ways. Ms. Merkel has sought to save Europe’s border-free zone by imposing one hard border.
Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian chancellor, has called for ever-harder “external” borders, which refers to those separating the European Union from the outside world, in order to keep internal borders open.
This might work if refugee arrivals were the root issue. But it would not resolve the contradiction between the European Union as an experiment in overcoming nationalism versus the politics of the moment, in which publics are demanding more nationalism.
That resurgence starts with borders. But Hungary’s trajectory suggests it might not end there. The country’s nationalist government, after erecting fences and setting up refugee camps, has seen hardening xenophobia and rising support for tilting toward authoritarianism.
As the euro crisis showed, even pro-union leaders could never bring themselves to fully abandon the old nationalism. They are elected by their fellow nationals, after all, so naturally put them first. Their first loyalty is to their country. When that comes into conflict with the rest of the union, as it has on the issue of refugees, it’s little wonder that national self-interest wins.
The Air Force is rigging a test for the F-35 and against the A-10. Jerry Pournelle said the Air Force would always kill a hundred A-10s to buy one more F-35… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Why did President Trump nominate, and Texas Senator John Cornyn vote to confirm, a circuit court judge who opposed Heller?
President Trump pardons Oregon ranchers at the heart of the Bundy protests. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Parkland shooting survivors sue Scott Israel and the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
Democratic Rep: Data is racist.
“Shocking Video Shows Abortion Clinic Staff Playing With Aborted Babies Like Dolls.”
Oopsie! (Hat tip: Mike.)
Feminist Apparel’s male CEO fires entire staff after they confront him over his history of sexual abuse. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
Good news! Kinky Friedman has a new album out. Interesting news:
Looking back through history, I can only think of two figures that have been mocked more than Trump, and they are Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ. So I say, give him a chance. How about a reality president for a reality world? Of course, this doesn’t sit well with people in New York I’m working with on projects, but, y’know, I would just withhold judgment on Trump. And it looks to me like he’s getting things done, and some of ‘em are pretty good things. And the last guy was a f*ckin’ Forrest Gump.
Trump has already done one thing that the previous three Presidents looked in our eyes and told us they were gonna do — and they knew the whole time they were never gonna do – which is move that embassy. He did it. Every expert told him that would result in the apocalypse coming…he did that. And that’s a big thing to do. And he’s done other big things. Pulling out of the Iran deal took Pawn Shop-sized balls when everybody else was telling him what a horrible mistake that was. And…we’ll see. He may be the guy who does get Kim to come along with him, that very well might happen. I follow what Billy Joe Shaver says, which is, Remember that Jesus rode in on a jackass.
No wonder Democrats never embraced him. Too much of a free-thinker… (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Lifestyles of the rich and felonious.
Size dysfunction among the London left:
Bye bye bag bans.
NFL owner sells team, but requires new owner to keep giant statue of him outside the stadium as a condition of sale.
William Shatner vs. the Social Justice Warriors.
“Thirteens my lucky number…” If you suffer from triskaidekaphobia, try to enjoy Social Distortion’s “Bad Luck.”
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