Posts Tagged ‘Social Justice Warriors’
Friday, February 10th, 2017
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas it’s looking a lot like Spring.
This LinkSwarm is heavy on border control and jihad issues.
“The 9th Circuit’s dangerous and unprecedented use of campaign statements to block presidential policy.”
By accepting the use of preelection statements to impeach and limit executive policy, the 9th Circuit is taking a dangerous step. The states’ argument is in essence that Trump is a bigot, and thus his winning presidential campaign in fact impeaches him from exercising key constitutional and statutory powers, such as administering the immigration laws.
This would mean that Trump is automatically disbarred, from the moment of his inauguration, of exercising certain presidential powers, not because of his actions as president, but because of who he is — that is, how he won the presidency.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
When Judge James Robart stated that “no” terrorists had attacked America from the countries on President Trump’s travel ban, he was engaged in the rhetorical device known as lying his ass off. “At least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Trump’s sanctuary city and terrorist-supporting state travel bans are his most popular executive orders. To quote Mark Steyn yet again, “‘divisive’ appears to be elite-speak for ‘remarkably popular.'” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“Rotherham sex abuse gang shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they are jailed for total of 81 years for sexually abusing girls.”
Most Europeans oppose further Muslim immigration. Can’t imagine why…
Among them: this Swedish cop:
Here we go; this is what I’ve handled from Monday-Friday this week: rape, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, rape-assault and rape, extortion, blackmail, assault, violence against police, threats to police, drug crime, drugs, crime, felony, attempted murder, rape again, extortion again and ill-treatment.
Suspected perpetrators; Ali Mohammed, Mahmod, Mohammed, Mohammed Ali, again, again, again. Christopher… what, is it true? Yes, a Swedish name snuck in on the edges of a drug crime. Mohammed, Mahmod Ali, again and again.
Countries representing all the crimes this week: Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown, unknown country, Sweden. Half of the suspects, we can’t be sure because they don’t have any valid papers. Which in itself usually means that they’re lying about their nationality and identity.
Scott Adams abandons all support for UC Berkeley in the wake of the Milo riot:
I’m ending my support of UC Berkeley, where I got my MBA years ago. I have been a big supporter lately, with both my time and money, but that ends today. I wish them well, but I wouldn’t feel safe or welcome on the campus. A Berkeley professor made that clear to me recently. He seems smart, so I’ll take his word for it.
I’ve decided to side with the Jewish gay immigrant who has an African-American boyfriend, not the hypnotized zombie-boys in black masks who were clubbing people who hold different points of view. I feel that’s reasonable, but I know many will disagree, and possibly try to club me to death if I walk on campus.
Yesterday I asked my most liberal, Trump-hating friend if he ever figured out why Republicans have most of the Governorships, a majority in Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court. He said, “There are no easy answers.”
I submit that there are easy answers. But for many Americans, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias hide those easy answers behind Hitler hallucinations.
Just in case you were unclear: President Trump is not Hitler. (Hat tip: Scott Adams, IBID.)
#Winning.
House Democrats are going on a retreat in Baltimore where they’ll go over an autopsy of the election. Will they learn from their many mistakes? “The Baltimore retreat, which will take place at the scenic Inner Harbor, will focus on the party’s fight for all Americans and feature speeches from top Democrats and various celebrities, including Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Chelsea Handler, as the party looks to get back on track.” Signs point to “No”… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Both Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus want you to know that they are not bitter enemies fighting for influence in the Trump White House. The truth is that they are “rather chummy.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
President Trump’s chess game:
In the end it would appear that Trump is playing the kind of game that I was taught to play by my coach. His opponents are never given time to mount an attack. Their queen – the MSM has been removed from the board and their favorite piece – the Celebrities are locked in a war of attrition while Trump gets the rest of his pieces on the board. Remember, these are all Tactics but Strategy flows from Tactics. Sooner or later the Left will find itself in some terrible position and the Strategy to drain the swamp will present itself.
(Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)
“Leftists said if Trump won, that there’d be violent mobs of hate, and intolerant fascists would try to silence those with whom they disagree. And they were right. It just was by a group of people from which they didn’t expect it: themselves.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
NSA contractor allegedly stole over 500 million documents. The news came out October last year (I guess reporting yet another giant classified data breach was something the media wasn’t too wild about digging into in the election homestretch), but he was just indicted yesterday. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Concision. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Well, with Trump, Modi, Brexit, and now France, there are some similar problems in those countries. What you are hearing is people getting fed up with the ruling class. This is not fascism. It has nothing to do with fascism. It has to do with the faux-experts problem and a world with too many experts. If we had a different elite, we may not see the same problem.”
Nikki Haley’s first speech at the UN blasts Russia over their continued occupation of Ukraine. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Secretary of Defense Mattis was a big hit in both Japan and South Korea.
Quitaly seems increasingly likely.
Is Russia helping the Taliban?
“Meet Denmark’s new anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-tax party.”
Gun sales finally dip. Obviously gun owners don’t feel like NRA-endorsed President Trump is a threat to take their guns, unlike “World’s Greatest Gun Salesman Obama.” It also suggests that those of us in the Vast Right Wing aren’t even remotely worried about that mythical leftwing “resistance” launching an actual civil war. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
Whistle-blower reveals that, yes, the NOAA lied about climate data.
Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) shares some of that vaunted liberal tolerance that’s been sent his way:
American feminists: Rich White Girl Problems. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Texas Senate passes sanctuary city bill.
Tennessee bill: Get off the road, you leftwing lunatic!
Can an average engineer earn more in a lifetime than an average NFL player? The study says yes, but I think the engineering pay average ($125,418) is probably a bit on the high side (I suspect California companies were oversampled).
Anonymous takes down a ton of child porn sites.
Pizza parties for abortion quotas.
Infosys sued for descriminating against Americans. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Twitter lost $457 million last year:
Twitter had decided, in an election year, to surrender control of its platform to a crew of feminist social justice warriors (SJWs) designated the “Trust and Safety Council.” This secretive group of Soviet-style commissars included the notorious anti-male hatemonger Anita Sarkeesian, and soon Twitter began purging conservative accounts…. Jack Dorsey had made his company part of the Democrat Party’s campaign team and four months later, when Twitter banned popular commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, the partisan nature of “Trust and Safety” became transparent. Banning conservatives from Twitter was Dorsey’s contribution-in-kind to the Democrats.
And that’s the 10th consecutive quarter of declining revenue for Twitter.
Twitter suspends a cartoon, presumably for offending SJW types.
FYI: He He Silly Comics are still on Gab. I really should activate my account there…
Marvel to knock it off with the Social Justice Warrior bullshit that’s been costing them sales.
This lawsuit goes to 11.
So Blizzard is worried that the user experience on consoles isn’t shitty enough.
“I didn’t say I had mice in my cellar, I said I had moose.”
Tags:2016 Election, 85th Texas Legislature, 9th Circuit Court, abortion, Afghanistan, Anita Sarkeesian, Anonymous, Baltimore, Berkeley, Blizzard Games, Border Controls, Chelsea Handler, chess, Democrats, Department of Education, EU, Euro, feminists, Gab, He He Silly Comics, Hitler, Italy, Jack Dorsey, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, James Robart, Japan, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Marvel, Milo Yiannopoulos, Minnesota, Muslim, Nikki Haley, Quitaly, rape, Reince Priebus, Republicans, Rotherham, Russia, Scott Adams, Social Justice Warriors, South Korea, Steve Bannon, Sweden, Taliban, Tennessee, terrorism, Texas, Twitter, UK
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 3rd, 2017
It’s been a weird, busy week here at BattleSwarm World Headquarters, including a bunch of job interviews and having my iMac in the shop most of the week. Now I’m back up and running, and even have that OS upgrade (to El Capitan) I’ve been putting off for longer than you would believe (I was running Mac OS 10.6.8).
All of which explains why today’s LinkSwarm is somewhat abbreviated.
Democrats retreat from reality:
“Real people” are what the Democratic Party is sorely missing. By real I do not mean the members of a specific ethnic or religious or cultural or regional group but simply those men and women who are uninterested in the latest trend embraced by the left. For the Democratic Party to win again, it would need to recapture voters in the Midwest and Appalachia who supported Barack Obama twice but felt so disillusioned and dejected by the end of his second term, so utterly unenthused by the bland and corrupt technological illiterate the party nominated to replace him, that they embraced an outsider who promised to upend the system. The Trump era is just beginning, but so far Democrats have been much more willing to retreat into their ideological cubbyholes, or ascribe the election results to (take your pick) James Comey, fake news, or Russian subversion, than to acknowledge the power of nationalism and populism. It’s their loss.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Democrats still don’t get it:
3) The race/class/gender agenda so favored by coastal elites and promulgated by media, Hollywood, and popular culture is an anathema to Middle America, especially its strange disconnect between affluence and the mandate for purportedly progressive equality. Moralistic lectures from wealthy people are not a way to win over the working classes. Rants by Hollywood celebrities and racialist sermons by would-be DNC chairs will not win over 51 percent of the voters in swing states. The twin agents of progressive dogma, the media and the university, are themselves under financial duress, must recalibrate, and have lost support from half the country.
Over at Ace of Spades Open Blogger helps articulate what I call the “How my liberal Facebook friends helped elect Trump” theory:
Let me start by saying that Donald Trump is a reactionary phenomenon and most of us who voted for him are, by definition, reactionaries. And I would argue that most of this is due to social media.
When one looks at the left wing, you can basically separate the institutional left from what I call the soft left. The institutional left consists of the political players and their lackeys, media, academics, street agitators and the like. These are the people that shape the direction, agenda, strategy and tactics of the left.
The soft left are the voters. They don’t give much thought to anything other than their preferences, which the Democrat party caters to very effectively. They are, traditionally, passive players.
Now I’ve understood since the Clinton years that the institutional left was actively seeking to harm me. Historically they’ve primarily done this through policy while other tactics such as demonization, othering, character assassination and lawfare were generally reserved for powerful political players and institutions on the right.
During the Obama years, we saw a radical shift. No longer were the Tom Delays and the Rush Limbaughs of the world the exclusive targets of what Bill Clinton labeled “the politics of personal destruction.” Your average citizen was now in the cross hairs as well.
I first became aware of this during the Joe the Plumber episode when the media relentlessly attacked a citizen simply for asking, on his own property where Barack Obama was a guest, a question that happened to make their Boy-King look silly.
I thought it was a one-off due to the threat that Plumber’s inquiry posed, but soon after the examples piled up–the slandering of the Tea Party movement, targeting of Christian wedding photographers, the harassment of the Memories Pizza owners, etc…
Which leads me to social media, Facebook specifically.
As this dramatic shift occurred, we began to see another shift within social media, one that reached its apex during the 2016 presidential election. That was the politicization of everything, not just by the institutional left, but by the soft left as well.
Where before the voters on the left were mostly passive receivers of Cultural Marxism, they had now become active participants via propaganda, slander, social shaming, and otherizing. This meant that conservatives were now being assaulted on two fronts, both from the institutional left and the soft left.
Every conservative who is active on Facebook knows what I’m talking about. After decades of Americans keeping their politics mostly to themselves, suddenly our feeds were jammed up with political invective.
It wasn’t just directed at politicians. It was personal–a relentless litany of insults and abuse, first at the Tea Party and then Trump supporters. Most of it was generalized, but the message was clear. They held our kind in contempt and didn’t care who knew it. In fact, they seemed to be in a contest to see who could broadcast it the loudest.
Most conservatives were hurt by this. We tend to keep our politics relatively private, both out of decorum and respect for our relationships with people whose politics differ from ours. The message that these public posts sent to us was that our “friends” on the left didn’t respect or value us enough to avoid giving offense.
As someone who has been following politics since high school, I tend not to trust my own instincts what the average voter thinks. I’m simply to close to the subject. My wife, however, is a fairly low-key traditionalist who doesn’t care to immerse herself in that world and so I use her as my political weather vane.
And so I knew that there was a storm brewing when she snapped down her phone over breakfast one day after reading Facebook and told me how sick and tired she was of her friends’ political posts.
“When they say those things,” she fumed, “they’re talking about our family.”
“I’m so sick and tired of being told that I’m a bad person because I disagree with someone’s position on abortion or transgender bathrooms. Who do they think they are to tell everyone what they’re required to believe?”
The hurt had turned to anger and quiet resolve.
The left sought to reprimand the right. What they did was alienate it. Their social media echo chamber only served to steel conservative misgivings about Donald Trump, if for no other reason than we simply couldn’t abide by being pushed around for another 4-8 years.
It’s one thing to know that your friends disagree with you. It’s another to realize that they think you’re stupid, uneducated, a bigot, bully, sexist, jerk and everything that’s wrong with the world.
It’s then that you realize that it’s not just the institutional left that yearns to place its boot on your neck, it’s your left-wing neighbors, friends, coworkers and even family. When you see attacks on regular citizens cheered and reinforced by people on Facebook, your worldview changes radically.
You can no longer believe that they don’t really understand what they’re voting for. It becomes clear that they do–they’re voting to turn you into a second class citizen, an “other” who is not due the same rights and courtesies as their exhalted tribe of Right Thinkers.
We loathed Obama and all the Marxist cockroaches surrounding him. Now we were beginning to loathe his supporters.
Donald Trump had exposed the press for the lying, shameless partisan hacks that they are. But social media exposed the soft left, the formerly passive Democrat party support.
This is why the left never saw it coming. They took over public spaces and shouted down the opposition with personal attacks. Horrified conservatives withdrew from engagement, but we didn’t disappear.
We seethed with resentment and contempt.
And it drove us to the polls, quietly and without fanfare, like assassins in the night.
The left still doesn’t know what hit him. They’re still too busy screeching, insulting, protesting, rioting, and trying to manipulate the rules to ask the simple question: Why?
I’ll tell you why. We see you. We see what you’ve become. And we’re not having what you’ve been dishing out any longer.
The rise of the alt-left intifada. “Just like ISIS and Hamas have found the use of unique hashtags on social media to recruit and radicalize, unique hashtags are now being used by groups here in the U.S. that call for violence, protest, resistance and anarchy. By the use of these unique hashtags with a call to action to a specified group and location, the online mob becomes a real world-mob that can cause damage, disruption and violence, like we just witnessed in Berkeley.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Why Democrats have declared war on Trump: They’re terrified:
I believe it stems from the inability of many Democrats to accept their defeat in November, or to understand that the people of mainland America — that heartland between California and New York — overwhelmingly rejected their elitist vision and collectivist values.
During the campaign, Donald Trump made a number of specific promises to the American people. Over the past 10 days, he has been fulfilling them one by one and the Democrats are tearing out their hair, because they know what this means for 2018.
Democrats are terrified that Trump will succeed.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The war between President Trump and the bureaucracy. “Not only are there two Americas. There are two governments: one elected and one not, one that alternates between Republicans and Democrats and one that remains, decade after decade, stubbornly liberal, contemptuous of Congress, and resistant to change. It is this second government and its allies in the media and the Democratic Party that are after President Trump, that want him driven from office before his term is complete.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
DHS Secretary John Kelly says that the border wall should be finished in two years. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The Other McCain has more on the Berkeley riot.
Milo (congrats liberals, your hate has tuned him into a one-named celebrity like Bono or Cher) talks about being the object of SJW wrath in the center of it:
Mother killed by President Trump’s travel ban is a hoax. She died five days before he even issued the order.
Army selects Sig Saur as it’s new official pistol.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott cuts funding to Travis County over the sheriff’s refusal to enforce immigration laws.
“Women send Gov. Abbott soiled tampons.” Because that’s a dandy way to prove to moderates that feminists aren’t deranged lunatics.
“I Don’t Dress For Men, I Dress For The Sea Witch That Cursed Me.” Parody site, just in case that was unclear.
Tags:Austin, Berkeley, Border Controls, border fence, Crime, Democrats, DHS, Facebook, feminists, Free Speech, Greg Abbott, Guns, John Kelly, Military, Milo Yiannopoulos, riot, Sig Sauer, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Travis County
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
Thursday, February 2nd, 2017
The tolerant left proves itself again, rioting in order to prevent gay conservative Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking.
MILO’s event at UC Berkely was cancelled and the venue evacuated over an hour before it was scheduled to begin, after masked left-wing protesters stormed the venue, overturning police barricades and lighting fires.
The event devolved rapidly after the arrival of a large number of black-masked protesters, who immediately stormed the venue’s barricades, threw fireworks towards police officers, and lit fires.
Multiple fires have been recorded on video, and police are attempting to subdue the crowd with rubber bullets. Police have advised members of the public to stay away from the area surrounding the venue.
Snip.
According to the reporter, police issued a dispersal order to the crowd, declaring it an unlawful assembly, but they have not yet attempted to move the protesters out of the plaza.
In a comment, MILO said “At Berkeley, once the home of the free speech movement, leftists tried to set a building on fire to stop me speaking. Leftist violence is now completely out of control. Soon it’ll be the conservatives that’ll need safe spaces … with armed guards and fire extinguishers!”
Every time a Yiannopoulos event gets cancelled due to leftwing violence, his point that the left is a far greater threat to free speech than the right is only proved further.
Tags:Berkeley, Democrats, Milo Yiannopoulos, riot, Social Justice Warriors
Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 23rd, 2017
The problem with compiling one of these “liberals freak out over Trump” posts is: Where do you stop? Every day since November 8 has brought new examples of liberal anger, violence, smug condescension, projection, virtue signaling, etc. Pretty much everything except but (with a few notable exceptions here and there) serious attempts to grapples with why America has rejected the Democratic Party.
So this segment only covers the lunacy on display this weekend surrounding the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States of America.
A majority of the 230 protesters arrested on Inauguration Day will face up to 10 years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine and will be faced with federal charges of felony rioting. Things have changed, snowflakes… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Among those arrested: Scott Ryan Charney, AKA Scott Green, caught on screen in a Project Veritas sting:
DisruptJ20 protesters dismissed as a joke an undercover Project Veritas video showing activists supposedly planning to shut down Thursday night’s DeploraBall by setting off smoke bombs or the sprinkler system — but D.C. police weren’t buying it.
The 34-year-old man arrested Thursday night for conspiracy to commit assault at the event was among the activists featured in the undercover video released this week, according to court documents made public on Friday.
Scott Ryan Charney was one of the three men caught on camera discussing plans to set off fire alarms and spray Butyric acid — an ingredient commonly used in stink bombs — at the National Press Club, where the party for Donald Trump supporters was held Thursday night. In the Project Veritas video, Mr. Charney is identified as Scott Green, the documents state.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“After protestors got tired of chanting “love trumps hate,” they started chucking rocks at cops.”
At least some pf the protests were a trained show for the cameras:
The protesters waited until the cameras were set up to begin “agitating.”
They organized around the camera positions between D and 7th and K and 12th, and performed for the news crews. We walked through those areas and there was no violence as the cameras were just getting set up after the inauguration events.
These were not just angry people. They were trained, likely paid, agitators. They were coordinated with with press so the crews knew exactly where to put there cameras. The filming angles, shots and probably even the actions of the agitators were staged. And the news ran with their footage over and over again.
The progression from “peaceful” protest, to confronting the police, to vandalism was set for maximum impact so people would focus on this and not the historic events taking place just blocks away.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Want to find a leftwing protest? Look for the burning American flag.
“Ugly women holding up ugly signs expressing ugly sentiments — the #WomensMarch to protest Donald Trump’s presidency is perhaps the clearest explanation of why Donald Trump is president. The all-out feminist crusade mounted on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign reminded millions of Americans of why they hate feminism. Yet it is clear today that Democrats have learned nothing from their defeat.”
“Soros Has Links to 56 ‘Partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
This one has to be seen to be believed: Man sitting down on plane gets asked whether he’s going to D.C. to protest. He says he’s going to celebrate democracy. His smug, entitled, condescending Trump Derangement-suffering liberal seatmate precedes to make such a scene harassing and attacking him for his beliefs that security actually escorts her off the plane, to the applause of fellow passengers. With video. Really, you have to see this to believe it.
Some tweets:
Tags:Democrats, feminism, George Soros, riot, Scott Ryan Charney, Social Justice Warriors, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington D.C.
Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 20th, 2017
Welcome to Inauguration Day, when Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the Forty-Fifth President of the United States of America! Celebrate the momentous day with a Friday LinkSwarm.
Trump plans to hit the ground running with a number of executive actions his very first day on the job. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Trump started planning his presidential run right after Romney lost. In fact, Trump registered his “Make America Great Again” slogan six days after Romney’s defeat. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Clinton Family Friend: “Yes, I will be at the review stand at the inauguration and I am going to kill President-elect Trump… what are you gonna do about it Secret Service?” Secret Service: “Enjoy these complimentary handcuffs.”
Much of the hatred against Trump is pure class bigotry:
I don’t think reasonable differences of opinion on the one hand, and the ordinary hypocrisy of partisan politics on the other, explain the extraordinarily stridency, the venom, and the hatred being flung at the incoming administration by its enemies. There may be many factors involved, to be sure, but I’d like to suggest that one factor in particular plays a massive role here.
To be precise, I think a lot of what we’re seeing is the product of class bigotry.
Snip.
Until last year, if you wanted to experience the class bigotry that’s so common among the affluent classes in today’s America, you pretty much had to be a member of those affluent classes, or at least good enough at passing to be present at the social events where their bigotry saw free play. Since Donald Trump broke out of the Republican pack early last year, though, that hindrance has gone by the boards. Those who want to observe American class bigotry at its choicest need only listen to what a great many of the public voices of the well-to-do are saying about the people who votes and enthusiasm have sent Trump to the White House.
You see, that’s a massive part of the reason a Trump presidency is so unacceptable to so many affluent Americans: his candidacy, unlike those of all his rivals, was primarily backed by “those people.”
Snip.
This isn’t just because so large a fraction of working class voters generally backed Trump; it’s also because Trump saw this from the beginning, and aimed his campaign squarely at the working class vote. His signature red ball cap was part of that—can you imagine Hillary Clinton wearing so proletarian a garment without absurdity?—but, as I pointed out a year ago, so was his deliberate strategy of saying (and tweeting) things that would get the liberal punditocracy to denounce him. The tones of sneering contempt and condescension they directed at him were all too familiar to his working class audiences, who have been treated to the same tones unceasingly by their soi-disant betters for decades now.
Much of the pushback against Trump’s impending presidency, in turn, is heavily larded with that same sneering contempt and condescension—the unending claims, for example, that the only reason people could possibly have chosen to vote for Trump was because they were racist misogynistic morons, and the like. (These days, terms such as “racist” and “misogynistic,” in the mouths of the affluent, are as often as not class-based insults rather than objective descriptions of attitudes.) The question I’d like to raise at this point, though, is why the affluent don’t seem to be able to bring themselves to come right out and denounce Trump as the candidate of the filthy rabble. Why must they borrow the rhetoric of identity politics and twist it (and themselves) into pretzel shapes instead?
Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
“In donated shoes and suit, a Trump supporter comes to Washington.”
Follow-up:
How ObamaCare helped destroy Medicare.
Physicians across the country have been firing Medicare patients; and according to a late 2015 study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 21% of physicians are not taking new Medicare patients.
Much of this trend is based on stiff penalties and financial disincentives from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and 2015’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization (MACRA) Act.
MACRA in particular is completely mystifying.
The law created a whopping 2,400 pages of regulations that Medicare physicians are expected to know and follow.
Many of the rules are debilitating.
For instance, MACRA changed how physicians can be reimbursed for their Medicare patients by establishing a bizarre set of standards to determine if a physician is providing “value”.
As an example, if a patient ends up in the emergency room, his or her physician can incur a steep penalty.
This explains why my step-dad was dropped by his doctor.
The healthcare system has been broken to the point that physicians now have a greater incentive to fire their Medicare patients than to treat them.
City journal has an extensive profile of George Soros.
Soros’s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen—and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic. “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” Soros has declared, “is the United States.” Ergo, that constitutional republic must be weakened and its allies degraded. The Sorosian world order—one of open borders and global governance, antithetical to the ideals and experience of the West—could then assume command.
Snip.
n the United States, Soros bankrolls a broad range of political and cultural causes. One is to destabilize the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. In 2015, he dedicated $650,000 for the purpose of shaping Pope Francis’s U.S. visit, using left-leaning Catholic groups to promote gay marriage, abortion, and physician-assisted suicide. Leading the effort was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, a self-professed Catholic. Bill Donohue, outspoken president of the Catholic League, vainly called for Podesta’s dismissal. “He is fomenting revolution in the Catholic Church, creating mutiny and is totally unethical,” Donohue said. “He is the front man for George Soros to create a host of phony anti-Catholic groups. These are not just bad comments, as some have suggested. These words are orchestrated, calculated and designed to create fissures in the Catholic Church.”
Another Soros favorite is Black Lives Matter, the radical protest group dedicated to the proposition that police are inherently racist. Working the streets with incendiary rhetoric, at odds with the truth about black-on-black crime, BLM has helped foster “depolicing,” as Heather Mac Donald describes it, in high-crime urban areas. In 2015, after days of rioting in Baltimore in response to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, an Open Society Foundations memo excitedly commented that “recent events offer a unique opportunity to accelerate the dismantling of structural inequality generated and maintained by local law enforcement and to engage residents who have historically been disenfranchised in Baltimore City in shaping and monitoring reform.” Three straight acquittals of police officers involved in the matter left the prosecution’s case in shreds but made no difference to the Open Society Foundations. It has donated at least $650,000 to Black Lives Matter and pledged more assistance to antipolice factions across the country. These activities prompted the father of one of the Dallas police officers killed during a Black Lives Matter protest to sue Soros (along with other individuals and groups) for inspiring a “war on police.”
(Hat tip: John Tierney at Instapundit.)
I always thought George Soros was running Black Lives Matter, and now here’s some proof: “BLM leader lives in home owned by Soros’ Open Society board member.”
Don’t look now, but the Clinton/Sanders rift is still roiling the Democratic Party. Sadly, neither side seems to be willing to give up on Social Justice Warrior victimhood identity politics. (Hat tip: Hot Air, which notes “Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that they stopped speaking for most Americans over the past eight years, and started lecturing at Americans instead. The party got wrapped up in the progressive-academic social-justice agenda to the point that the party made diversity into an obsession at the expense of the real economic issues facing voters outside of the coastal enclaves and college campuses.”)
One college Democrat has had enough:
A National Councilman for the College Democrats of America is jumping ship and considering joining the Republican Party just before President-elect Trump takes the oath of office.
Michael J. Hout, a junior at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told Campus Reform that he believes the contemporary Democratic Party is no longer the best place for an ideological moderate like himself, saying the Party is pivoting towards more extremist rhetoric and appealing more to those who often do not even consider themselves Democrats, such as socialists and independents.
Snip.
“This strategy of catering to the whims of those for whom identity politics matters more than anything else, and of allowing for even anti-white, anti-male rhetoric to find a home within the party, is a large part of its untenable strategy moving forward,” Hout explained, predicting that “it will continue to cause Democrats to lose, time and time again.”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Former California Democratic Party chair argues that Democrats should move their headquarters to Detroit to reconnect with middle class voters. I agree, but for a different reason: So they can be forced to see the results of their handiwork firsthand every day.
A glimmering of a clue: “U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, breaking ranks with other Democrats who are trashing President-elect Donald Trump and boycotting his inaugural, is imploring his party’s rank and file to figure out why middle American voters went Republican in November….’Folks, we lost their trust and being mortified and mystified about their vote doesn’t bring it back.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Tolerant left gets another Milo speech cancelled.
Ignore the shame mob and they’ve got nothing else to throw at you:
While [Steve] Harvey tries to use his celebrity for something selfless and useful and while the Talladega College marching band gets the world stage to show off the results of its hard work and school spirit, think of their detractors as the latter sit behind their cell phones and sling names like “coon” and “Uncle Tom”[i] in between posting their twerking and ghetto fight videos.
Ouch! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Joe Bob Briggs takes aim at the “angry white male” concept.
Numero Three-o: Why is anger as a voting incentive limited to white males? Don’t black men get angry? When Louis Farrakhan holds a rally, why doesn’t Yahoo News say “Angry Black Men Gather in Chicago”? Why aren’t there any Angry Latino Men or Angry Chinese Men?
Numero Four-o: More specifically, how do you explain the fact that the Angry White Men who voted for Trump in 2016 are the same white men who voted for Obama in 2008? When they vote for Obama they’re not angry, but when they vote for Trump it can only be because they’re enraged hicks? Gogebic County in Michigan is 92 percent white and hadn’t voted for a Republican since 1972—until this election. The counties in southwestern Wisconsin, all heavily Democratic, went for Trump after a strong Obama vote in 2008 and 2012. Eastern Iowa, Democratic since 1988, went for Trump. Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, which is frequently used as the very definition of “working-class,” went for Republicans for the first time since 1988. Why are all these people classified as “angry” now, but in 2008, when they were angry at George Bush, they were just “voting for change”? Could it be, just perhaps, maybe, they feel betrayed by the Democratic Party? If we’re gonna call them angry, let’s define what they’re angry about.
Then again, fake outrage over non-issues is the stock in trade of the center-left.
Four reasons why nobody trusts the media. Including that nothingburger of a New York Times hit piece on Rick Perry that relied on no facts whatsoever.
For all that CNN flack global warming, they certainly don’t act like they believe it. In addition from moving CNN headquarters from Atlanta to New York City, “Time Warner, the company that owns CNN, just invested in SEVEN new buildings located in Hudson Yards, a part of Manhattan just a block or two away from the water. An area that, according to its own CNN, will soon be underwater, and therefore utterly and completely worthless.”
Speaking of CNN, they just hired Valerie Jarrett’s daughter to report on Trump’s Justice Department. “Valerie Jarrett’s daughter quietly joined CNN in September as a reporter in the network’s Washington bureau. She came to CNN with no experience in journalism.” Evidence suggests CNN has naked contempt for both objectivity and those not in the anointed liberal overclass. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.”
Post-Brexit, an economic boom in the UK. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
UK PM Theresa May aims at a “hard Brexit.” Andrew Stuttaford (and I) wonder why she isn’t going for the ‘Norway option’ of leaving the EU but staying in the European Economic Area.
Marine Le Pen cues up Frexit. “The euro has not been used as a currency, but as a weapon—a knife stuck in the ribs of a country to force it to go where the people don’t want to go.” I disagree with Walter Russel Mead: The EU, as currently constituted, is incapable of being reformed. Reform is impossible without scraping the European Commission, which is impossible without scraping Maastricht, which would scrap the EU. Better to start again from scratch or go back to just the common market.
Jihadwatch’s Robert Spencer had a minor piece at The Hill on why Lindsay Lohan’s (rumored) conversion to Islam was a bad idea. I wasn’t even going to link it. The The Hill took it down due to political pressure. Now I have to.
As one of his last acts, Obama commutes the sentence of convicted Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera.
And it’s not just terrorists: Obama commutes the sentences of four South Texas druglords:
Four family members who ran one of the largest cartel smuggling operations in south Texas had their life in prison sentences commuted and will likely be returning to this border city from where they ran their criminal empire. One of the main destinations that the criminal organizations delivered drugs to was Chicago, Illinois.
This week, outgoing President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 209 convicted criminals and pardoned 64 others. The majority of the convictions were from drug trafficking or production offenses.
Four of those convicted criminals who had been sentenced to life in prison will be released by May 17. They ran a criminal organization made up of close to 80 men and women who worked with Mexico’s Gulf Cartel to move between 100,000 to almost 750,000 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. during a 10-year period. The drugs were moved into Houston and then distributed to Atlanta, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas.
According to court records obtained by Breitbart Texas, brothers Cesar Moreno Sr., Eduardo Moreno, Lazaro Moreno, and Luis Moreno along with other relatives and friends had been at the helm of a large-scale drug distribution operation based out of the border city of Roma, Texas.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
A tweet:
Brian Krebs deduces the author of the Mirai worm.
Seattle kills bikeshare program. If it can’t make it in Seattle…
3D TV is dead again. Good. 3D always struck me as an annoying gimmick, even in IMAX.
“Woman stabbed man 9 times after he wouldn’t commit to relationship.” I’m pretty sure the guy made the right call there… (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Man gets head start on the epic douchebag Olympics. “28-year-old James Allen is facing a charge of driving while intoxicated. [He] drove a $385,000 Ferrari off a bridge in Westlake, went airborne for 40 feet and crashed into the woods while speeding on Friday night.” (Hat tip: Iowahawk’s Twitter feed.)
Oakland Raiders file papers to move to Las Vegas.
“It’s come to my attention that some of you Hollywood types are calling yourselves ‘the Resistance’. Stop. Now.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Graduate student sues after being kicked out of school for not supporting left-wing causes.
Scott Adams being unable to comment on his own blog due to a software bug has to be the most Dilbert thing ever…
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Andrew Stuttaford, Austin, Brexit, Brian Krebs, California, CNN, Crime, Democrats, DeRay Mckesson, Detroit, Donald Trump, EU, European Economic Area, Foreign Policy, George Soros, Hollywood, Internet, Iowa, James Allen (Austin), Jihad, Joe Bob Briggs, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Las Vegas, Laura Jarrett, Lindsay Lohan, LinkSwarm, Marine Le Pen, Media Watch, Medicare, Michigan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Mirai worm, New York Times, Oakland, Oakland Raiders, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Pennsylvania, Rick Perry, Rio Grande Valley, Robert Spencer, Roma (Texas), Scott Adams, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Theresa May, Trump Cabinet, TV, Valerie Jarrett, Wisconsin
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 14th, 2017
Here’s an interesting piece on the threat Trump poses not only to the media’s political pieties, but to the entire edifice of politically correct moral authority they had spent decades constructing:
If all his other cultural blasphemies did not finish off Donald Trump, his grab-them-by-the-pussy line, in the overwhelming opinion of the liberal media, would. That it did not might suggest that many cultural certainties are a lot less firm than most of the media and culture industry thought. Twenty years (or so) of rule tightening about how we talk about sex, gender, race and our multicultural society—what is disparagingly called political correctness, or, more inclusively, the liberal point of view—was put up for review by Trump’s election.
The ongoing expressions of shock on the part of the cultural establishment—expressed on a daily basis by The New Yorker, New York magazine and The New York Times, anything, apparently, with New York in its title—reflect their fears that the development of a more careful, regulated and corrected world is about to be undone. That the unapologetic white male has returned. You could hardly find a more threatening and throwback version of that than Trump—a rich, voluble, egomaniacal, middle-aged pussy hound. To write him you would need some combination of authors like Norman Mailer, Terry Southern, Harry Crews and Gore Vidal, all notably out of step with current cultural norms.
The culture norm is as starkly confronted as the political norm with proof that it’s not speaking to the lives of a sizeable part of the nation: that same pussy talk that shocked cosmopolitans turns out not to be of much concern, and even to express a casual day-to-day reality, for many Americans. Media fragmentation has created all sorts of thriving niches that accommodate the views of eager consumers, lessening the need to speak to a broader, more difficult-to-reach audience—the once-great mass market.
Snip.
Instinctively or by canny plan, Trump converted the conservatives’ parochial and rate-limiting culture war on abortion and gay marriage into a much more visceral campaign against the political pieties of sophisticated America, with Trump as the ultimate revenge on upper-middlebrow cultural life. It’s the mannered and effete against the profane and immediate.
For Trump, Hillary Clinton, in her guardedness and suspicion, in her inability to express herself with any openness and spontaneity, summed up out-of-touchness, struggling to attract crowds of a few hundred, while he was pulling tens of thousands.
Trump’s attacks on the media served to say that his language, his expressiveness, his ability to connect with the audience was more potent than the media’s. (In an interview with Trump shortly after his nomination was secure, he told me he was sure of victory when for the first primary debate, the usual audience increased almost tenfold because of his presence: “I’m more entertaining than the media.”) The media, in thrall to the culture establishment—and signed on to its cultural rules and concerns (hence its Pussygate shock)—was inauthentic and he was the real thing. For “CNN sucks”-screaming Trump supporters, CNN sucks for, in fact, the same reason that it sucks to everybody else—it’s phony and slavish—but Trumpsters were suddenly saying it, screaming it. (Liberals took this as an attack on free speech; on Trump’s side, the view was that the media stifles real speech.)
This attack on careful, orderly, prescribed culture is what happens when the culture stops talking about real things—at least what a significant part of the country regards as real and important. Or, it is—and certainly is inevitably thought to be by those cultural standard bearers under attack—a sinister onslaught against enlightenment itself.
In the view of the latter camp, Steve Bannon, one of the masterminds of the Trump campaign, and the new administration’s “chief strategist,” becomes a preeminent retrograde white male bugaboo. The non-Trump culture can only see him as a threat, and sore thumb, and, without the means to describe or recognize anybody too far outside its circle, a racist, misogynist, anti-Semite. And yet, not that long ago, Bannon would have been a perfectly recognizable figure, even an admirable one, an ex-military and up-from-working-class guy, striving, through three marriages and various careers, to make it, but never finding much comfort in the establishment world, wanting to be part of it, and wanting to explode it at the same time—a character for a writer like Kevin Morris. An American man’s story. Republican politics is filled with such strivers—Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove—great characters reduced to violations of liberal sensibilities.
Indeed, the election reengages a gender battle that many people on the New York side of the Trump gap had thought was mightily going in only one direction. The vestigial and primitive American man, unreconstructed, baying at the moon (probably high on opiates)—the alt-right in the liberal view—voiceless for many years (or, anyway, wise to shut up), now had Donald “Let me be your voice” Trump. The obvious message of his sudden resurgence of course is that he didn’t go away or reform: He was just shut out. Without any place in upper-middlebrow culture, except as an occasional enemy of reason or subject of scandal, there was no bridge to who he was—no humanity left for him.
Hence, while the liberal media was helping to eject that ultimate white man devil figure Roger Ailes from Fox News for real and perceived sins against women (it seemed not to much matter which), the country was making a pussy-grabber president. The gap between HR departments and the real world is a story obviously not being told very well. A story whose ambiguities and nuances could not now be written—nor its real language uttered—because the cultural establishment sees no ambiguities and nuances and, for sure, doesn’t allow those words. But meanwhile, a good part of the country—unable to communicate with the cultural establishment—sees only hypocrisy.
Read the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Tags:2016 Election, Donald Trump, Media Watch, Political Correctness, Social Justice Warriors
Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, January 13th, 2017
Time to extract more pure wheat from chaff!
Glenn Greenwald says Democrats will go to any lengths to avoid blaming themselves for their debacle:
I really haven’t experienced anything even remotely like the smear campaign that has been launched by Democrats in this really coordinated way ever since I began just expressing skepticism about the prevailing narrative over Russia and its role that it allegedly played in the election and, in particular, in helping to defeat Hillary Clinton. I mean, not even the reporting I did based on the Edward Snowden archive, which was extremely controversial in multiple countries around the world, not even that compared to the attacks now.
And the reason is very, very obvious, which is that it has become exceptionally important to Democratic partisans to believe that the reason they lost this election is not because they chose a candidate who was corrupt and who was extremely disliked and who symbolized all of the worst failings of the Democratic Party. It’s extremely important to them not to face what is really a systemic collapse on the part of the Democratic Party as a political force in the United States, in the House, in the Senate, in state houses and governorships all over the country. And so, in order not to face any of that and have to confront their own failings, they instead want to focus everything on Vladimir Putin and Russia and insist that the reason they lost was because this big, bad dictator interfered in the election. And anyone who challenges or anyone who questions that instantly becomes not just their enemy, but now, according to their framework, someone who’s actually unpatriotic, that if you question the evidence, the sufficiency of the evidence to support this theory, that somehow your loyalties are suspect, that you’re not just a critic of the Democratic Party, you’re actually a stooge of or an agent of the Kremlin.
In fact, Greenwald is all over this week’s LinkSwarm, saying that the U.S. “deep state” is at war with Trump:
For months, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump. In August, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell announced his endorsement of Clinton in the New York Times and claimed that “Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” The CIA and NSA director under George W. Bush, Gen. Michael Hayden, also endorsed Clinton and went to the Washington Post to warn, in the week before the election, that “Donald Trump really does sound a lot like Vladimir Putin,” adding that Trump is “the useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”
It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.
Whatever one’s views are on those debates, it is the democratic framework — the presidential election, the confirmation process, congressional leaders, judicial proceedings, citizen activism and protest, civil disobedience — that should determine how they are resolved. All of those policy disputes were debated out in the open; the public heard them; and Trump won. Nobody should crave the rule of Deep State overlords.
Yet craving Deep State rule is exactly what prominent Democratic operatives and media figures are doing.
One need not buy all of Greenwald’s analysis of geopolitics or Trump to conclude that his analysis of the current alliance between Democrats, the media and the intelligence community is essentially correct. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Borepatch, who is a real life computer security expert, is not impressed with the Russian hacking claims:
My take is that several state actors certainly hacked Hillary’s email server for years and years, and silently read all her communications. Probably more than one state actor penetrated the DNC email system for several years.
It’s plausible than an insider leaked the DNC emails – some BertieBro IT Admin type who saw how the sausage was being made and who was smart enough to cover his tracks while pointing clues towards Russia.
Bottom line, this is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. We know that something happened, but we don’t know who did it, and what they say in the report doesn’t change that.
Borepatch, in turn, points to this detailed analysis of the security on both Hillary’s email server and the DNC:
At this point, we can largely dispose of Hillary’s Hack. It was an open book to all comers and at least one was Romanian (and sharing with friends) and not Russia. However, I’d say it was almost certain that at some time a Russian intrusion happened. The name of the server was obvious. The location insecure. The operating system and protective layers a joke. Frankly, I’d expect them to be “in” the same day they first looked at it. Which means something like 8 years ago. So why didn’t things leak then?
Because the Russians Are Not Stupid. A fundamental of spycraft is you don’t expose sources and methods, you use them to collect intel for your use, not publication. I suspect they enjoyed a near real time email feed from the Secretary Of State for years, in silence. This argues for email dump to be someone other than them. My personal muse would be an NSA guy, aghast at what was in evidence. Like a Snowden, but not willing to give up the $1/4 Million salary… He (or she…) would have all the requisite skilz to pull it off and leave no finger prints, access to PRISM, and lots of neat toys to work with. Though more likely would be the underpaid I.T. guy Hillary had set it up who was making a backup one day and dropped a load… But I digress.
The bottom line on Hillary is we know she kept a full copy (found on Huma’s Laptop with the Wiener…) and that it was around until she had her lawyers erase it. We know it surfaced in full at the time the laptop went to the FBI, and in parts before that. We know at least one of her hackers was found (though he had likely not leaked it) and that he said he had a doomsday copy for safety. He wasn’t a very good hacker, so that shows lots of good ones walked right in and snagged copies. Assigning source of any Hillary leaks is going to be an exercise is “ME ME MEE!!! PICK MEEE!” with a dozen hands up in the room.
More from Guccifer 2.0 himself: “I have totally no relation to the Russian government. I’d like to tell you once again I was acting in accordance with my personal political views and beliefs. The technical evidence contained in the reports doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. This is a crude fake.” (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)
“The opposition research firm that hired a former British spy to dig up dirt on Donald Trump is the same shady outfit that was hired by Planned Parenthood to put a positive spin on videos showing the sale of baby parts.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Our new Secretary of Defense sounds serious about defeating the Islamic State. “We should try to shut down its recruiting, shut down its finances, and then work to fight battles of annihilation — not attrition, but annihilation — against them; so that the first time they meet the forces that we put against them, there should basically be no survivors.”
Speaking of which: “Islamic State publishes video of toddler executing prisoner on playground.”
House Republicans are already laying the groundwork to repeal ObamaCare.
News media buries story of Jeff Sessions bankrupting the Klu Klux Klan in Alabama because it doesn’t fit their narrative. (Hat tip: Dierctor Blue.)
Mexican illegal aliens are already self-deporting in advance of Trump’s inauguration. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The problem with rule by experts:
The problem that we are faced with, and what the American people seem to be rebelling against, are the “experts” who seek to influence government policy in ways voters are either opposed to or at the very least find ineffective and expensive.
To put it bluntly: those experts have screwed a lot of shit up. Obamacare, American foreign policy, the war on drugs, domestic environmental policy, the economy…the list of issues is seemingly endless. The American people were told for at least the last eight years that the smart set was in charge, and things would be just dandy if only we allowed the “experts” free rein. The problem is that there are a lot of things that may seem smart on paper but which just won’t work when forcibly applied to the citizens of 50 separate states, with 50 separate economies, and 50 distinct voting bases, and this assessment assumes that those implementing policy actually have America’s best interests as a free republic at heart.
This leads us to the real heart of the matter: liberty. The Washington political and bureaucratic classes have no Constitutional right to force the “solutions” to any of these problems on their fellow citizens. The health insurance “problem” is not a national problem insofar as there is no Constitutional right to health insurance (or even healthcare), and the answer to what problems there are in healthcare in Texas are very probably not the same as the answer for New Hampshire or Oregon. The federal government institutes regulations constantly affecting the economy that have no Constitutional basis. There is no Constitutional basis whatsoever for banning or regulating any drug at the Federal level, and yet we’re told we have a national “opioid epidemic” that demands a federal solution. Foreign policy experts are undoubtedly necessary, but our foreign policy, when any logic or reason can be discerned in it at all, certainly doesn’t seem to be guided by any experts in the field. There is even a very good possibility that actually fixing any “problem” at the federal level is viewed as bad for business, because without the problem to solve there would be a lot of unemployable experts.
In short, the American people don’t have a problem with experts or intellectuals. What they have a problem with is incompetence, and it is just a fact of life that the larger and more remote the government and bureaucracy become, the more incompetent and unaccountable they will be.
Thanks Obama. “93 percent of police officers are concerned about their safety on the job; 72 percent are less willing to stop suspicious characters; and 75 percent report increased tension between cops and the black community.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
U.S. troops sent on permenant deployment to Poland. Given that Poland joined NATO in 1999, it’s a surprise it took this long. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
About half the EU has been cheating on the 3% deficit ceiling fiscal discipline rule half the time. Only Finland, Estonia, Luxembourg and Sweden have never broken the rule. And Poland, France and the brexiting UK have actually violated the rule more than Italy and Ireland. Once again: Austerity hasn’t been tried and found wanting in the EU, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames “terrorist exchange rates” for attacking his country. Fun how that happens when you ruin your own country… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Social Justice Warriors already deterring people from the “Women’s March on Washington.” See, they were all set to flaunt the peacock feathers of their leftwing virtue, only to be told “they had a lot of learning to do.” Because there’s nothing more fun than being lectured about how you’re a racist when you’re not. Welcome to Red State America, liberal white women! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“DNC Chair Candidate Forum to Be Held at Anti-Israel Restaurant” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Germany court rules that an attempt to burn down a synagogue is a “justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.” You know, I think I’ve seen this movie before…
Heh: “Intolerance at Berkeley as Faculty Demand Gay Immigrant Stay Off Campus.”
More: Berkley Social Justice Warriors dox the hosts of Milo’s speech. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
1. “CEO Raises Salaries to $70K for EVERY Employee” 2. ???? 3. Wrecked company. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Teach women not to lie about rape.
Social Justice Warrior drama at the Free Software Foundation. “‘Developer’ Leah Rowe has been making unhinged, outrageous claims of harassment and bullying on behalf of her anonymous friend who was let go by the FSF. She then stole the Libreroot project from the community, locked it down away from the other devs, and made a unhinged claims of wrongdoing by the FSF and two employees. She has provided no evidence of any of these claims and as she is a post-modernist, we’re supposed to substitute her feelings for any facts as being equivalent.” The amazing thing is that, for once, FSF head honcho Richard Stallman (who is somewhere on the continuum between “true software visionary” and “fanatic lunatic no one wants to deal with”) isn’t the person at fault for the drama…
“An Arizona Department of Public Safety officer has survived an attempt on his life after a passing motorist shot dead a highway sniper who took aim at the trooper after stopping to assist an individual in a rolled vehicle.”
Also from Arizona: Naked woman steals police car, goes joyriding.
Clockboy’s lawsuit dismissed.
William Peter Blatty, RIP.
What the hell? YouTube takes down Legal Insurrection’s channel at the behest of anti-Israeli activists.
Slate won’t even delete their big mistakes:
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, anti-semitism, Arizona, austerity, Border Controls, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, EmailGate, Estonia, EU, European Debt Crisis, Finland, Foreign Policy, France, Free Software Foundation, Glenn Greenwald, Guccifer 2.0, Guns, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Jeff Sessions, Jihad, Leah Rowe, Legal Insurrection, LinkSwarm, Luxembourg, Media Watch, Milo Yiannopoulos, ObamaCare, PIIGS, Poland, police, rape, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Republicans, Russia, Slate, Social Justice Warriors, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, UK, YouTube
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 30th, 2016
Welcome to the last LinkSwarm of 2016! I have a lot of bigger posts gestating for next week (including a huge one on Texas’ own municipal pension crisis), so in the meantime, enjoy these:
Newt Gingrich on The New York Times on Trump:
The New York Times is having a hard time understanding President-elect Donald Trump.
Trumpism is a process and a philosophy of action and leadership so different from the normal Washington systems that the Times just seems incapable of understanding it.
Furthermore, there is an Orwellian quality of deliberation misinformation and disinformation to the Times’ coverage.
President-elect Trump IS different. In fact, he is unique. No other American has won the presidency without serving in elected office or being a general in the military. No other billionaire has been elected to the presidency. No one has ever used social media as effectively. No one has had the scale and frequency of rallies. No one has understood that a 20,000-person rally with every person using his or her smartphone to send out photos and videos creates an audience the size of MSNBC. No one else has been dramatically outspent in both the primaries and the general election and won.
You would think that a person with these achievements would be worthy of a certain respect and of a curiosity about how he thinks and what he is trying to do.
Furthermore, Trumpism IS different. It isn’t traditional conservatism. It is an entrepreneurial, pragmatic, energetic, constantly evolving and constantly learning and improving model.
If The New York Times were a serious newspaper it would start by recognizing that Trump is a remarkable leader and that this is a new phenomenon. Then it would try to explore and understand the differences between the old order and the world Trump is trying to create. Then it could describe the context of the President-elect and educate its readers accurately in an informed, coherent manner.
Unfortunately, The New York Times is trapped within the obsolete establishment mindset which was wrong about Trump throughout the primaries, then was wrong about Trump throughout the general election, then was wrong about who would win. This elite mindset has learned nothing. It is now enthusiastically being wrong about the transition. All of this is great practice for the paper to be wrong about the new administration.
Obama’s spiteful anti-Israel UN resolution has united Republicans and divided Democrats. Good job! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
But for those thinking that Obama destroyed the Democratic Party singlehandedly, don’t forget that George Soros also played a big part.
All Democrats babbling about how Hillary won the popular vote should look at this dissection of how the Obama coalition crumbled in 2016. Which includes this gif:
Bribary and the border patrol. (Hat tip: Director Blue, which notes “just in time for the election.”)
Lunatic anti-#GamerGate tranny Brianna Wu (AKA John Walker Flynt) is running for congress from Massachusetts. Good. Every Democratic Party donor dollar that goes to that Wu is a dollar not backing a candidate that can actually win. (Background on Wu for people coming in to the story late.)
Nine Islamic State supporters arrested near Washington, D.C. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Interesting analysis of the media pushing the Russians did it meme. “Here’s a trick when reading New York Times articles: when they switch to passive voice, they are covering up a lie.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
And all the evidence they ignored to draw “the Russians did it!” conclusion. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Syrian migrants in Germany kick a baby. “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?” Disclaimer: Not these guys:
Lessons from 5,000 gun fights. Including “Reloads are almost vanishingly insignificant factors in gunfights” and “He who puts the first shot into meaty bits on the other guy, wins.”
Bloomberg-backed initiative to require all gun purchases (including private-citizen-to-private-citizen transfers) to undergo an FBI background check passes in Nevada. FBI: Nope, we’re not doing that. We’re not authorized to. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
When did feminism become so anti-motherhood? It’s been a while, actually. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
What Americans have spent things on over the last 75 years.
Thomas Sowell retires from writing columns. At 86 years of age, and after this year, who could blame him?
Another day, another fake hate crime, this time from Denton, Texas. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Liberal Muslim: “I voted for Trump due to ObamaCare.” Liberal college professor: “FUCK YOU, GO TO HELL.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) And still more details from The Other McCain.
The return of violent flash mobs. The is one of several similar incidents in the last week. Judging from video and mugshots, this round of violence, like the last, is disproportionately committed by black teenage males and, as in previous incidents, this fact is studiously avoided in the MSM reports on these incidents. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Gun control loses at the ballot box, as well as the box office. “For every dollar spent on advertising, Miss Sloane brought in just 21 cents in ticket sales.”
Italy comes out in favor of censorship. I think we know how this movie ends…
Oregon’s government owns your pond, comrade.
And speaking of Oregon, a college professor gets suspended over a Halloween costume she wore at her own private party.
Hit numbers for online #NeverTrump conservative publications? Not so hot.
Santa43.
Tags:#GamerGate, #NeverTrump, 2016 Election, 2018 Election, Border Controls, Brianna Wu, Crime, Denton, Donald Trump, Europe, feminism, flash mob, Germany, Guns, hate crime hoax, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Italy, Jihad, John Walker Flynt, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Nevada, New York Times, Newt Gingrich, ObamaCare, Oregon, Social Justice Warriors, Texas
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 27th, 2016
George Ciccariello-Maher, a “radical political theorist, and currently Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University,” tweeted that all he wanted for Christmas “is White Genocide.”
Naturally, now he’s claiming that it’s all a joke, though John Sexton at Hot Air has his doubts:
So the professor is claiming his tweet was intended to mock the alt-right. But if it was intended as mockery, why did he issue the follow-up tweet about the Haitian massacre? Clearly that wasn’t meant as a joke. It seems his first reaction was to defend the tweet as justifiable. Then a couple hours later he said it was satire. Which is it?
Given that Ciccariello-Maher has now made his Twitter feed private suggests that he realizes he’s really cocked it up.
Drexel University doesn’t seem to be taking it as a joke:
Given that Ciccariello-Maher seems to be a big fan of communism, the political movement responsible for more genocide than any other in the 20th century, I too have my doubts about the sincerity of “satire” claim. But just imagine if a university professor had called for “black genocide,” then tried to pass it off as a joke. As Iowahawk noted:
While this is America, and any lunatic can say incredibly stupid things without being thrown in jail, that doesn’t mean that Drexel University is required to keep him in their employ, especially when he’s violated university policy:
If Ciccariello-Maher were a tenured professor, they’d probably blow it off and seep it under the rug. But since he’s a mere Associate Professor, Drexel may decide it’s less painful to cut ties with him…
Tags:Communism, Drexel University, education, genocide, George Ciccariello-Maher, Social Justice Warriors, Twitter
Posted in Communism, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »
Friday, December 23rd, 2016
I hope everyone has plans for the Christmas weekend, even if they’re only “eat as much food and watch as much football as humanly possible.”
Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Suspect in Berlin jihad truck attack shot dead. I was going to do one of my increasingly irregular jihad updates, but Stuff and Things got in the way.
One possible benefit of a Trump presidency: a restoration of federalism:
America owes President Barack Obama an enormous debt of gratitude for showing how truly dangerous the federal government can be when our Constitution’s checks and balances start failing. With the active collusion of congressional Democrats, President Obama’s presidency has been one long series of body blows to the separation of powers that has protected our democracy since the Founding.
The results have been stark. Never has a president trampled so much on the prerogatives of Congress. Obama’s executive orders, suspending parts of our immigration laws and even his own prized Obamacare, have been sheer usurpations, going far beyond even the breathtaking delegations of legislative authority granted by the brief Democratic supermajority in Congress in 2009–10.
Sad to say, Obama’s trampling on the prerogatives of state governments has been even more unprecedented, and potentially far more damaging. His agencies’ “Dear Colleague” letters, addressing such sensitive issues as local school districts’ bathroom policies and the standards by which institutions of higher education review claims of sexual assault, have wrested away the core functions of state leaders, local boards, and even administrators.
The separation of state and federal authority is one of the most essential principles of our Constitution. It explains the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers as much as the division between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. If we lose the separate and independent existence of state governments, we will lose our Constitution.
And Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is walking point on the issue.
Trump’s election marks the overthrow of the media: “This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.”
Ten ways Obama broke the American system. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Outside California, Trump outdistanced Hillary by 1.41 million votes, 47.8% to 46.6%. As I have noted before, Hillary’s support was so geographically narrow that she won a popular vote majority in only 13 states (plus DC), the fewest of any major-party candidate since Bob Dole.”
Remember how Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison looked like a shoe-in for DNC head after Howard Dean withdraw from the race? Yeah, not so much. Although some of the dirt (like his ties to Louis Farrakhan) are decades old, there’s enough of it that lots of Democrats are getting cold feet about his candidacy:
Despite the support of the first couple of populist progressivism — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — the controversy has emboldened the opposition: Last week, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a buddy of President Barack Obama (who called him “wicked smart” last week), jumped into the race. The effort to boost Perez, paradoxically and to Ellison’s irritation, is led by operatives allied with the country’s first black president, who view the Minnesotan as too tied to the identity politics they think cost Hillary Clinton the election.
“We like Keith,” one longtime Obama political ally, who was pushing Perez, told me in November. “But is he really the guy we need right now when we are trying to get all of those disaffected white working-class people to rally around our message of economic equality?”
Texas officially removes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
“Feminism Is a Synonym for ‘Shut Up.’
A major goal of feminism is to silence opposition. Because their ideology cannot withstand informed and articulate criticism, feminists therefore requires a dishonest vocabulary of jargon that functions to disqualify and discredit their opponents. A man expressing disagreement with a feminist will invariably be accused of “sexism” or “misogyny,” and if he persists in his criticism, he will be accused of “harassment.” What these terms actually mean — other than as pejorative labels, deployed to smear the movement’s enemies — is seldom examined. It is quite often the case that men who ostensibly support feminism engage in abusive behavior toward women (e.g., Jian Ghomeshi), whereas men who oppose the movement are branded “misogynists” for no other reason than their willingness to state their criticism honestly and openly.
“New York State Employee Demands Death For Trump Supporters, Still Employed.” Bonus: Openly calling for Republican women to be raped and cheering the death of American soldiers. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of “Wounded Aleppo Children”.
Funny how “hate crime” hoaxes are the fake news the media wants to keep reporting:
n all four cases, there were reasons for the media to doubt the stories. In all four cases, the narrative of white and/or conservative and/or Trump-supporting and/or bigoted “people of privilege” persecuted and/or harassed and/or discriminated against some variation of minority. In all four cases, the hoax was reported before confirmed and later it was revealed by law enforcement or conservative media that we had all been duped.
Here’s the core of the problem. Mainstream media has a narrative agenda that has failed miserably. They did everything they could to hand the White House and Senate to the Democrats. In the past, that’s all that needed to happen; if the media united behind a cause, they could bend the will of the people. In the case of the 2016 election, their agenda backfired, so they now have two choices. They could learn their lessons and return to a bygone day when reporters actually reported and commentators made absolutely certain their perspectives would not be confused with news.
Predictably, mainstream media has chosen option two. They’re doubling down. The lesson they think they learned from their mistake is that they can’t allow a sliver of doubt to creep in. They actually think they were too easy on Donald Trump. They think they didn’t push enough of their narrative on Senate races. They think they now need to promote their agenda in full force, working overtime if necessary.
The media lies again.
Baby Boomers increasingly having their Social Security garnished to cover their student loans.
Snow falls in the Saraha.
Scott Adams on cognatize blindspots and worst-case-scenarios on global warming.
Obama to world: (10,000 word speech all about him.) World: (Ignores him). President Elect Trump: “Hey! Don’t do that! World: “Yes, Mr. Trump.” (Hat Tip: Chuck DeVore on Twitter.)
Of course, the entire issue is a final attempt for Obama to stick it to Benjamin Netanyahu out of personal vindictiveness, never mind how badly it might affect U.S. and Israel foreign policy. Because Obama is a spiteful, petty little creep.
Know who Obama doesn’t hate? Cocaine dealers. “President Barack Obama has commuted the sentences of 657 cocaine dealers since Aug. 3, a Daily Caller analysis reveals. That represents nearly 80 percent of the commutations the president has given since August.” I’m a “legalize it, regulate it, tax it” sort of guy, but the fact that admitted cocaine user Barack Obama would commute more cocaine dealers over mere mere marijuana users or dealers is more than a little odd. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Snopes Co-Founder Accused Of Embezzling Company Money, Spending It On Prostitutes.” And as Fark would say, “the rest he just wasted.” Bonus: Alleged prostitute is now allegedly a Snopes staffer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Navy decision to use PC titles reversed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
F4-J retired from flying. From aerial target to ground target. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
This is the sort of story headline writers live for: “Pensioner pleases neighbours with his massive flashing cock.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Cthuloid horror devours the Pope.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Aleppo, Benjamin Netanyahu, Berlin, California, cocaine, Crime, Cthulhu, DNC, Egypt, federalism, feminism, Germany, Global Warming, Israel, Jihad, Keith Ellison, LinkSwarm, media bias, Media Watch, New York, Obama, Obama Scandals, Planned Parenthood, Scott Walker, Snopes, Social Justice Warriors, Social Security, Texas, Tom Perez
Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
