Point And Laugh, Children

May 5th, 2019

Point and Laugh:

Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.

Update: The poll went so badly for them that the DSCC actually deleted it.

Damn Sneaky May 4 Election Today

May 4th, 2019

Another one of those sneaky May elections is upon us. In particular:

  • Cedar Park – City Council
  • Eanes ISD – Board of Trustees, Bond
  • Georgetown – Mayor, City Council
  • Georgetown ISD – Board of Trustees
  • Hutto – Mayor, City Council
  • Hutto – ISD – Board of Trustees, Bond
  • Leander – City Council
  • Lakeway – Mayor, City Council
  • Pflugerville ISD – Board of Trustees
  • Round Rock – City Council
  • Taylor – City Council
  • Village of Briarcliff – Mayor, Aldermen
  • Village of Webberville – Sales Tax Proposition

In fact, none of those elections applies to me, so I can’t offer you any advice on who or what to vote for or against (though if I did live in Pflugerville ISD, I would definitely vote against the union organizer), but I did want to make you aware of them.

Also, Empower Texans has a roundup of various Texas ISD bond elections.

Check your local League of Women Voter guides/media/etc. to see if there’s an election you weren’t aware of today. These things have a way of sneaking up on you…

LinkSwarm for May 3, 2019

May 3rd, 2019

Lot’s of rage by Democrats in this week’s LinkSwarm over Attorney General William Barr over, well, something.

  • The U.S. economy added 263,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest since 1969.
  • Followup: Baltimore’s Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh resigns following FBI/IRS raids on home and workplace following the “Healthy Holly” bribery scandal. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Poll: Percentage of Democrats who see border ‘crisis’ jumps 17 points since January.”
  • Old and Busted: “Trump is guilty of treason!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of collusion!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of obstruction!” Revised: “Trump is guilty of something! Release the report!” (Report released.) “Ummm…Barr’s summary was slightly off on one point! Impeach!” Trump Derangement Syndrome is a helluva drug…
  • Indeed, they’re just pissed that Barr’s summary of the report was accurate, meaning the Democrats had three weeks they couldn’t lie about the report. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Checkmate. How President Trump’s legal team outfoxed Mueller.” From the newly resurrected Human Events, this is a detailed legal analysis of how a memo written by William Barr before he became Attorney General laid the groundwork for curtailed Robert Mueller using an overly-expansive definition of “obstruction.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti pleads not guilty to federal wire fraud and tax evasion charges. (Hat tip: Roger Simon.)
  • “F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016.” You know, a spy. Here’s a handy decoder for the “covering for Democrats” speak:

  • “Ukrainian embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016.”
  • More Democratic compassion:

  • Deputy shot in Caldwell County. However, unlike most cases, there are some really stupid decisions on both sides.
  • Facebook banned Milo Yannopoulos, Alex Jones and Louis Farrakhan for “extremism,” and the Washington Post headline initially called them all “far right” before a ton of criticism forced them to correct the headline. Because Louis Farrakhan is so well-known for palling around with conservatives. (Facebook is a private entity and can do what it wants, but I don’t want any of those people banned. Let them speak and let people debate their ideas/lunacy/etc. or not as they feel).
  • Even CNN is starting to get a clue:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Speaking of CNN: “CNN Poll: Overwhelming Majority Want Investigation into Obama DOJ Spying on Trump.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The members of the Flint, Michigan City Council sound like real winners.
  • “Norwegian fisherman have discovered a beluga whale wearing a tight harness with a camera attachment – sparking speculation the animal belongs to the Russian Navy.” I wouldn’t be surprised, especially since we have our own dolphin program… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The new “Supermajority” organization is just another stalking horse for Planned Parenthood.
  • “Israeli ambassador calls NYT ‘cesspool of hostility.'” Correct, though that’s really two more words than necessary…
  • The latest counterculture icon to be found guilty of WrongThink by Social Justice Warriors is (rolls dice)…cartoonist Robert Crumb.
  • “Covington kid sues NBC for $275 million.” Good. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Lance Morrow reviews Robert Caro’s Working. “If I were teaching journalism or nonfiction writing, especially the writing of history and biography, I would build a course around Caro, with Working as my primary text and scenes from his Johnson books as case studies.”
  • In the “trouble in places you may not have heard of” department, clashes broke out on the African nation of Benin (between Nigeria and Togo on the Ivory Coast) when the ruling party held a parliamentary election from which opposition parties were excluded.
  • Dispatches from Social Justice Warrior land: “Trinity College professor tweets ‘whiteness is terrorism,’ refers to Barack and Michelle Obama as ‘white kneegrows.’”
  • Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicated, Emperor Naruhito mounting the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, marking the end of the Heisei era and inaugurating the Reiwa era.
  • Actor James Woods is still in the Twitter Gulag:

  • Woman awakens after 27 year coma. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Unhappy meals. Now if only every one came with mopping teenage Goth girl figurines…
  • “‘Mortal Kombat’ Introduces Brutal New Fatality Where Your Character Just States An Opposing Viewpoint…One character says, ‘There are only two genders,’ and his opponent instantly melts into nothing, being unable to handle the opposing viewpoint. Another character suggests that capitalism isn’t all bad, and his opponent’s head instantly falls off.”
  • Legging it.
  • Scientology, Measles, and Sea Org

    May 2nd, 2019

    A cruise ship owned by the Church of Scientology has been quarantined over a measles outbreak:

    A crew member aboard a cruise ship used by the Church of Scientology tested positive for measles, causing the vessel’s occupants to be quarantined in the Caribbean since Monday, a report said.

    The vessel and its roughly 300 passengers and crew members have been stuck on the “Freewinds” ship in the Caribbean port of St. Lucia after the confirmed case of the highly contagious disease, according to NBC News.

    The infected female patient has been isolated and is in stable condition, according to St. Lucia’s chief medical officer Dr. Marlene Fredericks-James.

    St. Lucia Coast Guard Sgt. Victor Theodore confirmed to the network that the cruise ship was the same as the one listed on the Church of Scientology’s website.

    The ship is described on the church’s website as being used as a floating “religious retreat ministering the most advanced level of spiritual counseling in the Scientology religion.”

    What most people reading this story might not know is that Freewinds isn’t just a Scientology ship, it’s the Scientology ship. “The Freewinds is the exclusive training center for OT VIII (Operating Thetan Level 8), the highest level of Scientology and the last of the published OT levels. Members of the Church of Scientology who have reached the highest levels must receive their training on the Freewinds, as the Church does not deliver this service anywhere else.”

    It’s also the likely current location of the Church of Scientology’s infamous “Sea Org” that formed the command and control nexus of the church while founder L. Ron Hubbard was alive, under which some of the Scientology’s most shocking human rights abuses were committed, including the mysterious death of Susan Meister.

    The Sea Organization is the actual nexus that controls the scientology empire. Sea Organization personnel are authorized to take over and control scientology organizations and to demote personnel, move bank accounts and run the corporation as if the SO personnel were employees or representatives of that corporation but they are not.

    Snip.

    Crew were put into a chain-locker as punishment. A chain-locker is “a dark hole where the anchor chains are stored; cold, wet and rats,” to quote one ex-Sea Org officer. A crew member that was put on ethics could spend up to two weeks in the tiny hole. Former Scientologists who served as crew together with Hubbard in the early years remember a five years old deaf and mute child being locked up in the chain-locker. Hubbard said she was not to leave the chain locker until she completed the formula by writing her name. Another witness claims that a three-year-old was once put in the locker.

    In 2011, The New Yorker published an expose of Scientology that accused the Church of using child labor on the ship.

    Oh, and the people who work on the Sea Org ship have to sign a billion year contract.

    I am very far indeed from the heart of Scientology leadership, but by all accounts Sea Org still exists, and Freewinds is the only cruise liner still used by Scientology. Maybe St. Lucia authorities can use the quarantine to determine just what else might be going down on Freewinds…

    (There’s a lot more on Scientology’s lunacy at the Operation Clambake site.)

    Venezuela: Scenes From A Revolution

    May 1st, 2019

    What better celebration of Victims of Communism Day than open revolt against an oppressive socialist government?

    Interim President Juan Guaido has called for a military revolt against socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, supported by the United States and numerous other non-scumbag nations. Naturally, the scumbag nations are supporting Maduro. “According to Secretary Pompeo, Maduro was preparing to flee to Cuba until the Russians persuaded him to stay put.”

    Showing the usual restraint of socialist dictators, Venezuelan troops loyal to Maduro have been running over protestors with armored vehicles:

    Unfortunately, the military does not seem to have joined Guaido in mass. But Manuel Figuera, the head of the secret police (and extremely powerful position in dictatorships) has joined the rebellion, and many Venezuelans who fled are looking to join.

    But there’s good economic news for Venezuela! Their inflation rate fell to a mere 1.62 million percent in March, down from 2.30 million percent!

    Related: Dwight just gave this to me as a birthday gift:

    All the better to tell just when that hyperinflated 1 Billion Bolivar note was printed…

    Stacey Abrams Is Not Running…For The Senate

    April 30th, 2019

    Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams announced she has no interest in being failed senatorial candidate Stacey Abrams:

    Former Democratic state legislative leader Stacey Abrams will not challenge Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) next year, a blow to Democrats who hoped to make inroads in a state Republicans have controlled for nearly two decades.

    In a video posted to Twitter, Abrams said she didn’t believe serving in the Senate would be the best use of her desire to serve the public.

    “I will not be a candidate for the United States Senate,” Abrams said. “The fights to be waged require a deep commitment to the job, and I do not see the U.S. Senate as the best role for me in this battle for our nation’s future.”

    Abrams met with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to tell him of her decision on Monday, a source confirmed to The Hill.

    Yeah, Chuckles is on a real losing streak recruiting senate candidates.

    What next for Abrams? Widespread speculation is she’ll either run for President or Governor. Erick Erickson thinks both:

    Stacey Abrams, suffering from spiking unpopularity for her willful refusal to accept defeat in 2018, has decided not to run for the U.S. Senate in 2020. This makes a ton of sense.

    Abrams wants to fundraise and running for the Senate would distract from that. Her real goal is a rematch against Brian Kemp in 2022.

    If Abrams ran for the Senate, she would either win or lose. If she won, that suggests there’d have been a huge Democrat wave and Democrat presidential victory. Historically, that’d cause an emboldened response from the GOP in the off year election, putting Abrams at a disadvantage against Kemp and raising questions about why she won’t complete a Seante term.

    If Abrams lost against David Perdue, she would no longer be seen as the natural nominee against Kemp in 2022 and other Democrats who’ve waited their turn would fight her for the nomination.

    Instead, Abrams can now run for President as a single issue candidate focused on voting rights. No one will hold that sort of loss against her. That will allow her to raise her national profile and fundraising efforts for a 2022 re-match.

    This makes a certain amount of sense. But Abrams may be looking at Kamala Harris’ faltering campaign and think she can do better in the same “lane.” She has her own fundraising donor list from her unsuccessful gubernatorial run (albeit not as impressive as Beto O’Rourke’s record-breaking donor list from his unsuccessful run), a fake issue to run on (“voter suppression”), and her own slavish national cult following.

    My own estimate is there’s about a 60% chance Abrams jumps into the presidential race.

    There’s always more room in the Clown Car…

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for April 29, 2019

    April 29th, 2019

    Biden is finally In, so barring stragglers and outsiders, the field is largely set.

    Also see yesterday’s update on the Twitter Primary.

    Polls

  • WaPo/ABC (open question poll of Democrats and Democrat-leaning adults): Biden 13, Sanders 9, Buttigieg 5, Harris 4, Warren 4, O’Rourke 3, Booker 1, Hillary Clinton 1(!), Klobucher 1, Donald Trump 1(!!!!!), Michelle Obama 1, Other 4.
  • Weirdly, ABC has different numbers for what appears to be the same poll: Biden 17, Sanders 11, Buttigieg 5, Harris 4, Warren 4, O’Rourke 4. And I’m too busy to dig into the methodology to figure out the discrepancy.
  • Monmouth from April 23rd: Biden 27, Sanders 20, Buttigieg 8, Harris 8, Warren 6, O’Rourke 4. “California Sen. Kamala Harris has 8% support, off just slightly from 10% in March and 11% in January.” But she can’t be thrilled at that trendline…
  • UNH New Hampshire poll. Sanders 30, Biden 18, Buttigieg 15, Warren 5, Harris 4, Booker 3, O’Rourke 3, Klobucher 2, Yang 2, Ryan 2. That’s as high as I’ve seen Buttigieg.
  • Emerson Texas poll: Biden 23, O’Rourke 22, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 8, Warren 7, Castro 4, Yang 3, Harris 3, Klobucher 3. That’s an abysmal showing for Castro in his home state, and Harris should be doing better just off urban voters from Houston and the Metroplex. Indeed, Harris is down in every poll here.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls.
  • Election betting markets. Yang is polling better at 4.9% for the Dem nomination than Warren at 4.7%. One wonders which Bulwerk-backer has Marco Rubio 2020 at 0.5%…
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Kevin Williamson says that in the bold new Social Justice Warrior Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders and joe Biden are the same candidate:

    Old white guy? Joe Biden has hair plugs that are older than the median Democratic primary voter. Sanders and Biden are a year apart — and both of them are older than Trump. Creaky? Creepy stuff in his history? Dusty northeastern union-hall politics? Check all those boxes. Worst: Sanders and Biden, though they are miles apart in rhetoric, are in many ways a couple of outmoded Teddy Kennedy liberals in a party that wants nothing to do with dinosaurs of that particular species.

    Snip.

    The old-white-guy thing isn’t working out too well for Sanders. In Houston earlier this week for a cracked festival of progressive inanity called “She the People,” Sanders got read the old-white-guy riot act: Pressed about racial issues, Comrade Muppet started to launch into yet another retelling of the fact that he marched with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 — but the crowd shut him down, hooting and laughing at him. “We know!” someone shouted. They’d heard it all before. Sanders, visibly flummoxed, went on to talk up the fact that he’d supported Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, and the room responded with, approximately, “Jesse Who?”

    The Reverend Jackson’s is a name to conjure with no more.

  • The Democratic Party Civil War, Round Two:

    Former Vice President Joe Biden’s entry into the 2020 presidential primary sets the stage for another knock-down, drag-out fight between the establishment wing of the party and the ascendant left, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

    Snip.

    The 2016 primary contest left liberals fuming at what they viewed as establishment interference in the race, underscored by the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails that showed favoritism toward Clinton.

    And some mainstream Democrats are unnerved by what they view as a group of left-wing interlopers, online brawlers and sore losers trying to take over the party.

    The same fight played out in 2017, when party officials elected Tom Perez to be the next DNC chairman. Perez, who was backed by Biden, narrowly defeated Sanders’s preferred candidate, former Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.). That race similarly cut along establishment and grass-roots lines.

    Snip.

    But many centrist Democrats are just as worried about how the left will approach the primary contest.

    They’re frustrated by Sanders’s steadfast refusal to officially join the Democratic Party and worried by what they view as his team of political assassins. And they wonder whether Sanders’s supporters will accept the outcome of the primary and turn out to vote for the nominee in the general election if Sanders falls short again.

    “There is a ‘Bernie-or-bust’ coalition, and they have no allegiance to the party,” said the Democratic strategist. “They don’t care about campaign infrastructure or winning up and down the ballot. They’re just concerned about bullshit litmus tests and defending their guy no matter what and pretending that everyone else is a member of the big bad establishment.”

  • 538 on what the candidates are saying and doing.
  • Here’s a handy visual identifier for the clown car:

  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? Some sort of announcement looms early this week. Gets a New York Times softball interview.
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out.
  • Actor Alec Baldwin: Probably not. Still no news since his three week old tweet.
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning toward a run. He’s been very quiet since his cancer surgery. Hard to blame him…
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. See last week’s post for his announcement video. Naturally, there’s tons of Biden news to wade through:
    • He raised $6.3 million within 24 hours of announcing, the most of any of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, but not a “blow you away” number. “Biden’s campaign announced Friday that 96,926 donors contributed, with an average online donation of $41. His campaign also noted that 97% of his online donations were under $200.”
    • “Joe Biden Launches Presidential Bid With Fundraiser Filled With Corporate Lobbyists and GOP Donors.”

      Biden has long since been close to lobbyists. Biden’s presidential campaign is currently being coordinated by his former chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, who was himself a lobbyist. In the past, Ricchetti’s role with Biden’s vice presidential office sidestepped the Obama administration’s ban on employing lobbyists: Ricchetti received a special waiver to take his role with Biden.

      Thursday’s fundraiser will be rife with lobbyists — but not those registered in the federal system.

      The Biden for President host committee includes Kenneth Jarin, a lobbyist with Ballard Spahr who is registered to work on behalf of toll road operator Conduent and several health care interests. Jarin is a major donor to both parties and has given to political action committees controlled by former Republican House Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner.

      Another host of the Biden fundraiser is Alan Kessler, another lobbyist who works with the firm Duane Morris. Kessler is registered to lobby in Pennsylvania for American Airlines and the global information tech firm Unisys Corporation, among other clients.

      Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, another host of the event, is a senior adviser to the local lobbying operation at Dentons, a law firm with a vast government affairs operation. Nutter is also on the board of Conduent.

    • Whistling past the graveyard: “Democrats dismiss Biden as front-runner in name only.”

      In another election, at another time, the late entrance of a well-funded candidate leading in the polls might send convulsions through the primary field.

      But Joe Biden’s arrival into the 2020 race has not had that effect. No Democratic rival appears doomed. No one’s fundraising seems in danger of drying up. Instead, in joining the race, the former vice president has laid bare how unsettled the entire 20-candidate contest remains — and how many in the party don’t believe the 76-year-old Biden is prepared for the rigors of a modern campaign, or the demands of a party transformed.

      What, you mean the other candidates didn’t immediately start rending their garments and proclaiming “Woe is me! All is lost!”? Do tell…

    • Carpe Donktum nails Biden on the “very fine people” lie:

    • Heh:

    • About one of Biden’s advisors:

    • The cases for and against Joe Biden. On the for side:

      I’ve written previously on how the Democratic Party is more moderate and older than you probably think it is. About 50% of Democratic voters call themselves moderate or conservative, which is about the same percentage that are at least 50 years old. Most Democratic candidates running this year don’t seem to recognize that fact.

      We’ve seen a Democratic field in which the candidates seem to be falling over each other to move further left, where the youngest Democrats are.

      Biden, meanwhile, is sitting all alone in his base. In a Monmouth University poll released earlier this week, he had a 19-point advantage over his nearest competitor with Democrats who called themselves moderate or conservative. He was up by 18 points among those who were at least 50 years old. A Quinnipiac University poll released last month (that had Biden in a similar overall position) gave him even bigger advantages with more moderate and older voters.

      Now, Biden does trail with the youngest and very liberal Democrats. But they make up a minority of the party, and Biden’s competitors are splitting that vote.

    • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo enddorses Biden, and is going to use his fundraising network to help him. That will be useful.
    • R. S. McCain thinks that Biden’s 29% is his peak. I’m not so sure. I think there are a substantial portion of people who vote in Democratic primaries that haven’t swallowed the SJW line, and will show up at the polls for Biden.
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Probably Not. The word always was that Bloomberg would only get in if Biden didn’t. Now that Biden is in the race, does this mean an end to the “Bloomberg might still run” pieces?
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Get’s a New York profile. Actually talks about meeting with Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Jared Kushner, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, as both Mayor of Newark and a Senator. “I value comity, I value finding common ground.” He posted 10 years of tax returns. “When I said we should crash the Booker campaign event, I didn’t mean literally!”
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Doesn’t sound like it.
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Out.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: Maybe. The Montana legislative session has already ended, and he had a closed event in Butte. But: “You know, the Legislature just left town, they left 300 bills on my desk, so I have quite a bit of work to do to sort the rest of that out, and haven’t made any decisions what I’d do after I get to serve governor.” Slight downgrade.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. He praised a Republican, but it’s OK, he’s safely dead. “According to reports by Politico, Buttigieg displays photos of himself alongside [late Indiana Republican Senator Richard] Lugar and other officials in his South Bend office.” Get’s a semi-fawning profile from Ross Douthat:

    But another part of Buttigieg’s appeal rests on the fact that during and after the McKinsey stint, he did two very un-meritocratty things: First, he joined the Navy Reserve and was briefly deployed to Afghanistan, and then he moved back to the small, de-industrialized Midwestern city of his youth, not to join his parents in its academic enclave, but to run for mayor of South Bend and attempt to save a piece of the heartland from stagnation and decline.

    These unusual steps away from elite self-segregation inform the way he sometimes seems to want to run for president: As a bridge-builder between the heartland and the coasts, as the Ivy League guy who takes Trump voters seriously as something more than just “deplorables,” as the first gay president who, like Nixon going to China, might be able to call a truce in the post-Obergefell culture wars and convince cultural liberals that they don’t need to bring every evangelical florist or Catholic adoption agency to heel.

    But this bridge-building possibility coexists with another theory of Buttigieg, in which his unusual trajectory back homeward, far from a rejection of the meritocratic mentality, is actually just a clever meritocrat’s “hack” of the system of ascent — an advertisement for his own seriousness that, having served its purpose, can now be abandoned while he tries to vault insanely high, to return not only to Washington but to the Oval Office (or at least the Naval Observatory or a cabinet office).

    This is the reading offered by Buttigieg’s pungent left-wing critics: I especially recommend a long takedown of the young mayor’s memoir by Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs, and a shorter critique by a scion of the Studebaker family (Studebakers being the cars whose manufacture once built South Bend’s blue-collar prosperity).

    These anti-Buttigiegians look at his mayoral record and see a politician who never really escaped the mentality of Harvard and McKinsey, whose big idea for the city involved bulldozing poor people’s houses and encouraging internet companies to move in — a “creative class” theory of urban renewal that didn’t supply the jobs that working-class South Benders need.

    Here’s that Current Affirs takedown of Buttigieg’s memoir Douthat mentions. Current Affaris is both progressive and uber-smarmy, so read it only if you want a hard-lefty hit-piece. But I’ve got to admit that the author’s deep reading of Buttigieg’s own extremely lengthy index entry for himself in his own memoir (“CrossFit phase of, 133”) has some definite zing to it.

  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Out.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He goes spelunking to discover homeless people under Las Vegas. (What CHUDs in Vegas stays under Vegas…) He visits New Hampshire.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out.
  • New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: Leaning toward In. Why Bill De Blasio wouldn’t make a good president.” But it’s only 800 words rather than 800,000…
  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Presidential hopeful John Delaney wants you to unfollow Trump on Twitter.” See, I would think if you have some 19,800 Twitter followers, you wouldn’t want to draw attention to that fact by telling people to stop following the guy who has just under 60 million…
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tulsi Gabbard Is Running a Presidential Campaign on Freelancers. The Hawaii Democrat lists only one person as being on payroll in the first quarter of 2019.” Naturally unions have their knickers in a knot over that. Interesting how quickly she deleted this tweet, about how Democrats attack her more than Republicans:

    (Hat tip: Lee Stranahan.)

  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Out.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. Cruel, but accurate: “No One Likes You, Kirsten Gillibrand.”

    It’s clear that Gillibrand has made women and “women’s issues” a focus of her campaign, and it is clearly reflected in her fundraising. More than half of all the individual donations to her campaign during the first fundraising cycle of 2020 were from women. That’s more than any other 2020 contender can say. She is prioritizing issues like national paid family leave, access to abortion and birth control, improving public education, and stopping sexual harassment and abuse. But is that a winning strategy?

    Maybe her hot pink campaign logo and website splashed with the word “BRAVE” all over are a little too on the nose. Maybe constantly describing herself as a “young mom” is a label that just isn’t doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe women voters don’t liked to be courted simply because of their sex. Or maybe, she’s just too much like Hillary Clinton.

    Ouch!

  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. But there is this: “Andrew Gillum Agrees To Pay $5,000 Fine In Ethics Case Settlement.”
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. How Biden could derail Harris in South Carolina. Harris calls for a ban on right to work laws, which suggest she really wants union campaign contributions.
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a New York Times profile. “In its 191-year history, the Democratic Party has never nominated a presidential candidate from west of the Central time zone.” I doubt that’s the tidbit I would have led with. Also “He got all these lefty programs through but supports fracking.” He had a brain freeze and forgot what GDP stands for.
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Out.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. He blathers about climate change and takes potshots at Bernie Sanders to a lefty outlet. “If you’re looking for a woman, or even an economically progressive candidate, Inslee is not your guy.”
  • 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. Facebook. Twitter. “Klobuchar hails Anita Hill as an inspiration,” because of course she does. Genuflecting to St. Anita is a required ritual on the left again, mainly as a way for “woke” candidates to bash Biden for the Clarence Thomas confirmation. But one wonders how much a confirmation hearing that occurred more than a quarter-century ago will mean to an electorate that doesn’t remember Jesse Jackson…
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Probably 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. Last week’s Clown Car Update noted reports that Messam had missed payroll for campaign staffers. This week: “The two-term mayor’s campaign staffers have scattered from the nest after Messam missed payroll, first reported by The Miami New Times. Reports from the road say rallies have been sparsely attended. Now, Messam is mum, referring people to his legal counsel.” Also this: “There was speculation that Messam has his eyes set on the seat of Congressman Alcee Hastings, 82, who is reportedly going through treatment for pancreatic cancer.”
  • Update: Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Rolling Stone profile:

    Democratic congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA), an Iraq war veteran who announced his candidacy for president early this week, wants you to know that presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who are trying to push America towards more progressive policies are bad for our country, and he’s running to save us.

    “We can’t go too far left or we will lose middle America.”

    It seems like Moulton is competing with Biden, Buttigieg and Delaney for the “non-crazy” Democratic Party vote. Whether this is a viable strategy remains to be seen. I have my doubts. But I was mildly surprised to see that Moulton has 138,000 Twitter followers, which is more than any of the other representatives running save Gabbard. Of course, that says less about how well Moulton is running than how badly Swalwell, Delaney and Ryan are…

  • 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 and Bernie Sanders both heckled at She the People conference. He wants to spend $5 trillion on climate change, because who can most quickly bankrupt America for an unproven theory is now a race among Democratic candidates. The cops at the scene of O’Rourke’s 1998 DWI said that yes, he did try to flee the scene. (Hat tip: Twitchy.)
  • 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. Got a KVUE interview: “I want to change the conversation. I’ve listened to some of these political shows and we’re not even talking about the real issues in the campaign. I think first and foremost, we need an industrial policy that actually lifts middle-class wages.”
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside Bernie’s army: “On Saturday, the campaign launched a nationwide organizing program with nearly 5,000 house parties in every state throughout the country, demonstrating a show of force for his volunteer network and an opportunity to mobilize supporters in a primary contest that could remain close through the early voting states and beyond.” He’s also building out Our Revolution as a “shadow campaign” in the Midwest. “Bernie Sanders Can Win, But He Isn’t Polling Like A Favorite,” which compares Sanders’ numbers to candidates with similar numbers in previous cycles from Jeb! in 2016 all the way back to Hubert Humphrey in 1972. “Three of these candidates [Romney 2012, Obama 2008, McCain 2008] won their nominations; the other 12 lost.”
  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Probably Out. But he did attract a sarcastic Trump tweet:

  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s touring Iowa. “Trey Gowdy: Eric Swalwell as president ‘ought to scare the ever-living hell out of you.'” Well, it might if his campaign weren’t dead in the water…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. “A Guide to Elizabeth Warren’s (Many) 2020 Policy Proposals.” How Warren is threatening Bernie’s left flank. Op-Ed: “Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are bad for the Democrats.” “Both represent the purist liberal wing of their party, a faction that has failed to elect a single president since the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. And with only one out of four Americans calling themselves liberals in the last election, the notion that a doctrinaire left-winger can win in 2020 is an exercise in self-delusion.” Warren was evidently well-received at an SEIU shindig that Sanders skipped.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a lengthy video interview from a Las Vegas TV station. Also gets endorsed by some actor I’ve never heard of who was in Glee.
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Report on a Yang rally in Los Angeles, complete with comparison to cult bad film The Room. “He is the hyper-enthusiastic high school teacher and his supporters are the jocks, goths, and potheads who never knew school could be so fun.” He also campaigned in Iowa.
  • The Twitter Primary Revisited for April 2019

    April 28th, 2019

    A month ago I did a post on the number of Twitter followers among Democratic presidential candidates. A lot of new candidates have jumped into the race since then, so let’s look at how the Twitter Primary stacks up today:

    The following are all the declared Presidential candidates ranked in order of most to least Twitter followers:

    1. Bernie Sanders: 9.25 million (up 90,000)
    2. Cory Booker: 4.25 million (up 30,000)
    3. Joe Biden: 3.54 million (up 40,000)
    4. Marianne Williamson: 2.61 million (unchanged)
    5. Kamala Harris: 2.6 million (up 110,000)
    6. Elizabeth Warren: 2.44 million (up 130,000)
    7. Beto O’Rourke: 1.42 million (up 50,000)
    8. Kirsten Gillibrand: 1.39 million (up 40,000)
    9. Pete Buttigieg: 982,000 (up 494,000)
    10. Amy Klobuchar: 683,000 (up 23,000)
    11. Tulsi Gabbard: 341,000 (up 29,000)
    12. Andrew Yang: 257,000 (up 62,000)
    13. Julian Castro: 209,000 (up 15,000)
    14. John Hickenlooper: 139,000 (up 4,000)
    15. Seth Moulton: 138,000 (new)
    16. Eric Swalwell: 77,600 (new)
    17. Jay Inslee: 42,000 (up 6,300)
    18. John Delaney: 19,800 (up 1,700)
    19. Tim Ryan: 18,900 (new)
    20. Wayne Messam: 6,350 (new)

    For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 59.9 million followers (up 600,000). (The official presidential @POTUS account has 25.7 million, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap.)

    A few notes:

  • Twitter does rounding, and counts change all the time, so the numbers might be slightly different when you look at them.
  • Buttigieg is the biggest riser in both absolute and percentage terms, doubling his followers and leapfrogging Klobucher, but he’s still behind O’Rourke. He should crack one million this week.
  • Save Buttigieg, no one below one million followers is on track to have one million followers by the Iowa caucuses.
  • Warren is the second biggest riser in April, up 130,000, which doesn’t jib with the narrative that her campaign has been underwhelming and policy-heavy.
  • Williamson does not seem to be gaining followers, and her vast Twitter readership doesn’t seem to be showing up in polls.
  • Harris also did well, and should soon pass Williamson, but she’s not on track to pass Biden before Iowa.
  • Thus far Biden hasn’t gotten much of a bump from formally entering the race.
  • Booker’s Twitter strength is not showing up in polling.
  • Castro, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Swalwell, Inslee, Delaney, Ryan and Messam are all below Yang, and none seem to be on a trajectory to catch him.
  • Of course, it’s possible that one of the longshots could catch fire, and race up the charts. Buttigieg started as a longshot and is now right in the thick of it. Compared to expectations, Yang is doing very well, but so far not well enough to be an actual contender.

    And watch tomorrow for the regular Clown Car update.

    President Trump’s Speech To The NRA

    April 27th, 2019

    Back in 2016, one of the knocks on then-candidate Donald Trump was that he was soft on Second Amendment rights, having backed the Clinton “assault weapons” ban in the 1990s. However, Trump’s views clearly evolved, as 18 years ago he stated he was against a handgun ban (“Democrats want to confiscate all guns, which is a dumb idea because only the law-abiding citizens would turn in their guns and the bad guys would be the only ones left armed.”), and Hillary Clinton was so bad on the Second Amendment that it was easy for the NRA to endorse him.

    Fast forward to today, and not only has President Trump kept almost all his promises on the issue (the bump stock ban, which the NRA itself went soft on, being a notable exception), he just gave an enthusiastically received speech to the National NRA convention.

    It was a speech full of red meat, and ranged considerably beyond the Second Amendment to border control, crime, sanctuary cities, and the deep state.

    A few excerpts:

    Every day of my administration, we are taking power out of Washington, D.C. and returning it to the American people, where it belongs. (Applause.) And you see it now better than ever, with all of the resignations of all of the bad apples. They’re bad apples. They tried for a coup; didn’t work out so well. (Applause.) And I didn’t need a gun for that one, did I? (Laughter.)

    All was taking place at the highest levels in Washington, D.C. You’ve been watching, you’ve been seeing. You’ve been looking at things that you wouldn’t have believed possible in our country. Corruption at the highest level — a disgrace. Spying, surveillance, trying for an overthrow. And we caught them. We caught them. (Applause.) Who would have thought in our country?

    Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take away your guns. You know that. They want to take away your guns. You better get out there and vote. You better get out there and vote. It seems like it’s a long ways away. It’s not.

    Democrats want to disarm law-abiding Americans while allowing criminal aliens to operate with impunity. But that will never happen as long as I’m your President. Not even close. (Applause.) I promise to defend the Second Amendment rights of every American, and I always will. I’ll never let you down. (Applause.) Never let you down. I haven’t so far, and I won’t. Because as the famous saying goes, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Very simple. (Applause.)

    As we protect gun rights for law-abiding citizens, we are also getting guns out of the hands of violent criminals.

    When I took office two years ago, one of my highest priorities was to reduce violent crime. In the two years before my inauguration, the murder rate had increased by more than 20 percent, and the United States had experienced the largest increase in violent crime in over 25 years.

    For this reason, my administration resurrected Project Safe Neighborhoods, bringing together prosecutors, police, sheriffs, and citizens groups to put the most dangerous offenders behind bars.

    We funded 200 new violent crime prosecutors. We charged a record number of criminal offenders. And last year, we prosecuted the most violent criminals ever in our history.

    And now, violent crime is way down. Murders in America’s largest cities dropped by 6 percent between 2017 and 2018. But I do have to ask you: What the hell is going on in Chicago? What is going on? (Applause.) We could solve that problem. We would’ve been down even a lot more. And it’s not a tough problem to solve. You got to let law enforcement do what they have to do. They’ll solve the problem very quickly. Very quickly. (Applause.)

    We don’t think enough about the victims. They’re too worried about the people that cause the crime. It’s got to stop. That thought process is no good.

    The number of police officers shot and killed in the line of duty last year, I’m so happy to report, is down 21 percent compared to the year before. (Applause.) And that was the year before I took office.

    President Trump also announced he was withdrawing America from the UN Arms Trade Treaty:

    in the last administration, President Obama signed the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. And in his waning days in office, he sent the treaty to the Senate to begin the ratification process.

    This treaty threatened your subjugate — and you know exactly what’s going on here — your rights and your constitutional and international rules and restrictions and regulations.

    Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. (Applause.) We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom. And that is why my administration will never ratify the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. I hope you’re happy. (Applause.)

    I’m impressed; I didn’t think too many of you would really know what it is. You what it is? A big, big factor. But I see a couple of very happy faces from the NRA over there.

    And I am officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided agreement. We’re taking our signature back. (Applause.) The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty. (Applause.)

    President Trump also brought up several people who used guns to defend their lives against bad guys, including Sutherland Springs hero Stephen Willeford.

    NRA members had doubts about Donald Trump’s commitment to the Second Amendment when he announced he was running for President. I don’t see any having those doubts anymore.

    LinkSwarm for April 26, 2019

    April 26th, 2019

    Democratic mayors behaving badly, violence, mayhem, and an Easter Bunny smackdown. Welcome to your Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Long, detailed post on FISA abuse under the Obama Administration. Fully 85% of all Obama Administration requests were not compliant with federal law.
  • AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka slams Obama and praises President Trump. Unions are also not wild about the “Green New Deal.”
  • Kurt Schlichter revels in the misery of #NeverTrumpers after the Mueller Report:

    Now, it’s not really fair to imply that the Never Trumpers hate Trump solely because he’s vulgar and crude – or, as normal people see it, unwilling to meekly take the guff the Never Trumpers’ country club class pals dish out like a proper gentleman should. They do find him aesthetically displeasing, but it also gnaws at them because every time he stands up to the garbage Democrats, the garbage press, or the garbage jerks and pervs of Hollywood, his refusal to knuckle-under reminds Team Fail that they don’t have the stones to do the same. He shames their cowardly weakness.

    It’s clear, in retrospect, that George W. Bush’s supine acceptance of the abuse the elite heaped upon him was not because he was too classy and too decent to respond in kind. Since Obama left office and he rediscovered his vocal cords, Bush has had zero problem trashing Trump and Trump supporters who, like many of us, stood by Bush in the ’00s while Bush was treading water in a sea of mediocrity. No, it’s clear that W was afraid to fight back against fellow members of the ruling class. He cared about being part of the club. Not The Donald. Trump, by fighting, demonstrates that the establishment GOPers are weak. And it eats at them.

    But besides providing a manly contrast to their own gimp-like submission to the leftist establishment, Trump infuriates the Never Trumpers for another reason. He’s kicked them out of their comfy sinecures. One of Trump’s magical powers is to make his enemies reveal their own grift complicity, and boy, have they ever. As a result, while once the mandarins of Conservative, Inc., traded on their insider influence and privilege, under Trump they are outsiders. Copies of the Weekly Standard used to be all over the Bush White House. Now, if its inept crew had not slammed it into an iceberg, you would be lucky to find a few pages at the bottom of Barron’s pet iguana’s cage.

    Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and all the rest are nobodies, relegated to occasionally joining CNN panels and fighting with Ana Navarro over the doughnuts in the green room. Where’s Bob Corker now? Jeff Flake hasn’t even got an MSNBC gig; I think last week he was the dude who offered to supersize my order.

  • The Twilight of Liberalism:

    it is not the abstract logic of liberalism that is flawed, but rather the attempt to apply it to fallible humans. Like communism, liberalism conflicts with immutable human characteristics. However, unlike communism, certain kinds of liberalism (the industrial liberalism of the 1900s, for example) work because they are moderated by the material conditions of society. But as those moderating conditions are obliterated by technology, the problems of post-industrial liberalism have become clearer. The ultimate problem is this: Humans desire unfettered freedom, but need the discipline that constraint provides. Without such discipline, they risk slumping into an empty and unsatisfying hedonism that is ruinous to communities and to society more broadly.

    Those who are intelligent and self-controlled often create their own constraints and can therefore thrive in post-industrial societies that are radically unlike the societies in which humans evolved. Those who are less intelligent or self-controlled, however, often fail to create successful constraints and therefore suffer when once powerful cultural guardrails (such as religion, strict norms, civic groups, and so on) are destroyed by accelerating innovation and secularism. The result is a growing cultural and economic gap between segments of the population which, when coupled with the declining outcomes for a once thriving middle class, fuels growing bitterness and discontent. Combine this with a trend toward cosmopolitanism that increases ethnic and religious diversity and therefore potential sources of faction and conflict, and liberalism’s immediate prospects look bleak.

    The authors also posit technological change as one of the biggest drivers of challenge to the old liberal order.

  • Followup: Remember how Baltimore’s Democratic Mayor Catherine Pugh took over $100,000 in bribes disguised as book sales? Well, now the feds have raided her house and office:

    Hauling out boxes of “Healthy Holly” books and documents, dozens of federal law enforcement agents Thursday struck homes, businesses and government buildings across Baltimore as an investigation into Mayor Catherine Pugh’s business dealings widened.

    FBI agents and IRS officials executed search warrants at her City Hall office, Pugh’s two houses, and offices of the mayor’s allies, as the growing scandal consumed the city’s attention, generated national headlines and provoked fresh calls for the embattled Democratic mayor’s resignation.

    Snip.

    Dave Fitz, an FBI spokesman, confirmed that agents from the Baltimore FBI office and the Washington IRS office searched at least six addresses. The U.S. attorney’s office confirmed the location of a seventh search. The actions were the first confirmation that federal authorities, as well as state officials, were investigating the mayor’s activities.

    Snip.

    Shortly after the raids began, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on Pugh, who has taken a paid leave of absence as mayor, to resign. The Republican governor had asked the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor on April 1 to investigate Pugh’s sales of her self-published “Healthy Holly” children’s book series to the University of Maryland Medical System while she was on its unpaid board of directors.

    “Today, agents for the FBI and the IRS executed search warrants at the mayor’s homes and offices,” Hogan said. “Now, more than ever, Baltimore city needs strong and responsible leadership. Mayor Pugh has lost the public trust. She is clearly not fit to lead. For the good of the city, Mayor Pugh must resign.”

    When a raid involves both the FBI and the IRS, usually that’s a bad sign.

  • And speaking of Democratic mayors committing fraud, Edinburg, Texas Mayor Richard Molina was arrested on voting fraud charges:

    At times appearing unfazed by the severity of his circumstances, Edinburg Mayor Richard Molina was guided into a Pharr courtroom Thursday morning after he and his wife surrendered themselves to law enforcement to face multiple election fraud charges. The scene was notably different from when Molina entered a state of the city address just one year ago, shadowboxing and wielding a championship belt.

    Now, allegations from a Texas Attorney General’s office investigation into the city’s 2017 municipal election have cast Molina as allegedly cheating his way into the mayoral seat by having people who live outside of the city vote for him.

    An hour after he turned himself in at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Edinburg office, Molina stood before Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Jaime “Jerry” Muñoz, who presides out of Pharr, and was charged with two counts of illegal voting and one count of engaging in organized election fraud — second- and first-degree felonies, respectively.

    Molina, 40, was then escorted to Hidalgo County jail where he was quickly booked in and out on a combined $20,000 cash surety bond, and promptly headed to a city workshop to discuss the future of a city golf course.

    It was business as usual for a mayor who has faced scrutiny since he unseated Edinburg’s longtime mayor, Richard Garcia, in November 2017 by 1,240 votes. Such scrutiny has only increased over the past year as the AG’s office arrested more than a dozen people on illegal voting charges tied to the election.

    And the voting fraud, sadly, seems business as usual in both the Rio Grande Valley in general and Hidalgo County specifically… (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • The Press Will Learn Nothing From the Russiagate Fiasco.”

    You know what was fake news? Most of the Russiagate story. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.

    He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”

    Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!

    In March of 2017, in one of the first of what would become a mountain of mafia-hierarchy-style “Trump-Russia contacts” graphics in major newspapers, the Washington Post described an email Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sent to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. They called it “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government.”

    The report shows the whole episode was a joke. In order to further the Trump Tower project-that-never-was, Cohen literally cold-emailed the Kremlin. More than that, he entered the email incorrectly, so the letter initially didn’t even arrive. When he finally fixed the mistake, Peskov didn’t answer back.

    That was “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government”!

    As outlined in his initial mandate, Mueller explored “any links” between the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. His conclusion spoke directly to the question of whether there was any kind of quid pro quo between the two sides:

    “The investigation examined whether these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the Campaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future.”

    In other words, all those fancy org charts were meaningless. Because there was no conspiracy, all those “walls are closing in” reports — and there were a ton of them — were wrong. We were told we’d hit “turning point” after “turning point” leading to the “the beginning of the end,” with Trump certain, soon, to either resign in shame, Nixon-style, or be impeached.

    The “RNC platform” change story was a canard, according to Mueller. The exchanges Trump figures had with ambassador Sergei Kislyak were “brief, public, and non-substantive.” The conversations Jeff Sessions had with Kislyak at the convention didn’t “include any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.” Mueller added “investigators did not establish that [Carter] Page conspired with the Russian government.”

    There was no blackmail, no secret bribe from Rosneft, no five-year cultivation plan, no evidence of any kind of any relationship that ever existed between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Michael Cohen “never traveled to Prague.”

    The whole Steele dossier appears to have been bunk, with even Bob Woodward now saying the “highly questionable” document “needs to be investigated.” The Times similarly is reporting, two-plus years late, that “people familiar” with Steele’s work began to have “misgivings about [the report’s] reliability arose not long after the document became public.”

    Reporters are going to insist all they did was accurately report the developments of a real investigation. They didn’t imply vast criminality that wasn’t there, or hoodwink audiences into thinking a Watergate-style ending was just around the corner, or routinely blow meaningless episodes like the Sessions-Kislyak meeting out of proportion, or regularly smear people who not only weren’t part of a conspiracy but had no connection to anything (see here for an example).

    They’ll also claim they didn’t spend years openly rooting for indictment and impeachment via wish-casted predictions disguised as reporting and commentary, or denouncing people who doubted the conspiracy as spies and Putin apologists, or clearing their broadcast panels and op-ed pages of skeptics while giving big stages to craven conspiracy-spinners like Malcolm Nance and Luke Harding.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Mark Steyn notes that between the Notre Dame fire and the bombing of Christian churches in Sri Lanka, our journalists have reached new levels in truth avoidance:

    It used to be said that ninety per cent of news is announcing Lord Jones is dead to people who were entirely unaware that Lord Jones was ever alive. Now the trick is to announce Lord Jones is dead and ensure that people remain entirely unaware of why he is no longer alive. One senses that a line was crossed in yesterday’s coverage. As one of our Oz Steyn Club members, Kate Smyth, put it, the media have advanced from dhimmitude to full-blown taqiyya.

    The lights are going out on the most basic of journalistic instincts: Who, what, when, where, why. All are subordinate to the Narrative – or Official Lie. All day yesterday and into today, if you had glanced at the telly, switched on the radio or surfed the big news sites of the Internet, you would have thought the Tamil Tigers were back “with a vengeance”, as The Economist put it – even though with one exception (the 1990 police massacre) the death toll was higher than any individual attack the Tigers had ever pulled off.

  • This seems like big news: “The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House abandon a U.S. surveillance program that collects information about Americans’ phone calls and text messages.”
  • Interesting thread on Gregory Craig, Obama’s White House Counsel who was recently indicted for crimes in his Ukraine work with Paul Manafort, and also Ted kennedy’s top foreign policy guy back when he was secretly asking for the Soviets to help him against Reagan.
  • “The partisan warfare over the Mueller report will rage, but one thing cannot be denied: Former President Barack Obama looks just plain bad. On his watch, the Russians meddled in our democracy while his administration did nothing about it.”
  • Russia launches world’s largest submarine. “The six hundred foot long submarine displaces more water than a World War I battleship and can dive to a depth of 1,700 feet.” More: “The nuclear-powered Belgorod is neither an attack submarine nor a ballistic missile sub. A special mission submarine, Belgorod will be a mothership to other undersea vessels. The sub can carry a payload on its back, behind the sail, or a Losharik class mini-submarine that attaches and detaches to the bottom of the hull.”
  • The Philippines threaten war over the canuck garbage menace.
  • M. J. Hegar, the Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. John Carter for the Texas 31st congressional district last year, announced that she’s running against John Cornyn. If she couldn’t take Carter in the Betomania midterm of 2018, she stands approximately no chance against Cornyn in the Presidential year of 2020.
  • “Sarah Wickline Hull was 20 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.”
  • Former State Department employee Candace Marie Claiborne pleads guilty to concealing contacts from communist China. From the 2017 indictment:

    According to the affidavit in support of the complaint and arrest warrant, which was unsealed today, Claiborne began working as an Office Management Specialist for the Department of State in 1999. She has served overseas at a number of posts, including embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China. As a condition of her employment, Claiborne maintains a Top Secret security clearance. Claiborne also is required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency.

    Despite such a requirement, the affidavit alleges, Claiborne failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), even though these agents provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years. According to the affidavit, the gifts and benefits included cash wired to Claiborne’s USAA account, an Apple iPhone and laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, and a monthly stipend. Some of these gifts and benefits were provided directly to Claiborne, the affidavit alleges, while others were provided through a co-conspirator.

    Notable is how cheaply her allegiance was bought: “Claiborne noted in her journal that she could “Generate 20k in 1 year” working with one of the PRC agents, who, shortly after wiring $2,480 to Claiborne.”

  • Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander reportedly defects. “Brigadier General Ali Nasiri, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Protection Bureau, is said to have fled to the West after a fallout with the representative of the Supreme Leader in the IRGC….General Nasiri was said to have fled with hundreds of classified documents, which could be of great value to the United States.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Katy human trafficking sting results in 44 arrests. (Hat tip: Governor Greg Abbott on Twitter.)
  • “The Bail Project is an unprecedented effort to combat mass incarceration at the front end of the system…We pay bail for people in need, reuniting families and restoring the presumption of innocence.” Like Samuel Scott. “Just hours after a nonprofit group posted bail for a man accused of assaulting his wife, the suspect went to the woman’s home and brutally murdered her.”
  • Kansas schools rebel against Mark Zuckerberg.
  • Ouch! 28-vehicle, multiple-fatality crash in Colorado.
  • Man who shot four people in self-defense, killing one, turns down plea deal, gets acquitted by jury in Philadelphia. (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • No matter how badly you’ve ever failed a class, you’ve never failed one “police cadet accidentally shoots two fellow cadets” bad. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • More on the Boeing 737 Max stall issue. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Australian feminist coffee shop that charged men a surcharge goes out of business. That will teach the patriarchy!
  • Shocking truth from the Washington Post: “If you’re in debt, you don’t deserve a vacation.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Savage:

  • Florida Man gets ass kicked by the Easter bunny.
  • Speaking of oversized ears, here’s a chart of everything Disney owns. Including Vice.
  • “New Poll Reveals Americans Strongly In Favor Of Legalizing Comedy.”
  • This just seems like a really bad idea. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Heh:

  • “Epic Troll: Jesus To Return Moments Before Avengers: Endgame Premieres.”
  • Happy Friday!