Contempt News Network

January 30th, 2020

Everyone else and their dog has already covered this video of CNN talking heads Don Lemon, Rick Wilson and Wajahat Ali calling Trump supporters illiterate rubes:

No wonder the RNC quickly came up with an ad. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

But you may not have seen this really solid dissection and analysis of that clip by Dave Rubin and Michael Malice, as well as dissecting how outlets like CNN dishonestly label people to further a partisan agenda:

“Look who the corporate press has needlessly alienated through their chicanery: Rogan fans, Tulsi fans, Bernie fans, Andrew Yang fans, Trump fans, Kobe fans, Don Imus fans. It’s amazing. They can’t help themselves, because when they have a fundamentalist faith, you are certain you are on the side of the angels.”

Worth a watch.

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

Trump Offers Bold New Peace Plan For Palestinians To Reject

January 29th, 2020

President Donald Trump has unveiled Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Let me summarize:

Blah blah blah two state solution blah blah blah land for peace blah blah blah settlement building freeze blah blah blah $50 billion in aid.

What, too cynical? So is the plan. In one way it (like all the previous Middle East peace plans) is a serious plan, in that if the Palestinians accepted and implemented it, it would bring enduring peace and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The cynical part is that there’s no way in hell the kill-crazy death cults in charge of Gaza and the West Bank will ever agree to it.

And indeed, it’s worse than previous peace plans they rejected, including the 2008 Olmert plan where they got 94% of the West Bank and got compensated with another 6% elsewhere. But that’s what happens when you spend the last 12 years sucking, Israel completes a strong security barrier, and the entire Middle East landscape falls out from underneath your feet. Most of the other Arab countries are tired of the Palestinian bullshit, and Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Oman and the Saudis have been dropping hints they should take the deal, or at least start negotiating based on it.

I suspect President Trump offered it as a win-win-win situation, which is to say he wins no matter what the Palestinians do. If they take it, great! He brought peace to the Middle East! If they don’t, he can say he made a serious proposal, backed by Israel and supported by other Arab countries. (And he know Democrats will call him an evil racist trying to screw their pet Palestinians no matter what.) And if the Palestinians don’t take the deal but use it as a starting point, he’s provided Israel with a very strong opening position.

Further, he got signoff on the deal both of the aspirants to the Israel PM seat, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz…

Sorry, wrong Gantz

…which would insulate him from charges of favoring Netanyahu if Democrats weren’t so reflexively hostile to Israel.

Palestinians reacted to the proposal in the traditional way: By burning stuff.

This peace proposal will be rejected by Palestinians because it’s a peace proposal, and it doesn’t achieve their “river to the sea” goal of the complete eradication of Israel. Other Arab countries will not backing the proposal will make noises about “returning to the 1967 borders,” which is about as likely as the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire.

No matter how good Donald Trump’s persuasive skills may be, this peace plan won’t succeed because the Palestinians are led by crazy and/or corrupt scumbags, who will never make peace as long they continue getting paid not to.

The Middle East peace process is all process and no peace.

The Twitter Primary for January 2020

January 28th, 2020

As I did in previous months, here’s an update on the number of Twitter followers of the Democratic presidential candidates, updated since last month’s update.

Five months ago I started using a tool that gives me precise Twitter follower counts.

I do this Twitter Primary update the last Tuesday of each month, following Monday’s Clown Car Update.

The following are all the declared Democratic Presidential candidates ranked in order of Twitter followers:

  1. Bernie Sanders: 10,387,974 (up 250,595)
  2. Joe Biden: 4,136,560 (up 91,552)
  3. Elizabeth Warren: 3,656,031 (up 82,196)
  4. Michael Bloomberg: 2,400,724 (up 36,373)
  5. Pete Buttigieg: 1,600,953 (up 28,982)
  6. Andrew Yang: 1,207,702 (up 83,546)
  7. Amy Klobuchar: 876,409 (up 37,138)
  8. Tulsi Gabbard: 774,170 (up 10,490)
  9. Tom Steyer: 278,793 (up 25,326)
  10. Deval Patrick: 53,931 (up 1,412)
  11. Michael Bennet: 44,611 (up 1,799)
  12. John Delaney: 38,213 (up 198)

Removed from the last update: Cory Booker, Marianne Williamson, Julian Castro

For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 71,730,827 followers, up an astounding 3,691,379 since the last roundup, so not only has Trump gained more Twitter followers this month than all the Democratic presidential contenders combined, the impeachment farce seems to have tripled the number of followers he usually gains. To put it another way, Trump gained more followers in a month than Warren has total followers. The official presidential @POTUS account has 27,975,624 followers, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap with Trump’s personal followers.

A few notes:

  • Bernie is having a great month. In addition to now topping polls, he gained as many Twitter followers as his next three Democratic rival gainers (Biden, Yang and Warren) combined.
  • Biden’s follower gain rate picked up only slightly, but he moved into second because Cory Booker dropped out.
  • I expected Warren’s follower gains to tail off with the rest of her campaign, but it actually picked up a tick.
  • Twitter counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them. And if you’re not looking at the counts with a tool like Social Blade, Twitter does significant (and weird) rounding.
  • Bloomberg and Steyer’s upticks are also picking up slightly.
  • Given her previous rate of follower addition, for Klobuchar, endorsements from both the New York Times and the Des Moines Register have gained her…maybe 12,000 followers.
  • Patrick, Bennet and Delaney are all dead in the water, and Gabbard is barely moving.
  • Weird statistical anomaly: Last month Bennet was up 799 followers. This month, he’s up 1,799 followers.
  • Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 27, 2020

    January 27th, 2020

    Everything’s coming up Bernie (including a Joe Rogan endorsement), Biden tranny panders, Buttigieg does a Jeb!, Bloomberg ops get sick bennies, Yang rises, and WaPo worries about screaming ghosts. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Also: The Iowa caucuses are next week. Our long national nightmare is finally coming to a middle!

    Polls

  • Suffolk/USA Today (Iowa): Biden 25, Sanders 19, Buttigieg 18, Warren 13, Klobuchar 6, Yang 3, Steyer 2, Gabbard 1. No link to crosstabs/sample size/etc.
  • CBS/YouGov (Iowa): Sanders 26, Biden 25, Buttigieg 22, Warren 15, Klobuchar 7, Steyer 1, Yang 1, Delaney 1, Delaney 0, Bennet 0, Gabbard 0, Patrick 0.
  • NBC/Marist (New Hampshire): Sanders 22, Buttigieg 17, Biden 15, Warren 13, Klobuchar 10, Gabbard 6, Yang 5, Steyer 3, Bennet 1, Patrick 1. Sample size of 1,401.
  • CNN/UNH (New Hampshire): Sanders 25, Biden 16, Buttigieg 15, Warren 12, Klobuchar 6, Gabbard 5, Yang 5, Steyer 2, Bloomberg 1, Delaney 1, Bennet 0, Patrick 0. Sample size of 1,077.
  • ABC News: Biden 28, Sanders 24, Warren 11, Bloomberg 8, Yang 7, Buttigieg 5, Klobuchar 3. Sample size of 1,004. Yang over Buttigieg is interesting.
  • New York Times/Sienna (Iowa): Sanders 25, Buttigieg 18, Biden 17, Warren 15, Klobuchar 8, Steyer 3, Yang 3.
  • Emerson: Biden 30, Sanders 27, Warren 13, Yang 8, Bloomberg 7, Buttigieg 6, Klobuchar 4, Gabbard 1, Bennet 1, Steyer 1, Delaney 1, Patrick 0. Yang in fourth here!
  • WBUR (New Hampshire): Sanders 29, Buttigieg 17, Biden 14, Warren 13, Klobuchar 6, Gabbard 5, Yang 5, Stehyer 2, Bloomberg 1, Patrick 1, Delaney 0. Samples size of 426. Sanders has doubled his support in a month.
  • Monmouth: Biden 30, Sanders 23, Warren 14, Bloomberg 9, Buttigieg 6, Klobuchar 5, Yang 3, Bennet 1, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1.
  • Morning Consult: Biden 29, Sanders 24, Warren 15, Bloomberg 10, Buttigieg 8, Yang 4, Klobuchar 3, Steyer 3, Gabbard 2, Bennet 1, Delaney 1, Patrick 0.
  • Economist/YouGov: Biden 28, Warren 21, Sanders 18, Buttigieg 8, Bloomberg 6, Klobuchar 4, Yang 3, Gabbard 3, Steyer 2, Bennet 0, Delaney 0, Patrick 0.
  • CNN: Sanders 27, Biden 24, Warren 14, Buttigieg 11, Bloomberg 5, Klobuchar 4, Yang 4, Steyer 2. I think this is the first CNN poll that has Sanders over Biden.
  • Boston Globe/Suffolk (New Hampshire): Sanders 16.4, Biden 14.8, Buttigieg 12.2, Warren 9.8, Yang 5.6, Gabbard 5.4, Klobuchar 4.6, Steyer 2.6, Patrick .6, Delaney 0.0.
  • Focus on Rural America (Iowa): Biden 24, Warren 18, Buttigieg 16, Sanders 14, Klobuchar 11, Steyer 4, Yang 3, Gabbard 1 Bennet 1, Bloomberg 1, Delaney 0, Patrick 0. Sample size of 500 and heavily biased questions, which you would expect from a hard left interest group.
  • Emerson (New Jersey): Biden 28, Sanders 25, Warren 15, Bloomberg 9, Buttigieg 6, Yang 6, Klobuchar 4, Gabbard 3, Delaney 2, Bennet 0, Steyer 0, Patrick 0. Sample size of 388.
  • Real Clear Politics polls.
  • 538 poll average.
  • Election betting markets.
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Everything’s coming up Bernie:

    Up until this point, we’ve been pretty hesitant to read too much into any one of the post-debate polls — largely because for each poll that showed Sen. Bernie Sanders on the upswing, there was another poll that showed him on the downturn. But now with four more national polls and six early-state surveys (three from Iowa and three from New Hampshire) since we last checked in, we’ve got a much clearer picture of where things stand. And one thing that’s immediately obvious is that Sanders really has gained in the polls.

    Sanders’s chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates has increased by 4 percentage points since Friday, up from 22 percent to 26 percent in our forecast. But notably, his gain hasn’t come at the expense of former Vice President Joe Biden. In fact, Biden’s odds are unchanged — he still has a 42 percent shot at winning a majority of pledged delegates, which was also the case on Friday. Sen Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, slipped 5 points since Friday, and is now roughly tied with Buttigieg in our overall delegate forecast. (Buttigieg’s odds remain the same, and the chance that no candidate wins a majority of pledged delegates ticked up very slightly.)

    The second thing that’s immediately obvious from this latest batch of polls is that the race in Iowa is still incredibly close. Biden has slightly better odds than Sanders in our forecast, but it’s probably better to think of the two of them as roughly tied, with Buttigieg and Warren not too far behind. That said, this weekend’s polls did change the picture in New Hampshire with Sanders vaulting into the lead, which at least partially explains some of his overall gains in the forecast.

    Sanders is looking good in New Hampshire, but Iowa is a toss-up.

  • Two Jews walk into the presidential primary:

    In a country where anti-Semitic attacks have spiked and the president has sometimes hesitated to condemn neo-Nazis, two men who celebrated their bar mitzvahs in the 1950s suddenly want to talk about their Jewishness.

    “I know I’m not the only Jewish candidate running for president,” Mike Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, told a packed synagogue here today, referencing his Democratic-primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders. “But I am the only one who doesn’t want to turn America into a kibbutz.” For the first time in American history, this niche joke fit neatly into a campaign for the White House. And for the first time in American history, there’s a good chance that a Jewish candidate for president will beat another Jewish candidate to become a major party’s nominee.

    Before this campaign, neither Bloomberg nor Sanders spent much time publicly discussing, let alone celebrating, their Jewishness. But a few weeks ago, Sanders was ice-skating during a Hanukkah party at a Des Moines rink, lighting a giant menorah with a blowtorch and mouthing the words to a few of the Hanukkah songs. And Bloomberg was here, making a direct appeal to Jewish voters complete with deli references and Catskills-style rim shots. He quoted Leviticus (a book he identified by its Hebrew name, Vaykira) in Hebrew and said, “Lo ta-amode, do not stand by idly while your neighbor’s blood is shed,” stumbling slightly over the pronunciation, much like how he misplaced the emphasis on the word kibbutz.

    To those who know Bloomberg well and even spent years working for him, this is a surprising turn. As mayor, he was more of the stop-by-synagogue-on-Rosh-Hashanah kind of observer, not the guy who’d make a not-so-subtle reference to Donald Trump as “a pharaoh who knows not Joseph,” and speak about “standing together, rejecting demagogues who try to seduce us by playing us against each other, and uniting behind the only shield that can protect us: our common values as American citizens and our common humanity as God’s children.” Bloomberg went all in, going directly from “When Moses descended from Mount Sinai, he smashed the golden calf and raised high a tablet of laws,” to noting that Monday is “the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation,” and recalling his own visit to the death camp a few years ago.

    This wasn’t a speech like any presidential candidate has delivered before—and that includes Sanders. Before launching his 2020 campaign, Sanders rarely discussed his Jewish roots, publicly or privately. Sanders superfans know he spent a few months after college in Israel working on a kibbutz, but he’s talked about that more through his socialism than through any connection to the Jewish state. For years, Sanders referred to his father as a “Polish immigrant,” which some saw as a pointed erasure of his identity—when Eli Sanders arrived in America, after all, his passport from the Polish government would have listed his nationality as “Jew.” Jewish leaders have criticized him for decisions like speaking at the evangelical Liberty University in 2015 on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

  • The impeachment farce continues to sideline the senators still in the race, namely Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar and Bennet.
  • How much current maneuvering is “Block Bernie”?

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. All in on New Hampshire.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. ‘Middle Class’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem – it makes him a weak candidate.”

    Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. I know it seems crazy, but a lot of the voters we need – independents and people who might stay home – will look at Biden and Trump and say: “They’re all dirty.”

    It looks like “Middle Class” Joe has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn’t being “moderate”. It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe.

    After sitting on the sidelines, big money Democrats are finally backing Biden:

    Joe Biden is locking down support from powerful New York donors who have spent the past year flirting with multiple candidates, setting him up for a major cash boost just as 2020 voting begins.

    Biden’s campaign — sometimes with help from the candidate himself — has spent the last few weeks reaching out to big donors who have collectively raised tens of millions for past presidential campaigns and are not yet attached to 2020 rivals. The Biden camp, which suffered serious money problems in the fall, came to them with a message: The time is now to join up and back Biden to beat President Donald Trump, after the former vice president lasted the whole year as the Democratic polling frontrunner, despite frequent predictions that his campaign was about to collapse.

    The message landed. And Biden’s campaign will cash in on those efforts in mid-February, when Biden will head to New York City for a pair of fundraisers hosted by a litany of Wall Street power players, many of whom previously helped Kamala Harris’ campaign or split their support among several candidates in 2019. Originally scheduled as one event, organizers had to split the Feb. 13 fundraising blowout in two because so many donors new to the Biden fold signed up to help.

    Hosts for a cocktail-hour fundraiser will include financiers and former Harris supporters Blair Effron and Marc Lasry, both of whom were major donors to Hillary Clinton, as well as Jon Henes, a lawyer and Harris’ former finance chair, and Tom Nides, a Clinton donor and former State Department aide. Later that evening, another set of major donors will fete Biden, including former U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley, Blackstone president Jonathan Gray and PR executive Michael Kempner — another who was once a bundler for Harris, who dropped out of the 2020 race in December.

    Biden succumbs to tranny pandering:

    Speaking of pandering, Biden claims he was born a poor black childraised in the black church politically.” “Hunter Biden’s Firms Scored Reportedly Hundreds of Millions from Russians, Chinese, and Kazakhs.” “Hunter Biden renting $12,000-per-month Hollywood home while refusing to pay child support.” Prince. Among. Men. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) Have I stolen this one before?

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Why would anyone work for Bloomberg? Well, for starters, it’s a pretty sweet deal:

    Billionaire presidential long shot Michael Bloomberg is trying to poach staff from other campaigns with outsized salaries and fancy perks like three catered meals a day, an iPhone 11 and a MacBook Pro, according to sources.

    Bloomberg is paying state press secretaries $10,000 a month, compared to the average going rate of $4,500 for other candidates and state political directors are making $12,000 a month, more than some senior campaign advisers earn, sources said.

    National political director Carlos Sanchez pulls in $360,000 a year. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s political director, made $240,000 in 2016.

    Every Bloomberg staffer gets a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 11 on day one. They also enjoy three catered meals daily.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.) Various pundit sorts debate the effectiveness of Bloomberg’s billions. “Is there even a way to effectively spend another billion or $2 billion in a money-drenched election year? “There’s only so much airtime you can buy.'”

    Jim McLaughlin, a Republican strategist who worked as a consultant on Bloomberg’s mayoral campaigns, doubts Bloomberg will really spend nine figures this year, suspecting he is dangling the promise of the massive payout mainly to curry favor with Democrats.

    “Do I think he can spend $2 billion? Of course. Do I think he will? No,” McLaughlin said.

    And he questioned the impact of that money, either way.

    After all, the most expensive presidential campaign in history was Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, and she wasn’t able to stop Trump, though she did win the popular vote. She spent almost twice what Trump did per electoral vote won.

    “Donald Trump was significantly outspent,” McLaughlin said, “and at the end of the day, it didn’t matter.”

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s still the other white meat:

    When Pete Buttigieg holds “big rally type events” in South Carolina, “it’s mostly white folks showing up,” he acknowledged ruefully Thursday night. And his struggle to fix that problem has become an existential threat to his presidential ambitions.

    Buttigieg’s low standing with black voters has been a long-running theme, and as he and his campaign argued that he simply wasn’t well-known enough, it is one he has worked to correct. Over the past month and a half, he has invested more money advertising in South Carolina, where a majority of Democrats are African American, than any of the non-billionaire Democrats running for president.

    But the more than $2 million Buttigieg poured into TV and radio ads, some featuring black supporters touting the former South Bend (Ind.) mayor, hasn’t budged his stubbornly low poll numbers in the state — 2 percent among African American Democrats in a recent Fox News poll.

    Goes on a Fox town hall. Twenty questions with New York Times, in annoying video snippet format. “Buttigieg warns that Sanders could alienate GOP and independent voters.” He’s not wrong. “Please clap.”

  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? She really hates Bernie.

    “I just don’t want him to get out there and say the revolution is working, [that] people ‘felt the Bern,’” she says, before quickly leaving the room to beat him to a speech. Clinton adds that she found his socialist proposals unrealistic and phony. “I had people in my campaign say, ‘Just say ‘‘Free college.’’ Millennials love it,’ ” she says. “And I said ‘no.’ ”

    Whenever Sanders is onscreen, his underscoring is brooding and villainous, like Darth Vader just took off his helmet for a breather. In a hallway before a debate in New Hampshire, Sanders asks a tense Clinton how she feels about his suit. “Buttoned or unbuttoned?” he says. Irked, she tells him to undo the button as soon as he gets “worked up.”

    Last week, it was revealed that Clinton said of her former rival in the doc: “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

    You would not believe how black that pot is! Here’s a Truthout commentator who thinks she’s running.

    In the interview, Clinton is asked if she has considered jumping into the 2020 presidential race. “I have had so many people [urge me to],” she replied. “Every day. And I’m grateful for people’s confidence, but I did think it was right for me to step back. I’ll do anything I can to defeat the current incumbent, and to reverse a lot of his damaging policies. Thankfully, I still have a voice and a following.”

    I can’t simply dismiss this as another example of a politician who doesn’t know when to recede. I don’t believe this is just Clinton acting out because Iowa can’t throw a party without inviting her. This interview, and that pointedly vicious quote about Sanders, will explode the rift between the progressive candidates and the establishment candidates on the doorstep of the season’s first caucus. It will exacerbate the tensions already in place to a clamorous degree.

    I believe it is deliberate on two levels. First, this is the establishment standard-bearer jumping into the fray in a moment when the establishment is conspicuously worried about the campaigns of Sanders and Warren. I have been nursing a fear that the Democratic Party might prefer a Trump victory over losing control of the party, and this sudden broadside from Clinton has only exacerbated those concerns.

    He may be right, but he omits the other probably-even-more-true side of that equation: The radical left may also view losing to Trump acceptable if it means gaining control of the party. This is precisely the scenario that played out in Texas as it went from a one-party Democratic state to a one-party Republican state.

    Second, Hillary is slated for release in March, an enormously important month that will see 29 primaries and caucuses take place in both the states and the territories. Super Tuesday falls on March 3, and will include make-or-break primary votes in California, Texas, Virginia, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio….Hillary Clinton seems to be hoping for a brokered Democratic convention so she can offer herself up as the “reasonable” compromise candidate.

  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Edward-Isaac Dovere asks “John Delaney Is Still Running. Why?” (First, let me check and make sure I didn’t run this article last week…nope, not a dupe. OK then.)

    WHAT CHEER, Iowa—Don’t let the name fool you: What Cheer is a dreary little town. Other than the gas station, the most notable place in the city is an old building that apparently used to house the What Cheer Telephone Company, whatever that was. Today, cheap white curtains are drawn across the windows. It looks like someone is living there.

    John Delaney is here at dusk on a Friday night in January because he’s still running for president. Did you know he was running for president? Probably not. If you did once know—Delaney was actually the first Democrat to declare his candidacy, way back in July 2017—you probably forgot. And if you did know he was still running, the question you’re probably asking is the one I am here to explore: Why? Why is a candidate who’s barely registering in any poll still traipsing across Iowa day after day when he has absolutely no chance of winning, or even of seeming like more than an outlying blip on the radar?

    I’ve wondered that myself for months. But the Delaney campaign is like the This Is Spinal Tap of Presidential campaigns:

    Today began with an event at a pizza place in the small central-Iowa city of Montezuma, which 12 people attended. This evening, the door-knocking starts at a house across the street from the old telephone-company building. No answer. At the second house, a light in the front hall illuminates a Christmas tree, but no one answers the door here either. Third house, also no answer. Finally, at the fourth house a man wearing pajama bottoms answers the door. After listening to Delaney make his pitch for six or seven minutes, he says that while he’s committed to voting for a Democrat in the general election, he’s not planning to caucus—and that if he was, he’d probably go with Andrew Yang, because he likes Yang’s proposed Freedom Dividend, his signature policy of providing a guaranteed basic income of $1,000 a month to all Americans.

    “But that can’t happen!” Delaney says.

    It’s quickly evident that Delaney can’t get this voter, but courtesy dictates that he now listen politely while the man talks about how he wants to fix up the shed across the road.

    After that, Delaney’s small caravan, a big blue-and-red bus trailed by a car, rolls on. No one is home at the next two houses. When a woman pulls into the driveway of the second house, Delaney’s campaign manager tries to talk to her, but she walks in the back door and doesn’t come out again. Up a hill and around a corner is another house that the campaign staff have identified as belonging to a Democratic voter. An old man opens the door. He says he’s recovering from eye surgery but that he doesn’t like Donald Trump and is happy to talk. Finally—a prospect! He says the main thing he’s looking for in a candidate is honesty. Delaney makes his pitch, but the man is soon trying to wrap up the conversation. “Hope you do well,” the man says. Delaney invites him to a free dinner that the campaign is hosting the next town over. The man just smiles noncommittally.

    At this late stage of a very long presidential campaign that has by any conventional measure been remarkably unsuccessful, this actually counts as a pretty good hour for Delaney. How, I asked him as he walked away from the old man’s house, does he keep his head up?

    “I’m disappointed it hasn’t gone better, but I think it’s a privilege to do this,” he said. “I meet people who are really struggling. And I realize, you know, I have really no problems. And the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives is—what better way to spend my time?”

    Has a Union-Leader op ed where he says that “Divisiveness is America’s biggest hurdle.” If only the political party whose nomination he’s running for could bring themselves to accept the results of the 2016 election…

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Calls for ending the war on drugs. CNN screws Gabbard out of a town hall, even though Deval “0” Patrick gets one. She’s betting on independents and Trump supporters in New Hampshire. Eh, it’s a strategy, but I’m pretty sure she loses that bet. Talks about her lawsuit against Hillary.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Enjoying a little boomlet? Yeah, but “little” as in “maybe 5th place on a good day.” Gets the same annoying video format 20 questions with the New York Times. Endorsed by the Union-Leader. As one of the country’s few remaining conservative newspapers, I don’t think that will have much sway on Democratic Party voters.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: In. Twitter. Facebook. Evidently it’s “Edward-Isaac Dovere interviews no-hopers week,” because he did the same for Patrick:

    Pretty much everyone hates what the Democratic primary race has become. It’s gone on too long, cost too much money, and tended to reward people who’ve been repeating the same lines for years. Pretty much everyone also hates the debates. (How many people watched last week’s debate and saw a future president? How many people saw someone who they’re confident can beat Donald Trump?) And pretty much everyone hates what the process has churned out: A Des Moines Register poll three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, and 14 months after the campaign started, showed that 60 percent of people still hadn’t made up their minds. The New York Times endorsed two candidates. “People like the field, but I don’t think they feel that great about the front-runners,” John Delaney, who is still winding down the final days of his own candidacy, told me a few weeks ago. New York magazine’s latest cover headline nailed the Democratic panic: “Well, Here We Are.”

    And here I am, in the lobby restaurant of a Marriott, with a candidate who’s telling me it’s not too late to do something about all this. Deval Patrick says voters have been telling him directly that they like him, that they’re ready to go with him, or at least consider him. “I meet donors who say, ‘I am so there; I just want to see this in the polls, and then I want to bundle for you.’ What are you waiting for? If you already think I contribute something that the rest of the field doesn’t, why are you waiting for permission from pundits, pollsters, the party, somebody else?” Patrick said. I’ve heard the same thing from people who’ve been thinking about writing checks. More often, I’ve heard people tell me that they can’t bring themselves to be a part of this.

    When the lights in the lobby keep swelling high and low, and the manager comes over to apologize, he doesn’t recognize the former Massachusetts governor. Neither does the waiter.

    That’s the problem for Patrick. He got in a year later than he was planning to, because his wife was diagnosed with cancer in late 2018. Then he spent this past fall stressing about how far off course the primary race seemed to be spinning, before deciding in November to go for it. That’s a whole year he didn’t spend getting better known, or building any kind of organization. By the time he did jump in, he had to argue with campaign staff he’d never met before about whether to spend days chasing the media exposure they said he needed or follow his gut and campaign more deliberately, one on one, the way he had in his first race, when he’d pulled off his out-of-nowhere win for the governorship of Massachusetts. He’s annoyed about old friends and supporters who’ve been smiling to his face—and then telling reporters like me that they’re heartbroken to see what a flop his campaign seems to be so far.

    Not sure “flopping” is quite accurate, since flopping usually makes a sound. He announced support for slavery reparations, because of course he did. That worked out so well for Kamala Harris…

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Joe Rogan endorses Sanders…and is immediately smeared as a white nationalist. “Bernie Sanders Welcomed As Newest Member Of Alt-Right After Joe Rogan Endorsement.” “Bernie Sanders isn’t a ‘democratic socialist’ — he’s an all-out Marxist.” Oh come on! We all know “Democratic Socialist” is just what Marxists call themselves until they get into power.

    His rise clearly troubles establishment Democrats who are uneasy with his far-left agenda. Among Sanders’s most notable detractors are mainstream Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The former president, for instance, is reported to be so “anxious” about Sanders’s standing that he’s contemplating publicly repudiating him (although some Obama allies deny this account).

    Obama and Clinton may have unwittingly contributed to Sanders’s rise, but they are right to be concerned. The man has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office — not even on a guided tour. The fact that the socialist senator is considered a national leader is a disgraceful blemish on the Democratic Party, a party once comprised by men such as John F. Kennedy, who fought communists, while Sanders defended them.

    President Donald Trump defends Sanders over the Warren flap. Live view of Democrats:

    Can anyone stop Sanders?

    We’ve seen a rash of establishment-minded Democrats speak out against Sanders in recent weeks, but polls suggest it’s done little to stop his rise. The Vermont senator was at or near the top of several early state and national primary polls over the weekend. We’ve heard everyone from Pete Buttigieg to Rahm Emanuel raising concerns about Sanders’ ability to beat President Donald Trump and help vulnerable down-ballot Democrats this fall, even as passionate progressives rally behind him. For now, establishment Democrats are girding for a fight. And the ghosts of 2016 are screaming.

    “The ghosts of 2016 are screaming” sounds like an impressive turn of phrase, until you realize that it’s either meaningless, or can mean any of a dozen contradictory things. Is Sanders going to wound Biden so badly he can’t win? Is Trump being underestimated again? Are the shades of Prince and David Bowie going to rise up to haunt the race? “Sanders Apologizes to Biden for Bringing Up Biden’s Corruption Problem.” Bernie takes on JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for daring to dis socialism. He has Alexandria Ocasio Cortez out on the trail for him as a surrogate in Iowa. BoldMoveCotton.jpg.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s one of the few candidates still schlepping around Iowa a week before the caucuses, due to either the impeachment farce or other candidates having gone all-in on New Hampshire. Can you imagine the glorious screw-job Steyer would wreck on the race if he won or even placed in Iowa? Deeply unlikely, but stranger things have happened in politics. Can he win Nevada? Since Bloomberg didn’t make the ballot, possibly. And I love this photo of him:

    Yep, another New York Times video 20 questions. Calls for marijuana legalization and opioid decriminalization. Good for him. But his idea to eliminate cash bail is a horrible one.

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren has no answer for Iowa dad who paid for his daughter’s education rather than getting bailed out by the government. “My daughter is in school,” he said. “I saved all my money just to pay student loans. Can I have my money back?” Warren replied, “Of course not!” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Panderwatha. NYT 20 questions. Does the Des Moines Register endorsement matter? Their answer is “Sort of, maybe.” I suspect not.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. He qualified for a February 7 debate in New Hampshire, joining Sanders, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Steyer. Marianne Williamson endorsed Yang. 20. He tells the DNC they should let Fox News host a debate. Agreed.
  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (Dropped out January 11, 2020)
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock (Dropped out December 2, 2019)
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro (Dropped out January 2, 2020)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • California Senator Kamala Harris (Dropped out December 3, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: (Dropped out November 20, 2019)
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak (Dropped out December 1, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson (Dropped out January 10, 2020)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Pandemic Update

    January 26th, 2020

    Ready for an update on the pandemic that might kill us all? For those keeping track of the Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV):

    Total Infected: 2116
    Total Deaths: 56
    Total Recovered: 52
    Number of Countries Where Cases Have Been Confirmed: 14 (China (including Hong Kong), Thailand, Macau, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, France, South Korea, United States of America, Vietnam, Canada, Napal)

    Slightly over 50% mortality? Not good! And the number of total infected jumped just over 100 while I was writing this. But those numbers may not be accurate anyway.

    Let’s dig into the latest news.

    First up: this handy interactive map of the contagion.

    But! China may be hiding the real extent of the pandemic:

    As the world’s cortisol and stomach acid levels rise every hour in parallel with the number of officially reported Coronavirus infections (and deaths), which as of Saturday morning was roughly 1,400…

    … the world has an unpleasant flashback to 2003 when for weeks Beijing would lie and hide the full extent of the SARS epidemic to avoid risking a social panic. To be sure, this time China has done its best to pretend it has learned from the past and it is so transparent, even President Xi Jinping warned that the country is facing a “grave situation”, and that the spread of the deadly virus is accelerating after holding a special government meeting on the Lunar New Year public holiday.

    Snip.

    In China – which has put over 56 million people on lockdown quarantine – the coronavirus has killed at least 41 people and infected over 1,400 in China. Ominously, a UK researcher predicted that the Coronavirus would infect over 250,000 people in China in under two weeks, which has sparked a renewed fear that China will once again try to underrepresent the true severity of the diseases until it is too late.

    The problem is that even as China theatrically pretends to be so forthright about the extent of the epidemic – if only to avoid panic and chaos over allegations it is again hiding the full impact of the disease – it is doing precisely that, and now we know just how it is doing that: instead of putting down coronavirus as the cause of death for an unknown number of Wuhan casualties, China’s coroners and hospitals merely ascribe death to “viral pneumonia”, case closed.

    Remember the Wuhan infectious diseases lab we talked about yesterday? Well Canada kicked a member of that lab out of the country last year supposedly for transporting deadly strains out of Canada’s only class 4 pathogen lab:

    A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation into what’s being described as a possible “policy breach.”

    Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab on July 5, CBC News has learned.

    A Level 4 virology facility is a lab equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases. That makes the Arlington Street lab one of only a handful in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment, such as Ebola.

    Security access for the couple and the Chinese students was revoked, according to sources who work at the lab and do not want to be identified because they fear consequences for speaking out.

    Sources say this comes several months after IT specialists for the NML entered Qiu’s office after-hours and replaced her computer. Her regular trips to China also started being denied.

    Snip.

    Qiu is a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She is still affiliated with the university there and has brought in many students over the years to help with her work.

    Currently head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies section in the Special Pathogens Program at the lab, Qiu’s primary field is immunology. Her research focuses on vaccine development, post-exposure therapeutics and rapid diagnostics of viruses like Ebola.

    She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba.

    Cheng also works at the lab as a biologist. He has published research papers on HIV infections, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), E. coli infections and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome.

    Also:

    “China and Canada’s relationship right now stems from China using espionage to advance its strategic interests, be that its security interests or its economic interests,” West said. “How Canada deals with that going forward, especially given that we have two Canadians who remain in Chinese custody, will be very interesting to watch.”

    This isn’t the first time police have investigated an incident at the lab.

    In 2009, a former researcher at the lab was convicted of trying to smuggle genetic material from the Ebola virus across the Manitoba-North Dakota border.

    The FBI is also investigating cases involving Chinese researchers in the United States.

    So add “China weaponizing Ebola” to the list of things to worry about.

    If this video from China is any indication, Chinese citizens are appalled at the way their government has handled the crisis:

    The U.S. is closing its embassy in Wuhan and evacuating everyone there.

    A third U.S. case has been confirmed, this one in Orange County, California, adding to confirmed cases in Chicago and Seattle.

    Closer to home, there’s still no word on whether the possible College Station infection is coronavirus or not, and four Texans total have been tested, one of whom tested negative.

    That’s how things stand now. A year from now, either we’ll look back on this as a minor epidemic that ran it’s course until being contained (much as happened with SARS), or else we’ll refer to it as the Thanos Plague that wiped out a goodly portion of humanity.

    Update: Five U.S. cases, including cases in Los Angeles and Arizona.

    Schiff Hits The Fan

    January 25th, 2020

    Don’t know how I missed this in November, but let’s correct that oversight:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    LinkSwarm for January 24, 2020

    January 24th, 2020

    Burisma, Chinese plagues and falling iguanas all feature in this Friday’s LinkSwarm!

  • Emails tie “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella to Obama White House meeting on Bursima.

    Fox News host Laura Ingraham reported Wednesday evening that she obtained a chain of State Department emails stemming from a standard request for comment from New York Times journalist Ken Vogel, whose reporting helped generate scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Hunter Biden, 49, is the son of Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, and Republicans have called for him to testify during the Ukraine-related Senate impeachment trial against President Trump.

    On May 1, 2019, Vogel contacted State Department official Kate Schilling about a story he was working on regarding an Obama administration meeting in January 2016 with Ukrainian prosecutors and mentioned the name of the CIA analyst believed to be the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings that led to two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

  • Would you believe that the New York Times had and killed the story of the meeting? Of course you would. It reflected badly on Democrats. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Top seven lies Adam Schiff has told to booster impeachment. Pretty much all of these should be familiar…
  • “Democrats Warn That American People May Tamper With Next Election.” “‘When the Founders wrote that founding document thing, they never imagined there would be electoral outcomes that Democrats did not agree with.’ Democrats also said they even have hard evidence that the 2016 election was compromised by Republicans voting for Trump.”
  • Final Brexit bill passes. The EU is reportedly quite eager to hurt its largest trading partner to spite its face…
  • John Bercow is so very, very upset that Tories are blocking his peerage, in much the same way he blocked Brexit…
  • Giant warehouse explosion in Houston. No reports of injuries, but the explosion was said to be heard 20 miles away… Update: Now hearing it was a manufacturing facility, with a propylene tank as the suspected cause, with two dead and one missing.
  • China’s birthrate hits historic low. Mark Steyn always said that China would get old before it got rich.
  • China is also trying to control the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic:

    The Chinese government has placed the city of Wuhan under quarantine in an attempt to stop the spread of the deadly, pneumonia-like virus called 2019-nCoV.

    According to a Chinese news bulletin, all passenger transportation out of the city has been temporarily suspended. That means that the city’s 11 million residents, hundreds of whom have fallen ill and at least nine of whom have died from the viral outbreak, are trapped unless they receive special permission to leave.

    The virus quickly spread to nearby Japan, Thailand, and South Korea, and a traveler from Wuhan also carried it to the U.S.

    In the face of a global outbreak, the Chinese government has been trying to maintain control of the narrative, censoring media and deleting social media posts that don’t align with its official statements.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Last coronavirus death count is 26 people, with more than 30 million people under quarantine. By contrast, the 2014-2016 west African Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people.
  • But wait! Wuhan is also home to a lab studying the world’s most dangerous pathogens.
  • Coronavirus case in Brazos County, Texas? That’s home to College Station and Texas A&M University.
  • For its new White House correspondent, CNN hired the guy who got caught asking the DNC what he should ask.
  • First! Rule! You! Fucking! Idiot!
  • Smear someone as a “white nationalist” on the says so of the SPLC, just because they want to enforce border control laws? Enjoy your $5 million lawsuit.
  • Hungary to abolish Gender Studies. Good.

    Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen has stated that such programs “ha[ve] no business in universities” as they represent “an ideology, not a science,” with a market profile “close to zero.” Similarly, Orban’s Chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said, “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women. They lead their lives the way they think best [and] the Hungarian state does not wish to spend public funds on education in this area.”

  • Media estimates of 22,000 for the Second Amendment rally are probably too low. “I think when all is said and done, the crowd of gun rights supporters attending Lobby Day on Monday probably was double the official figure and approached 50,000.”
  • Speaking of Virginia Democrats trying to override inconvenient passages in that pesky Bill of Rights: “Virginia Democrats File Bill To Make Online Criticism of Elected Officials a Crime.
  • Norway’s government falls over Islamic State bride.
  • “Austin’s Homeless Policy May Be Implicated in the City’s First Murder of 2020.”
  • In addition to Steve Adler all but personally inviting every transient drug addict in the state to take up residence in Austin, the killer was out on personnel recognizance bond after committing a burglary, thanks to yet another Austin City Council decision.
  • Fun things from the SHOT Show. (Hat tip: CutJibNews on Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Amazon sues to stop to stop Microsoft $10 billion “war cloud” project for the Pentagon, evidently because President Trump is a big meanie who didn’t let them get the contract. Eh, Pentagon procurement bidding is pretty opaque under the best of circumstances, much less under the zillions of possible variations on setting up a cloud infrastructure. There’s no way whether to determine this is a real grievance or just sour grapes over losing a big contract.
  • Denver Post writer fired for insisting there are two sexes.
  • Journalist Glenn Greenwald charged with hacking in Brazil. Though in this case, “hacking” seems to amount to “publishing embarrassing information about members of the Brazilian government.”
  • In praise of Christopher Tolkien. It’s probably only a matter of time until Disney buys the Tolkien estate now…or someone far worse.
  • Terry Jones has eaten his last mint.
  • Lost Klimpt recovered. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit. )
  • Tradwife. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Icy with a chance of falling iguanas.
  • Again?
  • Enjoy your weekly funny dog tweet:

  • Suleimani Ally Whacked In Iran

    January 23rd, 2020

    This is interesting:

    An elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander has been shot dead by masked assailants in front of his house in southwestern Iran. Crucially, he was a mid-range to possibly top commander of the IRGC’s hardline domestic wing, the Basij militia, and a close ally of recently assassinated Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, reports state news IRNA on Wednesday.

    The Basij are those swell fellows who punish Iranians for “un-Islamic” activity like women not wearing a hijab. They’re usually on the front lines of punishing protesters and defending the regime. And as members of the Revolutionary Guards, they are included under the State Department’s designation as a terrorist organization.

    The details clearly suggest that it was an assassination — at this point by an unknown entity or group — given two men riding a motorcycle drove by and essentially executed him in the street.

    Reuters has described the slain Basij militia commander, Abdolhossein Mojaddami, as “an ally of Qassem Soleimani” — who was himself assassinated by US drone strike on January 3rd.

    Did we whack him? Quite possibly. But it’s not like the Basij don’t have other enemies. Could be domestic opposition. Could be Iranian Army regulars. Could be a rival Islamic Republic faction. Could be Mossad. Could be the Saudis.

    But also note that he isn’t the only Iranian terror functionary killed since Qassem Suleimani got dirtnapped. On January 11, word came down that Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Taleb Abbas Ali al-Saedi had also been killed.

    Local media is reporting that Al-Saedi was “assassinated” by an unknown group of gunmen late Saturday night in the Iraqi city of Karbala, some 62 miles southwest of Baghdad, the Daily Mail said. Al-Saedi commanded the Karbala Brigades, an Iranian militia unit that is part of the larger Shiite PMF umbrella.

    If we whacked one or both of them, it’s a sign that the Trump Administration is willing to wage war against Iranian terror agents the same way the Islamic Republic of Iran wages war against its enemies: quietly, behind the scenes, consistently striking at our enemies without bragging or press releases.

    And we’ve already put Suleimani’s successor Esmail Ghaani on notice:

    “If (Esmail) Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,” U.S. envoy Brian Hook told the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat.

    He said in the interview in Davos that Trump had long made it clear “that any attack on Americans or American interests would be met with a decisive response.”

    “This isn’t a new threat. The president has always said that he will always respond decisively to protect American interests,” Hook said. “I think the Iranian regime understands now that they cannot attack America and get away with it.”

    After his appointment, Ghaani said he would “continue in this luminous path” taken by Soleimani and said the goal was to drive U.S. forces out of the region, Iran’s long stated policy.

    Mess with the bull, get the horns…

    Clinton Corruption Update: What’s $1 Million Between Friends?

    January 22nd, 2020

    It’s been a long time since the last Clinton Corruption update. I meant to crank this one out when news of the Qatar bribe “donation” first broke, but the press of events got in my way.

    Back in November, it was revealed that the Clinton Foundation received $1 million in “donations” from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

    The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

    Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

    Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.

    If a new foreign government wished to donate or if an existing foreign-government donor, such as Qatar, wanted to “increase materially” its support of ongoing programs, Clinton promised that the State Department’s ethics official would be notified and given a chance to raise any concerns.

    Clinton Foundation officials last month declined to confirm the Qatar donation. In response to additional questions, a foundation spokesman, Brian Cookstra, this week said that it accepted the $1 million gift from Qatar, but this did not amount to a “material increase” in the Gulf country’s support for the charity. Cookstra declined to say whether Qatari officials received their requested meeting with Bill Clinton.

    Officials at Qatar’s embassy in Washington and in its Council of Ministers in the capital, Doha, declined to discuss the donation.

    The State Department has said it has no record of the foundation submitting the Qatar gift for review, and that it was incumbent on the foundation to notify the department about donations that needed attention. A department spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions about the donation.

    That’s the same Qatar that’s been a leading financial backer of jihadist terrorism for some time, and was accused of funding the Islamic State.

    Speaking of the Clinton Foundation, Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch notes that the recent DOJ “investigation” into the Clinton Foundation was a “whitewash.”

    We at Judicial Watch were skeptical that Huber would turn up anything either. Huber was appointed by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who did so on the recommendations of his career professional staff. You know who they are: the Sally Yates-Bruce Ohr clone army subversively staffing Justice Department headquarters.

    To paraphrase my colleague Tom Fitton, you shouldn’t be surprised to have a non-finding from a non-investigation. Recall that Huber skipped a critical congressional hearing on the Clinton Foundation in December 2018, and his investigators kept “losing” thousands of pages of evidence handed over by whistleblowers who did testify (and whose names we know, incidentally). It has long been clear that the Huber effort was a charade.

    Besides, the Huber “investigation” was not going to lead to indictments in any case because that was not its mandate. Huber was simply surveying a wide array of issues to see if further investigation was merited.

    Judicial Watch meanwhile has been investigating Clinton corruption for many years. We have documented that Hillary Clinton repeatedly broke the law and lied to investigators and the American people. Our persistent efforts have forced the government to admit that it recovered at least 5,000 of the 33,000 emails Clinton admitted she deleted. The FBI and Justice Department have done everything they can to keep this information from seeing the light of day, slow-rolling their release and redacting large sections of the records they do hand over, usually when compelled by court order.

    Most of the emails deal with official government business, which means Clinton lied when she said they were all about yoga and wedding planning. Many contain classified information, the transmission of which in the clear is a criminal offense. We even know now that she regularly transmitted sensitive security information about her schedules — which placed her life and those around her in danger. The number of such documented security violations increases with each new tranche of emails the FBI is forced to release because of Judicial Watch litigation.

    Transmission of classified information through unsecure channels is a crime whether Clinton intended to or not. But intent can be proven as well. In a June 17, 2011 email then-Secretary Clinton instructed senior State Department adviser Jake Sullivan to strip security markings from a classified document to send it to her over nonsecure channels. That is a felony.

    The most recent record release revealed that Hillary was conducting official and sometimes classified business via text messages, something that had been suspected but not proved until now. So now we have the matter of how many texts she sent and what they contained, for which we have no answers — yet. But it does make clear why her staff demolished cell phones with hammers.

    More Judicial Watch background on their Clinton Foundation ivestigation can be found here.

    So: Any other Clinton corruption news as of late? Well:

  • New photographs surfaced of Bill Clinton posing on the Lolita Express with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein “sex slave” Chauntae Davies.
  • It’s not just Hunter Biden. Chelsea Clinton’s “jobs” have included chemical industry analyst at a hedge fund and being on the Board of Directors at Expedia at an estimated salary of $250,000 a year. I know it will absolutely shock you that both Expedia and the hedge fund are run by Clinton supporters. It must be nice to be born into the Extended Graft Universe…
  • Update: No sooner do I click Publish than word breaks that Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation over the “Russian asset” crack. Much as I’d love to see Gabbard win, I’m not sure she has a case, as Clinton only implied she was a Russian asset without naming her, letting others fill in Gabbard’s name.
  • Oh, and the Hillary comments slamming Bernie Sanders will be in Monday’s Clown Car Update…

    Thousands of Non-Deaths At Virginia Second Amendment Rally

    January 21st, 2020

    What if they had a Second Amendment rally in Virginia and and nobody got shot?

    You and I know that there was never going to be any violence coming from Second Amendment advocates, and that if any started it was going to come from antifa. But oddly enough, antifa didn’t seem interested in showing up to confront armed opponents.

    Funny how that happens.

    It must have been a great blow to an MSM falsely accusing the event of being a “white supremacist” rally.

    They were heartbroken:

    “Nobody has so much as fired a shot. This is an unbelievable tragedy,” said one teary-eyed MSNBC reporter, clearly caught up in the anguish of the moment. “It’s tragic that we live in a country where reporters who are just minding their own business trying to push a narrative can have everything ripped away from them in an instant when protesters refuse to shoot at people.”

    (Do I actually need to flag the preceding from the Babylon Bee?)

    The media was hoping for a second Charlottesville, but without paid agitators and a police force willing to channel two sets of protestors into each other, it never materialized.

    Again, funny how that happens. There were also too many non-white attendees to pass it off as a “white supremacist” rally:

    Enjoy some tweets: