This has probably been my busiest February on record. Enjoy a complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, try the waitress and tip the veal:
“It’s doubtful you can find a more succinct example of TDS than a seemingly inebriated Democrat Senator asking the aggregate intelligence apparatus, during a public session of congress, to give specific details of U.S. covert intelligence efforts to thwart Russian, Chinese and North Korean cyber-warfare.” Democratic Senator Jack Reed continues to long, proud tradition of questionable Rhode Island political figures…
Asian student at Harvard discovers that identity politics is a dead end.
“Stop Trying To Shove Women Into STEM.” “There’s this big push to get girls into STEM — while there’s no commensurate push to get women into oil rig work, no complaints that there aren’t enough women hanging off the back of garbage trucks.” Also:
We’ve recently found that countries renowned for gender equality show some of the largest sex differences in interest in and pursuit of STEM degrees, which is not only inconsistent with an oppression narrative, it is positive evidence against it. Consider that Finland excels in gender equality, its adolescent girls outperform boys in science, and it ranks near the top in European educational performance. With these high levels of educational performance and overall gender equality, Finland is poised to close the sex differences gap in STEM. Yet, Finland has one of the world’s largest sex differences in college degrees in STEM fields. Norway and Sweden, also leading in gender equality rankings, are not far behind. This is only the tip of the iceberg, as this general pattern of increasing sex differences with national increases in gender equality is found throughout the world.
It’s one of those “too much to write about and not enough time to do it” weeks. So instead of a scanty Clinton Corruption update, here instead is an interesting piece on the meaning of Patty Hearst. It covers a lot of the social context for those those who were not around (or too young at the time) to appreciate.
The thing you have to understand about Patty Hearst, the reason that her fantastically sui generis story resonated so deeply within so many millions of ordinary American households, is that back then a lot of girls like her were disappearing. They were not California publishing heiresses, certainly; nor was the agency of their disappearance abduction at gunpoint. But disappear they did. One moment their lives could be summed up in a series of photographs not so different from the ones flashed on the nightly news over and over again: Patty in a first-communion dress at age 8; smiling with her gaggle of glossy-haired sisters as a young adolescent; sitting quietly—dreamily, inwardly—on the floor beside her mother’s chair as a teenager, staring off into the mists of girl land. And the next moment—gone.
One day my older sister—the smart and dutiful one, the daughter everyone had placed their bets on—was helping my mother pin McCall’s patterns to paisley linen, and the next she had crammed a sleeping bag and a passport into a rucksack and made her way to San Francisco International Airport with just enough money for a Eurail Pass, and although she did come back from Europe, she never really came back home. One of my friends had a glamorous older sister who fed the seals at Fairyland—she was long-legged and pretty, and she’d stand in her red miniskirt on a platform, tossing the fish—but then something happened; she went to live down in the flats, and her mother didn’t want to see her anymore. There were boyfriends who brazenly took girls out of their houses without chatting up the fathers; there were blue jeans (it is hard to convey the chagrin that middle-class mothers once felt at seeing their daughters in the loathed and stigmatized garment of their own Depression-era childhoods, instead of skirts and ironed dresses and lightweight cardigans). And most of all, underneath it all, there was the line connecting the dots of the Eurail Passes and the screaming matches and even the blue jeans: sex.
Also this:
“The SLA was probably the first band of revolutionaries to marry a commitment to radical feminism with the use of systematic rape as a means of recruitment.”
Few people today realize just how violent American leftwing radicals like the SLA and the Weathermen were in the late 60s and early 70s…
An American drone destroyed a Russian-made T-72 battle tank operating in eastern Syria on Saturday, according to the U.S. military’s command unit responsible for forces in the Middle East — which added the strike was in “self defense.”
No U.S or allied troops were hurt in the incident, but three people inside the tank were killed by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, a defense official told Fox News on Tuesday.
The strike was the second by the U.S. against “pro-regime” forces since Wednesday, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command.
The U.S. airstrike took place the same day an Iranian drone was shot down over Israel on Saturday, prompting a counter-attack by the Israeli Air Force into Syria against Iranian and regime targets. An Israeli F-16 was shot down during that mission, and it crash landed inside Israeli territory.
The T-72 tank came from the “same hostile forces” which attacked U.S. special operations troops and allied Syrian fighters last Wednesday in eastern Syria, officials said.
“The tank had been maneuvering with coordinated indirect fire on a defensive position occupied by Syrian Democratic Forces and Coalition advisers,” U.S. Central Command said in the statement. “The defensive position was within effective range of the tank’s weapon system. Coalition officials maintained regular contact with Russian counterparts via established de-confliction lines to avoid misperceptions and miscalculations that could endanger each other’s forces.”
The latest U.S. airstrike came less than a week after a massive strike killed 100 “pro-regime” forces, including what defense officials told Fox News were Russian contractors.
That suggests it was a Russian-made tank, rather than a Russian army tank. The T-72 was (and probably still is) used extensively by both the Iraqi and Syrian army, and the Islamic State captured some.
There were reports of Russian ground troops in Syria back in 2015, but I don’t see many reference to Russian regulars (as opposed to special forces) in combat in Syria.
The strike appears to have occurred near Khusham, east of Deir ez-Zor, indicated by the blue circles.
It seems unlikely that Russian army troops attacked American troops and got their asses kicked. But if that did happen, they’ll think twice before trying it again…
Here’s a story you may have missed (I certainly did) over the weekend.
In summary:
Iran sends drone from base in Syria through Jordan and into Israeli airspace.
Israeli Apache helicopter shoots down drone.
Israel launches surgical strike against drone base of origin near Homs, Syria.
Syrians manage to shoot down Israeli F-16 (pilots successfully eject and land in Israel), evidently the first successful enemy downing of an Israeli aircraft since 2006.
“Israel carried out a large-scale attack against 12 targets in Syria, including three Syrian SA-5 and SA-17 air defense batteries and four other Iranian military targets.”
The New York Timeshas a piece up discussing the situation that runs the gamut from “commonplace” to “tendentious” to “wrong.” In particular, the assertion that Israel can’t prevent Iran from establishing a conventional force presence in Syria is probably wrong; I suspect Israel can more easily pay for and replace expended material than Iran can, especially with the latter beset by extended domestic unrest. Even more unsupported is the assertion that Russia must “pick a side” in the conflict. I’m pretty sure the Russians have no desire to tangle militarily with another highly-trained nuclear power in a peripheral theater of conflict in a move that would doubtlessly provoke an American response, and Assad has no leverage by which to compel Russia to do any more for him than they’re already doing against the remnants of the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic State. “Shoot down some Israeli planes, or I won’t let you fight for me anymore!”
Iran is establishing bases in Syria for essentially irrational dick-measuring reasons, i.e. to be able to say it’s doing more to oppose “the Zionist Entity” than any other country in the Muslim ummah, as well as support Hezbollah and Assad’s Syria, two of it’s most important clients/allies in the Shia/Sunni civil war.
Iran would not be so bold had it’s sugar daddy Obama not lifted sanctions and showered it with cash for a meaningless agreement. The world will be living with the baleful consequences of the Obama administration’s feckless policies for a long time to come.
Judging from all the fanatical Trump-hatred on the left, you’d think the Democratic National Committee would be swimming in donations.
You’d be wrong:
The Democratic National Committee had a rough 2017, plagued by leadership troubles, internal squabbling, and unflattering reports. To top it off, the party ended the year “dead broke,” says The Intercept’s Ryan Grim.
The Democratic Party is carrying more than $6 million in debt, according to year-end filings — and has just $6.5 million in the bank. Do the math, and the party is working with just over $400,000 overall. Meanwhile, the Republicans are swimming in pools of money. The Republican National Committee had raised $132 million by the end of 2017 — about twice as much as the DNC — and entered 2018 with almost $40 million to spare, with not a penny of debt.
DNC Chair Tom Perez can make all the noises about “off-year” money all he wants, but the party’s screw-job of favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders seems to be keeping money away. Well, that and the fact that he ruthlessly purged Sanders supporters from the DNC, leaving it staffed pretty much entirely with Clinton supporters.
So too have the Democrats let Social justice Warriors have full run of the party, letting victimhood identity politics dominate discourse. Take, for example, this Linda Sarsour rant denouncing America as racist, fascist, etc., while DNC deputy chair Keith Ellison sits and applauds.
The iverwhelming majority of average Americans aren’t racists, so having Democratic activists accuse them of racism, while practicing it themselves, is not exactly a recipe for electoral success.
You may remember my exposes of Dan Backer’s wide array of scam PACs, where money is raised under false pretenses, the vast majority of which disappears into the pockets of Mr. Backer and his associates.
Cash for Coalition Against Trump Going Into Consultants’ Pockets Instead
As Trump ran for president, the group raised money promising to stop him—while dedicating more than 90 percent of its expenditures to paying its own members.
Omar Siddiqui couldn’t make it to an August fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. But he ponied up the $2,000 ticket price after the group’s senior adviser, Scott Dworkin, sent him a personal invitation.
Months later, Siddiqui, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), was surprised to discover his money—or three of every four dollars of it—had gone to the coffers of consultants and lawyers the group leaned on to fight a libel suit, rather than pushing back against the president.
Snip.
The Democratic Coalition, one of the many new progressive-minded organizations to bloom in the age of anti-Trump fervor, brought in nearly half a million dollars last year. Its donors include Siddiqui, a pair of Hollywood television producers, a former Real Housewife of Miami, and a member of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. The vast majority of its funds, however, have come from people whose names don’t make it into Federal Election Commission disclosures: the small, “unitemized” donors who give $200 or less.
It’s what the group has done with its money—not how much it has brought in—that has raised eyebrows among other operatives.
The Democratic Coalition paid more than half of the money it raised last year to its employees or their consulting firms, according to Federal Election Commission records. Dworkin’s Bulldog Finance Group was the chief beneficiary, drawing more than $130,000 from The Democratic Coalition.
The breakdown in 2016, when the Democratic Coalition declared its goal was “making sure that Donald Trump never became President,” was even starker. That year, Dworkin and other staff members received more than 90 percent of all of the Democratic Coalition’s expenditures, either personally or through a consulting company, according to FEC records.
Mr. Dworkin appears to be treating the “resistance” the same way Backer treated the Tea Party…
The New York Times confirms someone was paying off the Russians. Tiny problem: It wasn’t Trump, it was the CIA:
After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.
The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.
Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals.
Note this story is going to claim the CIA paid to get their own stolen cyberweapons/hacking tools back and this Russian just insisted on offering dirt on Trump they didn’t want.
That’s absurd. How do you buy back your own cybertools? You already have the tools; the problem is that other people have them, and paying someone to send you a copy does nothing at all to stop him from selling other copies forever, to whoever he wants.
No, this is about the Trump dirt, and the cyberweapon thing is the cover story.
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last year with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele, according to text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News.
“We have so much to discuss u need to be careful but we can help our country,” Warner texted the lobbyist, Adam Waldman, on March 22, 2017.
“I’m in,” Waldman, whose firm has ties to Hillary Clinton, texted back to Warner.
Steele famously put together the anti-Trump dossier of unverified information that was used by FBI and Justice Department officials in October 2016 to get a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page. Despite the efforts, Steele has not agreed to an interview with the committee.
Secrecy seemed very important to Warner as the conversation with Waldman heated up March 29, when the lobbyist revealed that Steele wanted a bipartisan letter from Warner and the committee’s chairman, North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr, inviting him to talk to the Senate intelligence panel.
Throughout the text exchanges, Warner seemed particularly intent on connecting directly with Steele without anyone else on the Senate Intelligence Committee being in the loop — at least initially. In one text to the lobbyist, Warner wrote that he would “rather not have a paper trail” of his messages.
I'm beginning to worry that our intelligence community is run by the Daily Kos comments section. https://t.co/uMHlrrZhHJ
Combine this with the fact that we know the Clinton Campaign/DNC-funded Fusion GPS was already in the pay of Russian nationals, and it becomes clear why Democrats thought they would nail Trump for Russian influence: They were projecting their own sins onto others.
Will the last Democrat not colluding with the Russians please turn out the lights?
So, the Washington Post says that Donald Trump wants to honor the military with a parade, which the Trump-haters inform us is the worst thing that ever was because it’s Donald Trump who wants to honor the military with a parade. The very day the Democrats decided that they should make fun of Trump’s physical disqualification for military service – Democrats were pretending to think not serving is bad that morning – the Donkeys also decided they needed to spazz out about honoring our troops.
Whap! That’s the sound of the Democrats stepping on another rake.
Is a parade a good idea? A bad idea? Irrelevant! It’s a hilarious idea, because when this idea erupted on social media, it was absolutely certain that the liberals would immediately take a position that required them to say, “No, we should totally not honor our troops.”
Also:
Every day, the Democrats seem intent on stepping on a new rake. The tax bill comes out, and the Democrats’ promise that those of us not already dead from Trump pulling us out of the Paris Climate Change Grift were going to be dead from getting more money back in our paychecks.
Whap! Rake! Because working folks keeping their own money is bad – for Democrat prospects.
Then a bunch of companies start giving bonuses to their employees, which the Dems pooh-pooh.
Whap! Rake! Because money not dispensed by Uncle Sucker doesn’t count or something.
And then Nancy Pelosi, the gift who keeps on gibbering, announces again and again that a grand is just “crumbs.”
Whap! Rake! Way to remind us why everyone hates San Francisco limo libs, Richie Witch.
With powerful midterm messages like, “We intend to repeal the tax reform bill that gave you Normals a few more bucks,” and “More illegal aliens or you’re racist!” the Democrats are a shoo-in to hold their House seats in Manhattan, Marin County, and Chicago!
Speaking of law enforcement abuse: “FBI told state police not to wear body cameras for 2016 stop of refuge occupation leaders.” The Obama Administration obviously had it in for the Bundy family. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Michael Totten offers additional details, including the fact that what should be a straight-forward, logical alliance is impaired by the virulent anti-Semitism of Egypt’s state-controlled media.
Another conservative voice silenced for Tweeting While Conservative:
Sam asked me to let you all know SHE DID NOT DEACTIVATE!! She has been suspended. We do not know why. We are pretty sure it was someone not being able to deal with her making them look stupid. PLEASE TWEET SUPPORT TO FREE @politibunny
— Artist_Angie: Sensei of Sarcasm (@Artist_Angie) February 8, 2018
Conservative Tweet @PolitiBunny, AKA Sam, AKA “The Foo,” is a happy conservative warrior and constant Twitter presence, far more sinned against than sinning. We had policy differences (she was #NeverTrump in 2016), but she always seemed pretty reasonable, so it seems odd that Twitter suspended here.
Or it would, if Twitter were not so fond of suspending conservative Twitter users for no reason at all.
I just dropped Sam a line to get her take. I know she suffered another false suspension in 2015.
I got the issue resolved with BlueHost, so now any hits coming in on http://www.battleswarmblog.com should automatically forward to https://www.battleswarmblog.com, as they were doing before this weird glitch showed up.
But this is also a good reason to make sure your bookmarks and links point to https://www.battleswarmblog.com going forward.
