Posts Tagged ‘Minneapolis’

Scenes From The Antifa/BlackLivesMatters Riots

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020

A roundup on the Antifa/BlackLivesMatters riots still wracking the nation:

  • Even Democrats are wising up to the fact that the violence was organized:

    At least one big-city mayor is now calling on the federal government to investigate what appears to be an “organized” effort to foment unrest and engage in rioting, as security experts in other cities discover evidence that many of the weekend’s violent incidents may have been pre-planned and coordinated.

    In Chicago, mayor Lori Lightfoot told media Sunday that she believes there is “strong evidence” of an organized effort to use the weekend’s anti-police brutality protests as a cover for violence, Crain’s Chicago Business reports, and said the city is speaking with at least three Federal agencies about a possible joint investigation.

    Snip.

    “There is no doubt. This was an organized effort last night,” Lightfoot said in a weekend press conference, referring to Friday’s unrest. “There were clearly efforts to subvert the peaceful process and make it into something violent.”

  • How the pandemic, idle hands and alienation helped create the conditions for the riots:

    Minneapolis and urban centers across America are burning, most directly in response to the brutal killing of a black man by a white Minnesota police officer. But the rage ignited by the death of George Floyd is symptomatic of a profound sense of alienation that has been building for years among millions of poor, working class urbanites. The already diminished prospects facing such people have only been worsened by the unforeseen onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and the policies devised to combat it.

    Like earlier pandemics, the virus has devastated poorer communities, where people live in the most crowded housing, are forced to travel on public transport, and work in the most exposed “essential” jobs, most of which are badly paid. Unlike the affluent of Gotham, some 30 percent of whom were able to leave town and work remotely, the working class remained, forced to endure crowded conditions as the disease raged through the city. No surprise then that inhabitants of the impoverished Bronx have suffered nearly twice as many deaths from COVID-19 as those in the more affluent, but denser borough of Manhattan.

    This pattern can be observed globally. In Spain, the bulk of infections and reduced incomes are concentrated in poorer areas. Similar disparities can be found in countries as varied as China, Japan, France, and Italy. Even in egalitarian Singapore, infections have risen precipitously among the country’s migrant workers—an underclass who tend to live in crowded dormitories. Similarly, in Los Angeles the poor have died from COVID-19 at four times the rate of the city’s overall population. In both New Orleans and Detroit, the vast majority of fatalities have been among disproportionately impoverished African Americans.

    As if this were not already quite bad enough, we are now starting to see the economic consequences of the lockdowns. In the US, roughly half of all job losses in April were in low-paying fields such as restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks; in contrast information and finance jobs were barely touched. Almost 40 percent of those Americans making under $40,000 a year have lost their jobs as the wage gains made during the first two years of the Trump administration largely evaporated.

    Snip.

    Perhaps the most alarming development during these riots has been the urgent revival of what urban historian Fred Siegel calls “the riot ideology.” The roots of this thinking can be traced to the late-1960s when they were set down among progressive analysts who decided that violence and looting constituted a just response to abuses by law enforcement and other agents of oppression. This notion became painfully popular during the 1992 LA riots, which I covered as a journalist, when random looting and even killings were applauded by some radical activists as part of a glorious “rebellion” or uprising.

    Today, two generations later, this ideology is staging a comeback. Progressive outlets like Vox scold anyone who refers to outbreaks of widespread mayhem and looting as “riots” preferring to describe them as righteous protests; Mother Jones says that anyone using the word “riot” to describe violent looters is intrinsically racist. Writers at the New York Times have even proposed “de-funding” police forces in favor of spreading more money to other government programs. Slate, for its part, endorsed the burning of the Minneapolis police station as “a reasonable reaction” to George Floyd’s death, and suggested that such wanton destruction is a “quintessentially American response, and a predictable one” comparable to the Boston Tea Party and Stonewall.

    National Democratic leaders, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, have been strangely reluctant to denounce the violence, while correctly criticizing President Trump for his needlessly inflammatory tweets. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has quoted Martin Luther King’s remark that “a riot is the language of the unheard” and stripped it of its original context to decorate the current violence with the romanticism of justice. Radical Minneapolis firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar has suggested that her constituents are “terrorized” by the presence of the police and National Guard.

    Deep blue Mayors like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a 38-year-old progressive focused heavily on racial injustice, cede the streets to the most violent elements, even abandoning a police station that was set alight—a response former St. Paul Mayor and Senator Norm Coleman called “stunning.” Rather than contain demonstrations, some cities initially conceded critical urban space to the rioters to the point of threatening prime central city real estate. In Chicago, city officials, much like their Medieval counterparts, raised the bridges over the Chicago River to keep the protestors out of affluent parts of the central city.

    Remarkably, these mayors seem to be largely indifferent to the rise of largely white, anarchist groups, like Antifa, who can be seen in videos committing acts of vandalism and violence, even over the objections of African American protestors.

  • Tucker Carlson thinks that President Donald Trump hasn’t been tough enough cracking down on rioters:

  • Did you notice that rioters set fire to AFL-CIO headquarters?
  • LAPD finally show up on a scene of a store owner holding off looters…and arrest the store owner.
  • More on the burning of Uncle Hugo’s bookstore.
  • The communist origins of antifa.
  • Flashback to a Project Veritas piece on antifa:

  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

  • Enough is enough:

  • Yep:

  • This one is everywhere:

  • “Governor Cuomo Orders Nursing Homes To Admit Rioters.”
  • Babylon Bee also has a riot safety checklist…for rioters.
  • Paul Martin has a good checklist for preparing to handle civil unrest.
  • Obviously this post could have been 100 times longer…

    American Burning Redux: Why?

    Sunday, May 31st, 2020

    More of American burned last night, with looting and arson in:

  • Austin
  • San Antonio
  • Los Angeles
  • New York City
  • Upstate New York (Buffalo, Albany, Rochester and Syracuse).
  • Minneapolis, again. Despite the talking points of some, most of those arrested in the riots there have Minnesota addresses.
  • Among many others.
  • Patrick Underwood, the federal protective officer killed in Oakland, was black. So, just as in the 1960s, we have black law enforcement officials being killed by white radicals.

    The playbook has been the same one they ran in Fergeson: use the cover of black protestors to bring far-left agitators out to sow disorder and chaos through rioting, looting and arson, while the response to the disorder in (mostly) Democratic Party run locales is ineffectual. That playbook appeared to be aimed at radicalizing black voters so they continued to show up at polls for Democrats without Obama at the top of the ticket. Not only did it fail to do that, the actual voting results seemed counterproductive; Romney won Missouri by about 250,000 votes in 2012, but Trump won it by over 500,000 votes in 2016. Given that, why are George Soros and other financial backers of Antifa and #BlackLivesMatter running the same playbook again in multiple communities around the country?

    Here are some possible answers, come complimentary, some contradictory.

  • With lockdowns ending across so much of the nation, never again would so many people be idle and/or unemployed all at once. Never again would antifa have a chance to wreck so much havoc on so wide a scale. It was now or never.
  • The radical left always thinks it’s more popular than it actually is, and it actually thought it could topple the U.S. government with violent insurrection.

    At its core, BLM is a revolutionary Marxist ideology. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, BLM’s founders, are self-identified Marxists who make no secret of their worship of communist terrorists and fugitives, like Assata Shakur. They want the abolishment of law enforcement and capitalism. They want regime change and the end of the rule of law. Antifa have partnered with them, for now, to help accelerate the break down of society.

    The US is getting a small preview of the anarchy antifa has been agitating, training and preparing for. Ending law enforcement is a pre-condition for antifa and BLM’s success in monopolizing violence. Those who are harmed first are the weak and vulnerable, the people who cannot protect themselves. Small business owners in Minnesota pleaded for mercy, even putting up signs and messages in support of the rioters, but to no avail.

    The destruction of businesses we’re witnessing across the US is not mere opportunism by looters. It plays a critical role in antifa and BLM ideology. Their stated goal is to abolish capitalism. To do that, they have to make economic recovery impossible. Antifa sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exploit an economically weakened America during the coronavirus pandemic.

  • The old communist adage that “Reform is the enemy of revolution.” With the pre-cornoavirus economy going gangbusters, the hard left had to do something radical to prevent prosperity from spreading among the black community. So when they torch a bar that a black firefighter built with his life savings, that’s not a lamentable side effect, that’s a direct desired result to punish him for participating in capitalism.
  • What the left really wants is a chance to insert direct Social Justice Warrior control into the nation’s police departments.
  • Maybe it was a lure to bait police into overreacting to create another round of martyrs to further radicalize blacks.
  • The Wuhan coronavirus lockdown wasn’t moving Trump’s poll numbers at all, so more drastic actions were needed.
  • The aftermath of ObamaGate is going to be bad for the Democratic Party, and they needed a distraction.
  • “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Maybe they saw it as a chance to transfer more power and control to government now that it’s lockdown powers were dwindling.
  • Here’s a radical thought: What if the backers and antifa and #BlackLivesMatter want Trump to win? The insane wing couldn’t get Bernie Sanders the nomination, and they can’t control the Democratic Party if Biden wins and leaves the Clinton hacks in charge of the gravy train for the next 4-8 years. As in the 1960s, looting and rioting boost the chances of law and order candidates, which is clearly Donald Trump this year. They need Trump to win again to completely take over the Party for the radical left.
  • Some random tweets about the rioting:

    Any other ideas about why antifa and #BlackLivesMatter choose this weekend to rip America apart, leave them in the comments.

    Update: BOOM!

    America Burning

    Saturday, May 30th, 2020

    Rioting and looting by Antifa/BlackLivesMatter spread across American cities last night, including:

  • Minneapolis/St. Paul, where over 150 buildings have been burned, looted or damaged. Including twin science fiction and mystery specialty stores Uncle Hugos and Uncle Edgar’s:

    (There’s now a GoFundMe site set up.)

  • In Atlanta, the CNN building was heavily vandalized. Other businesses were vandalized and looted, police cars were set on fire and the College Football Hall of Fame looted. Rapper Killer Mike has some thoughts:

    As does Cernovich:

  • Rioters shot and killed a Federal Protective Service officer in Oakland, California.
  • More riots in Antifa Ground Zero in Portland:

  • Dallas wasn’t spared, with downtown and the club-filled Deep Ellum area attacked, at least one police car burned.
  • In Houston, damage appeared to be less severe, possibly because 200 people were arrested for trying to block a roadway. Some broken glass, but I’m not seeing reports of arson. As always, judiciously applied lawful force tends to nip rioting in the bud.
  • Rioters tried to rush a police station in Brooklyn.
  • Don’t believe for a second the laughable “white supremacists did this” talking point the left is trying to foist on the public:

    The question remains: What do hard-left and antifa/#BlackLivesMatters backers like George Soros hope to gain through backing such riots?

    I’ll try to examine possible answers to that question tomorrow.

    LinkSwarm for May 29, 2020

    Friday, May 29th, 2020

    Minneapolis burns, coronavirus fades, and North Korean dictators can’t teleport. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Over 50 buildings were burned, looted or damaged in Minneapolis over rioting in response to the death of George Floyd.
  • Lots of people suggesting that antifa as well as #BlackLivesMatter were involved:

    It seems that every four years the leftwing media complex manufactures another race riot. Who benefits? Do they think they can prevent an erosion of black voters to Trump by playing the “Racist cops!” card from now until election day? That backfired spectacularly in 2016. Minnesota went narrowly to Hillary Clinton in 2016; did they just ensure that it will now flip to Trump? Is that the preferred outcome, so the insane wing can seize control of the Democratic Party from the corrupt wing?

  • What? “A former club owner in south Minneapolis says the now-fired police officer and the black man who died in his custody this week both worked security for her club up to the end of last year.” I don’t think anyone had that on their bingo card.
  • Ode to the Roof Koreans. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Good news from the CDC:

    According to the CDC’s current best estimate, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is .4 percent. And that’s just amongst symptomatic cases, which, the CDC estimates, is 65 percent of all cases. This means the CDC estimates that the fatality rate for all infections across all age groups, symptomatic as well as asymptomatic, is approximately .26 percent.

    The CDC does caution that the numbers are likely to change with new data, but considering we’ve gone from 3.4 percent to 2.0 percent to now 0.26 percent. The more data we get, the lower the numbers get. So, I’m thinking it might get even lower.

    But, the bigger takeaway from this is that the early doomsday predictions about the coronavirus were all wrong. Everything that justified the lockdowns and the shutting down of our economy was wrong. We need to open this country back up.

  • More on that theme:

    There appears to be no statistical connection between the economic pain of the nationwide shutdowns and the number of COVID-19 cases or fatalities. None. Let that sink in for a moment, given we were told we had to lock down America to “flatten the curve” and save lives.

    On the other hand, the data does suggest that reliance on mass transit is connected with virus cases and fatalities.

    Snip.

    There appears to be no statistical connection between improved health outcomes and pandemic policies that forced nearly 40 million people into the unemployment lines. None.

    One might expect to see that states that suffered the most in COVID cases or fatalities would also be the states with the highest increases in unemployment as politicians and public health officials in those areas instituted strict measures to slow the disease. Alternatively, states that hadn’t seen much in the way of the virus should be relatively better off economically.

    Among the 15 most-populous states, New York has the highest COVID case rate, the highest death rate, and the highest age-adjusted death rate, while its unemployment rate jumped 10.8 percent from February to April.

    At the other end of the spectrum, Texas has the lowest case rate, the lowest death rate, and the lowest age-adjusted death rate among the 15 most-populous states. Texas’ unemployment rate increased 9.3 percent over the past two months reported.

    But New York City’s mass transit probably was a key contributing factor.

  • Norway believes that the lockdown was unnecessary. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Andrew Cuomo gave immunity to nursing home execs after big campaign donations.” Because being part of the Democratic Money Complex means never having to admit you’re guilty…
  • No one trusts the media on the Wuhan Coronavirus. Gee, wonder why… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Tucker Carlson reveals the truth about voting fraud:

    For the first time ever, Twitter.com, the company responded directly to one of the president’s tweets. They inserted a link below this one to declare authoritatively that the tweet was false. “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.” If the user has taken to a Twitter news page with a headline declaring “Trump makes the unsubstantiated claim that mail-in voting will lead to voter fraud.” That’s the official story. Voter fraud never happens no matter what, and it definitely won’t happen with mail-in voting. You are hearing trusted news anchors tell you that, a lot. And they say it like they know it. Anyone who disagrees is a conspiracy nut, a flat Earther, a freak. Probably doesn’t vaccinate his kids.

    They’re lying. That’s a lie and we know it’s a lie because of fraud at mail-in voting already happens. Not speculating. Do you have Google? Look it up. Ballot harvesting is the problem. Ballot harvesting is the process when the third-party collects and turns in ballots on behalf of another person. It’s only possible with mail-in ballots.

    Laws around ballot harvesting vary from state to state. It’s currently legal in 27 states but Democrats want to legalize it in all 50, and, I wonder why. The recent House coronavirus bill declares that “all states” must permit a voter to designate any person to deliver a sealed absentee ballot. The only restriction is ballot harvesters can not be paid based on the number of ballots they collect, but of course, you could easily pay that than a campaign could pay a canvasser for their time or the distance they travel.

    With unlimited ballot harvesting, there is no state supervision or chain of custody, to limit on the amount of ballots a single person can collect. Ballot harvesters can go to people’s homes, and they do in California. They pressure them to vote or vote the right way, or they help a person read through a ballot while nudging them on who to vote for.

    Why stop there? You could pay a person to sign or turn in a blank ballot… Or simply throw away ballots that don’t vote the right way. We are not saying that all of these methods of fraud are equally likely, you probably could prevent some of them with safeguards but the point is this. Universal mail-in voting with ballot harvesting massively expands the potential for voter fraud and it makes a mockery of the secret ballot.

    I don’t care what Twitter tells you, that’s true. It’s obvious. And by the way, it’s been documented. In the past decade, most battles over voter fraud have centered around whether to require an I.D. to vote like most every countries do. But that’s not the real issue… Ballot harvesting is the… choice for those that want to steal an election.

  • “New book claims Bill Clinton had an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell.” Live look at Alex Jones:

  • “Canceled Contact Tracing Contract Reveals Michigan Authorized Democrat Firm for 400 Activists to Collect Medical Information.” Governor MegaKaren has been generous spreading that sweet graft around… (Hat tip: Cut Jib News at Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “28 North Koreans Charged In Sweeping Conspiracy To Launder $2.5 Billion For Nuclear Program.”
  • ACLU folds on abortion lawsuit against Texas cities over “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” Which makes you wonder why. Is keeping a slender reed of hope for keeping sanctuary cities for the inevitable illegal alien amnesty more important than the sacrament of abortion? Or maybe, given that they’re all pretty small cities (Big Spring may be the largest) they just didn’t want to spend money on it?
  • Facebook creates unaccountable international board to censors content.
  • “Mark Zuckerberg Finishes Another Long Day Of Deciding What People Should Believe.”
  • They’re still upset that we’re allowed to call it the “Wuhan virus”:

  • Former Texas Representative (and Vietnam War POW) Sam Johnson dead at age 89.
  • California Democrats desperately want to be able to discriminate on race again. (Hat tip: Gail Heriot at Instapundit.)
  • “He Was Falsely Accused Of Rape By His Ex. He Just Won The Largest Defamation Case In Minnesota History.”
  • No baseball for you!
  • Dixie Chicken roof in College Station collapses. No one injured, snake recaptured.
  • In praise of pointy things.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • That is pretty amazing:

  • Ed Driscoll looks back at The Lives of Others (a film everyone should watch).
  • Rescue K-9:

  • Important historical note: North Korean founder Kim Il Sung did not have the ability to teleport.
  • Time magazine names Karen as Person of the Year.
  • LinkSwarm for July 19, 2019

    Friday, July 19th, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Lots of Analysis of “The Squad” along with the usual absurdities…

  • ICE raids begin. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The Trump Administration is trying a novel plan to thwart “asylum seekers” at the border:

    A rule published Monday bars migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they’ve traveled through another country first.

    Tens of thousands of migrant families from Central America travel through Mexico to the U.S. each month, many claiming asylum. The Trump administration claims families are taking advantage of legal loopholes it says allow migrants a free pass to the country while they wait out phony asylum requests.

    Mexico and other central American countries are not so hot on the idea.

  • Mother Jones admits that Democrats are actually for open borders.
  • Nineteen illegal alien MS-13 members arrested for crimes from racketeering to murder.

    The DOJ’s statement documents one particularly horrifying murder that some of the gang members are charged with where a rival gang member “was abducted, choked, and driven to a remote location in the Angeles National Forest” where he was “dismembered, and his body parts were thrown into a canyon after one of the defendants allegedly cut the heart out of the victim’s body.”

  • Majority of Mexicans Supports Deportation of Central American Migrants.”
  • President Donald Trump, Grandmaster Troll:

    I didn’t initially buy into this business about how Trump’s often-unorthodox tweets and actions are part of a political 3D chess game he’s playing while the rest of the country is playing checkers.

    But I do now.

    I could go through a lengthy punchlist of examples of Trump statements and moves that prove the 3D chess theory, but that would dramatically overtake the space this column has to offer. Instead, let’s just talk about this weekend’s flare-up over the president’s Twitter outburst aimed at The Squad — the four idiot freshman Democrat congresswomen, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, who have spent their time as elected officials offering one inappropriate and stupid anti-American outburst after another.

    Trump didn’t initially name any of the four. He didn’t talk about Omar or Ocasio-Cortez, and he didn’t talk about Ayana Pressley or Rashida Tlaib.

    Instead he referred to “Progressive” Democratic congresswomen, and then noted that they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

    This was decried by all the Usual Suspects as an abjectly racist statement, a response that Trump certainly anticipated and couldn’t care less about. Even some weak-kneed Republicans thrashed about in paroxysms of self-righteousness about how Trump could possibly be so bigoted and insensitive in calling out The Squad. After all, three of the four were born in this country!

    But Omar wasn’t.

    Omar is from Somalia. Omar is quite possibly here in this country after having committed immigration fraud. There has been a quite credible, perhaps even convincing, case made that Ilhan Omar married her biological brother in furtherance of that immigration fraud. And Ilhan Omar has not stopped making incendiary anti-American and pro-Muslim Brotherhood statements since she entered public life.

    Absolutely everything Trump said in his tweets applies perfectly and without stipulation to Ilhan Omar.

    The fact that he didn’t use her name meant that our political betters immediately assumed he was also talking about Pressley, Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez.

    Which bothered Trump not one bit.

    Paragraphs on the unpopularity of Omar and Ocasio Cortez with actual voters (which I covered here) snipped.

    So what do you do if you want to ensure Omar and AOC poison those so-called moderate Democrats who won those swing House districts last year?

    You force Pelosi into bed with them.

    Which is precisely what Trump has done.

    The Democrat leadership immediately, reflexively, lined up behind The Squad after an entire week of slapping them down. Al Green, a Democratic congressman from the slums of Houston, is now attempting to use Trump’s tweets as a fresh justification for impeachment, which is all Al Green does in Congress. There will be a House resolution condemning the president’s comments as racist, on which Pelosi has put her stamp of approval, and another seeking to formally censure Trump.

    All of this is precisely what Trump wanted. And he proved it by doubling and then tripling down on his statements Monday, first unleashing a new set of tweets mostly quoting Lindsey Graham, who had partially rebuked the president for getting too personal about The Squad in his complaints, and then popping off in a Rose Garden press avail with comments directly eviscerating Omar in a way I can’t remember ever having seen a president do to a member of Congress. Which was glorious, by the way, and if you haven’t seen the video you owe it to yourself to watch it.

    Don’t think for one second that Trump doesn’t absolutely love this fight. He is a pig in slop at this point. Trump will continue forcing Pelosi and her leadership team into bed with The Squad from here all the way to Election Day, and when he’s through he won’t just win reelection in a landslide but he’ll also take away every single one of those swing districts.

  • How calling out The Squad benefits both President Trump and The Squad:

    The four — AOC, Tlaib, Pressley, Omar — have no clout in the Democratic caucus. But because of the confrontations they have caused and the controversy they have created, they have a massive media following.

    Paradoxically, their interests in winning cheers as the fighting arm of the Democratic Party coincide with the interests of Donald Trump. He entertains and energizes his base by answering in kind their attacks on him and by adopting incendiary rhetoric of his own. He is now assuming the old “America! Love it or Leave it!” stance in going after the four women as anti-American ingrates.

    They, by calling Trump a criminal, racist and fascist for whom impeachment proceedings should have begun months ago, elate and energize the outraged left of their party.

    Among the presidential candidates, some have begun to side with the four, with Bernie Sanders saying Pelosi has been “a little” too tough on them.

    On “Meet the Press,” Bernie added: “You cannot ignore the young people of this country who are passionate about economic and racial and social and environmental justice. You’ve got to bring them in, not alienate them.”

    Trump’s Sunday attack forced Pelosi to stand with her severest critics, and she re-elevated the race issue with this tweet: “When Trump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.”

    Do Democrats believe that refighting the racial battles of the 1960s that were thought to have been resolved is a winning hand in 2020?

    Does Pelosi think that demeaning white America is going to rally white or minority Americans to Democratic banners?

    (Caveat: Patrick Buchanan.)

  • Democrats tell Jake Tapper off the record that Trump snookered them into embracing The Squad. “And they have to pretend that their party is unified because of their fear of being challenged in primaries by radicals with the support of Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s Svengali chief of staff and the brains behind the Justice Democrats.”
  • Speaking of which: “Meet AOC’s Brain: Saikat Chakrabarti.”

    Chakrabarti’s previous HQ was a Knoxville address out of which the Justice Democrats and another PAC operated side by side with a dozen congressional campaign committees. This arrangement flouted a variety of campaign finance laws and prompted several Federal Election Commission complaints, including one alleging that Chakrabarti set up a $1 million slush fund. But this sort of skullduggery is standard practice among Democrats. What exacerbated the already tense atmosphere in their House caucus was Chakrabarti’s response to the $4.6 billion border aid package passed by Congress last month. On June 27, he took to Twitter and berated the Democratic leadership for its shortcomings:

    As usual, Dem leadership tried to create a pre-watered down border bill because of a mistaken idea that it’s more “viable.” And they lost to McConnell anyway. This is the entire theory of change that never works. Why not start from your strongest negotiating stance?

    Predictably, this presumptuous tweet drew a number of angry responses from various Democrats who had voted for the measure, whereupon Chakrabarti once again betook himself to Twitter and proceeded to accuse his critics of racism:

    Instead of “fiscally conservative but socially liberal,” let’s call the New Democrats and Blue Dog Caucus the “New Southern Democrats.” They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.

    Chakrabarti later deleted that tweet, but not before it had clearly signaled who actually calls the shots in AOC’s office.

    Snip.

    Chakrabarti’s Justice Democrats PAC is also taking fire from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The Hill reports, “Congressional Black Caucus members are furious at Justice Democrats, accusing the outside progressive group … of trying to oust lawmakers of color, specifically African American lawmakers.” The PAC evidently plans to primary at least six CBC members who occupy safe Democratic seats simply because they don’t lean far enough to the left. Chakrabarti is clearly using his position as AOC’s chief of staff to engineer a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. He said as much during an extensive profile for The Washington Post Magazine:

    To me, there wasn’t a difference between working for her and working for the movement … The whole theory of change for the current Democratic Party is that to win this country we need to tack to the hypothetical middle … you don’t take unnecessary risks, which translates to: You don’t really do anything.

    Chakrabarti doesn’t see himself as a mere staffer in some congresswoman’s office. He sees AOC as someone who provides him with a headquarters from which he can “fundamentally change” the Democratic Party.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of The Squad, The Minneapolis Star Tribune actually reports on allegations against Omar: “New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.”
  • Powerline, which has been following the story the media wouldn’t, has still more:

    In 1995, Ilhan entered the United States as a fraudulent member of the “Omar” family.

    That is not her family. The Omar family is a second, unrelated family which was being granted asylum by the United States. The Omars allowed Ilhan, her genetic sister Sahra, and her genetic father Nur Said to use false names to apply for asylum as members of the Omar family.

    Ilhan’s genetic family split up at this time. The above three received asylum in the United States, while Ilhan’s three other siblings — using their real names — managed to get asylum in the United Kingdom.

    Ilhan Abdullahi Omar’s name, before applying for asylum, was Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.

    Her father’s name before applying for asylum was Nur Said Elmi Mohamed. Her sister Sahra Noor’s name before applying for asylum was Sahra Nur Said Elmi. Her three siblings who were granted asylum by the United Kingdom are Leila Nur Said Elmi, Mohamed Nur Said Elmi, and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.

    Ilhan and Ahmed married in 2009, presumably to benefit in some way from a fraudulent marriage. They did not divorce until 2017.

    With lots of official documentary evidence.

  • Omar happened because the media chose to lie to you. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democrats have defined racism down yet again. “Thirty-two percent (32%) of Democrats, however, say it’s racist for any white politician to criticize the political views of a politician of color. So being a ‘politician of color’ means that your views are immune to disagreement. Unless–once again–you are a Republican.”
  • Indeed, they insist that merely to criticize them is tantamount to exposing them to death threats.
  • Democratic strategist says that Democrats should stop worrying about all those rubes in flyover country. Ann Althouse:

    The point is, apparently, Democrats are sick of thinking about that guy, the “guy in a diner in rural” whatever. Once they were safely stowed in a basket — a basket of deplorables — and that worked out so disastrously that the reaction could be to obsess over these imaginary people. Are Democratic Party candidates expected to actually venture into the hinterlands? No, they’ll just worry about those people, and then they come to Madison (where I live) or Milwaukee to try to score enough votes to outnumber those diner people. That’s what Democrats do to win Wisconsin.

  • US downs Iranian drone.
  • BBC caves, gives Iran veto power over their Iranian reporting.
  • Say goodbye to those F-35s, Turkey. (Previously.)
  • Planned Parenthood head ousted over refusal to back transsexual abortions. Tranny madness is going to take out the entire leftwing establishment by insisting that every member must forthrightly declare that 2+2=5.
  • Amazon starts pulling out of Seattle:

    The Amazon pullout of Seattle continues. The corporate giant announced on Tuesday that it is going to build a 43-story tower in Bellevue.

    It will be Amazon’s tallest building anywhere in the world, and it will be the tallest building in Bellevue, which has more than a few skyscrapers. Several thousand employees will be able to work there. So it looks like this is another part in the saga of Amazon leaving Seattle. All of this is because we have a city council and a mayor who have gone fanatic about socialism. They keep pushing anti-business policies.

    What this means for the downtown Seattle real estate market is that when the economy inevitably starts to turn, it will be cataclysmic. When you have one company that takes up so many thousands of square feet of downtown real estate, and that company moves out, real estate prices will fall.

    I don’t know when this is going to happen, but I am very confident in my analysis; Seattle will fall harder than any other city in the country. This is because Seattle has been the craziest in its Leftist run-up during this boom economy that we’re enjoying right now.

    We already have so many businesses on the brink of survival because of the minimum wage because of all of the controlling policies the city government keeps imposing. When the businesses start toppling, you’re going to see all the support industry in downtown Seattle — the food service, etc. — fall hard, too.

    The Amazon pullout of Seattle is another dramatic sign that when the people who drive our economy, our tax revenue, our job creation are out because of our politics, it’s time to change our politics.

  • Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s world:

    In addition to his sexual predation with “tweens and teens,” Epstein pursued ambitious, beautiful New York City women in their 20s in the early 2000s, some of them ex-models seeking a professional afterlife. To this woman, and others, Epstein introduced himself as the owner of a hedge fund with clients investing $1 billion or more. He kept his child molestation secret, and came off as a gentle, erudite recluse. He was often at movie premieres, sometimes with a blonde on each arm—a blonde of legal age, but still, as noted this week by David Boies, usually under 25 years old. His predation had not been reported to the police yet, but there were indications that he was somewhat different than most mature men his age. Eleanora Kennedy, the elegant wife of powerhouse lawyer Michael Kennedy, recalls asking Epstein to underwrite a premiere party at the Metropolitan Club for The White Countess, a Merchant Ivory film released in 2005. “I got him on the phone and explained that the event was also a benefit for a women’s medical center conducting a study about menopause,” says Kennedy. “As soon as I said ‘menopause,’ he said, ‘Ms. Kennedy, if you don’t say that word again, I’ll send you a check for $10,000.’”

    Like most of the older men who date young women, Epstein seemed to take great pride in his behavior. He seemed to desperately want other important men to perceive him as a great lothario, Genghis Khan in a monogrammed sweatshirt. A former model who was on Epstein’s 727 shortly after she graduated college recalls him taking her and some older men on a tour to show off his custom-designed, padded floors. “When I saw that I thought, Wow, rich people are weird,” she says. “I was so stupid and naïve—Why are padded floors cool? I was too young to get it.” The men simply laughed and winked, joking with each other that Epstein padded his floors so that he could have sex on the floor at 10,000 feet.

    Also: He liked to keep his bedroom at 54°F when slept.

  • “Inside the Victoria’s Secret pipeline to Jeffrey Epstein.” I liked the part where the model threw the vibrator at his head…
  • “Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch linked to investigation.”
  • Media unveils bombshell report of Trump hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein…in 1992.

    Yes, that’d be 27 years ago, before Epstein was even known to have done anything illicit. So apparently, Trump is guilty by association because he couldn’t see into the future and know that Epstein would abuse women some years later. In fact, Epstein did not even own his “pedophile island” in 1992, nor are there currently any victims dating back to that time.

  • The sexual assault charges against Kevin Spacey have been dismissed. The case, which involved Spacey allegedly groping an 18-year old man, evidently had multiple problems and fell apart when the accuser refused to testify. This is the only one of some fifteen accusers (one as young as 14) who alleged Spacey did something sleazy with them.
  • CNN ratings sink to new lows.
  • Related: CNN reporter asks a panel of women to comment on President Trump’s “racist” tweets. Their reply: “It’s not racist.” Including a legal immigrant.

  • “Billionaire investor Peter Thiel says one reason for Google aiding in the transfer of AI technology to the Chinese military in favor of America is that “woke” Google employees are anti-American and prefer China to the U.S.”
  • In addition to being a corrupt scumbag, the Governor of Puerto Rico is also a bit of an asshole. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Car thief steals car with three kids inside, father beats him to death.
  • Today’s stupid ecoscam headline: “Streaming Online Pornography Produces as Much CO2 as Belgium.” From the comments: “If we had a global referendum on whether we’d rather have porn or Belgium, I wouldn’t bet on Belgium.”
  • #TeamCocaineMitch is already throwing down on Democratic opponent Amy McGrath:

  • Nancy Pelosi to fundraising event for Wendy Davis. Davis is running against Chip Roy for the Texas 21st Congressional District in 2020, and Roy is already fundraising off it.
  • The late Ross Perot was always willing to use his money to help disabled veterans in need.
  • Condolences to James Lileks on the loss of his father.
  • Houston road vote bungled.
  • Once again, the New York Times puts its thumb on the scale to keep a conservative bestseller from reaching the top of the list. That book is Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court.
  • Wes Pruden, editor of the Washington Times, RIP. I like the cut of his jib:

    He was the last of the old-time newspapermen, and the word “journalist” was prohibited from appearing in the pages of the Times during his tenure as editor-in-chief.

    That rule was one of several variations from the AP Stylebook known as “Prudenisms,” reflecting Mr. Pruden’s preference for plain English and his hostility to euphemism, jargon and lazy writing. For example, “controversial” was prohibited, as were “alleged,” “allegation” and “allegedly.” If someone was accused of wrongdoing, then you had to cite a source making that charge, rather than just saying the person allegedly did whatever it was. Also, under Mr. Pruden’s rules, “gay” was not an acceptable synonym for homosexual, which meant that, as an assistant editor on the national desk, I had to change this in AP wire stories.

    The Times used courtesy titles, so the President would be “Mr. Trump” and the Speaker of the House “Mrs. Pelosi” on second reference, and we were not allowed to use “Ms.,” so that on second reference a certain New York Democrat would be Miss Ocasio-Cortez. Also, we did not use “Dr.” as the honorific for a Ph.D., but only for an M.D. This was because doctorate degrees were a dime a dozen in D.C., and even many high-school principals could demand a “Dr.” if we ever let that get started. This particular Prudenism really ruffled the feathers of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who had a Ph.D. in psychology and always insisted on being called Doctor Dobson, but the editor’s rule was unbending and on second reference he was always “Mr. Dobson.” I seem to recall Ralph Z. Hallow on the phone with Dobson’s people, getting an earful of complaints about this, as the “Doctor” thing was part of Dobson’s brand, as it were, but it was Mr. Pruden’s paper, and complaints were useless.

    Some of my colleagues at the paper grumbled about Mr. Pruden’s curmudgeonly ways, but having an old-fashioned editor was in many ways a great blessing, because he was utterly invulnerable to any kind of political correctness or manufactured “controversy.” Of course, every liberal on the planet hated the Washington Times, so there was never any shortage of “activist” types indignant about our coverage, but there was no pressure they could bring to bear on Mr. Pruden that would make him flinch. A reporter whose story touched off a firestorm of outrage knew that, as long as he had the facts right, Mr. Pruden had his back. As long as the Old Man was happy with your work, it didn’t matter who else might be angry about it. He had courage, and a sense of honor.

  • Bird, an electric scooter sharing startup, lost $100 million over three months. On behalf of every Austinite who’s driven downtown recently, I’d just like to say:

  • A reminder from 50 years ago: Don’t drink and drive. And if you do, don’t leave the scene of the crash to flee. Especially if there was another passenger in the car. Especially if it’s underwater…
  • “Trump Finally Loses Baptist Support After Video Emerges Of Him Dancing.”
  • All aboard the Uncanny Valley Express:

  • LinkSwarm for June 5, 2015

    Friday, June 5th, 2015

    Another Friday, another LinkSwarm!

  • Democrats believe illegal aliens should be allowed to vote. “The Obama Administration has lost faith in the electorate and has decided to appoint a new one.” (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)
  • The ObamaCare death spiral is still coming.
  • Doctors leaving practice due to federal mandates. “EHR is health care’s Solyndra.”
  • Vermont: A funny thing happened on the way to Socialized Medicine.
  • “If there’s a more renewable resource than Clinton lies, I’m hard pressed to think what it might be.”
  • Hillary’s event ticket sales: Not setting the world on fire. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • Democrats panicking over Hillary’s sleaze contemplate breaking the glass case around Michael Bloomberg.
  • And speaking of old rich white male Democrats, Lincoln Chafee joins the Presidential race, comes out against drone strikes, for the metric system and belt onions.
  • Minneapolis teacher takes middle school students on field trip to sex shop. Bonus: “Gaia Democratic School”
  • America: There’s an App for that. Cuba: There’s a line for that.
  • Another day, another Islamist suicide bombing killing 10 in Nigeria. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Professional pro-Putin Internet troll now suing her former masters.
  • France insists those damn elected representatives can’t be let anywhere near their precious global warming treaty.
  • Planned Parenthood goes ballistic over OTC birth control. It’s all about the Benjamins…
  • Consultants advise college applicants how to appear less Asian.
  • Did you know there’s a national egg shortage on?
  • This Week in Jihad for January 27, 2011

    Thursday, January 27th, 2011

    The big Jihad news this week, of course, was the Moscow bombing. But that was hardly the only thing of note:

  • The Moscow bombers were evidently trained in Pakistan. “An al-Qaeda linked website said that the group Islamic Caucasus Emirate, led by the rebe Doku Umarov, was poised to claim it had staged the attack. It said that Russia’s harsh military measures against independence activists in the Caucasus had provoked the attack. It said: ‘You disbelievers are the firewood of Hell. You will enter it.'” (I’m guessing “rebe” is short for “rebel,” though I have not heretofore heard it used.)
  • Short, interesting analysis of successes and failures of Russia’s own war on terrorism.

    Dokka Umerov has repeatedly made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with al Qaeda, or bin Laden.

    The latter point reveals the following about the global War on Terror. First, the US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded in destroying al Qaeda’s reputation amongst Islamist organizations. If an Islamist cause as major as the Caucasus Emirate wants to stay clean of al Qaeda, it means that al Qaeda equals trouble. Al Qaeda involvement means interference from the world’s great powers.

    Second, Russia’s situation reveals that the US and British efforts have failed to do significant damage to the ideology of Islamism. If a nationalist movement turns itself into a movement with Islamist objectives in order to make itself stronger, then it proves that the ideals to which al Qaeda subscribes have not been significantly damaged.

  • UK man arrested “on suspicion of using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour,” i.e., burning a Koran.
  • Pro-Jihadist forces organizing in North Africa. Wait, did I say “North Africa”? I meant “Norway.”
  • JihadWatch (from whom I regularly steal a very significant fraction of the stories listed in these weekly Jihad roundups) interview Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind.
  • Hezbollah moves closer to control of the Lebanese government.
  • Lots more on that subject from the invaluable Michael Totten (just keep scrolling).
  • UK Jihadists evidently don’t like being filmed.
  • Australian artist receives death threats from left-wingers and islamists for anti-burqua mural. Once again we see the alliance of the left and radical Islam.
  • Danish Judge to Kurt Westergaard: Don’t you dare call the man who tried to kill you with an axe a terrorist.
  • U.S. border authorities arrest Jihadi Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago when he tried to sneak into California inside the trunk of a BMW.
  • Jihadists kill four in attack on army base in Thailand.
  • Also in Thailand, nine Buddhist wild pig hunters were killed by a roadside bomb. In other news, there are Buddhist pig hunters.
  • Jihadists also killed six in Nigeria. With machetes.
  • Wyoming joins Oklahoma in proposing law outlawing Sharia.
  • A similar law has been proposed in South Carolina.
  • New Imam of Ground Zero Mosque says that all apostates from Islam should be jailed. This is a great improvement from the standard clerical opinion that they should be killed…
  • He also says that most gays were abused as children. Strangely enough, some people have a problem with this.
  • All you Islamophobes who say Mohammed was a pedophile are way off base. Sure, Mohammed married a 6 year old, but all Islamic experts agree that he refrained from having sex with her until she reached the ripe old age of 9.
  • Islamic man in Buffalo texts his wife that he can’t live without her. Twenty minutes later he beheaded her.
  • Batman to get Muslim sidekick. Presumably one that doesn’t murder Muslim girls for daring to date non-Muslim men…
  • Muslim Minneapolis police officer arrested for assaulting his wife.
  • Bin Laden threatens France. Insert your own joke here.