Posts Tagged ‘Schlitterbahn’

LinkSwarm for June 21, 2019

Friday, June 21st, 2019

Welcome to summer! It hit 100°F in Austin this week. Try to keep cool and enjoy this complimentary LinkSwarm:

  • “New Clinton Email Review Reveals ‘Multiple Security Incidents‘”:

    The State Department revealed in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that it had identified “multiple security incidents” committed by current or former employees who handled Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to Fox News.

    So far 23 “violations” and seven “infractions” have been issued as a part of the department’s ongoing investigation – a number that will likely rise according to State Department Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, Mary Elizabeth Taylor.

    “To this point, the Department has assessed culpability to 15 individuals, some of whom were culpable in multiple security incidents,” said Taylor in the letter to Grassley, adding “DS has issued 23 violations and 7 infractions incidents. … This number will likely change as the review progresses.”

  • “State Dept. Suspends $200 Million Enhanced Aid for El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras Pending Illegal Migration Enforcement.”
  • Human Rights watch accuses Daniel Ortega’s Nicaraguan government of torture. Once a commie scumbnag, always a commie scumbag…
  • “The DNC has spent more money than it has raised this year.”

    The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020.

    In the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican counterpart was stockpiling cash.

    Snip.

    Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars by Election Day, but the party needs to spend early to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names, something it’s never done before.

    “It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us,” said Allan Berliant, a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open offices and get boots on the ground around the country. “All of that starts with fundraising,” he said.

    Party officials and fundraisers blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.

    “Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.

    But major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that the national party is disorganized – a hangover from the 2016 election. The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger, activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.

    By the end of April, the DNC had collected contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million, according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand, $1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt, including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election Commission records show.

    It seems like I link some variation of this story every year.

  • Democratic doxxer sentenced:

    The Democratic ex-staffer who doxxed several Republican senators after disapproving of their handling of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation will be going to jail for four years.

    Jackson Cosko, a 27-year-old former staffer for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.), was arrested last October for leaking the phone numbers and home addresses of Republican senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Mike Lee (Utah). The information was briefly posted on the senators’ Wikipedia pages before being taken down.

    Cosko was working for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) at the time of his arrest, and was immediately fired.

  • The case is actually much worse than you’ve heard:

    Jackson Cosko was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison. Prosecutors called his offense an “extraordinary” and “vicious” crime where the ex-Democratic aide stole a senator’s data, mined it for blackmail material and then published the home addresses and phone numbers of Republican senators during the 2018 hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Even after the computer administrator was caught in the act and arrested for spying on a senator’s office using his advanced technical skills, Capitol Police didn’t check the USB ports of nearby computers. Six different computers within steps of where he was arrested in the Senate had keylogger devices in them that continued to capture and beam private information over WiFi. They were only exposed through a confession.

    Police then got a search warrant on his home, but missed critical evidence because they didn’t check the oven.

  • A black man testifies against reparations:

    I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our ability to fix the present. Think about what we’re doing today. We’re spending our time debating a bill that mentions slavery 25 times but incarceration only once, in an era with zero black slaves but nearly a million black prisoners—a bill that doesn’t mention homicide once, at a time when the Center for Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of death for young black men. I’m not saying that acknowledging history doesn’t matter. It does. I’m saying there’s a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today.

    In 2008, the House of Representatives formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009, the Senate did the same. Black people don’t need another apology. We need safer neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive criminal justice system. We need affordable health care. And none of these things can be achieved through reparations for slavery.

  • Kurt Schlichter on the hypocrisy of the left:

    “This is his worst treason since his last worst treason!” they thundered. “This is even more treasonous than when The Bad Orange Man called us ‘traitors’ for our treachery after we called him ‘traitor’ for two years!”

    They got really, really upset. Fake upset, of course, but they committed to the bit and kept straight faces. And you know that Trump pulled the pin on that hand grenade of truth on purpose in order to make the dummies explode just like they did.

    You have to wonder if the garbage elite really thinks their brand of blatant hypocrisy disguised as moral outrage works, or if this is just a reflexive response to a president who not only sees them for the useless slugs they are, but says so.

    My apologies to slugs. I am not slugist.

    Still, do any of them truly think that we Normals will listen to them sounding off about the perfidy of perhaps considering the possibility of maybe accepting dirt on their freak show candidates from outsiders and not recall that Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit famously did just that with the pee-pee dossier, or that Adam Schiff got punked by a couple of Russian Howard Stern wannabeskis offering him pics of the POTUS au natural?

    When Staggers O’Cankles does it, it’s cool? When Congressman Leaky does it, it’s fine? Yet when Trump says he might do exactly what they did, it’s the greatest betrayal of our Values, our Constitution and our Democracy since his last greatest betrayal of our Values, our Constitution and our Democracy, which happened last week?

    Snip.

    To the extent our modern elite had retained any residual credibility from back in the distant past when our elite wasn’t totally corrupt and incompetent, that goodwill has been squandered in the wake of its war to crush Trump, which is actually a war to crush us and restore the elite’s unchallenged power.

    We watch them do X as they tell us to do Y, and they expect us to accept it. Maybe that’s not a completely unreasonable expectation. A lot of goofy, submissive alleged conservatives from Conservative, Inc., have accepted that 2 + 2 =5. The whole cruise-shilling set loves Big Gender-Neutral Sibling and eagerly joins in the phony festivals of fake fury. Last week, social media was packed with these bitter pills fulminating about TRUMP TRAITOR TREASON. And, probably, the geebos at The Bulwark ran with it too, not that anyone would know except the donors Bill Kristol somehow suckered into funding that cesspool floater of a blog.

    Everything they tell us reeks of hypocrisy, like the ever-changing rules about our Glorious Public Servants. When some bureaucrat parrots the party line, we’re supposed to defer. When one fails to parrot correctly, we’re supposed to scream that he’s in contempt of Congress.

  • How Republicans can retake the House in 2020. “The Republicans need to flip only 18 seats in 2020 to regain control of that body — and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has already identified nearly twice that number of vulnerable Democrats in districts won by President Trump during the last presidential election.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Will Oberlin Learn Its Lesson? Short answer: No, they won’t.”
  • In fact, they’re already lying about the verdict.
  • David French brings the requisite amount of wood in stating how the Oberlin College judgment provides a blueprint to fight back. Maybe because Trump isn’t involved. But one wonders why neither the phrase “Social Justice Warriors” nor the word “woke” appears in the piece.
  • Iran shoots down U.S. drone over international waters.
  • President Donald Trump says no strike for now:

  • Both Iran and Trump are playing the long game.” “Iran’s recent attacks signal weakness and desperation, not strength and assurance…Most of the oil passing through Hormuz (about 11/17ths) is bound for the Straits of Malacca en route to China, Japan and Korea. If Tehran actually closed the Straits, by mining it for example, they would essentially be blockading China.”
  • The U.S. holds all the cards in the confrontation with Iran:

    The United States then ramped up sanctions on the Iranian theocracy to try to ensure that it stopped nuclear enrichment. The Trump administration also hoped a strapped Iran would become less capable of funding terrorist operations in the Middle East and beyond, proxy wars in the Persian Gulf, and the opportune harassment of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

    The sanctions are clearly destroying an already weak Iranian economy. Iran is now suffering from negative economic growth, massive unemployment and record inflation.

    A desperate Iranian government is using surrogates to send missiles into Saudi Arabia while its forces attack ships in the Gulf of Oman.

    Snip.

    Time, then, is on the Americans’ side. But it is certainly not on the side of a bankrupt and impoverished Iran that either must escalate or face ruin.

    If Iran starts sinking ships or attacking U.S. assets, Trump can simply replay the ISIS strategy of selective off-and-on bombing. The United States did not lose a single pilot to enemy action.

    Translated, that would mean disproportionately replying to each Iranian attack on a U.S. asset with a far more punishing air response against an Iranian base or port. The key would be to avoid the use of ground troops and yet not unleash a full-fledged air war. Rather, the United States would demonstrate to the world that Iranian aggression determines the degree to which Iran suffers blows from us.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • Instapundit on why social media sucks:

    It’s unfortunate that social media not only makes informed debate more difficult on their platforms, but also, it seems, rewires people’s brains in such a fashion as to make such debate more difficult everywhere else. This is made worse by the fact that Twitter in particular seems to be most heavily used by the very people – pundits, political journalists, the intelligentsia – most vital to the sort of debate that Emerson saw as essential.

    In fact, the corruption of the political/intellectual class by social media is particularly serious, since their descent into thoughtless polarization can then spread to the rest of the population, even that large part that doesn’t use social media itself, through traditional channels. Writing on why Twitter is worse than it seems, David French observes that even though its user base is smaller than most other social media, those users are particularly influential:

    But in public influence Twitter punches far above its weight. Why? Because it’s where cultural kingmakers congregate, and thus where conventional wisdom is formed and shaped — often instantly and thoughtlessly.

    In other words, Twitter is where the people who care the most spend their time. The disproportionate influence of microbursts of instant public comments from a curated set of people these influencers follow shapes their writing and thinking and conduct way beyond the platform.

    (That’s from his new book The Social Media Upheaval.)

  • Hong Kong stages huge demonstration against new communist Chinese extradition laws:

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott didn’t use a single line-item veto on any item in the Texas budget. There’s been a lot of grumbling that the recently completed legislative session didn’t hold the line on spending and failed to enact several conservative priorities.
  • Banning plastic bags won’t save the planet. “Research from 2015 shows that less than 5 per cent of land-based plastic waste going into the ocean comes from OECD countries, with half coming from just four countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.” Also: “You must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less environmental damage than a plastic bag.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Brian Cates asserts that social media didn’t elect Trump.
  • More on voting fraud in Edinberg:

    “Down here, voter fraud is not all that unusual,” says Monte, a city planning consultant in a brown suit jacket, sitting with other activists at a table in Coffee Zone on McColl Road. “It’s unusual when they get prosecuted.”

    Now, for this south Texas town, that unusual moment has arrived. A November 2017 mayoral election has been under scrutiny from local and state officials, and 19 arrests have been made over alleged voter fraud. The mayor—and winner of the 2017 election—was indicted earlier this month, along with his wife.

    Only 8,400 votes were cast in the mayoral election, and Mayor Richard Molina’s final vote count was more than 1,200 votes ahead of the No. 2 candidate, 14-year incumbent Richard Garcia. From what’s known now, the election result couldn’t have been changed by the number of suspicious votes identified.

    But Molina reportedly is the first elected official in Texas to face a felony charge under a 2017 statute against vote harvesting, casting the midsize city into the national debate over election integrity.

  • “A New Jersey man is facing up to five years behind bars for running a nearly $3 million food stamp fraud operation at a Connecticut store.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Longtime ATF guard admits to stealing thousands of guns destined for destruction. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Chattanooga VW plant rejects the UAW yet again. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Prenda Law troll sentenced to 14 years in prison.
  • Extensive technical analysis indicates that Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was probably intentionally depressurized and then flown a long ways before being ditched in the ocean by someone controlling the cockpit. (Hat tip: @davidjacksmith.)
  • Wallace Hall thinks that admissions cheating still goes on at The University of Texas. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Get woke, go broke, Hollywood edition. (Although I liked Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It wasn’t a good movie but it was a good Godzilla movie.)
  • Just as all the media Trump bashing has backfired, so will Hollywood’s condescension. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Not news: Breaking and entering. News: Gets ass handed to him by an 11-year old. Cherry on top: With a machete.
  • Schlitterbahn sells its its New Braunfels and Galveston water parks. That leaves them with parks still in Kansas City, South Padre and Corpus Christi.
  • In case you were worried that Democrats had a monopoly on all the bad ideas, the Tampa Bay Rays are considering spending half their time in Montreal. Because nothing says “well thought-out idea” like 1,500 miles between home games…
  • “Florida man says he had sex with stolen pool toys instead of raping women.” Uh…you can buy pool toys, dude…
  • The Edge wanted to live where the streets have no name, but thanks to the California Supreme Court’s ruling, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
  • Google busted stealing lyrics. Bonus: Morse code.
  • Attack squirrels on meth.
  • Happy ending story, with dog. (Hat tip: Dwight.)