Dumbass Texan Arrested Fighting for the Islamic State

January 20th, 2019

The world is filled with dumbasses, and some of them even come from Texas. But it takes a special kind of dumbassery to join the Islamic State:

An American English teacher who joined ISIS says that witnessing people being beheaded never bothered him because ‘they like to execute people in the US too.’

Warren Christopher Clark, 34, who joined the group in spring 2015 before being captured by Kurds earlier this month, spoke out about life in the so-called Islamic State from a prison in northern Syria.

Clark told NBC that during his time in Iraq and Syria ‘I saw some people being executed publicly, I saw some crucifixions… that’s just normal life there.’

Watching your first judicial crucifixion, a man of even average intelligence and/or a functioning moral compass might have said to himself “Huh, maybe I’ve made a mistake.”

Asked how he felt about it, he replied: ‘I’m from the United States, from Texas. They like to execute people, too. So I really don’t see any difference.

‘[Texas] might do it off camera, but it’s the same.’

Clark also admits that he had seen the execution videos before leaving to join the group, and hadn’t been put off.

‘That’s just normal life there,’ he said. ‘This is an Islamic society, an Islamic country, things like this happen.

‘I guess [it didn’t bother me] because I knew what I was coming to see.’

Yeah, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or even the sharpest spoon.

Asked why he decided to join the group, which was being bombed by the US at the time, he said: ‘I wanted to go see exactly what the group was about and what they were doing.’

Clark made contact with the group by applying to be an English teacher at the University of Mosul, Iraq, having been a substitute teacher in Sugar Land, Texas.

He even sent a resume with a cover letter to the course director, under the alias of Abu Mohammed al-Ameriki.

Most people researching radical terrorist organizations don’t feel the need to join them.

By the way, my parents lived in Sugar Land for many years. For those unfamiliar with Texas, it’s a suburban city southwest of Houston where I-69 and Highway 6 meet. A hotbed of Islamic radicalism it’s not.

He was accepted, and in June 2015 Clark said he traveled to Turkey before crossing into Syria and making his way to Iraq.

Two weeks ago he was captured in eastern Syria, near the Euphrates river, as Kurdish forces attempt to flush out the last remaining pocket of ISIS resistance.

He was captured alongside two men from Pakistan, another from Ireland, and a fifth from Trinidad and Tobago.

Only five other American ISIS fighter are known to have been captured alive.

Clark claims he only ever worked as a teacher and refused to fight for ISIS, spending several terms in jail for refusing to pick up a weapon.

When interviewed by NBC he was walking on two crutches, but insisted he was injured in a ‘personal fight’.

Yeah, right.

“US officials have yet to reveal what they will do with Clark and another US citizen purportedly arrested by Kurdish-led forces, Zaid Abed al-Hamid.”

Here’s hoping Mr. Clark gets the precise degree of justice he deserves…

Jonathan Pie on Why May’s Brexit Deal Was So Horrible

January 19th, 2019

Missed this in December, but everyone’s favorite fake UK reporter does a fine job concisely and succinctly explaining why PM Theresa May’s Brexit agreement was such a horrible deal for anyone who voted Leave:

A hard, no-deal Brexit is infinitely preferable to the dog’s Brexit May cooked up.

LinkSwarm for January 18, 2019

January 18th, 2019

This week was filled to the brim with stupid news. I don’t want to get into most of it…

  • “Obama’s Border Patrol Chief Agrees With Trump, Says Build the Wall.”
  • Related Tweet:

  • “Trump Gains 19 Points with Latino Voters During Border Wall Shutdown.” Via that well-known alt right cabal of NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist. Also: Trump popularity rating among Latinos at 50%. Gee, evidently Latinos like jobs and the rule of law too! Who knew? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Democrats cracking? “Moderate, freshman Democrats open to deal.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France.” We could be heroes, just for one day…
  • The Washington Post lies about Texas education reform proposals.
  • Another week, another Trump-Russian collusion “bombshell” bites the dust.
  • In Israel, walls work.
  • Increasingly, to be a Democrat means to hate Israel.
  • “The Democratic National Committee is the latest organization to silently drop its partnership with the Women’s March. The DNC offered no explanation or condemnation of several march leaders’ well-documented history of anti-Semitism, yet the committee’s name is no longer listed as a “sponsor” on the Women’s March partner list.”
  • President Donald Trump orders military to step up missile defense efforts. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Sears not quite dead yet.
  • At least five Saudi citizens in Oregon facing serious charges (“two accused rapists, a pair of suspected hit-and-run drivers and one man with child porn on his computer”) disappeared after posting large bail and/or surrendering their passports.
  • Stupid news: “CNN analyst Areva Martin accused Sirius XM radio and Fox Nation host David Webb of benefiting from ‘white privilege‘ because of his views on race Tuesday morning.” There’s just one tiny problem…
  • Let’s not forget one of the stupidest pieces of stupid news this week: that Gillette “toxic masculinity” ad. Here’s everything wrong with it.
  • Not only should you stop buying Gillette razors, you should consider stop buying everything parent company Proctor & Gamble makes until they clean house:

  • Related tweet:

  • And another:

  • Looks like voters will have a chance to kick around former State Rep. Jason Villalba in their mayoral race. You may remember Villalba from such hits as I Hate Photographers and Lawful Gun Owners and Lisa Luby Ryan Retired My Ass.
  • Missed this in 2017, but it’s worth linking to: “Air Force captain lands A-10 with no canopy, no gear.
  • More Facebook thumb-on-the-scale shenanigans:

  • “In a change designed to make their mission more transparent to Colorado citizens, the state’s Civil Rights Commission updated its mission statement Thursday to read simply “DESTROY JACK PHILLIPS.”
  • Get ready for an NFL strike or lockout in 2021. How can we tell? Language in new coaching contracts.
  • Read SF/F/H books? Here’s my most recent book catalog. And the rest of my stock is here.
  • Judge to City of Austin in Gun Lawsuit: BOOM!

    January 17th, 2019

    Remember that lawsuit against the city of Austin over barring a legally armed citizen from City Hall in violation of state law I mentioned two days ago? Well, State District Judge Lora Livingston just ruled against the city:

    A Travis County judge has ruled that the city of Austin violated state open carry gun laws for blocking a licensed firearms holder from entering City Hall on multiple days in 2016.

    State District Judge Lora Livingston fined the city $9,000. Her ruling came down Thursday, a week after the judge presided over a two-day trial centered on a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

    The suit stated security guards at City Hall blocked local gun activist Michael Cargill, who has a concealed gun permit, from entering the building on multiple occasions. The building had a sign etched in glass prohibiting the presence of guns even though, according to the suit, City Hall was not exempt under the law the same way that a courthouse would be.

    Cargill told the American-Statesman on Thursday that he complained to the city in July 2016 after he was denied entry to the building. When he returned to the building days later and was again told to leave, he alerted Paxton’s office.

    “This means that every city and county, municipality and property, needs to follow the law,” Cargill said Thursday. “This means we absolutely were correct since we won in Travis County — a blue dot in a sea of red.”

    Also this:

    The AG’s office had asked the judge to make Austin comply with the law that states only certain government buildings, like courthouses and those that have school functions, are gun-free. The judge denied that request, saying that there’s no reason to believe Austin will not abide by the law going forward.

    Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    Two Essays: Workers Vs Elites

    January 17th, 2019

    Here are two pretty interesting essays on the “revolt of the masses” currently roiling world politics.

    The first is from Christopher Caldwell about France from two years ago, and which prefigures the “yellow vest” riots:

    In France, a real-estate expert has done something almost as improbable. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in various rapidly changing neighborhoods north of Paris, studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems—immigration tensions, inequality, deindustrialization, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties.

    Snip.

    A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other “symbolic analysts,” as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, “desertified,” haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.

    Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.

    Yet economic opportunities for those unable to prosper in Paris are lacking elsewhere in France. Journalists and politicians assume that the stratification of France’s flourishing metropoles results from a glitch in the workings of globalization. Somehow, the rich parts of France have failed to impart their magical formula to the poor ones. Fixing the problem, at least for certain politicians and policy experts, involves coming up with a clever shortcut: perhaps, say, if Romorantin had free wireless, its citizens would soon find themselves wealthy, too. Guilluy disagrees. For him, there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.

    Snip.

    After the mid-twentieth century, the French state built a vast stock—about 5 million units—of public housing, which now accounts for a sixth of the country’s households. Much of it is hideous-looking, but it’s all more or less affordable. Its purpose has changed, however. It is now used primarily for billeting not native French workers, as once was the case, but immigrants and their descendants, millions of whom arrived from North Africa starting in the 1960s, with yet another wave of newcomers from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East arriving today. In the rough northern suburb of Aubervilliers, for instance, three-quarters of the young people are of immigrant background. Again, Paris’s future seems visible in contemporary London. Between 2001 and 2011, the population of white Londoners fell by 600,000, even as the city grew by 1 million people: from 58 percent white British at the turn of the century, London is currently 45 percent white.

    While rich Parisians may not miss the presence of the middle class, they do need people to bus tables, trim shrubbery, watch babies, and change bedpans. Immigrants—not native French workers—do most of these jobs. Why this should be so is an economic controversy. Perhaps migrants will do certain tasks that French people will not—at least not at the prevailing wage. Perhaps employers don’t relish paying €10 an hour to a native Frenchman who, ten years earlier, was making €20 in his old position and has resentments to match. Perhaps the current situation is an example of the economic law named after the eighteenth-century French economist Jean-Baptiste Say: a huge supply of menial labor from the developing world has created its own demand.

    Snip.

    Guilluy has written much about how little contact the abstract doctrines of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” make with this morally complex world. In the neighborhoods, well-meaning people of all backgrounds “need to manage, day in, day out, a thousand and one ethno-cultural questions while trying not to get caught up in hatred and violence.” Last winter, he told the magazine Causeur:

    Unlike our parents in the 1960s, we live in a multicultural society, a society in which “the other” doesn’t become “somebody like yourself.” And when “the other” doesn’t become “somebody like yourself,” you constantly need to ask yourself how many of the other there are—whether in your neighborhood or your apartment building. Because nobody wants to be a minority.

    Thus, when 70 percent of Frenchmen tell pollsters, as they have for years now, that “too many foreigners” live in France, they’re not necessarily being racist; but they’re not necessarily not being racist, either. It’s a complicated sentiment, and identifying “good” and “bad” strands of it—the better to draw them apart—is getting harder to do.

    France’s most dangerous political battles play out against this backdrop. The central fact is the 70 percent that we just spoke of: they oppose immigration and are worried, we can safely assume, about the prospects for a multiethnic society. Their wishes are consistent, their passions high; and a democracy is supposed to translate the wishes and passions of the people into government action. Yet that hasn’t happened in France.

    Guilluy breaks down public opinion on immigration by class. Top executives (at 54 percent) are content with the current number of migrants in France. But only 38 percent of mid-level professionals, 27 percent of laborers, and 23 percent of clerical workers feel similarly. As for the migrants themselves (whose views are seldom taken into account in French immigration discussions), living in Paris instead of Bamako is a windfall even under the worst of circumstances. In certain respects, migrants actually have it better than natives, Guilluy stresses. He is not referring to affirmative action. Inhabitants of government-designated “sensitive urban zones” (ZUS) do receive special benefits these days. But since the French cherish equality of citizenship as a political ideal, racial preferences in hiring and education took much longer to be imposed than in other countries. They’ve been operational for little more than a decade. A more important advantage, as geographer Guilluy sees it, is that immigrants living in the urban slums, despite appearances, remain “in the arena.” They are near public transportation, schools, and a real job market that might have hundreds of thousands of vacancies. At a time when rural France is getting more sedentary, the ZUS are the places in France that enjoy the most residential mobility: it’s better in the banlieues.

    Read the whole thing.

    There are also some related thoughts on the elite/worker divide from Instapundit Glenn Reynolds:

    In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

    Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the “New Class,” noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”)

    Djilas’ work was explosive — he was jailed — because it made clear that the workers and peasants had simply replaced one class of exploiters with another. It set the stage for the Soviet Union’s implosion, and for the discrediting of communism among everyone with any sense.

    But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements. And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.

    Snip.

    But after the turn of the millennium, other Americans, much like the workers and peasants in the old Soviet Union, started to notice that while the New Class was doing quite well (America’s richest counties now surround Washington, D.C.), things weren’t going so well for them. And what made it more upsetting was that — while the Soviet Union’s apparatchiks at least pretended to like the workers and peasants — members of America’s ruling class seemed to view ordinary Americans with something like contempt, using terms such as “bitter clingers,” “deplorables” and flyover people.

    Suddenly, to a lot of voters, those postwar institutional arrangements stopped looking so good. But, of course, the beneficiaries showed no sign of giving them up. This has led to a lot of political discord, and a lot of culture war, since in America class warfare is usually disguised as cultural warfare. But underneath the surface, talk is a battle between the New Class and what used to be the middle class.

    Both essays are well worth your attention.

    Brexit Update: May Survives Again

    January 16th, 2019

    UK Prime Minister Theresa May survives a no-confidence vote 325-306.

    To quote Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review:

    there are two crises at work. The first is a crisis of responsibility in Parliament. Theresa May’s deal may not be what hard Brexiteers wanted. But they have neither the votes nor the courage to oust May and expose their own Brexit to parliamentary and public criticism. And they certainly don’t have the votes in Parliament to pass their preferred terms. By shooting down a deal that has been negotiated with over two dozen other European heads of state, with the clock ticking down, their rejection of their party leader’s deal makes the possibility of crashing out of the EU without a deal at the end of March more likely, or it will provoke the rest of Parliament to delay or cancel Brexit altogether, possibly inflicting yet another national referendum on the issue.

    The second crisis underlies the first. In the U.K. system, Parliament is supposed to be sovereign. But Brexit was won by national referendum, against the tide of media and parliamentary consensus. That result seemed to give the cause of Brexit a superior form of popular legitimacy. And yet many Tory and Labour MPs, despite running on election manifestos committing themselves to delivering Brexit, are against the project altogether. They hope to show that Brexit is harmful, or “impossible” in some way, thinking that the passage of time will increase an ascendant majority for Remain.

    Snip.

    Parliament may discover that it has no working political majority willing to stand behind any Brexit. Northern Irish ministers don’t want Northern Ireland to be treated differently and may be willing to tolerate the U.K. remaining in the customs union. English Brexiteers despair of being in a customs union if the U.K. loses its ability to shape the rules, thinking it vassalage. The Labour party is led by a not-so-secret Red Brexiteer, Jeremy Corbyn. The overwhelming political lagoon forces Labour to reject every May-negotiated Brexit as ruinous, trying to please their Remain and Leave constituencies at the same time.

    An unprecedented opportunity to reshape the laws and regulations governing the U.K. economy is being squandered. Right now, a solution to these twin crises is not within sight. Parliament has voted for its confidence in May’s leadership and demonstrated that it has none. Pretend confidence. Pretend governance. But there is no way to keep pretending. The U.K. must Leave or Remain, and it is up to Parliament to decide when and how.

    In other Brexit news, EU chief says May should cancel Brexit. Because of course he did.

    Parliament Rejects May’s Dog’s Brexit

    January 16th, 2019

    UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s “let’s give the EU everything they want” abomination of a Brexit bill went down in flames:

    The only meaningful unity that the United Kingdom has seen in the past two years has been opposition to the Brexit deal Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated with the European Union. That agreement, as predicted, suffered a crushing blow in the House of Commons today, voted down by a 432-to-202 margin in what was instantly the worst parliamentary defeat in history.

    The defeat, as predicted, has prompted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to propose a vote, expected to be held on Wednesday, of no confidence in the government. When future historians consider Brexit, they will surely marvel at May’s obstinate capacity for survival in the face of unending political humiliation. Though her authority is all but nil at this point, if she hangs on tomorrow, her leadership will be further cemented. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, though it still doesn’t bring me Brexit . . .

    The no confidence vote is expected around 7 PM UK time.

    Going from the absolute majority May inherited from David Cameron to handing the keys to power to loony leftist Corbyn would be an epic own-goal on May’s part. But Labour are themselves conflicted about how to proceed next.

    And the March 29 Brexit deadline looms…

    (Not entirely useless breakdown on May’s rejected Brexit bill here.)

    Gun News Roundup for January 15, 2019

    January 15th, 2019

    Been a while since I did one of these, so let’s have at it:

  • The Trump Administration’s bump-stock ban is a legal abomination:

    The new rule represents the most sweeping federal gun control effort since the so-called assault weapons ban, which was passed in 1994 and expired in 2003. Even the Obama administration, which was overtly hostile to Second Amendment rights, rejected the logic of Trump’s bump stock ban.

    As a matter of both law and physics, the Trump administration’s gun control rule banning bump stocks is an abomination. The Department of Justice (DOJ), which formally issued the rule, not only ignores underlying federal statutes that precisely define what constitutes a fully automatic “machine gun,” it also ignores the mechanics of how guns are fired and how bump stocks increase the rate of fire. Even worse, the faulty logic of the new gun control rule could eventually be used as a basis for a presidential administration unilaterally banning and confiscating all semi-automatic weapons.

  • Another concern about the bump stock ban: It doesn’t just ban them, it make those already legally purchased before the ban illegal to own:

    “A current possessor may destroy the device or abandon it at the nearest ATF office, but no compensation will be provided for the device. Any method of destruction must render the device incapable of being readily restored to its intended function.”

    Get caught in violation and prepare to have your life destroyed through arrest, prosecution, incarceration and a lifetime ban on owning guns. All brought to you by a “pro-gun” president taking his lead from NRA’s plea to regulate instead of legislate.

    This is, to my mind, an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment, and if allowed to stand, would pave the way for future gun confiscations via regulatory mandate.

  • Borepatch makes his position clear: “Gun control is unconstitutional. All of it. ALL OF IT.” Further: “I would roll it all back past the 1934 Gun Control Act. No lists. No watchdogs. No limits on design or rate of fire.”
  • Speaking of unconstitutional, “red flag laws” are bullshit.”
  • Just in case it was unclear, Democrats really do want to ban all modern sporting rifles. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • City of Austin: Don’t think you can bring your foolish “gun rights” here. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Here, have a lawsuit:

    Austin could face punishment for infringing on the citizen’s rights: state law allows for a $1,500 daily fine for blocking licensed citizens from entering city hall with their permitted handguns. According to Paxton’s press release, the city has been barring the resident for more than 500 days, and the attorney general’s team asked the court to impose a total fine of over $750,000.

  • Democratic Presidential Race Clown Car Update for January 14, 2019

    January 14th, 2019

    More Presidential race news popping up left and right, mainly that Tulsi Gabbard and Julian Castro are both officially In, Tom Steyer is Out, and that some of the people I had down as probably out are already grubbing for money and hiring staffers. I’ve also started adding campaign websites where known.

    No more categories, just a long, long, long list of candidates. Climb in the clown car, aspiring candidates! It will be a year or so before voters start tossing you out…

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Doubtful.
  • Creepy Porn lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: Leaning toward running. “Joe Biden has told some top Democrats that he’s running for president, Axios reported Saturday. The former vice president even set Tuesday as a likely announcement date.” Presumably the Trans-Am is suitably waxed…
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Making noises like he’s getting in. Says he can self-fund and will decide in the next couple of months.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: Probably in. New Jersey law lets him run for both the Presidency and for reelection to the senate simultaneously. Making noises about protecting his left flank.
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Not seeing any signs yet.
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Probably running. He’s visiting Iowa, which suggests he’s in…
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Maybe, leaning toward out. Hearing a lot of boilerplate waffling right now.
  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: Leaning toward in, and reportedly reaching out to potential staffers in Iowa.
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: Probably in, but who cares. Has a Facebook page.
  • Former President Jimmy Carter: Not Running. Look, he actually commented on it. I’m just putting this in here to see if you’re awake…
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Here’s coverage of his announcement and his official website.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not, despite the fact that she just will not shut up. Other candidates are reportedly seeking her blessing, presumably with the soundtrack to The Godfather playing in the background.
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: Out.
  • New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: Maybe. He announced he hadn’t ruled out a run. I can see his campaign being boosted by New Yorkers who feel his absence from the city can only improve municipal governance. An upgrade from “All But Out.”
  • Maryland Representative John K. Delany: In. Has raised nearly $5 million.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Official website. This piece on why parts of the hard left hate Gabbard, which seems to boil down to “she doesn’t hate Trump enough and was prematurely pro-Syrian pullout, as well as being pro-Bernie,” though I would take the geopolitical analysis with several grains of salt. I like her chances better than Elizabeth Warren, and she’s much prettier than Kamala Harris. And she just received her first hit piece from the left. Someone obviously considers her a threat…
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Leaning toward a run, but I’m not hearing much buzz.
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Probably In. She’s staffing up for a run. An upgrade over Probably Out.
  • Former Vice President Al Gore: No signs of a run.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: All but in.
  • Outgoing Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: Probably in. Has been meeting with donors, along with…
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In.
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Probably not.
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign. It would cut into his wind-surfing.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: Still considering a run.
  • New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Conflicting reports as to whether he’ll run, and one commenter on the last roundup mentioned him. Arguing for no: Ask anyone “What do you love about New Orleans?” and not one person will reply “The honest, efficient governance!”
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Leaning toward a run. Another guy looking around for money.
  • Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley: Sure looks like he’s running. And it sure looks like nobody cares.
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama: Out.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: Probably In. Oprah is interviewing him in Times Square next month. Golly, sounds like the perfect time to announce a run, doesn’t it?
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Out.
  • Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan: Maybe? All the buzz seems to be from the middle of last year; nothing recent.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: Probably running.
  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Out. Added to the list just to subtract him…
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: Probably running. Visiting South Carolina, an early primary state.
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. It’s a tough call whether she or Kamala Harris are more pissed about Tulsi Gabbard entering the race.
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Probably not running.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Running but no one cares.
  • You can see odds on the usual suspects as well as all sorts of unlikely people running. Their current ranked odds on the Dem nominee are:

    1. Beto O’Rourke
    2. Kamala Harris
    3. Joe Biden
    4. Bernie Sanders
    5. Elizabeth Warren

    I think those are more realistic than that Daily Kos poll.

    Any serious potential candidates I’m missing?

    Google Won’t Autocomplete “peter strzok lisa page”

    January 13th, 2019

    Here’s another case of Google putting its thumb on the scale, making you go out of your way to find what it thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to find: Google won’t autocomplete the phrase “peter strzok lisa page.”

    Or “lisa page peter strzok“:

    You know, the adulterous FBI lovers whose anti-Trump texts were in the news for months? Google evidently doesn’t think the same autocomplete that extends to just about any other news story that doesn’t cover the FISA scandal should apply to them. I first saw this pointed out by commenter whitney at Ann Althouse’s blog.

    Here some other notable phrases Google won’t autocomplete: “fbi conspiracy

    fisa warrant trump“:

    It’s not just the FBI FISA scandal. Google also doesn’t want you to know other facts about various Democratic operatives. For example, it won’t autocomplete the phrases Willie Brown mistress” or “Kamala Harris mistress:

    Strangely, Google won’t autocomplete just “Beto DUI” itself, but will autocomplete “Beto DUI reddit“:

    Looks like someone was asleep at the censorship switch, there.

    Google evidently exists to let you find any information you want…except when it’s embarrassing to Democrats.