Posts Tagged ‘Michael Burgess’

LinkSwarm For November 17, 2023

Friday, November 17th, 2023

Progressives kick Jews out of the club, San Francisco cleans up for a communist dictator (but not mere citizens), FBI busts a brothel catering to politicians…then refuses to divulge their clients, and The Marvels crashes and burns on opening weekend. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Jews Get Kicked Out of the Progressive Club.”

    To sustain the alliance between leftists and Islamists, something had to give. And that something was Jews.

    After a while, it became a parody worthy of classic comedy skits: the Biden administration’s reflexive need to launch into a condemnation of “Islamophobia” every time the discomfiting topic of antisemitism came up — which, you may have noticed, it does quite a bit these days.

    Progressives hate antisemitism. Not, unfortunately, the concept . . . the word. It holds a mirror up to their internal contradictions.

    Jews have been among the most consequential, cutting-edge progressives in history. A few months back, I reviewed Democratic Justice, Brad Snyder’s biography of Felix Frankfurter, who may have been as responsible for forging the dominance of American progressivism as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president he zealously served. Alas, Frankfurter would not be welcome today in what’s become of his movement — not least because of another project on which he collaborated with his mentor and fellow Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis: Zionism. That project is anathema to today’s progressives. It honors the old order and the uniqueness of a people reified in their ancestral homeland, one in which they dwelled for millennia — before Islam existed and, 14 centuries later, the notion of “Palestinians” was conceived.

    Moreover, to highlight antisemitism is intolerably inconvenient to the collaboration of highest priority for modern progressives: Their partnership with sharia supremacists — so-called Islamists, adherents to “political Islam.”

    Snip.

    Ostensibly, it’s an unlikely partnership: Sharia supremacists despise many signal progressive causes — e.g., abortion, equality for women, civil rights for homosexuals, and “gender fluidity.” (How long do you figure the “activists” waving their “Queers for Palestine” placards would actually last in Gaza?) And it seems odd for progressives, infamously intolerant of religious liberty, to make common cause with unabashed theocrats who would impose on society a systematically discriminatory legal code enforced by barbaric punishments — of the terrorizing kind that, not coincidentally, the Brotherhood’s Hamas jihadists inflicted on Israeli men, women, and children on October 7.

    But let’s dig deeper. The ne plus ultra for sharia supremacists and leftists is the extirpation of the established order. Yes, they have very different ideas about what should replace that order; but that’s an argument for later (at which point progressives would find themselves in the unenviable position of the appeaser after the crocodile is done devouring everyone else). For now, it is a marriage of convenience, a joint war of conquest against Western civilization.
    Marriages of convenience are not big on commitment and loyalty. Hence, Jews — predominantly on the left, with legions of stalwart progressives who would as reflexively rebuke Islamophobia as any good Democrat — have become a casualty of that war.

    The sharia-supremacist hatred of Jews is doctrinal. As the Hamas Charter relates, Islamic eschatology is consumed by an end-of-times war in which even trees and stones will help Muslims kill their mortal enemies, the Jews. The Islamic claim on the land “from the River to the Sea” also stems from scripture: Mohammed’s night ride from Mecca to Jerusalem and on to heaven. And Muslim scripture further holds that Islam’s prophet died upon being poisoned to death by a Jewish woman.

    This is all very uncomfy for progressives. They really don’t do doctrine, let alone submit — or at least allow themselves to appear to be submitting — to religious doctrine. Thus must they engage in euphemistic games to sidestep reality.

  • “Democrat Media Arm Scrambles As It Becomes Clear They Knew About Hamas Invasion Of Israel Before It Happened. “Reports have been bubbling up that the various tentacles of the Democrat hacktivist media actually had pro-Hamas activists ‘journalists’ embedded with Hamas before and on October 7th.”
  • Democrats wouldn’t clean up San Francisco for mere citizens, but they did it for a communist dictator.

    Apparently, the city of San Francisco can indeed clear out the tent cities of homeless, remove the human feces and hypodermic needles from the sidewalks, and make the downtown look sparking clean and shiny in just a matter of days. All it takes is sufficient motivation — like hosting a visit from Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

    Even the New York Times can’t deny the irony that the arrival of Xi and a plethora of overseas leaders is spurring efforts that, presumably, could have been started and carried out at any point with enough motivation:

    On Market Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, maintenance workers resurfaced uneven sidewalks and installed plywood over empty tree wells.

    Nearby, a crew gave a long-derelict plaza a makeover by turning it into a skateboard park and outdoor cafe with ping-pong tables, chess boards and scores of potted plants. Elsewhere, workers painted decorative crosswalks and new murals, wiped away graffiti, picked up piles of trash and removed scaffolding to show off a refurbished clock tower at the Ferry Building. . . .

    Perhaps the most obvious change has been seen at the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building at the corner of Seventh and Mission Streets, less than a mile from the conference center.

    Before we go any further, can I just point out how infuriating it is that we live in a country with so many genuinely heroic, inspiring, and under-recognized figures, and yet we name things after politicians whose greatest achievements were bringing back a lot of federal funds to their constituents? I realize in the state of West Virginia, that statement is blasphemy.

    In a perfect irony, in August, “Officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advised hundreds of employees in San Francisco to work remotely for the foreseeable future due to public safety concerns outside the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building on Seventh Street.” As Iowa GOP senator Joni Ernst noticed, to protect the building named after the House speaker who said that border walls are “immoral,” federal officials put up a high chain-link fence.

    In other words, the official assessment of the federal government is that the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is not a safe place for anyone, which strikes me as a heavy-handed metaphor.

    Anyway, back to the Xi-driven cleanup:

    For two years, a stubborn fentanyl market at the corner and a sprawling homeless encampment across the street became neighborhood fixtures. People regularly used drugs in an adjacent alley.

    Most have seemingly disappeared in a poof…

    It’s almost like the city government of San Francisco perceives Xi Jinping as the boss it needs to impress, instead of the voters whose exorbitant taxes (including an 8.625 percent sales tax!) pay city employees’ salaries. If the city is worth making safer, cleaner, and more attractive for a visit by Xi, President Biden, and a whole bunch of diplomats . . . why isn’t it worth making safer, cleaner, and more attractive for the full-time residents?

    Why indeed.

  • “Newsom Assures Homeless They Can Resume Pooping On Sidewalks Once His Boss Leaves.”
  • “Californians Set Up President Xi Dummy So Newsom Will Keep The Cities Clean All The Time.”
  • Thinks that make you go Hmmmm: “DOJ Protects D.C. Brothel Customers… As Congress Votes For New FBI Facility.”

    Two tightly connected things happened in Washington, D.C., on November 8: a “high-end” brothel serving “elected officials” was shut down by the FBI, and the U.S. House approved a controversial $300 million new headquarters building for the weaponized agency.

    In announcing the brothel’s bust, the Department of Justice explained that the sex-trafficking operation served “elected officials, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, attorneys, scientists and accountants, among others.”

    The press release named the brothel operators: Han “Hana” Lee, 41, of Cambridge, MA; James Lee, 68, of Torrance, CA; and Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, MA.

    In lurid detail, the Department of Justice explained how the operators advertised their services—primarily young Asian women—for high-end customers. In order to utilize the prostitution services of the brothel, prospective clients allegedly completed “a form providing their full names, email address, phone number, employer and reference if they had one.”

    Not mentioned in the press release were the names of the customers.

    The announcement was made just ahead of a vote in the U.S. House, which would have defunded the $300 million new headquarters building proposed for the FBI. The facility, to be built in Maryland, will reportedly be larger than the Pentagon. The Pentagon has a total floor area of 6.5 million square feet and offices 23,000 military and civilian employees.

  • Dispatches from the Biden Recession: “Stellantis offers buyouts to roughly half of U.S. salaried workers.” Stellantis consumed the corpse of Chrysler several years back.
  • “Taibbi: According To Pundits, ‘Ignorance’ Makes Americans Give “Wrong” Answers To Economic Confidence…The Guardian editorial Krugman linked to explains: Americans continue to believe the economy sucks, even though they’ve been told over and over it doesn’t! Why won’t they listen?…I can’t remember an instance of newspapers polling Americans about their feelings, then telling them their answers are not only wrong, but ignorant!
  • “Pro-Palestinian” protestors are anti-American protestors:

    (Hat tip: The Daily Gator https://thedaleygator.net/?p=25316 )

  • Gaza kids say the darndest things…about killing Jews. “I want to stab them again and again.”
  • Speaking of which, what better accessory is there for a little girls room than a cache of rocket launchers?
  • Tim Scott is out. Like so many in this presidential campaign cycle, he made himself less, not more, electable by taking the wrong side in the culture war.
  • Texas Republican congressman Michael Burgess will not seek reelection.
  • This is a weird story: “Congressman Pat Fallon (R-TX-4), who had filed to run for Texas Senate District (SD) 30, has now backed out and will instead run for re-election to his currently held congressional seat.” Being a state senator is all well and good, but who steps down from a U.S. Congressional seat to a state senate seat?
  • Austin police officer Jorge Pastore was killed in the line of duty early Saturday morning.
  • “Texas: Islamic scholar praises Gazans for having ‘thrown horror’ in the hearts of the Israelis.” That would be Mohamad Baajour of the East Plano Islamic Center.
  • Another week, another liberal journalist charged with child pornography.

    A BuzzFeed feature story from 2018 about a journalist who told a group of schoolchildren that he was gay was taken down just a day after it was announced that he had been brought up on child pornography charges.

    Slade Sohmer, 44, the former editor-in-chief of the left-leaning video-driven news site The Recount, was freed on $100,000 bail on Monday after he was charged in Massachusetts court with possessing and disseminating “hundreds of child pornography images and videos.”

    He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of dissemination of child pornography.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • “Germany’s Rheinmetall to supply Ukraine with 25 Leopard-1 tanks.”
  • Asianometry takes a deep dive into Nvidia’s radical new computational lithography method for generating semiconductor masks. I know a whole lot of eyes just glazed over, but this stuff is important, and I don’t think any other bloggers are covering semiconductors. And speaking of eyes…
  • World’s first whole eyeball transplant performed. No vision yet, but doctors are hopeful.
  • Rosalynn Carter joins her husband in hospice care.
  • Texas A&M head football coach Jimbo Fisher just got paid $77 million to go away. Nice work if you can get it…
  • The Marvels officially has the worst opening weekend of any MCU film. Yes, worse than the Ed Norton Hulk.
  • Speaking of disasterous superhero films, Critical Drinker goes over the compounding errors of the never-to-be-released Batgirl movie. Surprisingly, the film itself was reportedly not that bad, it’s just a cascading series of studio decisions made the film nonviable.
  • Snoop Dogg says he’s giving up weed. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
  • A tale of two Halloween lights.
  • “Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use.”
  • “Thousands Already Lined Up For Black Friday After Grocery Store Offers Prices From When Trump Was President.”
  • Congressional Republicans: Zero Funding For Vaccine Mandate Programs

    Monday, February 7th, 2022

    Some Republican congressmen have finally drawn a line in the sand:

    With several of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates still in effect — such as those affecting members of the military, federal contractors, and healthcare workers — Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) is calling on lawmakers to block government spending that funds the enforcement of those mandates.

    Roy, along with 48 other Republicans in Congress, sent a letter to the GOP leadership in each chamber pledging to refuse consideration of “any federal government funding vehicle [. . .] that funds the enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates at any level of government.”

    The letter comes in advance of February 18, 2022, the date through which the federal government is currently funded thanks to two continuing resolutions (CRs) that were passed by Congress last fall.

    According to the top-ranking Republican in the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress is headed toward passing another stop-gap measure to continue funding the government without any shutdowns.

    Republicans like Roy — who also expressed frustration with the national debt surpassing $30 trillion — don’t want to see that funding continue to support the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

    During a House floor speech on Friday, Roy explained his position, saying, “[W]hen members of this body or the United States Senate vote for a continuing resolution — I want every American to listen to me — when they vote for a continuing resolution to fund government, they are voting to fund the enforcement of vaccine mandates that are causing our men and women in uniform to be forced out of service, to be discharged.”

    Members of the Texas delegation who signed Roy’s letter include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-02), Lance Gooden (R-TX-05), Ronny Jackson (R-TX-13), Randy Weber (R-TX-14), Pete Sessions (R-TX-17), Troy Nehls (R-TX-22), Michael Cloud (R-TX-27), Michael Burgess (R-TX-26), and Brian Babin (R-TX-26).

    Opposition to vaccine mandates is widespread in America, and almost universal among Republicans, which makes defunding them an excellent hill to defend. The only question is why more GOP legislators haven’t signed this pledge.

    If Biden and congressional Democrats didn’t want their unconstitutional regulatory schemes held hostage to continuing resolutions, they should have tried to get them passed into law and passed an actual budget rather than a continuing resolution. Too bad pandering to their far left-wing base was more important than writing a budget Manchin and Sinema could sign off on.

    He who lives by the continuing resolution dies by the continuing resolution.

    Texas Senate Race Update for July 26, 2012

    Thursday, July 26th, 2012

    A quick roundup Texas Senate race news. Less than a week before the runoff! I’ll try to do at least one more update Monday.

  • Friday the Ted Cruz campaign is having a big get-out-the-vote rally in The Woodlands featuring Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint.
  • Saturday brings another get-out-the-vote rally, this one in Southlake (DFW area), featuring Rick Santorum and Congressman Michael Burgess.
  • Greg Groogan of Fox Houston seems impressed at the lineup.
  • Palin has also cut an automated call for Cruz:

  • Cruz is at FreePAC in Dallas…and David Dewhurst isn’t.
  • Former Texas GOP chair George Strake, Jr. says the latest Dewhurst smear is the dirtiest he’s ever seen.
  • George Will says that Dewhurst is good enough. I would take issue with one of Will’s assertions, though: If you read that letter signed by eighteen Texas state senators, it is not “in support of Dewhurst,” but rather a technical description of the various legislative fates of the various bills Cruz said Dewhurst either killed behind the scenes, or else didn’t push hard enough for. It’s not an endorsement of Dewhurst’s candidacy by those Senators. However, Dewhurst did just pick up the endorsement of…
  • State Senator Dan Patrick. Given the significant differences Dewhurst and Patrick have had over the years (most notably the fate of the anti-groping bill), that’s a good pickup for Dewhurst, though I don’t think it really moves the needle.
  • Many members of the legislative Tea Party Caucus are not pleased.
  • Erick Erickson is not impressed with the Will column.
  • Texas Comptroller Susan Combs also endorsed Dewhurst.
  • Sen. John Cornyn is maintaining strict neutrality in the race.
  • Dewhurst’s conservative credentials get examined by Rice professor Mark P. Jones, who concludes that “Dewhurst’s ideological location is somewhere in the moderate or centrist wings of the Republican Senate delegation,” while passing legislation acceptable to “most” Republicans.
  • Blogger Befuddled by the Clowns says that “Dewhurst because he clearly feels he will be able to swing in and buy the votes. In my mind, this represents the same old arrogance that has existed in Washington DC for decades. This prevailing attitude is the very essence that I want evaporated from our Federal Government…It is clear that David Dewhurst is out of touch with the real working class and will bring his elitist ideals with him. These are the reasons why I voted for Ted Cruz.”
  • Dewhurst appeared on KIII in Corpus Christi:

    KiiiTV3.com South Texas, Corpus Christi, Coastal Bend

  • The fourth day of early voting, and I just received my first piece of Dewhurst direct mail since the primary.
  • On the Democratic side of the runoff, Paul Sadler, the establishment candidate, picks up the usual establishment endorsements.
  • Sadler also appeared on KUHF.
  • Sadler had just over $30,000 cash on hand as of July 11.
  • Grady Yarbrough, who evidently still hasn’t filed an FEC report, has still somehow managed to buy air time, using the same video he put up on YouTube in June.
  • Texas Senate Race Update for July 6, 2012

    Friday, July 6th, 2012

    Been a busy week blowing things up and reading stories for an upcoming science fiction workshop, so here’s a quick senate race update:

  • Ted Cruz picks up the endorsement of Dallas-area U.S. Congressman Michael Burgess. Burgess had previously endorsed Tom Leppert.
  • The Cruz campaign released an internal poll showing Cruz leading Dewhurst 49%-40%. All the usual internal poll caveats apply.
  • More on the poll’s methodology. If memory serves, they never released any methodology on those Michael Baselice internal polls the Dewhurst team kept leaking to favored journalists…
  • And still more on the methodology.
  • Ted Cruz on Glenn Beck.
  • Past and current presidents of Texa Eagle Forum Split endorsements between Dewhurst and Cruz.
  • Cruz: Let’s have five debates. Dewhurst: OK. Cruz: OJ, let’s debate. Dewhurst Sorry, too busy simonizing my cat.
  • Cruz to Dewhurst surrogate Mike Richards: Thanks for coming out. Richards to Cruz: Die in a fire. I may be paraphrasing a little…
  • Kate Alexander offers up the current state of play.
  • Dewhurst sets up an Astroturf twitter feed: @TxSenFactCheck.
  • Dewhurst is willing to campaign after the election. Insert your own joke here.
  • Texas Senate Race Update for May 28, 2012

    Monday, May 28th, 2012

    Since tomorrow is election day, here’s a final Senate race roundup. You might want to take time today to find your voter registration card, locate your polling place, and figure out who you want to vote for.

    Since it’s possible people who haven’t been following the race until now are tuning into this blog, you might want to take a look at:

  • My endorsement of Ted Cruz.
  • Previous senate race posts.
  • Websites of the 2012 Texas Senate Candidates, which is a pretty comprehensive list.
  • Now today’s update:

  • Ted Cruz gets some love over at Big Government.
  • Cruz says he’ll beat David Dewhurst decisively in a runoff.
  • Cruz on Memorial Day.
  • Dewhurst on his father and Memorial Day.
  • Ramparts 360 calls the amnesty smear Dewhurst’s Lowest Attack.
  • More on the Amnesty charge.
  • Peggy Fikac’s roundup of the race. Including this: “Retired teacher Addie Ratliff tossed a verbal grenade at Dewhurst. ‘He’s trash,’ said Ratliff, 74. ‘I just don’t like him. I think he’s a RINO,’ a Republican-in-name-only.”
  • Cruz has picked up six times as much money in donations from Midland as Dewhurst has.
  • Somehow I missed the fact that Dewhurst picked up the endorsement of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma back on May 18. I think they would have trumpeted that more, since it brings the total of sitting Senators who have endorsed Dewhurst to [long pause while Your Humble Narrator counts on his fingers for dramatic effect] one.
  • Dewhurst squeezing potential donors?

    One source familiar with Texas politics who supports Cruz says that he knows “a number of significant donors” who also have business interests in the state and have been “told by their lobbyists in Austin, ‘Don’t dare give money to Ted, don’t endorse Ted . . . because if you do you’ll never get anything else through in Austin.’”

  • Rick Perry’s endorsement of David Dewhurst is all about Rick Perry.
  • Dewhurst says Cruz hasn’t met a fighter like him before. Maybe, but when was the last truly competitive race Dewhurst ran? 2002? And his last contested Republican primary fight was against Jerry Patterson for Land Commissioner in 1998.
  • Speaking of candidates with one notable sitting congressman supporting them, here’s Rep. Michael Burgess on Tom Leppert:

  • The Tea Party is anti-Big Government, not anti-incumbent.
  • A hand-wringer piece about all the uncertainty redistricting has wrought in Texas selections, focusing on Sylvia Romo vs. Lloyd Doggett in CD35, as well as the Senate race.
  • National Journal offers up the obligatory what to look for on election night piece.
  • Craig James predicts that he’ll be in the runoff. Also predicts that Rob Schneider will take home next year’s Oscar for Best Actor.
  • Paul Sadler cements his standing as the MSM anointed Democratic candidate, snagging the endorsements of The Austin American Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, The Austin Chronicle, and The San Antonio Express-News.
  • The Democratic Senate race is a much more low-key affair. “Sadler has raised less than $80,000, Hubbard less than half that with $30,000.” Also this: “‘I’ve talked to people who have said, “Get through the primary and we’ll make sure you have money to work with,”‘ Hubbard said.” Psst, Sean, hate to tell you, but those people are lying to you. Chances are good they said the same thing to Ricardo Sanchez, and look where it got him…
  • Sadler and Hubbard also appeared on WFAA:

  • Texas Senate Race Updates For July 26, 2011

    Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

    I’ve been meaning to do a general Senate Race update all weekend, but things have been hopping:

  • Jim Geraghty has a piece up over at National Review Online on Ricardo Sanchez’s disappointing debut. I get quoted on the race.
  • Ted Cruz wins the endorsement of Rand Paul.
  • Cruz defends Rick Perry’s upcoming prayer meeting.
  • U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, representing Texas’ 26th Congressional District, endorses Tom Leppert. The 26th runs from south of Ft. Worth up to the Oklahoma border (or at least did before this year’s redistricting), so it’s right in Leppert’s backyard. Though not one of the more prominent members of the Texas delegation, Burgess has an impressive 95% rating from the American Conservative Union, making this really the first notable conservative endorsement Leppert has picked up.
  • A report on the candidates forum sponsored by the Denton County Republican Party last week.
  • Leppert get’s a mostly flattering profile by Big Jolly Politics’ David Jennings, though Jennings does ding him for his support for Dallas workers to unionize. (Jennings doesn’t mention Leppert’s contributions to liberal Democrat Ron Kirk’s Senate campaign.) Jennings also says he doesn’t have much use for the term “RINO”:

    By now, if you have read this far, it should be clear that Mr. Leppert is not some wild-eyed liberal trying to pick the pockets of the taxpayer. You wouldn’t know that if you listened to the self-appointed RINO hunters in the Texas Republican party. Gawd I hate that term.

    Hmmm. I may resemble that remark…

  • Leppert’s communication guy Shawn McCoy is leaving the campaign, being replaced by Daniel Keylin, though Leppert campaign manager Josh Kivett will be handling those duties during a transition period.
  • If David Dewhurst wants to convince conservative’s he’s one of us, maybe he shouldn’t have picked the campaign manager for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • Elizabeth Ames Jones was on the Mark Davis show on WBAP.