Theresa May’s Colossal Failure

May 25th, 2019

Theresa May was hired to do one job and she couldn’t do it, and she managed to screw up a lot of other things along the way. Now that she’s stepping down, the political obituaries are rolling in and they’re not kind.

Madeleine Kearns’ “Theresa May: A Political Obituary”:

Theresa May became the second female prime minister after the Brexit referendum result and David Cameron’s resignation in July 2016. In March 2017, she decided to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting the Brexit process into motion and giving the United Kingdom exactly two years to exit the bloc.

In 2017, May then called a snap election, which threw away her party’s majority and propelled Jeremy Corbyn within striking distance of power. Needing support in facing this threat, May was forced into a coalition with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party.

Given the needless and catastrophic damage inflicted by the general election, this was the obvious moment for her to resign. But she didn’t. After insincerely promising a commitment to Brexit (“no deal is better than a bad deal”), May then came up with an unbelievably bad deal: the withdrawal agreement, which was crushed by historic margins in parliament. Again, here she should have resigned. But again, she didn’t. Her deal was then rejected two further times and each time May clung on, only narrowly surviving a vote of no-confidence in December of last year.

So, what to make of this? In her resignation speech May extolled the virtues of compromise. But her mishandling of the Brexit negotiations was never about strategic diplomacy in pursuit of Britain’s best interests, it was about political incompetence in a damage-control exercise gone badly wrong.

By signaling to the European Union that she would not entertain no deal, May allowed the Brussels and the two-thirds Remain majority in Westminster to use secondary issues as bully tactics. After 2017, May began to make concessions that were unthinkable to most Leave voters. The Irish backstop, the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland, and finally — with her fourth attempt at a deal this month — cross-party talks with the Labour party, which entertained the idea of a second referendum (the precise opposite of Brexit).

Politico: “Inside Theresa May’s Great British Failure”:

It was May 16, 2019 — and no-one in the room could see a way forward. Their only option was to make one last offer to MPs: a chance to vote for a second referendum.

“Are you telling me it’s not going to work?” May asked the assembled aides sitting around her table or on sofas nearby, according one senior official familiar with the discussion that day. Her aides did not sugarcoat it: None thought it would work.

It was the moment May and her team had tried for so long to avoid — the end of the road. From that point it was only a matter of time. But the prime minister was determined to roll the dice anyway.

The scene reveals a prime minister whose commitment, duty and determination crashed up against an almost unprecedented evaporation of authority, power and influence after a series of catastrophic miscalculations. None was more damaging than her decision to call a snap general election in 2017, robbing her of the majority she needed to take Britain out of the EU with a deal acceptable to her Conservative Party.

Snip.

Theresa May had inherited the biggest political challenge for any U.K. prime minister since 1945 — and proved unequal to the task. Personal and political shortcomings met the inescapable reality of parliamentary arithmetic, EU power and the Irish border.

Instead of delivering Brexit and making the country work for provincial Britain, as she promised, she departs leaving an even bigger crisis than the one she inherited, with little — if anything — by way of domestic achievements to show by way of mitigation.

Iain Murray: “Theresa May’s Calamitous Premiership Comes to an End”:

Much of the commentary surrounding her departure will focus on her inept handling of the Brexit negotiations, or her misjudgment in squandering the safe majority bequeathed to her by David Cameron, but I’d like to draw attention to an equally calamitous mistake: her disdain for free-market economics.

At a very early point in her leadership, Mrs. May announced that she rejected the policies of the “libertarian right” and vowed to “repair free markets.” This speech heralded the return of an industrial strategy to Britain, which was watered down somewhat but still displayed a worrying amount of fatal conceit. This conceit was in full display with the manifesto her advisers produced as the platform for the disastrous 2017 election. As Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute pointed out, it contained proposals to reregulate the labor market, cap energy prices, and bash successful CEOs. Unsurprisingly, as the Conservative Party shifted leftwards, so did the electorate, resulting in the loss of David Cameron’s majority.

Yet despite the rebuke, May’s government continued in the paternalist fashion laid out in the manifesto. Perhaps most striking has been the complete capitulation to extreme environmentalist fads — most recently manifesting in bans for plastic straws, cotton buds, and stirrers from 2020. Whenever her government saw a problem, it moved to “clamp down,” legislate, and often exercise a ban.

And if all that’s not enough, The Guardian has a roundup of UK newspaper reactions to May’s resignation.

Theresa May had one job, and she wasted three years not doing it.

LinkSwarm for May 24, 2019

May 24th, 2019

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! This week: Texas legislative news, foreign elections, and a surprising amount on analog synthesizers…

  • Theresa May is out as British Prime Minister effective June 7. The only reason she’s not the worst prime minister of the last century is that she didn’t give Czechoslovakia to Hitler…
  • May’s refusal to offer the UK a real Brexit may result in the Tories being crushed by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party:

    Even before [EU Parliamentary] election results are known on Sunday, therefore, there’s a growing sense that the Brexit party may be a permanent factor in British politics. Opinion polls on how people would vote in a general election show that the party would do less well than in European elections but still run about level with the Tories and Labour. There are deep divisions on policy apart from Brexit that have allowed critics to argue that the party would fall apart once its main goal had been achieved. But the divisions don’t seem deeper than those of other parties, and power or its prospect is itself a unifying social glue. Farage’s rallies around the country are hugely successful — packed, good-humored, more diverse socially and politically than those of the other parties, full of confidence and optimism, and notably without rancor. As with Trump’s election rallies, people seem to find them enjoyable as well as genuinely serious. A kind of Brexit party spirit already exists with many different types of people happy to be together on the bandwagon. It seems less class-bound than any of the existing parties.

    And if the Brexit party wins one-third or more of Britain’s votes this week from a standing start, it will change British politics. Such a result would have the effect of a second referendum victory for Leave. It simply would not be possible for Parliament and the mainstream parties to push through a Brexit that doesn’t get the effective consent of Farage and his party. If such a thing is attempted, it will be seen to be anti-democratic and will have to be abandoned quite quickly. It would force the EU to confront the fact that there is little chance of getting a deal like May’s withdrawal deal accepted, and that even if one were to make it into the statute book, it could never be effectively implemented. In those circumstances the EU might simply throw up its collective hands and declare that the U.K. has left without a deal.

    The third effect of a Farage success in the European elections would be to realign political parties and, in particular, to place the Conservative party in mortal peril. Voting for a political party is a matter of both loyalty and habit. For lifelong Tories, the idea of voting for another party is anathema. Most people who think about it never actually get around to doing it. But the Tories have certainly given their traditional supporters and those new supporters who voted for them in order to achieve Brexit good reason to leave them on this occasion. Many will do so this week. And as with adultery, betraying your party for another is much easier the second time around.

  • Well:

  • You know who doesn’t want to impeach President Donald Trump? House Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)
  • But she may not be able to hold off her lunatic party much longer.
  • And all that despite ample evidence that voters are opposed to the whole charade. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Democrats lying about preexisting conditions again:

  • “A charity run by the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally.”
  • Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is a rarity: an actual pro-life Democrat. When Edwards’ wife was “20 weeks pregnant with their first child, a doctor discovered their daughter had spina bifida and encouraged an abortion. The Edwardses refused. Now, daughter Samantha is married and working as a school counselor, and Edwards finds himself an outlier in polarized abortion politics.”
  • A succinct summary from across the pond:

  • If you look at what China is targeting in retaliatory tariffs, it’s obvious their hand is incredibly weak:

    But based on what we know, what’s even more revealing about China’s choices are the U.S.-made products that haven’t made any tariff list. They include civilian aircraft and their engines and parts, which had a 2018 export total of $17.73 billion. They include semiconductors and their components, which last year had China shipments that totaled several billion additional dollars. They include the equipment needed to manufacture and inspect semiconductors and their parts, which racked up at least $850 million in 2018 exports to China; devices for conducting chemical and physical analyses (with $912 million in China exports last year); laser equipment ($304 million), motor vehicles, auto parts, and plastics resins and polymers (which each produced billions in exports to China); and billions of dollars’ worth of other products that the Chinese either can’t (yet) make or can’t make in the amounts that they need—or that consist of goods preferred by Chinese consumers over their Made in China counterparts.

    As I’ve said before, semiconductor equipment is an area where it’s all but impossible for the Chinese to do without American technology.

  • Narendra Modi wins reelection in India. Forcing Pakistan to stand down over Kashmir probably clinched the victory for him. Modi’s Hindu ethononationalism is not good for India in the long-run, but he’s probably someone President Trump can trust to be a staunch ally against Islamic terrorism. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The election was an outright disaster for Rahul Gandhi, “the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and leader of India’s Congress party,” which is down to 52 seats as opposed to 303 for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. (Remember that Indira Gandhi was the daughter on India’s first prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and is not related to Mahatma Gandhi.)
  • The Morganza Spillway on the Mississippi to be opened for only the third time in history. The Morganza Spillway is located downstream of the Old River Control Structure.
  • “60% of male managers are ‘uncomfortable‘ working around women,” a 32% increase over last year. You mean they don’t want false accusations of sexual harassment to derail their careers? Way to go feminists! Once again you’ve made things worse for women living in the real world!
  • People have known that Chinese manufacturer Huawei has been stealing American intellectual property for at least seven years. Former congressman Mike Rogers: “If I were an American company today, and I’ll tell you this as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and you are looking at Huawei, I would find another vendor if you care about your intellectual property, if you care about your consumers’ privacy, and you care about the national security of the United States of America.”
  • Social Justice Warriors are ruining Young Adult publishing.
  • How computer security is actually handled in the wild:

  • UK foreign minister to Iran: “Bitch, you try to throw down on T-Dog, he gonna go HAM upside yo dome!” Of course I’m paraphrasing a bit…
  • Good news! It looks like Texas taxpayers will finally be getting some meaningful property tax relief, to the tune of $5 billion, or half the projected surplus. (Kids, if you have any friends in California or Illinois, try to explain to them what a “budget surplus” is.) This follows months of waffling.
  • Good news! Texas passes constitutional amendment banning a state income tax, which will go before voters in November.
  • Bad news! Texas House kills election integrity bill.
  • Bad news! Texas House refuses to pass a taxpayer-funded lobbying ban.
  • Laredo passes Los Angeles as America’s largest port. (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
  • Coordinated Instagram troll farm attack on Trump. So the next time you see a Trump-Putin meme, be sure to post that link and ask “How the trolling, Trolly McTrollFace?”
  • Speaking of trolls: Twitter Permanently Bans Anti-Trump Krassenstein Brothers” for “operating multiple fake accounts and purchasing account interactions.” The overwhelming majority of conservatives I follow think Twitter should lift the ban so these idiots can keep talking, but it will be nice to no longer see these morons as the top reply on every Trump tweet.
  • Antifa activist ordered to pay Judicial Watch’s legal fees.
  • Speaking of legal fees, Harvey Weinstein will reportedly pay $44 million to settle various sexual harassment/etc. lawsuits, the money evidently coming from insurance, but will still face criminal prosecution over at least two sexual assault allegations.
  • “Florida man hid legless fugitive girlfriend in plastic tote.” She sounds like a real winner: “Anderson was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges including false imprisonment related to a 2015 incident when she allegedly held people hostage at a Burger King with a BB gun. It ended in a shooting with police and she lost both legs.”
  • Speaking of lunatics: “Trump is the devil!” Genuine loon, or suicide by cop? You make the call. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • All teaching “white privilege” does is make leftists more contemptuous of poor white people. Which pretty much explains the Democratic Party’s decline in a nutshell…
  • Austin Mayor Steve Adler rolls out the welcome mat for antisemetic Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar.
  • Followup: “Medieval Sex Cult at Center of German Crossbow Murder Mystery. Police now say a German sex guru specializing in medieval bondage directed lesbian sex slaves in bizarre murder-suicide.”
  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez frets over colonial cauliflower in her own garden. She really is an idiot. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Moogseum.
  • And speaking of analog synthesizers, they had features you don’t find on modern digital versions, like secret caches of LSD. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Facebook Claims Party Celebrating Candace Owens’s Suspension Was ‘An Honest Mistake.'”
  • A Song of Vanilla Ice and Fire.
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Even Creepier

    May 23rd, 2019

    Conservatives have been calling ex-Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti “Creepy Porn Lawyer” for quite a while now. Yesterday Vanity Fair revealed that Avenatti was even creepier than we thought.

    The wins, while lucrative, couldn’t keep up with his ever-burgeoning expenses, which, according to a divorce filing from his second wife, Lisa Storie-Avenatti, had swelled to include a $19 million Newport Beach mansion, several race cars, and monthly family costs, including a staff of nannies, an assistant, and a driver, she estimated at $200,000, along with shares in two private jets. Around the time he met Daniels, Avenatti’s life was essentially unraveling. His second wife had filed for divorce in January. (Avenatti disputes the claims in her filing. “I hardly think that I am the first person to have a batshit-crazy ex-spouse who overstates things to fit their financial demands,” he told me in response.) A month before that, Avenatti’s law firm made a $10 million settlement for back pay with a former partner, who claimed that the firm failed to provide him with copies of its tax returns and had misstated its profits. By March, the coffee chain Tully’s, which he bought through his company Global Baristas with the actor Patrick Dempsey, had closed all its stores. By that time, the I.R.S. had been after him and the company for years, claiming that Global Baristas owed $5 million in federal taxes. And then there was the issue of a $1.6 million settlement for a client in a civil case, which was due to his client on March 10. The settlement had come through to Avenatti. But instead of transferring it to his client, the complaint alleges, he put the money into his own account. When his client repeatedly asked Avenatti when the money would come in, he allegedly lied about the fact that it already had, in fact, been paid to him. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

    And then Stormy happened.

    It was his skill set and his strategy, Avenatti explained, that took her case from what could have been a two-day story and turned it into a case cable-news hosts chewed over night after night, week after week, month after month. “She was known as headlining the Make America Horny Again tour, and I took her to another level,” he said. Daniels denied repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.

    On March 6, 2018, he filed a lawsuit against the president of the United States on behalf of Daniels in a California civil court, seeking to void the 2016 non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Daniels from discussing her supposed affair with Trump. The following morning, he appeared solo on Today, kicking off a flurry of interviews that would keep him in green rooms and on cable-news sets and shuttling from one studio to the next in black cars for weeks. From a virtual unknown, Avenatti became one of the most famous people in America, a cable-news pugilist who was actually going toe-to-toe with the president and drawing blood. For a while, it spun faster than anyone, including Avenatti, could control. There were stories written about his body-fat percentage and his suits; odes were written about the color of his eyes, which sit symmetrically above his steep jaw like two infinity pools; women he’d never met before started texting him racy photographs; and of course, television bookers put him as a frequent hitter in their rotation.

    Perhaps Avenatti’s most Trumpian quality was the tension between his desire to be talked about incessantly and his crepey thin-skinned-ness if and when that talk turned to criticism, whether in the media or from strangers on Twitter. He would routinely respond to people who e-mailed him comments after he appeared on cable news, calling small-town lawyers who’d written him notes to chew them out for their remarks, according to people familiar with this practice. He berated Time magazine after it published a story quoting him saying that the next Democratic nominee would likely have to be a white man, demanding that the publication release the transcript of his interview. He once threatened The Daily Caller with a defamation suit, messaging the reporter that “this is the last warning.” His girlfriend through much of his year in the spotlight, Mareli Miniutti, recalled that he rarely put his phone down and would scroll through all of his Twitter mentions. “He would say, ‘Oh my god, this asshole said this and you know what I did? I fucking blocked that motherfucker.’ ”

    Behind the scenes, his behavior was even more volatile. “He had a terrible temper,” one prime-time anchor told me. “He never lost it with me, or really with any of the talent, as far as I know, because it was mostly for the bookers or the people who were behind the scenes. But he would tell people, ‘I’m going to fucking bury you. Why the fuck would you do that?’ if he didn’t like something.” A number of reporters recalled that he would physically invade their space. “His nose gets millimeters from your face and it’s clear he knows no boundaries,” one broadcast reporter and producer told me.

    The MSM made Avenatti a media star and he repaid them by treating their staffers like shit. And yet, did we hear any whiff of what a Grade A asshole Avenatti was before the federal indictments dropped? Of course not. The MSM was, rather than acting like news organizations and verifying things, were all in against President Trump, and any weapon against him, no matter how creepy, sleazy or abusive, was allowed. So instead of hearing about what a raging asshole Avenatti was, they boosted him as a serious Presidential candidate.

    Don’t forget the unbelievable fawning Avenatti received:

    There’s lots more Avenatti sweetheart behavior on display in the story:

    No one knew Avenatti’s rage cycle better than Miniutti, a model who moved to the United States from a little town in Estonia on a gap year after high school. She ran into Avenatti in October 2017 at Cecconi’s in Hollywood. She was 23 at the time and out with a girlfriend when the lawyer, then 46, approached her and asked her to have dinner with him. After a few weeks, she was essentially moved into a luxury high-rise in Century City. They traveled in Europe for a few weeks in November and he offered to pay her rent and about a thousand dollars in spending money each month.

    Yes, because being asked to be the kept woman of a guy you just met a few weeks ago is totally normal behavior. Is this some Sex in the City thing? Is this something beautiful single woman moving to Manhattan naturally consider as a career option?

    (Avenatti said that his financial support far exceeded that amount.) He didn’t want her to work, she told me, sitting in her attorney Michael Bachner’s Manhattan office in early April, within spitting distance of the Charging Bull sculpture down past Wall Street. She turned up in ripped black jeans and dainty silver rings on five of her fingers. She had a mess of blonde hair pulled back by the black sunglasses she kept on her head for much of two hours and Jessica Rabbit lips that quivered as she detailed what she called a year of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse. Avenatti has denied ever physically harming anyone. “Any allegation that I have ever been physical with a woman is complete nonsense,” he told me. By the spring, months into their dating, she told him she was thinking about getting a waitressing job. “I wanted to be more social and earn some money to pay my credit card, but he said, ‘Mareli, really? Do you realize who you’re dating? I could be the next president of the United States. We could celebrate my 50th birthday in the White House. You can’t be a waitress.’ ” (Another woman Avenatti was romantically involved with also told me that Avenatti had asked her if she wanted to be First Lady.) Avenatti denied telling Miniutti that she could not wait tables. He said that he’d perhaps joked with a few women about being First Lady—but many more had approached him asking if they could have the role.

    Miniutti rarely knew which Michael she would wake up to, she said. “He has two extremely different personalities,” she explained. “One was this very powerful guy. I saw people who would shake his hand. They respected him. … I was so proud of him [when he first started representing Stormy].” The other, she said, was “very aggressive.” By the summer, when his schedule was busy enough that they would only have a few days together at a time, his temper flared. On their way to dinner one evening, when she opened up to him about an eating disorder she struggled with and started to cry, he turned the car around and told her that she was “fucking the whole night up” by bringing it up on their one night out together, that she was “a fucking idiot to start crying and making drama” on their way out for a nice night. “It was my fault at the end of everything,” she told me. “That was just something I got used to. He would yell at me for bringing something up by asking if that’s really how I wanted to spend what little time we had together. I wanted to be a supportive partner, so I let it slide off … but I felt really scared when I would see one side of him, then the other, within a half-hour period. Up and down, up and down.”

    It was not until February, four months into their dating, that she said he became physically abusive. It was his birthday, and he had wanted to spend the night before going out with a friend who was in town. She went out separately with her friends, and when Avenatti returned to his apartment and saw that she was not yet home, he texted her, asking where she was. She said she told him that she would be home in an hour. When she got there, she said she could tell that he was drunk. She had been drinking, too, and he laid into her. “He was upset that I could be so disrespectful and selfish, on his birthday. If he texts me that he’s home, he told me that I should come right away and that that’s how relationships work.” She had gotten into bed before he jumped up and started yelling at her to “get the fuck out. Get the fuck out” of the apartment. “I don’t want you here tonight,” he told her. When she got up to leave, she said, he literally threw her out the door into the hallway, where she hit her head on the wall. “I made excuses after that,” she said. “The excuse that time was that we were both drunk and emotional, and I really did not believe that he would do something like that again.”

    He did, though, she said. By early November, she had maxed out her credit card. She’d bought him a $500 limited-edition Yves Saint Laurent cologne (it “smelled so sexy,” she said) for their anniversary, though, she says, he had not gotten her anything. She had asked him for money because her accounts were overdrawn and she didn’t have enough cash to order food or put gas in her car. He had put $2,000 in her account on November 13, just before she went to work on set for a Snoop Dogg music video. It hadn’t yet cleared, so she had to ask one of the other girls to pay for her gas in order to get home at the end of the day. She took a shower, put on a T-shirt and underwear, and got into bed. In a letter to the district attorney’s office Avenatti’s lawyers sent last fall, he claimed that she had been drinking and doing drugs on set, a claim she denied. He also said that she had recently started taking Accutane, an acne medication he said could cause emotional distress. She said she had only been taking the drug for two days and had no problem with it whatsoever.

    She was drained by the time Avenatti got home from drinks with a friend, but she told him she thought she needed to work more. She had been embarrassed having to ask for gas money, and she never wanted to feel that way again. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, she said, and he looked her right in the eye. “Goddammit,” she said he yelled, mimicking how he stood up in the bedroom as we sat in her lawyer’s office. “You motherfucking ungrateful bitch.” She went to the guest bedroom. He followed, she said. “Get the fuck out,” she recalled him saying. “You’re just ungrateful and disrespectful.” She started to text a friend to see if she could sleep there that night instead when he grabbed her phone. He put his hands on her shoulders, she said, and tried to force her out of the apartment. Her arms were slick from body oil after the shower and he couldn’t quite grip her. She saw that the window was open and started screaming for help, she says, when he got hold of one of her arms and dragged her first across the carpet and then across a hardwood floor. He opened the door and flung her into the hallway. “I was so shocked and shaking that I couldn’t even stand up. I reached up to ring the doorbell for the apartment across the hallway and he saw me. ‘Are you fucking insane?’ he said.” He pulled her back inside and she warned him that if he did not give her phone back and let her go, she would count to three and start screaming. She started to panic when he didn’t budge. “That’s when I really started to freak and I asked him to please not come any closer.” His demeanor immediately changed, she said. “He said, ‘Baby, come here. We’re so much better than this.’ I can’t even describe that moment and what his eyes looked like. Like a psychopath. All I could think was, He is going to hurt you.” She made her way to the guest bedroom, put on pants, and made a break for the door. The elevator did not come fast enough, she said, so she walked toward the service elevators, where she knew there were cameras. He got in with her, pleading with her to not do this. She went down to the security desk in the lobby, where the attendants ultimately called the police.

    Despite being larded with “alleged” and “accused,” Avenatti comes off as an out-of-control narcissist, rageholic, thrill-seeking asshole. It’s a pretty devastating piece.

    But that’s not the only bad news that dropped on Avenatti yesterday. He was also indicted for stealing Stormy Daniels’ book advance:

    Celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti was indicted by federal prosecutors Wednesday for stealing the identity of his former client, Stormy Daniels, in order to claim more than $300,000 she was owed for a tell-all book about her efforts to expose President Trump.

    In the indictment, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York accuse Avenatti of forging Daniels’ signature on a letter instructing her literary agent to wire her book advance money to an account he controlled. Daniels, an adult-film star born Stephanie Clifford, is not identified by name but the timeline and other details laid out in the document make clear that she is

    “The literary agent then wired $148,750 to the account, which AVENATTI promptly began spending for his own purposes, including on airfare, hotels, car services, restaurants and meal delivery, online retailers, payroll for his law firm and another business he owned, and insurance,” the indictment reads.

    And the recap of the federal charges against him:

    The new indictment comes as Avenatti is facing separate extortion charges brought by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles in connection with his alleged efforts to blackmail Nike. The charges were brought after Nike lawyers provided a recording to the FBI in which Avenatti demands $25 million in exchange for his silence about illegal payments the company allegedly made to high-school basketball players to induce them to attend Nike-sponsored colleges.

    Los Angeles prosecutors also indicted Avenatti last month for embezzling millions of dollars from his clients, one of whom was a mentally-ill paraplegic who won a suit against the city of Los Angeles but never received his settlement because Avenatti allegedly stole it. The charges ending in Los Angeles carry a maximum sentence of up to 300 years in prison.

    Even among his supporters, I think very few mistake Donald Trump for a saint. But do you know who he looks like a saint next too? Michael Avenatti.

    Democrats All In On Tranny Agenda

    May 22nd, 2019

    One of the more puzzling aspects of the Social Justice Warrior long march through the Democratic Party is how laughably absurd assertions that no sane person would have entertained 20 years ago have now become the latest (and therefore most sacred) belief of the victimhood identity politics left.

    As a case in point, take the suddenly widespread, irrational and unscientific notion that “sex is a social construct” or that “gender is fluid.” Both of these are lies. The sex of an individual human being, as with all other primates, is determined genetically before birth. If you have XX chromosomes, you’re female, and if you have XY chromosomes you’re male, the only exceptions being an exceptionally tiny handful of odd genetic corner cases that make up a vanishingly small fraction of the human population. All a “sex change” operation does is change a person’s outer appearance, it does not change their genetically-determined sex.

    Enter the Democratic Party, which is all in on the radical transsexual agenda.

    The Democratically controlled House of Representatives voted Friday 236-173 in favor of the Equality Act, which would require schools to include male athletes who identify as transgender girls on female sports teams.

    Eight Republicans crossed party lines to vote for the bill, which had unanimous Democratic support.

    The bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make “sexual orientation and gender identity” protected characteristics under federal anti-discrimination law.

    Among other things, that would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls.

    Republican Florida Rep. Greg Steube introduced a last-minute amendment to the bill that would have preserved Title IX’s protections of female athletic teams, but Democrats rejected it.

    Every House Democrat but one co-sponsored the legislation. The only Democrat who wasn’t a co-sponsor, Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, announced his support for the bill following pressure from left-wing activists.

    “People need to wake up. This radical bill is going to totally eliminate women’s and girls sports,” Republican Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko warned in an op-ed Thursday.

    Republican Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler and a half-dozen other House Republicans held a press conference Thursday in opposition to what Hartzler dubbed the “Inequality Act.”

    “Congress enacted Title IX to provide equal opportunities for women in education and sports. All this is erased under H.R. 5,” Hartzler said at the press conference.

    It’s not just women’s sports. Hartzler fears that it could also affect “domestic-violence shelters and other ‘safe spaces’ that have traditionally barred men.”

    Republicans who voted for the bill include representatives Susan W. Brooks (IN), Mario Diaz-Balart (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PN), John Katko (NY), Will Hurd (TX), Tom Reed (NY), Elise Stefanik (NY) and and Greg Walden (OR). I know he’s a moderate in a swing district, but Hurd’s vote is especially disappointing, as I don’t see Hispanics in south and west Texas crying out for transsexual rights.

    Using the case of Caster Semenya (one of those genetic corner cases disqualified from competing due to excess testosterone as a jumping-off point), as a jumping off point, Andrew Sullivan spells out some of the vast physical difference between men and women:

    A bevy of arguments against the compromise have been provided. The first is that testosterone is no big deal when it comes to athletic ability. Men and women both have testosterone after all, and some in each sex have naturally higher levels than others. So why force someone to take meds — with side effects — when they are merely above average in one particular characteristic among the many that ultimately affect athletic performance? This appears to be the driving point behind a recent New York Times op-ed, “The Myth of Testosterone.” The authors — both professors who adhere to social-justice ideology — make some decent points. They usefully complicate the impact of testosterone on performance in differing sports, note that its effects are far more varied and subtle than mere physical strength. They then argue that “the International Association of Athletics Federations’ own analysis of testosterone and performance, involving more than 1,100 women competing in track and field events, shows that for six of the 11 running events, women with lower testosterone actually did better than those with higher levels.” Then this: “In other words, for most sports, testosterone levels do not correlate with superior performance.”

    To put it mildly, this is bonkers. Women have a range of 0.3–2.4 npl, and we know that Semenya must have more than 5 npl, or the regulations would not apply to her. Men, in contrast, have a range from 10–38 npl. There’s not even an overlap. The range among women is tiny compared with the difference between men and women. Of course testosterone correlates with superior performance! That’s the entire reason we have separate contests for the two sexes. And the entire reason we forbid doping. How the New York Times could publish this deeply misleading sentence (to be polite) is beyond me.

    Current testosterone levels per se also don’t account for the effect of the hormone throughout a man’s life. Doriane Coleman, Duke law professor and former 800-meter running champion, notes how profound the effects are:

    Compared to females, males have greater lean body mass (more skeletal muscle and less fat), larger hearts (both in absolute terms and scaled to lean body mass), higher cardiac outputs, larger hemoglobin mass, larger VO2 max (i.e. a person’s ability to take in oxygen), greater glycogen utilization, and higher anaerobic capacity.

    A physician who ignored these differences would lose her license. Gender studies professors apparently make careers out of denying it. So take the top female runners in the world right now: Literally thousands of boys and men would beat them. Coleman elaborates: “In the single year 2017, Olympic and World Champion Allyson Felix’s lifetime best in the 400 meters of 49.26 seconds was surpassed over 15,000 times by boys and by men.” Remove the distinction between male and female testosterone levels, and no women will be in any major athletic contest for the foreseeable future.

    Reality is not optional, and I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of American voters are willing to accept the “sex is a social construct” canard peddled by the Social Justice Warrior left. This isn’t an issue that divides Democrats from Republicans, it’s an issue that divides lunatics from normal Americans. If the radical tranny agenda is the hill Democrats want to die on, the President Donald Trump and Republicans should make them die on it in 2020.

    Illegal Alien Serial Killer Murders 11 Elderly Texans

    May 21st, 2019

    Evidently he just wanted to kill the elderly women native serial killers weren’t willing to kill:

    A Dallas man previously arrested in the death of an 81-year-old woman has been charged with killing at least 11 more elderly women whose jewelry and other valuables he stole, authorities said Thursday.

    Kim Leach, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office, said 46-year-old Billy Chemirmir was indicted Tuesday on six more counts of capital murder in the deaths of women ranging in age from 76 to 94.

    Chemirmir, a Kenyan citizen who was living in the U.S. illegally, also is charged in nearby Collin County with two counts of attempted capital murder for similar attacks there, according to county court records.

    A Collin County grand jury also returned five capital murder indictments against Chemirmir on Tuesday.

    Chemirmir has been in custody since March 2018 in the death of the 81-year-old Dallas woman, Lu Thi Harris. Police in Plano were investigating Chemirmir in connection with suspicious death and suspicious person calls at a senior apartment complex in that Dallas suburb and found evidence linking him to Harris’ death in Dallas, authorities said. Plano is in Collin County.

    The fact that illegal aliens commit crimes more frequently than native-born Americans is one of those dirty little secrets the Democratic Media Complex doesn’t want to talk about:

    he Government Accountability Office released two unsettling reports in 2005 on criminal aliens who are in prison for committing crimes in the United States, and issued an updated report in 2011.

    The first report (GAO-05-337R) found that criminal aliens (both legal and illegal) make up 27 percent of all federal prisoners. Yet according to the Center for Immigration Studies, non-citizens are only about nine percent of the nation’s adult population. Thus, judging by the numbers in federal prisons alone, non-citizens commit federal crimes at three times the rate of citizens.

    The findings in the second report (GAO-05-646R) are even more disturbing. This report looked at the criminal histories of 55,322 aliens that “entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.” Those 55,322 illegal aliens had been arrested 459,614 times, an average of 8.3 arrests per illegal alien, and had committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, an average of roughly 12.7 offenses per illegal alien.

    Out of all of the arrests, 12 percent were for violent crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes; 15 percent were for burglary, larceny, theft and property damage; 24 percent were for drug offenses; and the remaining offenses were for DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons, immigration, and obstruction of justice.

    The 2011 GAO report wasn’t much different. It looked at 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons and jails. Those aliens were arrested nearly 1.7 million times for close to three million criminal offenses. Sixty-eight percent of those in federal prison and 66 percent of those in state prisons were from Mexico. Their offenses ranged from homicide and kidnapping to drugs, burglary, and larceny.

    Until America gets serious about border enforcement, illegal aliens will continue to kill and victimize America’s most vulnerable citizens.

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for May 20, 2019

    May 20th, 2019

    De Blasio and Bullock are In, which means I’m now tracking 24 declared Democratic Presidential candidates. That’s enough to field both side of a football team, plus Mike Gravel as the coach and Beto O’Rourke as the towel boy. It’s the latest Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!

    Polls

  • Reuters finds Biden up five points since their last poll: Biden 29, Sanders 13, O’Rourke 6, Warren 6, Harris 6, Buttigieg 4, Booker 2, Klobucher 1, Gillibrand 1, Hickenlooper 1, Castro 1, Yang 1, Inslee 1, Ryan 1, Bennet 1, de Blasio 1. That’s one more than I ever expected for de Blasio…
  • Fox: Biden 35 (up 4), Sanders 17, Warren 9, Buttigieg 6, Harris 5, O’Rourke 4, Booker 3, Castro 2, Klobucher 2, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Inslee 1, Ryan 1, Williamson 1, Yang 1. I think two percent is a record for Castro.
  • Quinnipiac Pennsylvania: Biden 39, Sanders 13, Warren 8, Harris 8, Buttigieg 6, Booker 5, O’Rourke 2, Klobucher 1. Relatively good showing for Booker, but state polls tend to be more volatile.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Rich Lowry wonders if President Donald Trump has, paradoxically, driven Democrats sane.

    What if Donald Trump hasn’t driven Democrats insane, sending them into a spiral of self-defeating radicalism, but instead made them shockingly pragmatic?

    Biden’s early strength suggests it may be the latter, that the reaction to Trump is so intense that it has crossed some sort of event horizon from fevered fantasy of his leaving office early via resignation or impeachment to a cold-eyed, win-at-any-cost practicality.

    If this is true, one of the exogenous factors that could appreciably increase Trump’s odds of reelection — a zany Democratic nomination contest leading to a nominee much too far left for the American electorate — may not materialize.

    Snip.

    If hardly dispositive, Biden’s robust numbers at least suggest that this play is more likely than it seemed in the very early going, when candidates were stumbling over one another apologizing for sundry alleged offenses in the Woke Olympics.

    If that’s not going to be the true dynamic of the race, I’m as surprised as anyone. What’s extraordinary, though, is that almost every Democratic candidate might have been misreading it as well, and chasing the wrong rabbit down the track.

    Certainly, Bernie Sanders dominated the intellectual and policy debate in the wake of his 2016 run, driving other presidential candidates to embrace his signature proposals. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a genuine political star.

    It’s only because the center of gravity of the party has clearly moved left that Biden, always a standard liberal, now sounds like a centrist when he calls himself an Obama-Biden Democrat.

    But, as Harry Enten of CNN, among others, has been insisting for some time, the average Democrat is older, more moderate or conservative, and less likely to have a college degree than you’d guess from following Twitter or cable TV.

    These voters were underserved by the rest of the field, and Biden is taking dead aim at them with the simple message that he can beat Trump.

  • Your latest “There are two many Democrats running” thumbsucker:

    Others suggest that the size of the field highlights vulnerabilities of the two candidates now topping the polls, former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Biden has started strong, but it’s too early to judge his candidacy. Front-runners never coast to victory, and he will face adversity, whether self-inflicted or delivered by a rival who rises to the moment.

    One risk for Democrats is that, with so many candidates and so many voices, side debates distract from core issues and unifying messages. The debate over reparations sparks passions within the Democratic base but is not an issue high on the list of most voters who will determine who is the next president. The same is even more true of the issue of whether violent felons, terrorists or sexual predators should be allowed to vote while in prison, a topic recently injected into the Democratic conversation by Sanders.

  • Some states are moving from primaries to caucuses:

    At least 10 states are planning to switch from a caucus to a primary in 2020. As things stand, just two states — Iowa and Nevada — have firm plans to caucus again. Two other 2016 caucus states — Maine and Wyoming — are still up in the air. Maine lawmakers may establish a government-run primary, in which case the Maine Democratic Party plans to move to a primary. And Wyoming Democrats are still ironing out some details.

  • Ghost of Hillary Clinton haunts 2020 Democratic hopefuls.”

    “I think it’s also critical to understand, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me,” she said last week, “you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.”

    One third of that statement is true — she was the nominee; two thirds are not. Hillary Clinton did not run the best campaign. Her campaign was a disaster. She was a disaster. She insulted half of the electorate by calling them “deplorables” even before the first vote was cast.

    “So, part of our challenge is to understand what it will take to put together not only the popular vote, but the Electoral College,” she added.

    That is good advice. It is also advice she should have given herself in 2016 when, capturing the popular vote, she lost the Electoral College to Trump.

  • 538 on what the candidates are saying and doing.
  • And via Reuters, here’s a handy visual guide to the clown car:

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? Blah blah blah abortion blah blah blah. But she did finally pay off the $54,000 she owed the IRS, as well as student and credit card debt. Which shows that attention=money, so why wouldn’t she run for President?
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out. Somehow I missed the fact that Avenatti endorsed Biden after he entered the race. I’m sure Biden is just thrilled at that endorsement.
  • Actor Alec Baldwin: Probably not.
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Far-left group Demand Justice is already running attack ads against him for voting for too many of Trump’s judicial nominees. Demand Justice is being run by Brian Fallon, who was press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run. Makes you go “Hmmmmm.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Little did I know when I posted about the John Durham appointment that I would be mentioning late Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger twice in one week, since Joe Biden’s son Hunter is doing business with his nephew, also named James Bulger, along with John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, in a deal with the Bank of China. Biden’s rhetoric suggests he’s already looking toward the general election. Biden’s popularity suggests that maybe voters don’t want change after all:

    A January poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Republicans wanted their party to become more conservative. In contrast, 53 percent of Democrats wanted their party to become more moderate.

    That raises the question of whether the party’s center of gravity lies less with vocal activists than with a quieter group of voters that is less likely to join Twitter or show up at campaign events. “His candidacy may be different,” says Biden’s campaign pollster John Anzalone, “But it is the one that is working.”

    Feminist Jill Filipovic asks “Does Anyone Actually Want Joe Biden to Be President?” It’s yet another “Electability Sucks, Because White Male!” screed:

    The Democratic Party of 2019 does not look much like Joe Biden. Women, African-American, Latino and Asian voters are all much more likely to say they support Democratic candidates than Republican ones. White voters, male voters and especially white male voters generally support Republicans.

    Statistics on who votes Democratic also suggest that the Democratic Party is more diverse than the experts deciding who is electable.

    Those assumptions about electability reflect entrenched biases more than political science, and have a dash of arrogance to boot. An electable candidate, the thinking goes, has to be authentic and broadly appealing. But authenticity itself is coded as white and male when it’s defined by white men.

    “Shut up and eat your intersectionality, white patriarchal oppressor!”

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Probably not.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a PBS profile; expect to read the Hassan Washington anecdote in every Booker profile. Plus an NPR interview. I’m just assuming the Booker campaign has friends at NPR.
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Doesn’t sound like it.
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Out.
  • Update: Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. He announced last week.

    According to Morning Consult data from the first quarter of 2019, Bullock is among the 15 most popular governors in the country, and one of the top Democrats to make the list (13 out of the top 15 most popular governors are Republicans; the other Democrat is Delaware governor John Carney). But that fact makes Bullock’s decision to run for president a bit more puzzling.

    In a field of 23 candidates, where Biden continues to lead the pack by double digits in many polls, it’s hard to imagine the Montana governor will have an easy time making an impression on primary voters. But it’s much easier to imagine Bullock putting up a decent fight against Republican senator Steve Daines, who is up for re-election in 2020.

    He launched his presidential campaign by coming out against free speech. 538 says that Bullock is talking about his plan to reach out to rural voters:

    In a May 8 tweet, he said, “As the only Democrat to win statewide re-election in a Trump state in 2016, I know firsthand: we must reach out to rural voters.”

    And this message might resonate. As we know from polls, many Democratic voters think it’s a very important consideration to nominate a candidate who can beat President Trump, and as a white man, Bullock may benefit from perceptions that he is “electable.” But he has empirical evidence for it, too: He has won three statewide elections in red, heavily rural Montana — one for attorney general and two for governor. In 2016, he won his second gubernatorial term with 50 percent of the vote, 15 points more than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

    He’s all in on Iowa, and has an endorsement from Iowa’s attorney general Tom Miller.

  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He had a town hall on Fox. “Mayor Pete and the Order of the Kong: How Buttigieg’s Harvard pals helped spur his rise in politics.” One of those friends was “Joe Green, who was Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate.” Yep, just good old ordinary, salt-of-the-earth Mayor Pete…
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Out.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He jumped on the impeachment bandwagon. Because I’m sure trying to impeach Trump and year and a half before a Presidential election couldn’t possibly backfire on Democrats. He visited Tennessee, whose primary is on March 3. He also visited Santa Clarita University in California.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out. But Howard Stern thinks her refusal to go on his show may have cost her the election.
  • Update: New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. See my previous post on how he sucks and everyone hates him. (And honestly, actually running on the slogan “De Blasio 2020: He Sucks And Everyone Hates Him” would actually probably earn him more votes than he would get otherwise.) I note that his official Presidential website has exactly zero links to the actual policies he’s running on. Jonah Goldberg calls him “the Sponge of Woke Platitudes“:

    The reason it is very unlikely that de Blasio will replicate the success of Donald Trump in the Democratic primaries is that he cannot offer any contrasts that matter. He isn’t entertaining, he’s tiresome. He isn’t charismatic, he’s unctuous. He talks like the president of a small liberal-arts college, spouting clichés plucked from a flier on an assistant professor of Peace Studies’ door. He seems convinced that the glassy expression on the faces of the students and faculty in the audience is awe, not a soul-numbing tedium that is a few desperate heartbeats away from resorting to self-harm just to feel something again.

    De Blasio holds press conference at Trump Tower — and gets heckled. Come for the pro-Trump posters, stay for the “You suck!” chants. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. His name came up on The Viewand the hosts didn’t know who he was. That’s sort of Delaney’s campaign in a nutshell…
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She decried a possible war with China. Said gossip that her campaign is being supported by Vladimir Putin is “fake news.” You know, I think there’s something familiar about that claim…
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Out.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She appeared on Face the Nation. Another day, another Democrat lying about supporting the Second Amendment.
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. But the plea deal he cut on four of five charges with the Florida Ethics Commission is starting to look pretty smart now that new indictments are raining down on his associates.
  • Addition: Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: In. Twitter. Facebook. The 18-year old running Gravel’s campaign.

    At first, they just wanted Gravel to run so he could perform the same function he did in his longshot 2008 campaign – yell at the other candidates on stage and push them as far left as possible, especially on an anti-war foreign policy.

    But at this point, nobody can rule anything out when it comes to election outcomes.

    “We’re running to win, of course, but we don’t expect to win,” Oks told the Forward. “I don’t think Mike expects to become president – it would probably be a hitch in some of his plans.”

    But earning enough donations and poll support to get him on the debate stage, he explained, would allow Gravel to “put forth criticism of war and the military industrial complex, and even domestic policy, that hasn’t been seen in many decades, even more radical than Bernie.”

    Pushing the Democrats even further left? There’s no way that could possibly backfire…

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Hugh Hewett thinks it’s Harris’ race to lose. She wants to ban foreign-built AR-pattern rifles. And that ban would affect who, again? Heckler & Koch? AR manufacturers are overwhelmingly American firms. She also wants to fine companies that don’t pay women “equally” with men. That’s just the thing for helping American companies compete globally, inserting a member of the federal GenderStasi into every HR department…
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. He attacked fellow Democrats for daring to challenge the globalist status quo: “Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) on Sunday took swipes at unidentified Democrats he said ‘would have the U.S. withdraw from global engagement.'”
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Out.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inslee wants to destroy the coal industry. Because that goal worked out so well for the Australian Labor Party.
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She wants to increase regulation on business, because that’s a surefire ticket for economic growth. “Klobuchar’s plan also calls for updating the tax code to support ‘gig workers’ by establishing a national paid leave program, mandatory sick leave and portable retirement savings accounts, funded by employers.” Thus ignoring the fact that the reason a “gig economy” exists at all is that government regulations have made regular full-time employees too expensive so expensive to hire.
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Out.
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Out.
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Onion: “Mike Gravel Can’t Believe His Polling Numbers Neck-And-Neck With Fucking Nobody Like Wayne Messam.”
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. He unveiled a national service proposal, which would not be mandatory. So another AmeriCorps to suck up tax dollars.
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama: Out.
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda: Out.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. “O’Rourke stocks campaign with Obama and Clinton alums.” No names I’m familiar with. “O’Rourke’s recent hires come after the departure of Becky Bond and Zack Malitz, two senior strategists who worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential effort — both evangelists for the distributed organizing model.” Snip. “[Jen] O’Malley Dillon, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and deputy campaign manager to Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, is bringing on a roster of staffers with long experience in the Democratic Party.” Pledges to “decriminalize truancy, address fines on parents.” That would be an interesting policy proposal…if he were running for the El Paso school board.
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Out.
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a PBS NewsHour interview. He campaigned in Iowa. He’ll appear on a CNN town hall on June 2.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. “An Our Revolution Staffer Fired For ‘Anti-Immigrant’ Remarks Is Suing The Pro-Bernie Group For Racial Discrimination.” As usual, “anti-immigration” is code for suggesting illegal aliens shouldn’t get government benefits. The staffer in question was part of the black outreach team. Also checkout this bedwetting overreaction from Our Revolution’s former political director Erika Andiola: “I became sick to my stomach and could not stop crying all night.” If hearing contrary opinions makes you ill and depressed, maybe you shouldn’t be working in politics. “Bernie Sanders is challenging two cherished theories of electability.”

    One of those theories is beloved by self-styled centrists, and has served as a way to gate-keep against more liberal candidates. It argues that Americans are ideological moderates who punish political parties for nominating candidates too far to the left or right.

    The other is beloved by leftists, and has served as a cudgel against more centrist candidates. It holds that there’s a vast working-class majority out there for any candidate willing to slough off the Democratic Party’s turn to corporatism, free trade, and identity politics and recapture the economic populism that made the New Deal Democrats dominant for a generation.

  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Out.
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: In. Twitter. Facebook. “In the six years since Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) began earning the big salary that comes with being a member of Congress he has failed to pay down his student loans, cashed out his pension, and accumulated credit card debt.” Maybe a guy who can’t manage his own finances shouldn’t be managing America’s…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. R.S. McCain thinks Warren is over: “My guess would be that, after the first round of debates, Warren will fade and Harris will rise, because Harris is black and is obviously better qualified than the other black candidate, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Such is the logic of identity politics, in which Democrats are heavily invested.” I expect that this is premature, especially with Warren also making a play for the hard left Sanders voters. “Sen. Elizabeth Warren Has A Plan For Everything — Including Your Love Life.”

    For all the praise The New Republic is heaping on her opioid crisis plan, it just sounds like more federal government money airdrops.

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Heh: “‘Tom Perez Is Such a Goddamned Weenie’: What Marianne Williamson’s Candidacy Reveals About the Democrats.” After noting Oprah’s not running:

    Yet one of Oprah’s star guests, Marianne Williamson, is running—and has beat out several conventional politicians, including Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton and Colorado senator Michael Bennet, to qualify for the first D.N.C.-sponsored debate. That Williamson has qualified is irritating to some of her opponents—not because of who she is, but because of the rules that could make her one of the 20 contenders appearing on the prime-time stage: candidates need to score at least one percent in three certified polls or collect donations from 65,000 different people.

    She gets a profile in New York:

    Marianne Williamson deserves some serious attention, and not just because she’s written four books that hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. At a time when the leftward drift of the Democratic Party is regularly in the news, she is by any measure the most rigorously progressive candidate in the field of 23. That she wraps her progressivism in a syncretic spirituality instead of socialist materialism may even be an advantage for a politician in this God-haunted country of ours.

    Pick an issue, and odds are Williamson is going to out-Bernie Bernie and out-Warren Warren. She’s for Medicare For All, unsurprisingly, but she’s also for heavy investments in preventive medicine and nutritional education, and a pretty heavy regulatory arm on those she feels are poisoning our bodies, including those who produce “high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats.” So far as I can tell, she’s the only candidate committed to reducing national stress levels, too.

    And one at The Hill: “Those who say who can and cannot win now are the same people who were telling us that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in three years ago.”

  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Andrew Yang’s TED Talk version of politics.”

    Over and over again when I ask people who identify as members of “the Yang Gang” what attracted them to Yang, they cite Silicon Valley’s preferred solution to our economic woes: universal basic income (UBI) or, as he calls it, “the Freedom Dividend.” Yang argues that technology is going to eat up millions of jobs over the coming decade, wiping out everything from retail workers to truckers. “How many of you have seen the self-service kiosk at McDonald’s or another fast food restaurant?” Yang asks. “You kind of like them. I kind of like them too.” The only solution to this inevitability, Yang argues, is giving every American, beginning at age 18, $1,000 a month. He’d fund it by upping taxes on technology companies.

    Yang has translated his unlikely background and platform into something of a cult following, centered around men under the age of 40. The idea that anyone except the occasional oddball would thrill to carrying signs with the word “MATH” emblazoned on them — which stands for Make America Think Harder — may feel like a stretch in the United States, where an anti-intellectual streak is writ large, and our current president is prone to saying such things as, “I love the poorly educated.” But when people attending the rally talk about UBI, it feels more personal. “It makes a lot of sense, because a lot of Americans are struggling,” said Keegan Steinke, 24, a canvasser for a solar company. “It provides a safety net for everyone, and it doesn’t provide these perverse incentives like, ‘Okay, I made this much, I might lose these benefits,’ ” said Elliott Ribner, 32, a software engineer.

    Politico asks: “Is Andrew Yang for Real?”

    Viewed from a great distance, Yang’s candidacy has a lot in common with the two political comets that streaked across the 2016 presidential campaign: Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left. Yang runs essentially the same playbook: embracing economic grievance, hammering the tech giants and other darlings of the “new economy,” selling his case directly to the working American. Since he launched his campaign in November 2017, he has been retailing a vision of America in which educated, entitled elites have rigged the system and hoovered money away from middle America and toward the coasts, giving little in return. With no prior political experience or prominent backers, Yang is nonetheless gaining a peculiar traction, including some true believers who want him to be president and others who are mostly just intrigued.

    Unlike Trump and Sanders, however, Yang, 44, comes precisely from the same corporate, tech-soaked world he is trying to attack. Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, he made his money prepping students to get into MBA programs and, in recent years, has spent months at a time living in Silicon Valley. He was once a successful startup CEO and head of a group that trains budding entrepreneurs, but in the wake of 2016 presidential election Yang soured on an industry that wreaths itself in promises of prosperity and transformation; he rejects the conventional policy wisdom—popular on the left and the right—that out-of-work Americans should retrain for jobs in tech. And in a Democratic Party reveling in its diversity, the Taiwanese-American candidate says he worries most about how displaced white men will react to their declining fortunes—a stance that has, strangely, won him some fans from the “alt-right.“

  • Texas Finally Bans Red Light Cameras

    May 19th, 2019

    With the rush of national news, I haven’t been keeping up with this year’s Texas legislative session as well as I should. But one bit of good news: The legislature finally passed a ban on red light cameras.

    The Republican-led push to rid Texas intersections of red-light cameras moved one step closer to becoming law after the state Senate signed off on a measure with that aim Friday, sending the bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

    House Bill 1631 cleared the chamber on a 23-8 vote after several back-and-forths among senators about studies that both support and challenge the efficacy of the devices when it comes to promoting safer streets. The Senate left in place a key provision to allow local governments to continue operating cameras until they finish out any contracts in effect as of May 7.

    “Red-light cameras violate the right to due process guaranteed under Article 1 of the Texas Constitution by creating a presumption that the registered owner of the car committed a violation when in fact that may not have been the case,” said state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, who is sponsoring the legislation originally offered by state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford.

    Worth noting: All but two of the House “No” votes on the bill were from Democrats, who evidently have no problem draining money from poor Texas motorists to fill government coffers.

    In addition to violating due process, red light cameras are a cash grab that actually make streets less safe. Moreover, most of the cities using red light cameras are doing so illegally, as required engineering studies of red light camera intersections were never conducted.

    Voters in Killeen, Corpus Christi, Arlington and Houston have already repealed their red light camera programs. Once Governor Abbott signs the bill, the clock starts ticking on winding down the remaining programs.

    The sooner the better.

    Conservatives Win in Australia (“Unexpectedly!”)

    May 18th, 2019

    Another national election where polls favored the left-wing party but the right-wing party won, this time in Australia.

    No-one predicted it, but the Liberal-National Coalition has won. PM Scott Morrison calls it “a miracle”.

    We don’t yet know if they have the 76 seats required for a majority, but they will certainly be in government.

    Labor’s Bill Shorten has conceded and said he will step down as leader.

    The coalition has swept through Queensland, a state full of marginal seats.

    Former PM Tony Abbott has lost his seat.

    How badly were the polls off? “The polls – 56 consecutive weeks of them – pointed to a win for Labor and Bill Shorten.”

    Labor’s failure to pick up any marginal seats in Queensland has sealed its likely fate in opposition for the next three years, as the party reels from Saturday’s election result.”

    I did not intimately track every step of the Australian election, but it seems that Labor campaigned in large measure on that holy shibboleth of transnational leftism, climate change. By contrast, in 2017, “Morrison addressed the House of Representatives while holding a lump of coal, stating ‘This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt you,’ and accusing those concerned about the environmental impact of the coal industry of having ‘an ideological, pathological fear of coal.'”

    Labor’s policies mirror those of the America’s Democrats in another way, in that they’ve made a huge stink about the “rights” of illegal aliens entering Australia. In 2009, with Labor in power and the Liberals out, Morrison became shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, urging a policy of strict immigration enforcement, which he continued to follow as actual minister when the Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party kicked out Labor in 2013, before becoming Prime Minister in 2018 following a “leadership spill” which resulted in Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (who had replaced Abbott in another “spill” in 2015) stepping down. So it’s rather like the director of ICE becoming President.

    And once again a left-leaning party has lost an “unloseable” election that polls said was in the bag. Why, it’s almost as though modern “scientific” polling has a built in bias against conservative parties!

    Keep that in mind (yet again) the next time someone confidently predicts victory for a left-wing party or candidate based on polls…

    LinkSwarm for May 17, 2019

    May 17th, 2019

    Just been one of those weeks…

  • Are Brennan, Clapper and Comey ratting on each other? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • This is more than infuriating: “Kentucky Judges Pre-Signed Blank Legal Documents So That Child Services Could Take Custody of Kids on Nights and Weekends.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • No sooner did I put up my own piece on jihad in the Sahel than the BBC published this extensive piece about the same subject, including how jihadists came to Mali in the wake of Obama’s supergenius intervention in Libya.

    The religious extremists imposed strict sharia law. In Timbuktu and beyond, they smashed shrines built for Sufi mystics, burned manuscripts and destroyed ancient artefacts.

    The priceless texts would have all been lost had it not been for the old guardian families who protected what they could.

    Tuaregs and Islamists disagreed over the way their new state of Azawad should be run and began to fight each other.

    The government asked for foreign military help and the former colonial power France answered the call.

    French troops arrived in January 2013 and were joined by African forces. Within a month, they had driven the violent extremists out into the desert and retaken the River Niger towns.

    Plus the usual UN fecklessness. Read the whole thing.

  • “CONFIRMED: Google Gives Left-Wing Websites Preference Over Conservative Ones, Audit Finds.”
  • Denmark’s main leftwing party realizes that uncontrolled, unassimilated immigration hurts the poor. “For me, it is becoming increasingly clear that the price of unregulated globalisation, mass immigration and the free movement of labour is paid for by the lower classes.”
  • The New York media can’t talk about skyrocketing antisemetic attacks against Jews in New York City. Why? Because the attackers are black and Hispanic.
  • Idaho is ending some regulations. Which ones? All of them. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • So that botched Houston drug raid is looking even more botched, as forensic evidence shows the people in the house they wrongly targeted didn’t even fire their weapons at police, and all police gunshot wounds were inflicted by other officers. It seems like just about every aspect of the raid was a lie. At this point, it seems like some rogue HPD cops straight-up murdered Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas for reasons nobody has yet been able to identify.
  • Speaking of infuriating abuses of power: “San Francisco Police Go After Journalist Who Revealed Public Defender’s Affair, Overdose.”
  • State district judge rules Houston Proposition B unconstitutional. That was the one to give firefighters pay parity with police officers, and one Houston mayor Sylvester Turner was fighting tooth and nail.
  • Why people die in Houston car accidents. A whole lot of “Pedestrian failed to yield to vehicle,” failure to drive in one lane” and “failure to control speed,” plus the usual smattering of alcohol. (Hat tip: Kemberlee Kaye.)
  • No federal high speed rail money for California. Good.
  • Is Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib a terrorist sympathizer? Well, here’s evidence from five of her closest friends, so you can judge for yourself:

  • The Air Force brings a B-52H back from the bone yard for active service duty. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Atheist visits places in America his fellow liberals forgot about, and finds not only a sense of place, but an abundance of faith:

    When I first went to the Bronx, I expected that the people there, those most affected by the coldness and ruthlessness of the world, would share my atheism. Instead, I found a strong belief in the supernatural, and a faith that manifested in many ways, mostly as a belief in the Bible.

    Everyone I met there who was living homeless or battling an addiction held a deep faith. Street walking is stunningly dangerous work, and everyone has stories of being cut, attacked, and threatened, or stories of others who were killed. Everyone has to deal with the danger. Few work without a mix of heroin, Xanax, or crack. None without faith. “You know what kept me through all that? God. Whenever I got into the car, God got into the car with me.”

    There are dirty Bibles in crack houses, Qur’ans in abandoned buildings. There is a picture of the Last Supper that moves with a couple living on the streets. Rosaries, crucifixes, and religious icons are worn for protection and good luck. Pages of the Bible are torn out, folded up, and kept in pockets, to be pulled out and fingered nervously, or read over in times of stress, or held during prayers.

  • Latest Remainer complaint “Brexit Party logo ‘subconsciously manipulates voters into backing Farage.'”

  • Hot take: “Ha ha! Gene Simmons of KISS at the Pentagon! Stupid Trump!” Deeper take: As part of a military outreach program, to talk about how his mother, a concentration camp survivor who recently died at age 93, loved America and teared up watching the TV sign-off flag. “America is the promised land. For everybody.”
  • When I removed Creeping Sharia from the blogroll because it was no longer up, I didn’t realize that it had just been deplatformed by WordPress. (Hat tip: A comment from regular blog reader Howard.)
  • Supermodel appears nude in protest of not enough black babies being aborted in Alabama.
  • You know what Germany needs? Stricter crossbow regulation. (Hat tip: Amy Alkon.)
  • Haven’t seen this yet, but I want to: “The Guns and Gunplay of The Highwaymen Were Actually Accurate.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Not buying this, not even sure it will work, but buying buying your own biohacking lab is a pretty cyberpunk thing to do…
  • Voynich manuscript decoded?
  • Grumpy Cat, RIP. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • De Blasio: Man No One Wants To Run For President Running For President

    May 16th, 2019

    Like watching the Titanic plot a course directly into the iceberg, political observers from all points of the spectrum have watched the impending disaster of a Bill de Blasio presidential run with morbid fascination. Now, against the advice of just about everyone outside his inner circle (and a few in it), the New York City mayor has launched his Presidential campaign.

    After nearly half a year of hemming and hawing, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday entered the 2020 presidential race, becoming the 23rd Democrat to join the jam-packed field.

    The termed-out politician, known for his habitual tardiness, finally decided to run after five months of toying with a White House bid.

    “I’m Bill de Blasio and I’m running for president because it’s time we put working people first,” the mayor said in a three-minute YouTube video announcing his candidacy.

    The opening shots include de Blasio zipping around the city in the back of an SUV — his gas-guzzling choice of transportation for the 11-mile jaunt from Gracie Mansion to the gym in Park Slope.

    That’s about as kind as the media coverage of de Blasio gets. A National Review piece earlier this month captured the general tenor of pieces about de Blasio’s presidential chances:

    New York is a town that enjoys a good quarrel, but it’s all but impossible to find someone to argue, “I love Bill de Blasio.” Rarely do you meet anyone who can even tolerate Bill de Blasio. If you must have an argument about Bill de Blasio, you need to ask a crowd, “Why do you hate Bill de Blasio?” To this, everyone has something to say.

    At 6-foot-6, de Blasio may be the world’s largest twerp, unmistakably large but barely in charge. New Yorkers, for a change, line up with the rest of America on this. As de Blasio reportedly readies a hilariously futile run for president, he sits at 0 percent in Iowa. He’s at 0 percent in New Hampshire. A Quinnipiac poll taken in March showed that, among New Yorkers, he is the least popular presidential candidate in the immense field. In that survey, the former Warren Wilhelm Jr. scored a favorability/unfavorability rating of 24/49, the lowest of any Democrat in New York, that approval rating being lower than Donald Trump’s, which is 28. A different New Hampshire poll that asked voters to plump for anyone they liked for president elicited mentions of Barack Obama, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Howard Schultz, and even, on a handful of occasions, Kirsten Gillibrand, but 0 percent mentioned De Blasio. In a New Hampshire appearance, de Blasio recently found himself in a panel discussion comprising 14 people that drew only six spectators. Rule of thumb for political superstars: You aren’t one if, at age 57, the crowd on your stage dwarfs the crowd in the audience.

    Then again the “No one likes Bill de Blasio and he’s an idiot for running for President” genre is wide, rich and deep:

  • NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Unites the Nation: No One Wants Him to Run for President.”

    If there’s one person who can unite this nation, it’s New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who likes to prattle on about his transcendent, historic vision and who (polls confirm) roughly nobody wants running for president after he’s flirted with the idea for months, but who The New York Daily News reported Friday will announce as soon as next week that he’s joining the absurdly crowded Democratic field—where he’d be the only one of 23 declared candidates with a negative favorability rating.

    I was tempted to propose a New York to America: Take our mayor, please, joke, but 76 percent of New Yorkers say he shouldn’t run. Politico New York surveyed 30-odd members of Team de Blasio, and all but two said it was a bad idea, with one calling it “fucking insane.”

  • Why Bill de Blasio wouldn’t make a good president.”

    The mayor is the consummate special-interest politician; his latest pay-to-play scandal is for the city to pay an above-market price for a portfolio of homeless hotels owned by a family with a key donor connection to the mayor. In a hypothetical debate with the current president – extremely hypothetical at this point, to be sure – de Blasio would have no moral authority to take on Trump’s own shady real estate practices.

    De Blasio, despite his rhetoric, has never been a good radical; he’s too beholden to the local fundraising machine. But he’s also not a good technocrat: key initiatives to turn around underperforming high schools and help people with mental illnesses have failed, with the mayor barely noticing. It’s not clear which path, ultimately, Democratic primary voters will choose, but they would seem to want one of these two choices – and the mayor fits neither bill.

  • Why Is Bill de Blasio’s Presidential Dream a Sad Joke?”

    As de Blasio weighs entering the 2020 race, the prospect of a President de Blasio has been met with widespread derision. The New Republic’s Alex Shephard termed his interest in the presidency an “embarrassing quest for national fame,” while the mayor’s own allies (anonymously) told Politico that his flirtation with a presidential run was “fucking insane.” De Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, has said the “timing is not exactly right” for him to launch a campaign. The New York Times, which seems to take gleeful pleasure in dinging de Blasio for everything from calling errant snow days to ostentatiously hanging around Iowa, recently noted that Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has generated far more presidential buzz than the mayor of the country’s biggest city. Even in his hometown, there seems to be only one person who thinks a de Blasio presidential campaign would be anything other than a joke: de Blasio himself.

  • De Blasio Stubbornly Moves Toward Presidential Race That Could Humiliate New York.”

    The human ego is a powerful beast that grows luxuriant in the soul of career politicians. We are seeing an egregious example in the proto-presidential campaign of New York mayor Bill de Blasio, who, according to the New York Times, is bulling ahead toward a formal candidacy despite multiple indicators that it’s a very bad idea….

    There have been so signs of any craving for a de Blasio candidacy on the trail so far. His first two recent trips to Iowa have been, in a word, fiascoes (his first, last December, was marked by NYPD protests, and during the second, in February, he was stranded in a blizzard at a Super 8 motel and dined on a gas-station burrito). He hasn’t been listed in most 2020 polls, and his peak performance in any has been a booming one percent.

    It’s hard to discern any path to the White House for Hizzoner. Let’s say he can revive his sagging reputation as a fighting progressive. Is he really going to challenge Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris in that “lane”? None of the early states would strike you as de Blasio Country, unless New York chooses to have a relatively early primary next year (it was in April in 2016, and the legislature has yet to set a 2020 date). But then again, it’s not like New York is a hotbed of BDB ’20 enthusiasm. Au contraire, as the Daily News noted after a new Quinnipiac poll of his constituents was released this very week:

    A whopping 76% of New Yorkers polled said de Blasio should not run for president — with just 18% supporting a bid. The feeling was as universal among New Yorkers as their contempt for bagels sliced like bread — every single party, gender, racial group, borough and age group polled agreed Hizzoner should not run.

    Those polled didn’t just think the potential run was a bad idea — they thought it would be bad for New York City, by a margin of 47% to 32%, the poll found.

  • New Yorkers Don’t Seem Too Thrilled About Possible Presidential Candidate Bill de Blasio.”

    The specter of President Bill de Blasio has attracted ridicule, from his would-be constituents and from the media—back in January, for example, the NY Times cuttingly said, of BdB’s theoretical run, that he “remains an afterthought” in the deepening pool of Democratic candidates, “if he is thought of at all.”

    Yet none of that has deterred our mayor from coyly glad-handing, a practice that does not sit well with New Yorkers. In a Quinnipiac University poll published Thursday, New York City residents surveyed gave him the lowest score of all the Democratic hopefuls: 48 percent have an unfavorable opinion of de Blasio. And de Blasio’s statewide favorability rating is at an all-time low since taking office in 2014, according to Mary Snow, polling analyst for the Quinnipiac University Poll.

  • De Blasio Dead Last Among NYers’ Picks For President, Poll Shows.”

    New Yorkers think a congresswoman who isn’t even eligible for the White House would be a better president than Mayor Bill de Blasio, a new poll suggests. Just 5 percent of Empire State voters picked the Democratic mayor when asked who among New York’s political stars would make the best president, according to the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

    That’s the lowest share among the five names included in the poll. Even U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez — who at 29 isn’t even old enough to be president — did better, with 7 percent of voters saying she would be the best fit.

  • A rich, rich genre.

    The Tweets have been equally savage.

    And Iowahawk in particular had a field day:

    As I wrote when his name was first floated: “De Blasio is widely loathed with no national base and no notable fundraising prowess. Other than that he’s in good shape.” I’ve seen nothing from him since to change my mind. A de Blasio presidential campaign isn’t going to be a dumpster fire, it’s going to be a parade of dumpster fires, and all we can do is sit back and bask in the warmth…