November 13th, 2015
“Terrorists wielding AK-47s and hurling explosives executed at least 100 people inside a Paris concert hall late Friday night, in a massacre that followed coordinated attacks that killed at least 40 more people, rocking the French capital — prompting President Francois Hollande to close the entire nation’s borders and order a state of emergency.”
There are reports that the Islamic State took responsibility. Also reports that Belgium has closed their border.
This is not a “tragedy,” as so many mealy-mouth leftists are calling it. This was an act of war. And Europe’s current open borders policy on Middle East “refugees” almost certainly contributed to it.
Two exceptionally obvious courses of action present themselves:
- All of Europe, not just Paris, should close their borders until adequate border controls are in place, and immediately start forcibly deporting illegal aliens from Muslim countries.
- Paris should ask that Article 5 of the NATO treaty be activated, to be followed shortly by a broad coalition (including the United States) completely destroying the Islamic State and followed by a heavy, lasting multinational occupation of the territory formerly held by it.
For a long time, liberals have soft-peddled and downplayed Islamic terrorism so they could continue their moral preening about how enlightened and sophisticated they are. The time for people dying so liberals can avoid feeling bad about themselves is over. Either confront radical Islam with the force necessary to destroy it, or cede power to those willing to do so.
Tags: 11/13 Paris Attacks, France, Islam, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, NATO, Paris
Posted in Border Control, Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
November 13th, 2015
The big story this week has been the Children of the Corn running amok in Missouri. I hope to have a longer piece on that by and by. In the meantime, enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm:
ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is blowing holes in state budgets across the nation.
How the Clinton Foundation money-laundering machine works.
Maryland’s “bullet fingerprint” database cost $5 million to set up and maintain. Number of criminals caught by it? Zero. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
How much money each state is sending to the Presidential race. Texas is number one in SuperPAC money, and number two (behind California) in hard money.
Kurdish Pesh Merga forces retake Sinjar from the Islamic State.
China makes tiny under-reporting error on coal usage. Any by “tiny,” I mean “equal to entire U.S. coal use.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
Sell books critical of the Chinese government in Hong Kong? Prepare to be disappeared.
Secret Service agent arrested in child sex sting. The country is in the best of hands. (Hat tip: AceofSpadesHQ.)
Kafkatrap vs. Honeytrap. “If you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference.”
Woman starts making documentary about Men’s Rights Movement. Funny things happens: When she starts making an actual, even-handed documentary, the funders who wanted a feminist hit piece drop her like a hot potato, but Kickstarter backers step up to the plate after a plug from Milo Yiannopoulos.
UT academic critics of open carry should step out of their ivory tower and take a look at the real world.
Dear Formula 1: If your race requires subsidies to survive in Austin, I’m happy to see you fold.
An inside-baseball look at the Ted Cruz super PAC ad buy that wasn’t.
Tags: 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, California, China, Clinton Foundation, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Kurds, LinkSwarm, Milo Yiannopoulos, ObamaCare, Pesh Merga, Sinjar, Social Justice Warriors, Ted Cruz, Texas
Posted in Austin, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, ObamaCare, Texas | No Comments »
November 12th, 2015
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
Is the Los Angeles Unified School District headed for bankruptcy?
If it does, pensions are one of the main culprits. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
A tale of two pension plans. Atlanta successfully reformed theirs. San Jose didn’t. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
All five of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. are in California.
California ranks among the bottom five in standardized school tests.
Part four of a long, detailed piece on the fall of Pacific Grove, and why it matters. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Spending $15 billion for a tunnel for fish in the midst of a drought isn’t going over well with California voters.
Who is the water-wasting Wet Prince of Bel Aire?
The fight over California mining company Molycorp’s bankruptcy.
Roses are Red/Violets are Blue/The State of California has/Blood samples from you.
The WNBA’s Tulsa (formerly Detroit) Shock relocate to Dallas. In other news, the WNBA is evidently still in business.
TPPF’s Dr. Vance Ginn on why the Texas model works.
Tags: California, Pacific Grove, pension crisis, San Jose, Texas, Vance Ginn, Welfare State, WNBA
Posted in Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
November 11th, 2015
106 bikers involved in the Waco biker shootout have been indicted. (A complete list of those indicted can be found here.)
However, as far as I can tell, the indictment is only for engaging in an “organized criminal conspiracy.” No one has yet been charged with murder.
More indictments may be due the next time a grand jury meets, which will be later this month. Hopefully standard information (like ballistics reports) the Waco police have thus far withheld will finally be released.
Tags: Bandidos Motorcycle Gang, Cossacks Motorcycle Gang, Crime, Texas, Waco
Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »
November 11th, 2015
Looks like it’s going to be all crime blotter news today.
First up: Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow’s racketeering trial started November 9.
Chow, 56, is charged with running the Ghee Tung Kong, a Chinese American community organization he has led since 2006, as a racketeering enterprise that trafficked in guns, drugs and stolen goods. He is also charged with arranging the murder of the organization’s previous leader, Allen Leung, and with conspiring to seek the murder of an alleged gang rival, Jim Tat Kong, who was shot to death in Mendocino County in October 2013. He has been held without bail since his arrest in March 2014.
First Democratic State Senator Leland Yee was supposed to be the big fish, but then he plead guilty to one piddling count of racketeering. That leaves Chow as the big fish, especially since so many lesser defendants have plead guilty to lesser charges.
The biggest charge against him is, of course, murder, but the evidence presented thus far on that is hardly conclusive.
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags: California, Crime, Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 10th, 2015
One of the more surprising results from last week’s election was Austin voters defeated a courthouse bond package.
Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman, who led the opposition to the courthouse project, said the last-minute defeat of the bonds was an “absolute stunning result.”
“The corporate downtown special interest lobby spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this,” he said. His anti-courthouse campaign through the Travis County Taxpayers Union barely spent anything, he said. “I think a lot of people heard that and said, ‘Well why are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent if it’s such a good idea?’”
He said part of the reason the bonds were rejected is that Austin-area voters are increasingly concerned about affordability and increasingly loathe to support tax increases.
Because I live outside the city limits and in Williamson County, I was only vaguely aware of the Courthouse bond issue. As long as I’ve been in the Austin area, I can’t recall another bond issue going down in flames like this one. Could the People’s Republic of Austin finally have had enough of tax increases?
“It is not that complicated,” said local attorney Mark Pulliam. “Travis County homeowners are sick of property tax increases.”
“Only pompous, out-of-touch downtown lawyers — like those who belong to the Austin Bar Association — would think that a 14-story high-rise costing more than The Austonian, and almost as much as the just-completed JW Marriott, the largest in the North America, made sense,” he told Watchdog.org.
The Watchdog piece suggests that the long overdue move to single City Council districts may have been a factor in defeating the bond issue.
Also, Travis County suburbs may finally have become populous enough to balance out the liberal central city for county elections like this one. Indeed, that’s what this map suggests.
Tags: Austin, Don Zimmerman, Elections, Texas
Posted in Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »
November 9th, 2015
I wanted to take a closer look at a few off-year election issues from last week, specifically the Proposition 6 “Right to Hunt and Fish” Amendment.
Really, if you wanted a “safe” vote for people favoring gun control to cast, opposing Prop 6, a constitutional amendment that wouldn’t change a single law in hunting-friendly Texas, seems ideal.
Just look at how the Houston Chronicle sneered at the amendment’s supporters in an editorial opposing it: “This amendment…is the most ridiculous on the ballot…[it’s] essentially a paean to the ‘black helicopter’ crowd that’s eager to harry and harass legitimate conservation efforts in Texas.”
And after all the sneering by smart set urban liberals, how did Prop 6 do? It won with over 81% of the vote. Evidently more than four-fifths of Texans are part of “the black helicopter crowd.”
That’s some fringe group.
My quick scan of county-by-county results shows not a single county in Texas voted against Prop 6. In the smaller counties, Prop 6 passed by a ratio of about 10-1.
A liberal data wonk sent out this tweet while voting was still going on.
(Here’s a non-Tweet version of that map.)
That’s your gun control vote right there: A white liberal urban core. Prop 6 passed Travis County, the deepest blue white liberal bastion in the state, by 44,128 in favor to 28,797.
When actual citizens get to vote, gun control loses every time.
If gun control loses in Austin, it’s hard to see where it wins outside San Francisco and New York City.
Tags: Austin, gun control, Guns, Texas, Texas Constitutional Amendment
Posted in Austin, Elections, Guns, Texas | No Comments »
November 6th, 2015
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm:
What’s Obama’s strategy in Iraq and Syria? He doesn’t have one. “Without a clear overarching strategy to resolve the conflict.” Say what you want about Bush, he wanted to win in Iraq. Obama wants to do just enough to not get blamed for losing.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not wild about George Soros encouraging waves of Islamic refugees in Europe.
Speaking of Islamic refugees, shotguns (which don’t need a permit) are selling like hotcakes in Austria. Whatever could be the reason?
“The Democratic party is mainly a coalition of interest groups, and the current model of Democratic politics — poor and largely non-white people providing the muscle and rich white liberals calling the shots — is unsustainable…Democrats gleefully predict that demographic changes are going to give their party a permanent majority. The unspoken corollary to that is that white liberals think they’re going to remain in charge of it.”
Forget all those Republican obituaries: Democrats are the ones being booted out of office.
Victories in Houston and Kentucky were stinging rebukes to cultural war overreach by the left.
Ted Cruz, Jedi Debater.
Jeb Bush needs an intervention.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General, facing criminal indictment and calls to resign on all sides, instead send out porny emails.
Announce that you’re abandoning your Vegan diet because it was making you sick? That’s a death threat.
Owner of bankrupt Atlantic City casino threatens to house thousands of Syrain refugees there.
Denmark to Bernie Sanders: Stop calling us socialists, you pinko!
Free market economics: It even makes formerly socialist food banks run better!
Students entering Yale are evidently ignorant as fark all. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Dashcam video proves black Texas professor lied about being racially profiled. Hat Tip: Instapundit.)
Matt McCall takes another run at Rep. Lamar Smith.
I’ll take Least Surprising Sports Headlines for $400, Alex: “Former Raiders first-round pick convicted on three counts of murder.”
Tags: 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Atlantic City, Austria, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Europe, gambling, George Soros, Guns, Houston, Hungary, Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jeb Bush, Jihad, Kentucky, Lamar Smith, LinkSwarm, Matt McCall, New Jersey, Oakland Raiders, Pennsylvania, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Syria, Ted Cruz, Texas, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
November 5th, 2015
The latest ObamaCare exchange plans are out, and if you’re a cancer patient in Houston, you’re screwed:
The healthcare marketplace is open once again, but if you look closely at the offered insurance plans you might find something lacking: coverage for specialized treatments.
Preferred Provider Plans, or PPOs, often do cover specialized treatment like care for cancer patients.The loss of individual-market plan PPOs will affect tens of thousands of people who buy their insurance privately rather than through an employer. Before the Affordable Care Act, it was the way most people who did not have employer insurance got coverage.
Jenny Deam, with the Houston Chronicle, investigates the disappearance of these plans. She says there will no longer be any plans, by any carrier on the federal exchange for the Houston area, that cover treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
If you’re unfamiliar with MD Anderson, they’re one of the best cancer treatment centers in the world. For many cancer patients, the difference between MD Anderson and another cancer treatment center is quite literally between life and death.
Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?
Not so much.
The media mocked Sarah Palin for using the phrase “death panels,” but in the name of cost controls, they’re already implementing them at the provider level.
(Hat tip: ColorMeRed’s Twitter feed.)
Tags: cancer, death panels, Houston, MD Anderson Cancer Center, ObamaCare, Texas
Posted in ObamaCare, Texas | 1 Comment »
November 4th, 2015
As expected, all seven Texas constitutional amendments passed easily. The two most heavily promoted amendments, Proposition 1 (homestead property tax relief) and Proposition 7 (dedicating sales tax money to the highway fund), each passed with more than 80% of the vote.
Other Texas voting news:
Houston’s unpopular “tranny bathroom bill” went down in flames. Liberals crying foul that their pet transgender culture war bill was reduced to tranny bathrooms might want to remember that no one forced Houston Mayor Annise Parker (who whispered not a word of it during her own election campaign) to bring it up, and certainly wasn’t forced to sue churches who dared oppose it. Every time an item on the Social Justice Warrior agenda actually gets put before voters, it loses big time.
Austin voters rejected a courthouse bond package derided as a big-spending boondoggle. And keep in mind that Austin voters practically never turn down bond proposals.
But it wasn’t just Texas. Across the nation, conservatives won big in off-year elections:
Republican Matt Bevin won a big upset in the Kentucky governor’s race. The guy who Mitch McConnell crushed by 25 points in a 2014 primary will now become just the second Republican to govern the Bluegrass State in four decades.
Democrats failed to pick up Virginia’s state Senate. It’s a huge blow to Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who went all-in to make it happen. Democrats could have won by capturing just one seat because of the tie-breaking authority of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D). But Republicans held every single seat…
Even in San Francisco, the sheriff who steadfastly defended the city’s “sanctuary city” policy went down. Fox News: “Ross Mirkarimi and his office received heavy criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi’s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested that he be detained for possible deportation.” The city also rejected new regulations on Airbnb.
The Kentucky Governor’s race was the one where Fark’s Drew Curtis ran as an independent. He garnered just over 3% of the vote.
Tags: Annise Parker, Elections, Houston, Kentucky, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Texas Constitutional Amendment, transexual, Virginia
Posted in Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »