Posts Tagged ‘Crime’
Thursday, June 29th, 2017
Mexico’s drug war is one of those news stories that’s been crowded off America’s front pages by the tide of #FakeNews. How can the MSM find time to cover dead Mexicans if Donald Trump’s doorman might have once talked to a Russian?
I say “drug war” but that should probably be “drug wars,” in that each government crackdown on particular cartels, wars between rival cartels, and wars between different factions of the same cartel are all different events, and different parts of Mexico experience explosive violence and relative calm at different times. Juarez, the Mexican city just across the border from El Paso, experienced horrific drug violence between 2008 and 2012, peaking at 3,766 homicides in 2010, dropping back to 256 in 2015. (By contrast, in 2010 El Paso had a total of five murders.)
Some 2,000 dead bodies have been found in hidden graves in Mexico, and over 30,000 people have disappeared without a trace.
in 2017, a newly hot drug war is roiling Mexico just south of the border patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector. “The Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel lost its boss, Comandante Toro or Juan Manuel Loaiza Salinas aka Julian Loiza Salinas. The death sparked violent infighting and clashes with Mexican authorities. Residents in the area were forced to live under complete control of Toro, with even the news outlets having to answer to him.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
There are five border control sectors that cover Texas, from East to West: Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Marfa, and El Paso. Reynosa is directly south of McAllen.
At least 36 people have been killed in drug violence in Reynosa alone this year. Just this week, they machine gunned to death a seven year old boy during a failed carjacking.
In other drug cartel news:
Just today, eight members of the La Familia drug cartel in Austin and San Antonio were sentenced to prison:
- Oscar Maldonado, 32 of Austin, was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
- Julio Rogel, 20 of Austin, was sentenced to 88 months in prison.
- Jose Duenas, 35 of Austin, was sentenced to 60 months in prison.
- Jorge Arellano, 36 of Austin, was sentenced to 88 months in prison.
- Javier Jaimes, 28 of Austin, was sentenced to 72 months in prison.
- Javier Alvarez, 26 of San Antonio, was sentenced to 57 months in prison.
- Jaime Carbajal, 26 of Austin, was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
- Hugo Rodriguez, 31 of Austin, was sentenced to 70 months in prison.
“Investigators found 75 kilograms of methamphetamine during their investigation, along with nine kilograms of cocaine and around $175,000 in cash.” Three more members await sentencing.
Marciano Millan Vasquez, a hitman for the Zeta drug cartel was just sentence to seven life sentences for numerous murders in San Antonio.
At least three Uber drivers were executed in Monterrey, Neuvo Leon.
Tags:Austin, Border Controls, Comandante Toro, Crime, drug war, El Paso, Gulf Cartel, Hugo Rodriguez, Jaime Carbajal, Javier Alvarez, Javier Jaimes, Jorge Arellano, Jose Duenas, Juarez, Julio Rogel, La Familia, Marciano Millan Vasquez, McAllen, Mexico, Oscar Maldonado, Reynosa, Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Texas, Zeta Drug Cartel
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Texas | 3 Comments »
Friday, June 23rd, 2017
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! There’s so much news I’m going to punt “The Pelosi Question” to the weekend:
In case you hadn’t noticed, illinois is going bankrupt.
John Podesta to testify before the House Intelligence committee. Hopefully they’ll ask him about the allegations in Shattered that he and Robby Mook cooked up the entire “Russia hacked the election” fantasy within 24 hours of Hillary’s loss. And also about his and his brother’s documented financial ties to Russia.
Former state Department/CIA employee charged with espionage for China:
A former State Department employee was arrested Thursday and charged with espionage for allegedly transmitting Top Secret and Secret documents to a Chinese government agent, according to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA.
Kevin Mallory, 60, of Leesburg is a self-employed consultant who speaks fluent Chinese. Court filings show that Mallory was an Army veteran who worked as a special agent for U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service from 1987 to 1990. Since then, Mallory has worked for various government agencies and defense contractors, maintaining a Top Secret security clearance. The Washington Post reports that Mallory was also an employee of the CIA.
A lot of hardcore Democrats are becoming increasingly uneasy about the way that Trump Derangement Syndrome has warped their party:
We do know that Wednesday’s congressional attacker, James Hodgkinson, shared a conspiracy-tinged Change.org link on March 22, accompanied by the caption, “Trump is a traitor.” Once again, it has to be stressed that this information is woefully insufficient to conclude that the perpetrator was motivated by Russia-oriented conspiracy theories. Motivations are multifaceted, and often political beliefs “intersect” with mental distress, causing people to act violently. But the sharing of the link does indicate that Hodgkinson has been affected by the frenzied climate Democrats have stoked around the Russia issue.
Once again, for extra emphasis: calling attention to the link Hodgkinson shared is not to say that Democrats are directly culpable for this shooting. That would be ridiculous. But the shared link does show that he was to some extent enmeshed in the conspiratorial paranoia that Democrats have knowingly fostered, at full-blast, for approaching an entire year. One ancillary consequence of fostering conspiratorial paranoia for a full year is that certain people with unstable mental predispositions may latch on and commit violent acts. But Democrats and liberals, in their self-assuredness, have been reticent to acknowledge this byproduct of their current political strategy. Proclaiming that the president engaged in treason — as many members of Congress and media figures have — is going to have an influence on the broader public, and included in that broader public are people who might be deranged and/or have violent inclinations.
If you deny that the kind of overblown rhetoric that Democrats have specialized in over the past months — warning about traitorous subterfuge and foreign infiltration — can have any trickle-down effect on regular people, you’re deluding yourself.
It looks like Democrats are learning all the wrong lessons from Jon Ossoff’s loss:
Democrats want a resistance. They want to impeach the President. They want full-blown socialism. They want to go further to the left than the tea party wanted to go right. A lot of activist Democrats are already interpreting Jon Ossoff’s loss as him not being aggressively anti-Trump enough.
The Democrat base has moved way further left than where the American public is and at a time we seem to be in a pendulum swing back to the right, that could hurt them. As they start challenging Democrat incumbents with more liberal activists and start winning primaries in swing seats with radical progressives, they risk their ability to win.
What makes this fun to watch is knowing they reject that idea and think the more radical and more militant the more likely their candidates will win. I cannot wait to watch their slate of moonbat crazy challengers.
All those “Ossoff’s loss was a moral victory” excuses? Vox says don’t believe it: “Don’t sugarcoat it — Ossoff’s loss is a big disappointment, and a bad sign, for Democrats. Democrats need to outperform Hillary Clinton to take back the House. Ossoff did worse than her.”
As bad as political violence is now, the 1960s and early 1970s were much worse.
Phil Montag, technology chairman for the Nebraska Democratic Party, was caught on audio saying he was glad Rep> Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot and wishing he had died. Make that the ex-technology chairman for the Nebraska Democratic Party. Good. Pink slips seem to be the only thing these people pay attention to. (Hat tip: Gabriel Malor’s Twitter feed.)
“A professor at a Connecticut college said he was forced to flee the state after he received death threats for appearing to endorse the idea that first responders to last week’s congressional shooting should have let the victims ‘f**king die’ instead of treating them.” Step right up, Trinity College Professor Johnny Eric Williams! You’re the next contestant on “Trump Derangement Syndrome Ruined My Life!”
And speaking of Democrats losing it, “Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused ex-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson of lying under oath when he said the DNC refused the help of the DHS in their hacking scandal.”
“This May was the Democratic National Committee’s worst May of fundraising since 2003. The DNC raised $4.29 million in May of this year, according to data recently released by the Federal Election Commission. It is the weakest take for national Democrats since May of 2003, when the party raised a paltry $2.7 million.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Did 5.7 million illegal aliens vote in 2008? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
President Trump follows through on his campaign promise to kill deferred action for illegal alien parents, AKA DAPA.
TPPF’s Chris Jacobs is not impressed with the Republican Senate ObamaCare replacement bill. TPPF’s Chip Roy said:
Simply put, the bill doubles down on the fundamentally flawed architecture of Obamacare and if implemented, will neither increase the actual care available to the people nor drive down the cost of care or insurance. It maintains Obamacare’s subsidy regime, retains almost the entirety of the regulatory architecture driving up people’s premiums and deductibles, continues the previous Administration’s unconstitutional bailouts to insurers, and maintains the Medicaid expansion for five more years before slowly attempting to reform the program.
More on the same subject: “Top Ten Ways Senate Obamacare Bill Is #FakeRepeal.”
ObamaCare tweet:
Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz states that Presidnet Trump’s tape bluff is perfectly legal. “What President Trump did was no different from what prosecutors, defense attorneys, policemen, FBI agents and others do every day in an effort to elicit truthful testimony from mendacious witnesses.” Also: “We must declare an armistice against using our criminal justice system as a political weapon in what has become a zero-sum bloodsport.”
Saudi king replaces crown prince with his own son.
Saudis foil Iranian sabotage attack on their offshore oilfields.
“Trump Imposes New Sanctions on Russia Over Ukraine.” Insert record scratch sound over derailment of the “Trump is Putin’s stooge” narrative here. Oh, also, New York Times: When you invade, occupy and annex territory, it’s not an “incursion,” it’s an “invasion.”
Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who oversaw German reunification, dead at age 87. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Remember all those “refugees” Angela Merkel invited in? “Up to three quarters of Germany’s refugees will still be unemployed in five years’ time.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Trump Administration Begins to Dismantle Obama Campus Rape Tribunals.” Good.
“CENTCOM confirms Islamic State’s ‘Grand Mufti’ killed in airstrike…Turki al-Bin’ali was killed in a May 31 airstrike in Mayadin, Syria.”
Amazon buying Whole Foods ties into their overall strategy of high fixed costs and returns to scale.
Alternate view: Amazon buying Whole Foods is this cycle’s AOL/Time Warner merger.
East Lansing, Michigan punishes man for daring to express pro-Christian thoughtcrime on Facebook.
“The amount of labor that once bought 54 minutes of light now buys 52 years of light. The cost has fallen by a factor of 500,000 and the quality of that light has transformed from unstable and risky to clean, safe, and controllable.”
The year-by-year descent into airline hell. But: More people are flying than ever before, and airlines are actually profitable. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Man almost dies after getting swept away by a river while hiking, learns important survival lessons. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Harvard introduces segregated commencement ceremony for black students. next up: Their own water fountains.
“A mentally ill homeless woman in Florida is accused of vandalizing a policeman’s patrol car and smearing feces on a church where she left the walls defaced with nonsensical writings against ‘patriarchy.'”
F-35 puts on an impressive demonstration at the Paris Air Show. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
F-16 catches fire at Houston airport.
The meaning of Bill Cosby’s hung jury:
The extraordinarily high prosecutorial burden of proof in any criminal trial is intentionally designed to heavily favor defendants, because we long ago embraced as a society Blackstone’s principle. Formulated in the seventeen-sixties by the English jurist William Blackstone, the presumption is that it is better to have ten guilty people go free than that one innocent person suffer. Hard as it is to stomach today, embracing that calculus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to mention terrorists and murderers) to go free in order to protect the one falsely accused. Unfortunately, Cosby is one of those to escape criminal punishment. And, to put a fine point on the over-all gendered impact of requiring proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the inevitable effect of the heavy tilt toward defendants is that in sexual-assault trials, which involve mostly male defendants and mostly female accusers, men are favored over women.
What works in Bill Cosby’s favor also works in Bill Clinton’s favor… (Hat tip: Christina Hoff Summers’ Twitter feed.)
15 companies that made great games that still went bust. Spoiler: The phrase “bought by EA” appears a lot.
Colin Kaepernick seems to have decided that his career is indeed over. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Whipped cream fatality.
And that gives me the thinnest of possible justifications to post this classic:
Tags:1960s, 2016 Presidential Race, aircraft, airlines, Alan Dershowitz, Amazon, amnesty, Bill Cosby, Border Controls, China, Chip Roy, Chris Jacobs, Colin Kaepernick, Connecticut, Crime, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrats, DHS, DNC, Donald Trump, Elections, F-16, F-35, Foreign Policy, Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Germany, Harvard, Helmut Kohl, Illegal Aliens, Illinois, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, James T. Hodgkinson, Jihad, John Podesta, Johnny Eric Williams, Jon Ossoff, Kevin Mallory, Michigan, Military, ObamaCare, Obituary, Phil Montag, Regulation, Saudi Arabia, Social Justice Warriors, Syria, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Trinity College, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Turki al-Bin’ali, Ukraine, Voter Fraud, Whole Foods
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »
Thursday, June 22nd, 2017
It’s been a while since I last reported on the wheels of justice continuing to grind in the aftermath of the May 17, 2015 Waco biker shootout. The grinding is more glacial than slow, not only are they not grinding exceedingly fine, right now they don’t seem to be grinding at all.
With the trial of Bandidos member Christopher Jacob Carrizal delayed, the trial of Cossacks member Kyle Smith was supposed to start June 5.
Guess what? That trial has also been delayed:
A judge on Friday effectively postponed the start of any Twin Peaks biker trials in McLennan County until after the federal trial of Bandidos national leaders in San Antonio or until federal prosecutors agree to share evidence with McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna.
Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court granted a motion to delay the June 5 trial of Kyle Smith, 50, an air-conditioning technician from Kilgore and member of the Cossacks motorcycle group.
I would say that further delay starts to raise Sixth Amendment issues, but in fact, since it’s been more than two years since the shootout, those factors were already in play. I’m hardly an expert, but Orand vs. State and Barker vs. Wingo seem to be the relevant precedents here. Both cases involve balancing factors for speedy trial issues. The defendant in Orand was acquitted after a 12-year delay between indictment and the arrest, while the five years Barker waited for trial (during which an accomplice was tried five times before a conviction was obtained) was not considered excessive, partially because Barker had not asserted his right to a speedy trial.
Given the large, complex cases against the numerous Waco biker shootout defendants, the judicial system is more likely to make allowances, despite the fact that none of them have been charged with murder.
There are, however, a few tidbits of news related to the case:
William Richardson, a biker who was shot at the Waco shootout but not charged, is suing to recover medical expenses. Named in the suit are “Twin Peaks Investment; Front Burner Restaurant GP; former Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman; Waco police Detective Manuel Chavez; McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara; and an unknown officer identified in the lawsuit as John Doe.”
One of the arguments in the lawsuit is one we’ve heard before: that Waco police refused to render medical aid:
The lawsuit claims the deaths of nine bikers and injuries to at least 20 others were compounded by the mass arrests “and wrongful detention of innocent individuals.”
“During this period of detention, prior to transporting the detained off scene, neither law enforcement officers under control of defendant Chavez, defendant Stroman or defendant McNamara rendered aid to detainees who were injured nor did they call for emergency medical assistance,” the suit alleges.
Richardson was not provided immediate medical attention by restaurant or law enforcement officials, the lawsuit claims.
But one Bandidos member has been convicted in a murder case involving a bar fight with a Cossack. A different bar fight:
About 20 members of the Bandidos, one of the most notorious outlaw motorcycle clubs in Texas, poured into the front and rear doors of Gator’s Jam Inn in Fort Worth on a Friday evening in early December 2014. Reports of gunfire soon followed. “There’s been 15 shots so far, and they’re still shooting,” one of several 911 callers reported to Fort Worth police.
The Bandidos’ Fort Worth chapter president, Howard Wayne Baker, was one of three arrested in connection with the shooting. He was charged with engaging in organized crime and directing the activities of a street gang. On Tuesday, the 62-year-old was sentenced to 45 years for one charge and 40 years for the other, to be served concurrently in prison.
Fort Worth police said that in 2014, the Fort Worth Bandidos ambushed three rival outlaw motorcycle clubs — the Cossacks, the Ghost Riders and the Wino’s Crew — at the bar. When the smoke cleared, Geoffrey Brady, a 41-year-old member of the Ghost Riders, had been shot in the head, and two others also sustained injuries.
“They dragged Brady out of the front door and executed him in front of his wife and friends,” said Allenna Bangs, Tarrant County assistant district attorney, in Baker’s trial last week. “They stood over him in a circle, and Howard Baker was standing in that circle.”
On May 8, there was also another Waco bar shooting involving Bandidos affiliates. Evidently seven members of a unnamed biker group affiliated with the Bandidos assaulted a man, the man pulled a gun and started firing, and then everybody ran away.
Bandidos were also involved in a violent gang brawl in Australia.
Would you believe that the Bandidos have filed papers to operate as a non-profit?
Tags:Australia, Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Brent Stroman, Christopher Jacob Carrizal, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Ft. Worth, Geoffrey Brady, Ghost Riders, Howard Wayne Baker, Kyle Smith (Coasack), Manuel Chavez, Matt Johnson, Parnell McNamara, Sixth Amendment, Texas, Waco, William Richardson, Wino’s Crew
Posted in Crime, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, June 19th, 2017
Time for an update on everyone’s favorite socialist paradise, where the collapse of the economy (and civil society) continues apace:
Things have degenerated enough that lynching has made a comeback:
The public-safety infrastructure in Venezuela has been degraded to such a degree that citizens now take justice into their own hands. Agence France Presse reported that lynchings have risen sharply over the last year and a half as political and economic instability in the crumbling socialist republic has worsened. Witnesses who spoke to AFP said a 22-year-old man who was set on fire at an anti-government demonstration in May was actually lynched after being accused of stealing by the crowd – not because he was a government sympathizer, as President Nicolas Maduro had suggested at the time.
Protestors set fire to the Venezuela Supreme Court. “The incident comes after the Supreme Court voted to reject a motion blocking Maduro from rewriting the country’s constitution, despite recent polls showing that up to 85 percent of Venezuelans oppose the reforms.”
Tearing down a statue of Hugo Chavez doesn’t get you sent before a civilian judge, it lands you before a military tribunal:
Maduro is following the playbook of other tyrants facing the collapse of socialism page by page. The anger in the streets against his failed regime is so intense that protesters might not be convicted in a jury trial handled through the regular order of civilian law enforcement. So instead, the troublemakers are being rounded up and taken off to face a court martial in an environment which the government can closely control.
Brazil has suspended tear gas sales to Venezuela.
Venezuela’s collapsing oil industry is also screwing over Cuba.
Venezuela in 20 pictures. Including a really sad one of a starving elephant. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Are the government’s Twitter accounts suspended?
There’s also a Washington Post piece that asks if Civil War is imminent I’m not linking to because the words “starvation” and “hyperinflation” are conspicuously absent. As the Hot Air piece on military tribunals states, “the citizens are effectively in a state of war with their own government” already…
Tags:Communism, Crime, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, socialism, Venezuela
Posted in Communism, Crime | No Comments »
Friday, June 16th, 2017
James T. Hodgkinson, the shooter of Rep. Steve Scalise and four others, had a list of names to be assassinated on him:
The Daily Caller is reporting that an assassination list was found on Hodgkinson, and if true, had three members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on it:
James T. Hodgkinson, the shooter who opened fire on dozens of Republican congressmen and staffers at a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, had a list of Republican names in his pocket that was recovered by the FBI, The Daily Caller has learned.
The news that the shooter had a list of names suggests the shooting was not a random outburst, but instead appears to be a premeditated political assassination.
The list was written out on notepad paper and found in the shooter’s pocket, according to multiple sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. The list of names included Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan and Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, TheDC has confirmed.
Had Hodgkinson succeeded and not been killed by capitol police, that would likely have changed his charge from Second Degree Murder to First Degree Murder.
Scalise remains alive but in critical condition. Says his doctor: “I would say that when he arrived, he was in critical condition with an imminent risk of death.” Scalise now faces “additional operations to manage abdominal injuries and other bone injuries.”
Tags:Alexandria, assassination, Crime, Democrats, James T. Hodgkinson, murder, Steve Scalise
Posted in Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Friday, June 16th, 2017
Briefer than normal due to a packed schedule today:
Coalition forces continue to advance in the Islamic State capital of Raqqa.
Speaking of Raqqa, Russia is saying one of its airstrikes there may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Great news if true, but right now the report should be taken with several grains of salt.
Illinois bonds headed toward junk status.
“Mueller Hires Clinton Foundation Lawyer for Russia Probe.” Transparent this is not… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) reported that in the last six years around 220,000 criminal aliens have been booked in Texas jails. DHS confirmed to DPS that at least 148,000 or 66% of those criminal aliens had entered the U.S. illegally.”
“Qatar’s financial system is running out of dollars.”
ObamaCare is failing. “Not one Republican voted for Obamacare. A Democratic Congress passed and a Democratic president signed the legislation over the loud objections of the GOP. Conservative activists and legal groups fought tooth and nail to prevent its roll-out, and when that failed, they repeatedly warned it was doomed to failure.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
And some ObamaCare premiums have increased by more than 100% in the last four years.
More of those peaceful Democrats: “FBI Investigates Package With ‘White Powdery Substance’ Sent to GOP Candidate in GA-6.”
This piece on the current state of the Democratic Party comes with caveats, namely: a.) Rolling Stone, b.) Obviously hostile to Republicans, Trump, etc., and c.) Lots of “Ra-ra isn’t Tom Perez great” flacking. But look beyond that and there’s a cold-eyed assessment of just how badly off Obama left the Democratic Party:
The Democratic Party is in the worst shape of its modern history. The presidency of Barack Obama papered over the fact that the party was being hollowed out from below. Over Obama’s two terms, Democrats ceded 13 governorships to the GOP and stumbled from controlling six in 10 state legislatures to now barely one in three. Across federal and state government, Democrats have lost close to 1,000 seats. There are only six states where Democrats control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
More troubling: Even amid the great upwelling of anti-Trump resistance, Democratic favorability ratings have continued to tumble since Election Day – to just 40 percent in a May Gallup poll. “Our negatives are almost as high as Trump’s, as far as party goes,” says Rep. Tim Ryan, a rugged Ohio Democrat serving Youngstown. Ryan led an unsuccessful 63-vote insurgency against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in November because, he says, “We weren’t winning.”
There is no official accounting for this erosion of power and popularity. Unlike the GOP in the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, Democrats have not published post-mortems. But get party insiders talking – with anonymity exchanged for candor – and there’s little debate about how the party went sideways.
Responsibility rests foremost at the feet of former President Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama sidestepped the party’s next-in-line culture, riding into the White House on the strength of a then-revolutionary digital-and-grassroots machinery of his own creation. “Obama was almost like the anti-Democrat,” a former DNC chair tells Rolling Stone. “The president didn’t care about the Democratic Party.”
Once in office, Obama had the weight of the world to bear. He staved off financial collapse and secured health insurance for an estimated 20 million Americans, leveraging the party’s infrastructure for these fights. “When you’re at the head of the DNC and you have the White House,” says Sen. Tim Kaine, who chaired the party from 2009 to 2011, “a lot of the job is about promoting the president’s agenda.” But Obama and his team neglected a far less heroic duty: the care and feeding of the national party, which Democrats had rebuilt during the Bush years with a “50-state strategy” that had empowered Obama with dominant Democratic majorities in Congress.
The GOP took full advantage of the president’s disregard for party politics. The Tea Party vaulted Republicans to control of the U.S. House and statehouses across the country in 2010 – putting the party in the driver’s seat for the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative boundaries known as redistricting. The White House mounted no resistance. “The Obama team, David Axelrod, had no organized structural redistricting [game plan],” says a longtime Democratic strategist. “The Republicans just ran up the fucking score everywhere. They got two or three extra congressional seats in state after state after state, creating lasting struggles to get back to a majority.” Case in point: Democratic House candidates netted 1.3 million more votes than Republicans in 2012, but secured 33 fewer seats.
The 50-state strategy devolved under Obama into a presidential-battleground strategy, leaving state parties starved for cash and leadership. “Obama didn’t put resources into local parties unless it was for his re-election effort,” says the former party chair. Making matters worse: Obama tapped ambitious Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz – a favorite of White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett – to run the DNC in 2011. “That congresswoman had no idea what she was doing,” adds the former chair.
Wasserman Schultz went rogue. In a rift with the White House that spilled into a story on Politico, she was criticized for using the DNC as a vehicle for self-promotion, hoping the office would serve as a springboard into House leadership. The White House made overtures to oust Wasserman Schultz, but she dug in, promising an ugly fight that could tar the president as both anti-woman and anti-Semitic. (Wasserman Schultz, who was forced to resign in the aftermath of the Russian hack of the DNC, declined to participate in this story.)
Obama dodged that fight, and instead fostered Organizing for Action, the grassroots group born of his campaigns. “They had a mirror organization that did just their politics, and it weakened the DNC,” says a source in House leadership. “It directed money elsewhere and was not in the interest of the long-term stability [of the party]. It was a selfish strategy.”
The hobbled DNC’s chief remaining value was as a fundraising vehicle. For Obama, it “was like his ATM – and Clinton was the same,” says the former chair. Clinton pioneered a strategy that allowed her largest donors to give $10,000 to each of 32 state parties participating in her Victory Fund. But that money didn’t stay in the states. Instead, nearly every penny was hoovered up to the DNC for the benefit of Clinton’s election.
Clinton today says she found the DNC to be a liability. In an onstage interview at a Recode tech conference in May, Clinton recalled, “I get the nomination. . . . I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party. It was bankrupt. . . . I had to inject money into it – the DNC – to keep it going.” Clinton then raised eyebrows by indicting the DNC’s data, which the party had inherited from the Obama re-election campaign. “Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong,” Clinton said. (The DNC’s former data chief hit back, tweeting that Clinton’s broadside was “fucking bullshit,” but declined to be interviewed.)
Under Obama, the party infrastructure was honed to elect a president. And being a presidential party is a powerful thing – until you lose the White House. The Clinton campaign lost significantly on its own merits, though the party is loath to admit it. The same candidate who was caught flat-footed by the rise of Obama in 2008 found herself stunned by the grassroots surge behind Sen. Bernie Sanders. “And she was really surprised by how strong Trump was – and part of it was she just sucked,” says the Democratic strategist, who criticizes Clinton despite being entrenched in her center-left, pro-trade wing of the party. “At a really fundamental level we gotta get people to acknowledge what a fucking piece of shit her campaign was.”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
CNN’s Jim Acosta flat out lies about President Trump’s visit to wounded Representative Steve Scalise’s hospital room. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
More lying from CNN:
New York Times editorial about Rep. Scalise’s shooting is not just a lie, it’s actually libelous.
New bill aims to eliminate “structuring” civil asset forfeiture abuse. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
A profile of radical Islamist and left-wing media darling Linda Sarsour. “Her rise, and the celebration of her by progressives as one of their own, demonstrates how clearly and phenomenally Jews and Jewish concerns are being written out of the progressive movement.”
“DOJ Moves To Seize DiCaprio’s Picasso, Rights To ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ As Part Of 1MDB Case.” Or “Hollywood accounting meets a Malaysian dictator, and hilarity ensues!”
MLA votes against Israel boycott.
How Indians scam their way to Australian citizenship, and how a crackdown on the practice may crash Sydney and Melbourne property values. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
President Trump orders the federal government to stop working on the Y2K bug.
“Is this some kind of bust?” (Hat tip: Dwight, who also came up with the Police Squad! reference.)
“My Trip to a Marijuana Dispensary, the Happiest Place in Boulder.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
All the people Billy Martin brawled with.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, al-Baghdadi, Austin, Australia, Border Controls, civil asset forfeiture, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Crime, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic Party, Democrats, DNC, Donald Trump, EmailGate, Hillary Clinton, Illinois, India, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Jeannie Rhee, Jihad, Karen Handel, Leonardo DiCaprio, Linda Sarsour, LinkSwarm, Malaysia, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Qatar, Raqqa, Rolling Stone, Steve Scalise, Syria, Texas, Texas DPS, Tom Perez
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Regulation, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 15th, 2017
More details are emerging of the now-dead Alexandria shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Like the fact he beat his adoptive daughters.
He was the foster father of at least two girls. The first, Wanda Ashley Stock, 17, committed suicide in 1996 by pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire after a few months of living with the Hodgkinsons, the Belleville News-Democrat reports. The Hodgkinsons gave an interview to the paper after her suicide, calling her a “very practical, level-headed girl.”
Privacy laws do not allow the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to release foster records.
In 2002, Hodgkinson became the foster father of another girl whom he allegedly abused, according to police records.
In 2006, he was arrested for domestic battery and discharge of a firearm after he stormed into a neighbor’s home where his teenage foster daughter was visiting with a friend. In a skirmish, he punched his foster daughter’s then 19-year-old friend Aimee Moreland “in the face with a closed fist,” according to a police report reviewed by The Daily Beast. When Moreland’s boyfriend walked outside of the residence where Moreland and Hodgkinson’s foster daughter were, he allegedly aimed a shotgun at the boyfriend and later fired one round. The Hodgkinsons later lost custody of that foster daughter.
“[Hodgkinson] fired a couple of warning shots and then hit my boyfriend with the butt of the gun,” Moreland told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Hodgkinson was also “observed throwing” his daughter “around the bedroom,” the police report said. After the girl broke free, Hodgkinson followed and “started hitting her arms, pulling her hair, and started grabbing her off the bed.”
Moreland said Hodgkinson’s daughter “told me a lot of stories that he was really awful to her.”
“According to his foster daughter, he was always angry,” Moreland said. “She was really unhappy there. She had come over to get away from them.”
When Moreland tried escaping with Hodgkinson’s daughter in a vehicle, Hodgkinson reached inside and “turned off the ignition,” the report said.
“We were panicked and when I tried to reverse, I hit neutral instead and he opened my car door and hit me, and then came to her car door and pulled out a knife and cut her seatbelt and dragged her out,” Moreland said. “She was only 15 or 16, I think. She was so tiny.”
Mr. Hodgkinson was also not big on observing Rule 4:
Hodgkinson may have practiced before the attack, a neighbor told The Daily Beast.
On March 24, neighbor William Schaumleffel called the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office to complain that Hodgkinson had fired approximately 15 shots outside. A responding officer found Hodgkinson shooting into nearby trees and advised him to stop, according to a sheriff’s report, which added that Hodgkinson had a valid firearm license.
“I thought, my God, what is that guy shooting?” Schaumleffel recalled.
He told The Daily Beast that he was out in his backyard with his grandchildren when the shooting started. He heard one shot, then another, and then three in rapid succession.
Hodgkinson held the gun to his shoulder and fired across Schaumleffel’s field, he said. Schaumleffel said he yelled to him to say that there were houses in that direction and that he should stop, but wasn’t sure if he heard him.
The shooting started again, in what Schaumleffel now calls “target practice.”
“I told my wife, ‘hey, I’m gonna call the sheriff. He’s liable to turn the gun on us,’” Schaumleffel said.
(Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)
Hodgkinson had other minor brushes with the law, including a DUI and resisting arrest charge dismissed in 1993.
The question remains of why a resident of Belleville, Illinois, who still had a wife and home back there, was living out of a van down by the river near Washington, D.C.? “The gunman’s brother told The New York Times that the man was upset about Trump’s election and recently went to Washington to protest, but Michael Hodgkinson said he didn’t know why the man stayed in the area.”
Unless he was living in D.C. with the express purpose of shooting Republicans, and just looking or an opportunity to do it…
Tags:Alexandria, Crime, Democrats, James T. Hodgkinson
Posted in Crime, Democrats | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 14th, 2017
The big news this morning is that several Republican congressmen and staffers, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), were shot during baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. As of this writing at least five people appear to have been shot, but there are apparently (thankfully) no fatalities. One of those shot was identified as Zack Barth, a staffer for Texas Rep. Roger Williams. Early reports that Williams himself was shot appear to be erroneous.
Police have identified the shooter as James T. Hodgkinson, who reportedly asked whether the congressmen were Republicans or Democrats before opening fire.
I bet you can guess Hodgkinson’s political affiliation:
“Hodgkinson Wrote on Facebook, ‘Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.'”
His Facebook page also includes rants against congressional Republicans (or what a police detective would call “motive”), and he was arrested for battery in 2006. (The charges were later dismissed.)
Hodgkinson is what the Hillary team dismissively referred to as a “Bernie Bro”:
Here’s the photo everyone seems to be using of him:
Is it bad of me that the first thing that comes to mind is Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski?
“League game, Smokey!”
Democrats are reacting with their usual grace and tact:
Developing…
Update: Shooter Hodgkinson has reportedly died from wounds inflicted by capitol police.
Update 2: Senator Sanders has properly condemned the shooting.
Update 3: President Trump uses occasion to praise capitol police. Virginia Governor and Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe uses the occasion to push for gun control.
Update 4: More class from the left:
Tags:Alexandria, Bernie Sanders, Crime, Donald Trump, James T. Hodgkinson, Republicans, Roger Williams, Steve Scalise, Terry McAuliffe, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Zack Barth
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Republicans | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 12th, 2017
Enjoy a late, out-of-band LinkSwarm to start your week:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is serious about border control:
Sessions said 25 judges have already been deployed to detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Politico. Another 50 judges will be “on the bench” later this year. A separate 75 judges will be added in fiscal 2018 at a cost of $80 million.
The need is obvious. About half of all federal arrests in 2014 were for immigration crimes, and 93 percent of that figure took place at or near the border, the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently reported.
Leaked diplomatic cables show concern by other U.S. allies in the region that Qatar was backing terrorist groups.
More background on the Qatar vs. every other Sunni gulf state feud.
“President Trump continues to make sterling judicial nominations.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Trump as our Claudius.
Pundits keep telling President Trump he has to give up tweeting. Why would he, when his tweets make the media dance to his tune? (Hat tip: Scott Adams.)
“Obama Admin Did Not Publicly Disclose Iran Cyber-Attack During ‘Side-Deal’ Nuclear Negotiations.” Because why protect America’s cybersecurity when you can give billions to a jihad-supporting regime to sign a treaty they’ll refuse to follow?
“12 Democrat staffers arrested, charged with voter fraud.”
Congress should investigate if Attorney General Lynch pressured Comey to cover for Hillary Clinton, says notorious right-wing shill…Dianne Feinstein? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Now that Democrats are getting getting hefty support from moneyed elites, they’re not so keen on wealth redistribution.
“The Strange Death of Scottish Nationalism.” The Tories did badly in the snap election, but the Scottish National Party did much, much worse.
How Theresa May screwed up. And why on earth was she using Jim Messina as a political consultant? Because he did such a smashing job on the “Remain” campaign?
“EU, UN siphon off 100 million Euro annually to groups running anti-Israel campaign.”
“UK government paid London jihad mass murderer’s brother to fight ‘extremism.'”
Jim Goad covers the lunacy at Evergreen College. Tidbit: “The school bears the dubious distinction of being ‘one of the least selective universities in the nation with an admittance rate of 98%.'” *Hat tip: Director Blue.)
So much news dropped last week that I didn’t get around to posting on the arrest of NSA contractor Reality Winner for leaking classified information. And does the name “Reality Winner” mean we’re living in a Philip K. Dick novel? Or a Thomas Pynchon novel?
But we should lit Winner’s weird name distract us from the fact she’s a complete and utter moron, “not only printing the document from her NSA computer but emailing the Intercept using her personal Gmail account from the same computer.” (More on printing microdot technology.
In any case, the MSM is omitting Winner’s long, documented history of far-left political activism.
“The Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class problem.’ They have a ‘working-class problem.” Caveat: Lots of leftist blather. But it’s refreshing to see liberals admit just how badly the Obama economy sucked. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
Tweet:
“Italy’s populist Five Star Movement humiliated in municipal elections.” That’s Beppe Grillo’s left-wing populist Euroskeptic Party. Between this and France’s election, was Brexit the high-water mark of Euroskepticism? Maybe, until the next economic crisis.
Speaking of which, the slow-motion Spanish banking panic continues apace, and Spanish regulators have imposed a ban on short-selling.
Adam West, RIP.
Flying Goth.
Attempted cereal killing.
Joe’s Crab Shack files for bankruptcy.
“Man Fashions Fabulously Tiny Hats for Toad Who Visits His Porch Every Day.”
Tags:Beppe Grillo, Border Controls, Brexit, Conservatives, Crime, data security, Democrats, Dianne Feinstein, Donald Trump, Elections, EU, Evergreen State College, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Iran, Italy, James Comey, Jihad, Jim Messina, Labour, LinkSwarm, London, Loretta Lynch, Maggie Haberman, Media Watch, New York Times, NSA, Qatar, Reality Winner, Scottish National Party, Spain, Stanley Greenberg, Theresa May, Twitter, Voter Fraud, War on Terror
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
Friday, June 2nd, 2017
While the mainstream media is chasing their Russian conspiracy tail, the House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas to Samantha Power, Susan Rice and John Brennan over the surveillance unmasking scandal.
President Donald Trump also pulled out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. You know, the one that was so anti-American Obama never bothered to even submit it to the Senate, sure in the knowledge they’d reject it. Naturally, liberals freaked out over the end of something that never actually had the force of law, much like they freaked out over the rollback of tranny bathrooms, another Obama “law” imposed entirely by judicial fiat. “My acts of executive fiat are sacred and immutable, yours are crimes against democracy.” Liberals seem to regard Climate Change Treaties not as something subject to cost/benefit analysis and the checks-and-balances of Constitutional law, but as Holy Writ, the failure of which to heed irreparably stains America’s soul.
In other news:
New York Democrat busted for child pornography:
A leading young Democrat and de Blasio administration employee has a secret taste for sickening kiddie porn that involves baby girls as young as 6 months old, court papers revealed Friday.
Jacob Schwartz, 29, was busted for allegedly keeping more than 3,000 disgusting images and 89 videos on a laptop after downloading the filth from the internet.
The illegal smut shows “young nude females between the approximate ages of 6 months and 16, engaging in sexual conduct… on an adult male,” court papers say.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
President Trump is dismantling Obama’s authoritarianism:
Obama is the one who imposed what we might deem — in appropriately Maoist parlance — the “Three Authoritarianisms.” They were the Paris climate accord, the Iran deal, and US intelligence agencies being used to surveil American citizens.
All three of these “authoritarianisms” were entirely ex-Constitutional. The first two were in essence treaties on which Congress (and by extension the American people) never got to vote or, for that matter, discuss in any serious way. The Paris accord probably would have failed. As for the Iran deal, we still don’t know the full contents and therefore debating it is somewhat moot. We have, however, seen its consequences — corpses littered all across Syria, not to mention untold millions of refugees.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“Nothing that an Islamic terrorist can do will ever shake the left-wing commitment to open borders—not mass sexual assaults, not the deliberate slaughter of gays, and not, as in Manchester last week, the killing of young girls. The real threat that radical Islam poses to feminism and gay rights must be disregarded in order to transform the West by Third World immigration.”
Just as in 2016, black voters aren’t turning out for Democrats in special elections like they used to.
“A federal grand jury has indicted 35 [St. Louis] store owners on federal conspiracy charges for trafficking contraband cigarettes, distributing controlled substances and money laundering.” The charges seem on the weak side to me, but see if you can notice a pattern in the names indicted… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Global Pension Underfunding Will Hit Nearly Half A Quadrillion Dollars In 2050.”
“The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project.” Why so many math geniuses born in Budapest between 1890 and 1920? Simple: A high concentration of Jews. “In general Jews born in Europe after 1920 didn’t have a great life expectancy.”
Evergreen State College in Washington State remains shut down after a particularly virulent outbreak of Social Justice Warrior rage. It’s been hard to keep up with all the Stupid on display there…
A few heartland Democrats are trying to un-Pelosi the party. Good luck with that, but I suspect any variance from the Official Party Line on abortion, tranny bathrooms or illegal aliens will meet with swift punishment from the SJW faction controlling the levers of power in the party. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Jim Goad takes a stroll through the latest leftist “math is racist” garbage. “In the only way we know how to quantify such things—by scores on math tests, duh!—it would appear that if math is indeed ‘racist,’ it is biased strongly against non-Asians.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The “white supremacist” who stabbed two people in Portland was a pro-Bernie Sanders/Jill Stein supporter.
76% of “child refugees” entering Sweden are over 18. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Latest example of an illegal alien having more rights than you? Montgomery County, Maryland releases an illegal alien accused of stealing guns from an off-duty cop’s car. (Hat tip: The Political Hat.)
Houston: “Democratic Poll Workers Plead Guilty of Voter Fraud.”
Rigging the precious metals market?
Manuel Noriega dead at 83.
A climate change tweet:
The judge presiding over the Ken Paxton trial has been removed:
The Dallas Court of Appeals has ordered Judge George Gallagher removed from the case and all orders he has issued since granting a motion to transfer venue vacated.
In April, Gallagher granted a motion to transfer venue in the case from Collin County to Harris County, the backyard of the three criminal defense attorneys who were appointed as special prosecutors in the case. The motion to transfer venue was legally baseless and centered on the prosecutors’ complaints about criticism they have received on social media. The decision to grant the motion followed months of bad rulings from Gallagher in which he had turned a blind eye to abuses of the grand jury process by the special prosecutors.
When Gallagher granted the motion to transfer venue, Paxton’s defense team immediately informed him that they would not consent to him continuing to preside over the case and cited to the Code of Criminal Procedure, which requires the consent of the defendant before a judge can continue on a case after venue is transferred.
The case state case against Paxton already looked weak after the SEC dropped charges on the federal case the state case is predicated upon. Now it looks that much weaker.
Uber and Lyft are back running in Austin following Governor Greg Abbott signing a bill creating statewide ride-sharing rules superseding Austin’s draconian version.
USS Gerald R. Ford delivered to the Navy. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
“Alabama Town Requires Teens to Buy Business License to Mow Lawns.”
New York Times offers buyouts to editors…and eliminates the “public editor.” But don’t worry; rumor has it that they left the Trump Conspiracy Theory Unit intact… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas list has been updated again. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Kathy Griffin fired from CNN’s New Year’s Eve duties for holding up severed Trump head prop. And just when she was cultivating that “Eldritch Undead Lich” look Dick Clark sported in his final years…
Important health tip: “Don’t put wasp nests up your vagina.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Sharknado 5 gets a title.
Tags:Alabama, Austin, barbecue, Bill De Blasio, Border Controls, CNN, Crime, Democrats, Evergreen State College, George Gallagher, Global Warming, Greg Abbott, Houston, Jacob Schwartz, Jews, Jihad, Kathy Griffin, Ken Paxton, LinkSwarm, Lyft, Manuel Noriega, Maryland, Media Watch, Military, Nancy Pelosi, Navy, New York, New York Times, nuclear weapons, Obama Scandals, pension crisis, Samantha Power, sex offender, Sharknado, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uber, unmasking
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »