The Decline and Fall of Todd Kincannon

August 7th, 2018

Back in the dim mists of geologic Twitter time (say, five years ago), South Carolina lawyer Todd Kincannon was a must-follow.

The self-proclaimed “Honey Badger of American Politics,” Kincannon made his reputation helping put child molesters behind bars and was briefly chairman of the South Carolina GOP. On Twitter, Kincannon​ earned a no-holds-barred reputation attacking liberals. Instapundit once said “Punch back twice as hard.” Kincannon punched back ten times as hard. He also set up the Twitter Gulag Defense Network (TGDN), an effort to get conservatives on Twitter to follow each other to boost their subscriber numbers above a level that made it more difficult for Twitter to ban them.

Somewhere along the line, Kincannon went from clever trolling to crude trolling to getting kicked off Twitter to being arrested for domestic abuse and losing his law license. He’s not even on Gab anymore.

Fast forward to the present. If the police report is to be believed, Kincannon killed his mother’s dog, claimed God commanded him to do it, and claimed he was the second coming of Christ.

Assuming the accuracy of the report, Mr. Kincannon is not a well man and should be confined to involuntary commitment in a mental institution until he is no longer a danger to himself and others,

Blogroll Addition: The Babylon Bee

August 6th, 2018

As promised, I’ve added The Babylon Bee to the blogroll. If you haven’t read it, “The Onion for Christians, but funnier” nicely sums it up.

A few recent posts:

  • “Texas Constructs Border Wall To Keep Out Unwanted Refugees From California.”
  • “Twitter CEO Apologizes For Allowing Conservatives On Platform In First Place.”
  • “Struggling Chemistry Teacher Takes To Life Of Crime Manufacturing Plastic Straws To Sell On Streets Of Santa Barbara.”
  • They’re well worth checking out.

    Venezuela Socialist President Nicolas Maduro Target of Drone Attack

    August 5th, 2018

    The only thing surprising about this story is that it didn’t happen two years ago.

    Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said in a live broadcast Saturday that several dronelike devices armed with explosives detonated near Maduro during his appearance at a military event, according to AP.

    It quoted Rodriguez as saying Maduro was safe and unharmed. According to Reuters, seven National Guard soldiers were hurt.

    Just think how much better off Venezuela might be if someone had taken out Maduro before he admitted socialism was a failure, or even before people started eating their dogs and children started dying because his socialist paradise can’t afford antibiotics?

    Here’s footage of the attack. You can’t see the drone attack itself, but you can see reactions to it and people running from it.

    It’s actually surprising we haven’t seen more drone assassination attempts. The technology is mature and the strike can be carried out from several blocks away, even out of line-of-sight with an onboard video camera. Get a medium-sized quadcopter, pack it full of Semtex and roofing nails, and detonate a few feet from your target.

    Not only have we been using Predator drones since 1994, the Predator has actually been retired in favor of the much larger and faster MQ-9A Reaper…

    Sarah Jeong: 8 or 9 Racist Tweets? More Like 800.

    August 4th, 2018

    Remember how early reports had newly-hired New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong only spewing a few racist Tweets, and only in reaction to trolls?

    Now Twitter user @nickmon1112 has gone back through her Twitter timeline, and discovered: Yeah, not so much.

    Hating someone because they’re white (or black, or Asian) is racism, straight up, no matter how many left-wing intersectionality buzzwords someone throws down to obscure the fact.

    Hell, Body Count made this same point almost 30 years ago:

    PSA: Do not burn your mother alive and bash her skull in with a baseball bat. Even if she is a racist.

    LinkSwarm for August 3, 2018

    August 3rd, 2018

    I’m hoping that this week is Peak Busy for me. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Rasmussen: “Today’s [President Donald Trump] approval ratings among black voters: 29% This time last year: 15%.” Overall Trump approval rating at 50%.
  • Related: “President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the ‘most pro-black president’ in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.” (Hat tip: Da Tech Guy via The Other McCain.)
  • ObamaCare is now optional:

    At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued Wednesday reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent. And unlike President Barack Obama’s implementation of his signature healthcare legislation, it works within the confines of the law.

    Federal law exempts “short-term, limited duration” health insurance from having to carry the unwanted coverage and hidden taxes Obamacare requires. Many consumers have understandably taken refuge from soaring Obamacare premiums in short-term plans.

    Hoping to force those consumers into Obamacare plans, the Obama administration sabotaged short-term plans by stripping them of crucial consumer protections. It cut the maximum plan term from 12 months to three months, and forbade issuers from offering “renewal guarantees” that allow the sick to continue purchasing short-term policies at healthy-person rates. State insurance regulators protested that these restrictions literally stripped sick patients of their coverage.

    Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.

    You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Yesterday’s controversy de jour: “Sarah Jeong: NY Times stands by racist tweets reporter.”
  • Andrew Sullivan on the same topic:

    Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

    From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

    A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!

    Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.

  • Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro admits that socialism doesn’t work. Just think how much pain could be avoided if he had admitted this before people had to eat their dogs…
  • California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her staff for nearly 20 years. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Mistaken police call for an active shooter at a McAllen mall turns out to be an illegal alien robbery gang. Result? Seven illegal alien criminal suspects arrested.
  • Fort Myers, Florida: “Police Officer Dies After Being Shot By Illegal Alien.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Noncitizens across U.S. find it easy to register to vote, cast ballots.” And some have even had other people do it for them without their knowledge… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sheldon Silver Sentenced: Seven in Sing Sing. (Actually, it’s not clear the former New York Assembly speaker will be serving his sentence in Sing Sing, but we can only hope, for the sake of the alliteration…)
  • Maryland forces 90-year old woman to tear down wheelchair ramp she built for he own home.
  • Kane bodyslams Democratic opponent in Mayor of Knox County race.
  • Tommy Robinson freed in the UK.
  • Related tweet:

  • Woman rams car for having a Trump bumper sticker.
  • China cracks down on illegal coffins. Which is to say, any coffins, since cremation is now mandated. Including seizing and destroying coffins old people have spent their entire lives saving for.
  • He Made the Most Beautiful Films of All Time and They Put Him in Prison For It.” He being Sergei Parajanov and they being the Soviet Union. (Hat tip: Don Webb on Facebook.)
  • Liberal NYC lawyer who worked under both Bloomberg and De Blasio talks about just how bad De Blasio sucks:

    When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.

    Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.

    She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.

    Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.

  • Comics video blogger Jeremy Hambly attacked at GenCon. “The Quartering also provided another update claiming five eyewitness have identified the attacker as Matt Loter, the owner of Elm City Games.” GenCon promptly expelled Loter. Ha! Just kidding!

  • Liberal Chicago Sun-Times reporter: “Donald Trump is going to be re-elected in 2020. The Democrats don’t have anyone who can touch him. Bank on it.”
  • “Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Get Avocado Toast In Venezuela.” The Babylon Bee has just been tearing it up recently. I probably need to add them to the blog roll.
  • Harrowing Story of Policewoman vs. “Gooned Up” Perp

    August 2nd, 2018

    Anyone still wondering how anyone could shoot an “unarmed attacker” should read this:

    A West Virginia sheriff’s deputy has posted a harrowing account of her fight with a suspect on Facebook in order to, as she puts it, to give “a swift kick in the ass to a lot of cops.”

    Brooke County Sheriff’s Deputy Kristen Richmond and three of her colleagues were called to Bethany College early Friday to respond to a report of a man throwing things out a third-floor dorm window. After they arrived, Richmond encountered 21-year-old Brandon Jackson, whom she said “was gooned up on an unknown drug.”

    Richmond said she and Jackson fought for “about five minutes.”

    “During said altercation, my glasses were shattered and knocked off my face, none of my radio transmissions got out, and a ton of equipment was stripped from my vest and duty belt,” wrote Richmond, who added that the suspect was not deterred by being partially handcuffed or being attacked by Richmond’s K9 partner.

    “He wasn’t there. The drug had consumed every part of him,” Richmond wrote.

    Click through the link to see graphic pictures of what a severe beating Deputy Richmond endured.

    At one point, Richmond said Jackson “reached for my duty weapon” and credited her training for not using deadly force against him.

    “I’ve been beat to hell and back in training so I knew how to react and fight through being repeatedly being struck in the face and head,” she wrote. “I didn’t freak out … I knew I was okay and still in the fight.”

    Jackson was taken in handcuffs to a local hospital before being transferred to a facility in Pittsburgh, Pa. It was not immediately clear Sunday whether charges had been filed against him.

    Most ordinary citizens don’t have the luxury of training in not using deadly force. If a “gooned up” thug attacks me while I’m legally carrying my firearm, my logical, life-saving response is to shoot him.

    (Hat tip: James Woods’ Twitter feed.)

    Syrian Army Crushes Islamic State Pocket In Yarmouk Basin

    August 1st, 2018

    Saturday I covered the Syrian army’s offensive against the Islamic State pocket in the Yarmouk Basin along the border with Jordan and the Golan Heights.

    Now news reports indicate that pocket has been completely crushed:

    The Syrian regime’s army and its allies have taken full control of the Yarmouk Basin in southwestern Syria after routing Daesh, the Hezbollah group’s Al Manar TV said on Tuesday.

    The basin borders Israel and Jordan and had been the last embattled pocket of the southwest after a sustained advance by President Bashar Al Assad’s forces into the longtime rebel stronghold.

    The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has fought alongside Al Assad’s forces as he has turned the tide of the civil war against rebels and militants with the help of Russian air power since 2015.

    The regime’s army seized Daesh’s main redoubt in the town of Shajara on Monday, which left just a few villages in the hands of an Daesh-affiliated faction, the Khalid Ibn Al Walid army, that had controlled the Yarmouk Basin.

    Here was the Livemap snap Saturday:

    And here’s the map just after the pocket was crushed:

    Pocket by pocket, the last remnants of the Islamic State are being dismantled.

    Faster, please.

    Flores, Gallego Head For Runoff In SD19

    July 31st, 2018

    It’s a runoff to replace convicted felon Democrat Carlos Uresti in Senate District 19:

    Republican Pete Flores and Democrat Pete Gallego are headed to a runoff in the special election to replace convicted former state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio.

    With 97 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Flores was leading Gallego by 3 percentage points, 33 percent to 30 percent, according to unofficial returns. At 25 percent, state Rep. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio was coming in third in the eight-way race. The five other candidates were in single digits, including Uresti’s brother, outgoing state Rep. Tomas Uresti of San Antonio.

    The first-place finish by Flores, who unsuccessfully challenged Carlos Uresti in 2016, is a boon to Republicans in the Democratic-leaning district. In the home stretch of the race, he benefited from a raft of endorsements from Texas’ top elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

    The special election was triggered in June after Carlos Uresti was found guilty of 11 felonies, including securities fraud and money laundering, tied to his work with a now-defunct oilfield services company. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison days after he stepped down.

    Special Texas Senate District 19 Election Today

    July 31st, 2018

    If you live in Texas Senate District 19 (covering parts of San Antonio and much of west Texas), don’t forget to vote in today’s special election to replace resigned Democrat and convicted felon Carlos Uresti.

    Two tweets on the subject:

    Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has also endorsed Flores.

    Tennessee Democratic Party Spokesman: “F*ck Reaching Out To Trump Voters”

    July 30th, 2018

    Today’s example of Trump Derangement Syndrome harming Democratic electoral chances comes from Tennessee:

    A top Tennessee Democratic Party’s communications official made disparaging comments about President Donald Trump and lashed out against a suggestion to reach out to his voters, describing them as “idiots.”

    Mark Brown, a top communications official for the Tennessee Democratic Party currently working as the leading spokesperson to help Democrat Phil Bredesen win the Senate race against Republican Marsha Blackburn, has made a number over-the-top comments on social media, including calling the president “f—stik” and “Putin’s b—-,” the Washington Free Beacon revealed.

    “Exactly, f— ‘reaching out’ to Trump voters. The idiots aren’t listening,” Brown wrote in one of the tweets from 2017. In other tweets he also called Trump a “f—ing moron” and “insane f—.”

    Tiny little problem: “Trump won Tennessee by 26 points.”

    That’s some mighty fine electioneering, Lou…

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)