Posts Tagged ‘Keith Richards’

LinkSwarm for February 14, 2020

Friday, February 14th, 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day! Or, as we call it in my house, “Passover.”

  • So just who was the jury foreman for Roger Stone’s trial? Would you believe someone who ran for congress as a Democrat and tweeted about Stone before she was empaneled? How is this not automatically a mistrial?
  • The Trump-Cocaine Mitch Judicial Appointment Juggernaut continues apace.
  • That Wuhan hospital built for 1,600 coronavirus victims in a week? There are only 90 patients in it, but they report no spare beds while they herd victims into stadiums.

    The gulf between the vision of vast new hospitals created and thrown into action within days and the more complicated reality on the ground is a reminder of one of the main challenges for Beijing as it struggles to contain the coronavirus: its own secretive, authoritarian system of government and its vast censorship and propaganda apparatus.

    Communist party apparatus well honed to crush dissent also muffles legitimate warnings. A propaganda system designed to support the party and state cannot be relied on for accurate information. That is a problem not just for families left bereft by the coronavirus and businesses destroyed by the sudden shutdown, but for a world trying to assess Beijing’s success in controlling and containing the disease.

    “China’s centralised system and lack of freedom of press definitely delay a necessary aggressive early response when it was still possible to contain epidemics at the local level,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor in political economy at Johns Hopkins University in the US.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Tales from inside the Wuhan quarantine.
  • “I got you babe.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Just when you think it’s impossible to slam #NeverTrump harder than Kurt Schlichter, Kurt himself tweets a piece to this Ian Samuel piece:

    The “Never Trump” guys. How can you not love these guys? They really thought they owned the place, didn’t they? Strutting around in their little bow ties, swapping erudite bon mots about William F. Buckley’s jowls. Masters of the universe, with their little magazines and affected mid-Atlantic accents that made them sound like Frasier Crane’s gay uncle, perpetually explaining the subtle parallels between George W. Bush and Seneca. And then—boom! The guy from the Apprentice walked into their house, ate their lunch, kissed their wives, peed in their brandy snifter, and now their son (Romulus) calls him dad. Come on. That’s funny!

    Sadly, after Trump won, they mostly bent the knee. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, whoever. They all turned out to be pushovers. (Big surprise). I don’t know if John Kasich is still a Never Trump guy, because I could not honestly tell you whether John Kasich is still alive.

    But some of these precious little lads and lasses held out, and oh, am I ever glad they did.

    Because now they’ve got a new line in the sand. And, of course, we all better listen this time. Because although these guys might be willing to vote for a Democrat, they are putting their foot down about one thing. So get clear on this. If you want their help? Don’t even think about nominating that guy. You know who I mean.

    “The rise of socialist Bernie Sanders is frustrating Never Trump Republicans.”

    Stop. No. It’s the first sentence and I already don’t want this to be over. I am printing this article out so I don’t lose it.

    Tell me: has anything ever not been “frustrating” to “Never Trump Republicans?” Frustration is basically who they are, isn’t it? They stood, watching, getting more and more frustrated as Trump became the only 2016 candidate who actually could break a “ceiling.” Then they stood watching, getting more and more frustrated as he actually won the election. And now, it’s 2020, it’s time for payback, and this time we’ll just see whose pants get pulled down in math cl—wait, what? No! It can’t be! Bernie Sanders is winning now, too? Okay. Alright. Tell me, honestly, how bad is it? Tell me how far behind exactly David French is in the delegate race. I mean, how far behind could he be? He was a JAG!

    “If Sanders is the Democratic nominee, many will sit out the election and be deprived of the opportunity of voting against President Trump, they said.”

    Did you hear that? These extremely good boys and girls will be deprived of the opportunity of voting against President Trump! No! Oh, God, anything but that! First the Weekly Standard collapses, now this? Please. No. This is not a joke. Here! Take my commemorative “Mitt Romney ’12” dog carcass. Take my signed copy of “Hope for America: Evan McMullin and a New Generation of Leadership,” by Diane Sheafor. (Real book). Take my “¡yo quiero Jeff Flake!” fidget spinner. Anything but the opportunity to post a ballot selfie on Twitter so it pops up in the feed of the MSNBC producer that might actually like me!

  • This week, Democrats want to tax…(rolls dice)…insulin. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Dallas ISD internal auditor finds the district overpaying contractors.

    “Internal audit has been highly effective showing the district disregarded state law when it came to Job Order Contracts or JOC’s for 4 years and potentially overpaid for the work,” [auditor Steven] Martin said.

    Two of his audits found the district overpaid $330,000 to contractors, but he says that’s just the beginning.

    “We estimate over payments on only nine contracts at $1.7 million. There are over 400 JOC’s,” Martin said.

    Did the district immediately investigate how this could happen? They did not. Instead:

    • “Last month, the superintendent proposed raising the threshold for investigating fraud to $250,000.”
    • “Dallas ISD has established the Procurement Compliance Committee that meets regularly with the superintendent and Board of Trustees regarding compliance priorities.”
    • “Dallas ISD trustee Miguel Solis said he felt blindsided by the auditor’s statements. ‘I have not once been contacted by internal auditor to discuss any of this. Probably most unprofessional acts that I have ever seen in seven years on school board.'” So the big problem isn’t graft and corruption, it’s uncovering it and announcing it without contacting me first.

    Sounds like Dallas ISD needs a lot more audits, including those of the overseer’s bank accounts. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)

  • Three families file lawsuite to prevent men from competing in women’s athletics. Twenty years ago that headline would have seemed like absurdist comedy, yet here we are…
  • Nukes and lasers! (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • The navy wants to retire the first four littoral combat ships, the newest of which was commissioned only six years ago. (Hat tip: Austin Bay at Instapundit.)
  • Jussie Smollett indicted on six counts of lying to the police.”
  • Joseph Shabala, RIP.
  • Two reactions: 1. Good for him! 2. And the moon became as blood…
  • Happy dog:

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Military, Texas | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 14, 2018

    Friday, December 14th, 2018

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Austin just had a wind storm, to top off a year of weird weather.

  • Apple to spend $1 billion on Austin campus. This is going to be a couple of miles from my house. Expect more detailed examination in a latter post.
  • This Andrew Sullivan piece is half-useful for it’s look at Social Justice Warrioring as a religious substitute:

    For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and society and any kind of truth must be seen entirely as a function of social power structures, in which various groups have spent all of human existence oppressing other groups. And it provides a set of practices to resist and reverse this interlocking web of oppression — from regulating the workplace and policing the classroom to checking your own sin and even seeking to control language itself. I think of non-PC gaffes as the equivalent of old swear words. Like the puritans who were agape when someone said “goddamn,” the new faithful are scandalized when someone says something “problematic.” Another commonality of the zealot then and now: humorlessness.

    And so the young adherents of the Great Awokening exhibit the zeal of the Great Awakening. Like early modern Christians, they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin. “Social justice” theory requires the admission of white privilege in ways that are strikingly like the admission of original sin. A Christian is born again; an activist gets woke. To the belief in human progress unfolding through history — itself a remnant of Christian eschatology — it adds the Leninist twist of a cadre of heroes who jump-start the revolution.

    Unfortunately, the second half is just Christian-concern-trolling as a way to bash Trump. Pace-Sullivan, there’s nothing new in his critique that couldn’t also be applied, to say, the “prosperity gospel” movement of the 1980s on, and it all boils down to “Those stupid Christians voted for Trump rather than the positions we enlightened betters believe in.”

  • “Census confirms: 63 percent of ‘non-citizens’ on welfare, 4.6 million households.” The ideal number there should be “zero.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Incoming New York Democratic attorney general vows to get Trump and his little dog Toto, too.
  • “Mexican National Sentenced to 8 Years for Trafficking Girls into U.S., Forcing Them into Prostitution.”
  • ICE workplace arrests up 700% in President Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year.
  • Think the Paris riots are bad? Just think what would happen if the biggest climate alarmists got their way:

    If Paris streets burned over a proposed 25 cents per gallon climate change tax, imagine the global conflagration over a $49 per gallon tax.

    That’s what a United Nations special climate report calls for in 12 years, with a carbon tax of $5,500 per ton—equal to $49 per gallon of gasoline or diesel. That’s about 100 times today’s average state and federal motor fuels tax.

    By 2100, the U.N. estimates that a carbon tax of $27,000 per ton is needed—$240 per gallon—to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

    Of course, that isn’t going to happen. The economic wreckage of such a punitive tax would plunge the global economy into a permanent depression—and that’s assuming politicians could enact such huge tax increases over the will of their voters.

    Keep in mind that the unrest in France was triggered by a looming 25-cent hike, which is a little less than 10% more in taxes than French drivers already pay. To meet the $49 per gallon tax hike recommended by the U.N., fuel taxes in France would have to go up 17-fold.

  • “When you said, ‘Paris is going to be so hot,’ I did not realise it would actually be on fire…’Eye-watering opportunities’ did not, in my mind, involve tear gas.”
  • The weirdness of the Huawei story.
  • How corrupt is the Chicago Way? A college student running against Democratic Party boss Michael J. Madigan’s hand=picked alderman Marty Quinn found out:

    To get on the ballot, Krupa was required to file 473 valid signatures of ward residents with the Chicago Board of Elections. Krupa filed 1,703 signatures.

    But before he filed his signatures with the elections board, an amazing thing happened along the Chicago Way.

    An organized crew of political workers — or maybe just civic-minded individuals who care about reform — went door to door with official legal papers. They asked residents to sign an affidavit revoking their signature on Krupa’s petition.

    Revocations are serious legal documents, signed and notarized. Lying on a legal document is a felony and can lead to a charge of perjury. If you’re convicted of perjury, you may not work for a government agency. And I know that there are many in the 13th Ward on the government payroll.

    More than 2,700 revocations were turned over to the elections board to cancel the signatures on Krupa’s petitions. Chicago Board of Elections officials had never seen such a massive pile of revocations.

  • Mark Steyn: “If you’re having trouble keeping track, the French protests, Trump, Brexit, the Austrian and Italian elections, and the sudden cancellation of the ‘Murphy Brown’ reboot are all the work of Russian bots. Whereas the Tijuana caravan, the UK grooming gangs and that rental car heading toward you on the sidewalk outside the Berlin Christmas market are the authentic vox populi.” Plus some Max Boot bashing, which is now a year-round pursuit. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • 1. Google gets accused of anticompetative practices. 2. Google donates money to the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 3. Same think tanks write pieces defending Google. 4. Google boosts those studies in its search results. It’s like the human centipede of political policy studies…
  • Another drawing Mohammed death.
  • Boy Scouts file for bankruptcy. Get woke, go broke.
  • Texas constitutional carry bill introduced.
  • Nike: It’s fine to insult patriotic Americans by kneeling at NFL games, but criticize Islamist scumbag Recep Tayyip Erdogan? That’s not allowed.
  • Janitor in Greece is facing a decade in prison after 18 years on the job for lying about the years of primary school she completed.
  • Keith Richards gives up drinking. And I saw seven angels blowing seven trumpets… (Hat tip: Iowahawk.)
  • Scott Adams nails it:

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Global Warming, Guns, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Welfare State | 1 Comment »