No time to do instant-analysis tonight, but markets will undoubtedly be in panic-rollercoaster mode tomorrow. This will pass, but there’s a real risk this is the event that pishes the world into the cyclical recession that’s been looming for years now. Let’s hope not.
Early tidings were that “Remain” was polling ahead, enough so that even UKIP head Nigel Farage said it looked likely that Remain would pull out a win. But the “Leave” vote seems to be outperforming in areas where “Remain” was expected to be strong, and I’m not seeing any areas where the reverse is true.
Looks like its going to be a long night for global market watchers…
Update: Leave is currently up by about 800,000 votes. Including Wales which is, I think, a significant surprise.
Imagine that there’s a thoughtful, in-depth introduction here that explains the pros and cons of the Leave and Stay positions.
You’ll have to imagine it, because I have no time to write it and the vote’s tomorrow. Instead, have a quick-and-dirty shotgun scatter of Brexit links.
The economic case for Brexit. “The European project is controlled by statists and the one good thing it provides (free trade between members) is easily overwhelmed by the negative things it imposes (protectionism against outsiders, tax harmonization, horrible agriculture subsidies, bad fisheries policy, etc).” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The European Union’s bureaucracy and paper-parliament were set up to be as insulated as possible from the concerns of actual voters. Representatives to the European Parliament are selected by party elites as a kind of highbrow patronage. They invariably defer to the permanent bureaucracy, which acts like a transnational cartel, one that happens to be composed of governments. As Daniel Hannan, the rare Euroskeptic skunk to infiltrate the garden party that is the EU parliament, put it, “faced with a choice between democracy and supra-nationalism, the EU will always choose supra-nationalism.”
Elites ignore the populist revolt against them at their peril.
“A substantial portion of the Leave campaign views the referendum as a rigged process and the EU as conspiring behind the backs of the British people to launch a new round of integration.”
Here’s a debate between UK Tory PM David Cameron and UKIP head Nigel Farage on the subject:
Finally, here’s Brexit: The Movie, a 71 minute film that lays out the case for the UK leaving the EU. Haven’t watched any but a tiny bit of either of these videos, but offer them up here as a public service.
“Why it’s called a ‘modern sporting rifle‘ and not an ‘assault weapon.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal ‘betters’ who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.”)
Aside: Is the Washington Examiner paying Ashe Schow enough? She’s like some indefatigable writing machine…
“Right now the debate seems choked with people who don’t know, are proud of not knowing, and think you’re a redneck gun-nut asshole if you want them to know because they feel very strongly about this.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
No charges for officer Brad Miller. He’s the one who shot the “unarmed teen” who had driving his Jeep through a plate glass window and was in the process of vandalizing cars.
And here’s a police shooting where the use of lethal force was clearly justified.
JFK and LSD. Meh. It’s not that I think Kennedy wouldn’t have dropped acid given a chance, but Timothy Leary was basically a con man, and we already know that Nina Burleigh is irrational.
Wow, believe it or not, still another reason to never visit Oklahoma. “I’m going to need your driver’s license and all the money on your prepaid debit cards.”
Your auditor finds huge cost discrepancies in Houston ISD construction costs. Does HISD: A.) Call in an outside auditor, B.) Launch a criminal investigation or C.) Suspend the auditor who found the problems?
In case you hadn’t noticed with all the jihad shooting and Hillary corruption and the GLAVEN, the UK is voting next week on whether or not to leave the EU. Here Pat Condell makes the case for Brexit.
“[The EU’s] primary purpose is to eliminate the need for democratic consent, to empower politicians at people’s expense, and to make them our rulers, not our servants.”
“If you can’t remove the people who govern you, you live in a dictatorship, however many fancy labels and buttons and bows they dress it all up in. We cannot remove the people who run the European Union, no matter what they do, so they do what they want.”
“Do we want to live in a strong, free, independent country governed by laws to which the people have consented, or do we want to be a province of a federal dictatorship where we do what we’re told by unelected bureaucrats? When you sweep away all the speculation and verbiage, that is the choice.”
Don’t agree with his view on Ukraine, but the rest seems pretty solid. Also includes a fine slam on Obama.
Looks like I’m going to have enough news to make this a regular weekly posting…
“Saudi Arabia Has Funded 20% Of Hillary’s Presidential Campaign, Saudi Crown Prince Claims.” That, of course, is an addition to the already generous funds the Saudis sent to the Clinton Foundation. And naturally the report was taken down and Hillary’s mouthpieces at the Poedesta groups were frantically trying to convince people that “there’s nothing to see here.”
“I happen to believe when it comes to American industries or foreign oligarchs sending large checks to politicians they’re not going it out of the kindness of their hearts. They want favors and in the case of the Clintons, we’re talking about massive amounts of money and we’re talking about favorable action in return.”
Democrats have “chosen the corrupt, opaque, power hungry, self-serving, aloof, greedy, politically soulless, congenital liar they so richly deserve.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
EmailGate: “This appears to be a clear violation of federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals.”
What qualifications did Rajiv K. Fernando have to sit on the International Security Advisory Board? Simple: He gave the Clinton Foundation money.
Hillary enters incubation period. “As soon as we informed Hillary that she had reached the number of delegates necessary to secure the Democratic nomination, she thanked the staff and then promptly began secreting a thick, resinous substance from her oral gland and fashioning it into a protective casing around herself.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Never mind weekly. There’s probably enough dirt coming out on Hillary that I could make this a daily roundup, if I only had the time…
Hillary Clinton posted and shared the names of concealed U.S. intelligence officials on her unprotected email system.
Federal records reveal that Clinton swapped these highly classified names on an email account that was vulnerable to attack and was breached repeatedly by Russia-linked hacker attempts. These new revelations — reminiscent of the Valerie Plame scandal during George W. Bush’s tenure — could give FBI investigators the evidence they need to make a case that Clinton violated the Espionage Act by mishandling national defense information through “gross negligence.”
Numerous names cited in Clinton’s emails have been redacted in State Department email releases with the classification code “B3 CIA PERS/ORG,” a highly specialized classification that means the information, if released, would violate the Central Intelligence Act of 1949.
Remember when “Plamegate” was the worst thing ever as far as liberals were concerned?
Hillary committed a Plamegate every day while Secretary of State, because it was more important for her to protect her crooked dealings from Freedom of Information Act requests than it was to protect the lives of actual intelligence agents out in foreign countries.
Another week, another Texas flood. Try to stay dry and enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Paglia on Clinton: “If it were a Republican in the crosshairs, Hillary’s shocking refusal to meet with the Inspector General (who interviewed all four of the other living Secretaries of State of the past two decades) would have been the lead item flagged in screaming headlines from coast to coast. Let’s face it—the genuinely innocent do not do pretzel twists like this to cover their asses.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
New York Magazine massively re-edits article on why Hillary won’t debate because the original wasn’t fawning enough.
Eight reasons Hillary sucks. Including Obama: “she does not seem to want to run on Ben Rhodes’s foreign policy, Jonathan Gruber’s Obamacare, Lois Lerner’s IRS, Lisa Jackson’s EPA, Eric Holder’s Justice Department, or Barack Obama’s racial healing. And yet she needs Obama’s hard-left base. So far she has rejected her 2008 Annie Oakley, Reagan-Democrat schtick, gambling that her Black Lives (alone) Matter and transgenderism pandering can ensure that she will match Obama’s historic share of the minority vote. But so far it seems just as likely that she will lose more voters among the white working class than she can lease from Obama’s core.”
More on the same theme. Alas, this morning I just don’t have time to explicate all the manifest idiocies on display by the Social Justice Warrior Campus Cadets…
A North Korea missile launch meant to celebrate the birthday of the country’s founder ended in failure, U.S. defense officials said, an embarrassing setback in what was reportedly the inaugural test of a new, powerful mid-range missile.
“It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful,” Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. U.S. officials are still assessing, but it was likely a road-mobile missile, given that it was launched from a location not usually used for ballistic missile launches, on the country’s east coast, he said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency carried an unsourced report that a “Musudan” missile, which could one day be capable of reaching far-off U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific, exploded in the air a few seconds after liftoff.
It turns out that there’s another Clinton-Putin collection revealed by the Panama Papers in the form of ubiquitous Clinton toady Sydney Blumenthal:
Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian billionaire and former prime minister of the Caucasus state, is also named in the Panama Papers, which is believed to be the largest leaks of financial documents in history. A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ivanishvili appeared in the Hillary Clinton email dump through her longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal.
Blumenthal, who played a middle-man role for Clinton, passed along a memo from Ivanishvili ahead of the 2012 Georgian elections. Ivanishvili was head of the Georgian Dream party, which successfully ousted then-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a U.S. ally.
Snip.
According to Blumenthal’s email, [former Clinton ambassador to Germany John] Kornblum was “working with the political party in Georgia opposing Saakashvili.”
Kornblum made the case that the U.S. should consider distancing itself from Saakashvili. He also asserted that the regime was cracking down on opposition parties, such as the Ivanishvili-controlled Georgian Dream coalition.
“There is a real chance Saakashvili could lose,” Kornblum wrote. “He is doing everything possible to avoid that indignity, including harassing Georgian Dream in ways described in the letters.”
“If Saakshvili clearly steals the election, there could be public discontent, violence and maybe a ‘wag the dog’ scenario with Russia,” he added.
In a memo passed to Blumenthal through Kornblum, Ivanishvili urged Clinton to support Georgian Dream.
“The first step back to the path of democracy must be an open and fair election that offers the hope of a peaceful transfer of power,” Ivanishvili wrote. “Recent polls suggest that Georgian Dream can make this happen, if the authorities give democracy a chance.”
Yes, because “peaceful democracy” and “Putin stooges” go together so well. And who wouldn’t want to ally with an America whose Secretary of State is willing to intervene in local elections on behalf of their political enemies?
Of course, betraying allies and comforting enemies has pretty much been the modus operandi of Obama/Clinton/Kerry foreign policy.
It is unclear if Blumenthal was paid for connecting Kornblum and Ivanishvili to Clinton. It is also unclear whether Ivanishvili directed Kornblum or Blumenthal to reach out to Clinton. Additionally, it is unclear how Clinton responded to the memos.
But as Gawker reported, attorneys with expertise in the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which governs foreign lobbying, say that Blumenthal and Kornblum should have registered as lobbyists.
Blumenthal frequently emailed Clinton with items ranging from political gossip to in-depth intelligence briefings gleaned from his deep reservoir of intelligence community sources. He lobbied heavily on behalf of a company called Osprey Global Solutions, which sought contracts in post-Gaddafi Libya.
And this is not the last time that Blumenthal will be mentioned here this weekend…
