All Waco Biker Cases Dropped

April 3rd, 2019

Nine dead. Eighteen wounded. 170 arrests. 106 indictments. 1418 days.

Zero convictions.

All remaining criminal cases will be dismissed from the 2015 Twin Peaks biker shootout that left nine dead and 20 injured, prosecutors said Tuesday, ending a four-year prosecutorial fiasco that resulted in zero convictions.

McLennan County District Attorney Barry Johnson said he will dismiss the remaining 24 criminal cases to “end this nightmare that we have been dealing with in this county since May 17, 2015.”

Johnson’s decision means no one will be held accountable for killing and injuring bikers or for engaging in a chaotic battle in a shopping center parking lot in front of a Sunday lunchtime crowd.

“There were nine people who were killed on that fateful day in Waco, Texas, and 20 injured, all of whom were members of rival motorcycle clubs/gangs, and the loss of life is a difficult thing,” Johnson said. “But after looking over the 24 cases we were left with, it is my opinion as your district attorney that we are not able to prosecute any of those cases and reach our burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Johnson inherited the Twin Peaks cases when he took office in January, and said he has spent 75 percent of his time since then with a team of prosecutors and investigators trying to determine how to resolve the remaining cases.

About 200 bikers were arrested after the shootout on identical charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and held on $1 million bonds each. Former McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna sought indictments against 155 bikers on those identical charges and chose to try Jacob Carrizal, the Bandidos Dallas county chapter president, first.

Carrizal’s case, tried in Waco’s 54th State District Court, ended in mistrial in November 2017, with most of the jurors in his case favoring acquittal. No other defendant has been tried since.

Johnson’s campaign hammered Reyna for his handling of the Twin Peaks cases, and he won the March 2018 Republican primary by 20 percentage points. After the primary, Reyna dismissed all but 24 of the remaining Twin Peaks cases.

Johnson probably made the right call here, as Reyna cocked things up so badly by refusing to charge individual bikers with individual crimes, choosing instead to charge almost every biker arrested with “conspiracy,” evidently operating on an unconstitutional theory of collective guilt. At least some of the dead appear to have been killed by police rifles, and there are reports of law enforcement officials failing to render aid to the wounded.

Thanks to Abel Reyna, multiple people got away with murder, while over a hundred people got arrested, and had their lives destroyed, not for actually committing any crimes, but simply for wearing the wrong colors and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

More background here if you haven’t been following the story from the start.

(Hat tip: Dwight.)

Mueller Video Reactions Roundup

April 2nd, 2019

Keep seeing some clever video reactions to the Mueller report, so let’s round them all up here.

First up: Via Borepatch comes the inevitable Hitler parody.

Andrew Wimsatt posted this perfect Rachel Maddow supercut from the Greg Gutfeld show to Twitter:

Speaking of Gutfield, he tears into the media:

Louder With Crowder went all-out in the open here:

Most of the SNL Mueller bits were lame, but this one was moderately funny:

Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for April 1, 2019

April 1st, 2019

What use is April Fools Day when there are so many fools to choose from? That aside, Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam is In, while Biden continues his Hamlet routine. (Given what last week’s Mueller-Avenatti-Smollett smashup was like, I don’t really blame him anyone for not launching their campaign last week.) Eric Swalwell was do disappointed by the Mueller report that he’s going to run for President to ease the pain, sort of like sawing off your own leg to make you forget a toothache. There’s a little Buttigieg boomlet going on. And with the quarter just ended, fundraising totals are starting to trickle out.

Polls
A Quinnipiac national poll has it Biden 29, Sanders 19, O’Rourke 12, Harris 8, and Warren and Buttigieg in a distant fifth tied at 4% each. Most interesting tidbit? O’Roruke has double Harris’ support among black people, and ties it among women.

An Emerson Iowa poll had it Biden 25, Sanders 24, Buttigieg 11, Harris at 10, with Warren, Booker and O’Rourke trailing in single digits.

A Harvard poll of young voters showed they love them some geezers:

America’s youngest voters prefer the oldest 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls over those closer to them in age, and millennial women are showing little problem with former Vice President Joe Biden’s personally touchy style that has drawn the scorn of some #MeToo champions, according to a new survey.

The Harvard Youth Poll found that Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, and Biden, 76, top the choices of voters aged 18-29.

Sanders leads Biden 31 percent to 20 percent, said the survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy’s School.

Notably, one of the youngest Democratic candidates, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, registered just 10 percent. But that makes him the third top choice of the younger voters.

Everyone else was back in single digits.

“The one big takeaway from every 2020 Democratic primary poll: The 2020 Democratic primary won’t really start until Joe Biden runs — or doesn’t.”

538 Presidential roundup.

538 polls.

Democratic Party presidential primary schedule.

Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe?Stacey Abrams builds massive political network ahead of 2020 decision.” “Stacey Abrams is set to reveal soon whether she’ll run for president or senator or something else. But in recent months, the Democrat has mounted a nationwide, largely below-the-radar effort to expand her donor and political network that will make her an instant force whatever she decides.” She also ruled out preemptively agreeing to be Biden’s VP.
  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Out. Plus it’s gone be hard to run for president from inside a federal prison. (Bonus kick.)
  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Leaning Toward In. Says he’s very inclined to run.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: Leaning Towards Running. Biden isn’t even in the race yet, and they’re already dropping opposition research from the 1970s on him. Here’s a piece detailing all his deviationist votes from social justice warrior orthodoxy. Nevada Democrat Lucy Flores complains about Biden creeping on her. Biden says it’s hooey. Of course, Flores just happens to be a staunch Sanders supporter. More on Creepy Uncle Joe:

    Joe Biden is a creepy old goat. Everyone knows this. There is much photographic evidence of him crossing the line with women. He’s also a liar and a buffoon. But the Democratic party’s public-relations arm, aka the mainstream media, has never before had any incentive to hold Biden up to scrutiny. Why bother? When he became veep, any attack on Biden risked looking like casting aspersions on the man who made him his number two, and the media could not countenance any naysaying about the judgment of the Precious.

  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Out.
  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. He had a CNN town hall. Here’s a recording of his AIPAC conference speech.
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown: Doesn’t sound like it. He’s off on a ranch.
  • 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. He keeps saying he doesn’t want to run for the Senate,
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. There’s a little Buttigieg boomlet going on. He pulled in $7 million in fundraising in Q1. He got a new York Times profile. With him doing well in that Emerson poll, he’s already getting the but he’s a white male!” backlash. And that Washington Post piece tells us how to pronounce his name: “Boot-edge-edge.” Which just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way “Dick Butt” does…
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.: Out.
  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He was in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Back in January, Jim Geraghty noted: “Julián Castro was the candidate of tomorrow, and always will be.” It also included this tidbit:

    In 2012, Rosie Castro caused her son a bit of a headache when she told The New York Times Magazine that the Texans at the Alamo were “a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them…I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.” It’s not often you see a mayor’s mother trashing the city’s most famous historical site.

  • 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. He’s even losing the popularity contest to Buttigieg in the city of which he’s mayor.
  • Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Campaigning in Iowa.
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tulsi Gabbard Says It’s Time to ‘Move Forward’ After Trump-Russia Investigation.” “Now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country.” Yeah, I bet that stance is going to make her super popular among Democratic primary voters…
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti: Out.
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She released her 2018 tax returns. A smart move, assuming anyone pays attention to it…
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. “Unless somebody I know who inspires me on a regular basis decides to do something else, he’d be focusing all his energy on getting Florida voters registered and turning the state blue in 2020.” Downgrade from Maybe.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris is popular with her California constituents…but not super-popular, and the state doles out delegates proportionally. Interestingly, left-leaning PolitiFact said that her assertion that President Trump was raiding money from soldier pensions was false. And speaking of Jussie Smollett:

  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Hickenlooper is certainly different.” One way he’s different: He suffers from “face blindness,” the inability to remember someone’s face, a very un-politician-like disease.
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Out.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. He released his tax returns as well.
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. She visited Iowa to check out flooding damage. “There are half a dozen Democrats running for president who fill VFW halls or city squares or public parks. Klobuchar is not one of those Democrats. Her audiences are rapt and curious but small. Her Friday night visit to Council Bluffs, which took place in the same venue and time of day as Warren’s first visit to the city, attracted 75 people.” She also unveiled an very expensive infrastructure plan. How expensive?

  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Probably Out.
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe: Leaning toward a run? Here’s another “he’s leaning toward getting in” piece.
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley: Out. Filing for reelection to the senate instead.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. He announced Saturday.

    In the first speech of his presidential campaign, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam on Saturday said he’s aiming to “give Americans a second chance at the American Dream.”

    The 44-year-old son of Jamaican immigrants said his top priorities are greatly reducing gun violence and preventing mass shootings, eliminating college loan debt, reversing harmful climate change, and rebuilding ties with America’s allies across the planet.

    “We will meet this challenge,” Messam told the crowd at the Lou Rawls Center for the Performing Arts at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. He used the “Black Panther” movie song “Pray for Me” as his theme music.

    With all of five thousand twitter followers, Messam takes the longest of longshots crown from John Delaney. However, as a black mayor with a compelling personal story, the media will be unable to ignore him as they’ve largely ignored Delany, no matter how much Harris and Booker campaigns might wish they would. And the inevitable Obama comparisons won’t hurt, though I don’t see him having anything near that magnetism. Florida’s primary is March 17, fairly early but after Super Tuesday, and it’s possible that Messam’s favorite son bid could make some noise there, especially if Gillum doesn’t jump into the race.

  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? Yet another guy who says he’ll decide in the next few weeks.
  • 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. He kicked off his campaign with a rally in El Paso. “Beto O’Rourke is 2020’s John Edwards.” Especially how he magically shifted from a theoretical centrist who opposed ObamaCare to “a full-throated liberal.” Peter Beinart swoons over O’Rourke’s immigration ideas. “In his bicultural and bilingual hometown of El Paso, while speaking in both English and Spanish, he imagined the United States helping itself by helping Central America.” It’s the usual “my favored candidates policy ideas are extremely persuasive” piece no one will remember a week from now. The El Paso Times puts up, then takes down, a “Beto is a Furry” meme explainer.
  • 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? He was at a forum in Iowa.
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bernie “three houses” Sanders is not so keen on releasing his taxes. Also promises to magically cut prescription drug prices in half.
  • Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer: Out.
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell: All But In. He told an audience he was announcing in two weeks. Maybe he can spend his Presidential campaign looking for the real Russian colluders. (Upgrade from Maybe.)
  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. She just lost her financing manager. “Her staff is sensitive enough about the “but can she win” concerns that last week it issued a lengthy campaign memo, in the guise of a fund-raising email, detailing her platform and resume while offering a reminder that she is the only candidate who in recent years has defeated a statewide Republican incumbent.” Yeah, in Massachusetts, which for a Democrat is like Kramer beating up 9-year olds in his karate class.
  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. Robert Stacey McCain has been out on the trail covering the Williamson campaign.

    Say hello to Marianne Williamson, a best-selling author who has often been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru.” Although she isn’t even a single-digit blip in the national polls, Ms. Williamson’s campaign has already been featured on ABC’s Nightline, and her campaign appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire have received respectful coverage in such local media as the Des Moines Register and the Concord Monitor. Her only previous foray into electoral politics was a fourth-place finish in a 16-candidate California congressional race in 2014, but Ms. Williamson seems to have learned a lot in the past five years. Her campaign website is state-of-the-art, her calendar of public appearances is carefully targeted toward the early primary and caucus states, and she has already hired state campaign directors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. “We’re getting traction,” Williamson campaign spokeswoman Patricia Ewing told me in a brief telephone interview Thursday. “We’re very happy with it.”

    Ms. Ewing said the campaign is “confident” Ms. Williamson will surpass the crucial metric of 65,000 unique donors that the Democratic National Committee has established as the threshold to participate in the first televised debates. She already has more than 25,000 donors, Ms. Ewings said. “It’s not a stress point for us at all. We know we’re going to hit the numbers by the time the DNC wants us to.” Ms. Williamson has spent more than 30 years making public appearances to promote her popular books and, before launching her current campaign, went on a 75-city national tour with an average of 500 people attending each event, Ms. Ewing said. Do the math, and that adds up to nearly 40,000 dedicated supporters. Given how easily an “outsider” candidate like Trump vanquished a field of Republican politicians in the 2016 primaries, it’s not impossible that Ms. Williamson could pull off a similar feat among Democrats in 2020. “We believe that a presidential candidate can come from someone who is not a career politician,” Ms. Ewing said. “Someone who has an understanding of the breadth and width of the country.”

    More from McCain:

    For all the talk about the Religious Right’s role in Republican politics, little attention is paid to the influence among Democrats of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Williamson is a recognized leader. And if the odds against her winning her party’s 2020 presidential nomination are a million-to-one, there are nonetheless serious Democrats who believe she can achieve such a miracle. One of them is Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu, state director of the Williamson campaign. An experienced politician who served in the Georgia legislature before returning to her native South Carolina, Dr. Tinubu was twice the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District, getting more than 100,000 votes against Republican Rep. Tom Rice in this deep “red” district. Dr. Tinubu introduced Ms. Williamson at Bethel A.M.E. by saying, “I consider her a sister,” which is about as strong an endorsement as any Democrat needs here.

    Snip.

    If the “Three B’s” (Biden, Bernie, and Beto) are Trump’s “dream” of a 2020 opponent, Ms. Williamson might just be his worst nightmare. Like him, she’s an outsider, a non-politician without the kind of political baggage that sank Hillary Clinton. And she brings to the campaign a spiritual vibe that could connect with swing voters. “Politics should not be a pursuit disconnected from the heart,” her campaign literature proclaims. “Where fear has been harnessed for political purposes, let’s now harness the power of love.” Sure, conservative readers will roll their eyes at that kind of emotional appeal, but what about suburban “soccer moms”? What about the millions of women who’ve bought Ms. Williamson’s books or seen her many TV appearances with Oprah? What about the congregation at Bethel A.M.E. that applauded Ms. Williamson’s call for reparations for slavery?

    All the same pundits who confidently predicted Trump’s defeat would say it is impossible Ms. Williamson could win the Democrats’ 2020 nomination, and that’s the really spooky thing. We are living in a world where impossible things seem to be happening with remarkable frequency, and it’s foolish to say miracles never happen. How odd was it, after all, that Ms. Williamson was speaking Sunday from the pulpit of a black church in South Carolina? Not only is she white, she’s Jewish. (To quote New York Jewish Week: “Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one.”) She mentioned the Jewish celebration of Purim, which commemorates Esther’s role in saving the Jews of Persia. She didn’t mention the famous question Mordecai asked of Esther: “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Indeed, who knows? In such a time as this, perhaps Ms. Williamson could be the miracle that saves Democrats from themselves.

  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey: Out.
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: Running but no one cares. Twitter. Facebook. He gets a WIRED interview. Lots of talk of AI and robots.
  • Chris Rock Slams Jussie Smollett

    March 31st, 2019

    At the NAACP Image Awards, so extra style points:

    Democratic Operatives With Bylines

    March 30th, 2019

    This is a small anecdote about a small news story (a scoop when the first Democratic debates are to be held), but an indicative one:

    Instapundit called them “Democratic operatives with bylines,” and here we have a media figure asking a colleague to bury a scoop, not based on her organization’s needs, but because it might hurt the Democratic Party.

    The amazing thing about this story is the tininess of the stakes. If one media operative was this insistent over such a trivial scoop, how many times has she or another MSM functionary gone to the mat over over far more important stories that might damage the Democratic Party? We know that most of the MSM has pursued the nothingburger of the Russian collusion fantasy for two years because it might damage Donald Trump and the Republican Party. How many stories damaging to the DNC has the MSM suppressed?

    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.
  • 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.

    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.

    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…)

    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”…