Friday! LinkSwarm! The day is already packed, so let’s get this puppy out the door…
West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice announced at a rally with President Trump that he’s switching to the Republican Party. Since Trump won West Virginia by over 40 points in 2016, that seems less “smart” than “inevitable.” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin says he’s still staying a Democrat. We’ll see…
By tomorrow, 164 million Americans will live in the 26 states that are wholly controlled by Republicans, 109 million will live in states where power is shared between the parties, and only 50 million will live in the six states controlled by the Democrats.
Those who run the Democratic Party spend their time overwhelmingly in Washington, California and New York, and they read the New York Times and the Washington Post. They watch CNN and MSNBC, along with network news. As a result, I am not sure they are fully attuned to how unpopular their party has become in most of America. They may win a tactical victory against President Trump, whose inexperience and personality make him vulnerable. But I suspect that very few voters are responding to the Democrats’ daily assault on the administration by saying, In the next election I am going to change my mind and vote liberal! On the contrary, it may be that the Democrats’ hysterical, unprecedented assault on the president will prove to be a distraction that actually retards their ability to address their party’s long-term decline.
“Lawyers in DNC Class-Action Suit ‘Perplexed’ by Media Blackout. Press ignores fraud case brought by 2016 Sanders backers against Democrat Party.” How severe a blackout? “A search on Google News for the name of the case in quotes “Wilding v. DNC” yields zero results.” Why, it’s almost as if the MSM considered itself an extension of the Democratic Party… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Media keep overplaying their hand, especially with the Trump/Russia delusion. Even Democrats are getting tired of it…
“Trump pushes to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants and move U.S. to a ‘merit-based’ immigration system.” Expect this to be widely popular with the public and DOA with those congressional Republicans still freebasing “comprehensive immigration reform”/illegal alien amnesty…
Speaking of that proposal, here White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller delivers a brutal smackdown to CNN’s rude and clueless Jim Acosta, who seems painfully ignorant of the history of the Statue of Liberty.
Illegal alien apprehensions up almost double since President Trump took office. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)
Liberals: “We can’t let ICE pick up illegal aliens just because they’re breaking the law!” Ice: “OK, then, we’ll just pick them up at the courthouse.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
We aren’t dealing with a liberal media anymore, but an illiberal media. The liberal media was content to use its institutional power as a megaphone to broadcast its views. But you could debate those views. Actual conservatives were allowed to write columns, and not just as a strategic attack on some element of the GOP the way it is now, and appear on television to offer opinions, and not just as punching bags.
The liberal media was convinced it would win the argument because it was right.
The illiberal media isn’t interested in winning an argument, but in silencing the opposition. It doesn’t just want to shout louder than you. It wants to use its institutional power to shut you up.
This isn’t just a media phenomenon. It’s what happened across the social spectrum when the people we used to call liberals became illiberal leftists. It’s why colleges censor controversial speakers and punish dissenting faculty. It’s why the environmental debate went from scientific discussions to calls to punish, fine and even jail those who question the left’s Luddite alarmism on Global Warming.
It’s why the debate over gay marriage shifted to punishing Christian bakers and florists, the arguments about Israel tilted to preventing musicians from performing in Tel Aviv and civil rights turned into a call to create “safe spaces” that ban everyone else. Diversity is no longer dressed up as an expansion, but is now explicitly a contraction. Don’t read books by white authors. Don’t hire more men. Kick Jews out of the gay rights rally. Send the IRS after conservative groups. Punch a Trump supporter in the face.
Nearly every leftist cause these days is expressed by punishing someone. Arguments are won by force. The illiberal totalitarian lurking inside the liberal, as David Horowitz described it, is out of the closet.
Dallas: It’s another attack by a group of people on a single train rider where the racial characteristics of the attacker are clearly visible in the video, but never mentioned
Good: Government realizes the Internet-of-Things is deeply insecure. Bad: Trying to pass a law to fix it. That’s like trying to darn a sock with a pipe wrench…
Zero Hedge has another of those the auto industry is doomed pieces, but this time it’s about longevity surpassing demand, not the usual one about off-lease vehicles…
Here we are, a week after one of the biggest political upsets in American history, and the reverberations are still being felt. Democrats seem to be stuck in the anger and denial phases of the Kubler-Ross grieving cycle, and probably won’t get to bargaining until the 2017 legislative session opens with Republicans in charge of the White House, Senate, and House.
While liberals were losing their minds over Trump, India was losing its mind by banning all bills over $1.50. The idea is evidently to force Indians to accept a cashless society (in the name of “fighting corruption”), but it’s actually grinding India’s economy to a halt.
More on the Democratic Party wipeout: “Republicans are now in control of a record 67 (68 percent) of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers in the nation, more than twice the number (31) in which Democrats have a majority.”
Conservatives have a once in a lifetime opportunity at the state level. Including supermajorities in a number of states, a Democratic Party which has gerrymandered itself into oblivion, and almost enough states to call a constitutional convention.
Mark Steyn. “If you keep insisting that half your fellow citizens are haters, maybe you’re the hater.” Also this: “One third of the Democrats’ representation in the House now comes from just three states – New York, Massachusetts and California. That’s one reason why they’re calling for the abolition of the Electoral College.”
Trump to hold post-election tour rallies in swing states. 1. He’s closed the sale, and now he’s servicing the account. 2. You know Obama has to be kicking himself for not thinking of that.
More from the Democratic Party’s genius candidate selection process. “If you could choose any state in America where you might want to run a shemale candidate for the United States States, Utah probably wouldn’t be your first choice, nor anywhere in the top 40.”
Threaten to kill random white people after Trump’s election? Expect to spend some time in involuntary committal for a mental assessment. Even if you’re a university professor.
Rapper Kanye West says he would have voted for Trump…and will run for President in 2020. West is an idiot savant black nationalist car wreck married to Kim Kardashian, but after this year, would you really say he has no chance of being elected? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
I will say this for West: He knows where to steal his riffs:
How many piece of Gnostic symbolism can you spot in that video?
“It’s telling that so many city leaders hate their state or national governments, but love supra-national governments like the EU. This shows that their real desire isn’t to go it alone in the marketplace, but to create replacement governance structures that are more amenable to their way of thinking, that constitutionally enshrine their preferences, and are insulated from democratic accountability.”
An obvious observation, which hardly anyone seems to make, is that blacks suffer less from racism than from poor education. Harvard does not reject black applicants because it dislikes blacks but because they are badly prepared. Blacks do not fail the federal entrance examination because it is rigged to exclude them but because they don’t know the answers. Equality of opportunity without equality of education is a cruel joke: giving an illiterate the right to apply to Yale isn’t giving him much.
The intelligent policy is to educate black children, something that the public schools of Washington manage, at great expense, not to do. In fact the prevailing (if unspoken) view seems to be that black children cannot be educated, an idea whose only defect is that it is wrong: the Catholic schools of Washington have been educating black children for years. The Catholic system has 12,170 students in the District, of whom 7,884, or 65 percent, are black.
Trump takes lead over Clinton according to that notorious right-wing propaganda organ, the Los Angeles Times. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ, who notes “it certainly looks bad for the Beefy Elderly Drunken Crazylady.”)
Michael Moore thinks Trump is going to win. I pay very little heed to Mr. Moore’s opinions, but I admit the possibility that he may have more insight into the day-to-day outlook of blue collar, rust belt Americans than I do.
“Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.”
Remembering the glory of The Poor Man’s James Bond. What red-blooded American teenage boy wouldn’t want to make his own anti-tank missile? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
James Lileks is on the #NeverTrump bandwagon, even though he doesn’t think it will work. “His supporters are impervious to this argument.”
Heh: “His were the eyes of a man who has gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back, and then he endorsed the abyss.” (Hat tip: Virginia Postrel on Instapundit.)
Tuesday was very kind to Texas incumbents. “No congressional incumbent who wanted another term was defeated…Three incumbents seeking re-election to the Texas Supreme Court held their ground against serious challengers. Two judges on the state’s highest criminal court emerged from their primaries unscathed. No state senator who sought another term was defeated.”
In Dallas, indicted Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price wins nomination for his eighth term. “Price’s federal indictment actually helped him because it fed the perception that Price was angering the right people – Dallas’ white establishment.”
Voting oddity one: As a commenter on yesterday’s thread noted, here in Williamson County, GOP Presidential choices spanned two pages, with longshot Elizabeth Gray on the second page all by herself. Result: she won 3.57% of the county vote.
Voting oddity two: Long-gone longshot Gilmore was reported to have have won the most votes in Chelsea, Massachusetts. That was a computer counting glitch that has since been corrected. He actually got 2 votes.
According to early returns, Donald Trump has won five states on Super Tuesday: Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia, while Ted Cruz has won Texas and Oklahoma. In states not called yet, it also appears that Trump will win Vermont (over John Kasich) and Arkansas, while Marco Rubio has a very early lead in Minnesota.
I suppose I should be encouraged that Trump didn’t break 50% in any of those races, but it’s obvious that Cruz can’t win against Trump unless Rubio, Kasich and Carson drop out…and possibly not even then.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won everything but Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont and Oklahoma. Sanders has a small lead in Colorado and Clinton a small lead in Massachusetts and a slightly larger lead in Minnesota.
If Cruz can’t win in Georgia and Alabama, it’s hard to see where he stops Trump with Rubio and Kasich still on the ballot.
If Sanders can’t win in Massachusetts and Minnesota, it’s simply over for him.
We’re slowly slouching toward a Clinton-Trump Presidential election.
Democratic pollster predicts disaster for Democrats, largely thanks to young voters abandoning their party in droves. “That’s the biggest concern right now for Democrats and progressives in particular, is that millennial voters look very, very discouraged. They don’t think that anyone has particularly spoken to them, anyone has been doing anything for them, it’s a bad economy, it’s expensive education, and all the kinds of concerns that millennials have.”
Even more evidence of Kay Hagan’s family benefiting from “green energy” stimulus pork. “A Carolina Journal examination of the JDC Manufacturing grant file at the N.C. Department of Natural Resources revealed that Tilden Hagan and William Stewart, Sen. Hagan’s son-in-law, had significant involvement in the project. Records from the stimulus file show direct payments to Tilden and Stewart of $12,785.”
“Immigration Activists” (i.e., supporters of illegal alien amnesty) are not happy at Hagan’s waffling and flipflopping either.
These LinkSwarms tend to get pushed back to days when there’s not a big story jumping up and requiring my attention. It seems like the Olympics have created a bit of a news lull
Today’s example of a Democratic member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns being convicted of a felony (in this case bribery) also comes to you from New Jersey, in the form of Trenton Mayor Tony Mack. But as you observe all this Democratic malfeasance in New Jersey, never lose sight of the truly important thing: Chris Christie might have closed a bridge!
Here’s a fascinating piece from Ace of Spades HQ on class identification among the gentry left.
Massachusetts state Democrat Rep. Carlos Henriquez’s schedule: 1. Smack my bitch up, 2. Mark my bills up. Yes, assaulting a woman is evidently no reason to keep him from working as a legislator…
Heartening, but I can’t help but notice that some of the same people appear in this video as the one from that town hall meeting in December. Makes it hard to gauge just how widespread black America’s dissatisfaction with Obama is…
The Turncoat Diaries: “The conversions of Charlie Crist, from Republican to independent to Democrat, make up one of the least inspiring tales in modern politics. To take it seriously is to admit you’re the sort of person who takes Scientology stress tests and supplies credit card info to anyone who claims to need help from Nigeria.”
Inside the Red Light Camera Bribe Machine. Redflex has done business with several cities, including “Austin, El Paso, Plano, Corpus Christi, Grand Prairie, North Richland Hills, Hurst, Port Lavaca, League City, Carrollton, Killeen, Mesquite, and Longview.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
I’ve seen people say “Al Qaeda couldn’t have done this because it’s too small-scale and sloppy.” Too which i would like to point out that: 1.) Al Qaeda has bungled plenty of attacks, and 2.) As the Ft. Hood and UNC attacks showed, there’s no shortage of freelance Jihadis willing to kill Americans.
As for it possibly being “tax protestors” (it being April 15 an all), maybe. Suspected Plano pipeline bomber Anson Chi fit under that description. (Of course, he was also a pro-organic food, pro-WTO, pro-Occupy, anti-GMO type, so he doesn’t fit neatly in any left-right schema.)
Mary Steyn on Margaret Thatcher: “A generation on, the Thatcher era seems more and more like a magnificent but temporary interlude in a great nation’s bizarre, remorseless self-dissolution. She was right and they were wrong, and because of that they will never forgive her.”
The top story today (despite MSM attempts to avoid covering it) is the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell for murdering babies. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.” I guess doctors murdering black babies just isn’t a big deal for many white liberal journalists. Hell, Margaret Sanger encouraged it. Just contrast their reluctance to report on it compared to how they would have exploded if a guy walked into a hospital and shot seven infants in the head…
Man in Massachusetts arrested for shooting a bear that was trying to eat him.
America doesn’t need an official eugenics program when it has the Ivy league.
Head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents union calls out Sen. Marco Rubio for supporting amnesty.
For all the jokes about Fauxcahontas and the accusations of Affirmative Action fraud, I think we all know who the greatest victim of the blowup over Elizabeth Warren’s Indian ancestry: Elizabeth Warren herself.
Like so many native Americans, she’s been cut off from her people by the cruel actions of the white man. How can any of us of Native American ancestry (I’ve got some Crow and Blackfoot bumping around in my DNA) truly know our heritage, since the white man destroyed all our respective oral traditions in their relentless westward expansion? Is it any surprise that, so shorn of her roots, Elizabeth Warren is unable to pinpoint her Affirmative Action-qualifying Great-Great-Great-Grandmother?
It’s up to us, the great masses of the Internet, to heal Elizabeth’s Warren’s pain by recapturing her tragically lost Indian heritage.
I want those PhotoShop gurus among you (you know who you are) to depict Elizabeth Warren in the Native American traditions that the white man has so cruelly stripped from her past. Submit your artistic masterpiece to me here, either linked from the comments or via email. In two weeks time on Monday, May 28, I will choose the best submission and award a tasteful prize befitting the solemnity of the project.
