Job numbers boom! Ghislaine Maxwell captured! CHOP chopped! It’s your Friday before Independence Day LinkSwarm!
4.8 million jobs added in June, blowing away all estimates. This is what keeps Democratic strategists up at night: Between lockdowns and riots, they’ve done everything they can to kill the Trump economy, and the Trump economy refuses to die.
Hillary Clinton today after hearing of the news that Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested, there is a reason Epsteined is trending right now. pic.twitter.com/SrGorHPigu
Speaking of the intelligence community, here’s why that Russian bounty story was crap. And all your liberal Facebook friends shared it because they don’t care whether a story is true or not, as long as it hurts Trump. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
It is not transcendentally stupid for the alleged anti-racism rioters to destroy a Lincoln statue, though, to normal people, it looks like the act of drooling morons. Now, a good number of these cesspeople are drooling morons, but that does not change the fact that trashing POTUS #16’s statuary is brilliant.
They have confused their targets â us â by casting off the constraints of coherence.
Oh wait, you thought that these folks were trying to make a point about racism being bad. And you thought, because that’s how those of us who weren’t raised on Instatwitbook, soy, and critical race theory, that if you point out that something is unreasonable then that will cause the person you were instructing to rethink it. After all, trashing some Honest Abe totem in order to illustrate how racism is double-plus-ungood is about a “12” on the 1-10 scale of unreasonability. And yet, you can point that out all day and they don’t care.
In fact, they laugh at you for doing so.
It’s not about making sense. It never was. It’s about making you kneel.
If you look at everything that is going on, the one common denominator is that every action the woke insurgents take is designed to strip you of your ability to defend your interests, or property, or rights, or life. The idea is to leave you utterly vulnerable, totally exposed, at which point they can do with you as they see fit. The nicer ones will merely reeducate you then demand humiliating submission and tribute. History (and their social media feed) teach that others will happily murder you. Doubt me? Just ask your local kulak.
Stripping you of defenses takes many forms. One form is defunding and abolishing the police. Oh, someone will be wielding force in society. It just won’t be people accountable to or inclined to protect you. Another form is literally stripping you of your defenses. Why is gun control such a fetish for these creeps? Because you with a gun have the ability to not just say “no” but to exact a price from those who wish to compel a “yes.” So, of course, they want to eliminate your ability to have weapons, but they also want to eliminate, as a practical matter, your ability to use them to protect yourself.
Look at what happened when the pink polo shirt gun guy quite reasonably grabbed his AR-15 as the savages descended on his property and the cops were AWOL. St. Louis’s Soros-bought DA â who last month released all the arrested rioters â threatened to prosecute him. The media is slandering him too. A pack of jackals threatened his property, his family, and even his dog, and he’s the bad guy for not showing his belly? You see the same fake furor every time some citizen has his car surrounded by a feeding frenzy of scumbags and plows through them to escape. Ignore that the slime are now shooting people they try to trap. The idea is to make you give up instead of fight back because if you fight back, the law comes down on you instead of the criminals.
Soros really is a shrewd investor.
The law â and the law generally says you can reasonably defend your life and property (please consult your local laws for specifics and get proper training) â means nothing if corrupt Democrats ignore the crimes of leftists and prosecute normals who dare resist the Blue Terror, which is kind of the point. You thought you could rely on the law and on the government to protect you. Nope. And now you can’t protect yourself either.
And then there’s reason. That’s a defense too. You can use reason, make arguments, present evidence, and convince people. Not if making sense is beside the point.
You cannot reason with these people. Forget trying to convince them. You are not going to talk them out of their quest for power over you by deploying bourgeois conceits like “facts” and “evidence.” Yet so many of us see what’s happening and still take to Twitter or (increasingly) Parler to point out the sheer ridiculousness of the enemy’s latest antics. But these actions are not ridiculous. They are tactically genius. Instead of confronting an impenetrable defense, they just scuttle around it and attack into our rear.
Let’s do a double-shot of Kurt: “Americaâs Problem Is Systemic Liberalism“:
Forget the bizarre and evil concept of national original sin that is the malignant idea that America is built upon âsystemic racism.” Americaâs true systemic flaw, arising at the time of those miserable progressives of yesteryear and continuing up through the miserable progressives of this rotten year, is what we now call âliberalism.â
Oh, itâs not classical liberalism, with its concern for expanding economic and personal rights â you know, individual liberty. The current inverted mutation of liberalism is all about constricting economic and personal rights and forcing individuals into collective boxes where their individuality is subsumed into an easily exploited and manipulated conformist whole. Want to test out this hypothesis? Look through the endless woke tweets of your favorite hack journalist, pinko pol, or Hollywood half-wit, or even go up to some self-described liberal in your own life, and see if you can find one iota of deviation from any of the approved liberal dogma. Good luck. You wonât find a smidgeon of nonconformity. You wonât detect a molecule of dissent. These people are the Borg, if the Borg worked in a giant space coffee house, had Bernie stickers on their spaceships, and could not do a push-up. You canât reason with them â appealing to reason is futile.
Systemic liberalism is the real poison in Americaâs veins, not the fanciful notion pushed by bigots, charlatans, and demagogues, that the American enterprise is dedicated to invidious discrimination on the basis of race.
Left-wing activist and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun King is among the most visible faces of the Black Lives Matter movement. The former Daily Kos blogger is also one of its prominent fundraisers: In 2017, King founded a political action committeeâthe Real Justice PACâwith an eye toward driving criminal-justice reform across the country using the same mass mobilization techniques employed by the Sanders campaign.
But over the past 15 months, the Real Justice PAC, staffed by a number of left-wing activists, has funneled a quarter of the money it has brought in back to companies linked to PAC leaders.
Since January of 2019, the PAC has cut dozens of checks totaling more than $460,000 to three political consultancy firms linked to PAC employees. The PAC’s data strategist, Jin Ding, and its treasurer, Becky Bond, manage two of them: Social Practice LLC and Bernal Alto LLC. The thirdâMiddle Seat Consultingâwas cofounded by one of the PAC’s original leaders, Hector Sigala.
“There are legal and ethical ways to have people in leadership positions at an organization also serve as vendors to the same organization,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a money-in-politics watchdog, told the Washington Free Beacon. “But these relationships properly raise questions, especially for a group whose leaders include someone like Shaun King, who has repeatedly been accused of enriching himself improperly.”
“For 501(c)(3) charities, the IRS actually prohibits whatâs called âprivate inurement’ or excessive benefit to an individual from the organizationâs coffers,” Walter said. “Real Justice PAC isnât a nonprofit overseen by the IRS but a PAC overseen by the Federal Election Commission, which so far as I know doesnât have such a strict regulation. Still, groups like Real Justice that routinely criticize their opponents for things like âdark money’ influenceâshould be prepared to defend practices that let leaders write checks to their own for-profit consultancies.”
Ding, the PAC’s technology strategist, is registered as the manager for the California-based Social Practice LLC and Bernal Alto LLC in the firms’ state filings. Social Practice received nearly $250,000 from Real Justice PAC this cycle for campaign consulting and digital services. Bernal Alto, which dissolved earlier this year, was paid $20,000 for consulting and organizing services. Bond, a cofounder of the PAC and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, is also listed as a manager for both companies. Progressive digital firm Middle Seat Consulting, which was cofounded by Sigala, received $193,000 from the PAC for advertising services.
Seattle’s lawless CHAZ/CHOP zone finally demolished not due to all the murders, but because the scumbag protestors approached the mayor’s house. We can’t have the rabble bothering the more equal pigs!
Slowly but surely, all the Social Justice rioters are being brought to actual justice: 44 scumbags arrested in Scottsdale.
The antifa ringleader of the attempt to pull over the Andrew jackson statue was also arrested. “Jason Charter was arrested at his home by the FBI and U.S. Park Police on Thursday morning and charged with destruction of federal property.”
Our ruling class: “Peter Newell was the former co-ordinator of the Association for the Protection of All Children charity. The 77-year-old from Wood Green, north London, was sentenced last month at Blackfriars Crown Court. He admitted five indecent and serious sexual assaults on a child under 16.”
Wary of closer Indo-American ties, the Chinese Communist Partyâs mouthpiece Global Times news outlet published editorials cautioning India from involving itself in U.S.-China tensions and serving as an American pawn against China. Picking up on this notion, Brookings scholar Tanvi Madan believes closer India-U.S. ties triggered the border standoff, with Beijing intending to show India its rightful place.
Instead, Chinaâs deadly actions might have achieved exactly the oppositeâcementing New Delhiâs strategic tilt towards Washington.
Hey @tiktok_us, why do you paste from my clipboard every time I type a LETTER in your comment box? Shout out to iOS 14 for shining a light on this HUGE invasion of privacy. inb4 they say it was a "bug" pic.twitter.com/MHv10PmzZS
And it’s not just Tik-Tok! “Other news apps caught red-handed: ABC News, Al Jazeera English, CBC News, CBS News, CNBC, Fox News, News Break, NPR, ntv Nachrichten, Reuters, Russia Today, Stern Nachrichten, The Economist, and Vice News.”
“Coronavirus traces found in March 2019 sewage sample, Spanish study shows.” Absent other corroborative samples from that timeframe, I would guess it’s a case of sample contamination or a false positive. Still: a data point.
So what did it take to turn spineless lefty Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler into a law-and-order guy? Trying to create an “autonomous zone” on his own street. “By 1 a.m., elaborate barricades had been erected. But in the early hours of Thursday morning, police moved into the area, declaring it an unlawful assembly. Portland Police estimated about 50 people were in the area when they dispersed the autonomous zone.”
Itâs certainly frustrating to watch a pack of reeking leftist scumbags declare a portion of an American city an âautonomous zoneâ â what is it with Democrats and their secession fetish? â but do not get frustrated because Donald Trump has not sent the 101st Airborne in to powerwash the human grunge from Seattleâs feces-bedecked streets.
Thatâs what the Democrats want. And Trump â a better strategic thinker than all the media geniuses, hack politicians, and Afghan War-losing generals who cry about him â is not only not going to give them the victory they crave. Heâs going to jam their cheesy plan down their throats.
The libsâ plan to win in November corresponds to Trumpâs plan to crush them yet again. Skeptical? Consider this. In the five years since he rode down that escalator bringinâ hell with him, how many times have they come at Trump and won? Zero. Heâs spent half a decade on the edge of doom and heâs still here. Why would you think that the walls are suddenly closing in now? You shouldnât.
Letâs understand the strategic scenario. The long-term strategic objective of the leftists is to turn the United States into Venezuela, and they want to be Maduro. The major strategic objective that will put them in position to do so is victory in the November elections. Everything happening right now is part of their overall strategy to achieve that objective. But what kind of operation are they using to achieve that objective? There are two types of operations relevant here â kinetic and information. A kinetic operation is actual warfare. Itâs violence designed to defeat the enemy and cause his surrender by either physically destroying him or occupying his territory and compelling surrender. An information operation is designed to affect the perceptions, and thereby the actions, of the target. Kinetic ops tend to do something to the enemy; and info op tends to get the target to do something to himself.
Elections are usually information operations. They attempt to build a narrative and play on perceptions and cause the target to take the action that will lead to victory. That is, get the target (the electorate) vote for the candidate the info operator wants elected.
Okay, so what is the 2020 elections, with the rioting, vandalism, violence and occupations?
This still an information operation, not a kinetic one.
They want to convince us we are powerless, that everyone else supports their commie agenda, that we cannot win. Their tactics are designed to create that impression and crush our morale. These include the 24/7 media hype, the outright media lies, the movie stars with their dumb PSAs, the staged statue attacks, the corporate solidarity proclamations, the social media cancellations, and the craven kneeling by people who are supposed to stand up for us. But another tactic, familiar to any student of insurgencies, is to provoke an overreaction by those in power in order to undermine its moral authority. They want is to make us (including the president) think this is a kinetic operation, and get our side to make fundamental strategic errors by failing to recognize the true nature of the threat. They hope that such a mismatch between perception and reality will then lead to gravely damaging blunders. One of those would be Trump succumbing to his legit frustration and sending in a bunch of federal troops to crack skulls in Seattle.
Defining this insurgency as a kinetic operation supports the leftistsâ information operation goal of making Americans perceive the situation as out of control, of there being chaos, and of making the election of Grandpa Badfinger being the only thing that will resolve the situation. But there is no kinetic situation to resolve â at least none that is strategically significant in a kinetic sense. Despite the hype, the protests may have involved a peak of 2 million people across the country â out of 330 million. Thatâs nothing kinetically; itâs significant informationally because it is pushed by so many cultural influencers. The scurvy scumbags of Antifa hold essentially no ground except the turf they are physically standing on at the moment, and that is minuscule. Even the hilarious Road Warrior Republic of Seattle is not even a rounding error of a rounding error in terms of US territory. Itâs significant only in the context of an information operation.
Many of us cons are furious that Trump is âdoing nothing.â This is the wrong thing to think. Trump is only doing nothing if this is a kinetic operation; because this is an information operation, not going kinetic (sending in the troops) is doing something. And in fact, Trump is employing the law enforcement component of his kinetic assets by having the feds wait and arrest Antifa types after the protests end, and hitting them with hardcore federal rioting-related charges. Previously, they would get ticketed and released; now, looking at a five-to-ten stretch, the lawyers their daddies hired to get these sunshine anarchists out of their beefs are going to be advising them to roll over so they can start back up at Cornell in September and not at Leavenworth.
Who benefits then from our national nervous breakdown that never seems to end?
It is the globalist elites who still govern most of our society today, despite the invasion of Donald Trump.
And those elites wish to continue that rule through what they fervently hope will come as the outcome of these demonstrationsâmore government control, particularly government control that helps them.
They have seen it done elsewhere with results they might want to emulate, at least until recently.
Call it China Envy.
The Chinese Communist Party has, over the years, found a way to regulate their society to an extraordinary degree via a form of communism that maximizes profits and power for those (party) elites while holding the masses largely at bay.
No wonder our elites are jealous.
People call ours âglobalistsâ but theyâre not really global. Theyâre selectively global, but actually just greedy and power-hungry, like the ChiComs.
Whether planned or not, or partially planned, the current confluence of catastrophes has offered them an opportunity to advance their cause against their natural adversary, Mr. Trump.
In macro, that is the landscape of election 2020âthe globalist elites represented, for the moment anyway, by Joe Biden versus the American people, represented by Donald Trump.
Many of those American people, heavily influenced by the media and repelled by the presidentâs rhetoric, do not realize that he is representing them, but he is. Ignorant, often willfully, they oppose him tooth and nail.
An equal number, or possibly larger, as the one million plus requesting tickets to his Tulsa rally indicates, supports Mr. Trump.
We are in the midst of a Battle Royale for the soul of our nation, whether it remains more or less the democratic republic the Founders envisioned or becomes an Americanized version of what has been evolved by the CCP.
If the latter, ironically, then such groups as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa will be kicked to the curb once victory has been achieved and secured.
Itâs always the same thing: Our newspapers are full of intense interest in Harvardâs admissions standards but have very little to say about New York Cityâs dropout rate. People canât help being fascinated with themselves and their peers. If you want to know what is on the minds of the leaders of the American ruling class, itâs no secret. Theyâll tell you, if you ask â and if you donât.
George Floyd is still dead. Jacob Frey is still mayor of Minneapolis. Medaria Arradondo is still the chief of police. More than a third of black students will drop out of high school in Milwaukee. But Forbes has announced a change in its in-house stylebook and will henceforth honor the woke convention of uppercase Black vs. lowercase white. And George Floyd is still dead. Jacob Frey is still mayor of Minneapolis. Medaria Arradondo is still the chief of police.
Oh, but they got James Bennet, the opinion editor at the New York Times. And surely that is something? It is, indeed, a very useful illustration of the E-Class vs. S-Class divide. Bennet was fired after purportedly endangering the lives of black Times staffers â a charge no mentally normal adult actually takes seriously â by publishing a guest column about the riots and the Insurrection Act by Senator Tom Cotton. The campaign to end Bennet did not come from Americaâs poor black communities as the workers of the world looked up, stunned, from page A24 of the New York Times â the venom came straight and undiluted from 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y., with Bennetâs underlings and juniors more or less putting him on an ice floe and pushing him out to sea.
Bennet was pushed out on behalf of marginalized black Americans, which necessitated that Bennet immediately be replaced by . . . a well-off white woman who went to Georgetown and Columbia and won a Pulitzer Prize for writing about that great loathsome theater of American middle-class anxiety: restaurants. (âThe real price of inexpensive menu items,â the Pulitzer people summarized.) Well-off white women from elite colleges run the diversity-and-sensitivity racket like the 17th-century Dutch ran the tulip racket, like the De Beers cartel used to run diamonds. Big Caitlyn is getting paid. Affluent white women are the main E-Class beneficiaries of the current headhunting project to clear a little room at the top, just as they have historically been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative-action programs, contracting set-asides, and other programs to help out the poor disenfranchised Georgetown alumni out there in the cold and dark.
“Police, Fire Reportedly Refused to Respond to Crime in Progress in Seattle’s Breakaway CHOP.” “This is where ‘defund the police’ will lead not just in Seattle, but wherever itâs thoughtlessly implemented. Probably not all the way to the segregationist, secessionist CHOP, but to crime-ridden streets into which police and fire are more circumspect about intervening.”
these riots and their associated melodrama might most accurately be called the Nov. 3 riots. Itâs the prospect of the election, especially the possibility that President Donald Trump will be reelected, which provides the fuel for the current hysteria.
But Simon is right. A solid majority of voters are disgusted by what they see. There is a large overdraft on the countryâs budget of white guilt. Expect a foreclosure on the account Nov. 3. Yes, yes, the situation is fluid and a week, as Harold Wilson once observed, is a long time in politics. But a biopsy of the body politic in mid-June 2020 doesnât bode well for the old man in the basement or scriptwriters Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
The longer this madness continues, the more likely it is that the president will enjoy a victory of historic proportions.
Another caveat about all those “Oh my God, Wuhan coronavirus cases are spiking in Florida,” etc. stories, take a look at these statistics. Assuming they’re accurate (a big assumption), new cases are going up (not spiking per se), but deaths are going down. It really looks like cases aren’t spiking, we’re just detecting milder and milder cases of it thanks to widespread testing.
Instead of #BlackLivesMatters, how about actually defending black lives? “National African American Gun Association (NAAGA) Membership Grows as Members Purchase Ammo in Record Numbers.” Good. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
Good news in a sea of bad: Austin Police Chief Brian Manley is not getting the axe. Finally, a scalp the radical left didn’t take.
Antifa members arrested in Austin for looting. “Lisa Hogan, Samuel Miller, and Skye Elder were arrested last week and charged with various state jail felonies after they smashed into a boarded-up Target, destroyed and ripped out surveillance cameras, and looted the store, stealing and damaging over $20,000 in property.” The mugshot:
Exactly the sort of Antifa winners you would expect to loot a Target
Chuck-E-Cheese files for bankruptcy. When they had to make it on the quality of their food, they were doomed…
Also filing for bankruptcy: 24 Hour Fitness. Hard to make a living when the government outlaws your business model. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Rocket fuel storage facility explosion in #China, the air catches fire before the explosion, the orange smoke is a clear indication of rocket fuel. The Shockwave shatters the glass of the nearby textile mill. You will not find this story on Chinese "news"
Are we finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel? The Wuhan coronavirus numbers have gone from doubling every two or three days to taking more than a week to double, which suggests successfully bending the curve. If hydroxychloroquine is indeed effective against the virus, we should think about opening the economy back up sooner rather than later, as our ICUs won’t be too overwhelmed to save lives.
Speaking of which…
Are fears of the Wuhan coronavirus overblown? This roundup of reader reports from various hospitals around the country suggests that it is. Lots of hospitals having layoff because so many elective procedures have been cancelled and projected coronavirus ICU cases never materialized. Maybe we’ve flattened the curve enough?
Democrats are going to fight Trump to the death over a stimulus aimed at small business. How are they supposed to get their beaks wet there?
CNN tells the truth that Democrats blocked GOP funding for small business, then changed it, because telling negative truths about Democrats is always bad. (And speaking of bad, Powerline, I’m really not enamored of you launching a full-screen popup ad every time I click on a story (at least on the machine that doesn’t have Ad-Block for everything.)
Public officials across the United States are flying blind against the novel coronavirus epidemic. Because of a government-engineered testing Âfiasco, they donât know how fast the virus is spreading, how many people have been infected by it, how many will die as a result of it or how many have developed Âimmunity to it.
The failure to implement early and widespread testing â caused by a combination of shortsightedness, ineptitude and bureaucratic intransigence â left politicians scrambling to avoid a hospital crisis by imposing broad business closures and stay-at-home orders.
The grand failure of federal health bureaucrats foreclosed the possibility of a more proactive and targeted approach, focused on identifying carriers, tracing their contacts and protecting the public in a more measured way through isolation and quarantines.
The initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, was Âreported at the end of December. The first confirmed case in the United States was reported on Jan. 20, by which time it seems likely that many other Americans were already infected.
At first, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Âmonopolized COVID-19 tests. When the CDC began shipping test kits to state laboratories in early February, they turned out to be defective.
The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration initially blocked efforts by universities and businesses to develop and conduct tests before relaxing the restrictions that made it impossible to assess the progress of the epidemic. Making a false virtue of necessity, the CDC set irrationally narrow criteria for testing, which meant that carriers without Âsevere symptoms or obvious risk factors escaped detection.
Nate Jones and I dig deep into Twitter’s decision to delete Rudy Giuliani’s tweet (quoting Charlie Kirk of Turning Point) to the effect that hydroxychloroquine had been shown to be 100% effective against the coronavirus and that Gov. Whitmer (D-MI) had threatened doctors prescribing it out of anti-Trump animus. Twitter claimed that it was deleting tweets that “go directly against guidance from authoritative sources” and separately implied that the tweet was an improper attack on Gov. Whitmer.
I call BS. Hydroxychloroquine has looked very effective in several tests in France and China, but it hasn’t passed any controlled trials, and along with all the other promising drugs, it won’t pass those trials until the wave of death has begun to recede. In a world of bad choices, the drug looks like one of a few worthwhile gambles, as even Gov. Whitmer recognized by reversing course and asking to be allocated a lot of doses. Giuliani was closer to right than Whitmer. But Twitter decided that Giuliani’s view was so far from the mainstream that it had to be suppressed.
To be clear, Twitter management decided to suppress a legitimate if overstated view about how to survive the coronavirus. Twitter readers would not be allowed to see that view. That’s a stance that requires some serious justification.
Only Verified Official Coronavirus views are allowed, because Orange Man Bad.
Could the Wuhan coronavirus have been in California already last fall? “[Victor Davis] Hanson said he thinks it is possible COVID-19 has been spreading among Californians since the fall when doctors reported an early flu season in the state. During that same time, California was welcoming as many as 8,000 Chinese nationals daily into our airports. Some of those visitors even arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.”
Texas local governments need to start trimming their budgets right now.
A World Poker Tour organizer’s diary of the Wuhan coronavirus’ onset. I’m not really interested in poker tournaments, but this piece is really valuable for it’s detailed, almost minute-by-minute breakdown of those crazy days less than a month ago when the Wuhan Coronavirus went from Something We Might Have To Worry About to The Event Horizon of Absolute Change.
“Diamond Comics Announces They Will ‘Hold Payments To Vendors‘ Amid Coronavirus Pandemic.” Also, they won’t ship comics to stores, either. Given that Diamond has a defacto monopoly on comics distribution, this is going to drive a lot of indie comics makers completely out of business. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
New York Democratic represntative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez draws a well-funded Democratic primary challenger in CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. “Word broke yesterday that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly planning to endorse Caruso-Cabrera, probably because they don’t want to be the first with their backs up against the wall after AOC’s glorious people’s revolution.”
Colleges and universities are already starting to panic over the loss of revenue. “How long will it take for Democrats to propose a higher education bailout? When that happens, Republicans should hold out until schools start cutting pointless administrators and departments.” Like a malware-infected Windows system, what higher education needs is a shutdown, reboot, reformat and reinstall before it’s safe to start up again.
Corbynâs tenure has cost Labour the trust and patience of millions, including political observers around the world. By rights, it should have been Corbynâs hidebound socialism and barely concealed tolerance for anti-Semitism that did him in. But what ultimately cost Corbyn the support of his party was electoral defeat. And not just any defeat, but a disastrous one.
British Labourites and voters more broadly knew who Corbyn was well before the summer of 2017. His first shadow cabinet was a mess. His nostalgic Marxism was laid bare in a manifesto that called for the nationalization of infrastructure and industry alike. His fondness for terroristsâfrom the IRA to Hezbollah and Hamasâwas no secret. But the conservative government under Theresa May plodded into the general election with all the grace of a muskox, confirming votersâ fears that the government could not completely manage Brexit and transforming a 20-point margin in the polls into a 13-seat loss for the Tories. Though it was a defeat for Labour, Corbynâs party managed a halfway decent showing. It was enough to avoid the impression that Labour had suffered a rebuke.
In the interim, Jeremy Corbynâs anti-Semitism problem rapidly became Labourâs anti-Semitism problem. The party was wrought by schism when it pledged to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Allianceâs definition of anti-Semitism but amended it to allow its members more freedom to criticize Israel, all without consulting relevant Jewish organizations or even the partyâs Jewish members. The unearthing of a variety of Corbynâs anti-Semitic online affiliations compelled his own members to openly criticize their partyâs leadership. Under Corbyn, his partyâs affinities trended steadily in one odious direction, leading to the high-profile resignations of many longtime Labour MPs. âI am sickened that Labour is now perceived by many as a racist, anti-Semitic party,â said outgoing MP Mike Gapes.
All this weighed heavily on British voters. One survey found that 85 percent of Britainâs Jews believed Corbyn was himself anti-Semitic, despite his pro forma denunciations of Jew-hatred. Britainâs chief rabbi denounced the Labour Partyâs leader as âunfit for office,â a sentiment with which the Archbishop of Canterbury agreed. By the eve of the 2019 general election, only the most unwavering of Labour voters told pollsters that their primary concern about the prospect of a Labour-led government was âJeremy Corbyn being prime minister.â But the inevitability of the disaster headed Labourâs way was not acknowledged until it was upon them, and by then it was too late. On December 12, Labour turned in the partyâs worst electoral performance since 1935. It wasnât the anti-Semitism that did Corbyn in. It was his failure to deliver at the polls.
Technically, that’s Sir Keir Starmer, providing just the right amount of irony that a party theoretically representing the interests of the working class is now lead by an Oxford-educated lawyer-knight.
The tests are those most people would impose. Is this emergency law within the constitution or a violation of it? And thereâs no doubt that itâs constitutional. It was passed by the super-majority that such a law requires. Are there safeguards in it? There are two. First, the constitutional court could reject it in whole or in part, either today or after the epidemic has receded. That is unlikely since all the required constitutional procedures were fulfilled in its passage, but constitutional courts are unpredictable. The second is that Parliament can vote to end the state of emergency at any time by the same two-thirds majority by which it passed the law. I would not entirely rule out that happening if the Orban government were to abuse these powers, but I judge both serious abuse and a parliamentary rebellion against it to be unlikely. Third, are the emergency powers granted to the government too broad? Some of them may be. The fines and prison sentences for breaking quarantine and spreading false rumors, though not unreasonable in themselves when panic and plague are in the air (the latter quite literally), look to me to be too high. But those sentences wonât be imposed arbitrarily; courts will determine them; and the terms of the legislation are tightly written to prevent its being used for political censorship or anything unrelated to the pandemic. So I would urge moderation on the courts and government, and leave it at that. Finally, shouldnât the legislation have a sunset clause â say of one year on the British model â rather than staying in force indefinitely or until ministers judge the epidemic to be over? And there I think that it should.
Plus it’s not like other European countries haven’t passed similar liberty-abridging laws in response to the crisis.
“‘Voter fraud’? California man finds dozens of ballots stacked outside home.” “The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighborâs two-bedroom apartment.”
Austin’s holy homeless don’t need to practice the social distancing that mere citizens are required to observe:
I went to downtown Austin to see if the homeless were practicing social distancing. They werenât. Also getting more territorial and violent. No law enforcement in sight. pic.twitter.com/zTEJQ3YBiu
Here’s a really good essay by Open Blogger over on Ace of Spades about Quintin Tarantino. I was unaware of the Terry Gilliam connection.
FINALLY! Former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich is being inducted into the basketball hall of fame. A long-overdue honor for the man who guided the Houston Rockets to two NBA championships.
Young Turks host Cenk Uygur is having a very bad week.
Last week’s uproar over him fighting unionization hadn’t even died down before Ungyer lost his carpetbagger bid for the 25th Congressional District that Democratic incumbent Katie “Naked Bong Hits” Hill resigned from.
In fact, Uygur came in fourth in the jungle primary, behind not only Democrat Christy Smith and Republican Mike Garcia (who are in a runoff May 12), but also behind Republican Steve Knight (who had previously represented the district before losing to Hill in 2018). Ungyer didn’t just lose, he lost badly, garnering just 5.4% of the vote and coming in at one fifth of Smith’s vote total.
Then, on top of that, he had his flight delayed for four hours. How did he take that?
Not. Well.
In case you didnât know, Cenk is a dick. You see someoneâs character when theyâre inconvenienced. (Or when they deny the Armenian genocide) https://t.co/4kVWXl70V8
I can understand being upset over a plane being delayed four hours. However, taking it out over service personnel isn’t going to make the plane magically appear. Moreover, filming yourself being a complete dick to those same service personnel isn’t going to help the plane appear either, or encourage normal, non-crazy people to watch your show.
Still another problem with the Social Justice Warrior left is how overt outbursts of anger are always seen as righteous and validating rather than a dangerous lack of self-control.
And the kicker is that Uygur uploaded this video himself, as though he would be the one who came off well for yelling at random employees. Oh, you get angry when you get hungry? Then pack some food, idiot!
The entitlement mentality of our left-wing media elites seems infinite.
The Bush family has been a long-time fixture in Texas politics. George H. W. Bush was instrumental in building up the Republican Party in Texas, and George W. Bush helped transition the state from a one-party Democratic state to a one-party Republican state. Even Jeb Bush was considered a very conservative Republican governor of Florida back in the dim mists of the 20th Century.
Sadly, the current crop of Bushes is not adding any luster to the family name.
Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush failed to disclose his ties to at least 11 companies, including a Cayman Islands-based oil and gas firm that did business with a state fund he helps oversee, records obtained by The Texas Tribune show.
Arabella Exploration, which declared bankruptcy in 2017, put Bush on its board in January 2014, paid him $43,000 for his service and granted him stock options that were valued at over $100,000, regulatory filings show. The next year, a few months into his new job as land commissioner â and about a year after he left the Arabella board â the School Land Board, which Bush chairs, approved a lease agreement with Arabella for oil and gas exploration in West Texas, records show.
State politicians must provide details of their personal finances, including business dealings and corporate board service, every year to the Texas Ethics Commissions so voters can judge whether their elected leaders have any conflicts of interest.
Nowhere did Bushâs 2015 state disclosure mention Arabella, however. Nor did he list 10 other companies in which he has a stake on more recent disclosure forms.
Next up: Pierce Bush, son of Neil Bush and grandson of George H. W. Bush, is running for the Texas 22nd congressional district, currently held by retiring Republican Pete Olsen. While he claims to be running as a pro-Trump conservative Republican, he hasn’t always acted that way:
So Bernie Sanders won 6,000 more votes than Pete Buttigieg, but by the amazingly fair and in no way flawed or crooked process Mayor Pete won two more “state delegate equivalents” in Iowa than Bernie. How many actual national delegates get apportioned to who remains to be seen. Elizabeth Warren came in third, while Joe Biden came in fourth with just enough votes to put him over the 15% threshold to win delegates.
Speaking of weird Iowa voting artifacts, enjoy a long, detailed, borderline tedious discussion of how “satellite” voting sites counting methods might or might not have screwed Sanders depending on which type of rounding is used.
This morning’s official Cornoavirus totals:
Total Infected:31,522 (up from 9,776 last Friday)
Total Deaths: 638
Total Recovered: 1,741
Number of Countries Where Cases Have Been Confirmed (new in bold): 29 (China (including Hong Kong), Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Germany, the United States of America, Malaysia, Vietnam, Macau, Canada, France, United Arab Emirates, India, Italy, Russia, Philippines, UK, Cambodia, Finland, Napal, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Sri Lanka; there’s also an “Others” which I assume is Chinese territory, but not mainland China or Hong Kong)
In the U.S. Coronavirus cases have been spotted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Benito (CA), Seattle, Phoenix, Madison, Chicago and Boston, plus London, Ontario and Toronto. No deaths in U.S. locations.
Of course, all that assumes that China isn’t lying about the extent of infections there. Briefly leaked graphics from China tech conglomerate Tencent suggests that deaths may be two orders of magnitude higher than what China has admitted to.
More on the same theme from ZeroHedge, also inconclusive. I don’t have the deep biological background to remotely evaluate the technical claims. “Plausible but thus far unproven” seems to be the most logical stance based on what we currently know.
Speaking of ZeroHedge, they were suspended by Twitter for fingering the identity of Wuhan biolab researcher Dr. Peng Zhou. Awfully shady, Twitter…
The NeverTrumpers all follow and retweet each other, creating an echo chamber, amplifying and reinforcing their Trump Derangement Syndrome. As Bush establishment Republicans, they would be delighted with the open borders and the endless wars of past Republican presidents. When confronted with a truly conservative presidential administration, they run like scalded dogs.
Boom! Another al Qaeda leader dirtnapped, this time “Qasim al-Rimi, a founder and the leader of al-Qaâida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and a deputy to al-Qaâida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri,” taken out in Yemen.
“Cook Political Report Shifts Alabama Senate Race to Lean Republican After Doug Jones Votes to Convict.” Wait, how was it not already Leans Republican based on the facts that: A.) It’s Alabama, and B.) It’s Alabama?
Former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi has died. He was a corrupt and mildly brutal scumbag, but far from the worst on the continent, and he prevented Kenya from descending into the violence and instability that plagued Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe (among many others).
I was on vacation awhile, avoiding the news. Howâd the #Mueller thing work out? The #impeachment scam? Who won the #Iowa caucuses? Is #MichaelAvenatti still a contender for the Democratic nomination for President? Howâs #JeffreyEpstein doing?
Massive “monster” galaxy has died (i.e., it stopped producing new stars). Or rather, it did this some 12 billion years ago, due to that pesky “speed-of-light” thing. I blame Thanos. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! If you’re reading this, you haven’t died from the Coronavirus yet, despite China’s best efforts! And so many Babylon Bee slams of CNN that I couldn’t just pick one:
This morning’s contarvirus totals:
Total Infected: 9,776 (up from 2116 Sunday)
Total Deaths: 213
Total Recovered: 187
Number of Countries Where Cases Have Been Confirmed (new in bold): 22 (China (including Hong Kong), Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Macau, South Korea, United States of America, France, Germany, United Areb Emirates, Canada, Italy, Vietnam, Cambodia, Finland, India, Napal, Philippines, Sri Lanka)
Thoughts: If that’s not quite exponential growth it’s a pretty good first cousin. A case in Mumbai is scary. 11 cases in Japan is scary for the opposite reason, in that the Japanese take hygiene very seriously and have been unable to prevent spread there. No confirmed cases in Indonesia, which is probably only a matter of time.
The Cornoavirus is the demon bedeviling Xi Jinping: “Yes, ‘demon’ is a metaphor for a pathogen capable of killing millions. However, it is a demon the dictatorship’s repressive policies animate and tolerate in lieu of free communication.”
2019-nCoV, however, is beyond Xi’s dictatorial control. China’s dictatorship may awe Free World idiots, but it cannot intimidate a pathogen.
The coronavirus and its potential consequences of mass death expose the dictatorship’s brittleness. If you prefer, substitute “incompetence masked by police intimidation and lack of free expression” for “brittleness.”
Brutal authoritarian political control exacts overt and covert systemic costs. Western commentators — The New York Times’ Tom Friedman is a particularly smarmy example — admire authoritarian China’s alleged skill at solving major problems that dithering Western democracies cannot. What really dazzles Friedman and his ilk is the regime’s one-command-solves-it pose. Information control, especially control of dissent, bolsters this fraud.
Since 1980, China has made extraordinary economic progress, but its government’s destructive decisions are telling. The notorious one-child policy produced a demographic devil. What Western admirers touted as a farsighted plan to promote zero population growth killed millions of baby girls, skewed female-male sex ratios and, as of 2010, began creating a worker shortage.
Doctors in China and several Asian countries — the virus is on the verge of savaging Thailand — advocate isolating infected patients. The Great Firewall of China isolates the Chinese people from global information access and sharing. Beijing demands its citizens use state-sponsored social media in lieu of global alternatives. Isolation from information sharing hinders angry citizens from criticizing the communist leaders.
But this system isolates Chinese leaders from bad news — like mass illness — that caring human beings must shareâŠ.As the party bigwigs dither, a deadly pathogen kills.
It was an example of ‘No Borders’ but not in a good way. The pathogen got on a plane abetted by a delay in acknowledgement. “The Chinese government failed to act quickly enough to curb the spread of the Wuhan virus, risking further outbreaks,” Guan Yi, the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong told the Asia Times. The Chinese government’s own data, hosted on Wikipedia, confirms this. It shows how at the beginning the numbers were small, the infection still all in one place. After a week it blew up.
This illustrates how giant totalitarian governments like China’s can be at a disadvantage in dealing with emergent events. What it gains in ruthless response cannot always make up for lost response time caused by the official denial of embarrassing facts. That explains why establishments are often surprised by events like Brexit and Hillary Clinton’s shock loss. They are unexpected because they were not in the 5 year plan. They arrive like a bolt from the blue.
When the unexpected happens the official Narrative often increases the reaction time of the system. While events are slow moving there may be no penalty but in the fast moving global world threats like the coronavirus may hit the public even before institutions admit it exists. The old model of globalization has paradoxically both speeded up the rate at which events occur and slowed the rate at which behemoth transnational institutions can respond.
The result is a mismatch and failure of institutions is the theme which unites Brexit, the US impeachment and the repeated viral threats from China.
Back on January 1st, eight Chinese doctors tried to warn people about a “viral pneumonia” going around. Want to guess what happened? That’s right. They were punished for spreading rumors.
Kurt Schlichter thinks that President Donald Trump needs to get ahead of the coronavirus curve by communicating with the public, lest the impeachment-thwarted Democrats and media (but I repeat myself) make it into his “Katrina.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Meet Dr. Peng Zhou a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. You know, the same institute that posted a “help-wanted” ad to research Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats just before the local coronavirus outbreak there. What are the odds?
Speaking of China, I meant to blog this and forgot until Dwight reminded me: Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvardâs chemistry department, “a leader in the field of nanoscale electronics, has not been accused of sharing sensitive information with Chinese officials, but rather of hiding â from Harvard, from the National Institutes of Health and from the Defense Department â the amount of money that Chinese funders were paying him.”
Dr. Lieber was one of three scientists to be charged with crimes on Tuesday.
Zaosong Zheng, a Harvard-affiliated cancer researcher was caught leaving the country with 21 vials of cells stolen from a laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, according to the authorities. They said he had admitted that he had planned to turbocharge his career by publishing the research in China under his own name. He was charged with smuggling goods from the United States and with making false statements, and was being held without bail in Massachusetts after a judge determined that he was a flight risk. His lawyer has not responded to a request for comment.
The third was Yanqing Ye, who had been conducting research at Boston Universityâs department of physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering until last spring, when she returned to China. Prosecutors said she hid the fact that she was a lieutenant in the Peopleâs Liberation Army, and continued to carry out assignments from Chinese military officers while at B.U.
Know how the MSM keeps harping on President Donald Trump’s “unpopularity?” A deep dive into various poll metrics suggests “not so much.”
This is pretty interesting:
BREAKING: Eric Ciaramella,the CIA operative believed to be the "whistleblower," is captured in this 2015 photo taking notes b/t Biden adviser Michael Carpenter & NSC's Liz Zentos in WH meeting w Ukrainian officials.Carpenter later appeared w Biden in infamous "son of a bitch" vid pic.twitter.com/nq4JNgCsJq
63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Are they all slack-jawed yokels motivated by hostility to geography, and facts? Do they all â or even most â have strong Southern accents? And, irrespective, is a Southern accent a predictor of stupidity? Many of my neighbors have strong southern accents. One of them is a surgeon. Whither nuance?
This particular clip has landed with such a bump because it also serves as an example of how inaccurately mediocrities tend to see themselves. Rick Wilsonâs joke was second-rate and obviously pre-written, and yet Don Lemon reacted as if Wilson was Dave Chappelle â even going so far as to say he âneededâ it. This behavior is learned. Since Donald Trump was elected, a certain set of political âstrategistsâ â many of whom arenât actually strategists, Ana Navarro â have come to see CNN as a clearing house for their bad one-liners, each sitting at home preparing zingers that they hope, once delivered, will go viral. This one has gone viral, of course, but for the opposite reason than its architects hoped: Because it is pathetic.
Itâs about squishy prosecutors and judges who let repeat offenders walk free. It is about a city council that has designed this because anarchy will allow them to rebuild the city in a socialist image.
Today, a woman is dead and seven others are injured. A 9-year-old remains in the hospital. It is shameful but unfortunately predictable, given who we have running things around here.
Snip.
We do not let the cops do their jobs. The cops know who the gang members and drug dealers are. They also know that if they see a drug transaction and write it up for the prosecutorâs office, itâs going to get kicked because itâs not a serious enough crime. And when prosecutors pursue criminals, judges let them walk free.
The two suspects in this downtown shooting have been arrested 44 times with 20 convictions and 21 times with 15 convictions. Marquise Tolbert, the one with 20 convictions, had three felonies last year alone. You tell me how someone with three felonies in 2019 is walking around free and able to engage in a shootout that kills a woman and injures a bunch of other people, including a 9-year-old kid. Both Tolbert and William Tolliver, the other suspect, are just 24 years old. They both have previously been arrested and charged with drive-by shootings and unlawful possession of a firearm in 2018. So the courts knew full well that these were gun-toting gang members. Why did our justice system let them walk free? Why do we place criminals above law-abiding citizens?
Never Trump Republicans looked even more ridiculous at the end of the March for Life than they did that morning.
Trump was embraced by the largest gathering of pro-life Americans and Trump embraced them. Trump at the March for Life:
Sadly, the far-left is actively working to erase our God-given rights, shut down faith-based charities, ban religious believers from the public square, and silence Americans who believe in the sanctity of life. They are coming after me because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those who have no voice.
Never Trump Republicans canât imagine a man like Trump attending the March for Life.
Never Trumpism is built on a foundation of sanctimony.
These sanctimonious few donât like how Trump speaks. They donât like his bombast. They donât like his past. Heâs not George Bush.
Get over it. Heâs winning.
That he is not George Bush might be Trumpâs greatest transgression to Never Trumpers. Much of the hatred is mercenary, as so many have suffered financially from the end of their consultancy gravy train.
But Trump actually attended the March for Life. If you donât think that matters to the 100,000+ who marched, then you canât judge prevailing winds.
Snip.
Whatâs also striking about the Never Trumpers is how their hatred resembles a pathology, like some deep raw childhood memory. Trump is their auntâs cat who used to viciously scratch them each visit. Trump is the playground bully who threw the football at their face. Trump is the twisted cousin who made you look at his dead animals in jars hidden in the back shed. Heâs the bogeyman of their nightmares.
It all wells up in them, decades later, in outbursts, fears, and rage. Itâs unhinged.
“Trump Derangement Syndrome is burning out the core audiences that made the media profitable. The Impeachment Eve rallies failed miserably with turnouts in the hundreds in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. A month later, turnout at the Womenâs March had declined from the hundreds of thousands to the thousands. Even as impeachment was underway, the audience wasnât there.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy produce a proposal to fix health care.
James Younger case ends with joint custody and crazy mom not allowed to inflict hormone therapy on her eight-year old.
Border agents find longest smuggling tunnel yet discovered in San Diego, over three-quarters of a mile. “It includes an extensive rail/cart system, forced air ventilation, high voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance, and a complex drainage system.” (Hat tip: CutJibNews at Ace of Spades HQ.)
IBM replaces longtime CEO Virginia Rometty with Arvind Krishna. Probably a good move. The few people I knew who worked at IBM under her tenure had little good to say about the company, whose longterm trend has been offshoring and outsourcing rather than hiring fulltime U.S. employees. But every group in IBM seems like its own little fiefdom.
Dwight offers a moderately deepish dive into two fraud cases, including a celebrated social scientist and a celebrated organic farmer.
Congrats to Republican Gary Gates for winning the Texas House District 28 special election runoff over Democrat Eliz Markowitz. This is Gates’ first successful race in eight tries, and he supposedly threw a ton of money into it.
I know I’ve lavished a lot of time and attention to the clown car updates, but there are several other 2020 races worth looking at, some of them right here in Texas.
A bunch of Democrats are lining up to challenge Republican incumbent John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate. Now that the filing deadline has passed, let’s take a look:
Bell, a former Houston City Council member, represented a district in Congress from 2003-05 that included part of the city. In the 2006 gubernatorial race, he got 30% of the vote against then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and two well-known independent candidates. He has since attempted a number of political comebacks.
In his filing with the FEC, Bell named former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski as his campaign treasurer. Bell said the Jaworski name âstands for integrity and the highest ethical standards in the eyes of many Texans â things that are sorely missing in todayâs Washington and that I plan to talk about a lot on the campaign trail.”
Wait, did he just use “Galveston Mayor” and “integrity and the highest ethical standards” in the same sentence? Outside the Rio Grande Valley, Galveston has a reputation as the most corrupt locale in Texas, dating back to when the Maceo brothers ran Galveston for the mob and the Balinese Room had gambling tables that folded back into the wall whenever Johnny Law came walking down the long pier. My late uncle used to run a Galveston restaurant, and he said the entire political establishment was on the take.
Having run a high profile state race previously, and with a strong fundraising base in Houston, I see Bell as one of the favorites to make the runoff.
Michael Cooper: Not the basketball player. There’s squat in the way of useful information on his website as of this writing, but Ballotpedia says “Michael Cooper earned a bachelor’s degree in business and social studies from Lamar University Beaumont. Cooper’s career experience includes working as a pastor at his local church, president of the South East Texas Toyota Dealers and in executive management with Kinsel Motors.” He came in second in a two man race for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor in 2018, but only lost by 5 points to oil executive Mike Collier (who lost to incumbent Dan Patrick in the general). Got to say that, objectively, Cooper looks damn good in that cowboy hat and bolo tie:
Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards. Seems like a relatively mainstream liberal, at least compared to way too many presidential candidates. City Council to U.S. Senator is a big jump. She’s fighting with Bell for backers and West, Cooper, Lee, Foster and Love for the black base. Going to be hard to make the runoff, but if West or Bell stumble, she seems best positioned to take one of their slots.
Jack Daniel Foster, Jr. Appears to be a political neophyte in a race that already has several black candidates. Plus his big issue (which seems to boil down to “more money for community colleges”) strikes me as a county- or state-level issue, not the purview of a U.S. Senator. But I think he gets to 1% based solely on “Jack Daniel” in his name.
Annie “Mama” Garcia. Neophyte that seems to be running on Trump Derangement Syndrome, socialized medicine and gun control. 3% of the primary vote will be a challenge.
Victor Hugo Harris: A cipher, with no website I could find. I suspect that reminding Texas votes of a 19th century French novelist is an inferior election gambit to reminding them of whisky.
M.J. Hegar: A retread candidate who lost to incumbent John Crater in the Texas 31st congressional district race in 2018, albeit by less than 3%. Usually stepping up in weight class after a losing run isn’t a recipe for electoral success. Air Force vet. Seems better funded than other Democrats in the race. Policy positions are all polished liberal platitudes, which may not play to the Democratic base in an election year. An outside chance to make the runoff if white suburban women turn out for her in March rather than Chris Bell and all the black candidates split the black urban vote, but I still doubt it. Probably destined to fall somewhere between third and fifth place.
Sema Hernandez: Hard left/Social Justice Warrior/Democratic Socialist of America candidate. DSA had some successes at U.S. House races in 2018, but not in a senate race, and not in a state like Texas. Absent a huge out-of-state funding push for her, I don’t even think she even sniffs the runoff.
D. R. Hunter: Another cipher without a webpage. Unless he has a Samoan attorney and writes for Rolling Stone, I wouldn’t expect him to make much of an impression.
Midland City Councilman John B. Love III. Midland City Council is a stepping stone for a state House race, not the U.S. Senate. Not seeing signs of a serious campaign, and I don’t see him making any headway with Edwards and West in the race.
Financial advisor Adrian Ocegueda: Twitter. Came in sixth of nine Democratic candidate for Governor in 2018. His one issue is campaign finance reform, but I can’t make hide nor hair of what he actually wants to implement. Oh, and he wants West to drop out of the race. I’m sure that will happen any day nowâŠ
Leftwing activist Cristina TzintzĂșn Ramirez: Seems to be running as the hard-left Hispanic identity candidate. Don’t see her sniffing the runoff, and “TzintzĂșn” sounds like a lost South American city populated by the degenerate remnants of an eldritch people who worshiped some blasphemous Cthulhu Mythos god deep in the primordial past…
Dallas State Senator Royce West. The state senate is a pretty good stepping stone to higher office, and I don’t see any other big names from the Metroplex in the race. His issue stands are largely midleft boilerplate. He’s been in office since 2009, and in 2018 he ran completely unopposed, with no primary or general election opponant (not even a Libertarian or a Green), which suggests both political strength and the possibility that he’ll be rusty in a competitive race. A favorite to make the runoff.
Republicans
Cornyn has a few challengers on his side of the aisle as well:
Incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn won reelection in 2014 with the largest vote total and percentage of any statewide candidate, winning with 61.6% of the vote, which was two points better than Greg Abbott walloped Wendy Davis by. He’s been in office a long time, and sometimes longtime incumbents get complacent and lose. I don’t see that happening here. He’s going to win the primary and the general.
Bridge construction company owner Dwyane Stovall. He took a run at Cornyn in 2014, where he won lots of Tea Party straw votes, but came in third in actual primary voting with 10.7%. Made an abortive run at TX36 in 2016. A higher level of gadfly than Bierschwale, but just as doomed.
Former Dallas Wings owner Mark Yancey. More money than any of Cornyn’s other competitors, but WNBA owner money is not U.S. senate race money. He might come in second and still only garner 15% of the vote.
Another interesting Joe Rogan interview, this one with Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi. Taibbi may be a lefty, but he’s willing to call bullshit when he sees it, including on the Epstein murder “suicide” and the lack of any center in today’s hate-click driven media.
Rogan: “The more you censor conservatives, the more they’ll vote against liberals.”
Taibbi also notes that the very first people newspapers started getting rid of when the cash crunch hit was long-form investigative reporters, and the second were fact-checkers.
I would ignore the baseless speculation of Trump being on speed, but some of the commentary on other topics is pretty hilarious. “Biden, to me, is like taking a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long walk in the woods. It’s not going to work out.”
