December 19th, 2014
I trust everyone reading this has already heard about Sony Picture’s spinelessness in cancelling their release of The Interview, and Paramount’s even more-spineless refusal to allow theaters to show Team America: World Police in its place. This would be good reason to avoid paying for any Sony or Paramount products any time in the near future. And Cuba is a topic for another time. So here’s a quick look at the rest of what’s been happening the week before Christmas:
Obama’s taunting political opponents over how impossible it will be to overturn his illegal alien amnesty actually increases the chances it will be overturned.
Vermont can’t afford to pay for its socialist health care system.
Voters “prefer dysfunction to the alternative scenario of Democrats running both the White House and Congress.”
Democrats accept bribes to oppose Voter ID laws. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
It may be too late for investor’s to move money out of Russia in the wake of the ruble’s collapse, mainly because they already have.
Here are eight campus rape hoaxes that bear remarkable similarities to the Rolling Stone UVA rape hoax.
Was the entire hoax fabricated because one of “Jackie”‘s friends rebuffed her romantic overtures?
And the entire sad affair seems to have moved into farce now that it appears “Jackie” actually copied a Dawson’s Creek script for some of her catfishing.
The “campus rape epidemic” is “a male demonizing Gothic fantasy nurtured by several decades of hardline feminist theory”:
Meanwhile, in the real rape culture, the Islamic State hands out brochures on how jihadists are allowed to rape prepubescent girls.
The ex-wife of the Sydney gunman sought refugee in the U.S. right before she was murdered. “He was abusing her, having her wear the hijab, did not want her to talk with anybody.”
“Executive director out at Texas Democratic Party.” Really? After such a swell job? (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Amongst the Wikipedia editors.
I am not exaggerating when I say it is the closest thing to Kafka’s The Trial I have ever witnessed, with editors and administrators giving conflicting and confusing advice, complaints getting “boomeranged” onto complainants who then face disciplinary action for complaining, and very little consistency in the standards applied. In my short time there, I repeatedly observed editors lawyering an issue with acronyms, only to turn around and declare “Ignore all rules!” when faced with the same rules used against them.
Pro-gun control Austin City Council candidate defeated.
Wonder why so many UT insiders went after Wallace Hall when it was obvious Hall was right? Maybe it’s because they’re involved in the scandal up to their eyeballs. (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has suffered a strike. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Tags: Austin, bribes, Democrats, feminism, Guns, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jerry Pournelle, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, rape, Rolling Stone, Russia, Texas Democratic Party, UVA, Voter ID, Wallace Hall, Wikipedia
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas, video | No Comments »
December 18th, 2014
After pointing out that mass jihadist violence was common two days ago, Nigeria’s Boko Haram decides to underscore my point:
Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped at least 185 women and children, and killed 32 people in a raid in northeastern Nigeria this week, local officials and residents said.
Gunmen in pickup trucks attacked the village of Gumsuri, just north of Chibok, on Sunday, shooting down men before herding women and children together.
“They gathered the women and children and took them away in trucks after burning most of the village with petrol bombs,”
This actually happened a few days before the Peshawar school attack, but the village was remote enough that word is only trickling out now.
And speaking of the Peshawar massacre, a Taliban spokesman said killing women and children is just fine and dandy with Islam:
“The Mujahideen were instructed to only kill the older children. The Peshawar attack is in complete accordance with the Prophet’s teachings because when the Prophet killed the Jewish Tribe of Banu Qurayza, he put the same guideline, that only the children who have hair below their belly button (pubic hair) are allowed to be killed. Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.”
Got that? “Killing of women and children is also in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet.” Any questions?
(Hat tip: Jim Treacher’s Twitter Feed.)
Tags: Boko Haram, Islam, Jihad, Nigeria, Pakistan, Taliban
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
December 17th, 2014
Time for another Texas vs. California update:
California’s unfunded health care obligations for retired employees hits $72 billion. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Meanwhile, the state comptroller says that California’s unfunded pension liabilities has hit $198 billion. (Ditto.)
California may extend benefits to illegal aliens taking advantage of Obama’s amnesty.
Speaking of which, both California and Texas are on the hook for providing education for illegal alien children. “Today, those figures are $14.4 billion for California and $8.5 billion for the Lone Star state.”
California will go broke if it doesn’t adopt pension reform.
Lessons for California from Texas’ boom.
Costa Mesa police union tries to pin false DUI charge on City Councilman. Hilarity ensues. (Hat tip: Dwight.) And what caused the police union to go after him? Pension reform.
Pension spiking widespread in Cosa Contra County. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California’s high speed rail boondoggle won’t work with the current tracks.
Health industry software company vitaTrackr announces relocation of its headquarters from Baltimore to Austin.
Builders FirstSource announces expansion in San Antonio and Conroe.
Tags: amnesty, Austin, Border Controls, California, Conroe, Costa Mesa, Crime, Democrats, pension crisis, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
December 16th, 2014
Today “a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.”
From the text of the decision: “The Court holds that the Executive Action is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.”
Note: This is different than the D.C. District Court, which has also agreed to consider whether Obama’s amnesty is unconstitutional.
It looks like all those liberal pundits opining that “Oh, it will be years before the case works its way through the court system, by which time it will be too late” to undo the amnesty may be mistaken…
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Tags: amnesty, Border Controls
Posted in Border Control | No Comments »
December 16th, 2014
If you answered “two,” thinking of the Sidney siege, BZZZZPP! I’m sorry, you don’t win the microwave.
The answer would be “a minimum of 143,” given that the Taliban killed some 141 (a death toll that continues to rise) at a school in Pakistan yesterday. They burned a teacher alive and beheaded children.
You know: the usual.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed a dozen or more jihad-related killings the barely made local international papers, much less the ones not reported on.
If that happened in the U.S., the freakout would go on for weeks on end. But pretty much a week doesn’t go by that Jihadists don’t carry out a school killing somewhere in Nigeria or Kenya or wherever. Indeed, attacks on schools are part of the standard Jihadest blueprint for terror.
Blow-back must be a bitch for the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who played a key role in creating the Taliban and supporting various jihadist activities. (Remember where Osama Bin Laden was found?)
Tags: Foreign Policy, Islam, Jihad, Pakistan, Pakistani ISI, Sydney seige, Taliban
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »
December 15th, 2014
This video, reportedly of Freguson’s own Mike Brown (and it does look a great deal like him) presents an glimpse of him distinctly at odds with the “Hand up don’t shoot” crowd’s characterization of him as a “gentle giant”:
Usual caveats for things found on the Internet apply.
According to the YouTube description for the video: “All the old gentleman was doing was passing out Jesus flyers.”
“Mike Brown was a gentle giant.” Except when punching people and taking their stuff…
Tags: Crime, Democrats, Ferguson, video
Posted in Crime, Democrats, video | 1 Comment »
December 12th, 2014
Now ABC has joined the Washington Post in debunking still more aspects of the Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone UVA rape story. ABC got hold of and interviewed “Jackie”‘s friends, all of whom contradict Rolling Stone‘s account of the event in ways both great and small.
And now we find out that while at the University of Pennsylvania, Sabrina Rubin Erdely was once disciplined for fabulation by Stephen Glass? This has to be the most unbelievable plot twist since the revelation of Shaw’s communist handler in The Manchurian Candidate. “Jackie is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most honest human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
Now here’s three links to commentary on the story I didn’t have time to link before the Washington Post piece dropped. Though superseded by Facts On The Ground, each still has important points to make:
Sharyl Attkisson
Margaret Talbot
Mollie Hemingway, on unbelievable aspects of Erdely’s previous stories.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades)
Tags: Crime, Democrats, feminism, Media Watch, Mollie Hemingway, Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Sharyl Attkisson, Social Justice Warriors
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »
December 12th, 2014
You might not know from scanning the headlines of what the mainstream media wants to focus on, but there’s been a lot of liberal meltdown this week, among the MSM themselves especially:
Social Security to become insolvent in 2024. Thanks Obama! (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
The Gruber hearings: More “I don’t remember” than a Peter Gabriel video.
Wendy Davis earns Texas Monthly‘s Bum Steer of the Year. You know a Democrat had to have an epic train wreck when the lefty sorts over there are pretty much forced to put them on the cover…
Rapes by Democratic bundler Terry Bean or Democratic Capitol Hill staffer Donny Ray Williams? “Meh.” “The Press isn’t all that interested in stories that reflect badly on Democrats.”
Feminists prefer narrative to truth. “There is nothing that is nice or kind or empathetic about the subordination of truth to narrative.”
More on the same theme: “When questions first emerged, a number of people treated quashing those questions as the moral equivalent of war, attacking the questioners as if being skeptical of a story was itself wrong — rather than exactly the spirit of inquiry that makes science, and public debate, work…When we get wedded to our narratives, we become blind.”
“After four years of disastrous liberal Democratic rule, led by President Obama, the desperation of the left is now contributing to its own decline. And it’s not just recent defeats at the ballot box: The Democrats’ systematic overreach is destroying the credibility of their messengers and belittling the causes they want to promote; making it harder for them to identify and solve real problems.”
35 federal agencies plan to share your health data. What could possibly go wrong?
Feminists have used Title IX as a far-reaching tool to reorganize higher education to their ideological agenda.
“How feminism left me.”
We have a strong candidate for Most Clueless Example of Liberal White Female Privilege On Salon. Granted, it’s a target-rich environment…
Obama official who enabled illegal alien flood is resigning in advance of hearings How convenient…
“It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.”
How 401Ks are killing off defined-pension plans. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
#GamerGate is winning. “The ‘gamergate’ controversy cost Gawker Media ‘seven figures’ in lost advertising revenue, the company’s head of advertising Andrew Gorenstein said at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday afternoon.”
“All lives matter.” “APOLOGIZE!” WTF? Congratulations, Social Justice Warriors. You’re now officially a cult.
ISIS beheads four children for refusing to convert to Islam.
Joe Biden lectures Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, which is like Kayne West lecturing Stephen Hawking on quantum physics.
Indonesia editor to face blasphemy charges for mocking ISIS. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
India judge decides that country’s Child Marriage Act doesn’t apply to the Religion of Peace. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
Yet he who has never had a snake-throwing fight at a Tim Hortons cast the first stone. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
“Man With Gender Studies Degree Terrorizes Party”. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
And I’m not covering the CROmnibus debacle yet because I haven’t even read the summary of the summary of the summary of what’s in that monster…
Tags: #GamerGate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Border Controls, Charles Cook, feminism, Gawker, Hitler, Instapundit, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Joe Biden, Jonah Goldberg, Jonathan Gruber, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Megan McArdle, National Socialism, ObamaCare, pension crisis, rape, Social Justice Warriors, Social Security
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
December 11th, 2014
After spending days pointing out Amanda Marcotte’s factual and intellectual fallacies over the unraveling Rolling Stone UVA rape story on Twitter, this finally happened:
I love the smell of Amanda Marcotte blocking me in the morning. It smells like…victory.
Henceforth, December 11, 2014 shall be known as “Victory Over Amanda Marcotte” day.
Tags: Amanda Marcotte, Democrats, feminism, Media Watch, Twitter
Posted in Media Watch | 2 Comments »