Posts Tagged ‘Wes Pruden’

LinkSwarm for July 19, 2019

Friday, July 19th, 2019

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Lots of Analysis of “The Squad” along with the usual absurdities…

  • ICE raids begin. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The Trump Administration is trying a novel plan to thwart “asylum seekers” at the border:

    A rule published Monday bars migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they’ve traveled through another country first.

    Tens of thousands of migrant families from Central America travel through Mexico to the U.S. each month, many claiming asylum. The Trump administration claims families are taking advantage of legal loopholes it says allow migrants a free pass to the country while they wait out phony asylum requests.

    Mexico and other central American countries are not so hot on the idea.

  • Mother Jones admits that Democrats are actually for open borders.
  • Nineteen illegal alien MS-13 members arrested for crimes from racketeering to murder.

    The DOJ’s statement documents one particularly horrifying murder that some of the gang members are charged with where a rival gang member “was abducted, choked, and driven to a remote location in the Angeles National Forest” where he was “dismembered, and his body parts were thrown into a canyon after one of the defendants allegedly cut the heart out of the victim’s body.”

  • Majority of Mexicans Supports Deportation of Central American Migrants.”
  • President Donald Trump, Grandmaster Troll:

    I didn’t initially buy into this business about how Trump’s often-unorthodox tweets and actions are part of a political 3D chess game he’s playing while the rest of the country is playing checkers.

    But I do now.

    I could go through a lengthy punchlist of examples of Trump statements and moves that prove the 3D chess theory, but that would dramatically overtake the space this column has to offer. Instead, let’s just talk about this weekend’s flare-up over the president’s Twitter outburst aimed at The Squad — the four idiot freshman Democrat congresswomen, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, who have spent their time as elected officials offering one inappropriate and stupid anti-American outburst after another.

    Trump didn’t initially name any of the four. He didn’t talk about Omar or Ocasio-Cortez, and he didn’t talk about Ayana Pressley or Rashida Tlaib.

    Instead he referred to “Progressive” Democratic congresswomen, and then noted that they “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

    This was decried by all the Usual Suspects as an abjectly racist statement, a response that Trump certainly anticipated and couldn’t care less about. Even some weak-kneed Republicans thrashed about in paroxysms of self-righteousness about how Trump could possibly be so bigoted and insensitive in calling out The Squad. After all, three of the four were born in this country!

    But Omar wasn’t.

    Omar is from Somalia. Omar is quite possibly here in this country after having committed immigration fraud. There has been a quite credible, perhaps even convincing, case made that Ilhan Omar married her biological brother in furtherance of that immigration fraud. And Ilhan Omar has not stopped making incendiary anti-American and pro-Muslim Brotherhood statements since she entered public life.

    Absolutely everything Trump said in his tweets applies perfectly and without stipulation to Ilhan Omar.

    The fact that he didn’t use her name meant that our political betters immediately assumed he was also talking about Pressley, Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez.

    Which bothered Trump not one bit.

    Paragraphs on the unpopularity of Omar and Ocasio Cortez with actual voters (which I covered here) snipped.

    So what do you do if you want to ensure Omar and AOC poison those so-called moderate Democrats who won those swing House districts last year?

    You force Pelosi into bed with them.

    Which is precisely what Trump has done.

    The Democrat leadership immediately, reflexively, lined up behind The Squad after an entire week of slapping them down. Al Green, a Democratic congressman from the slums of Houston, is now attempting to use Trump’s tweets as a fresh justification for impeachment, which is all Al Green does in Congress. There will be a House resolution condemning the president’s comments as racist, on which Pelosi has put her stamp of approval, and another seeking to formally censure Trump.

    All of this is precisely what Trump wanted. And he proved it by doubling and then tripling down on his statements Monday, first unleashing a new set of tweets mostly quoting Lindsey Graham, who had partially rebuked the president for getting too personal about The Squad in his complaints, and then popping off in a Rose Garden press avail with comments directly eviscerating Omar in a way I can’t remember ever having seen a president do to a member of Congress. Which was glorious, by the way, and if you haven’t seen the video you owe it to yourself to watch it.

    Don’t think for one second that Trump doesn’t absolutely love this fight. He is a pig in slop at this point. Trump will continue forcing Pelosi and her leadership team into bed with The Squad from here all the way to Election Day, and when he’s through he won’t just win reelection in a landslide but he’ll also take away every single one of those swing districts.

  • How calling out The Squad benefits both President Trump and The Squad:

    The four — AOC, Tlaib, Pressley, Omar — have no clout in the Democratic caucus. But because of the confrontations they have caused and the controversy they have created, they have a massive media following.

    Paradoxically, their interests in winning cheers as the fighting arm of the Democratic Party coincide with the interests of Donald Trump. He entertains and energizes his base by answering in kind their attacks on him and by adopting incendiary rhetoric of his own. He is now assuming the old “America! Love it or Leave it!” stance in going after the four women as anti-American ingrates.

    They, by calling Trump a criminal, racist and fascist for whom impeachment proceedings should have begun months ago, elate and energize the outraged left of their party.

    Among the presidential candidates, some have begun to side with the four, with Bernie Sanders saying Pelosi has been “a little” too tough on them.

    On “Meet the Press,” Bernie added: “You cannot ignore the young people of this country who are passionate about economic and racial and social and environmental justice. You’ve got to bring them in, not alienate them.”

    Trump’s Sunday attack forced Pelosi to stand with her severest critics, and she re-elevated the race issue with this tweet: “When Trump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.”

    Do Democrats believe that refighting the racial battles of the 1960s that were thought to have been resolved is a winning hand in 2020?

    Does Pelosi think that demeaning white America is going to rally white or minority Americans to Democratic banners?

    (Caveat: Patrick Buchanan.)

  • Democrats tell Jake Tapper off the record that Trump snookered them into embracing The Squad. “And they have to pretend that their party is unified because of their fear of being challenged in primaries by radicals with the support of Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s Svengali chief of staff and the brains behind the Justice Democrats.”
  • Speaking of which: “Meet AOC’s Brain: Saikat Chakrabarti.”

    Chakrabarti’s previous HQ was a Knoxville address out of which the Justice Democrats and another PAC operated side by side with a dozen congressional campaign committees. This arrangement flouted a variety of campaign finance laws and prompted several Federal Election Commission complaints, including one alleging that Chakrabarti set up a $1 million slush fund. But this sort of skullduggery is standard practice among Democrats. What exacerbated the already tense atmosphere in their House caucus was Chakrabarti’s response to the $4.6 billion border aid package passed by Congress last month. On June 27, he took to Twitter and berated the Democratic leadership for its shortcomings:

    As usual, Dem leadership tried to create a pre-watered down border bill because of a mistaken idea that it’s more “viable.” And they lost to McConnell anyway. This is the entire theory of change that never works. Why not start from your strongest negotiating stance?

    Predictably, this presumptuous tweet drew a number of angry responses from various Democrats who had voted for the measure, whereupon Chakrabarti once again betook himself to Twitter and proceeded to accuse his critics of racism:

    Instead of “fiscally conservative but socially liberal,” let’s call the New Democrats and Blue Dog Caucus the “New Southern Democrats.” They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.

    Chakrabarti later deleted that tweet, but not before it had clearly signaled who actually calls the shots in AOC’s office.

    Snip.

    Chakrabarti’s Justice Democrats PAC is also taking fire from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The Hill reports, “Congressional Black Caucus members are furious at Justice Democrats, accusing the outside progressive group … of trying to oust lawmakers of color, specifically African American lawmakers.” The PAC evidently plans to primary at least six CBC members who occupy safe Democratic seats simply because they don’t lean far enough to the left. Chakrabarti is clearly using his position as AOC’s chief of staff to engineer a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. He said as much during an extensive profile for The Washington Post Magazine:

    To me, there wasn’t a difference between working for her and working for the movement … The whole theory of change for the current Democratic Party is that to win this country we need to tack to the hypothetical middle … you don’t take unnecessary risks, which translates to: You don’t really do anything.

    Chakrabarti doesn’t see himself as a mere staffer in some congresswoman’s office. He sees AOC as someone who provides him with a headquarters from which he can “fundamentally change” the Democratic Party.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Speaking of The Squad, The Minneapolis Star Tribune actually reports on allegations against Omar: “New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.”
  • Powerline, which has been following the story the media wouldn’t, has still more:

    In 1995, Ilhan entered the United States as a fraudulent member of the “Omar” family.

    That is not her family. The Omar family is a second, unrelated family which was being granted asylum by the United States. The Omars allowed Ilhan, her genetic sister Sahra, and her genetic father Nur Said to use false names to apply for asylum as members of the Omar family.

    Ilhan’s genetic family split up at this time. The above three received asylum in the United States, while Ilhan’s three other siblings — using their real names — managed to get asylum in the United Kingdom.

    Ilhan Abdullahi Omar’s name, before applying for asylum, was Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.

    Her father’s name before applying for asylum was Nur Said Elmi Mohamed. Her sister Sahra Noor’s name before applying for asylum was Sahra Nur Said Elmi. Her three siblings who were granted asylum by the United Kingdom are Leila Nur Said Elmi, Mohamed Nur Said Elmi, and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.

    Ilhan and Ahmed married in 2009, presumably to benefit in some way from a fraudulent marriage. They did not divorce until 2017.

    With lots of official documentary evidence.

  • Omar happened because the media chose to lie to you. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democrats have defined racism down yet again. “Thirty-two percent (32%) of Democrats, however, say it’s racist for any white politician to criticize the political views of a politician of color. So being a ‘politician of color’ means that your views are immune to disagreement. Unless–once again–you are a Republican.”
  • Indeed, they insist that merely to criticize them is tantamount to exposing them to death threats.
  • Democratic strategist says that Democrats should stop worrying about all those rubes in flyover country. Ann Althouse:

    The point is, apparently, Democrats are sick of thinking about that guy, the “guy in a diner in rural” whatever. Once they were safely stowed in a basket — a basket of deplorables — and that worked out so disastrously that the reaction could be to obsess over these imaginary people. Are Democratic Party candidates expected to actually venture into the hinterlands? No, they’ll just worry about those people, and then they come to Madison (where I live) or Milwaukee to try to score enough votes to outnumber those diner people. That’s what Democrats do to win Wisconsin.

  • US downs Iranian drone.
  • BBC caves, gives Iran veto power over their Iranian reporting.
  • Say goodbye to those F-35s, Turkey. (Previously.)
  • Planned Parenthood head ousted over refusal to back transsexual abortions. Tranny madness is going to take out the entire leftwing establishment by insisting that every member must forthrightly declare that 2+2=5.
  • Amazon starts pulling out of Seattle:

    The Amazon pullout of Seattle continues. The corporate giant announced on Tuesday that it is going to build a 43-story tower in Bellevue.

    It will be Amazon’s tallest building anywhere in the world, and it will be the tallest building in Bellevue, which has more than a few skyscrapers. Several thousand employees will be able to work there. So it looks like this is another part in the saga of Amazon leaving Seattle. All of this is because we have a city council and a mayor who have gone fanatic about socialism. They keep pushing anti-business policies.

    What this means for the downtown Seattle real estate market is that when the economy inevitably starts to turn, it will be cataclysmic. When you have one company that takes up so many thousands of square feet of downtown real estate, and that company moves out, real estate prices will fall.

    I don’t know when this is going to happen, but I am very confident in my analysis; Seattle will fall harder than any other city in the country. This is because Seattle has been the craziest in its Leftist run-up during this boom economy that we’re enjoying right now.

    We already have so many businesses on the brink of survival because of the minimum wage because of all of the controlling policies the city government keeps imposing. When the businesses start toppling, you’re going to see all the support industry in downtown Seattle — the food service, etc. — fall hard, too.

    The Amazon pullout of Seattle is another dramatic sign that when the people who drive our economy, our tax revenue, our job creation are out because of our politics, it’s time to change our politics.

  • Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s world:

    In addition to his sexual predation with “tweens and teens,” Epstein pursued ambitious, beautiful New York City women in their 20s in the early 2000s, some of them ex-models seeking a professional afterlife. To this woman, and others, Epstein introduced himself as the owner of a hedge fund with clients investing $1 billion or more. He kept his child molestation secret, and came off as a gentle, erudite recluse. He was often at movie premieres, sometimes with a blonde on each arm—a blonde of legal age, but still, as noted this week by David Boies, usually under 25 years old. His predation had not been reported to the police yet, but there were indications that he was somewhat different than most mature men his age. Eleanora Kennedy, the elegant wife of powerhouse lawyer Michael Kennedy, recalls asking Epstein to underwrite a premiere party at the Metropolitan Club for The White Countess, a Merchant Ivory film released in 2005. “I got him on the phone and explained that the event was also a benefit for a women’s medical center conducting a study about menopause,” says Kennedy. “As soon as I said ‘menopause,’ he said, ‘Ms. Kennedy, if you don’t say that word again, I’ll send you a check for $10,000.’”

    Like most of the older men who date young women, Epstein seemed to take great pride in his behavior. He seemed to desperately want other important men to perceive him as a great lothario, Genghis Khan in a monogrammed sweatshirt. A former model who was on Epstein’s 727 shortly after she graduated college recalls him taking her and some older men on a tour to show off his custom-designed, padded floors. “When I saw that I thought, Wow, rich people are weird,” she says. “I was so stupid and naïve—Why are padded floors cool? I was too young to get it.” The men simply laughed and winked, joking with each other that Epstein padded his floors so that he could have sex on the floor at 10,000 feet.

    Also: He liked to keep his bedroom at 54°F when slept.

  • “Inside the Victoria’s Secret pipeline to Jeffrey Epstein.” I liked the part where the model threw the vibrator at his head…
  • “Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch linked to investigation.”
  • Media unveils bombshell report of Trump hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein…in 1992.

    Yes, that’d be 27 years ago, before Epstein was even known to have done anything illicit. So apparently, Trump is guilty by association because he couldn’t see into the future and know that Epstein would abuse women some years later. In fact, Epstein did not even own his “pedophile island” in 1992, nor are there currently any victims dating back to that time.

  • The sexual assault charges against Kevin Spacey have been dismissed. The case, which involved Spacey allegedly groping an 18-year old man, evidently had multiple problems and fell apart when the accuser refused to testify. This is the only one of some fifteen accusers (one as young as 14) who alleged Spacey did something sleazy with them.
  • CNN ratings sink to new lows.
  • Related: CNN reporter asks a panel of women to comment on President Trump’s “racist” tweets. Their reply: “It’s not racist.” Including a legal immigrant.

  • “Billionaire investor Peter Thiel says one reason for Google aiding in the transfer of AI technology to the Chinese military in favor of America is that “woke” Google employees are anti-American and prefer China to the U.S.”
  • In addition to being a corrupt scumbag, the Governor of Puerto Rico is also a bit of an asshole. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Car thief steals car with three kids inside, father beats him to death.
  • Today’s stupid ecoscam headline: “Streaming Online Pornography Produces as Much CO2 as Belgium.” From the comments: “If we had a global referendum on whether we’d rather have porn or Belgium, I wouldn’t bet on Belgium.”
  • #TeamCocaineMitch is already throwing down on Democratic opponent Amy McGrath:

  • Nancy Pelosi to fundraising event for Wendy Davis. Davis is running against Chip Roy for the Texas 21st Congressional District in 2020, and Roy is already fundraising off it.
  • The late Ross Perot was always willing to use his money to help disabled veterans in need.
  • Condolences to James Lileks on the loss of his father.
  • Houston road vote bungled.
  • Once again, the New York Times puts its thumb on the scale to keep a conservative bestseller from reaching the top of the list. That book is Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court.
  • Wes Pruden, editor of the Washington Times, RIP. I like the cut of his jib:

    He was the last of the old-time newspapermen, and the word “journalist” was prohibited from appearing in the pages of the Times during his tenure as editor-in-chief.

    That rule was one of several variations from the AP Stylebook known as “Prudenisms,” reflecting Mr. Pruden’s preference for plain English and his hostility to euphemism, jargon and lazy writing. For example, “controversial” was prohibited, as were “alleged,” “allegation” and “allegedly.” If someone was accused of wrongdoing, then you had to cite a source making that charge, rather than just saying the person allegedly did whatever it was. Also, under Mr. Pruden’s rules, “gay” was not an acceptable synonym for homosexual, which meant that, as an assistant editor on the national desk, I had to change this in AP wire stories.

    The Times used courtesy titles, so the President would be “Mr. Trump” and the Speaker of the House “Mrs. Pelosi” on second reference, and we were not allowed to use “Ms.,” so that on second reference a certain New York Democrat would be Miss Ocasio-Cortez. Also, we did not use “Dr.” as the honorific for a Ph.D., but only for an M.D. This was because doctorate degrees were a dime a dozen in D.C., and even many high-school principals could demand a “Dr.” if we ever let that get started. This particular Prudenism really ruffled the feathers of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who had a Ph.D. in psychology and always insisted on being called Doctor Dobson, but the editor’s rule was unbending and on second reference he was always “Mr. Dobson.” I seem to recall Ralph Z. Hallow on the phone with Dobson’s people, getting an earful of complaints about this, as the “Doctor” thing was part of Dobson’s brand, as it were, but it was Mr. Pruden’s paper, and complaints were useless.

    Some of my colleagues at the paper grumbled about Mr. Pruden’s curmudgeonly ways, but having an old-fashioned editor was in many ways a great blessing, because he was utterly invulnerable to any kind of political correctness or manufactured “controversy.” Of course, every liberal on the planet hated the Washington Times, so there was never any shortage of “activist” types indignant about our coverage, but there was no pressure they could bring to bear on Mr. Pruden that would make him flinch. A reporter whose story touched off a firestorm of outrage knew that, as long as he had the facts right, Mr. Pruden had his back. As long as the Old Man was happy with your work, it didn’t matter who else might be angry about it. He had courage, and a sense of honor.

  • Bird, an electric scooter sharing startup, lost $100 million over three months. On behalf of every Austinite who’s driven downtown recently, I’d just like to say:

  • A reminder from 50 years ago: Don’t drink and drive. And if you do, don’t leave the scene of the crash to flee. Especially if there was another passenger in the car. Especially if it’s underwater…
  • “Trump Finally Loses Baptist Support After Video Emerges Of Him Dancing.”
  • All aboard the Uncanny Valley Express: