Happy Good Friday! More Democrat voting fraud, Iran manages to shoot down a couple of planes, more California fraud under Governor Hairgel, Commies gonna commie, Microsoft behaving (and performing) badly, Pakistan’s nefarious actions backfire (yet again), the best rifle for a militia, and a list of bad actors in the job market.
This is Democrat Joel Caldwell of the âCoalition for the Peopleâs Agenda,â a Fulton County ballot-harvesting NGO chiefâcaught on tape admitting it all.
Democrats are stuffing ballot drop boxes with fraudulent votes, and itâs all caught on videotape. He also admits this is how they rigged the 2020 election and why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID.
âą They pay people to illegally ballot-harvest.
âą They bribe ballot counters and election officials.
âą They forge and falsify ballots.
And the Atlanta mayor straight-up stole the election.
He says it all himselfâon tape.
Joel Caldwell:
âThatâs what happened in 2020, âcause thatâs when the ballotsâthey started stuffing them ballots and people stuffing them ballots, and they got videotape of them, but nobody talks about it. Thatâs why Trump was making that big deal about it, because you see it on videotape. Itâs like, come on. We see the man pull up and put a hundred ballots in this box. You know? You canât do that sh*t.
So groups were paying people to do just thatâdrop off ballots.â
He continues: Thatâs why Democrats fight to the death against voter ID laws.
Joel Caldwell:
âThatâs why the Republicans are always trying to fight the ballotâyou know, thatâs the whole argument, because Republicans are the ones who put out that kind of stuff, so they want voter IDs and stuff. Democrats are fighting voter ID laws. Itâs a two-sided thing. Thatâs what theyâre fighting over. Republicans are trying to say, âHey, look, we got proof of this sh*t.â
And the Democrats are like, well, we donât want voter ID laws, and we want to make it where you can just drop your ballot offâonline voting and different things they try to come up with.â
Iran manages to shoot down both an F-15 and an A-10 on the same day. Two of the three downed airmen have already been rescued. It’s worth noting that neither of those planes are remotely stealthy.
Earlier this week, Jose Medina-Medina, an illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration caught and released at the border, murdered Loyola University freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina-Medina had previously been arrested at least twice in Chicago, yet was released by local authorities, thanks to their sanctuary policies. According to reports, he approached her, raised a gun, and opened fire as she tried to flee. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Democratic Partyâs response has been nothing short of horrific.
Snip.
The reaction from Democrats to Gormanâs death has been so despicable that Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) unloaded on his own party over it.
“Why can’t we just talk about that life lost?” Fetterman told Fox Newsâs Bill Hemmer. “Why can’t we just acknowledge that this is serious, serious failure?”
Fetterman also invoked the Laken Riley Act, the legislation requiring the detention and deportation of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Fetterman was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote for it â a fact he’s clearly not going to let his colleagues forget.
“I think only seven or eight Democrats even voted for [the] Laken Riley [Act],â he said. “Why can’t you just agree that if you’re breaking the law and you’re already here illegally, deport them? I just don’t understand.”
He continued, “Tragedies like what happened to that young woman, they are gonna continue to happen,” he said. “That’s beyond common sense.”
Hemmer pressed him on why Democrats can’t seem to get there, and Fetterman gave an honest, if uncomfortable, answer.
A Just the News investigation has detailed how a wealthy Marxist activist best known for the funding of a global financial network both inside the U.S. and around the world has extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party-linked organizations inside of China.
China-based entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham lives and works in Shanghai, â which the American businessman now calls home â where he runs his network of pro-CCP news sites and other China-linked endeavors. Singham, who sold his ThoughtWorks tech company in 2017, has used the money to fund openly communist endeavors worldwide. Just the News can show that inside of China, Singham and his network collaborate with an array of Chinese propaganda sites, Chinese universities, and other Chinese groups committed to advancing the CCP.
Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the Chinese release of a report that sought to denigrate U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Helping the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping to create a “new world order”
Singham admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed âinternational rules-based orderâ â which he called a âlieâ â and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi Jinping achieve a ânew world orderâ more favorable to China. This report and the conference where it was introduced helped expose the extensive CCP-linked network in which Singham is ensconced within China.
Just the News reviewed hundreds of pages of Chinese business documents and U.S. tax records, English and Chinese language news sites, Chinese government websites, and more in an effort to provide the most comprehensive look yet at Singhamâs operations from his perch in Shanghai.
Also: “Singham colludes with CCP to rewrite history of WWII to advance Xi Jinpingâs ‘new world order.'”
The wealthy Marxist businessman behind a sprawling far-left network is collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party to denigrate the Allied actions in World War II in an effort to upend the U.S.-led international system and to advance Chinese leader Xi Jinpingâs ânew world order.â
China-based businessman Neville Roy Singham leads and funds a global financial and activist network that operates inside the U.S. and many other countries, and while he rarely grabs the spotlight for himself in public speeches, he did so in November through the release of a report that denigrates U.S. and Allied Power contributions to WWII.
Singham directly admitted during a CCP-backed forum in Shanghai in November that he had written the 174-page report to combat the U.S.-backed âinternational rules-based orderâ â which he called a âlieâ â and to help the CCP and its longtime strongman Xi achieve a ânew world orderâ more favorable to China.
The wealthy communist activist summed up the crux of his WWII argument thusly: âAs we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War (WAFW), the Western powers spin their familiar tale: U.S. industrial might and British resolve saved the world from fascism. This is a lie. The truth burns in the numbers: while the Western powers calculated their economic advantage, the Soviet and Chinese peoples paid in blood. Fascism was defeated not by Anglo-American capital but by socialist leadership and mass heroism â a brilliant strategy from Moscow and Yanâan, unbreakable resilience from workers and peasants who refused to surrender, and a sacrifice that saved humanity from slavery.â
Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California’s state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings.
Snip.
We conducted interviews with public officials, fraud experts, and political figures, and reviewed hundreds of pages of government reports, state audits, criminal indictments, and other public records on California fraud. From unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that, on the governor’s watch, fraudsters, scammers, and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxpayers.
In this firehose torrent of news, less attention than is proper has been paid to the fact that we’re finally going back to the moon. Or, technically, around it, since they’re doing the figure flyby of the dark side. They’re already halfway there…
Though the mainstream media will undoubtedly portray them as âmostly peaceful,â much of what we saw at the âNo Kingsâ protests Saturday was anything but, whether through actions or symbols used during the demonstrations.
Weâll start off with New York City, where the Communist flags were in full effect:
BREAKING: Leftists in NYC chant âThere is only one solution, Communist revolutionâ at the No Kings rally.
Communist flags at the NYC âNo Kingsâ protest pic.twitter.com/bIh2UiwkDI
â NJEG Media (@NJEGmedia) March 28, 2026
Snip.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D) was pledging solidarity with the Somali community:
âWe will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans. Hereâs our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans, your grandchildren will still be here when that orange clown is in the dustbin of history.â
I guess its too much to ask a Democrat governor to stand with actual Americans. Plus rioting in Denver.
Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballot received up to five days after Election Day to be counted.
The law appears to defy three federal laws that require that federal elections be held the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. The question is what did Congress mean by Election Day. Was it a day, five days later, a month later. Does Election Day mean election season.
The 5th Circuit ruled against Mississippi, which brought the case to SCOTUS. It could have profound impact on Democratsâ mail-in ballot strategy if ballots must be received by election official by Election Day.
I discussed the case and oral argument, plus redistricting and the Equal Protection Projects challenge to discriminatory NY State education practices, with Jesse Kelly, who tweeted out the portion regarding NY State: “It appears Kathy Hochul is defying the Supreme Court.”
Pam Bondi is out as attorney general, President Trump announced Thursday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.
âPam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,â Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. âPam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in Crime across our Country, with Murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900.â
âWe love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,â he added.
The announcement came just one day after Bondi was at the White House to attend Trumpâs address to the nation on the Iran war. She had also accompanied Trump to the Supreme Court to watch oral arguments in a birthright citizenship case.
The handling of the Epstein files and the lack of progress on indicting anti-Trump conspirators like James Comey were suggested as reasons for Trump letting her go.
Target has gone from pushing the radical transsexual agenda to being boycotted by Randi Weingarten for not condemning ICE. I haven’t shopped there once since they started boosting the tranny agenda, but maybe it’s time to go back again…
Pakistani is enjoying a nice, rich dinner of blowback.
For decades, the Islamabad establishment has played a dangerous game, nurturing the Taliban as a strategic depth agent against India. Today, this plan backfires, and the resulting explosion of violence threatens to send a fresh wave of illegal immigration toward the already strained borders of the European Union.
The âopen warâ declared by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif marks the end of a thirty-year illusion. The apprentice has not only left the master. He has now turned openly against him. The March 16 strike on Kabul was the moment masks fell. When Pakistani warplanes hammered a rehabilitation centre in the heart of the Afghan capital, the âIslamic brotherhoodâ of the two neighbours officially ceased to be.
Islamabad claims it is hunting the TTP â the Pakistani Taliban who find sanctuary under the wings of their Afghan cousins. Kabul denies it. The result is a cycle of diplomacy-in-name-only, where the only language spoken is the language of the air strike, the AK-47 and the suicide vest. This is the reality of the post-American vacuum.
Critics of the Biden presidency, watching from America and Europe, see the vindication of their most cynical instincts. They warned that the vacuum left by the 2021 withdrawal would be filled by chaos. They were right. Just look at Bagram Airfield. It once was the crown jewel of American power. It has now become a trophy in a war between two states the West can no longer control.
While the worldâs eyes are fixed on the Iranian plateau, South Asia is burning. The regionâs most volatile border is no longer Kashmir. It is the frontier where the Talibanâs jihadist agenda meets Pakistani nuclear-armed desperation. How safe is the world when a nuclear power goes to war with a ghost? The answer is terrifying. Pakistanâs military capacity dwarfs that of the Taliban, yet the Taliban have time, resolve and a complete lack of accountability.
While the Pakistani economy teeters and its domestic security implodes with a second insurgency front up against Baloch separatists in the south, the Afghan Taliban are playing the long game. They see a Pakistan that is overextended and a West that is exhausted. They are not interested in ceasefires brokered by Qatar or Turkey. They are interested in survival and the expansion of their ideological reach.
Almost nobody talks about it, but we are witnessing the âGaza-ficationâ of the Durand Line. The same knowhow of displacement and grazing the land is being applied to the tribal areas. Millions of thousands of people have already been displaced. But the humanitarian cost is only a footnote in a larger, more brutal calculation.
For Islamabad, this is an existential fight against the TTP thorn in its side. For Kabul, it is about defending the sovereignty they fought for twenty years to reclaim. Neither side can afford to blink. The light of the old order is fading. The era where the Pakistani military could manage Afghanistan like a colonial fiefdom is over. The trust is dead.
Trumpâs âAmerica Firstâ doctrine means that if Pakistan wants to fight this war, it will do so without a blank check from the Pentagon. The bitter truth for the region is that old security guarantees are gone. We are entering an era of fluidity, where borders are written in fire. The âspecial relationshipâ between Islamabad and Kabul has become hatred. The Taliban have proven they can survive an American occupation. Surviving Pakistanâs aggression should not be that hard.
And then there are all of those “refugees” Euroelites seem bound and determined to import. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The attack involved a sophisticated mix of long-range unmanned systems, likely between eight and fifteen primary strike drones supported by smaller decoys designed to saturate Russian air defenses. These drones traveled approximately one thousand kilometers from Ukrainian territory, penetrating deep into Russian airspace and reaching the Gulf of Finland near the Estonian border. Evidence suggests the use of fixed-wing kamikaze drones optimized for endurance and precision. Ukrainians also utilized small prop-planes modified to fly as unmanned aircraft, mounting droppable Fab bombs on the bottom, which could be dropped on target, in addition to the craft being used as a kamikaze platform.
Also:
Ukraine has delivered a decisive strategic blow just as Russia expected to capitalize on soaring oil prices driven by the Iran war, but got its export system crippled instead. With unimaginable 40% of its oil export capacity wiped out, ports burning for days, and follow-up strikes continuing, the question is no longer whether Russia can recover quickly, but whether Ukraine will strike again before Russia has the chance to do so.
After over four years of war, Ukraineâs military says itâs testing an exoskeleton in the field that can help soldiers more easily load artillery and run at speeds of up to 12 mph over sustained periods. The tests would mark one of the first known examples of exoskeletons used on the front lines of an active military operation.
A Facebook video shared late last week by Ukraineâs 7th Air Assault Corps shows a handful of soldiers putting on the device while inside of a muddy artillery trench. The device itself wraps around a soldierâs waist and legs and is supported by a back brace. The military claims that it can reduce overall load on leg muscles by 30 percent. In practice, that means the devices should make it easier for soldiers to pick up and load heavy artillery rounds. Each round can weigh upwards of 100 pounds, depending on the particular caliber used. Since a soldier on the battlefield may load several dozen of those runs every day, all of that weight adds up and can increase the odds of injury or fatigue.
Not quite Heinlein’s powered armor, but we’re getting there…
Paxtonâs office has now proposed detailed rules to implement the statute. The proposal was submitted to the Secretary of State on March 16 and published in the Texas Register on March 27, triggering a public comment period before the rules can be finalized.
The draft rules flesh out how SB 17 will work in practice, with the Office of the Attorney General as the central enforcement hub for the ban.
One of the most significant features is a new duty to report suspected violations.
Under the proposal, anyone involved in facilitating a real estate transactionâsuch as mortgage lenders, title insurance companies, property insurers, appraisers, and licensed real estate professionalsâwould be required to report any suspected SB 17 violations to the attorney general.
Complaints would have to be submitted either through an online complaint form on the OAGâs website or by mail to a designated address. Failure to report may subject entities to enforcement action once the rules are in place, potentially deputizing the real estate industry to help police foreign adversary land deals.
The rules would also place a tight lid on information that reaches Paxtonâs office.
All complaints, civil investigative demands, and related materials submitted to or issued by the OAG would be treated as confidential and not subject to public disclosure, except when disclosure is required by law. That means Texans may see enforcement actions and lawsuits, but not necessarily the complaints and background investigation files that triggered them.
Wither Canada? “The 177,000 signature threshold has now been passed, officially clearing the requirement for an Alberta independence referendum on October 19th.”
John Cleese: “The British do not like the kind of diversity that intends to take over Britain and kill any infidel who does not convert to Islam.”
Weirdly, Microsoft is also saying that “Microsoft says Copilot is for entertainment purposes only, not serious use â firm pushing AI hard to consumers and businesses tells users not to rely on it for important advice.” Which is ironic, since right now its website touts Copilot as “AI built for work.”
Stephen Green: And the first piece of software to break on the moon mission? Microsoft Outlook.
And speaking of Microsoft woes, “Microsoft closes worst quarter on Wall Street since 2008 on AI concerns.”
Speaking of bad actors in the job market: “Outrage as Oracle makes thousands of foreign-worker requests amid layoff bloodbath.”
As thousands of Oracle employees awoke on Tuesday to an email informing them they were being laid off, the workers likely didnât know the tech company had been busy trying to hire foreign staff.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, Oracle filed for roughly 3,126 petitions to employ H-1B workers in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Employers must submit the paperwork when seeking to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations like technology. Some 436 of those petitions were filed this year alone.
Amazon, which in January said it would axe 16,000 corporate employees, has filed for some 2,675 H-1B petitions during the same two-year fiscal period. That came on top of news in October that the retail giant was axing 14,000 corporate workers.
What’s the best gun for a militia? No surprise that three different gun experts (including Ian McCollum) all pick the AK-47.
Critical Drinker finally watches Mr. Inbetween, and really likes it. It’s been on my radar for a while, but there doesn’t seem to be a US DVD or Blu-Ray release of it, and I don’t have any streaming service.Â
Greetings, and welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! This one will be huge, since I didn’t do one last week. Biden pardons his crackhead/bagman son, Holman is serious about deporting illegal aliens, Trump taps some Texans,
Did you hear that, after swearing up and down that he would never pardon his son Hunter Biden, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden? “Joe Bidenâs pardon covers the time period from January 1, 2014 to December 1, 2024, relieving his son of any crimes he âmay have committed or taken part inâ over an 11 year period.” Wow, it’s almost like Joe was running a pay-for-play foreign influence peddling operation and Hunter was his bagman…
Not only is Donald Trump returning to the White House, not only do Republicans have 53 Senate seats and about 220 seats to control the House of Representatives, but Republicans now control almost 55 percent of state legislative seats nationwide. Republicans won control of the Michigan state house of representatives, and the Minnesota state house of representatives shifted from a 70â64 Democratic advantage to a 67â67 tie. (Rough year for Tim Walz all around.) Twenty-three states have Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures, just 15 states have the Democratic equivalent, and twelve states have divided governments.
If the election of Trump came as a shock to Democrats, it is perhaps even more shocking that, at least for now, a solid majority of Americans are giving the incoming president the benefit of the doubt. The latest Economist/YouGov poll found 51 percent of Americans have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Trump, the highest level going back at least as far as the start of his first term as president. For a long, long stretch, that number was around 40 percent.
This weekend a CBS News poll found that 59 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the transition. Perhaps this figure reflects that Trumpâs announced cabinet picks have something for everyone. For hawks, thereâs Marco Rubio. For doves and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, thereâs Tulsi Gabbard. For those who see the Covid vaccines as âa gift from God,â thereâs the surgeon general nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat. For those who hate vaccines and erroneously believe they cause autism, thereâs Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For those who love dogs, thereâs attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, who adopted a dog abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. For those who hate dogs, thereâs Kristi Noem.
That CBS poll also found that âthere seems to be a sense of exhaustion, as fewer than half of Democrats feel motivated to oppose Trump right now.â And who can begrudge Democrats exhaustion after an election cycle that arguably started a week after the midterm elections? Saul Alinsky warned in Rules for Radicals, âA tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.â
Evidently nine years of Trump Derangement Syndrome can be exhausting…
You’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table. I mean we’ve been looking for fugitives. There’s over a million illegal aliens in this country who got due process at great taxpayer expense, were ordered removed by a judge, and failed to leave.
We’ll be moving on to those who may not be a criminal, may not be a fugitive, but they entered this country illegally, which is a crime. And they’re here illegally and they’re not off the table.
Denver mayor Mayor Mike Johnston says he’s going to resist the enforcement of immigration law in his city. Homan: Get ready to go to jail.
Speaking of people who should be going to jail for blocking immigration enforcement: “California Allegedly Threatens Police Officers Over Deportation Compliance. CA mayor: The State of California âis threatening to take pensions and charge police officers with felonies if they comply with federal deportation laws.â
Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, claimed in a Monday post on X that the State of California âis threatening to take pensions and charge police officers with felonies if they comply with federal deportation laws. While the Trump administration is working to enforce immigration laws, California seems intent on blocking these efforts.â
Wells makes it clear that El Cajon, a city of approximately 100,000 people located 17 miles east of San Diego, is not a sanctuary city and that his police officers âare being put in an impossible position.â
Maybe Homan can start preparing an indictment against Gavin Newsom.
It’s insulting when members of the working class, which the Democratic Party has lost entirely in our lifetimes, to insist the economy is doing great. A 12-pack of Bounty is $40. Rich folks don’t feel that…
I think telling them that the Nasdaq is gangbusters is further insulting. It’s insulting, the biggest unforced error of the Biden administration, by far, was the border. To tell people that it’s not a problem is insulting. For the working class to see incoming migrants getting welcome bags, debit cards, and motel rooms is probably insulting as well …
They handed out camo hats that said ‘Harris-Walz’ the Democrats were kind of charmed by that. Their party has gone quinoa and the rest of America is eating at Cracker Barrel … it was an ironic use of something that millions of Americans put on their heads to start their day every day.
Harvard Universityâs celebrated pollster John Della Volpe has a message for the new leader of the Democratic Party: Move fast with proven solutions for voters who are hurting, or the party is doomed.
âMillions of Americans arenât shifting right â theyâre walking away. Theyâre abandoning a Democratic Party and democratic system they believe abandoned them first. This isnât realignment â itâs abandonment,â the pollster known for his surveys of the youth vote said.
In a memo to the incoming leader of the Democratic National Committee posted on his Substack, âJDV on Gen Z,â Della Volpe was blunt in his assessment of the nation and the 2024 election. The bottom line for the Democrats, he said, is that it needs a massive reinvention and focus on kitchen-table issues and less on wokeness.
âThis post-election analysis should not start with the question about moving left or right. It must begin by filling the vacuum of unaddressed daily struggles before it gets filled with something else. The typical response will be to fill that vacuum with new policies, messages, or words. But thatâs precisely backward. Before we can talk about solutions, we need to rebuild trust. Before we can restore trust, we need to listen. Really listen,â he wrote.
Corporate media outlets have buried, downplayed, or otherwise shelved a new study which reveals that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies cause people to become ‘hostile’ – essentially seeing racism where none exists.
The new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers University found that people exposed to DEI talking points about race, religion and gender form integroup hostility and authoritarian attitudes towards others.
“What we did was we took a lot of these ideas that were found to still be very prominent in a lot of these DEI lectures and interventions and training,” said NCRI Chief Science Officer Joel Finkelstein, a co-author of the study. “And we said, âWell, how is this going to affect people?â What we found is that when people are exposed to this ideology, what happens is they become hostile without any indication that anything racist has happened.”
Researchers exposed 324 participants to two sets of reading material; a racially-neutral text about corn, or the writings of race-baiters Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo. The participants were then exposed to a racially neutral scenario in which a student was rejected from college.
President Donald Trumpâs return to power earlier this month was remarkableâamong other reasonsâfor the breadth of the coalition that powered it. As Armin Rosen has documented for Tablet, by many measures Jews swung toward Trump, particularly in pivotal precincts. But they were just part of a minority-group wave: Exit polling and precinct analysis suggest large increases in the Black, Hispanic, and Asian vote for Trump.
Although Trump did not win outright majorities of any of these groups, Harrisâ underperformance still marks a remarkable shift. The president slandered as a racist and antisemite outperformed prior Republicans among minorities of all types: Why?
One easy answer, of course, is the uniform rightward swing of the electorate, fueled by anger over inflation, an uncontrolled border, and Harrisâ barely hidden far-left views. And future elections will probably see some bounce back.
But this argument misses the longer trend: Minority voters, once Democratic stalwarts, have been inching toward the GOP for decades. As the Financial Timesâ John Burn-Murdoch has showed, the GOP share of the nonwhite vote has been rising on and off since the 2000s. That mirrors trends among Jews: Over the past several elections, the Democratic share of the Jewish vote has shrunk, from around 80% in the 1990s and 2000s to around 70% in the 2010s and 2020s.
As the Jewish demographer Milton Himmelfarb famously wrote, Jews earn like Episcopalians, but vote like Puerto Ricans. If Puerto Ricans and Jews are both moving right, though, then maybe theyâre moving right for similar reasons. Explanations that rely on Democratic antisemitism or affection for socialism are special pleading. The neater explanation is that the same social forces are pushing Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and other minority voters toward the Republicans.
Why are minority groups moving right? As a body of political science argues, the answer is the breakdown of the social institutions that kept them voting for group over ideology. Among Jews, a similar, albeit reversed, phenomenon might be happening: The collapse of Jewish communal life might be giving Jews permission to break from the old ideological consensus.
If thatâs true, though, it has profound implications for the political futureâof the Jews and everyone else.
In a sense, the question is not why minority voters are moving right, but why they have stayed left for so long. After all, Black and Hispanic Democrats are more moderate ideologically than their white Democrat peers. And the ideological gap between white and nonwhite Democrats has only grown in recent yearsâimplying Black and Hispanic voters should be more willing to swing between parties. Yet in 2020, for example, 60% of Black voters who identified as conservative voted for Joe Biden, compared to 9% of white conservatives. Why?
The conventional explanation for this phenomenon is what political scientists call âlinked fate,â the tendency of group members to see their individual well-being as linked to the overall well-being of the group, and so to consider group interest in making electoral decisions. Even if a Hispanic voter would prefer conservative policies, for example, she may still vote for the Democrats under the theory that Hispanic group interest is served by doing so. Such thinking is most common among Black Americans, but has been shown to explain Latino voting behavior as well.
The sense of linked fate, though, is in part socially constructed. Minority voters donât consider their fates to be linked in a vacuumâthey reach that conclusion thanks, in part, to the work of social institutions. In their recent book Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, political scientists Ismail White and Chryl Laird look specifically at Black political identification, including with the Democratic Party. They argue that Blacksâ lopsided support for Democrats is driven by social pressure from the broader Black community.
âThe steady reality that Black Americansâ kinship and social networks tend to be populated by other Blacks,â White and Laird write, âmeans they persistently anticipate social costs for failing to choose Democratic politics and social benefits for compliance with these group expectations.â They show in survey evidence and experiments that Black voters change their behavior when around other Black peopleâa proxy for the effect of social pressure in general. This âsocial constraintâ strategy helps ensure that Black voters vote their racial identity, even when doing so is apparently at odds with their ideology.
Though it may sound unusual, this is a perfectly rational political strategy for minority groups in a large, pluralistic democracy. Being able to deliver lopsided group margins is one way a minority groupâs leaders can curry favor with a party. Indeed, White and Laird identify tendencies toward social constraint among âSouthern whites, white evangelical Christians, trade union members, and certain localized racial and ethnic groups.â Social constraint is not necessarily an exceptionâto the extent that any group has its own political interests, it has a reason to suppress dissent in the ranks.
Can the âsocial constraintâ model explain Jewish voting patterns? As Iâve argued previously, one way to understand Jewsâ strong support of Democrats is our unusually strong ideological commitments. Since at least the 19th century, Jews in America have been more left wing than the general public. And they associate those values with their identity. When asked by Pew what things were most essential to being Jewish, a majority of respondents listed âworking for justice/equalityâ as a key component of their identity, with an even larger majority among the non-Orthodox.
But ideology, like partisanship, can be socially constructed. Jews have a strong sense of in-group identity, with 85% saying they have âa great dealâ or âsomeâ sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Most Jews have at least some close friends who are Jewish; 29% say all or most of their close friends are Jewish. And Jews are highly concentrated geographically, with roughly half of American Jews living in the New York, Los Angeles, Miami, or Philadelphia metropolitan areas alone.
Collectively, those facts suggest thatâlike Blacks, and other ethnic minoritiesâJewsâ âkinship and social networks tend be populated byâ other Jews. Even in the non-Orthodox world, a Jewish personâs interactions with both fellow Jews and Jewish institutions may serve to reinforce his ideological commitments. After all, what right-leaning Jew has not been once or twice told his views are a shanda?
If social pressures produce in-group conformity among minority voters, then it stands to reason that they produce ideological conformity among Jews, too. But what happens to that conformity when the social pressures start to break down?
If you wanted to pack the history of the 21st century thus far into a single sentence, you could do worse than â20th-century social institutions collapsed.â As political scientist Robert Putnam has repeatedly argued, Americans have seen a steady decline in âsocial capital,â the network of interpersonal relationships that provide them informal means of individual security and advancement. The families, churches, and community groups which sustained that capital are in more or less continuous decline. That decline, though, has meant not just a reduction in the available stock of social capital, but also in those institutionsâ ability to shape behaviorâin their ability to impose social constraint.
Decades of unwillingness to enforce immigration laws were driven by the desire of some for cheap, controllable labor, and of others for a new client class that would shift political power to the Democratic Party. The culmination of that process under Biden became entwined with the identity of the party and its ideological activists who sincerely believe that national borders are an expression of racism and that turning away foreigners who want to move here illegally is immoral. The belief in unlimited, lawless immigration has become a litmus-test issue for the activist left, like hostility to the existence of law enforcement itself.
And because most voters naturally consider that insane, we now see broad public support, including among first-generation migrants, for âmass deportationâ and an electoral mandate for what the president-elect has promised will be the âlargest deportation effort in American history.â
Restoring credibility after decades of deceit will take time, cost money, get tied up in courts, and inevitably involve an unfortunate measure of human suffering, the images of which will be ruthlessly exploited for political purposes by the media and the interests they serve. But itâs neither the Manhattan Project nor the D-Day landingsâitâs simply a matter of enforcing existing law consistently and without apology, which is the legal and popular mandate the American people have given the incoming administration.
Herewith a look at whatâs likely to be involved.
When your tub is overflowing, you first turn off the tap. Mass impunity at the border will be the first thing to stop, because thereâs no point to deporting people if itâs easy for them to return.
What drove the crisis under Biden was a policy of catch-and-releaseâmillions of border-jumpers were simply waved into the country by a Border Patrol that the current administration turned into the equivalent of Walmart greeters. The illegal migrants told their friends back home, and more came. Human-trafficking cartels turned it into a massive business.
There are two ways to end catch-and-release: 1) detain illegal border-crossers until they can be repatriated, or 2) if they make an asylum claim, ensure that they wait across the border in Mexico for their court dates.
Option 1 will require a significant increase in spending and logistical assistance from the U.S. military. The Biden administration has consistently reduced DHSâs detention capacity, closing government-owned facilities and canceling contracts with private firms and county jails. That pattern will have to be reversed.
Option 2 is cheaper and easier, but requires Mexicoâs consent, because the country has no obligation to take back non-Mexican migrants, which account for the majority of attempted crossings. In late 2018, this option was instituted as the âMigrant Protection Protocolsâ (commonly known as âRemain in Mexicoâ); Mexico went along with it after President Trump threatened punishing tariffs on its exports to the U.S.
It was successful almost overnight. In January 2021, Biden canceled the program.
Despite the fact that Mexicoâs new president is more of a conventional leftist than her predecessor, she is likely to be cooperative with the new Trump administrationâs demands to restore Remain in Mexico, given that the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement is up for review in 2026. Access to the U.S. market is far more important to Mexico than any rhetorical solidarity with foreigners using its territory as a means of entering the U.S.
These and other measures (such as âsafe third countryâ agreements requiring migrants to have applied for asylum in one of the countries they passed through before reaching the U.S. border) will succeed in stabilizing the border. But what about those already here? Sending back people whoâve just recently snuck across the border is one thing, but finding and removing those already in the interior is something else altogether.
The Biden administration has released into the country close to 6 million foreigners with no legal right to enter, and another 2 million are believed to have eluded the overwhelmed Border Patrol, the so-called gotaways.
They join a large illegal population already here, though because of constant churn in the illegal population (people returning home, dying, or obtaining a green card), these numbers canât simply be added to prior estimates. Census Bureau data suggests there are now at least 14 million total illegal aliensâgiven the imprecision of such estimates, the real number could easily be 15 or 16 million, though higher numbers bandied about by some Republican politicians of 30 or 40 million are implausible.
The opponents of immigration enforcement want to make this seem like an insuperable problem. The American Immigration Council, the think tank of the immigration lawyersâ lobby, has estimated it would cost close to a trillion dollars over a decade to return the illegal population to their home countries.
Vice President-elect Vance addressed this counsel of resignation and surrender by likening the problem to âa really big sandwich. Itâs 10 times the size of your mouth. How are you possibly going to eat the whole thing?â
His answer:
you take the first bite and then you take the second bite, and then you take the third bite. Letâs start with the first million who are the most violent criminals, who are the most aggressive. Get them out of here. First prioritize them, and then you see where you are, and you keep on taking bites of the problem, until you get illegal immigration to a serviceable point.
Starting the deportation effort by focusing on criminals is both politically astute and simplest to manage. The Biden administration has reduced deportations of criminals by 67% compared to Trump I, so thereâs nowhere to go but up. Criminal aliens are picked up every day by police in the normal course of their duties for all manner of nonimmigration crimes. Taking them off the hands of local law enforcementâeither as an alternative to prosecution or after theyâve completed their sentencesâis a no-brainer.
Read the whole thing. The people who say it’s impossible are simply lying because they don’t want it done.
“Californiaâs fast food industry shed more than 6,000 jobs after Democratic lawmakers passed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage for most fast food and counter service restaurants in the state.”
President-elect Donald Trump has begun to fill out his cabinet with new names coming each week, and two recent nominations have strong ties to Texas.
Nominated to be Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Trump has tapped former member of the Texas Legislature, Scott Turner.
Turner served as a member of the Texas House from 2013 to 2017 â he challenged then-House Speaker Joe Straus, but ultimately lost his run for the gavel.
Trump in his first administration appointed Turner to head the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council.
The 2025 President’s Budget has requested $72.6 billion for HUD and $185 billion over 10 years for âaffordable housing investments.â
Another recent Texan to be nominated for the upcoming Trump cabinet is President and CEO of America First Policy Institute Brooke Rollins.
A native of Glen Rose, Rollins has been chosen as the nominee to become the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
âBrookeâs commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,â Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
Rollins held previous positions in the first Trump administration, as well as being president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
I like Turner’s starch in running against Straus, and Rollins helped turn TPPF into a think tank power house, so both seem like good picks for Trump. And you’ve got to balance out all the Floridians somehow…
Democrat megadonor John Morgan says Kamala was clueless and thought she was Obama. Plus: Barron Trump is smarter than Kamala’s entire team, because he urged his father to go on Joe Rogan.
Meanwhile, Russia abandoned its Tartus Naval base and its Khmeimim airbase in Syria.
And now Syrian rebels are on the outskirts of Homs, the last big city before Damascus itself. If they take it, it will essentially split Assad-controlled Syria into two parts.
Imagine there’s a link here to the Biden Administration strong-arming Israel into a ceasefire with Hezbollah, only for Hezbollah to start breaking the treaty in, what, an hour?
Russia’s been reduced to using Ladas to attack Ukrainian positions. For those unfamiliar with the name, that’s a brand of Soviet/Russian automobiles. So no armor and precious little reliability…
Dade Phelan bows out of the Texas House Speaker’s race. This was after he lost another House ally ahead of Saturday’s GOP caucus speaker vote. State Rep. Trent Ashby announced he was supporting State Rep. David Cook’s bid. “These endorsements bring Cookâs total public commitments to 48, giving him a majority within the 88-member Republican caucus.”
Sex trafficking busts in Montgomery county (immediately north of Harris County).
Montgomery County Constable Ryan Gable announced that a three-day operation this month resulted in numerous arrests associated with prostitution, child trafficking, and drug offenses.
The constableâs office collaborated with the Houston Police Department and received support from the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance (HTRA) and the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force to successfully carry out this operation.
During a Friday morning press conference, Gable explained working with ICAC was essential, as the internet has become a major platform for those who exploit children and traffic victims for sexual purposes. The partnership between HTRA and ICAC investigations enabled the use of digital forensics and online tracking to uncover trafficking networks. The three-day investigation, dubbed Operation Safe Haven, resulted in numerous arrests and the recovery of one victim.
The operationâs results include:
Seven arrests for prostitution.
Three arrests for promotion of prostitution.
Four arrests for online solicitation of a minor (including the capture of a registered sex offender).
One arrest for child trafficking.
One arrest for unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
One arrest for evading law enforcement.
One arrest for possession of a prohibited weapon.
Two arrests related to drug offenses.
One juvenile recovered.
“An illegal alien from Guatemala has been arrested in Massachusetts and charged with raping a child. Mynor Stiven De Paz-Munoz, 21, entered the country illegally in the Eagle Pass area in September 2020. He was arrested in Boston by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month.”
“California assistant principal charged with molesting 8 elementary school children….David Lane Braff Jr., 42, was charged Friday with 17 counts of “lewd acts” on children under the age of 14. The alleged abuse occurred between 2015 and 2019 while Braff was employed as a counselor at McKevett Elementary School in Santa Paula. At the time of his arrest, Braff was serving as an assistant principal at Ingenium Charter Middle School in Los Angeles.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. “‘Defund The Police’ Activist Charged With Misusing Over $75,000 Donations On Vacations & Shopping Sprees…”Brandon Anderson misused charitable donations to fund lavish vacations and shopping sprees, and the Raheem AI board of directors let him get away with it.”
Progress: “Southwest Airlines Agrees To End DEI Employment Practices In Response To Lawsuit.”
Nothing of value was lost obit: Liberian rebel Prince Johnson, who (among other atrocities) cut off Samuel Doe’s ears, cooked them, and then served them to Doe. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
While other companies are running away from wokeness, Geico (which used to be a refuge from Progressive’s leftism) is forcing it down employees throats.
SCOOP: Employees at @Geico are being forced to complete mandatory training courses instructing them to provide their pronouns when engaging with customers and how to deal with being misgendered.
Yet another company pushing gender ideology nonsense. We the people want this⊠pic.twitter.com/rkBj7lJc63
The Trump witchunt trial is suspended, PA Democrats give up the steal, the ruble collapses, a real estate developer is busted for bribery, thrash metal TDS, and an unexpected voice of sanity and reason from…Cenk Uygur?
Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed the sentencing hearing in President-elect Donald Trumpâs New York criminal case, which had been planned for next week, in light of Trumpâs election.
Merchan is giving Trumpâs legal team more than a week to file its motion asking for a dismissal under the argument that his return to office provides him a new host of immunity-related defenses.
Trumpâs lawyers will be required to file by December 2, after which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will have until December 9 to respond.
Snip.
While Trump could face up to four years in prison, the more likely sentence in the case â should it move forward â would be probation, which could include some combination of a fine or community service, as the former and future president is a first-time offender.
âJust as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,â Trumpâs lawyers wrote in a letter filed Tuesday.
Trumpâs team had requested a December 20 deadline to file.
Bragg, for his part, has argued in favor of freezing the case for the entirety of Trumpâs term in office, and then revisiting the sentencing at the end of Trumpâs tenure.
But Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove have argued dismissal of the case âis necessary under the Constitution and federal law to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power â and in the interests of justice â following President Trumpâs victory in the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 Presidential election.â
To paraphrase Instapundit, we’ve entered some sort of hellworld where Cenk Uygur is a voice of moderation and reason, calling out far left pollster Allan Lichtman for blowing his election call, whereupon Lichtman shrieks that Uygur is committing “blasphemy” against him. Everyone and their dog has posted this, but I’m linking to the Asmongold clip because his seems to be the shortest.
US President-elect Donald Trumpâs administration is preparing to reinstate its âmaximum pressureâ strategy against Iran, targeting Tehranâs economic stability and its ability to support militant proxies and nuclear development, The Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources close to the transition team.
The sources revealed that the administration plans to impose stricter sanctions, particularly on Iranâs oil exports, which serve as a critical revenue source.
The anticipated sanctions could drastically reduce Iranian oil exports, which currently exceed 1.5 million barrels per day, up from a low of 400,000 barrels per day in 2020. Experts suggest that these measures would severely impact Iranâs economy. Bob McNally, an energy consultant and former US presidential adviser, indicated that reducing exports to a fraction of current levels would leave Iran in a far worse economic position than during Trumpâs first term.
In a followup to yesterday’s story, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered state entities to divest from investments in Communist China. “One investment group specifically highlighted in Abbottâs letter is the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), which manages billions of dollars in assets for both university systems. UTIMCO has come under scrutiny after a Texas Scorecard investigation revealed its investments in more than 50 Chinese companies.”
El Salvador’s gang prison doesn’t play around. A whole lot of this would (rightfully) be considered cruel and unusual punishment, but we should veer more in this direction rather than putting illegal alien rapists up in hotels…
Sherman Roberts, who led the City Wide Community Development Corporation, was indicted four years ago for a bribery scheme involving former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and former City Council Member Carolyn Davis for their support of loans and low-income housing tax credits for his apartment projects.
He now faces up to five years in prison and is expected to be sentenced in March.
Roberts paid Davis several thousand dollars in cash, and promised future payments after her council tenure ended, in return for Davisâ support of his projects â Serenity Place, Runyon Springs, and Patriotâs Crossing â according to the U.S. Attorneyâs Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Roberts was a Democratic Party donor, but in fairly piddling amounts for a real estate developer…
The DOJ wants Google to sell off Chrome. Well, that would be a start in addressing their monopoly position in Internet searches, but would hardly be sufficient. They should also have to spin off YouTube. And because consumers were directly harmed by their monopoly, they should be required to add 2GB of storage a year for every Gmail user for 20 years, he said self-interestedly. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The time of the turning: “Sold-out NYC crowd ERUPTS, chants USA as President Trump attends UFC 309 with Elon Musk, RFK Jr, Speaker Johnson.”
Shocking news from the world of science: Weed isn’t good for you. “According to their findings, exposure to cannabis was associated with a range of cancers – breast, pancreatic, liver, thyroid, testicular and lymphoma – that also develop quickly and are more aggressive.”
Sweden’s Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg is deeply afraid of…bananas.
Details on the people and organizations dedicated to burning America down, more Biden corruption, more of his censorship regime, a few Russo-Ukrainian War updates, and a pedophile gets ventilated. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Have Americaâs college students suddenly converted en masse to anarcho-communist-jihadism? Not quite. Many are far left and anti-Israel. Some are foreigners, or the children of foreigners, who have imported the conspiracies and hatreds of their homelands. More, admitted under relaxed pandemic-era admissions standards and proudly ignorant of both American and world history, are taking the âdecolonialâ half-knowledge pushed by their elders to its logical conclusion.
But students are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, faction active in the campus protests. As in the âmostly peacefulâ Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, âoutside agitatorsââprofessional radicals and organizers, black bloc antifa thugs, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and Palestinian and Islamist radicalsâhave played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests, just as they have organized and escalated the wider anti-Israel protest campaign that began almost immediately after Oct. 7. This largely decentralized network of agitators is, in turn, politically and financially supported by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party.
The first hint that the protests are not entirely organic is their striking resemblance to previous rounds of organized far-left agitation, from the âuprisingâ of summer 2020 to the rolling antifa vs. Proud Boys brawls of 2016-17. The creation of âliberatedâ or âautonomousâ zones on campus, for instance, is a hallmark of anarchist organizing familiar from Seattleâs Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and New Yorkâs City Hall Autonomous Zone four summers ago. Familiar, too, is the governance of these zones, with masked security details prohibiting filming from outsiders and directing reporters to trained media representatives. During clashes with police or with counterprotesters, students and their allies have deployed classic âblocâ tactics, covering their faces and dressing in matching outfits to promote anonymity, linking arms to interfere with police attempts to conduct arrests, and attempting âde-arrestsââi.e., the coordinated swarming of police officersâto rescue apprehended comrades. At Yale, student activists doxxed the police officers sent to clear them out of the encampmentâanother harassment tactic frequently deployed by antifa.
These resemblances are no accident. All of these tactics require a degree of instruction and training. Footage from Columbia showed the professional âprotest consultantâ Lisa Fithian, a veteran of Occupy, BLM, Standing Rock, and Stop Cop City, teaching students at Columbia how to barricade themselves into Hamilton Hall. Recent video from inside the protest encampment at UCLA, meanwhile, showed masked men leading a hand-to-hand combat training. When police cleared out encampments at the University of Texas-Austin and Columbia and the City University of New York last week, roughly half of those arrestedâ45 of the 79 in Texas, 134 of the 282 in New Yorkâhad no connection with the university at which they were arrested. Some, like the 40-year-old anarchist heir James Carlson, arrested at Columbiaâs Hamilton Hall, had protest related rap sheets going back two decades.
âWhat youâre seeing is a real witchesâ brew of revolutionary content interacting on campuses,â says Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and an expert on far-left domestic extremism. âOn the left-wing side, you have a broad variety of revolutionary leftists, who serve as rent-a-mobs, providing the warm bodies for whatever the leftist cause of the day is. And on the other side you have the Islamist and Palestinian networks: American Muslims for Palestine and their subsidiary Students for Justice in Palestine, CAIR, the Palestinian Youth Movement. Weâre seeing a real mixture of different kinds of radical foment, and itâs all being activated at the same time.â
The far-left groups active in the protests include antifa and other anarchists: Anarchist literature has been distributed in the encampments, and antifa websites have published dispatches from âcomradesâ on the inside. They also include various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition, a PSL front group that worked with several Muslim groups to organize the Jan. 13 March on Washington for Gaza, at which protesters flew the black jihadist flag. On April 29, for instance, shortly before masked assailants stormed Columbiaâs Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside, The Peopleâs Forumâa Manhattan event space affiliated with the PSL and funded by Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy businessman who âworks closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide,â according to an August profile in The New York Timesâurged its activists to rush up to Columbia to âsupport our students.â Similar calls for an âemergency actionâ were distributed throughout radical networks in New York City.
Snip.
The âmovement,â in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL). Letâs take each in turn.
JVP is, in essence, the âJewishâ-branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, backed by the usual big-money progressive donorsâincluding some, like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that were instrumental in selling Obamaâs Iran Deal to the public. JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Sorosâ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute. JVP has also received nearly $1.5 million from various donor-advised fundsâwhich allow wealthy clients to give anonymously through their financial institutionsârun through the charitable giving arms of Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, and TIAA, according to NGO Monitorâs review of those institutionsâ tax documents.
SJP, by contrast, is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. governmentâs prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and related charities for fundraising for Hamas. SJP is a subsidiary of an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); SJP in fact has no âformal corporate structure of its own but operates as AMPâs campus brand,â according to a lawsuit filed last week against AJP Educational Fund, the parent nonprofit of AMP. Both AMP and SJP were founded by the same man, Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian academic who formerly fundraised for KindHearts, an Islamic charity dissolved in 2012 pursuant to a settlement with the U.S. Treasury, which froze the groupâs assets for fundraising for Hamas (KindHearts did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement). And several of AMPâs senior leaders are former fundraisers for HLF and related charities, according to November congressional testimony from former U.S. Treasury official Jonathan Schanzer. An ongoing federal lawsuit by the family of David Boim, an American teenager killed in a Hamas terrorist attack in 1996, goes so far as to allege that AMP is a âdisguised continuanceâ and âlegal alter-egoâ of the Islamic Association for Palestine, was founded with startup money from current Hamas official Musa Abu Marzook and dissolved alongside HLF. AMP has denied it is a continuation of IAP.
Today, however, National SJP is legally a âfiscal sponsorshipâ of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation. A fiscal sponsorship is a legal arrangement in which a larger nonprofit âsponsorsâ a smaller group, essentially lending it the sponsorâs tax-exempt status and providing back-office support in exchange for fees and influence over the sponsorshipâs operations. For legal and tax purposes, the sponsor and the sponsorship are the same entity, meaning that the sponsorship is relieved of the requirement to independently disclose its donors or file a Form 990 with the IRS. This makes fiscal sponsorships a âconvenient way to mask links between donors and controversial causes,â according to the Capital Research Center. Donors, in other words, can effectively use nonprofits such as WESPAC to obscure their direct connections to controversial causes.
Something of the sort appears to be happening with WESPAC. Run by the market researcher Howard Horowitz, WESPAC reveals very little about its donors, although scattered reporting and public disclosures suggest that the group is used as a pass-through between larger institutions and pro-Palestinian radicals. Since 2006, for instance, WESPAC has received more than half a million in donations from the Elias Foundation, a family foundation run by the private equity investor James Mann and his wife. WESPAC has also received smaller amounts from Grassroots International (an âenvironmentalâ group heavily funded by Thousand Currents), the Sparkplug Foundation (a far-left group funded by the Wall Street fortune of Felice and Yoram Gelman), and the Bafrayung Fund, run by Rachel Gelman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune. (A self-described âabolitionist,â Gelman was featured in a 2020 New York Times feature on âThe Rich Kids Who Want to Tear Down Capitalism.â) In 2022, WESPAC also received $97,000 from the Tides Foundation, the grant-making arm of the Tides Nexus.
WESPAC, however, is not merely the fiscal sponsor of the Hamas-linked SJP but also the fiscal sponsor of the third group involved in organizing the Columbia protests, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), formerly known as New York City SJP. Founded by the Palestinian American lawyer Nerdeen Kiswani, a former activist with the Hunter College and CUNY chapters of SJP, WOL has emerged over the past seven months as perhaps the most notorious antisemitic group in the country, and has been banned from Facebook and Instagram for glorifying Hamas. A full list of the groupâs provocations would take thousands of words, but it has been the central organizing force in the series of âFloodâ-themed protests in New York City since Oct. 7, including multiple bridge and highway blockades, a November riot at Grand Central Station, the vandalism of the New York Public Library, and protests at the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting.
More info on the people backing the Stop Cop City protestors:
Where did the money come from? From donations solicited through left-wing fundraising and organizing networks. One of those networks was the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), an umbrella group for more than 80 âcommunity organizations,â including the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, which organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested. CJAâs website promotes a grab bag of far-left causes, and includes a âFree Palestineâ page proclaiming that âthe path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.â To this dayâeight months after the Georgia RICO indictment alleged that the Forest Justice Defense Fund was a fraudulent charity paying for ammunition purchases in furtherance of a criminal conspiracyâCJA maintains a Stop Cop City page urging readers to donate to the Forest Justice Defense Fund and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. CJA also endorsed a âstatement of solidarityâ with Stop Cop City, which claimed, by the inexorable logic of intersectionality, the fight against âgentrification and police violenceâ in Atlanta as part of the fight against climate change.
CJA is a subsidiary of the Movement Strategy Center, a California-based 501(c)(3) that has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and various branches of the Open Society network. But it has another financial supporter, one that may come as a surprise: You, the American taxpayer. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was entrusting $50 million in federal grant money under the Inflation Reduction Act to the CJA, to be distributed in sub-grants to fund âenvironmental justiceâ projects by âcommunity-based nonprofit organizations.”
Read the whole thing.
More on the same subject: “Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Bidenâs biggest donors.” Surprising to people who haven’t been paying attention, maybe.
The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis.
Two of the organizers supporting the protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic megadonor George Soros and was previously supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change.
Soros declined to comment, but a spokesperson with the Open Society Foundations, of which Soros is the founder and chairman, said in a statement that it âhas funded a broad spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel.â The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has previously funded the Tides Foundation and other groups, said it no longer has active grants to Tides. It also does not support Jewish Voice for Peace or IfNotNow.
Covers some of the same ground as the Tablet piece, but still worth reading the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Former president Donald Trumpâs criminal trial in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents is being postponed indefinitely.
Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon ordered a new pretrial schedule for motions and discovery Tuesday afternoon after the classified documents case was originally scheduled to go to trial later this month.
âThe Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture â before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming â would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Courtâs duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,â Cannon said in her order.
The trial will likely be pushed until after the 2024 presidential election this November.
Itâs hard to exaggerate how abysmal Bidenâs polling has been lately.
No incumbent president should ever want to be near 43 percent in a head-to-head ballot test. Yet here is Joe Biden at 43 percent in the latest CNN poll, 43 percent in the latest Morning Consult poll, 43 percent in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, and 43 percent in the latest Harvard/Harris poll. (NB: Biden ticked up to 48 when Harvard/Harris pushed respondents to choose between Trump and Biden, and the Economist/YouGov poll had RFK Jr. in the mix.)
Detect a trend? (There are other polls that have Biden a little higher.)
Itâs no mystery why Bidenâs polling is at crisis levels.
An incumbent presidentâs level of support in a reelection bid is typically tethered closely to his job approval. Itâs hard to get much more than a couple of points above it. Bidenâs job approval is at 40 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average and at 39.3 in the 538 polling average.
Desperate for cash, James Biden traveled to Qatar with the aim of personally presenting to Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi who was later arrested and charged with bribery and laundering over $5 billion and sentenced to 20 years in prison. While little is known about the details behind the internal power struggle in the corrupt terror state, Al Emadi had been accused of âchanneling Qatari support to various Islamist groups over the yearsâ as well as subverting American and European institutions with sizable infusions of Qatari money.
As the American end of the deal fell apart in recriminations and lawsuits, one of the litigants received âblood-stained currencyâ and a âtorture ticketâ after suing James Biden and his partners. The blood money came from a Middle Eastern country known to be associated with terrorists. But the FBI refused to name the country and insisted the media also hide its identity.
Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an 800-page report that reads like Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”
Take a look:
In March 2021, an Amazon employee emailed others within the company about the reason for the Amazon bookstore’s new content moderation policy change: “[T]he impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden Administration about sensitive books we’re giving prominent placement to.”
In March 2021, just one day prior to a scheduled call with the White House, an Amazon employee explained how changes to Amazon’s bookstore policies were being applied “due to criticism from the Biden people.”
In July 2021, when Facebook executive Nick Clegg asked a Facebook employee why the company censored the man-made theory of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the employee responded: “Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more. . . . We shouldn’t have done it.”
There’s chutzpah, and then there’s chutzpah: “Denver Illegals Make Demands, Include ‘Culturally Appropriate’ Food, Lawyers, Unlimited Showers And Warnings Before Evictions.”
It was fun seeing Ukraine’s Bradley’s take out Russian tanks with their Bushmaster, but they just took out a T-80 from a mile away with their TOW missile, which is the recommended method of a Bradley killing a Russian tank.
In addition to using high tech weapons against Russia, Ukraine is also using caltrops to shred their tires, a weapon first deployed by the Roman empire.
So the City of Pasadena, Texas was hassling Azael Sepulveda’s Oz Mechanics car repair shop over parking for no apparent reason, came to an agreement to settle his lawsuit, and now says, get this, they don’t have to follow the agreement because they claim the city enjoys “immunity” from lawsuits. “The property he purchased had housed another auto mechanic shop for more than 30 years and included five parking spaces, but under revised ordinances, the city demanded that Sepulveda provide 28 parking spots.” Somebody in the Pasadena city government deserves a dick punching…
More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.
The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.
U-Haulâs Growth Index is compiled according to the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks arriving in a state or city, versus those departing from that state or city each calendar year across the U.S. and Canada and is a strong indicator of what kind of job states and cities are attracting and maintaining residents, according to the company.
Texas is the top destination for U-Haul trucks for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016, according to the study. That is followed by Florida, which has been a top-three growth state for seven years in a row. South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho also saw strong growth rates in 2022, the study found.
I think I’ve posted a variation on this story just about every year I’ve published this blog…
From July 2021 to July 2022, 300,000 more people moved out of the state than moved in. New York had the largest population lossâin both percentage and absolute termsâexperienced by any state during that period.
Sadly, this was both predictable and preventable.
In March 2021, a study of New York found that its already staggeringly high tax burden had worsened due to an increase in the top marginal tax rate to almost 15% for those in New York City. The study projected that the flood of people leaving would only accelerateâand it did.
Even before that study, the Empire State lost so many people that it cost New York a seat in Congress after the 2020 census. This exodus is a direct response to New Yorkâs obscenely high taxes.
Just how bad is it? Compared with other states, New Yorkers:
Pay the highest total tax burden and highest share of personal income (14%) in taxes.
Endure the second-worst overall business-tax climate.
Face the highest individual income-tax rate and income-tax collections per capita.
Pay the second-highest state and local corporate income tax collections per capita.
Have the fourth-highest property taxes and local sales-tax rate (on average).
Pay the highest cigarette taxes and ninth-highest gasoline taxes.
Remember how I’ve noted that semiconductor memory manufacturers make money hand-over-fist in boom times and barely break even during busts? “Samsung Profits Plunge 69% As Global Chip Demand In ‘Full-Fledged Ice Age.'”
ï»ż
Turnabout is fair play: “U. Houston Prof Tells Students to Report Teachers Berating ‘White People or Christians to DEI Office.'”
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock takes pride in virtue signaling his city as a refuge for illegal aliens. Guess what?
Two landmark Supreme Court cases drop, another woke social justice child-rapist exposed, Keith Olbermann channels John C. Calhoun, and the secret plans to nuke Yorkshire. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Just like the old gypsy woman said leakers indicated, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe vs. Wade.
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, allowing a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks to take effect.
âThe Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,â Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 6-3 majority.
Justice Alito was joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority. Justice Roberts wrote in a concurring opinion with the majority that he would have taken a âmore measured courseâ stopping short of overturning Roe altogether, but agreed that the Mississippi abortion ban should stand.
The Courtâs liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented….
The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Womenâs Health Organization means each state will now be able to determine its own regulations on abortion, including whether and when to prohibit abortion.
In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court affirmed that gun rights are due the same protection as all other constitutional rights.
To which I can only reply “Duh. What took them so long?”
Todayâs Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen is not only the most important Second Amendment ruling since D.C. v. Heller, it is potentially the most important Second Amendment ruling in American history.
Not sure about that, as Heller firmly established the gun ownership was an individual right unconnected to militia service. That laid the conceptual groundwork for today’s ruling.
For all the brouhaha, the question at hand in Bruen was rather straightforward: Can the state of New York require that applicants for gun-carry permits âdemonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community,â or is New York obliged by the Constitution to offer a âshall issueâ regime of the sort that 43 of the other 49 states have adopted? By a 6â3 vote, the justices decided that the latter approach is required. In the United States, Clarence Thomasâs majority opinion concluded, âauthorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.â Moreover, while there is nothing illegal about Americaâs existing state-level permitting systems, those systems may not be mere smokescreens for outright prohibition, unequal protection, or unacceptable delay. âWe do not rule out,â Thomas added in a footnote, any âconstitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.â
As Justice Alito was keen to note, this âholding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun. Nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess.â It concludes solely that:
The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New Yorkâs proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.
Bottom line: New York is allowed to exclude carry-permit applications on a categorical basis (e.g., the applicant has a felony conviction), but not on a subjective one (e.g., the applicant doesnât âneedâ a gun in the view of the determining officer).
To get there, the majority first determined that ânothing in the Second Amendmentâs text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms.â Indeed, âto confine the right to âbearâ arms to the home,â the majority observed, âwould nullify half of the Second Amendmentâs operative protections.â This, Thomas explained, would not do, because âthe constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not âa second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.ââ
Liberals are taking the gun and abortion rulings well. Ha, just kidding! Keith Olbermann came out for nullification. Because nothing says “progressive liberalism” like adopting the policies of South Carolina from 1832.
ï»ż
Ukraine has banned the main opposition party. Not a great look. Though you know FDR would have tried that with Republicans if he thought they posed more of a threat to his agenda and the Supreme Court would let him get away with it…
Israel is headed for yet another election. “After almost one year of taking power, Israelâs ruling coalition has agreed to dissolve the parliament and hold new elections. ‘Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennettâs office announced Monday that his weakened coalition will be disbanded and the country will head to new elections.'” (“How many elections is that now, five?” “Shut up! Don’t tell Mere!”)
International Swimming Federation bans men from competing. It’s astonishing that headline even needs to be written…
Powers that be in Tennessee are threatening YouTuber Whistlin Diesel with a year in prison for…splashing with a jet ski. Sounds like a clear abuse of power to me…
A review of one of the last production Trebants, the crappy, under-powered, plastic communist car East Germans had to wait years to buy. Let this be another reminder that commies aren’t cool and the consumer goods produced by commie companies that don’t have to deal with market competition are crap.
“In my day, we had to work twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week, and they set off a nuclear explosion underneath us! You tell that to kids these days and they don’t believe you!”
“After âLightyearâ Bombs, Disney Quietly Cancels Their Upcoming Movie ‘Brokeback Woody.”
Saturday night, downtown Denver got to experience the same joy that antifa and #BlackLivesMatter has brought to places like Minneapolis, Portland and Seattle.
Several dozen people, some donning shields and helmets, and police clashed at the headquarters of the Denver Police Department on Saturday night.
A group had organized a protest to start at 8 p.m. in response to an incident earlier this week when police and others clashed as the city removed people experiencing homelessness from a camp near 29th and Glenarm. A flier told people to âbring your gear.â
Sometime before 9 p.m., a van arrived to provide some of the people with shields. As the people marched toward the Denver police headquarters, Denver7 reporters witnessed people with a bat and an ax.
The group expressed various motives: defunding or abolishing the police, ending homeless sweeps, stopping racism, justice for Elijah McClain and more, including several who said they were there for vandalism and were done with peaceful protesting, according to crews at the scene.
But McClain’s mother earlier this week disavowed rallies like the one Saturday night, and she and others held a peaceful rally in memory of her son earlier in the day.
McClain was a black man killed in police custody in 2019. As in Portland and Seattle, there seem to be few if any black people involved in these riots, just white leftwing radicals attacking police and destroying property.
Antifa has surrounded the Denver police department and is besieging it with fireworks. Looks like a sight similar to the federal courthouse in Portland. pic.twitter.com/REaysspRjQ
These riots aren’t about police brutality, they’re about a hard-left, anti-police activism that’s rejected by the overwhelming majority of American citizens.
Bullock and Harris drop Out, Bloomberg rises (though slowly), Booker gets weepy, Tulsi sings, and Democrats have a diversity problem. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!
With just under two months until the Iowa caucuses, the already-volatile Democratic presidential race has grown even more unsettled, setting the stage for a marathon nominating contest between the partyâs moderate and liberal factions.
Pete Buttigiegâs surge, Bernie Sandersâs revival, Elizabeth Warrenâs struggles and the exit of Kamala Harris have upended the primary and, along with Joseph R. Bidenâs Jr. enduring strength with nonwhite voters, increased the possibility of a split decision after the early nominating states.
Thatâs when Michael R. Bloomberg aims to burst into the contest â after saturating the airwaves of the Super Tuesday states with tens of millions of dollars of television ads.
With no true front-runner and three other candidates besides Mr. Bloomberg armed with war chests of over $20 million, Democrats are confronting the prospect of a drawn-out primary reminiscent of the epic Clinton-Obama contest in 2008.
âThereâs a real possibility Pete wins here, Warren takes New Hampshire, Biden South Carolina and who knows about Nevada,â said Sue Dvorsky, a former Iowa Democratic chair. âThen you go into Super Tuesday with Bloomberg throwing $30 million out of his couch cushions and this is going to go for a while.â
Thatâs a worrisome prospect for a party already debating whether it has a candidate strong enough to defeat President Trump next November. The contenders have recently begun to attack one another more forcefully â Ms. Warren, a nonaggressor for most of the campaign, took on Mr. Buttigieg on Thursday night â and the sparring could get uglier the longer the primary continues.
A monthslong delegate battle would also feature a lengthy public airing of the partyâs ideological fissures and focus more attention on contentious policies like single-payer health care while allowing Mr. Trump to unleash millions of dollars in attack ads portraying Democrats as extreme.
The candidates are already planning for a long race, hiring staff members for contests well past the initial early states. But at the moment they are also grappling with a primary that has evolved into something of a three-dimensional chess match, in which moves that may seem puzzling are taken with an eye toward a future payoff.
Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, for example, are blocking each other from consolidating much of the left, but instead of attacking each other the two senators are training their fire on Mr. Buttigieg, the South Bend, Ind., mayor. He has taken a lead in Iowa polls yet spent much of the past week courting black voters in the South.
And Mr. Biden is concluding an eight-day bus tour across Iowa, during which he has said his goal is to win the caucuses, but his supporters privately say they would also be satisfied if Mr. Buttigieg won and denied Ms. Warren a victory.
It may seem a little confusing, but thereâs a strategy behind the moves.
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren each covet the otherâs progressive supporters but are wary about angering them by attacking each other. So Ms. Warren has begun drawing an implicit contrast by emphasizing her gender â a path more available now with Ms. Harrisâs exit â and they are both targeting a shared opponent whom many of their fiercest backers disdain: Mr. Buttigieg.
The mayor has soared in heavily white Iowa, but has virtually no support among voters of color. So he started airing commercials in South Carolina spotlighting his faith and took his campaign there and into Alabama this past week â an acknowledgment that Iowans may be uneasy about him if he canât demonstrate appeal with more diverse voters.
As for Mr. Biden, his supporters think he would effectively end the primary by winning Iowa. But they believe the next best outcome would be if Mr. Buttigieg fends off Ms. Warren there to keep her from sweeping both Iowa and New Hampshire and gaining too much momentum. They are convinced sheâs far more of a threat than Mr. Buttigieg to build a multiracial coalition and breach the former vice presidentâs firewall in Nevada and South Carolina.
I don’t think Warren’s winning Iowa or New Hampshire, but since this was actually in the article, and I had to see it, now you have to see it too:
And you thought the Halloween nightmare season was over…
The Times piece didnât mention the policy initiative upon which Harris launched her campaign: Bernie Sandersâs Medicare-for-All legislation, which would eliminate private and employer-based health insurance. Harris signed on as a cosponsor to the bill last April. Itâs haunted her ever since. Medicare for All might look like the sort of âbig, structural changeâ that sets progressive hearts aflutter. For most voters it causes arrhythmia.
The proposal is liberalsâ foolâs gold. It appears valuable but is actually worthless. It gets the progressive politician coming and going: Not only do voters recoil at the notion of having their insurance canceled, but candidates look awkward and inauthentic when they begin to move away from the unpopular idea they mistakenly embraced. Thatâs what happened to Harris earlier this year and is happening to Elizabeth Warren today.
Harris moved into second place nationwide after her ambush of Joe Biden over busing during the first Democratic debate. But her position soon began to erode. Her wavering position on eliminating private insurance dissatisfied voters. She had raised her hand in support of the policy during the debate, but the next day she walked it back. Then she walked back the walk-back. Then, ahead of the second debate, she released an intermediary plan that allowed for certain forms of private insurance. She stumbled again when Biden called her to account for the cost of the bill. Tulsi Gabbardâs pincer move on incarceration, using data first reported by the Free Beacon, made matters worse. By September, Harris had fallen to fifth place.
This was around the time that Warren, bolstered by adoring press coverage and strong retail politics, began her ascent. For a moment in early October, she pulled slightly ahead of Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. Her rivals sensed an opportunity in her refusal to admit that middle-class taxes would have to increase to pay for Medicare for All. The attacks took their toll. Support for Warren fell. She then released an eye-popping payment scheme that failed to satisfy her critics. In early November, she released a âfirst termâ plan that would âtransitionâ the country to Medicare for All. In so doing, she conceded the unreality of her initial proposal. She came across as sophistical and conniving. Her descent continues.
The national front-runner, Joe Biden, and the early-state leader, Pete Buttigieg, both reject Medicare for All in favor of a public option that would allow people to buy into Medicare.
Could all this sound and fury just boil down to Bernie vs. Biden? “Warren’s early October high has worn off, while Sanders has steadily crept back up in the polls. The result is that the two are in a virtual heat for second place.”
Disappointed Democrats groused that you obviously had to be rich to compete in the 2020 race â because [Harris] was gone, while two billionaires remained â and pointed to the potentially all-white, un-diverse lineup at the partyâs next debate as proof that the qualifying criteria put too much of a premium on fund-raising.
But Harris had made the cut for that debate. And she entered the presidential sweepstakes with a higher net worth ($6 million, according to Forbes) than Bernie Sanders ($2.5 million), Amy Klobuchar ($2 million) or Pete Buttigieg ($100,000), who are still in the hunt and are among the six contenders slated to be sparring onstage on Dec. 19. Whatâs more, Sanders and another of the six, Elizabeth Warren, have raised buckets of money without courting plutocrats.
Many Democrats blamed the media for Harrisâs demise. They have a point, inasmuch as some news organizations never had the kind of romance with her that they did with Buttigieg and Beto OâRourke, two white men. I noted as much in a column last May, pointing to OâRourkeâs placement on the cover of Vanity Fair and Buttigiegâs on the cover of Time.
But the media fell quickly out of love with OâRourke and is picking Buttigieg apart for his lack of support among African-Americans and his past employment as a McKinsey consultant. And Harris was hardly ignored: Her initial campaign rally in Oakland, Calif., in January was covered live, in its entirety, on MSNBC and CNN. That same month, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC told her, in a face-to-face interview, âI think there is a good chance that you are going to win the nomination.â And after the Democratic debate in June, when Harris stirringly confronted Joe Biden about his past opposition to federally mandated busing to integrate schools, she received a bonanza of media attention and rapturous reviews.
I get that this Democratic primary isnât playing out as anyone predicted or in remote accordance with the partyâs image of itself and with its priorities. None of the top four candidates â Biden, Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders â is a person of color, three of them are 70 or older, and the billionaires, Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg, are dipping into their personal fortunes in their efforts to gain ground. For a party that celebrates diversity, pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being future-minded and youth-oriented, thatâs a freaky, baffling turn of events.
But some of the conclusions being drawn and complaints being raised donât fully hold water.
Take the fears about the nomination being purchased. Without question, running for office is too expensive. That dynamic can definitely favor candidates with lucrative connections. And candidates are forced â unless theyâre Steyer or Bloomberg â to devote ludicrous and possibly corrupting sums of time to political panhandling.
But at least at present, neither Steyer nor Bloomberg is exactly barreling toward victory. And while Cory Booker drew a connection between Harrisâs departure and a process warped by wealth, the link is tenuous. Booker, whose campaign presses on despite his failure to qualify for the December debate, said of Harrisâs withdrawal, âVoters did not determine her destiny.â
Actually, they kind of did. Theyâre the ones who are or arenât excited enough about a candidacy to donate money and keep it alive. Theyâre the ones responding to pollsters and, by flagging their preferences, determining which candidates take on the air of plausibility that often generates the next round of donations. I keep seeing, on Twitter and Facebook, laments about Harrisâs fate from Democrats who chose to support candidates other than her. Well, she couldnât succeed on generalized, ambient good will.
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Another piece warning than if Biden places out of the money in Iowa and New Hampshire his campaign dies. “Biden: âNobody warned meâ about Hunter and Ukraine because Beau was dying.”
Joe Biden asserted that he never heard worries that his son Hunter Biden’s role on a Ukrainian gas company could create a conflict of interest.
“Nobody warned me about a potential conflict of interest,” Biden said Friday in an interview with NPR. “I never, never heard that once at all.”
Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was vice president and working on Ukrainian policy. President Trump asked the Ukrainian president this year to investigate the Bidens, prompting Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump.
George Kent, a top State Department official, testified during impeachment hearings in November that he raised conflict of interest concerns after he learned Hunter Biden was on Burisma’s board.
Is pathos supposed to distract us from the fact that Biden is too incompetent to keep his own house in order? Or are we just supposed to assume that so much graft and self-dealing went on the Obama White House that Hunter’s piddling $50 grand a month Ukrainian sinecure was side hustle chump change next to the scams others were running? Speaking of Ukraine, John Kerry endorses his stepsons’s business partner’s father. “Here Are The Billionaires Backing Joe Bidenâs Presidential Campaign.” Prominent names include Google’s Eric Schmidt, eBay’s Meg Whitman, Valve’s Gabe Newell, and George Lucas’ wife. He gets testy in a town hall and calls a retired farmer “fat.” Speaking of horrifying images lodged in your brain:
After two weeks in the presidential race, Mike Bloomberg now employs one of the largest campaign staff rosters, has spent more money on ads than all the top-polling Democrats combined and is simultaneously building out ground operations in 27 states.
But when the former New York mayor showed up to get the endorsement of Augusta Mayor Hardie Davis Jr. on Friday, only two of the 10 chairs initially placed before the lectern were occupied. When Bloomberg joked about his college years, saying he âwas one of the students who made the top half of the class possible,â he was met by silence.
âYouâre supposed to laugh at that, folks,â Bloomberg said to a room at the cityâs African American history museum filled mostly with staff and media.
For a normal presidential campaign, such moments would be a worrying sign, a potentially viral metaphor for a struggling effort. But with the Bloomberg campaign, it is not at all clear what established rules apply, if any. Everything he is doing is so unlike what has been done for decades that it is difficult to decipher how voters will react.
Rather than focus on the early states, he is campaigning for votes deep in the 2020 calendar, in places where voters are less tuned in to the nominating process. Rather than worry about a budget, he has put no limit on the money he is prepared to spend. Rather than run in a Democratic primary by appealing to ideological die-hards or partisan flag bearers, he describes himself as âbasically nonpartisan.â
Although far outside the box, the effort is not easily dismissed. As a former three-term New York mayor, he comes to the race with more executive governing experience and has represented more voters than most of his competitors, as well as a philanthropic record he has emphasized in campaign ads while pushing several core liberal priorities, including increased gun regulation and the reduction of carbon pollution. His campaign message is focused on his own competence and electability.
It’s ironic that he’s focusing on “competence and electability” while pushing two of the democratic Party policies most likely to lose him votes in swing states. Gun grabbing and carbon taxes are electoral poison in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Tired of pieces that do nothing but rip into Bloomberg? Me neither:
Everyone will have their least favorite figure in the Democratic presidential primary. Mine might be Michael Bloomberg, for sheer self-regard, narcissism, condescension, and arrogance.
Bloomberg did his first televised interview as a presidential candidate with CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King. Some of the highlights, or depending upon your perspective:
No other Democrats is even remotely as good Michael Bloomberg, according to Michael Bloomberg.
MIKE BLOOMBERG: I watched all the candidates. And I just thought to myself, âDonald Trump would eat âem up.â
GAYLE KING: You think all the candidates who are running today, he would eat them up?
MIKE BLOOMBERG: Let me rephrase it. I think that I would do the best job of competing with him and beating him.
His ego is justified because of his accomplishments, he explained.
MIKE BLOOMBERG: Does it take an ego? Yeah, I guess it takes an ego to think that you could do the job. I have 12 years of experience in City Hall. And I think if you go back today and ask most people about those 12 years, they would say that theâ not me, but the team that I put together made an enormous difference in New York City. And New York City benefited from it and continues to benefit from it today from what we did then.
Even his flip-flops are a demonstration of his intelligence, competence, and guts, he explained.
GAYLE KING: Stop and frisk. You recently apologized for that. Some people are suspicious of the timing of your apology.
MIKE BLOOMBERG: The mark of an intelligent, competent person is when they make a mistake, they have the guts to stand up and say, âI made a mistake. Iâm sorry.â
Bloomberg complimented the remaining African-American candidate in the race for being âvery well-spoken.â
GAYLE KING: the next debate is December And Cory Bookerâ said that it could possibly be on that debate stage no one of color. There would be more billionaires in the race than black people. Is that a problem to you?
MIKE BLOOMBERG: Well, Cory Booker endorsed me a number of times. And I endorsed Cory Booker a number of times. Heâs very well-spoken. Heâs got some good ideas.
To be fair, if fellow New York City mayor Bill de Blasio were still in the race, Bloomberg would only be the second most loathed figure in the race…
The tears started flowing near the end of Saturday nightâs town hall, as Cory Booker knew they would. The senator from New Jersey had started closing his events with a story about a mentor calling for him from his hospital bed, sharing his last six words.
âHe said to me: I see you, I love you,â Booker said. âI see you. I love you.â
Some people had started wiping their eyes. âA family moving up from the South, distressed. Neighbors that didn’t know them helped my family out. I see you. I love you. Slaves trying to escape from the South find white families opening their barns up, pulling together to build the greatest infrastructure project this county has ever known, the Underground Railroad. I see you. I love you.â
The crowd of around 50 Iowans is silent, except for the sniffles and tissue packets. Booker has done this repeatedly, over a year-long campaign that has made him well-liked across the state â a popular second choice for voters whose top pick is Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg.
But Booker is an infrequent first choice, and itâs about to cost him. Unless something dramatic happens by Thursday, heâll be knocked out of the sixth Democratic debate. Even Democrats who arenât voting for Booker say theyâre upset about that, wondering how the most diverse primary field in party history could become all white. The end of Sen. Kamala D. Harrisâs campaign rattled some Democrats, and Booker wants them to think about why. That starts with his own story, about a father who fought segregation to help his family, and a Stanford graduate who became a poor city’s mayor. That â hint, hint â was what would be left offstage.
White liberal Democrats will do anything for black candidates except vote for them.
âItâs unfair to voters,â Booker said about the debate rules in an interview after a stop in Iowa City. âOne of the most significant campaign presences here, and not be able to be on the debate stage? That’s unacceptable. The attitude from even local media here has been saying things like: Look, if you’re polled, choose Cory Booker, he deserves to be on the stage. Thereâs a backlash that’s going on here, where people are turning to our campaign, saying this is not right, we want to help.â
In front of voters, Booker was even more direct: âIf you sit there and you see a caller I.D. and don’t recognize the number, for the next week or so, answer the phone.â
Booker is not the only nonwhite Democrat who could get onstage. Andrew Yang and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii closer to qualifying than Booker is, based on polling. (Candidates must hit 4 percent in four polls, or 6 percent in two polls of early states, to qualify.) All three have hit the DNCâs fundraising marker and attracted at least 200,000 donations, as has JuliĂĄn Castro, who was bumped out of the last debate.
Senator Cory Booker, one of two black Democrats still running for president, thinks the Democratic Party has created a primary contest thatâs âgoing to have the unintended consequence of excluding people of colorâ while benefiting the white billionaires in the race.
âIs that really the symbol that the Democratic party wants to be sending out? That this is going to be made by money and elitesâ decisions, not by the people? Thatâs a very problematic message to send,â Booker told BuzzFeed News in an interview outside his Cedar Rapids campaign office on Sunday morning.
After Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out of the race last week, Booker has said he thinks the primary has been hijacked by billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, who are able to use their considerable wealth to reach voters quickly. For instance, despite launching his campaign much later than other candidates, Steyer has a spot on the Democratic debate stage next week, while none of the four candidates of color have met the DNCâs requirements to qualify.
âWhen you watch an election, even in Iowa here when youâre staying in hotels here, you see Steyer and Bloombergâs ads wall to wall and you see Kamala not making it now because of money,â he said.
Steyer’s spending millions to suck. Harris raised millions, and stopped raising them when people found out how badly she sucked.
Update: Montana Governor Steve Bullock: Dropped Out. Twitter. Facebook. Dropped out December 2, 2019, seemingly right after I hit publish on last week’s Clown Car update, and says he’s not running for the senate. 538 does a failure analysis of both Bullock and Sestak:
On paper, he coulda been a contender: Heâs a sitting governor, and governors have historically done well in presidential nominating contests. (Although itâs likely the 2020 nominee will not be a current or former governor â with Bullockâs departure, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is the only remaining current or former governor in the race.) And as the former chair of the Democratic Governors Association, heâs friendly with the establishment and even enjoyed the endorsement of Iowaâs most prominent statewide Democratic officeholder. He could also make a convincing case for his electability against President Trump, something that is very important to Democratic voters this cycle, as Bullock won reelection as Montana governor by 4 percentage points at the same time that Trump carried the state by 20 points.
But as with so many other candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden overshadowed Bullock. Biden has proven more durable in the primary than many pundits expected, which has limited the ability of similar candidates (center-left, white, male, perceived as electable, possessing executive experience) to get a foothold. And, for whatever reason, donors and other party leaders who are leery of Biden have chosen to recruit new candidates to enter the race rather than get behind a candidate like Bullock. And with his polling average in Iowa barely better than it was nationally, Bullock may have concluded that his path to the White House no longer existed.
Even with 12 Democratic candidates out, 16 remain in. No, Democrats do not have a quantity problem. What they have is a diversity problem â one of ideology â the only diversity problem they do not long to discuss.
To understand Democratsâ ideological diversity problem, compare two of this weekâs casualties: Bullock and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Bullock was a popular two-term governor from red state Montana, the kind of state Democrats hope to flip to win in 2020. Harris is a first-term senator from bluest of blue California, the kind of state Democrats could not lose if they tried. Bullock is a white man; Harris, a minority woman. Bullockâs support remained low and flat throughout his brief campaign; Harris experienced a brief boom-let.
None of those differences mattered much. The only one that mattered was the ideological one. Men and women, whites and minorities, and extreme liberals and less-extreme liberals remain in the race. Bullock was the contestâs only conservative. Harris was an undisguised liberal. Still, according to the Real Clear Politics average of national polling, just before their exits, Bullock stood at 0.5 percent; Harris was at 4 percent. That numerical difference is indicative of the raceâs content.
Bullockâs exit will be written off discreetly as a failure to gain âtraction.â That is no more than face-saving fiction. If âtractionâ means what it objectively should â a significant increase in enthusiasm for their candidacy â then the whole Democratic field lack it. By such a standard, they should all be gone.
Honestly, how many conservatives are even left in the Democratic Party?
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Last week we saw his beefcake, this week he’s talking about his endurance in the race. Maybe he should walk on stage to a Barry White tune. Actually, he should totally do that, because it would be hilarious, and at 1% he can’t possibly do any worse.
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Here’s the complete Joe Rogan interview with Gabbard (his second) that I merely posted an excerpt from last week:
She sings “imagine.” I hate that song, but she’s not cringy:
Senator Kamala Devi Harris, who survived growing up in the segregated deep south of Berkeley and then Montreal, was a sure lock to be the next President of the United States.
And then, after raising $36 million from gullible idiots and greedy special interests, she dropped out without even facing a single primary. It was her single greatest act of courage since being bused across the Mason-Dixon line from Berkeley into Thousand Oaks. Sadly, she just wasnât bused far enough.
There were many high points in the presidential campaign of the woman who would be Obama.
Her estranged father came out to condemn her for suggesting that his family was a bunch of pot smokers. Itâs not everyday a presidential candidateâs father states that her great-grandmothers are âturning in their graveâ over her âidentity politicsâ and that her Jamaican family wish to âdissociate ourselves from this travesty.â The travesty being the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
It took a while, but Kamala Harris also disassociated herself from her travesty of a campaign.
Snip.
The problem with Kamala Harris for the People was that the people didnât want Kamala. Toward the end, Kamala was polling at 2% in the HarrisX poll (no relation) alongside winners like Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, and the guy who promises to tell the truth about the secret UFO base on the moon.
If Moon Base Guy has a Twitter feed, I give him good odds to beat Delaney in Iowa.
By then her campaign had broken out in spasms of vicious infighting between her sister Maya and campaign manager Juan Rodriguez who were only speaking to each through media leaks. Rodriguez had run Kamalaâs Senate campaign and had the requisite skills to win elections in a corrupt one-party state. He was out of his depth competing in a national election and the dysfunctional campaign showed it.
But the real brains behind Kamala Harris for the People was, predictably, a member of the family.
Maya Harris had headed the ACLU in Northern California, then had a plum spot at the Ford Foundation, before becoming a senior advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, and then as campaign chair for her sister. âHillary really trusted her instincts,â John Podesta said of Maya. So did Kamala.
Too bad for her.
With her ACLU and Ford Foundation background, Maya had been billed as Kamalaâs âprogressive linkâ. It was more like the weakest link. While her campaign manager was out of his depth, her campaign chairwoman kept pushing her sister far leftward. And while that strategy worked in California where socialized medicine can pass without anyone having a clue how to pay for it: it didnât work nationally.
Kamala Harris for the People, the campaign brand, played off Kamalaâs background as a prosecutor. But under Maya, that part of her resume, the biggest part that doesnât involve Willie Brown, got buried. Maya pushed Kamala into the same radical policy space as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while trying to compete for Joe Bidenâs black voters. But Kamala and Maya were too detached from the black community to realize that South Carolina black voters wanted a more conservative candidate.
Instead of winning over leftists and black voters, Kamala lost both.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) “I will admit that seeing a liberal accuse the Democratic base of being racist is a delicious and refreshing change of pace, but itâs as lazy here as it is when they lob this nonsense at Republicans. Kamala Harrisâs biggest problem was always Kamala Harris.” Powerline: “The substance was Harrisâs record as a prosecutor in California. The problem wasnât just that Harris was a zealous prosecutor at times. Thatâs to her credit as far as Iâm concerned. The biggest problem was her over-zealousness. Some of her practices were offensive even to a die hard law and order type like me.” This piece identifies four fatal flaws with her campaign:
Mismanaging Campaign Funds: “Harris raised an ample amount of cash early in the campaign but didnât husband her resources well and failed to adjust in time when her fundraising slowed. The New York Times reported that at the time she dropped out, Harris would have had to go into debt to continue her campaign.”
Choosing the Wrong Ground on which to Fight (i.e., going after Biden for his opposition to forced busing)
Trying to Have It Both Ways on Medicare for All
Waging a Front-Runnerâs Campaign When She Needed to Wage an Insurgentâs: “Biden, the de-facto front-runner from the beginning, has proven to be much more durable in national polls than many expected, and his support among African-American voters in South Carolina kept Harris from ever really taking off in the first-in-the-South primary. Yet Harris kept on campaigning as if she were leading the race, focusing on national media, limiting her early events in Iowa, sticking to stage-managed appearances, and, worst of all, appearing thoroughly scripted.”
All true, though left unsaid is the fact that she sucked as a campaigner, an uncomfortable truth papered over by a fawning media desperate to boost the candidacy of a black liberal women.
The result has been an influx of money that has allowed her to build up her Iowa staff, though not on the scale of her rivals. Still, Klobuchar had added five offices around the state to the 10 she had.
Also noteworthy, this week she added to her team veteran Iowa Democratic campaign operative Norm Sterzenbach, a former Iowa Democratic Party executive director who had been an adviser to former Rep. Beto OâRourkeâs 2020 presidential campaign.
Klobuchar was on a three-day trip through Iowa, including lightly populated counties in her quest to campaign in each of Iowaâs 99 counties before the Feb. 3 caucuses. By Saturday, she planned to have campaigned in her 70th.
Snip.
There are signs itâs got potential. The Des Moines Register-CNN-Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted last month showed Klobuchar rising to a distant fifth, behind Buttigieg, Warren, Biden and Sanders. A brighter spot for her: Nearly 40% of likely caucus participants were still considering her, a jump of more than 10 percentage points in the past month.
Of all the longshots, Klobuchar is best situated to compete in Iowa. She also campaigned in Denver.
To call Deval Patrickâs campaign a shoestring operation would be insulting to shoestrings.
Attend a Patrick event and thereâs not a bumper sticker or pin to be found, let alone organizers with clipboards collecting names of would-be voters. His ground game looks to be nonexistent: The entire campaign appears to consist of a handful of volunteers and one publicly announced staffer, campaign manager Abe Rakov. In comparison, other campaigns have several hundred paid staffers and dozens of offices combined â and thatâs just in New Hampshire.
Patrick has spent the first dozen days of his campaign trying to persuade senior Democratic leaders in the early voting states to take him seriously. They want to give the former Massachusetts governor with an inspirational life story and friendship with Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt. But Patrick has a way to go before they fully buy in.
âA lot of the talent has already been acquired here, professional talent to run his campaign,â said former New Hampshire Chief Justice John Broderick, a Joe Biden supporter. âHeâs not going to be on the debate stage, most probably. Itâs pretty damn difficult.â
The campaign hasn’t publicized the few staff hires it has made, so far divulging only two names: Rakov and LaJoia Broughton, who will serve as South Carolina state director.
Can that sort of campaign succeed in the 21st century? Possibly, if either you have an unusually compelling candidate (think Donald Trump), or message campaign that resonates with primary voters (think McGovern 72); Patrick doesn’t check either of those boxes.
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. It’s not just that the 2016 presidential campaign never ended, the 2016 Democratic Primary is still being fought over, with Sanders and Clinton still trading barbs. Given how far she and the DNC went to rig 2016 in her favor, she has a lot of damn gall complaining about Sanders hurting her chances, especially since he ended up campaigning for her. Another day, another Democratic staffer (Darius Khalil Gordon) fired for tweets, including “Working hard so one day i can make that Jew money.” He wants to dump $150 billion into government owned broadband. Just when you think nothing could be worse than Comcast or Spectrum, Bernie proves you wrong!
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. By the shores of gutterrama, by the gently toppling 9 pin, by the rolling blackball thunder, confessed the sins of Liawatha:
đ Whoa…
This is quite the admission from Elizabeth Warren on previously identifying as Native American:
âI shouldnât have done it. I am not a person of color, I am not a citizen of a tribe. And I have apologized for confusion I have causedâpic.twitter.com/ErjPhVb62h
Gee, think maybe you should have done that four years ago? And note that she never confesses to the sin of using the benefits of Affirmative Action to advance her own career. Warren simply isn’t hard enough left for The Guardian. “Elizabeth Warren â under pressure from rival Pete Buttigieg to reveal her past compensation from corporate clients â announced Sunday that she’s received $1.9 million from private legal work since 1986.” That works out to just under $83,000 over 23 years. Pretty good money for most people (though less than I make), but (and I know this is going to sound weird coming from me) that’s really not an overwhelming amount of legal consulting billing, where good attorneys can bill $400 an hour an up, and a high profile lawyer like Warren before she ran for the senate, $1,000+ is not unheard of. On the oher hand, she hasn’t broken up how it was earned, exactly when, and for whom; maybe the bulk came after she was elected to the senate. How socialists soured on her:
It wasnât so long ago that you could read an article in Jacobin that argued, âIf Bernie Sanders werenât running, an Elizabeth Warren presidency would probably be the best-case scenario.â In April, another Jacobin article conceded that Warren is âno socialistâ but added that âsheâs a tough-minded liberal who makes the right kind of enemies,â and her policy proposals âwould make this country a better place.â A good showing by her in a debate this summer was seen as a clear win for the left in the movementâs grand ideological battle within, or perhaps against, the Democratic Party. Even staff writer Meagan Day, probably the biggest Bernie stan on Jacobinâs masthead, found nice things to say about Warren.
No more. A selection of Jacobin headlines from November: âElizabeth Warrenâs Head Tax Is Indefensible,â âElizabeth Warrenâs Plan to Finance Medicare for All Is a Disasterâ and âElizabeth Warren Is Jeopardizing Our Fight for Medicare for All.â In October, a story warned that a vote for Warren would be âan unconditional surrender to class dealignment.â Even a recent piece titled âMichael Bloomberg? Now Theyâre Just Fucking with Usâ went out of its way to say that Warren is insufficiently confrontational to billionaires.
At some level, the picks and pans of an activist magazine with only a fraction of the readership of, say, pre-2016 Breitbart might not seem of much consequence as America heads into its next presidential election. But as the Democratic Party faces its intramural battle over how best to respond to the Trump presidencyâwith measured centrism, or an opportunistic and disruptive lurch to the leftâ Jacobin has emerged as a hard-to-ignore voice in defining what the latter should look like.
Actually, I’ve done a pretty good job ignoring it.
The change in the publicationâs treatment of Warren, Sunkara told me, was not a conscious decision or directive from higher-ups like himself. The publication, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, cannot formally endorse political candidates.
But it does reflect, he said, what Jacobinâs mostly young left-wing writers and contributors, many of whom are open Sanders supporters and even campaign volunteers, are thinking. Where a previous generation might have been more than satisfied with a candidacy that would have been a socialist dream a mere decade ago, a younger generation tired of tempering its hopes is hungry for what it thinks could be a more revolutionary outcome.
Warrenâs ginger concessions to the centerâbe it her proclamations of â faith in marketsâ or her refusal to say sheâd raise middle class taxes to pay for single-payer health careâthus seem like a betrayal of necessary convictions.
âThere probably has been, among certain writers, a disillusioning with certain parts of the Warren approach to things, and also itâs probably an attempt to push her to be more resolute,â Sunkara said. Thereâs a reason, after all, why the candidate who said she is a âcapitalist to her bonesâ was not the socialistsâ favorite to begin with.
Man, the show trials where Jacobian writers purge DailyKos writers for rightist deviationism is going to be lit!
Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She said something stupid about vaccines, but the only link choices are Vice or The Mary Sue, so, nah, I’m just telling you about it. She’s angling for an apperance on Joe Rogan, which would be a great move for her (or, honestly, probably anyone but Biden or The Billionaire Boys).
âNot a single Republican has given any indication that theyâre in fact-finding mode. Theyâre all in defend-the-president mode. You need literally dozens of Republican senators to switch sides when the trial starts, which weâve gotten zero indication is going to happen.â
âThe more this drags on, the more danger there is of two things: Number one, Donald Trump comes out of this and says, âVindicated! Totally exonerated!â And number two, we are wasting precious time where we should be creating a positive vision that Americans are excited about solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected, and beat him in 2020,â he added.
He went on: âIf all that happens is all of the Democrats are talking about impeachment that fails, then it seems like there is no vision. It seems like all we can do is throw ineffective rocks at Donald Trump, and then it ends up leading, unfortunately, toward his reelection.â
Andrew Yang expanded his presidential bid’s digital operations with two senior hires, including an alum of the Obama and Hillary Clinton White House campaigns.
Yang brought on Ally Letsky, a senior vice president and strategist at Deliver Strategies, to lead the campaignâs direct mail efforts and Julia Rosen, a partner at Fireside Campaigns, to helm the campaignâs digital strategy.
âWhile other campaigns are scaling back or trying to sustain their current levels, our campaign is rapidly growing and adding experience and know-how to ensure that we peak at the right time,” Yang said in a statement. “Weâre absolutely thrilled that Ally and Julia â two of the most experienced and respected professionals in their fields â are bringing their expertise to the Yang Gang to help us compete and win.”
Letsky is a veteran of the Obama and Clinton presidential campaigns in 2012 and 2016, respectively. She helped former President Obama with his direct mail efforts during his reelection bid and served as the director of direct mail for Clintonâs failed 2016 bid….Rosen has also worked with several Democratic organizations and establishment groups prior to joining Fireside Campaigns, including ActBlue and MoveOn.
The piece also says that “JuliĂĄn Castro laid off staffers in New Hampshire and South Carolina earlier this month to narrow his focus on Iowa and Nevada.”
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, who declared then dropped out, or whose campaigns are so moribund I no longer feel like wasting my time gathering updates on them:
Kent is not a first-hand witness and much of his testimony is based off of second-hand knowledge. [Page 206-207]
Kevin Bacon has fewer degrees of separation to the Trump Zelensky call than George Kent.
That being said, his closed-door testimony revealed far more devastating pushback on the Democrat narrative than anything else.
Kent testified that it is appropriate for the State Department to look at the level of corruption in a country when evaluating foreign aid. [Page 103]
(Reminder: The Trump administration sent Ukraine lethal aid.)
Kent also testified that Hunter Biden being on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma while Joe Biden was VP was a conflict of interest. [Page 226-227]
And according to his testimony, when he raised corruption concerns with the Obama White House, he was rebuffed and was told âThere was no further bandwidth to dealâ with Hunter. [Page 226-227]
Taylor was not on the July 25th call and he did not read the transcript until it was publically released for the world to see.
Furthermore, Taylor doesnât have relationships with any of the players involved. He has previously testified that he did not have direct communication with President Trump, Rudy Giuliani or Mick Mulvaney. [Pages 107-108]
Yet even worse for Democratsâ, Taylorâs closed door testimony has undermined their phony narrative.
Taylor testified that at the time of President Trumpâs call with Ukraine, the Ukrainians were unaware of the hold on the U.S. aid. [Page 119]
Taylor also testified that combatting corruption in Ukraine is a âconstant themeâ of U.S. foreign policy. [Pages 86-88]
Surprisingly, McDaniel reports that opposition to the hearings among Democrats is up 6 points. Could it be that there are still some sane members left in the Democratic Party who see this spectacle for what it is? Regardless of what new information is learned, no matter how favorably it may reflect on President Trump, there are a large number of Democrats who will not be swayed. Most Democrats hate Trump so much that, even though theyâre well aware of how unfairly heâs been treated, theyâre willing to go along with anything that will remove him from office. A six point shift doesnât seem like much, but even a small move can swing an election.
This shift also makes sense in light of the recent rally data released by Trumpâs campaign manager, Brad Parscale…He reported that 27% of those who attended Trumpâs Tupelo, MS rally on November 1st identified themselves as Democrats. At an October 17th rally held in Dallas, TX, 21.4% identified as Democrats. These figures are stunning.
1) Impeachment 24/7. The âinquiry,â supposedly prompted by President Trumpâs Ukrainian call, is only the most recent coup seeking to overturn the 2016 election.
Usually, the serial futile attempts â with the exception of the Mueller debacle â were characterized by about a month of media hysteria. We remember the voting-machines-fraud hoax, the Logan Act, the Emoluments Clause, the 25th Amendment, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux coup and various Michael Avenatti-Stormy Daniels-Michael Cohen psychodramas. Ukraine, then, isnât unique, but simply another mini-coup.
2) False whistleblowers. The âwhistleblowerâ is no whistleblower by any common definition of the noun. He has no incriminating documents, no information at all. He doesnât even have firsthand evidence of wrongdoing.
Instead, the whistleblower relied on secondhand water-cooler gossip about a leaked presidential call. Even his mangled version of the call didnât match that of official transcribers.
At publication, Texasâ crime rate is the lowest it has been since 1965. Similarly, violent crime in Texas is at a 40-year generational low with 410.8 incidents per 100,000 residents, a rate not seen since 1977. This trend follows a decades-long aggregate decrease in both violent and property crime rates. As illustrated in Figure 1, murderâthe most heinous crime that can be committed using a firearmâhas mimicked the decline as well with the drop in constituent subcategories of homicide. (Note that the rifle and shotgun homicide rates are reflected on the secondary vertical axis on the right in order to display the drop in these rare incidents.)
Further, the percentage of total homicides committed with a firearm in Texas has been trending downward as well. Similar to Figure 1, Figure 2 shows declines across all major categories of firearm homicide, with rifles and shotguns being displayed on the right-hand vertical axis. During the preceding two decades, a handgun has been used in an average of 46.53 percent of all homicides, while rifles and shotguns were used in 3.57 percent and 4.10 percent, respectively. For handguns, the highest use was 54.55 percent in 2005; the lowest was the most recent year, 2018, at 40.12 percent.
Also: “These trends persist in tandem with a proliferation in concealed carry permits being issued. Between 1998 and 2018, the number of concealed handgun licenses issued have increased 568 percent.”
Writer Derek Cohen examines possible solutions to violence involving guns, and finds all of them but one wanting:
The Legislature should consider implementing and funding a Texas program similar to federal initiatives, which uses a multi-pronged strategy of policing and prosecution, agency integration, and identification of violent crime hot spots. The focus would be on criminals with guns, not law-abiding Texans (Governorâs Texas Safety Action Report).
Of all the recommendations made in this report, this enjoys the strongest scholarly backing. This essentially describes what is known as âfocused deterrence,â a holistic public safety strategy that includes law enforcement, prosecutors, social services, and analysts. The process begins when on-the-street law enforcement describes gang conditions in the area they patrol, both in terms of geography (what is the gangâs âterritoryâ) and identifying key members. The analysts then create a gang map as well as a relational network of the gang. Those in the gang are notified that they have been identified as such and invited to a âcall-in.â During this meeting, attendees are informed of the strategy and, should violence persist associated with the gang, not only will state and federal prosecutors seek the maximum punishment for all potential criminal charges, but gang members stand to face these charges should others within the network be responsible for furthering violence. Conversely, attendees are offered the option of enrolling in relevant social services to ease the transition to a more law-abiding life.
These programs have gone by multiple names during their ascendency: Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), Operation: Ceasefire, and the like. Their efficacy has been demonstrated in individual and meta- analyses, suggesting âthat focused deterrence strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, medium-sized crime reduction effect.â
Probably should have included a link to this in my Austin homeless roundup, but there’s a YouTube channel dedicated to drunken brawls on Sixth Street, which seems to have gotten much worse in the last year or so. (Hat tip: Paul Martin of KR Training.)
Nine deaths at USC since August? That starts to seem like a startlingly high number. And, accord to feminists, there must have also been thousands of student rapes in the same period…
Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton became the first the secure his reelection in 2020. How? Within hours of the filing deadline closing, his legal team challenged false statements by his only Democratic opponent, who promptly withdrew.
ProTip: Try not to drop your four baggies filled with cocaine. Especially at the airport. Especially if you’re Democratic state representative. Texas Democratic State Representative Poncho Nevarez evidently had to learn that the hard way, and now he’s not running for reelection.
Massachusetts to seize cars of people caught with untaxed vaping products. Even by the standards of Massachusetts crazy that’s Massachusetts crazy, and likely both and Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual) and a Ninth Amendment (neither necessary nor proper) violation.
Despite the roommates’ optimism, the system began to break down soon after its establishment. To settle disputes, the roommates held weekly meetings of the “Committee of Three.”
“I brought up that I thought it was total bullshit that I’m, like, the only one who ever cooks around here, yet I have to do the dishes, too,” said Foyle, unaware of just how much the apartment underscores the infeasibility of scientific socialism as outlined in Das Kapital. “So we decided that if I cook, someone else has to do the dishes. We were going to rotate bathroom-cleaning duty, but then Kirk kept skipping his week, so we had to give him the duty of taking out the garbage instead. But now he has a class on Tuesday nights, so we switched that with the mopping.”
After weeks of complaining that he was the only one who knew how to clean “halfway decent,” Foyle began scaling back his efforts, mirroring the sort of production problems experienced in the USSR and other Soviet bloc nations.
At an Oct. 7 meeting of the Committee of Three, more duties and a point system were added. Two months later, however, the duty chart is all but forgotten and the shopping list is several pages long.
The roommates have also tried to implement a food-sharing system, with similarly poor results. The dream of equal distribution of shared goods quickly gave way to pilferage, misallocation, and hoarding.
“I bought the peanut butter the first four times, and this Organic Farms shit isn’t cheap,” Eaves said. “So ever since, I’ve been keeping it in my dresser drawer. If Kirk wants to make himself a sandwich, he can run to the corner store and buy some Jif.”
Narwhale the Unipuppy. Which was trending over the impeachment hearings two days ago…
In keeping with all that global warming, Austin had an unseasonably early hard freeze this week. Stay warm out there…
Happy Memorial Day Weekend! A time to remember the fallen and enjoy a three day weekend. It’s also an Energy Star Sales Tax Holiday here in Texas, which could mean big savings on such varied items as refrigerators, water conservation or water efficient products, and various gardening products, including soil and mulch.
Now on to the LinkSwarm!
Hey Democrats: How’s that “All Trump Derangement Syndrome, All the Time” working out for you? “A new Gallup Poll indicates that the rating for Democrats has slipped five points since November, while the low rating for the Republican Party remained about the same.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
What ObamaCare wrought: “The average individual purchaser of health insurance across the United States saw their premiums increase from $232 per month in 2013 to $476 per month in 2017, a ‘modest’ increase of over 100% in just a few years. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly $3,000 per year and roughly 9% of what the median American earns each year.”
The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.
More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSAâs so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.
The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.
The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an âinstitutional lack of candorâ and that the improper searches constituted a âvery serious Fourth Amendment issue,â according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.
Looking at it objectively, as a guy who opposed Trump until he dispatched Ted Cruz, I have to consider all the facts and ponder the evidence carefully before awarding Donald Trump the grade of A+. He has done an incredible job of doing exactly what I had hoped he would do in the off chance he defeated that naggy harridan and her corps of gender indeterminate hipsters, coastal snobs, race hustlers, aspiring libfascists, media scum, and wussy pseudo-conservatives terrified that a Hillary loss would mean people might expect them to do more than wear bow ties and go on NPR to prattle about Burke in their high-pitched, nasal voices.
There can be no serious debate. Donald Trump has done a truly outstanding job of not being Hillary Clinton.
His not being Hillary Clinton was and remains my sole expectation of Donald Trumpâs presidency. Nothing else matters in the end; it is enough that Trump foiled Felonia von Pantsuitâs creepy scheme to subjugate forever the deplorable mass of normal people she despises. The Obamacare repeal, tax reform, plus appointees of the quality of Gorsuch, Mattis and McMaster, and his lower court appointments â the inexplicable and damn-well-better-be-corrected-if-Trump-doesnât-want-a conservative-rebellion omission of Justice Don Willett not withstanding â are merely icing on the red velvet cake of Trumpâs not-being-Hillaryhood.
A few weeks ago the BBC reported that “approximately 850 people” from the United Kingdom have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis and the like. That’s more volunteers than the IRA were able to recruit in thirty years of the “Troubles”, when MI5 estimated that they never had more than a hundred active terrorists out in the field. This time maybe it’s the exotic appeal of foreign travel, as opposed to a month holed up in a barn in Newry.
Carrying on in Germany, Angela Merkel pronounced the attack “incomprehensible”. But she can’t be that uncomprehending, can she? Our declared enemies are perfectly straightforward in their stated goals, and their actions are consistent with their words. They select their targets with some care. For a while, it was Europe’s Jews, at a Brussels museum and a Toulouse school and a Copenhagen synagogue and a Paris kosher supermarket. But Continentals are, except for political photo-ops on Holocaust Memorial Day, relatively heartless about dead Jews, and wrote off such incidents as something to do with “Israeli settlements” and “occupation” and of no broader significance.
So they moved on to slaughter 49 gays in a nightclub in Orlando – the biggest mound of gay corpses ever piled up in American history and the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11. But all the usual noisy LGBTQWERTY activists fell suddenly silent, as if they’d all gone back in the closet and curled up in the fetal position. And those Democrats who felt obliged to weigh in thought it was something to do with the need for gun control…
So they targeted provocative expressions of the infidel’s abominable false religion, decapitating a French priest at Mass and mowing down pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market. But post-Christian Europe takes Christianity less seriously than its enemies do, and so that too merited little more than a shrug and a pledge to carry on.
So they selected symbols of nationhood, like France’s Bastille Day, Canada’s Cenotaph, and the Mother of Parliaments in London. But taking seriously assaults on your own nation’s symbols would require you to take your nation seriously, and most western citizens are disinclined to do so. As the great universal talismanic anthem of the age has it, “Imagine there’s no countries/It’s easy if you try…”
But the arithmetic is not difficult: Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam. France and Germany and Belgium admit more and more Islam, and thus more and more terrorism. Yet the subject of immigration has been all but entirely absent from the current UK election campaign. Thirty years ago, in the interests of stopping IRA terrorism, the British state was not above preventing the internal movement within its borders of unconvicted, uncharged, unarrested Republican sympathizers seeking to take a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Today it declares it can do nothing to prevent the movement of large numbers of the Muslim world from thousands of miles away to the heart of the United Kingdom. It’s just a fact of life – like being blown up when you go to a pop concert.
The Denver City Council agreed Monday to change to local sentencing guidelines in order to shield legal immigrants convicted of domestic violence from deportation proceedings.
In a unanimous 12-0 vote, council members revised criminal penalties for several âlow-levelâ crimes, reducing the maximum sentence to less than 365 days in jail. Under federal law, a criminal conviction that results in a sentence of a year or more is grounds for deporting any alien, including U.S. visa holders and legal permanent residents.
Allegedly body-slamming a reporter did not prevent Republican Greg Gianforte from handily beating singing socialist Rob Quist in a special election for Montana’s at-large congressional seat. Hey, remember when progressives were busy telling us it was OK to punch Nazis? Good times, good time…
Indeed, Gianforte raised over $100,000 right after news of the alleged assault spread. One need not condone violence to suggest that the Trump Derangement Syndrome-riddled press just might have an image problem with the American people… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
As Obama learned on the job, he came to believe that the road to peace went through Tehran, crafting an Iranian deal that alienated both our democratic ally Israel and our strategic Sunni allies, chief among them Saudi Arabia. In pursuit of his fantasy, he turned a blind eye to Iranâs crushing of the Green Revolution and dithered to the point of complicity in the Syrian abattoir. Meanwhile, Iran remains as implacably hostile and as determined to be a regional hegemon as ever.
That is the context of Trumpâs fawning reception. âWelcome, President Not Obama!â
