Woke up entirely too early this morning, so here’s a big old bag of randomness:
LinkSwarm for May 27, 2012
May 27th, 2012My Obligatory Blog Post About Convicted Felon Brett Kimberlin
May 25th, 2012Just in case you hadn’t heard, today is Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day. Or should I say, “Blog about convicted felon, Speedway Bomber, and all-around psychopath Brett Kimberlin day.” Like Everyone Draw Mohammed Day, Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day is designed to stand up to illegal harassment and intimidation by giving the bad guys (Jihadests or convicted felon Brett Kimberlin) too many targets to attack. And like jihadests, convicted felon Brett Kimberlin has defenders (and funders) among the hard left.
Also, I certainly don’t want to be left out of the Blog About Convicted Felon Brett Kimberlin day festivities if there are tasty death threats to be garnered!
Here’s a short video:
And here are several posts where you can read about what an unmitigated scumbag convicted felon Brett Kimberlin is:
That should be enough to keep you going for a while, but if I have time, I may blog more about convicted felon Brett Kimberlin, if only to be the number one Google hit for the phrase “convicted felon Brett Kimberlin.”
Desperate Dewhurst Tries To Paint Ted Cruz As Supporter of Illegal Alien Amnesty
May 24th, 2012David Dewhurst seems to be getting desperate, as he’s trying to paint Cruz as a supporter of amnesty for illegal aliens.
It so happens that this is one of the subjects I covered in my interview with Ted Cruz last summer, so you can hear his answer for yourself:
So, which part of “I’m categorically opposed to Amnesty” was unclear?
Something Tells Me Lloyd Doggett Survives This Time Around
May 24th, 2012I always believe in telling the truth as I see it, no matter how uncomfortable. And my reading of the tea leaves (not the Tea Party leaves) is that, despite all the effort to redistrict him out of office, Lloyd Doggett will still be sworn in for another term on January 3, 2013.
Why? One word: money. Doggett’s biggest Democratic rival for the 35th Congressional District, Sylvia Romo, has $20,000 on hand. Doggett has $2.9 million on hand. Money isn’t everything, but it’s a lot. Even an experienced, popular incumbent would be hard-pressed to overcome a greater than 100-to-1 fundraising disadvantage, and Romo is neither.
For all the persistent talk of Hispanics being the future of the Texas Democratic Party, it’s still old white guys who seem to be getting the Democratic establishment juice…
Ted Cruz Picks Up Rick Santorum’s Endorsement
May 24th, 2012Rick Santorum just endorsed Ted Cruz on the Glenn Beck show:
That’s got to sting for Craig James, who endorsed Santorum’s Presidential run.
He’s already got Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Sean Hannity and Ron Paul, among many others. Who will be the next big name to endorse Ted Cruz? Phil Gramm? (Possible) Bush41 or Bush43? (Unlikely) Marco Rubio? (Probably would have happened by now.) Rush Limbaugh? (Nope. He avoids endorsements as a matter of policy.)
You know who should endorse Ted Cruz? In all seriousness? Craig James. With polls showing him around 4% and his latest FEC report showing he had only $9,000 cash on hand, it should be obvious to everyone (James included) that he won’t be the next Senator from Texas.
If James wants to run for office again (and I think he does), he should ask himself which looks better: 1.) Running a no-hope campaign to the bitter end and getting 4% of the vote, or 2.) Announcing Sunday night or Monday morning that he’s ending his campaign and endorsing Ted Cruz? In the later case, he’ll probably still pull 2-4% of the vote, and he can always point out the fact he ended his campaign early as the reason why. The Guy Who Dropped Out is a lot more viable than The Guy Who Got Slaughtered So Bad He Pulled Single Digits. Plus it wins him the gratitude of the conservative activists he’ll have to work with in the future, and maybe a nod for, say, a congressional race down the road. Not to mention depriving legions of disgruntled Texas Tech fans from their expected allotment of schadenfreude on election day…
EuroDoom #Grexit Update: Greeks Already Printing Drachmas?
May 24th, 2012Are the Greeks already printing Drachmas? So says a completely unverified tweet from a random Twitter user. Really, what better source could you possibly ask for?
The Internet is alive with buzz on Greece exiting the Euro (see #grexit for a sip from the firehose). Sadly, there seems to be no buzz at all on reigning in the cradle-to-grave European welfare state that caused the crises in the first place.
More Grext/European debt crises news:
“Growth” to social democrats means growth in government’s size and reach, not growth in the real economy. This approach directly contributed to our current predicament; and more of the same will only exacerbate it.
Major Democratic Donor Larry Flynt Pornographies Conservative Commentator S. E. Cupp
May 23rd, 2012I wonder if the founding fathers’ conception of the First Amendment right of free speech ever extended to faking pictures of a penis in a woman’s mouth. Which is what Obama supporter and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt just did to conservative commentator S. E. Cupp. I tend to doubt this thought crossed the mind of anyone attending the Constitutional Convention in 1787, not least because photography hadn’t been invented yet, and our founding fathers weren’t total pervs.
Remember all those liberals crowing over the need for civility? Whatever happened to them?
Expect some proforma sniffing from the left, to be followed by a quick flick into the memory hole, mainly because Flynt has been a serious contributor to Democrats and liberal causes over the years:
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 HUSTLER MAGAZINE 8/19/96 $10,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 10/20/04 $2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LFP – SELF-EMPLOYED/PUBLISHER/CHAIR 12/29/03 $2,000 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90210 L F P INC 8/30/93 $1,000 National Republican Senatorial Cmte
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC./PRESIDENT 7/22/06 $1,000 Studebaker, Stephanie (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 PUBLISHER 7/7/04 $1,000 DNC Services Corp (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 5/10/05 $500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 HUSTLER 5/18/98 $500 California Voter Registration Project
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90210 L F P INC 8/30/93 $275 National Republican Senatorial Cmte
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 1/9/97 $-1,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 8/24/96 $-9,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LFP INC./CEO 9/28/06 $10,000 Democratic Party of Nevada (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LARRY FLYNT PUBLICATIONS/EXECUTIVE 8/27/06 $10,000 Democratic Party of Washoe County (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT MANAGEMENT GROUP/PRESIDENT 12/30/05 $2,100 Carter, John William (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT MANAGEMENT GROUP/PRESIDENT 12/30/05 $2,100 Carter, John William (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 7/19/05 $1,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 7/18/05 $1,000 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 FMG, INC./PUBLISHER 8/25/05 $1,000 Clinton, Hillary (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 6/30/05 $-500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 9/22/05 $-1,000 Clinton, Hillary (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 8/10/05 $-2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 10/21/04 $-2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 SELF/PUBLISHER 2/15/08 $2,300 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 SELF/PUBLISHER 8/4/08 $1,000 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC/PRESIDENT 5/10/07 $2,300 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT PUBLICATIONS/CEO 9/26/11 $2,000 Hall, Isadore (D)
Of course, the donations to Bill Clinton (a man after his own heart) should surprise no one. The big mystery is those two donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Maybe he did it just to see if they would notice.
That’s an awful lot of money for Dennis Kucinich for a guy in California. I wonder what Flynt’s interest is….
Texas Senate Race Update for May 22, 2012
May 22nd, 2012With just a week to go in probably the longest Senate race Texas has ever seen, expect a lot of election news between now and May 29:
I am given to understand that this Hannity fellow is kind of a big deal.
It’s probably a more effective ad than all of Dewhurst’s previous ads put together.
Euro Update: The Euro is “An Unbridled Doomsday Machine”
May 21st, 2012Though markets have calmed a bit, the desperate search for a lever that will actually steer Europe away from the looming wall of a EuroCrash continues. Meanwhile, certain repeating motifs are detected:
Europe now has the lowest growth of any region in the world. We have already wasted years in trying to control this sickness in the euro, and we are saving the cancer and killing the patient. We have blighted countless lives and lost countless jobs by kidding ourselves that the answer to the crisis might be “more Europe”. And all for what? To salvage the prestige of the European Project, and to spare the egos of those who were wrong and muddle-headed enough to campaign for the euro.
Johnson is right about the cancer, but slightly wrong about the cause: The European cradle-to-grave welfare state is the cancer; the Euro just made it slightly more malignant.
But with two separate commentator’s calling the Euro a Doomsday Machine, I feel a new meme coming on:
Not to mention much better chances of being linked by Jonah Goldberg and James Lileks…
Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy (and California). In each case, the promise of more bailouts and a steady flow of cheap money only produced more reckless behavior, excessive levels of government spending and record levels of debt.
Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, summarizes the results: “From 1997 to 2007, government expenditures increased by around 6 percent annually in Spain, Portugal and Greece, while population remained mostly stable. Spending increased by 4 percent a year in Italy — even while the economy shrank.”
Consequently, “Between 2000 and 2010, Portugal increased its public debt as a share of GDP from 49 percent to 93 percent, France from 57 percent to 82 percent, Italy from 109 percent to 118 percent, and Greece from 103 percent to 145 percent,” reports Norberg.
The European crisis is as much a crisis of politics as economics. The current paralysis of the Greek political system demonstrates the point very clearly. EU policy has actively contributed to this crisis by effectively sealing off discussion of the political problems thrown up by austerity.
Budgetary policy is at the core of traditional democratic politics in Europe but the management of the euro zone is increasingly being effected not through democratic institutions but via a centralised and depoliticised form of technocratic fiat. The “stability” narrative has triumphed over the need for legitimacy as the crisis in Europe has deepened.
Ivan Krastev, the eminent political scientist, argues that we have now arrived at a point where national governments have politics but are no longer in control of policy, including budgetary policy, which is moving via the fiscal treaty and other measures to the EU level.
On the other side of this divide the European Union has policies but no politics, since decisions are increasingly being made by technocratic managers rather than directly elected representatives of the European public. The euro zone crisis has thus amplified an existing problem – the absence of both a European citizenry and a transparent European level political process.