Pretty much what you’d expect…
Game of Thrones: Libertarian Edition
August 5th, 2017White Working Class to Democrats: Die In A Fire
August 3rd, 2017Democrats commissioned a poll from Expedition Strategies, and the resulting report, “House Majority PAC White Working Class Voter Project,” is well worth reading.
First let’s cover the methodology:
1000 total interviews in targeted House districts with a sample of likely 2018 voters. All of the voters were White, over the age of twenty-four and did not have a college degree or higher education. The interviews were conducted June 27–July 13, 2017. The margin of error for overall results is ± 3.10% and higher among subgroups.
Next, let’s see where those interviews were conducted by regional breakdown:
The Midwest (MW) is 40% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota or
Wisconsin.The Northeast (NE) is 35% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Maine, New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania. The South/West (SW) is 25% of the electorate and is defined as those living in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida or
Texas.
Notice the ways those samples were constructed? MW includes four swing states plus heavily Democratic Illinois. NW includes one swing state (Pennsylvania) and three heavily Democratic states. The SW (an odd way to combine two quite disparate regions anyway) includes two solidly Republican states (Arizona and Texas), two swing states (trending blue Colorado and trending red Florida) and heavily blue California. Why, it’s almost as though they cherry picked the state targets to give the appearance of fairness while oversampling heavily Democratic states. (It also suggests Democrats already think that most of the South and West are gone and aren’t coming back anytime soon.) To learn how badly this skews the poll I would need to know which congressional districts they were targeting.
Which makes the poll results all the more damning for Democrats. Let’s take a close look at some of those results
White voters without a college degree made up 34% of the electorate in 2016. Their share was stable since 2012 but our
margin got 12% worse.
12% worse in this case means going from -25% to -37%. That is indeed “worse.”
A majority (57%) said a college degree would result in more debt and little likelihood of landing a good paying job, while 43% said a college degree was a necessary step to get ahead. 83% said a college degree was no longer any guarantee of success
in America, while 17% said people who have a college degree are able to get ahead.
➢In short, when these voters hear people tell them that the answer to their concerns is college, their reaction is to essentially say –don’t force your version of the American Dream on me.
So it appears that the white working class has figured out that “Step One: Put yourself $100,000 in debt” isn’t a surefire path to success. Good for them.
While Democrats have a small advantage on health care with this group, Republicans have major advantages on middle class
tax cuts, ensuring people are rewarded for hard work, and improving the economy and creating jobs. We have a small advantage on health care despite the unpopularity of the GOP health approach, but our deficit on the economy and jobs is overwhelming.
I wonder just how much of an “advantage” Democrats have on health care, and what language was used to achieve that advantage. I doubt terribly many people whose premiums have doubled under ObamaCare would agree…
A narrative about villains did not test as well nor did the Wall Street Republican negative–this reinforces the need to emphasize solutions over villains. Our most important villain–Congressional Republicans. It’s worth keeping in mind, Democratic leaders will be a significant villain highlighted by the GOP.
Translation: The old scaremongering isn’t working any more, and Nancy Pelosi is less popular than Ebola.
Despite a majority of these voters being pro-choice, they are more concerned about cuts to infrastructure than cuts to Planned Parenthood.
I’m betting the “pro-choice” finding is oversold, thanks to this lying frame: “Democratic concerns that the Republicans significantly cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood that supports breast-cancer screenings and contraception.” It’s well documented that Planned Parenthood doesn’t perform breast cancer screening. So they even have to lie in their polling questions to get remotely close to the results they want. And even with that lie Planned Parenthood cuts are less of a concern for those polled than infrastructure spending.
The poll also contains bad news for the Democratic Party’s powerful ecoweenie faction: “The Democratic candidate for Congress opposes building new oil and gas pipelines and opposes fracking for natural gas: This was the only positive that made a majority (54%) of voters less likely to support the Democratic candidate for Congress.” I still bet Democrats will brag about bankrupting coal and preventing fracking, because they just can’t help themselves. (See also: Tom Steyer.)
This was moderately popular among the targeted demographic: “The Democratic candidate for Congress supports punishing Federal contractors who are caught cheating taxpayers by putting them in a penalty box–banning them from any federal contracts for five years.” Note that they didn’t ask about penalizing companies caught hiring illegal aliens. I bet they didn’t dare…
Then they did the pollster testing thing: “Sure, you say you hate us, but what if we told you [insert finely-honed, focus-tested Democratic talking points here]?” After all that, all that demographic sample cherry-picking and question slanting, they manage to produce a 40%/40% tie. They finally get in positive territory with “What if we told you Republicans want to murder your baby and bath in its blood?” type questions.
But their conclusions were suitably bleak for Democrats:
We suffer from the lack of an identifiable positive agenda. Without it, voters will turn to Trump for progress. With it, we can make significant gains. Our economic deficit is devastating. Voters don’t see special interests as the problem we need to fix. Success means better jobs that pay well, not a new campaign finance system. Let’s not confuse the end and the means. Success means when you work hard you should be able to: get medical care and afford prescription medicine
and have a secure retirement. And when you work harder than your co-workers by doing overtime, you should
get paid for that overtime.
Translation:
Anyway, there’s a lot more to digest in that report, so take a look, if only to confirm that Democrats are finally starting to realize they have a problem.
(Director Blue has additional thoughts on the same report.)
Dukes Plea Deal Expires, Headed for Trial
August 2nd, 2017The plea deal for Austin Democratic State Rep. Dawnna Dukes on corruption charges has expired.
The Travis County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday said its offer to drop all corruption charges against state Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, in exchange for her agreeing to resign immediately had expired.
In a statement sent to The Texas Tribune after 5 p.m. Tuesday, Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore said she’d had no contact from the attorneys for Dukes.
“The offer to resolve this matter has expired and is no longer available,” Moore said in a statement. “We will be ready for trial.”
As a part of the deal, Dukes would’ve had to also pay $3,500 in fines and restitution and agree to a drug and alcohol assessment. Dukes has previously denied charges that she had her legislative staff run personal errands and that she was compensated for days she did not work at the Texas Capitol.
Dukes seems awful confident of beating the rap, especially since her previous legal team bailed:
On July 25, two of Dukes’ Houston-based lawyers filed a motion to withdraw as counsel, citing an inability to “effectively communicate with the defendant on matters essential to the representation.”
State Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville, put out a statement Tuesday night indicating he was representing Dukes, writing that the 12-term representative rejected the Travis County DA’s proposal because she “strongly reiterates her innocence,” adding that the “inexplicable request that she undergo some drug assessment is absurd.” He said neither Dukes nor her attorneys plan on commenting further.
Oliveira has been practicing law since 1979, so presumably he knows what he’s doing.
Maybe Dukes saw that John Wiley Price beat a federal rap and figured she could so the same for the comparatively piddling local charges. Given how quickly DA Margaret Moore was willing to sweep away the cobwebs of the Ronnie Earle/Rosemary Lehmberg era at the DA’s office, she may have miscalculated.
The trial is currently scheduled to start October 16.
Campus Carry for Texas Community/Junior Colleges Takes Effect Today
August 1st, 2017Good news! Campus carry went into effect for four-year colleges, and today it takes effect for community and Junior Colleges:
On Tuesday, August 1, Texas’ campus carry law goes into effect for community colleges around the state. As previously reported, Senate Bill 11 – legislation prioritized by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick during the 2015 legislative session and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott – took effect for four-year public colleges and universities one year ago. The law set the implementation date for public junior colleges as August 1, 2017.
As expected, adult faculty, staff and student License to Carry holders have behaved in the same law-abiding, responsible manner on public college and university campuses as they have everywhere else in the State of Texas for the more than twenty years the carry law has been in effect. Naysayers’ predictions of increased crimes involving firearms at these institutions have, unsurprisingly, not come to pass. In a recent article in the Austin American Statesman (“Campus Carry: No problems so far at UT-Austin”), SB 11 author Sen. Brian Birdwell stated: “After decades of resounding success with the concealed handgun license program in Texas, I’m not the least bit surprised to see the campus carry law being implemented successfully and without incident. It’s a testament both to the irrationality of the original prohibition and the law-abiding nature of handgun license holders.”
DA to Dukes: Resign or Else
July 31st, 2017There’s been a new development in Democrat State Rep. Dawnna Dukes corruption case:
Beleaguered state Rep. Dawnna Dukes has until the end of the day Tuesday to resign from office — and submit to a drug and alcohol assessment — as part of a plea offer in her criminal corruption case.
The plea offer is similar to one Dukes rejected last year prior to the Texas Rangers launching an investigation that led to a Travis County grand jury indicting Dukes on 13 felony charges and two misdemeanors.
Dukes did not respond to messages left by the American-Statesman on Monday morning. She told reporters in June after pleading not guilty that she would not take any plea deals and instead will proceed to trial on Oct. 16.
The deal expires at the close of the business day on Tuesday and will not be re-offered, according to Justin Wood of the district attorney’s office. In addition to her resignation, the plea offer calls for Dukes to:
Submit to a drug and alcohol assessment and complete any treatment and counseling recommended as a result of the assessment. In a March 29 meeting of the House Appropriations Committee, Dukes showed up late and, after posing a rambling question, referred to medication she was on — “I know I’m talking a lot. I’m full of morphine and will be headed out of here soon,” she said. Pay restitution in the amount of $3,000 related to charges of tampering with governmental records and abuse of official capacity. Dukes is alleged to have collected pay for days she did not travel to the Capitol in the 2014 Legislative session. She’s also charged with using her legislative staff for personal chores. Pay a $500 fine to the Texas Ethics Commission. Dukes was sued by the commission earlier this month for missing a deadline for an elections finance report and then not paying the fine. Waive her right to a speedy trial in any future litigation related to these matters In exchange for accepting the offer, the DA’s office has agreed to drop all charges, but only after Dukes has complied with all conditions.
If found guilty at trial, Dukes could face a maximum punishment of 28 years in prison.
Dukes’ attorney, Dane Ball, of Houston, declined comment Monday morning and would not say if he is still representing Dukes in this case.
Dukes was indicted in January and pled not guilty June 30. Her continuing in the legislature was a surprise, as she had been absent from from the legislature for more than a year for “medical reasons,” and had previously said she would step down, but then changed her mind and was sworn in for the 85th Texas legislature.
Dukes previously stated she wanted to go to trial, but she has continually delayed the case, most recently on the grounds of legislative continuance, a cause that would still presumably hold while the special session is active.
And if she beats the rap, Dukes says she’s considering running for reelection again in 2018.
Stay tuned…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Every TED Talk Ever
July 29th, 2017Want to give a TED Talk? This video shows you how!
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
LinkSwarm for July 28, 2017
July 28th, 2017Supposed to hit 104° in Austin today, and 106° tomorrow. Try to keep your cool…
In early March [Imran’s] wife, Hina Alvi, suddenly left the country for Lahore, by way of Doha, Qatar. Notwithstanding the return flight she booked for a date in September 2017, the FBI believes that she actually has no intention to return to the U.S. She had abruptly pulled the couple’s three daughters out of school without alerting the school’s staff, and brought them with her — along with lots of luggage and household goods — to Pakistan.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Steyn also notes: Why worry whether Vladimir Putin gave the DNC emails to Wikileaks when Debbie Wasserman Schultz just gave Imran Awan her DNC iPad password? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Donald Trump, Jr. appears to be the latest figure in President Donald Trump’s inner circle to be caught in the giant web of the Great Kremlin Conspiracy. Trump the younger said he was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, but that all he got in his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer was an earful about dropping the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian officials involved in the death of a Russian lawyer who was killed in detention.
If the Trump, Jr. meeting is just another chapter in the Beltway telenovela about Trump selling out America to the Russians through an ever-changing cast of supposed intermediaries—come back, Mike Flynn and Carter Page, we hardly knew ye—it sheds valuable light on the ways and means by which the news that fills our iPhone screens and Facebook feeds is now produced. You see, the Russian lawyer—often carelessly presented as a “Russian government lawyer” with “close ties to Putin”—Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump, also worked recently with a Washington, D.C. “commercial research and strategic intelligence firm” that is also believed to have lobbied against the Magnitsky Act. That firm, which also doubles as an opposition research shop, is called Fusion GPS—famous for producing the Russia dossier distributed under the byline of Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent for hire.
Steele’s report, a collection of anonymously-sourced allegations, many of which were said to come from “high-ranking former Russian government officials”—i.e. not exactly the kinds of people who seem likely to randomly shoot the shit with ex-British spooks—detailed Trump’s ties to Russian officials and strange sexual obsessions. Originally ordered up by one of Trump’s Republican challengers, the dossier circulated widely in D.C. in the months before the 2016 election, pushed by the Clinton campaign, but no credible press organization was able to verify its claims. After Clinton’s surprise loss, the dossier became public, and it’s claims—while still unverified—have shaped the American public sphere ever since.
Yet at the same time that Fusion GPS was fueling a campaign warning against a vast Russia-Trump conspiracy to destroy the integrity of American elections, the company was also working with Russia to influence American policy—by removing the same sanctions that Trump was supposedly going to remove as his quid pro quo for Putin’s help in defeating Hillary. Many observers, including the press, can’t quite figure out how the firm wound up on both sides of the fence. Sen. Chuck Grassley wants to know if Fusion GPS has violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
As the founders of Fusion GPS surely understand, flexibility is a key recipe for success—and the more room you can occupy in the news cycle, the bigger the brand. After all, they’re former journalists—and good ones. Fusion GPS is the story of a few journalists who decided to stop being suckers. They’re not buyers of information, they’re sellers.
Snip.
For the past seven years, I’ve reported on and written about American foreign policy and what I saw as troubling trends in how we describe and debate our relationship to the rest of the world. What I’ve concluded during that period is that the fractious nature of those arguments—over the Iran Deal, for instance, or the war in Syria, or Russia’s growing role in the Middle East and elsewhere—is a symptom of a problem here at home. The issue is not about this or that foreign policy. Rather, the problem is that the mediating institutions that enabled Americans to debate and decide our politics and policies, here and abroad, are deeply damaged, likely beyond repair.
The shape of the debate over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action illustrated this most clearly. The Obama White House turned the press into an instrument used not only to promote its initiatives, but also to drown out and threaten and shame critics and potential opponents, even within the president’s own party. Given the financial exigencies of a media whose business model had been broken by the internet, mismanagement, and the rise of social media as the dominant information platform, the prestige press sacrificed its independence for access to power. If for instance, your beat was national security, it was difficult at best to cross the very few sources of power in Washington that controlled access to information. Your job depended on it. And there are increasingly fewer jobs in the press.
Read the whole thing.
The Afghan Taliban has overrun three districts previously held by the Afghan government in the provinces of Paktia, Faryab and Ghor over the past several days. The Taliban is demonstrating that it can sustain operations in all theaters of Afghanistan. The three districts are located in three different regions of the country.
The district of Jani Khel in Paktia, a known stronghold of the Haqqani Network – the powerful Taliban subgroup that is based in eastern Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal areas – fell to the Taliban earlier today after several days of heavy fighting, according to Afghan officials and the Taliban. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the district headquarters buildings, the police headquarters and all security checkpoints are under his group’s control. Fighting is underway at a nearby military base.
Jani Khel was effectively under Taliban control. At the end of March, the group claimed that all but six percent of the district, including the district center, was under Afghan government control.
The districts of Taywara in Ghor in central Afghanistan, and Kohistan (or Lolash) in Faryab in the northwest fell to the Taliban on July 23 after several days of fighting. TOLONews confirmed that the two districts are now Taliban controlled and “government forces have not yet launched military operations to re-capture these districts.”
The Taliban has also claimed it seized control of Pusht Koh in Farah province and Guzargah in Baghlan, however the reports cannot be independently confirmed. However Taliban reports on the takeover of districts have proven accurate in the pasts.
The loss of the three districts shows that the Taliban is capable of conducting operations in all regions of the country. Even as the three districts fell, the Taliban is on the offensive in all of the other regions. Afghan security forces, which are sustaining record highs in casualties and desertions, is largely on the defensive in most areas of the country.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Because the District’s good-reason law merits invalidation under Heller regardless of its precise benefits, we would be wasting judicial resources if we remanded for the [lower] court to develop the records in these cases. … We vacate both orders below and remand with instructions to render permanent injunctions against enforcement of the District’s good-reason law.
Imran Awan: So Many Questions
July 27th, 2017Roger Simon has some of the same thoughts I did about Imran Awan:
At best, Awan is a fraudster who, working with his family, bilked the U.S. taxpayers out of over four million in IT fees and overpriced computer equipment. At worst he’s an agent of Pakistan’s ISI in league with Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, or even ISIS. There are other possibilities in between that are also of a frightening nature, including (although more remote) the mysterious death of Seth Rich.
He also has a number of questions:
- Why did Debbie Wasserman Schultz keep this man in her employ right up until he was arrested Tuesday night when he has been under suspicion for months. Does he have something on her or other people?
- Why did Nancy Pelosi lie when she said she never heard of Awan? Email revealed by Wikileaks says Awan had access to Pelosi’s iPad. (Wiklileaks has never been shown to be inaccurate.)
- What is on the smashed hard drives Awan is trying to retrieve from the FBI? (Oh, those Democrats and their hard drives.)
- Why is Awan suddenly being legally represented at the highest level by Clinton ultra-loyalist Chris Gowan — a fact-checker for Bill Clinton’s memoir of all things? (They are already using the same right-wing conspiracy baloney they used in the Lewinski case.) Does this make sense if Awan’s just a low-life fraudster? Why not let him dangle?
- Just what is the relationship, if any, between the Awan case and the unsolved Seth Rich murder? Is it entirely an accident that Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s brother Steven is accused of blocking the investigation? Denials from Debbie aren’t worth much anymore.
- Where did the Wikileaks come from anyway? Was it really Russia?
I doubt there’s actually a Seth Rich angle here, but you never know. And do all Democrats in the House have iPads that Awran and his co-conspirators had access to?
“Unlike Russiagate, this is an investigation that already has a crime.” He says the case deserves a special prosecutor, and I concur.
Read the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)