Posts Tagged ‘Mission’

LinkSwarm for October 12, 2018

Friday, October 12th, 2018

Trying to edit this last night brought up a repeated 502 error, since fixed. So enjoy this LinkSwarm as a triumph of persistence over technology:

  • How the Kavanaugh fight united the right around President Donald Trump:

    Trumpism is now the unregretted tattoo that altered the Republican coalition, making it edgier, more rugged, and more relentless in pursuing its policy objectives.

    Confronted with a liberal self-styled “resistance” movement—whose very name reeks of the virtue-signaling that galls the right—Trump responded in kind. Left-wingers march in the streets and chase prominent conservatives out of restaurants; he bows his back and marches Kavanaugh onto the bench for a lifetime. Liberals feel better for a weekend; pragmatic conservatives get to feel vindicated for decades. Good trade.

    Trump not only refused to rescind Kavanaugh’s nomination when the confirmation process got rocky—as both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had done with flagging nominees—he barnstormed the country and held campaign rallies in jam-packed basketball arenas rallying his coalition behind Kavanaugh. After playing nice for a handful of surprisingly diplomatic days, enabling a judiciary committee hearing to fairly hear the allegations against Kavanaugh, Trump retrieved his megaphone from its holster and unleashed on the judge’s liberal Senate and media antagonists.

    Conservatives who may have been privately uncertain on how to proceed in the face of the allegations found the light in the flames of Trump’s heat. The consensus on the right became clear: this was not a competition of memories between two middle-aged professionals who grew up privileged at boozy teen parties in suburban Maryland. By last Saturday’s confirmation vote, this episode was not even predominantly about Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford; it was a tectonic struggle between the voters’ chosen Republican government and the ruthless Democratic minority seeking to topple it by any means necessary.

  • Republicans quintuple fundraising in wake of Kavanaugh hearings.
  • There Is No Such Thing As A Moderate Democrat In 2018.” Focused on the Tennessee senate race, but applicable everywhere. “Dianne Feinstein picks your judges, Bernie Sanders runs the budget and Chuck Schumer runs everything.” I’ve been making the same point since 2010. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Jay Cost, by way of Alexander Hamilton, explains why America won’t have a another civil war: “To put matters bluntly, we do not have to like one another, so long as we continue to make money off one another.” To which I would add: Only left-wing loudmouths on Twitter are really trying to provoke a civil war. Average people rarely mention the things that rage huge on the Internet in their day-to-day lives…
  • Remember, it’s only a “mob” if it’s made up of Republicans. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of mob violence:

  • Some anti-Kavanaugh protestors were indeed paid Astroturf. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Border agents in Texas arrested three sex offenders in two days, one of whom had been jailed in Dallas. All three men have been previously convicted of offenses involving a minor, according to officials with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.” (Hat tip: Governor Greg Abbott’s twitter feed.)
  • Hurricane Michael leaves at least six dead.
  • Video of the aftermath:

  • Speaking of devastating: Holy moly!

  • Least anyone think I’m reflexively pro-Trump, his idea to increase the amount of Ethanol in gasoline is an astonishingly bad idea for numerous reasons. And get ready for it to start destroying your lawnmower engines…
  • How Soviet Communism tried to kill weekends. (Hat tip: Charles Martin on Twitter.)
  • The Navy is slowly working its way back to actual readiness. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Army to add WindGuard active radar defense systems to work with Trophy active defense systems on M1 tanks.
  • Mass criminal roundup in northern Mississippi.

    Around 150 gang members were arrested or validated with affiliations to the Simon City Royals, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings, Vice Lords, and the Aryan Brotherhood.

    Over 200 registered sex offenders living within the Northern District of Mississippi were checked for compliance in regards to sex offender registration requirements. Around 150 home visits were conducted on high- to moderate-risk offenders on probation with the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the United States Probation Service.

    Overall, 255 violent offenders were picked up during Operation Triple Beam. They were wanted on charges including homicide, aggravated assault, sexual assault, illegal gun crimes, narcotics possession and distribution, robbery, arson, and sex offender registration violations.

  • More voting fraud down in the Rio Grande Valley:

    Following a nine-day trial, a district court judge has voided the results of the City of Mission mayoral election after finding the winning campaign engaged in a conspiracy to bribe voters and harvest mail-in ballots.

    Norberto “Beto” Salinas, the former mayor of Mission of 20 years, filed a lawsuit against current mayor Armando “Doc” O’Caña after several witnesses claimed bribery, mail-in ballot harvesting, and illegal voting during the June 9 runoff election. On Friday, 93rd District Court visiting Judge J. Bonner Dorsey agreed with Salinas and voided the results of the election. “I cannot ascertain the true outcome of the election,” Dorsey said.

    Salinas’ camp had to prove 157 votes were illegally cast, the number the candidate lost by in the election. Dorsey ruled, “I hold or find, by clear and convincing evidence, that the number of illegal votes was in excess of 158.”

  • China blinks thrice over the trade war:

    First, it conceded in August by removing U.S. oil imports from a list of possible duties. Two months earlier, China – perhaps trying to either intimate U.S. oil producers (who have been largely supportive of Trump’s policies thus far) who would in turn pressure President Trump, or either by pressuring Trump directly, indicated it would levy a 25 percent duty on U.S. oil imports.

    Second, since China is the largest buyer of American crude, Beijing likely discarded one of its strongest bargaining chips in the trade war so far. Some reports claim that U.S. oil imports to China are worth $8 billion all by themselves, so erasing oil from the tariff list reduced the value of sanctioned goods by roughly one-third.

    As far as Beijing’s LNG tariff threats are concerned, the reduction from an earlier 25 percent duty to 10 percent could also be considered another blink on China’s part. Beijing, though it does have a host of other gas and LNG suppliers, at the end of the day still needs American LNG as the country continues to pivot away from dirtier burning coal needed for power production in favor of cleaning burning natural gas. By 2020, per government mandate, gas is earmarked to make up at least 10 percent of China’s energy mix, with further earmarks by 2030.

  • Creepy porn lawyer endorses Beto.
  • NFL running back legend Jim Brown comes out against NFL players taking a knee:

    “I am an American. That flag is my flag, and I want to represent it that day.”

    How many tweets it takes before a white liberal calls him “Uncle Tom”: One.

  • Speaking of Twitter, they’ve banned conservative GayPatriot again.
  • “Cant find a Nazi to punch? Make one!” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • Cost for male student to defend himself from charges of sexual assault even though the girl admitted the sex was mutual: $12,000. (Hat tip: Charlie Martin.)
  • Austin writer decides that maybe he shouldn’t spend every waking moment of his life high on weed:

    My son was born in 2002. I didn’t have an office job, so I was around a lot to get high and enjoy the cartoons. I opened a packet of Reefer’s peanut butter cups at his preschool fund-raiser and stunk up the place. But pot wasn’t just an occasional funny thing for me to do on weekends. I got stoned the day my son came home from the hospital and stayed that way, with few breaks, for a decade and a half. Of course I put him in danger because I couldn’t stop getting high. I was a drug addict.

    Snip.

    In March of 2017, my mother died. The hour before she passed, I was outside the hospital, getting a shipment of medical gummies from a friend. I was high when I watched her die, I was high at her funeral, and I was high every day for the next eight months. To say I was “self-medicating” to deal with grief would be too kind. My addicted self took grief as a no-limits license to get stoned.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Facebook Engineer Quits Over Company’s Mob-Like Attacks On Anyone Opposed To ‘Left-Leaning Ideology.’”
  • Carlos Danger is eligable for early release.
  • Dallas City Council lives in fear that the state legislature may actually allow voters to turn down tax increases.
  • “Amazon Raises Minimum Wage For Workers Building Their Own Robotic Replacements.”