LinkSwarm for March 29, 2019

March 29th, 2019

The aftermath of [rock DJ voice] NO COLLUSION WEEKEND dominates today’s LinkSwarm.

  • It will take years to undo the damage of Russiagate:

    Millions of Americans have been led to believe that President Trump committed treason, and any day he could be led out of the White House in chains. They wake up every day thinking this could be the day that Mueller gets Trump. These poor souls should be facing a tough reality this weekend. But hold the Xanax, at least for now. The media and Democrat Party have dug themselves so deeply in a hole, they must keep on digging. That’s absolutely terrible for this country, as has been this entire endeavor.

    If our country is ever to recover from this mess, we can’t forget how we got here. Russians were attempting to hack both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee in late 2015. Whether the DNC was ultimately hacked or suffered an internal leak, the truth remains that the DNC documents and emails obtained by WikiLeaks showed the entire country that Hillary Clinton, and those around her, were corrupt and would bend the rules (or worse) for power. There was never a real and fair contest between her and Bernie Sanders.

    As soon as the Clinton campaign realized its misdeeds toward Bernie had been made public, they blamed Russia. They immediately began putting out a narrative that attempted to say Russia had acted to favor Trump, which included paying Fusion GPS—a notorious propaganda outfit with ties to loads of so-called journalists—to create ties between Trump and Russia.

    Snip.

    In short, the Hillary campaign peppered the Obama executive branch with allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. The Obama intelligence apparatus, pushed on by Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, was only too happy to run with it. Jim Comey’s FBI then used those Word documents to get a warrant from a secret court to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide, which allowed the FBI to spy on the rival political party’s presidential campaign.

    The FBI’s involvement allowed Fusion GPS and the journalists it was working with to put out all sorts of stories before the election, meant to damage Trump’s candidacy. These stories alleged that the ties between Trump and Russia were so serious, the FBI was investigating them. For example, CNN and others ran stories about the FBI looking into Trump because there was supposedly a computer in Trump Tower that was communicating with a Russian bank.

    Snip.

    Once Trump won, all hell broke loose. There was talk of stopping him with the Electoral College, and protestors wrecked parts of DC. Obama’s deputy attorney general Sally Yates sent FBI agents to entrap Mike Flynn, at the time Trump’s national security advisor, using a 200-year-old law that is never enforced, unconstitutional, and routinely violated by every incoming presidential administration.

    The mainstream media was just as deranged. For the entire year of 2017, anything that could damage Trump, no matter how outlandish, was published. Journalistic standards collapsed.

    To MSNBC and CNN, every spurious and anonymously sourced report, which was always called a “bombshell,” was a sign that the “walls were closing in” on the Trump presidency. CNN famously reported on a Trump Jr. email, which could have shown collusion, until they realized they got the date of the email wrong. ABC News anchor Brian Ross produced a false report that caused the stock market to drop, and was eventually let go by ABC over the issue. These are but a few examples.

    It’s a nice summary of the whole “Russian collusion” madness. Read the whole thing.

  • “50+ Journalists, Politicians, Celebrities, and Grifters Who Peddled the Russia Collusion Hoax.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Matt Tabbi of Rolling Stone is even more damning of the media that hyped the Russian collusion fantasy, and those partisans trying to ignore Mueller’s conclusions:

    The report’s most-quoted line read, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

    In essence, Mueller punted the question of obstruction back to Barr, who together with Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has already decided the report didn’t provide enough evidence to support a criminal charge in any of the “number of actions” committed by Trump that raised the specter of obstruction.

    This isn’t surprising, given that Barr is a Trump appointee. The Atlantic is one of many outlets to have already cried foul about this (“Barr’s Startling and Unseemly Haste” is the name of one piece). But Barr’s letter includes a telling detail from Mueller himself on this issue (emphasis mine):

    In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction…

    In other words, it was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime, so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into what even Mueller deemed non-crime.

    Snip.

    MSNBC HOST Chris Matthews said something very similar. First, he recounted his dismay as he learned over the weekend there wouldn’t be new indictments of Trump family members, his inner circle, etc. From there, Matthews deduced, “There’s not going to be even a hidden charge…. They don’t have him on collusion.”

    Members of the media like Matthews spent two years speaking of Mueller in mythical tones, hyping him as the savior who was pushing those “walls” that were forever said to be “closing in” on Trump. Mueller, it was repeatedly said, was helping bring about “the beginning of the end.”

    Over and over, audiences were told the investigation had hit a “turning point,” after which Trump would either resign or be impeached, because as Brian Williams put it, “Donald Trump is done.”

    This manipulative brand of news programming preyed upon the emotional devastation of liberal audiences, particularly the older people who watch cable. It told them the horror they felt over Trump’s election would be alleviated in short order. The median age of the CNN viewer is 60 and MSNBC’s is 65, and these people were urged for years to place their trust in Santa BOB, who knew all and whose investigation would surely lead to impeachment and “the end.”

    All you had to do was keep turning in, because the good news could come any minute now! The bombshell is coming! Never mind that this is causing our profits to soar. Don’t wonder about our motives, even though outlets like MSNBC saw a 62 percent bump in viewership in the first full year of Russiagate coverage. Just keep tuning in. The walls are closing in!

    That was bad enough, but now that the Mueller dream seems to have died, news organizations are acting like they didn’t hype Mueller as savior.

    “Robert Mueller was never going to end Trump’s Presidency,” says Vox.

    Matthews, in a tone that suggested he was being the sober adult delivering tough love, completed his thought about how “they don’t have him on collusion” by saying, with a shrug of undisguised disappointment:

    “So I think the Democrats have got to win the election.” He added, “There’s no waiting around for uncle Robert to take care of everything.”

    I know no one cares how this sounds to non-Democrats, but this is a member of the media looking sad that Democrats would have to resort to actual democracy to win the White House back.

    Given that “collusion” has turned out to be dry well, to the ordinary viewer it will look a hell of lot like the MSNBCs of the world humped a fake story for two consecutive years in the hopes of overturning election results ahead of time. Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that “elites” don’t respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It’s hard to imagine what could look worse.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Even the New York Times‘s Bret Stephens says Democrats and the media blew it:

    The fiasco was to assume that the result of Mueller’s investigation was a forgone conclusion. And to believe that the existence of dots was enough to prove that they had to connect. And to report on it nonstop, breathlessly, as if the levee would break any second. And to turn Adam Schiff into a celebrity guest. And to belittle or exclude contrarian voices.

    Last July, I wrote of the special counsel’s inquiry: “The smart play is to defend the integrity of Mueller’s investigation and invest as little political capital as possible in predicting the result. If Mueller discovers a crime, that’s a gift to the president’s opponents. If he discovers nothing, it shouldn’t become a humiliating liability.”

    Instead, as Matt Taibbi perceptively observed last week, what we have is a W.M.D.-size self-inflicted media disaster, which ought to require some extensive self-criticism before we breathlessly move on to Trump’s latest alleged idiocy. Assume for a moment that Trump’s odd Russia behavior, including the obsequiousness toward Vladimir Putin and the routine eruptions against Mueller, was merely a way of baiting journalists for years.

    If so, he could hardly have played us better: He’d be the Keyser Söze of media manipulation. To adapt a line, perhaps the greatest trick Trump ever pulled was to convince the world his brain didn’t exist.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • Lee Smith in Tablet was even more critical of the media:

    The media criticism of the media’s performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne—OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff going on and now let’s all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.

    Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.

    The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country’s most prestigious news organizations—including, but not only, The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible because the institutions sustaining them are credible.

    Michael McFaul was U.S. ambassador to Moscow—he knows everything about Russia. He wouldn’t invent stuff about national security matters out of thin air. Jane Mayer is a national treasure, one of America’s greatest living journalists who penned a long profile of Christopher Steele in the pages of the New Yorker. Susan Hennessy is a former intelligence community lawyer, who appears as an expert on TV. And how about her colleague at the Lawfare blog, Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution fellow and a personal friend of James Comey? You think he didn’t have the inside dope, every time he posted a “Boom” GIF on Twitter predicting the final nail just about to be hammered in Trump’s coffin?

    Many more jumped on the dog pile along with them, validating each other’s tweets and breathless insider sourcing. The point was to thicken the echo chamber, with voices from the right as well as the left in order to make it seem real. Hey, if this many experts are saying so, there must be something to it.

    Except, there wasn’t—ever.

    American democracy is premised on a free press that does its best to provide the public with information. Misinforming the public is like dumping toxic waste in the rivers. It poisoned our democracy—and it continues to do so. In fact, the most important thing for the public to understand is that Russiagate is not unique. It’s the way that the expert class opines on everything now, from immigration to foreign policy.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “The report showed that the so-called Trump Dossier, which was compiled by a former MI6 spook, Christopher Steele, and funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, is a total work of fiction. There was no collusion. There was no blackmail or any of that innuendo. If anything, this operation executed on behalf of Democrats shows collusion between Russia, Steele, DNC, and the Clintons.”
  • Scott Adams enjoys the media freakout over the Mueller report’s total vindication of President Trump.
  • It turns out that lying to your viewers constantly for two years is not a great business model.
  • Speaking of the media getting it wrong: “USA Today Blacklists The Federalist For The Crime Of Getting The Trump-Russia Story Right.”

  • “Mueller Orders Trump To Sit On Scale To See If He Weighs The Same As A Duck.”
  • President Trump held what appeared to be a very well-attended rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan:

  • I keep thinking I should do an update on Brexit news, but there isn’t really any. Parliament, having stripped Prime Minister Therese May of the power to negotiate Brexit, will neither shit nor get off the pot.
  • “Transgender “Women” Bully Rape Crisis Center, Get Funding Pulled.” What’s real rape compared to the crime of using the wrong pronoun?
  • “The REAL Collusion, Part 2: What Is the Connection Between James Clapper, Victor Pinchuk, and CTO of Only Company To Work on Hacked DNC Server?”
  • “Green New Deal” defeated in the Senate, with 0 votes for and 57 against, most Democrats voting “present.” Because actually calling your insane, economy-wrecking resolution for a vote is just a dirty trick…
  • Ilhan Omar Has Been Holding Secret Fundraisers For Groups That Support Terrorism.”

    Omar recently spoke in Florida at a private event hosted by Islamic Relief, a charity organization long said to have deep ties to groups that advocate terrorism against Israel. Over the weekend, she will appear at another private event in California that is hosted by CAIR-CA PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR a group that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive terror-funding incident.

  • Hmmm: “Gerald Goines, the HPD officer at the center of a botched drug raid, retires.” “Goines’ retirement came a day after Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo confirmed that he expected more than one officer to be criminally charged for their actions in the ill-fated raid.”
  • Hmmm Part II: “Houston police investigator probing failed drug raid relieved of duty.” “Angel August was taken off duty with pay on March 13, according to a Houston Police Department spokesman. Officials have not yet publicly divulged the reason for their decision to bench August, who joined the department in 2011. August was the officer who filed the initial report a day after the Jan. 28 shooting at 7815 Harding Street that left two residents dead and five police officers injured, according to a police report obtained by the Houston Chronicle under the state open records law.” (Hat tip (for both): Dwight.)
  • “Video shows fired Paterson [New Jersey] police officer brutally assaulting hospital patient.” A patient who was flat on his back on a stretcher at the time.
  • Even the Illinois Prosecutor’s Bar Association condemned the Jussie Smollett dismissal as “abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State.”
  • Two Mexican drug cartels clashed in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, just over the border from Roma, Texas. “Both cartel factions used numerous grenades and incendiary devices in order to disable the other sides armored SUVs. The clashes left several burned-out vehicles throughout the city and the surrounding areas.” A nearby Mexican army base did nothing to stop the violence. (Hat tip: Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton on Twitter.)
  • Criminal pro-tip: When looking for a potential victim, try not to pick an off-duty policewoman:

  • “92 percent of illegal immigrant families ignore deportations.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Homeland Missile Defense System Successfully Intercepts ICBM Target.” (Hat tip: John Bolton’s Twitter feed.)
  • A quicker Navy plan to get to 355 ships. But many questions remain. (Hat tip: CDR Salamander via The Other McCain.)
  • New Zealand bans guns. Result? “Of the 1.2M gun owners registered there, 37 have turned them in.”
  • Liberals are increasingly shocked that Joe Rogan has interesting people on his show and allows them to speak their minds. Link goes to the Althouse comments session rather than the article she’s linking to, since the comments are far more interesting. Today’s SJW-riddled liberals seem terrified and outraged by anyone allowing even the slight shred of heresy from their orthodoxy. I forget what the first Rogan interview I stumbled across was (probably one with Bill Burr), but he’s someone that actually let’s his guests just talk and express their ideas without trying to argue or interrupt.
  • Andrew Sullivan: “Maybe Hollywood should stop depicting working class white Americans as racist bigots if they want to avoid reelecting Trump.” Hollywood liberals: “Silence, blasphemer!” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • “Microsoft takes control of 99 domains operated by Iranian state hackers.”
  • BOOM! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “Sick And Tired Of All This Prosperity, Nation To Try Socialism For A While.”
  • Stephen Jay Gould fell pray to the same bias he thought he was condemning.
  • The scourge of fake wasabi.
  • Unwrapping a Gutenberg Bible.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »

    Laws Are For The Little People: Michael Avenatti/Jussie Smollett Edition

    March 28th, 2019

    #TheResistance™ insists, again and again, that they’re the only moral alternative to that dastardly Donald Trump. This week, we got a good, close look at how a couple of “heroes” of #TheResistance™ operate.

    First up: Mr. Multiple-Felony-Indictments himself, Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti, who lead “a luxury lifestyle built on a purported house of cards.”

    Long before he was Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, well before he was accused of trying to shake down Nike for millions of dollars, Michael Avenatti was an Orange County plaintiff’s attorney living a luxe life adorned with fast cars, high-end properties and expensive jewelry.

    He flew in a private jet, lived in a mansion overlooking the Pacific and rang up six-figure receipts at Neiman Marcus and other sumptuous retailers.

    That his wealth might in fact be illusory, built on a flimsy and teetering financial foundation, slowly grew clear to some who knew Avenatti and hounded him for years in Bankruptcy Court and other venues in search of money he owed.

    Suddenly, with his arrest Monday in Manhattan for allegedly scheming to extort $20 million from the sportswear giant, the rest of the world got a glimpse into the tangled life of the pugnacious litigator and, prosecutors assert, his reckless venality.

    But as startling as the Nike allegations may be — attempting to strong-arm one of the most recognizable companies on the planet — the federal fraud charges simultaneously unsealed in California may be more revealing and could pose greater jeopardy to Avenatti and his freedom.

    They exposed nearly a decade of alleged financial misdeeds on a vast scale, many of which have sporadically surfaced in courtrooms up and down the West Coast.

    Snip

    The 48-year-old counsel, who made his living by filing class-action lawsuits against big corporations, crashed into the nation’s consciousness a year ago as the representative of Daniels, an adult-film actress who sought to nullify a hush-money agreement stemming from an alleged 2006 sexual dalliance with Donald Trump.

    But Avenatti’s notoriety — so far as federal investigators were concerned — long preceded his emergence as Daniels’ advocate and President Trump’s tormentor.

    The nearly 200 pages of charging documents submitted by the Internal Revenue Service show that federal investigators started pursuing Avenatti for alleged tax violations a decade ago.

    The first sign of trouble came in 2009 when, the IRS said, he reported $1.9 million in personal income but failed to pay $570,000 in taxes. The next year, the IRS said, Avenatti reported $1.2 million in income but skipped out on a $282,000 tax bill.

    Since then, according to federal prosecutors, Avenatti has filed no personal income tax returns, even as he deposited $18 million into his bank accounts.

    He also has filed no tax returns since then for Avenatti & Associates, a corporation that has recorded $38 million in deposits, the government says. Avenatti, who owns the firm, has often used it to pay personal expenses, including $176,500 to Exclusive Resorts, which bills itself as “the world’s elite private vacation club.”

    “During these tax years, Avenatti generated substantial income and lived lavishly,” Remoun Karlous, an IRS criminal investigator, wrote in his sworn statement.

    Among other big-ticket items: $217,000 at Neiman Marcus; $117,000 at Jewelers on Time, a luxury watch store; $277,236 to Porsche dealers; $100,000-a-month rent for a waterfront house on Lido Isle in Newport Beach; $39,762 in Ferrari lease payments, $123,825 in rent on his apartment in a luxury high-rise in Century City.

    How arrogant do you have to be to think you can get away with not filing tax returns for a decade? Did he think the IRS was just going to shrug that off? Did he think they were too busy auditing Tea Party groups to go after him? Did he think he was somehow protected? Did he think his brash bad boy lawyer approach would get him off the hook with Uncle Sam?

    Here’s a kicker: “Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman collapsed in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday, shortly after the judge in her [NXIVM sex cult] racketeering conspiracy case asked if she’d secretly retained embattled lawyer Michael Avenatti in a bid to negotiate a deal with prosecutors.”

    From Hero of #TheResistance™ to persona non grata in a week.

    Speaking of heroes of #TheResistance™, the felony hate crime hoax charges against Jussie Smollett have been magically dropped:

    Jussie Smollett will not be prosecuted for allegedly faking a racial attack, because all charges have been dropped!!!

    Jussie and his lawyers ran to court Tuesday morning in Chicago, where he was facing 16 felony counts of lying to police in the alleged racial and homophobic attack.

    Jussie will surrender his $10,000 bond. But, that’s it. The case is over.

    Maybe not.

    State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office says, “After reviewing all of the facts and circumstances of the case, including Mr. Smollett’s volunteer service in the community and agreement to forfeit his bond to the City of Chicago, we believe this outcome is a just disposition and appropriate resolution to this case.”

    That “community service?” It was all of two days working for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

    That’s like dropping 16 felony charges against Ted Nugent in return for two days of him volunteering with the NRA.

    How did the charges get dropped? Evidently Tina Tchen, who once served as the chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama and as an aide to the president himself, ran interference with Foxx to get the charges dropped.

    Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police is officially requesting a federal investigation into whether the Cook County State’s Attorney, Kim Foxx, tried to interfere into the department’s investigation of “Empire” star Jussie Smollett on behalf of a former Obama administration official.

    CWB Chicago, which has covered the Smollett case from the beginning, reports that Chicago’s police union requested the investigation in a letter to John R. Lausch, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago on Monday.

    Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson is not pleased.

    I’m left hanging my head and asking, why? Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? How could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile? How can an individual who has been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims? Bogus police reports cause real harm. They do harm to every legitimate victim who is in need of support by police and investigators as well as the citizens of this city. Chicago hosts one of the largest pride parades in the world, and we’re proud of that as a police department and also as a city. We do not, nor do we ever, tolerate hate in our city, whether that hate is based on an individual’s sexual orientation, race or anything else. So I’m offended by what has happened, and I’m also angry. I love the city of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department, warts and all. But this publicity stunt was a scar that Chicago didn’t earn and certainly didn’t deserve.

    Now the FBI is looking into the dropped charges.

    Why did Team Obama go all-out to get the charges dropped? Because of his friendship with the Obamas? Because of his high Victimhood Identity Politics “intersectionality” score? (“Black and gay? Well, that just wipes those 16 felony charges right out!”) But maybe it’s also because he was caught faking a hate crime hoax, and the liberal establishment wants to ensure that hate crime hoaxes continue to be manufactured because they’re politically useful. Namely to keep the black and gay communities stirred up enough to keep voting for Democrats rather than walking away.

    One way or another, the rules just seem to be different for our liberal elites.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »

    How Qatar Buys Influence (and a bit about Saudi Arabia)

    March 27th, 2019

    I saw this video about Qatar buying influence at a number of American media outlets and think tanks. It’s 23 minutes long, but worth you’re time if you’re interested in the subject.

    A few takeaways:

  • Qatar has poured a lot of money into the Brookings Institute, so much that their scholars are forbidden to criticize it. And no one knows just how much they’re pouring into Brookings’ Doha branch.
  • I knew that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had sidelined many hardline Wahhabist clerics in 2017, but I didn’t know that (as this video asserts) he at least some threatened with a sentence of beheading. But that does appear to be the case.
  • Nick Muzin, Ted Cruz’s deputy chief of staff for strategy in his 2016 Presidential campaign, opened lobbying agency Stonington Strategies and became a registered agent for Qatar, specifically for pitching them to the American Jewish community. According to Tablet, Muzin’s firm was pulling down $300,000 a month from Qatar, though he says he cut ties with them last year (which is not in the video).
  • Qatar has evidently launched hacking attacks against many of its critics.

    • I think their overall take, that Qatar continues to fund the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups, and that Mohammed bin Salman is largely cleaning up Saudi Arabia’s act when it comes to sponsoring terrorism, is general correct. This does not make the Saudis our friends, but it does make them somewhat less repugnant allies.

    Speaking of the Saudis, this piece in Foreign Policy states that “Mohammed bin Salman Is Here to Stay“:

    for all the talk of the crown prince’s brashness (former State Department officials Aaron David Miller and Richard Sokolsky described the crown prince as a “ruthless, reckless, and impulsive leader”), some of the changes he has brought to his country have benefitted the United States. Not least among them are his efforts to drastically curtail Wahhabi clerical influence at home by detaining dozens of radical clerics and drastically limiting the power of the religious police and to empower Saudi women by better integrating them into the workforce.

    And despite what many in the West see as Saudi Arabia’s missteps during his tenure—including its involvement in the war in Yemen, blockading Qatar, detaining Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the imprisonment and alleged torture of women’s rights activists, the detention of Saudi political and moneyed elites, and the diplomatic spat with Canada—Saudi Arabia has also used its considerable diplomatic and financial leverage to support key U.S. policies throughout the Middle East. These include efforts at Arab-Israeli peace and stabilization and reconstruction initiatives in Iraq and northeastern Syria.

    The United States should remember that Mohammed bin Salman’s successes as well as some of his mistakes are products of the same qualities: his youth and drive. He is 33, which is an asset insofar as it aligns him with the needs, wants, and hopes of a country in which 70 percent of the population is under 35. Youth entails boldness and an increased appetite for risk—essential qualities in a leader who is trying to bring about the type of total social and economic transformation the kingdom requires.

    I think that this analysis is largely correct as well, but a large measure of caution is always in order where the Saudis are concerned.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, video | No Comments »

    Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti Indicted on Felony Charges

    March 26th, 2019

    It would take a man with a heart of stone not to dunk on creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti.

    After all, here was a man who swore he had the goods to take down President Donald Trump. Well, it looks like Avenatti will be the one taken down, as he was indicted not once, but twice on federal charges today:

    Michael Avenatti, the attorney who shot to national fame for representing adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her case against President Donald Trump, was arrested Monday in two separate cases of alleged financial crimes on both coasts.

    New York prosecutors accused Avenatti of trying to extract more than $20 million from Nike Inc. by threatening to inflict financial and reputational harm on the company. Avenatti, a frequent attacker of Trump who flirted with a 2020 presidential bid, is also facing separate bank and wire fraud charges in Los Angeles, authorities said.

    On the Nike extortion scheme:

    The feds claim Avenatti told Nike’s lawyers if they didn’t pay him between $15 million and $25 million he would hold a news conference on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings call and the start of March Madness and announce allegations of misconduct by employees at the shoe company.

    According to the complaint, Avenatti demanded Nike hire him to conduct an internal investigation for the enormous salary.

    The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York says Avenatti was representing a client who was the coach of an AAU Youth Club basketball team.

    Prosecutors say Avenatti gave Nike an option … don’t hire him but pay $22.5 million to resolve the dispute and buy his silence.

    The complaint says Avenatti claimed the AAU coach had evidence that one or more Nike employees had funded payments to the families of top high school basketball players and attempted to conceal those payments.

    According to prosecutors, there was a call on March 20 between Avenatti and Nike during which Avenatti said, “I’m not f**king around with this, and I’m not continuing to play games … you guys know enough now to know you’ve got a serious problem … So if you guys think that you know, we’re gonna negotiate a million five, and you’re gonna hire us to do an internal investigation, but it’s gonna be capped at 3 or 5 or 7 million dollars, like let’s just be done.”

    Prosecutors say then Avenatti makes a threat … “I’ll go and I’ll go take 10 billion dollars off your client’s market cap. But I’m not f**king around.”

    The U.S. Attorney says the call was recorded and there’s video of a meeting between Avenatti and Nike attorneys on March 21. In that meeting, Avenatti allegedly said, “If [Nike] wants to have one confidential settlement and we’re done, they can buy that for $22.5 million and we’re done.”

    As for the wire fraud charge:

    Avenatti sought loans from The Peoples Bank on behalf of Global Baristas and his law firms. As Avenatti pursued the loans, the complaint states, he provided false financial documents, including fake IRS filings and incorrect corporate financial material.

    In or around December 2014, for example, Avenatti allegedly provided a 2012 IRS Form 1040 claiming that he made $4 million in 2013 and paid $1.3 million in taxes; according to IRS records, Avenatti did not file an IRS Form 1040 for 2013, nor did he pay any taxes to the IRS that year. Avenatti failed to file personal federal income taxes from 2011 to 2017, though he “generated substantial income and lived lavishly,” according to the complaint.

    Upon receiving the apparently fake IRS form, The Peoples Bank wired $494,500 to a bank account associated with Avenatti’s law firm.

    The complaint also alleges Avenatti defrauded a client of his law firm, using the client’s portion of a $1.6 million settlement toward his own purposes. According to the complaint, Avenatti used $1.6 million transferred into one of his accounts related to the settlement for payment such as to Tully’s vendors, a lawyer who represented Global Baristas, and a bank account under the name of “Michael Avenatti, Esq.”

    Wait, Avenatti “failed to file personal federal income taxes from 2011 to 2017?” No wonder Uncle Sam is pissed.

    Remember, this is the guy who made 108 appearances on CNN and MSNBC in a two month period.

    Also charged as a co-conspirator: CNN legal analyst Mark Geragos, attorney for Jussie Smollett and Colin Kaepernick. (If you tried to put this a novel, your editor would have rejected it as too heavy-handed.) Or I should say former CNN legal analyst, as the dwindling cable news network cut ties with him after the news broke.

    Remember when Senate Democrats believed that Avenatti’s wild, baseless charges against Brett Kavanaugh were somehow credible? Democrats let this grifter become one of the faces of #TheResistance™, and now he, not Trump, is one who is probably going to end up in prison. The only question is whether Democrats are even capable of feeling shame over how their Trump Derangement Syndrome led them to put even the tiniest amount of faith into this guy.

    Some day Avenatti’s life is going to be made into a great opera. (Tentative title: Basta!)

    The last few days have been nonstop kicks in the teeth for “Russian Collusion truthers.” First the Mueller Report says no collusion or obstruction, now their favorite creepy porn lawyer is looking at serious prison time. If, as some technophilosophers believe, we are in fact living in a computer simulation, it would appear to be a computer simulation designed to allow Donald Trump to live his best possible life…

    (Caveat: Innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda yadda. And even though it appears that Avenatti did indeed commit extortion, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the underlying charges against Nike turned out to be true…)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for March 25, 2019

    March 25th, 2019

    This week in the clown car update: Two more additions, one possibly serious, the other definitely not. Also, don’t miss yesterday’s post on the Twitter primary.

    Polls and Pundits

    Fox poll has Biden at 31, Sanders at 24, and both beating Trump, with everyone else in single digits and losing to Trump.

    CNN has it Biden 28, Sanders 20, Harris 12, O’Rourke 11, with no one else more than 6.

    James Pindell of the Boston Globe ranks the Democratic presidential field in New Hampshire. TLDR: Sanders, Biden, Warren, Harris, Booker, O’Rourke, Williamson, Gabbard, Buttigieg, Yang. Yes, he has Williamson and Yang ahead of numerous “serious” candidates.

    538 Presidential roundup.

    538 polls.

    Democratic Party presidential primary schedule.

    Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? Still considering a run. Also see Biden comma Joe.
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out. But he did pen an op-ed stating that Beto O’Rourke can’t win. “It’s not Beto’s fault he’s not a fighter. After all, he’s led a very charmed, privileged life as a white male. He’s faced very little adversity.” Seems like the Creepy Porn Lawyer is calling the kettle white…
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning Toward In. “U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is taking the final steps toward becoming the second Colorado Democrat in the 2020 race for president, with a possible announcement coming soon, sources familiar with his plan have told The Denver Post.”
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: Leaning Towards Running. Trial balloon floated the idea of him announcing for the campaign and naming Stacey Abrams as his running mate right out of the gate. Not sure that would help clinch the nomination with two (or, see below, three) actual black candidates in the race. Lots of pundits are pronouncing this to be a bad idea, but how many are in the tank for Kamala Harris? Jim Geraghty: “Nominating Biden atop the Democratic ticket is like giving the wacky neighbor supporting character on a beloved show his own spinoff.” Could Biden be the Jeb Bush of 2020?

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Out.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Booker is being pulled left by the party’s crazy primary base. Booker and Harris top a poll of South Carolina’s Democratic Party county chairs. He also had a fundraiser hosted for him by Bon Jovi. “Cory Booker the Only Dem 2020 Candidate Attending AIPAC Conference.”
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Doesn’t sound like it.
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Out.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: Leaning Toward In, but is reportedly going to wait until Montana’s legislative session finishes, which would be May 1. But he has been fundraising for local Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a profile from NBC, which notes that he too has met the 65,000 donor threshold to participate in debates.
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Out.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He whistled past the graveyard about O’Rourke’s entry into the race.
  • 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. “New Yorkers Don’t Seem Too Thrilled About Possible Presidential Candidate Bill de Blasio.” Why should they be different than the rest of the country?
  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets an ABC profile that notes “Delaney has made Iowa his primary focus. He’s traveled to 99 counties and was planning to open six offices in the first state that will have a say in the election. His time in Iowa reportedly earned him early endorsements from three Iowan Democratic Party county chairs.” Probably the only candidate in the field emphasizing bipartisanship.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. Got a New Hampshire public radio interview. She visited Plaistow, New Hampshire, which is right on the border with Massachusetts.
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Out.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She had an an official campaign launch where she bashed Trump (way to stand out from the crowd). Gillibrand’s solution to the opioid epidemic is to take pain medication from the people that actually need it.
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Maybe? This week Gillum announced…a voter registration drive.
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: Maybe, but it’s a joke run. He lost to everyone in 2008, coming in eight out of eight and receiving no delegates, then switched to the Libertarian Party, where he came in four out of eight. According to his Twitter account: “I’m not planning to contest any primaries and, if offered the nomination, would decline it.” The 88-year old did make an FEC filing, but I’m only listing him here to mention that I’m not listing him here…
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. She swung through Texas and compared herself to LBJ, which suggests she’s a mean, corrupt political operator who used voting fraud to steal an election. “Black women could help boost Kamala Harris’ presidential aspirations.” Wow, there’s an original thought. But the whispers I hear suggests that Homewrecker Harris is far less popular among black women than you might expect…
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. John Hickenlooper, ladies man. He’s also wondering why no one asks the female candidates whether they would pick a male running mate.
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Out.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Appeared on The Daily Show. Inslee’s extra security for his presidential run will cost Washington state $4 million. Wait, don’t you actually have to know who someone is before you target him for assassination?
  • 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. But he did get 4% in that CNN poll.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. US News and World Report (who are evidently still around) cover the “humor” of Klobuchar. Judging from the samples provided, I don’t see her headlining at The Laugh Factory anytime soon…
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Probably Out.
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Leaning toward a run? He gets a Washington Post profile. “When he left office in January 2018, McAuliffe appeared to be well positioned for a White House run as a socially liberal, business-friendly Democrat from an important swing state. But 14 months later, it’s unclear if there is room for McAuliffe, 62, in a party that seems to be pulling leftward.”
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
  • Addition Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: Leaning Toward In. Twitter. Stumbled across him on Wikipedia. He’s filed paperwork with the SEC and is expected to make an announcement March 30. He was also a wide receiver at Florida State and a member of their 1993 National Championship team. Do I consider the 44-year old a serious contender? Right now, no. But as of 2010, Miramar had a population of 122,041, compared to South Bend, Indiana’s 101,168. By what objective criteria is Sound Bend’s white gay mayor Pete Buttigieg a legitimate Presidential contender and Miramar’s black, straight (presumably, since he’s married with three children) mayor isn’t? (Even 538 is keeping track of him, and made the same point about Buttigieg.)
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? Says he’ll decide by next month.
  • 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. Two Jim Geraghty pieces: Beto finds that that everything seems a lot harder when you’re not running against Ted Cruz. “All of a sudden Beto O’Rourke, the candidate who was most beloved by the national press in 2018, is getting brutal coverage in 2019.” But then he warns Republicans not to underestimate him and compares his career path to George W. Bush. There are some parallels there, but it’s a big leap from the congressional son of a city councilman to the gubernatorial son of a President. He campaigned in South Carolina. Wait, he’s now saying he’s a gun owner? Did he mention that when he was bragging about his F rating from the NRA last year? Whoa ho here he comes, he’s a dirt eater.
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Out.
  • Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan: Leaning Toward In? Save the usual Trump bashing, I’m not seeing significant news this week.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. From that Boston Globe piece on New Hampshire:

    As it stands in the New Hampshire primary, there’s Sanders and then everyone else. No one even comes close to the level of support, energy, and commitment that Sanders has enjoyed since he won the New Hampshire primary with 60 percent of the vote in 2016.

    Now here’s the downside of expectations: mathematically, his numbers can go only go down in a field this large. But even with polls putting him at 25 percent to 30 percent support in the state’s primary, that’s enough to win in such a large field.

    Journalist David Sirota spent the last few months attacking all the non-Sanders Democrats in the race. Surprise! Bernie just hired him. Sanders also spoke to large crowds in San Francisco (of course) and San Diego.

  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Out.
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: Leaning Toward In. Gonna be a tough week for Russian collusion truther Swalwell…
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. In Politico, Jeff Greenfield ponders her slow start. “She is languishing in fifth place in a spate of polls of Democratic primary voters; Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke are dominating the money race.” Oh, and she wants to eliminate the Electoral College because of course she does.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. From that Boston Globe piece on New Hampshire:

    Yes, a person most readers will have to Google is already well ahead of sitting senators, Cabinet officials, and former governors in the New Hampshire rankings. Don’t believe me? Just look at the overflow crowds of people who adore her and probably won’t even consider voting for anyone else. It’s clear by these counts that Williamson, Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser, enters the race with her own base of support. Also, it turned a lot of heads when former congressman Paul Hodes agreed to run her campaign in the state.

    She gets an intermittantly interesting Buzzfeed profile that talks about all her celebrity spiritualist boosters (Steve Tyler, Gwyneth Paltro, Cher, Kim Kardashian West) and officiating at one of Elizabeth Taylor’s weddings, while showing her speaking before an audience of six. Robert Stacy McCain needs your donations so he can travel to South Carolina to give the Williamson campaign the coverage it deserves in person. Help make it happen! (And here’s an update.)

  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Running but no one cares. Twitter. Facebook. He’s in the debates! Yang has lots of ideas, most of them bad. He wants to reformulate GDP: “Robot trucks are going to be great for GDP, but they’re going to be terrible for the 3 1/2 billion [sic] truck drivers in the country.” He’s also come out against the most pressing issue of our day: circumcision. Though I suspect there’s no truth to the rumor he’ll make his official campaign song Pink Floyd’s “The Final Cut”…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

    Report Summary: No Collusion, No Obstruction

    March 24th, 2019

    The summary of the Mueller Report has been released.

    No collusion, no obstruction.

    Here’s the first part of the summary, with the conclusions on the two primary charges, and the footnotes omitted.

    March 24, 2019

    Dear Chairman Graham, Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Feinstein, and Ranking Member Collins:

    As a supplement to the notification provided on Friday, March 22, 2019, I am writing today to advise you of the principal conclusions reached by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to inform you about the status of my initial review of the report he has prepared.

    The Special Counsel’s Report

    On Friday, the Special Counsel submitted to me a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” he has reached, as required by 28 C.F.R. § 600.8(c). This report is entitled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.

    The report explains that the Special Counsel and his staff thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and others associated with it, conspired with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, or sought to obstruct the related federal investigations. In the report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.

    The Special Counsel obtained a number of indictments and convictions of individuals and entities in connection with his investigation, all of which have been publicly disclosed. During the course of his investigation, the Special Counsel also referred several matters to other offices for further action. The report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public. Below, I summarize the principal conclusions set out in the Special Counsel’s report.

    Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

    The Special Counsel’s report is divided into two parts. The first describes the results of the Special Counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report outlines the Russian effort to influence the election and documents crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts. The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel’s investigation was whether any Americans –including individuals associated with the Trump campaign – joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

    The Special Counsel’s investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.

    The second element involved the Russian government’s efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.

    Obstruction of Justice

    The report’s second part addresses a number of actions by the President — most of which have been the subject of public reporting — that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns. After making a “thorough factual investigation” into these matters, the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

    The Special Counsel’s decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime. Over the course of the investigation, the Special Counsel’s office engaged in discussions with certain Department officials regarding many of the legal and factual matters at issue in the Special Counsel’s obstruction investigation. After reviewing the Special Counsel’s final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

    In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference,” and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction. Generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding. In cataloguing the President’s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department’s principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction of ­justice offense.

    Democrats and their media allies spent two years hyping an investigation into a sitting president, threw around charges of “treason” with wild abandon, all over an imaginary nothingburger. All because they couldn’t get over Trump upsetting Hillary in 2016.

    Just think of all the time and effort wasted on the Russian collusion fantasy when the nation could have come together to address real issues. Imagine the countless real news stories left uncovered because of all the time wasted on this garbage.

    There will come a reckoning…

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

    The Twitter Primary

    March 24th, 2019

    Twitter is not the end-all and be all of the world, or even of social media, but it does provide a quick-and-dirty estimate of the popularity of various Democratic presidential candidate. So let’s take a snapshot and see who’s winning the Twitter Primary right now.

    The following are all the declared Presidential candidates, plus Joe Biden, ranked in order of most to least followers:

    1. Bernie Sanders: 9.16 million
    2. Cory Booker: 4.22 million
    3. Joe Biden: 3.37 million
    4. Marianne Williamson: 2.61 million
    5. Kamala Harris: 2.49 million
    6. Elizabeth Warren: 2.31 million
    7. Kirsten Gillibrand: 1.39 million
    8. Beto O’Rourke: 1.37 million
    9. Amy Klobuchar: 660,000
    10. Pete Buttigieg: 488,000
    11. Tulsi Gabbard: 312,000
    12. Andrew Yang: 195,000
    13. Julian Castro: 194,000
    14. John Hickenlooper: 139,000
    15. Jay Inslee: 42,000
    16. John Delaney: 18,100

    A few notes:

  • Twitter does rounding, and counts change all the time, so the number might be slightly different when you look at them.
  • I had an old Twitter account for Andrew Yang, now corrected.
  • For a guy that constantly leads polls, Joe Biden isn’t showing much Twitter strength. Biden’s supporters may also skew older than average, including people not on Twitter. He also hasn’t officially entered the race yet.
  • Media darlings Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke are both doing much worse than you would guess from their hype, and much worse than Cory Booker.
  • Governors in the race have abysmally low Twitter follower counts. Both had official announcemnets in March (though Inslee had been running longer than that), so maybe they will rise in time.
  • Julian Castro, a supposedly serious candidate and the only Hispanic in the race, is losing to Andrew Yang.
  • Judging from Twitter strength alone, Marianne Williamson should be a top tier candidate.
  • If I had included them, “rock star” losers Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams would both go between Klobuchar and Buttigieg.
  • Candidates with more Twitter followers than I expected: Booker, Williamson, Gillibrand, Buttigieg.
  • Candidates with fewer Twitter followers than I expected: Biden, Harris, O’Rourke, Castro, Hickenlooper, Inslee, Delaney.
  • John Delaney’s minuscule number of followers does not bode well for the “non-insane” lane in the primaries.

    • For reference, President Donald Trump’s personal account has 59.3 million followers. (The official presidential @POTUS account has 25.5 million, which I’m sure includes a great deal of overlap.)

    As crowded as the field is now, the soft Twitter numbers suggest the race could be ripe for a disruptive outsider celebrity candidate…

    Edited to add: Just from starting to compile this yesterday and posting today, some of the numbers have jumped around quite a lot. Kamala Harris dropped from 2.9 million to 2.49 million, and Pete Buttigieg’s followers jumped by 50,000. Updated numbers above. Maybe just normal volatility, or maybe something screwy going on…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections | 1 Comment »

    Fitzmas II: The Muellering

    March 23rd, 2019

    Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has turned in his report on alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election and “no further indictments are expected.”

    Mueller managed indictments or convictions of a handful of President Donald Trump associates for either process crimes (lying to the FBI) or unrelated, pre-campaign issues like tax evasion, plus some 20 Russian hackers that will never face a jury. Neither President Trump himself nor any of his aides were indicted for Russian collusion.

    For Democrats who relentlessly hyped the Muelller investigation at every opportunity, breathlessly predicting that it would “take down” Trump and his entire administration, this is the biggest wet fart of a disappointment since “Fitzmas.” That was the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation over the “outing” of non-secret agent Valerie Plame that equally breathless liberals predicted would take down the entire Bush43 Administration. In both cases Democrats indulged in naked wish fulfillment rather than sober analysis in anticipating the likely outcome.

    Roger Simon notes that the media destroyed their credibility over the Russian collusion fantasy:

    With only a few exceptions — Fox News, the editorial pages (not the front pages) of the Wall Street Journal, and a handful of websites — the better part of the American media has spent the last two years fulminating about Trump-Russia collusion we now know never existed.

    Actually, we always knew that, but finally, it’s official. It was always a bunch of — excuse the expression — trumped up baloney that made no sense except to those who wished so deeply to believe it was true.

    Which makes the people who were doing that fulminating — media, politicians and (usually retired) intelligence figures, who were, as is becoming increasingly clear, betraying the American Constitutional system with impunity — sick and evil.

    That may sound extreme, but it’s the all-too-obvious truth. What they did is unforgivable, particularly since few, if any of them, will have the honesty or basic morals to apologize. Some, however, may go to jail.

    The provenance of what happened also couldn’t be more obvious. People who considered themselves elite guardians of our country were so appalled by the possible election, and then the actual election, of the “barbarian” Donald Trump, they thought nothing of breaking the law and then exploiting it to bring Trump down. In so doing, consciously or unconsciously, they expressed their utter contempt for roughly half of their fellow citizens, not to mention their disdain for the electoral process and the law many of them swore to uphold.

    It was a conspiracy and, worse yet, a conspiracy ignited and carried out from within the FBI and the Department of Justice. Nothing could be more dangerous to a democratic society than that. How high this conspiracy went is still somewhat unclear. I say “somewhat” because the likelihood of it having reached into the White House of the previous administration is great. It’s hard to imagine how it could have happened otherwise.

    These conspirators all worked in tandem, through leaks or directly, with the aforementioned media that has disgraced itself beyond words. The reputation of this media, never terrific, is in tatters and being washed, deservedly, down the drain. Anyone who believes a word they say from here on in should have his/her or zhe’s head examined.

    In the interests of schadenfreude, here’s a collection of Mueller-related tweets from last night:

    Need your sound on for this one:

    Happy Muellermas, everyone!

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for March 22, 2019

    March 22nd, 2019

    Hope you’re enjoying the spring weather! This week: Jexodus, Clinton emails (yet again), and a fair amount about aircraft. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • President Donald Trump calls for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Since Israeli has controlled the Golan Heights for more than half a century, this would not be a radical and surprising move were it not for much of the world’s (and the Democratic Party’s) antipathy to the Jewish state. Expect liberal Jewish Democrats (see below) to fiercely condemn the move…
  • “How Trump is on track for a 2020 landslide.” Or so says those notorious pro-Trump shills at Politico. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • How dare Chelsea Clinton defend the Jews?

    For those of us who consider Chelsea Clinton a cringe-inducing banality, that she could be accused of anything so momentous, never mind a racist slaughter in the Antipodes, was puzzling indeed. And so it was with great curiosity that I read the Buzzfeed piece in which the pair explain their actions. In it, they accuse Clinton of having “stoked hatred against” all Muslims, everywhere, with a single tweet criticizing just a single one, Ilhan Omar. When the Democratic congresswoman complained about lawmakers being forced to pledge “allegiance to a foreign country,” she wasn’t repeating a hoary anti-Semitic trope which has instigated all manner of desecrations and violent attacks and pogroms. No, according to these NYU coeds, exemplars of American higher education as impressive as those Yale students who screamed at a distinguished professor for hours over Halloween costumes, Omar was “speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country.”

    It is Rep. Omar who is the victim here. “Chelsea hurt our fight against white supremacy when she stood by the petty weaponizers of antisemitism, showing no regard for Rep. Omar and the hatred being directed at her,” Asaf and Dweik declared. English translation: People who are left wing, Muslim or “of color” cannot be anti-Semites, and those who say otherwise will be condemned as handmaidens of Jim Crow. This is especially true if the person in question is, like IIhan Omar, all three.

    Reading the many progressive identity-based defenses of Omar, which repeatedly and pointlessly invoke the fact that she is a hijabi-wearing black refugee being criticized by a white native-born American woman, one gets the impression that this particular legislator can pretty much say whatever she wants and expect to be absolved for it: Her canonization as a left-wing hero is necessary, and irrevocable.

    Omar can’t be an anti-Semite because members of “marginalized” groups are inherently virtuous. This is the ultimate logic of identity politics. Jussie Smollett just had to be telling the truth; he is black and gay and progressive and his purported assailants were white and straight and wearing MAGA hats. But when Asaf and Dweik insist that she “did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo,” they are taking the side of anti-Semites over Jews. They are normalizing anti-Semitism.

    They are not the only ones. For a growing number of progressives, anti-Semitism has become an ideological obligation as central to their political identity as the Universal Basic Income, Green New Deal, a 70-percent marginal tax rate, and free higher education. These progressives, of course, cannot openly say this. Anti-Semitism is bad. Some of their best friends are Jews. The Holocaust happened. So they need to redefine anti-Semitism out of existence, while redistributing the valuable cultural capital of Jewish historical suffering to more deserving groups. Thus, the phenomena of “white Jews.”

    However, I think the author misses one obvious reason Democrats pander to Muslims: They’ve decided they need their votes more than they need Jewish votes, therefore Jews are expendable in order to keep the victimhood identity politics coalition together.

  • More of Jexodus:

    The negative Jexodus will be the aftermath of a radicalization that splits the Democrats, as it did Labour in the UK along dividing lines of militant socialism, Islamism, and anti-Semitism. These three ‘isms’ will split Jewish Democrats alone those same lines leaving the radicals on the inside and moderates outside. Those Jews who remain will be required to prove their loyalty by denouncing Jews and Israel. These demands will be put forward in the stridently anti-Semitic tones commonplace on the fringes of the Left.

    The 2020 season is just getting started and the Sanders campaign’s deputy press secretary, an illegal alien, already accused Jews of being disloyal, and Elizabeth Warren issued a statement in defense of Rep. Omar accusing Jews of inventing anti-Semitism accusations to silence criticism of Israel. It’s no coincidence that these overt shows of anti-Semitism are coming from the leftiest figures in the race.

    And it will only get worse.

    Jewish lefties have a high degree of tolerance for anti-Semitism. But ultimately the only Jews who will be able to remain in the Dem ranks will have very thick skins and career ambitions, like Chuck Schumer, harbor a complicated mix of shame and hatred for Jewishness, like Bernie Sanders, or have no connection to anything Jewish beyond their last names, like your average millennial Obama official.

    The Democrats have shown no ability to moderate their extremist drift. The movements pushing them leftward are, like the Democratic Socialists of America, openly supportive of anti-Semitism.

    That’s the easiest case to make for Jexodus because the Democrats will be the ones to make it.

    Jews will exit the Dems voluntarily or they will be forced out.

    Snip.

    Jewish Democrats have responded to the outbreak of anti-Semitism with the usual nebbish excuses, blaming Israel, Netanyahu, and the ‘politicization of anti-Semitism”. But socialist movements were anti-Semitic before Zionism and Jesse Jackson was slurring Jews as ‘hymies’ long before Netanyahu.

    Israel is a convenient excuse for anti-Semitism, not only by anti-Semites, but by their Jewish apologists who are eager to exercise a sense of control over a hatred that cannot be controlled, by taking the blame. And then placing it as far away as possible, on another country thousands of miles away.

    The anti-Semites blame the Jews. The Jews blame Israel. And nothing is learned from the experience.

  • Ukraine opens investigations of attempts to interfere in the U.S. Presidential elections in favor of Hillary Clinton. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Speaking of Clinton, in “newly revealed emails, [she] discussed classified foreign policy matters, secretive ‘private’ comms channel with Israel.” That is to say, emails from her secret, illegal, unsecured server, which means that back-channel might not have been so “private” after all. I might have to restart the Clinton Corruption Watch updates. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • A masterful takedown of Max Boot’s new book by Sohrab Ahmari:

    The liberal consensus, then, has emerged as a profoundly illiberal, repressive force—precisely because it grants the autonomous individual such wide berth to define what is good and true. If maximizing individual autonomy is the highest good and, indeed, the very purpose of political community, then for ­Chelsea Manning to exercise “her” autonomy requires the state to compel the rest of us to say that “she” wasn’t born male. And even absent state compulsion, as already exists in Canada and elsewhere, the institutions charged with upholding the consensus—corporations, big tech, universities, and elite media—can exact a high price for dissent.

    Snip.

    In Europe and, to a lesser extent, in the U.S., raising a peep about ­unrestricted mass migration was treated as phobic. Likewise, the guardians of the consensus drummed out of the public square those who questioned the wisdom of replicating the West’s political forms in ­societies shaped by history, and countless other factors, to favor order, community, and authority over individual autonomy. On the home front, economic growth, interconnectedness, and openness were treated as the only ideals worthy of the name.

  • Kurt Schilchter says we’re going to lose the coming war with China.

    We’re hanging our whole maritime strategy in the Pacific Ocean around a few of these big, super-expensive iron airfields. If a carrier battle group (a carrier rolls with a posse like an old school rapper) gets within aircraft flight range of an enemy, then the enemy will have a bad day. So, what’s the super-obvious counter to our carrier strategy? Well, how about a bunch of relatively cheap missiles with a longer range than the carrier’s aircraft? And – surprise – what are the Chinese doing? Building a bunch of hypersonic and ballistic anti-ship missiles to pummel our flattops long before the F-35s and F-18s can reach the Chinese mainland. We know this because the Chinese are telling us they intend to do it, with the intent of neutering our combat power and breaking our will to fight by causing thousands of casualties in one fell swoop.

    The vulnerability of our carriers is no surprise; the Navy has been warned about it for years. There are a number of ideas out there to address the issue, but the Navy resists. One good one is to replace the limited numbers of (again) super-expensive, short-range manned aircraft with a bunch more long range drones. Except that means the Naval aviation community would have to admit the Top Gun era is in the past, and that’s too hard. So they buy a bunch of pricy, shiny manned fighters that can’t get the job done.

  • Speaking of fighting the last war, the Air Force plans to buy more F-15Xs and less F-35s, supposedly because the non-stealthy F-15X can carry more weapons and work with F35s to deliver more ordinance. The F-35 has its issues, but this is probably the wrong decision. The Air Force still hasn’t figured out an optimal 21st century platform for carrying out close air support, a mission that institutionally has been among the least favored of its priorities.
  • Offutt Air Force Base sits near Omaha, the home of the Strategic Air Command and several vital aircraft, was affected by the recent flooding.
  • The compounding issues that led to the Boeing 737Max crashes.
  • Russia’s navy sucks:

    The Russian Navy is in trouble. After years of coasting on the largesse of the Cold War, Russia’s navy is set to tumble in size and relevance over the next two decades. Older ships and equipment produced for the once-mighty Soviet Navy are wearing out and the country can’t afford to replace them.

    Snip.

    Russia’s economy, flat on its back for more than a decade, started to claw back in the mid-2000s, thanks in large part to spiking oil prices. Today Russia is the fourth largest spender on defense worldwide. In 2017, the earliest year in which comparisons are possible, Russia’s gross domestic product amounted to $1.5 trillion dollars, of which it spent 4.3 percent on defense. That works out to $66.3 billion for Moscow’s war machine, trailing only the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia (yes, Saudi Arabia spends more on defense than Russia).

    Snip.

    Today, 28 years after the end of the Soviet Union, Russia still relies mostly on Soviet-era ships. The country’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, has suffered from repeated mechanical problems and should be, but probably won’t be, retired immediately. Russia has built no cruisers since 1991, relying on the five impressive-but-aging Kirov and Slava-class cruisers to act as the country’s major surface combatants. Russia has built only one destroyer since the Cold War, the Admiral Chabanenko. Chabanenko was laid down in 1989 and commissioned into service in 1999.

    Likewise, most of Russia’s submarine fleet still consists of Soviet-era submarines, including Delta-class ballistic missile submarines, Oscar-class cruise missile submarines, and Akula, Sierra, Victor, and Kilo-class attack submarines, which have been in service for so long they are still referred to by the code names they were given in Soviet service.

    (Hat tip: CDR Salamander via The Other McCain.)

  • Inside the Russian Collusion Industry:

    Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trump’s campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.

    The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.

    The operation’s nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily “research” briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia “collusion” narrative alive.

    TDIP is led by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator, Clinton administration volunteer and top staffer to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It employs the key opposition-research figures behind the salacious and unverified dossier: Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Its financial backers include the actor/director Rob Reiner and billionaire activist George Soros.

  • Speaking of Soros, here’s a list of all the left-wing oprganizations Soros funds, over 200 of them. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Brexit slightly delayed. Probably until April 12. At which time Theresa May and the EU will probably find some other excuse to delay it again…
  • The MSM continues to lie about president Trump’s Charlottesville remarks. Scott Adams has been noting this for a long time:

  • How Democrats are going to ensure President Trump’s reelection:

    Democrats have floated radical proposals designed only to appeal to the far-left progressive wing of the party. Those ideas include stacking the Supreme Court or, at the very least, implementing term limits for justices; pushing for a constitutional amendment to end the electoral college; reducing the voting age to 16; and ending the legislative filibuster.

    These do not represent the return to norms and values moderate Americans want.

    It’s not fringe Democratic candidates floating such ideas but prominent presidential candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand.

    Mind you, that’s in addition to the Democratic support for the Green New Deal, a massive government undertaking that one former Congressional Budget Office director estimated could cost as much as $93 trillion.

    Let’s be honest: Democrats wouldn’t have offered up such ideas if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016. This is all about Donald Trump and supposedly creating an environment to react to the Trump presidency which can prevent someone like Trump from winning again (via the electoral college).

  • Vietnam veteran finally wins two decade battle against his homeowner’s association to fly the American flag. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years.”
  • Speaking of Facebook, Joe Bob Briggs notes that the best way to suppress hate speech is not to suppress hate speech.

    I’ve seen Klan rallies that are so lame they don’t get noticed. Why don’t they get noticed? Because they chose some town that was wise enough not to care whether they gathered there or not. The Klan has no power until it goes into an area that hates it. Clarence Brandenburg knew this. He could have spoken down in the Appalachian part of Ohio, but he chose sophisticated urban Cincinnati instead. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison. It was a great Klan recruiting year.

  • More corrupt featherbedding from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner:

    Tomorrow, a Houston taxpayer named Darryl Chapman will ask a judge to stop the new contract with Cigna, calling it an illegal procurement, rigged from the start to make sure they won. The court hearing is scheduled for 1:00 pm in Judge Steven Kirkland’s court.

    One of the allegations is that Cigna was given information about medical claims that another company United Healthcare wasn’t given.

    But why would city hall ever play favorites? Isn’t it supposed to be what’s in the best interest of taxpayers and of city employees and their families?

    It’s hard not to notice that the Mayor’s close friend Cindy Clifford was in the room during the vote. Clifford was the head of Mayor Turner’s Inaugural Committee. She’s been on the winning side of a curious number of big city contracts since then.

    City records show she’s the lobbyist for Cigna. The Mayor pushed through the Cigna deal today, even after learning the legal action had been filed.

  • The end of SXSW plus St. Patrick’s Day equals a police shootout and a dead body in a Masarati. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Shut up and be funny.
  • Is Qatar staffing up a couple of foreign mercenary tank battalions?

    Qatar faces an ongoing and immediate threat of destruction by revolution [by] its population of foreign workers. Qatari citizens make up only 12% of the actual population of Qatar. 88% of the populace are imported labor, and Qatar treats them horribly. It is a case that the UK Independent rightly describes as “modern slavery,” and there are far more slaves being abused than there are citizens abusing them.

    For every Qatari citizen — male, female, adult, child, elderly — there are seven working age foreigners walking around who have legitimate reasons to hate them…. [this] explains Qatar’s sudden decision to purchase many new tanks and mobile artillery, allegedly to prepare itself against soccer riots in the 2022 World Cup. You don’t need tanks to stop a soccer riot. However, the Leopard tank variation they are purchasing is optimized for urban warfare; and the mobile artillery can be used to fire canister, while providing the gunners with cover from improvised weapons like Molotov Cocktails, or rifles seized from the police.

  • “Brazilian Nuclear Fuel Convoy Attacked By Heavily Armed Gangsters.”
  • Oklahoma sheriff and staff quit rather than return prisoners to unsafe jail. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Here’s a long (too long) essay about how the need for social media positivity is killing honest book reviewing. But it also displays that insular “only high literature talked about by inner circles of New York cognoscente is worth talking about” attitude that’s a contributing factor to most readers tuning out.
  • The shocking truth about Trump’s America:

  • The Who lead singer Roger Daltry is not impressed with Remainers having cases of the vapors:

  • Justice Brett Busby sworn in on the Texas Supreme Court.
  • Like a Netflix show? Good luck, because Netflix is never going to review it, because long show runs are not part of their business models.
  • “When the Dominatrix Moved In Next Door.” Neighbors go all NIMBY on a “kink collective.” That’s what you get for moving into such a backward, sex-hating location as [checks notes] Brooklyn. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Is this a great state or what?

  • And you thought American sports fans were crazy.
  • Happy National Puppy Day!

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    Caliphate Caput: Take Three

    March 21st, 2019

    This time for sure!

    The very last bit of the Baghuz pocket (formerly the Hajin pocket), the very last defended territory of the Islamic State, AKA Zeno’s Caliphate, appears to have finally been cleared. By the end of battle yesterday, the Islamic State had been reduced to a tiny sliver, and today that sliver was conquered.

    Here’s what the Livemap looked like on March 2, 2019:

    Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

    Livemap finally shows it completely cleared today:

    Syrian Democratic Forces are now searching tunnels to capture or kill any remaining Islamic State members.

    Why did it take so long to clear the pocket? (I first thought the end was a matter of days a month ago.) For one thing, 60,000 civilians were trapped in the pocket, and there have been pauses as a steady stream of them exited over the last two months. For another, the terrain was more daunting than I realized; the last of the Berghuz pocket was smack dab right up against an escarpment that’s too steep to use armor in an attack from the west. Here’s a few tweets that may give you an idea of the geography:

    What all that adds up to is the “Stalingrad” problem: as the front narrows the density of fighters facing you increases.

    Anyway, it seems that the Islamic State, at least as a land-holding caliphate, is finally well and truly crushed. Here’s the same conclusion I used the first time I erroneously declared it dead:

    The media, which seemed to avoid reporting success after hard-won success in the war against the Islamic State, not only ignored the final destruction of the Hajin pocket, is now writing articles about how the Islamic State continues as a transnational terrorist organization. This is both true and largely irrelevant. There are plenty of Islamist terrorist groups to worry about, but the Islamic State’s primary claim to legitimacy, the thing that drew foreign fighters from around the world, was its presumed legitimacy as an Islamic caliphate:

    To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law. Baghdadi’s Islamic State achieved that long before June 29, Cerantonio said, and as soon as it did, a Western convert within the group’s ranks—Cerantonio described him as “something of a leader”—began murmuring about the religious obligation to declare a caliphate.

    In late 2014, the Islamic State controlled some 40,000 square miles of territory. Now it controls nothing. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is no longer a credible caliph, capable of claiming the allegiance of all Sunnis worldwide, but a loser and a failure, assuming he’s even still alive. Ambitious worldwide jihadists no longer have any incentive to pledge bayʿah to al-Baghdadi, and it’s entirely possible that the ones who previously had will drift away or declare their support to another transnational Islamic terrorist group like al Qaeda.

    For this we can thank cost-effective strategy by the U.S.-led coalition to arm and support the Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State, greatly aided by the Trump Administration’s decision to loosen the rules of engagement from what they were under Obama.

    The Islamic State wasn’t completely destroyed today, but the last shred of it’s claim to a caliphate was.

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