April 22nd, 2015
More good news from the Texas legislature: The Texas House has voted to remove jurisdiction over statewide elected and appointed officials from Travis County’s corrupt, partisan Public Integrity Unit. Instead, such investigations would be handled by the unimpeachable Texas Rangers rather than the likes of Ronnie Earl and Rosemary Lehmberg.
It was only a historical fluke that Travis County managed to exercise such authority in the first place, and given the Public Integrity Unit’s willingness to pursue abusive vendettas against Republican political figures such as Tom DeLay and Rick Perry, removing that responsibility was long overdue.
Democrats will no longer be able to get revenge against Republicans from the Travis County prosecutor’s office for what Republicans and voters have done to them at the ballot box over the last two decades…
Tags: Democrats, Republicans, Rick Perry, Ronnie Earle, Rosemary Lehmberg, Texas 84th Legislative Session, Texas Rangers, Tom DeLay, Travis County, Travis County Public Integrity Unit
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
April 21st, 2015
House Bill 910, which gives Texas Concealed Handgun License holders the right to open carry, has passed the Texas House. Since the Senate has already passed a version, and Governor Greg Abbott has promised to sign the bill, its all over but the gun grabbers shouting about how it will result in a state-wide bloodbath.
You know, just like happened after concealed carry passed.
Here’s the text of the law.
Tags: CHL, Crime, Guns, open carry, Texas, Texas 84th Legislative Session
Posted in Crime, Guns, Texas | 2 Comments »
April 20th, 2015
Last week was incredibly busy for sundry reasons. It would be nice to get the Friday LinkSwarm back to Friday, but in the meantime, enjoy the Monday version:
“One of the reasons why Obamacare remains stubbornly unpopular is because most Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being the sort of people who would punch nuns.”
The idea that the tea-party movement is animated or motivated by racism is pure fiction.
Wait a minute, an actual useful article from Vox on the assumptions underlying the Iran deal, and the case against those assumptions? I’m as shocked as anyone.
One of the greatest advantages of sanctions as a coercive tool is their effect over time. Dismantling this thing, which in a way is what we’re doing, is kind of like taking money out of your retirement account early. As we let these sanctions work over time, by the time we got to 2012, they were really in dire straits. If a deal is signed this year and then in 2017 they cheat, it would take years and years and years of penalizing them before we could ever get back to the situation we had in 2012.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Women expelled from Calgary Expo due to thoughtcrimes.
Ten takeaways from Rolling Stone‘s UVA rape hoax.
“On the Internet, when all the social context is stripped away and you don’t even have to look at the face of the person you’re being mean to, shame loses its social, restorative function. Shame-storming isn’t punishment. It’s a weapon.”
Old and Busted: Getting Montazuma’s Revenge in Mexico. The New Hotness: Thanks to Obama’s illegal alien amnesty, now it’s coming to you! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“Tsarnaev is, literally, a traitorous, child-murdering cop killer.”
The Kurds are kicking ISIS’s ass: “Picking a fight with the Kurds is a little like going to war against Lebanon’s Druze or the Israelis. It’s like trying to invade and occupy Texas.”
Islamic State beheads man for witchcraft.
People are burning and looting immigrant shops in South Africa. “South Africa, with a population of about 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants….South Africa’s unemployment stood at 24 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.” Doesn’t seem like a recipe for social harmony…
Parenting Protip: Although I’m unmarried and childless, I’m pretty sure the answer to “Mom, will you buy booze and weed for my naked Twister orgy, then have sex with my underage boyfriends?” should be “No.”
It doesn’t take six months to repair plumbing problems at a Wal-Mart. What gives? (Hat tip: Zero Hedge)
A blind person with a stick would be better than Hillary Clinton at reading people around her.”
De Blasio brings class warfare to Iowa.
Now that Rahm Emanuel has been reelected, he no longer needs to pretend to obey your puny peasant laws. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Here’s what’s roiling the Whacko American community these days.
Buzzfeed has outdone itself. You will be staggered by their amazing psychic powers…
Tags: 2016 Presidential Race, Border Controls, Boston, Chicago, Crime, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Kurdistan, Kurds, nuclear weapons, ObamaCare, Rahm Emanuel, rape, Rolling Stone, Social Justice Warriors, South Africa, Wal-Mart
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »
April 20th, 2015
Amidst word that other European banks are urging Greek banks to dump Greek securities, and continued mutterings of Greek contingency plans to nationalize banks, Zero Hedge just tweeted this:
Not seeing confirmation yet, but if true, those quiet bank runs in Greece are about to stop being quiet…
Update: Here’s Zero Hedge’s post, citing an (unlinked) Bloomberg piece citing internal Greek decree, saying it’s the start of capital controls. If so, bank runs are all but assured…
Update 2: Now seeing news reports saying that Greece is “The Greek government is forcing the country’s municipalities to transfer cash reserves to the Bank of Greece in a bid to shore up its short-term finances, according to officials…The decree on Monday mandates the transfer of cash that is not needed to cover spending in the next 15 days, as Athens continues negotiations with creditors to unlock bailout funds.”
So, no forced bank funds transfers.
Yet.
Tags: European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, Welfare State, Zero Hedge
Posted in Economics, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
April 17th, 2015
It’s appropriate that Zeno (the paradox Zeno) was Greek, since Greece appears to have entered Zeno’s Endgame. The country edges ever closer to default, without actually defaulting. Or without the Greek government actually ceasing to spend radically more money than it takes in, because the ruling left-wing Syriza Party would rather destroy the Greek economy than give up their bloated welfare state. Their latest plan is to raid pension funds to keep that welfare state going just a little longer. “This is the last bit of cash that the Greek state has.” “Honey, let’s cash in our 401K so we can buy some heroin!”
Sorry if this sounds like every other update on the Greek debt crisis over the last six years. It’s a vitally important story, which is why I keep covering it, but it’s also the story of a host of people making the same stupid, easily avoidable mistake again and again rather than making the hard choices necessary to deal with the problem.
A few other links of interest on the Greek debt endgame:
So Greece went hat-in-hand to the IMF: Can we put off making some debt repayments? IMF: (Laughs) Oh wait, you’re serious! Let me laugh harder!
Speaking of the IMF, this should be good for a laugh.
Greece’s phony baloney budget surplus disappears.
Looks like Greece’s creditors have finally reached the depression phase of the Kubler Ross grief cycle. “Greece’s international creditors signaled they are losing hope that Athens will do what is needed to unlock bailout funds before it runs out of money.” Do tell.
A timeline of Greece’s bills coming due. “Debt interest payments are piling up. It has to pay off an €80m interest bill to the European Central Bank (ECB) on 20 April and €200m to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on 1 May. But the one that is stirring jitters around Europe is a €760m (£550m; $810m) interest payment to the IMF that is due on 12 May.”
Gameplanning a Grexit.
Tune in next week! Same bankrupt time! Same bankrupt channel!
Tags: Budget, Europe, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, grexit, IMF, Syriza, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
April 16th, 2015
Sometimes I amuse myself:
Might have some real content coming later today…
Tags: 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Sir Mix-A-Lot
Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
April 15th, 2015
Hope you’ve finished your taxes already! Time for another Texas vs. California update:
Detroit and Stockton’s bankruptcies may signal further problems nationwide, says New York Fed President William Dudley. “While these particular bankruptcy filings have captured a considerable amount of attention, and rightly so, they may foreshadow more widespread problems than what might be implied by current bond ratings.”
The Texas senate approves a $211.4 billion biannual budget, which will need to be reconciled with the $209.8 billion House budget. Both budgets offer tax relief, but of different kinds.
The senate also zero funds two rogue agencies the Texas Racing Commission and the Travis County Public Integrity Unit. Expect Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, with deep ties to the gambling industry, to go to the mat to save the Racing Commission.
The Texas senate has also passed signifcant spending limit reform in Senate Bill 9.
CalPERS raises contribution rates by 6%.
California senate OKs yet another restrictive energy policy bill. Yet another in their continuing “Let’s send as much business to Texas as possible” acts…
Los Angeles Unified School District extends lavish employee benefits package another three years, despite existing underfunded liabilities. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California sets aside $261 million for cost overruns on its already pricey high speed rail boondoggle.
California’s drought is something environmentalist liberal elites have brought on themselves: “Those who did the most to cancel water projects and divert reservoir water to pursue their reactionary nineteenth-century dreams of a scenic, depopulated, and fish-friendly environment enjoy lifestyles predicated entirely on the fragile early twentieth-century water projects of the sort they now condemn.”
More on the same theme.
San Diego builds a desalinization plant (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Central California is already starting to suffer water-related thefts.
In the wake of the Vergara ruling, California Republicans want to overhaul how teachers are hired and fired. Naturally teacher’s unions are opposed…
Judge rules that California must pay for sex change operations for prisoners on Eight Amendment grounds. “To contend that ‘forcing’ a prisoner to continue as a man violates the Constitution is absurd…It is nonsensical to grant imprisoned convicted felons health-care ‘entitlements’ that many law-abiding, hardworking taxpayers don’t enjoy.”
California prostitutes demand prostitution be legalized. You’d think they’d get a sympathetic hearing from California’s Democrat-controlled legislation, what with all they have in common… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Stanford student council candidate grilled over Colleging While Jewish. This could go in the regular LinkSwarm, but I noticed that both of these recent incidents took place in California.
Tags: Budget, California, drought, fraud, Joe Straus, Los Angeles Unified School District, Regulation, Texas, Texas Racing Commission, Travis County Public Integrity Unit, unions, Vergara vs. California, waste, water, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
April 14th, 2015
Remember John Wiley Price, the longtime Dallas Democratic political fixture arrested on bribery charges?
Well, he’s now on his second court appointed lawyer.
At taxpayer expense.
Price is accused of taking $950,000 in bribes over a decade from businesses seeking county contracts or other approvals. He earns $141,236 a year as a county commissioner and owns various cars and two Oak Cliff houses.
Federal agents seized more than $450,000 from Price in 2011 as part of their investigation. Price had about $11,000 in cash on him when he was arrested in July, authorities said.
Yeah, that sounds like some serious grinding poverty Price is facing. (Just for balance, the lefty Dallas Observer says that politicians getting public legal aid after indictment is not all that uncommon. And Price’s case is complicated by having so many “assets” tied up via civil forfeiture.)
Maybe he and Hillary Clinton could compare notes on being broke…
Tags: bribes, Crime, Dallas, Democrats, John Wiley Price
Posted in Crime, Democrats | 1 Comment »
April 13th, 2015
For some reason, yesterday I remembered this novel review from 2003. A Washington Post reviewer calls up the author of The Great American Parade:
I tell Burrows that if he is willing to submit to an interview, I am willing to review his book at length in The Washington Post. The only catch, I said, is that I am going to say that it is, in my professional judgment, the worst novel ever published in the English language.
Silence.
“My review will reach 2 million people,” I said.
Okay,” he said.
It does not sound like a deathless work of timeless literature.
Me: It is possible that some people might have found the plot a little improbable. They might find it hard to believe that, in order to garner political support for his tax cuts, George W. Bush would secretly arrange a giant parade in Washington honoring the richest people in America, who would march front to back in order of their net worth. Or that a cadre of earnest, teetotaling college students would get wind of this and, encouraged by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, rise up to stage a heroic counter-parade honoring basic American values like morality and hard work. Was this perhaps deft satire, a nifty Swiftian touch?
Burrows: No.
Me: Ah.
Anyway, the review is well worth your time…
Tags: book review, Media Watch
Posted in Media Watch | No Comments »
April 10th, 2015
Here’s an update on my previous post about the latest attempt to kill the A-10:
An Air Force general has been removed from his position after warning airmen not to talk to members of Congress about the A-10 “Warthog” attack jet.
Air Force Maj. Gen. James Post III, a two-star vice commander at Air Combat Command, was under investigation by the Air Force’s inspector general for allegedly telling more than 300 airmen at a Nevada conference in January that they were not to talk to members of Congress about the Air Force’s attempts to retire the attack jet.
In response to a question about the A-10, Post discussed “the importance of loyalty to senior leader decisions and used the word ‘treason’ in describing his thoughts on communication by Airmen counter to those decisions,” the investigation found.
Post’s “choice of words had the effect of attempting to prevent some members from lawfully communicating with Congress, which is a violation of the U.S. Code and [Department of Defense] Directives, whether that was his intention or not,” said Air Combat Command (ACC).
Maybe Gen. Post was just talking clues from more vocal supporters of his Commander and Chief. After all, is there any opposition to any Obama Administration policy that hasn’t been called “treason” at this point?
Tags: A-10 Warthog, Air Force, Gen. James Post III, Military
Posted in Military | 1 Comment »