LinkSwarm for August 9, 2019

August 9th, 2019

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! It’s been both super busy and super-hot here at BattleSwarm headquarters…

  • Leftward ho:

    Ah, the good ol’ days of . . . April, or so, when conservative critics of the Democratic party could still count on being lectured to about the enduring moderation of Team Blue and chastised for paying so much attention to such figures as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and Senator Bernie Sanders (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and claiming that these self-described socialists are the socialists they describe themselves as being, who want to “abolish capitalism” (the stated mission of the Democratic Socialists of America) and the traditional family to boot (“democratizing the family to get rid of patriarchal relations,” in the words of the Democratic Socialists of America), all of which, the usual media scolds tut-tutted, was unfair. “The Democratic party is the party of moderates,” as Politico magazine editor Bill Scher argued.

    Somebody must have slipped some psilocybin into the Democrats’ potato salad at this year’s May Day picnic. Open borders? Check! Eviscerating the Bill of Rights? Absolutely, with one of those weird barbed Uncle Henry gut-hook knives! What else? I hope that whichever debate moderator finally presses this crew about the limits of late-term abortion is over 35, because Elizabeth Warren was pretty clearly ready to roll up her sleeves and perform an impromptu D&E right there underneath the Art Deco adornments and heavy brocade curtains of the Fox Theater in beautiful downtown Detroit.

  • Speaking of the Democratic Socialists of America, Stephen Green looks in on those lunatics. “No perfume in the quiet room, no misusing doors, no talking to cops, no talking to the press, always display your credentials, beware of right wing infiltrators.” Plus the usual lunacy about pronouns, and triggering, and singing “The Internationale.”
  • Border control policies start working:

    Monthly apprehensions of migrants in Mexico have begun to slow down, indicating that its government’s recent border crackdown is yielding results.

    Authorities in Mexico apprehended 18,758 migrants in July, according to preliminary data from Mexico’s immigration agency, reported by The Wall Street Journal. While this number is more than double the amount detained in the same month last year, it is a decline from the record-setting 31,573 apprehensions in Mexico in June.

  • “China Wants to Hit Back at Trump. Its Own Economy Stands in the Way.”

    China’s imports from the United States only a fraction of the trade going the other way, so it cannot match Washington tariff for tariff. Much of that trade consists of agriculture goods like soybeans, as well as specialized products like Boeing jetliners or the American-made chips for the smartphones China makes.

    There are several things China could do. It could call for a boycott of American goods or stop buying Boeing planes. It could devalue its currency, which would in effect partially nullify American tariffs. It could make life much harder for American business and executives in China, or it could exercise its power over key parts of the global supply chain, like its dominance over key manufacturing minerals called rare earths.

    Some investors on Friday signaled they expect at least one of those moves. China’s currency, the renminbi, fell to its weakest point so far this year. Shares of rare earths companies rose, while Boeing’s shares fell more than the broader market on Thursday.

    But each of these measures has drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest among them is that China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in 27 years. Many of the arrows Beijing has in its quiver could ricochet and hit its own factories and workers.

    Plus the perils of weakening the renminbi. Also: “As they consider their moves, Chinese officials will also try to parse Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. Experts said his capricious style had flummoxed Beijing.”

  • How the media pick and choose which parts of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto to hype.
  • More on the same subject:

    The manifesto is insane. Part of it discussed commonly debated issues such as the environment and the economy in ways that are well within the boundaries of political conversation going on today — indeed, that might have come out of the New York Times or many other outlets. Other parts of it mixed in theories on immigration from far right circles in Europe and the U.S. Then it threw in beliefs on “race-mixing” straight from the fever swamps. And then it concluded that the solution is to murder Hispanic immigrants, going on to debate whether an AK-47 or an AR-15 would best do the job. By that point, Crusius had veered far from both reality and basic humanity.

    But the question is, was he inspired by President Trump? It is hard to make that case looking at the manifesto in its entirety.

    Crusius worried about many things, if the manifesto is any indication. He certainly worried about immigration, but also about automation. About job losses. About a universal basic income. Oil drilling. Urban sprawl. Watersheds. Plastic waste. Paper waste. A blue Texas. College debt. Recycling. Healthcare. Sustainability. And more. Large portions of the manifesto simply could not be more un-Trumpian.

  • Dayton shooter was indeed a “Pro-Satan Leftist Who Supported Elizabeth Warren.”
  • How President Donald Trump changes the political calculus.

    This is a colossal fraud, and it won’t work. The public doesn’t buy it; the candidates aren’t talking about it; when Congress returns in September, Lindsey Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee will grill the authors of the politicization of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other parts of the Obama Justice Department as well as the propagators of the false Steele dossier and the fraudulent FISA warrant applications. Graham (R-S.C.), will get the publicity, and the bare-faced liars who chair the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), will be talking to themselves about their “solid evidence” of the president’s crimes. Weissman and the lesser Democratic Torquemadas couldn’t find them; Nadler and Schiff can’t declare what their evidence is (because there is none).

    This is the last echo of this attempted rape of the Constitution and no one will be listening when the Congress returns in September. They will listen to the Graham committee’s exposés of the Democrats who acted corruptly, and they will notice the indictments when the special counsel, (John Durham, who unlike Mueller does have full retention of his faculties), starts bringing them down.

    The president deliberately has escalated the controversy by attempting to make the four extremist freshman Democratic congresswomen the real face of the Democrats, and by pointing out, in the case of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the inappropriateness of Cummings’ assault on the integrity of the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

    The president undoubtedly knows that he is playing with fire assaulting the most holy of the taboos of political correctness so explicitly, though his grasp of the political arithmetic is almost certainly correct. I assume he can reassure his own followers and whatever independent voters may be left in this fierce partisan crossfire that he is not racist. In sober times, it would be clear that no case whatever exists that he is a racist. But these are not sober times and he has contributed something to their insobriety, though—one must remember—in reaction to immense provocations.

  • Is the UK headed for a November 1st election the day after Brexit? (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • How Trump’s legal team of “nobodies” defeated Robert Mueller’s team of credentialed elites.
  • Liberals just come out and admit that yes, they do indeed want to seize the guns of law-abiding Americans.
  • More on “Red Flag” laws:

  • Active shooters are a rounding error. “If you feel the need to take training to protect your life and the lives of your loved ones, take a Defensive Driving Course.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
  • “AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company’s network. DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
  • Two Amazon subcontractor drivers stole an estimated $10 million worth of goods over several years, selling many items through pawn shops.
  • “Minimum Wage Hikes in NYC Are Forcing Businesses to Cut Jobs and Raise Prices.”
  • Washington Post writer goes through Sugar Detox.

    But here’s the part that blew my mind: I started to lose weight. Before the detox I weighed 166 pounds. Twelve weeks later, I hit a new low adult weight: 155. I’ve cinched in my belt a notch. My bloodwork looks much better (my triglycerides dropped by half in six weeks). And as my belly fat has reduced, I do feel better and more energetic.

    The weight-loss and triglyceride reduction mirrors my own experience when I first went on Atkins.

  • Speaking of meat: the vegetarians who became butchers.
  • New York Times revenues continue to decline. I’m sure that somehow this is all Russia’s fault…
  • Leftwing protestors call for the murder of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Naturally Twitter suspended the account…of his reelection campaign, for showing videos of leftwing protestors calling for his murder:

  • Lunatic tranny balls-waxing lawsuit filer Jonathan Yaniv arrested for brandishing a stun gun.
  • Uber lost $5.24 billion this quarter. That’s with a “B”.
  • At least two people on Joaquin Castro’s list of San Antonio Trump donors also donated to him. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • ”Democrats Propose Creation Of National Trump Voter Registry.
  • “Experts Warn We Have Only 12 Years Left Until They Change The Timeline On Global Warming Again.”
  • Borepatch: Red Flag Laws Are Stupid and Useless

    August 8th, 2019

    Lots of “red flag” talk after the latest shooting panics, but Borepatch would like to remind us that such laws are stupid and useless.

    The Parkland shooter was known to be a nutcase, having been reported to the local police some four dozen times (and twice to the FBI). Nobody took action, because the local (and likely national) government agencies thought that doing so would screw up the crime statistical goals that they were trying to achieve. While it’s very early after the event, it appears that lots of people knew that the Dayton shooter was a nutcase. Nobody did anything. The Air Force dishonorably discharged a guy because he was, well, a nutcase – but forgot to update the NCIC database with this information. The nutcase was able to buy a gun and kill a bunch of people in a church.

    These are just the examples that come to mind; presumably a thorough analysis my the media or by social scientists would turn up many more examples. Of course, the media and social scientists don’t want to look into this because it would hurt their push for more gun control.

    Left unsaid: Red flag laws are not only a Second Amendment violation, but a Fifth Amendment violation as well, violating due process of law. Legal expert Alan Dershowitz argues that we don’t have the tools to make such laws work:

    Research shows that any group of people identified as future violent criminals will contain many more who will not be violent (false positives) than they will (true positives). More true positives mean more false ones. Such groups also fail to identify many future violent criminals (false negatives).

    We do not currently have the predictive tools needed to increase the number of true positives while reducing false positives. We may one day develop such tools, but how many false positives are we willing to tolerate until then to reduce the number of false negatives? Put another way: How many law-abiding people are we prepared to steal weapons to prevent another mass shooting?

    For those who favor strict gun control, the answer may seem obvious. They believe it is worth it for 100 or 1,000 non-violent people to lose their weapons to prevent mass shootings. But those who view gun possession as a fundamental right under the Second Amendment – as the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) – frame the problem differently. They ask: Can the government deprive a citizen of a constitutional right based on a prediction?

    Red Flag laws run the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. If the government can take your weapons based on a prediction today, what will prevent it from taking your freedom based on a prediction tomorrow?

    Indeed, everywhere on Twitter this week, the left have been saying two things:

    1. We need to remove guns from the hands of racists, and
    2. Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist.

    So hell no, we’re not disarming now or in the future, especially not when Democratic Party partisans are in the grip of mass hysteria.

    Joaquin Castro Does Something Really Stupid

    August 7th, 2019

    Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro just did something really stupid:

    You can point out until you’re blue in the face that it isn’t technically doxing since it didn’t include addresses, and was based on public information, but it is clearly targeted harassment based on political beliefs.

    And also notice, yet again, Democrats intentionally misspelling “illegal alien” as “Hispanic immigrant.”

    Tweets on the subject:

    This also means that I now have to eat at Bill Miller BBQ at least once, even though they suck…

    The Great Baltimore Cleanup

    August 6th, 2019

    In the unending barrage of bad news, it’s easy to overlook the good things. Take, for example, this Republican effort to clean up Baltimore:

    Many a morning, 58-year-old Millie Jefferson finds herself outside her home in West Baltimore, sweeping her front steps and picking up trash on her block. Monday, she had some unexpected visitors.

    Dozens of volunteers gathered near her home on North Fulton Avenue and started bagging garbage and weeding, too. They were inspired by Scott Presler, a Republican activist from northern Virginia who started a social media campaign to help clean up Baltimore’s 7th congressional district in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tweets about it last month.

    “We can’t do it alone,” Jefferson said. “It makes me feel good to see that there are still some good people and good communities that want to see better.”

    The volunteers donned gloves and wielded rakes and weed wackers as they combed through trash dumped in the neighborhood and hacked away grasses peeking through the sidewalks. Beneath a pop-up tent, they signed a poster with the words “Americans Helping Americans.”

    I’m thankful that [Trump] brought attention to Baltimore,” said Presler, a conservative commentator with several hundred thousand followers on Twitter. “It’s important to know that although we are the best, freest, greatest country in the world, we still have our problems, and we can’t look at the world just through rose-colored glasses.”

    Just imagine if President Donald Trump himself were to spend one weekend a month cleaning up an inner city neighborhood in various parts of the country. Democrats could scream “Stunt!” until they were blue in the face while they watched their near-monopoly on inner city black voters slip further and further away…

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for August 5, 2019

    August 5th, 2019

    Gravel is out, Creepy Porn Lawyer threatens a return, the Biden bunch banks big bucks, Ryan hits the showers, and Michelle says no (yet again). It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • Morning Consult: Biden 31, Sanders 18, Warren 15, Harris 10, Buttigieg 6, Booker 3, O’Rourke 3, Yang 2.
  • Harvard CAPS/Harris: Biden 34, Sanders 17, Harris 9, Warren 8, Buttigieg 4, O’Rourke 3, Booker 2.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Who all has qualified for the September debates: Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Sanders and Warren. Castro, Gabbard and Yang have hit the fundraising threshold, but not the polling threshold.
  • Matt Tabbi of Rolling Stone watches the Democrats wander around Iowa and is not impressed:

    Traveling hundreds of miles across Iowa, passing cornfields and covered bridges, visiting quaint small town after quaint small town, listening to the stump speeches of Democrat after would-be Donald Trump-combating Democrat, only one thought comes to mind:

    They’re gonna blow this again.

    Imagine how it looks to Republicans. If that’s too difficult or unpalatable, just look at the swarm of 24 Democratic candidates in high school terms.

    The front-runner — the front-runner! — is septuagenarian gaffe machine Joe Biden, who started running for president in the Eighties and never finished higher than “candidacy withdrawn,” with a career delegate total matching John Blutarsky’s grade-point average, i.e., zero point zero. The summer’s “momentum” challenger is California Sen. Kamala Harris, who spent all year sinking in polls but surged when she hit Biden with “I don’t think you’re a racist . . . but . . .” on national TV.

    A third contender is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a famed red-state punchline who already has 10,000 Pocahontas tweets aimed at her head should she make it to the general. Her “I have a plan for that” argument for smarter government makes her a modern analog to Mike Dukakis — another Massachusetts charisma machine whose ill-fated presidential run earned him a portrait alongside the Hindenburg in a Naked Gun movie.

    A fourth challenger, Bernie Sanders, is a self-proclaimed socialist born before the Pearl Harbor attack who’s somehow more hated by the national media than Trump. A fifth, Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has never earned more than 8,515 votes in any election. The claim to fame of a sixth, Beto O’Rourke, is that he lost a Senate bid to the world’s most-hated Republican. It goes on.

    The top Democrats’ best arguments for office are that they are not each other. Harris is rising in part because she’s not Biden; Warren, because she isn’t Bernie. Bernie’s best argument is the disfavor of the hated Democratic establishment. The Democratic establishment chose Biden because he was the Plan B last time and the party apparently hasn’t come up with anything better since. Nothing says “We’re out of ideas” quite like pulling a pushing-eighty ex-vice president off the bench to lead the most important race in the party’s history.

    Snip.

    With a few exceptions, all the candidates here are giving a version of the same stump speech, which by itself is a problem — voters tend to notice this sort of thing.

    Then there’s the content, which, to paraphrase Lincoln, is thinner than a soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that starved to death. The Democrats’ basic pitch reads like a list of five poll topics: kids are in cages; let’s close the gun-show loophole; this administration’s policies are an existential threat; something something Mitch McConnell; and Trump is (insert joke here).

    There are truths there, but in baseball terms, it’s weak cheese Trump will swat into the seats. Our walking civil war of a president reached office on a promise to burn it all down, which, incidentally, he’s doing. A core psychological appeal to destruction needs a profound response. Slogans won’t work. Poll-and-pander won’t work. True inspiration is the only way out.

    The Democrats had years to come up with an answer to Trump that is fundamental, powerful, and new, solving the problem the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” What’s mostly been shown instead is more of the same. Literally more, as in three times the usual suspects. The sequel even Hollywood would never make is now showing in Iowa.

    Nor is he any more impressed with the debates.

    There was Klobuchar dunking on Inslee, Harris thrashing Biden over his past stance on school busing, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro walloping O’Rourke for not doing his “homework” on section 1325 of the immigration code, and O’Rourke providing an anti-moment of his own in an agonizing marathon effort at speaking Spanish in his introductory debate segment.

    The gambit inspired hundreds of vicious Twitter memes. Someone forgot to tell O’Rourke and fellow en-Español adventurist Cory Booker that the debates were already translated into Spanish on NBC’s broadcast partner, Telemundo. Stephen Colbert called it an “Español-off” and joked that the remarks “really got through, really penetrated.” Trevor Noah of The Daily Show and Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show also hammered the effort, leading to an approving recap of late-night comedy by Breitbart, never a good sign for Democrats.

    There are real, heavy ideas underlying the Democratic primary…but few of them are coming through in these melees. Mostly the Democrats are taking tweet-size bites out of one another’s hind parts in Heathers-style putdowns, or engaging in virtue-signaling contests, like they’re running for president of Woke Twitter.

    Snip.

    Biden’s early front-runner flubs are reminiscent of Jeb Bush’s $150 million failure to handle Trump tweets. There are many such parallels. Biden is Jeb. O’Rourke, running in what the Times calls the “younger face” lane, is Marco Rubio. Unseen Steve Bullock is unseen Jim Gilmore. Bill de Blasio is the same “Why is he running?” New Yorker George Pataki was. And this election’s version of John Kasich, the embittered realist barking, “What are we doing here?” from the literal edge of the debate stage, is former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • New York Times did a nice infographic roundup of where money for the top candidates is coming from. Sanders does well everywhere. Biden does well in Delaware and the D.C. suburbs. Buttigieg crushes it in South Bend (and Martha’s Vineyard). Until you take Sanders out, you can’t even see Harris in California.
  • When will the no-hope bozos drop out? “Most of the 2016 Republicans waited until at least the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016, before calling it quits. (Seven candidates, including heavy hitters like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, exited the race that month.) Others waited until so-called Super Tuesday in March. It wasn’t until May 2016 that the final holdouts, John Kasich and Ted Cruz, finally bowed out.”
  • “Nation Torn Between Watching Democratic Debates, Sticking Face In Blender.”
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? Still not running for the senate.
  • Update: Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti: Threatening To Get In. No, really, Creepy Porn Lawyer says he’s thinking of getting into the race after saying he wouldn’t run. Should he have done that before his multiple federal felony indictments? If those indictments are to be believed, Avenatti is not just a con man, he’s an amoral sociopath stealing from his own clients. Wouldn’t you have a better chance to rake off campaign contributions before the indictment? Couldn’t you more plausibly have railed that it’s just Trump trying to take you out of the race because he’s scared of you? If he does get in the race, that would make Bill de Blasio only the second most loathsome person running…

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Good Morning America profile. Debate coach gives him a B.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden, Inc.:

    The day the Bidens took over Paradigm Global Advisors was a memorable one.

    In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present.

    After the firing, the two large men escorted the fund’s president out of the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, and James Biden laid out his vision for the fund’s future. “Don’t worry about investors,” he said, according to the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”

    At the time, the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid. According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.

    At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden, who was then running for attorney general of Delaware, turned bright red. He told his uncle, “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”

    A spokesman for James and Hunter Biden said no such episode ever occurred. Beau Biden died in 2015, at 46.

    But the recollection of an effort to cash in on Joe’s political ties is consistent with other accounts provided by other former executives at the fund.

    Snip.

    Biden’s image as a straight-shooting man of the people, however, is clouded by the careers of his son and brother, who have lengthy track records of making, or seeking, deals that cash in on his name. There’s no evidence that Joe Biden used his power inappropriately or took action to benefit his relatives with respect to these ventures. Interviews, court records, government filings and news reports, however, reveal that some members of the Biden family have consistently mixed business and politics over nearly half a century, moving from one business to the next as Joe’s stature in Washington grew.

    None of the ventures appear to have been runaway successes, and Biden’s relatives have not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in their dealings. But over the years, several of their partners and associates have ended up indicted or convicted. The dealings have brought Joe unwelcome scrutiny and threaten to distract from his presidential bid.

    Read the whole thing, and at the very least look at that timeline of all the questionable business ventures the Biden clan has embarked on during Joe’s political career.

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. “If you were cooking up a candidate in a lab to take on Donald Trump, you might come up with someone a lot like Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. (Well, except for the unmarried vegan part.)”

    Like Pete Buttigieg, Booker was a Rhodes scholar and the dynamic mayor of a city afflicted by industrial decline, and unlike Buttigieg, he’d be sure to increase African-American turnout. He’s more talented than Joe Biden or Beto O’Rourke at summoning an inspiring and unifying civic gospel. His criminal-justice record is better than Kamala Harris’s. He is near the top of Greenpeace’s ranking of Democratic presidential candidates on environmental issues, behind only Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand.

    Hell, he was even a reality TV star, albeit of the prestige type; his mayoral exploits were chronicled in the award-winning 2009 documentary series “Brick City.” He once ran into a burning building and carried a woman out over his shoulder. Long before Donald Trump, he was known for his innovative use of Twitter, responding to his Newark constituents’ complaints about things like potholes and snow removal. (In 2010, Time magazine called him a “social-media superhero.”) He looks like a movie star, and is dating one, the former Bernie Sanders surrogate Rosario Dawson. Booker is often mocked for showboating, but his ebullient theatrical streak would be useful in running against a carnival barker who is, as Marianne Williamson said on Tuesday, channeling a dark psychic force.

    After Booker’s skillful performance on Wednesday, a CNN focus group and a flash poll of activists from the progressive group Indivisible both found him to be the night’s winner. That makes him, along with Elizabeth Warren, one of only two candidates who is widely viewed as shining in both the June and July Democratic debates. His sparring with Biden was particularly impressive; he was able to simultaneously make the case against the party’s front-runner and maintain a posture of optimistic, intraparty comity.

    It’s a bit of mystery, then, why he’s yet to break into the top tier of 2020 Democratic contenders.

    No it’s not. It’s because large swathes of the media have already chosen Kamala Harris as their Social Justice Warrior champion based on more instersectionality brownie points.

  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is electable, just not in the Democratic primary.”
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Bankers love Buttigieg and Biden.

    Federal Election Commission filings for the last quarter, reviewed by the Washington Examiner, show Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg were the top recipients of banker cash. The South Bend, Indiana mayor brought in $67,019.42 for the April through June period, followed by the former vice president at $45,456.25.

    “The banking industry is more conservative than other industries. The biggest risk for them is uncertainty,” Kenneth Leon, director of equity research at CFRA, told the Washington Examiner. “The primaries are a noisy period. Bankers want a middle of the road Democrat. If you look at what happened under President Bill Clinton, where he and [Treasury Director] Robert Rubin teamed up and delivered big benefits to the financial sector and the American economy, that’s the kind of success bankers want.”

    Rubin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, has given a combined $8,000 to Biden, Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

    Despite her polling surge after the first round of Democratic debates, Harris brought in much less money from bankers than her fellow front-runners, at $30,314.00. Those with connections to the banking industry, who only spoke with the Washington Examiner on background, said part of that hesitation could be because of her history as a prosecutor.

    “Harris came into the Senate as a moderate, but her voting record is almost as liberal as Warren or Sanders,” the individual said. “Wall Street also doesn’t want to be sitting on the other side of a prosecutor. Think about how she treated [Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh during his hearing.”

    Unsurprisingly, both Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont received the least amount of money from those in the banking sector. Warren brought in $11,482.39 from those employed in some capacity by a bank or financial firm, but a breakdown of those contributors show many of them work in retail or design positions.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) More on Buttigieg’s bundlers:

    Pete Buttigieg is drawing new blood into the world of big-league presidential fundraisers.

    Buttigieg’s campaign has amassed 94 people and couples who have already raised more than $25,000 for him in the race, according to a list of his top bundlers obtained by POLITICO. But roughly two-thirds of those donors were not among the major fundraisers for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton during recent election cycles, according to a POLITICO analysis — though in many cases they are well-connected people in their own right.

    Buttigieg’s roster of top bundlers, known inside the campaign as his “investor’s circle,” includes well-known hedge fund manager Orin Kramer and Esprit co-founder Susie Tompkins Buell — each of whom has raised upward of $25,000 for his campaign. The rainmakers were instrumental in making Buttigieg the biggest fundraiser in the Democratic presidential field this spring, as he brought in $24.8 million in the second quarter of the year.

    And because Buttigieg is largely drawing from outside the ranks of traditional Democratic bundlers, the group’s loyalty could help the South Bend, Ind., mayor raise multiples more over the course of that campaign — helping him hire field staff, cut television ads and, they hope, break into the top of the polls at just the right time.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. Washington Monthly has a “Why Julian Castro’s Candidacy Matters,” a whistling-past-the-graveyard piece.
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: In. Twitter. Facebook. “De Blasio urges Dems to back the hard left to defeat Trump.” Because of course he did.
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. Delaney, we hardly knew you:

    In his opening remarks, Delaney took direct aim at Warren, Sanders, and Medicare for All. “We can go down the road that Senator Sanders and Senator Warren want to take us, which is with bad policies like Medicare for All, free everything, and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump reelected,” he said. “That’s what happened with McGovern. That’s what happened with Mondale. That’s what happened with Dukakis.”

    Delaney went toe-to-toe with Elizabeth Warren on free trade, but his best moment of the night came during his exchange with Bernie Sanders on health care.

    Not only would Medicare for All tell “half the country that your health insurance is illegal,” Delaney said, “the bill that Senator Sanders drafted, by definition, will lower quality in health care.”
    Delaney explained that Medicare for All would fund all health-care expenditures at current Medicare rates — only about 80 percent of the real cost of health care, while private insurance pays 120 percent. “So if you start underpaying all the health-care providers, you’re going to create a two-tier market where wealthy people buy their health care with cash, and the people . . . like my dad, the union electrician, will have that health-care plan taken away.”

    Sanders was visibly angry at times. When Delaney noted he was the only candidate with experience in the health-care business, Sanders snapped: “It’s not a business!” Sanders’s response to Delaney’s argument about the true cost of health care was that Medicare for All would save $500 billion a year by “ending all of the incredible complexities that are driving every American crazy trying to deal with the health-insurance companies.”

    “Listen, his math is wrong,” Delaney replied. “I’ve been going around rural America, and I ask rural hospital administrators one question: ‘If all your bills were paid at the Medicare rate last year, what would happen?’ And they all look at me and say, ‘We would close.’”

  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s hit the donor threshold for the September debates, but has yet to hit the polling threshold. She gets a New York Times profile, focused on her non-interventionist foreign policy, that also props up the “Russian Bot” talking point that the same people who were trying to push the Russian Collusion fantasy are now pushing:

    “Tracking metrics of Russian state propaganda on Twitter, she was by far the most favored candidate,” said Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “She’s the Kremlin’s preferred Democrat. She is such a useful agent of influence for them. Whether she knows it’s happening or not, they love what she’s saying.”

    See also last week’s Gabbard vs. Harris piece.

  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s finally found the issue to take down Biden with: opposition to a 1981 childcare tax credit.

    Also:

  • Update: Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: Out. Twitter. Facebook. Tweets announced he was ending his campaign. Congrats for outlasting Eric Swalwell.
  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tulsi Gabbard Calls Kamala Harris a Drug Warrior and Dirty Prosecutor. She’s Right… She also ramped up penalties or enforcement for not just drug crimes but prostitution, truancy, and many other misdemeanor offenses.” Polifact, on the other hand, things thinks there’s less there there.

  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. How confident is the Hickenlooper campaign of his Presidential run? They just registered HickForSenate.com.
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. There’s Inslee news, but it’s all stupid or really stupid.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s qualified for the September debates.
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Messam’s candidacy is “a joke,” going over his low standing, missing payroll, etc.
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: In. Twitter. Facebook.
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: In. Twitter. Facebook. Here’s a piece that says he was one of the losers in last week’s debate. “Jen O’Malley Dillon is a star Democratic operative. Can she save Beto O’Rourke’s candidacy?” Even by the puff piece standards of the “female political reporter raves about Democratic female political operative” genre it’s a tongue bath.

    O’Malley Dillon once helped eke out a 524-vote Democratic Senate victory in South Dakota. And before moving to the Obama camp, she was key to former U.S. Sen. John Edwards’ two second-place finishes in the 2004 and 2008 Iowa caucuses. While she started the 2008 cycle as the Iowa state director for Edwards, she eventually made her way to the Obama campaign and was his deputy campaign manager for the 2012 campaign.

    She earned legendary status within Democratic circles in November 2012 when she was Obama’s deputy campaign manager in charge of field and data. That campaign pioneered analytics and turnout models and outperformed the late polls.

    Man, the threshold for “legendary” among female Democratic political operatives is pretty low. Also, let me get the Betteridge’s Law answer to the headline out of the way: No.

  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan: In. Twitter. Facebook. He talks about showering after work, which is evidently the new trope for “blue collar.”
  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. That Tabbi piece says of Sanders:

    It’s unseemly, the degree to which the press is rooting for Sanders to get his socialist tuchis out of the race. This is an actual headline from Politico after the first set of debates: “Harris, Warren Tie for Third in New Poll, But Biden Still Leads.”

    The Washington Post/ABC poll showed Biden dropping to 25 percent nationally, with Harris and Warren jousting for third at nine percent. Where’s Waldo? The missing data point is that Sanders doubled both Harris and Warren in said poll at 18 percent. He also has the highest number of unique donors, and is the leading fundraiser overall in the race.

    That doesn’t mean Sanders is going to win. He’s the only candidate with a more or less insoluble base of voters, but unlike Warren, who seems really to want this, Bernie has sometimes seemed dispirited. Still, the undeniable truth is that the Democratic race is about Sanders. Most of the candidates either support Medicare for All or try to sound like they do. They also tend to support a $15 minimum wage and call for wealth taxes, a Green New Deal, antitrust actions, and some rejection of corporate donors. Even Joe Biden, he of the lengthy career deep-throating credit-card-industry bucks, has parroted Sanders’ anti-corporate themes, noting that the Constitution reads “ ‘We the People,’ not ‘We the Donors.’ ”

    There is an irony in the fact that Sanders has become the bête noire of Clintonian politics, given that Sanders represents the culmination of Bill’s 1992 electoral formula: “Change versus more of the same.”

    Decades later, this is no longer just a marketing formulation. About 20 of the candidates exist somewhere on the spectrum of traditional Democratic politics, with Klobuchar, Mayor Pete, and Biden on one side, and Warren on the more progressive end. Sanders is the revolutionary. His election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector. That’s what a vote for “change” would mean in 2020.

    Sanders endorses “strong border protections” to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of government education and health care. There are two possibilities here: 1.) He’s lying. 2.) He’s telling the truth (maybe on “Socialism in one country” grounds), and, if elected, wouldn’t lift a finger to stop Democrats from passing open border laws, since any Sanders Administration would mean an absolutely disasterous 2020 for Republicans in the House and Senate. How Sanders made the health care debates among Democrats all about how much to socialize medicine. “I’ll take Unlikely Teamups for $200, Alex.” “Cardi B joins Bernie Sanders for campaign video and talks student debt, climate change and the minimum wage.” Gets his own Ben & Jerry’s flavor. To really make it taste like Bernie, you have to wait until someone else buys some and then steals theirs…

  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Business Insider profile.
  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 does the how he could win thing.

    Low name recognition isn’t necessarily a serious liability, however. In fact, it can be an opportunity, if you have access to a lot of money — which Steyer certainly does. With a net worth of $1.6 billion, Steyer can easily afford to spend millions of his own dollars on campaign ads. The former hedge fund manager is already responsible for the largest TV ad buy of the Democratic primary thus far: a reported $1.4 million for two weeks of ads on national cable news and local programs in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Steyer has also outspent every other candidate in Facebook and Google ad buys since entering the race. And there could be much more to come: Steyer and his wife were the largest contributors to the 2014 and 2016 federal elections (ahead of the likes of Sheldon Adelson and George Soros!) and the third-most prolific donors in the 2018 cycle, giving a cool $74 million. And Steyer has claimed that he will spend at least $100 million on the presidential race.

    Unfortunately for Steyer, all that money may not make a difference. (Just ask Presidents Ross Perot and Steve Forbes … oh wait.) Our research into 2018 Democratic primary races found that self-funders (specifically, candidates who loaned or donated $400,000 or more to their campaigns) didn’t have an advantage. If anything, self-funders historically have had poor electoral track records, especially in open-seat races. As FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote in 2010, they often suffer from inexperience when interacting with voters, a lack of adequate vetting and the diminishing returns of ad spending.

    Steyer’s background in finance probably hurts him as well, as Democrats do not seem favorably disposed to nominating a businessman of their own. Steyer, Andrew Yang and now-declined candidate Michael Bloomberg have all tended to have lower favorability ratings than would be expected based on how well-known they are. And people without experience running for office are also generally less successful.

    But Steyer does have one ace in the hole: his close association with the effort to impeach Trump. Until switching gears to run for president, he was the founder and primary funder of Need to Impeach, a group that advocates for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings. Impeachment is quite popular among Democrats, too. Sixty-one percent of Democrats said they supported beginning impeachment proceedings in a recent Quinnipiac poll, and the most recent Fox News poll found that 74 percent of Democrats wanted to see Trump impeached and removed from office. In addition, Sen. Elizabeth Warren experienced a small bump in the polls in late April — which happened to occur right after she became the first candidate to come out forcefully for impeachment, although it’s impossible to know if one caused the other.

    On the other hand, both polling and anecdotal evidence suggest that impeachment isn’t that important to Democratic primary voters. For instance, in a HuffPost/YouGov survey from June, only 18 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners listed it among the three issues most important to them; the topic has also rarely come up at town halls with the presidential candidates.

    Steyer’s best-case scenario probably relies on his ability to use his massive financial resources and to seize on a popular issue to introduce himself favorably to the Democratic electorate. Indeed, in less than a month, he has notched half of the polls he needs to qualify for the September debate (although his ability to amass 130,000 individual donors remains a big question mark). He has already begun to leverage the robust campaign operations of Need to Impeach, which has more than 8.2 million people on its email list, and NextGen America, an advocacy group he founded in 2013, to help his campaign. But Steyer is also starting from way behind, and it’s going to take every ounce of political muscle he’s got to crack into the top tier in such a crowded field.

    So what it amounts to is: He can spend his way into the race. Thanks for that blinding flash of the obvious, 538…

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren and Sanders don’t understand math:

    The line everyone is quoting is Warren’s riposte to John Delaney: “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”

    Step back and you can see a media myth being created before your eyes. Everyone’s talking about the zinger, nobody can remember that allegedly unambitious agenda from Delaney that spurred Warren’s response:

    I think Democrats win when we run on real solutions, not impossible promises, when we run on things that are workable, not fairy tale economics. Look at the story of Detroit, this amazing city that we’re in. This city is turning around because the government and the private sector are working well together. That has to be our model going forward. We need to encourage collaboration between the government, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector, and focus on those kitchen table, pocketbook issues that matter to hard-working Americans: building infrastructure, creating jobs, improving their pay, creating universal health care, and lowering drug prices.

    That’s what makes Delaney such a naysayer and cynic? If the next president built up America’s infrastructure, created jobs, improved take-home pay, created universal health care, and lowered drug prices, would you look at that legacy and lament how timid and unambitious it was? Or would you say, “wow, that was an amazing presidency, I can’t believe so much got done”?

    (This is all separate from the question of whether a zinger against one of the least-known, least-discussed, lowest-polling figures in the field really counts as the knockout punch that Warren fans want to believe it is.)

    Delaney’s recurring refrain during the debate, particularly in reference to Sanders, was “I’ve done the math, it doesn’t add up,” and “his math is wrong.” The progressives hate him for it. Everyone wants their presidential campaign to be about brighter tomorrows and daring proposals and sunnier horizons and bold visions and all of that. But that doesn’t change the math.

    Delaney may have exaggerated when he said that enacting Medicare for All would lead to all hospitals shutting down. But he’s pointing to a real problem. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “more than two-thirds of hospitals are losing money on Medicare inpatient services and that the average Medicare inpatient hospital margin was -9.9 percent in 2017.” What happens when everyone’s paying through Medicare, and more hospitals are losing money on most of their treatment?

    Over at Reason, Alex Muresianu calculates that Warren wants to spend her $2.75 trillion in new wealth taxes on $3.26 trillion in spending. When you use the trillion, it doesn’t look so bad, so let’s rephrase that: after enacting a gigantic new tax hike, Warren wants to spend $51,000,000,000 more. And she continues to insist her taxes will only hit “billionaires and big corporations.”

    David A. Graham writes, “[Warren] seemed to be focusing on emotion.” Yeah, no kidding. Every presidential candidate prefers to focus on emotion. Obama talked about “hope” and “yes we can,” Trump vented his spleen and offered a vision of an America that was “great again.” Every candidate wants to focus on emotion because it’s easier than getting the math to add up. You would think the electorate would learn after getting so many consecutive cycles of believing in the next great inspiring hope and then being disappointed by the results.

    Emotion is easy. Everybody’s got a sad anecdote about losing someone they loved, or knowing someone who faced an unfair, undeserved hardship. Everybody’s got some inspiring anecdote about someone who fought through adversity and is now living the American dream. Everybody’s heard about some kind of injustice that is technically legal but morally wrong, and that gets an audience’s blood boiling.

    You know what kind of people want you to focus on emotion? Salesmen, con artists, cult leaders, and demagogues. Emotion empowered Bernie Madoff; math caught him.

    You want to know why you have problems, America? Because you don’t like doing the math. Your checkbook doesn’t add up, you didn’t read the fine print, you didn’t realize how bad the interest rate on your credit card was, you didn’t think your adjustable rate mortgage would adjust so soon, and you can’t believe you agreed to buy that timeshare.

    She said the U.S. should never use nukes first, so Russia should view a Wraren presidency as a great chance to get Alaska back. Anti-Israel BDS activist Max Berger is a Warren aide. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. That Tabbi piece is big on Williamson:

    Marianne Williamson, the self-help author made famous by Oprah Winfrey, is speaking to about 50 people. “When we get bad news, when we learn that something really terrible is going on, so many superficial concerns drop away. And we become very intelligent,” she says, glaring and pausing for emphasis.

    Williamson is a small, almost ethereal figure with silver-streaked hair and intense eyes that 19th-century authors would have described as being “like coals.” Her superficial eccentricities and occasional incautious statements (she once said “there’s a skepticism which is actually healthy” on the issue of vaccines) have caused reporters to chortle at her run.

    But her speech is not a lifeless collection of policy positions. It’s an interesting, tightly written diagnosis of the American problem. Precisely because socioeconomic stresses have pushed them into heightened awareness, she says, the American public sees what she calls “a transition from democracy to aristocracy,” and the corporate sector’s “insatiable appetite” for money that dominates American life.

    Williamson is not a traditional orator, with a voice that fills the room. You can barely hear her without a microphone. But she grabs crowds. Nobody is checking sports scores or Twitter. They’re in.

    Williamson goes on to say that most Americans are aware that their government is now little more than a handmaiden to sociopathic forces. She describes a two-party system that, at its worst, operates in perfect harmony with the darkest impulses of corporate capitalism, and at best — presumably she refers more to Democrats here — sounds like institutionalized beggary.

    “ ‘Pretty please, can I maybe have a hundred-thousand-dollar grant here?’ ” she says. “ ‘Pretty please, can we maybe have a million dollars in the budget for all this?’ ”

    Heads are nodding all over the place.

    “They say, ‘I can get you a cookie.’ ”

    This elicits a few yeahs from the crowd.

    Christ, I think. This woman is going to win the nomination.

    Williamson was interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations. Now it’s time to play: “Marianne Williamson or John Bolton?”

    Q: How, if at all, should China’s treatment of the Uighurs and the situation in Hong Kong affect broader U.S. policy toward China?

    A: China is aggressively engaging in theft, practicing commercial espionage, and ignoring intellectual-property rights as well as trampling on human rights and democracy in their drive to dominate global markets. The US must maintain a strong position regarding China with regard to economics, politics, and human rights.

    China’s treatment of the Uighurs and of Hong Kong reflect their aggressive drive for domination and their disdain for human rights and democracy. The United States needs to stand up for human rights and call out the gross violations of human rights committed by China. It’s a good thing that this week Secretary Pompeo denounced China’s treatment of the Uighurs. We should also be speaking out against the authoritarian push for greater control in Hong Kong where thousands of people are demonstrating for their democratic rights.

    Additionally, the US has the power to prevent China from buying strategically important companies, which we have done through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS). We should exercise this power more vigorously as we defend our economic interests and human rights for all.

    Yep, that’s Williamson. Save a mention of military power, I’m not sure a Bolton response would be much different. But then she ruins it by backing the Iran deal. “Apparently, Bill Maher Agrees With Marianne Williamson on ‘Everything.'” Received opinion seems disturbed that anyone questions the widespread use of antidepressants. Donald Trump, Jr. calls her the harbinger of doom for the Democratic Party, given the wild applause for her very-farthest left positions. Noah Berlatsky pens a weak “Williamson is no friend of the left” hit piece, which amounts to antivax and “fat shaming” viewpoints. Way to focus on the important issues! “Marianne Williamson Not Sure What She’s Doing Up Here With All These Crazy People.” See also last week’s Williamson debate piece.

  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. The Hill talks about his $1,000 a month guaranteed income proposal. “‘It is a very Silicon Valley solution’…UBI has also failed to gain much traction in the 2020 race.” Yang is not wild about the debate process. “We’re up here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines, playing roles in this reality TV show.”
  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, or who declared then dropped out:

  • Actor Alec Baldwin
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama. Oh, and an update: She just said, yet again, she’s not running.
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Library Additions: Two Books About Presidents

    August 4th, 2019

    Two more Half Price Books finds, both of about Texas Presidents, one by and signed by a Texas President:

  • Bush, George W. 41: A Portrait of My Father. Crown Publishers, 2014. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with a tiny bit of wrinkling at head and heel. Signed by George W. Bush. Political biography of George H. W. Bush. Bought for $7.99 at a Half Price Books in Austin. Like that signed copy of Decision Points, someone in the book receiving room was asleep at the switch…
  • Caro, Robert. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. Knopf, 2002. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with a slight bump to top front corner tip. The third in Caro’s monumental LBJ series. According to Caro, Johnson is the first Majority Leader to ever actually make the senate work. Of course, that’s not really its constitutional duty… Bought for $17.49 from Half Price Books in Austin.
  • Philomena Cunk on Climate Change

    August 3rd, 2019

    Like Jonathan Pie, Philomena Cunk is a fake British media personality, in this case the alter ego of comedienne Diane Morgan. Cunk comes in on the dim end of the celebrity stick, and in this episode she tackles climate change.

    LinkSwarm for August 2, 2019

    August 2nd, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! As mentioned previously, today starts an extremely busy week for me, so expect some light blogging ahead.

  • “Why Do Democrats Run All Of The Dangerous And Rodent Infested Cities?”

    Rep. Cummings, while being very obsessed with Russia, seems utterly bewildered with the idea that anyone could dare question why so many billions of federal dollars flow to places like West Baltimore when they are obviously doing no good.

    Look at other cities in similar dilapidation and there holds a unique truth: Democrats run them all.

    How long will sewage run down the streets of San Francisco? How long will St. Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore, continue to rotate as the nation’s most dangerous crime infested metros? And how long will federal dollars keep chasing bad money with new?

    Snip.

    According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report and as reported in the USA Today (from Feb 19, 2019), the top 10 most dangerous cities in America are run by Democrats.

    The overwhelming majority of them are also all governed by Democratic Governors. And the Congressional districts represented are also majority Democratic.

    Did I mention that each of them also has higher unemployment rates than the national average?

    In Baltimore, Democrats have run everything for more than four decades. Federal dollars have flowed in, and yet the stench, sight, and symbolism of it all—stinks.

  • El Chapo may be convicted, but the cartel wars continue:

    In the end, the forces that are driving these trends in Mexico are larger and more powerful than any individual, and there is very little that any one person can do to counter or control them. It is true that individuals such as Gulf cartel founder Juan Garcia Abrego and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the “godfather” of the Guadalajara cartel, were instrumental in altering the relationship between Mexican cartels and their Colombian counterparts. They succeeded in boosting the role of Mexican cartels from mere errand boys, who received a small cut of the Colombian cartels’ profits on cocaine smuggled through Mexico, to full partners that received an equal share of the profits. The vast profits that the cocaine trade brought to the Mexican cartels was a game changer. They provided the Mexican groups with vast quantities of cash to hire armies of hit men, arm them with military-grade weapons and bribe officials at every level of government. This vast wealth also allowed them to challenge — and in some places usurp — the government’s monopoly on force and governance as they pursued their campaign of “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) to either bribe or kill people in authority.

    Mexican cartels multiplied their profits by embracing the heroin trade, eventually coming to dominate the North American heroin market. They also ventured into the synthetic drug trade, as drugs like methamphetamine and fentanyl brought them even larger profits than cocaine or heroin. Literally awash in money, many Mexican cartels struggled to launder and spend all the money they were making.

    Naturally, however, this vast fortune has come with consequences beyond just coming to the attention of authorities. Given the huge sums at stake, business partners and even family members have turned into sworn enemies as they fight over a greater share of the profits. And in addition to fighting over smuggling routes to external markets — which have grown to include Australia and Europe, in addition to the United States — they are also fighting bitterly for control of the sizable domestic Mexican retail drug market in places like Mexico City, Cancun, Tijuana and Juarez. Moreover, they are struggling to grab control of the lucrative petroleum theft racket, while also engaging in extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, human smuggling and other criminal activities.

    In the end, I believe that Balkanization will continue to impact even the larger and stronger cartels such as Sinaloa and the CJNG [Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, or just New Generation]. I anticipate additional rounds of Sinaloa infighting and while the CJNG had been largely immune from the trend, the emergence of the Nueva Plaza cartel, which is composed mostly of former CJNG members under the direction of Carlos “El Cholo” Enrique Sanchez Martinez and Erick “El 85” Valencia Salazar, has showed that it, too, is vulnerable to greed and infighting.

    Indeed, Gulf cartel leader Cardenas Guillen earned the nickname “El Mata Amigos” (the friend killer) for, unsurprisingly, turning on those close to him amid the greed-driven infighting. The amount of internecine conflict, however, has only grown since Cardenas Guillen’s 2003 arrest, as evidenced by recent murder trends, much of which stems from intracartel fighting, as well as battles among different groups.

  • The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is having a Social Jusstice Warrior diversity meltdown:

    Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) was set to make an unplanned trip to Washington from her district Monday amid an outcry from top black and Latino lawmakers over a lack of diversity in the campaign arm’s senior management ranks.

    Bustos’ sudden return to D.C., just days after Congress left for a six-week-long August recess, comes as aides and lawmakers are calling for systematic changes to the DCCC, the party’s main election organ.

    POLITICO reported last week that black and Hispanic lawmakers are furious with Bustos’ stewardship of the campaign arm. They say the upper echelon of the DCCC is bereft of diversity, and it is not doing enough to reach Latino voters and hire consultants of color. In addition, several of Bustos’ senior aides have left in the first six months of her tenure, including her chief of staff — a black woman — and her director of mail and polling director, both women.

    In the most dramatic move so far, Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Filemon Vela told POLITICO Sunday that Bustos should fire her top aide, DCCC executive director Allison Jaslow.

    “The DCCC is now in complete chaos,” the pair said in a statement to POLITICO. “The single most immediate action that Cheri Bustos can take to restore confidence in the organization and to promote diversity is to appoint a qualified person of color, of which there are many, as executive director at once. We find the silence of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on this issue to be deafening.”

    It’s lovely to see Democrats inflict the same “diversity” pain on themselves as they’ve tried to inflict on the rest of the country. The DCCC was already lagging badly behind Republican efforts, and a “diversity” witch hunt will only add to its problems.

  • It may be a bigger issue than you realize:

    The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ powerful campaign arm, has just abruptly purged half a dozen staffers. Why? Because they are white.

    It appears that no one had anything against these particular staffers … except for the color of their skin. Although roughly half the committee’s full-time staff (13 of 27) were nonwhite, this was not enough for some Democratic members of Congress. They complained DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos of Illinois had brought in too many white staffers when she won the position. And they put enough pressure on her that she sacrificed her loyal staffers to the god of diversity.

    Even if all these staffers ended up with cushy lobbying jobs as a reward for their loyalty, this is still a lot more shocking than people perhaps realize.

    There are two possible interpretations of this mass-purge at the DCCC. Either a few Democrats are making a racial issue out of a patronage question, once again knifing each other under the cover of intersectionality, or Democrats are genuinely angry that half the staff at the DCCC are white. As often happens with the Democratic Left, it is difficult to tell just where the insincerity ends and the fanaticism begins.

    But either interpretation implies that this is not a party fit to govern.

  • “The biggest loser in Wednesday’s Detroit debate was sanity.”

    Here’s a quick cheat sheet. All the Democrats support policies that would raise taxes. They all support policies that would make the country poorer because less energy independent. Some want to give free college tuition to illegal immigrants, all want many more immigrants, legal or illegal. Most think Trump should be impeached. Some want to abolish private insurance, most want ‘Medicare for all.’ Gov. Inslee insisted that ‘it is time to give people adequate mental health care,’ a statement that won a round of applause. Judging from what was said from the platform tonight, I think he may be right.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Baltimore murder rate worse than Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, driving asylum surge.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The United States has officially withdrawn from the INF treaty. “The Russians have been flagrantly violating the treaty for years, and it doesn’t apply to China, which has massively built up its missile program, including intermediate-range systems.”
  • Speaking of China, don’t look now, but it looks like they’re about to Tiananmen Hong Kong.
  • Get woke, go broke: Remember Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” social justice warrior pandering commercial? “P&G reported a net loss of about $5.24 billion, or $2.12 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, due to an $8 billion non-cash writedown of Gillette.” Nothing says “woke” quite like destroying eight BILLION dollars of shareholder value…
  • Long, long, long article on Alan Deshowitz and his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. I remain pro-civil liberties and anti-kid-diddling. Most interesting tidbit: The raid on Epstein’s home produced “an expired passport that contained Epstein’s photograph alongside an assumed name, with the country of residency listed as Saudi Arabia.”
  • More on the subject: Derschowitz defends himself.
  • Campaign funds of the living dead!
  • Texas DPS implements soft decriminalization of marijuana:

    Texas’ largest law enforcement agency is moving away from arresting people for low-level marijuana offenses. It’s the latest development in the chaos that has surrounded pot prosecution after state lawmakers legalized hemp this year.

    As of July 10, all Texas Department of Public Safety officers have been instructed to issue a citation for people with a misdemeanor amount of the suspected drug — less than 4 ounces in possession cases — when possible, according to an interoffice memo obtained by The Texas Tribune. The citation requires a person to appear in court and face their criminal charges.

    Those issued a citation for misdemeanor charges still face the same penalties if convicted — up to a year in jail and fine of $4,000.

    I’d like to see actual decriminalization rather than selective enforcement, but you can argue that of all the laws DPS is required to enforce, enforcing marijuana prohibition (at least on adults) is a waste of time unless the driver is impaired.

  • “New York City Still Trying to Avoid A SCOTUS Fight Over Gun Law.” Because they know they’ll lose. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Australian expedition sent to Antarctica to celebrate the golden age of Australian antarctic exploration. Like many golden age Antarctic expeditions, it was filled with disaster. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Why Snopes fears The Babylon Bee and feels the need to “fact check” them.
  • Two superintendents enter Whataburger, one superintendent leaves.

  • “Adrian Peterson Reportedly Made Over $100 Million But Owes Millions in Debt.”
  • Congratulations to Dwight for ten years of blogging.
  • Happy birthday, Herman Melville.
  • Bronypocalypse now.
  • Will Hurd Not Running For Reelection

    August 1st, 2019

    Well this is going to make holding his seat significantly harder:

    After reflecting on how best to help our country address these challenges, I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.

    I left a job I loved in the CIA as an undercover officer to meet what I believed to be a need for new leadership in Congress on intelligence and national security matters. I wanted to help the Intelligence Community in a different way by bringing my knowledge and experience to Congress. I’m leaving the House of Representatives to help our country in a different way. I want to use my knowledge and experience to focus on these generational challenges in new ways. It was never my intention to stay in Congress forever, but I will stay involved in politics to grow a Republican Party that looks like America.

    As the only African American Republican in the House of Representatives and as a Congressman who represents a 71% Latino district, I’ve taken a conservative message to places that don’t often hear it. Folks in these communities believe in order to solve problems we should empower people not the government, help families move up the economic ladder through free markets not socialism and achieve and maintain peace by being nice with nice guys and tough with tough guys. These Republican ideals resonate with people who don’t think they identify with the Republican Party. Every American should feel they have a home in our party.

    While I have 17 months left in my term, I’m very proud of the last 55.

    In the Year of Beto in the only true swing district in Texas, Hurd, a black Republican moderate, won his seat over Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones by less than 1,000 votes. Holding the seat with Hurd would be tough but doable, but holding it without him will likely be a lot more difficult.

    Quick Gabbard vs. Harris Debate Roundup

    August 1st, 2019

    Eh, want to do a bit on the second Round Two debate?

    Not really. Without Marianne Williamson it doesn’t have as big a hook, and I should probably save something for the Clown Car update. Surely there’s something more interesting to talk about.

    (Checks news) Nope.

    (Checks Twitter) Nope.

    (Checks blogs) Hey, Instapundit has a lot of links…on the debates.

    OK, debates win by default!

    I’m not a Tulsi Gabbard fan, unlike some almost sane lefty types, but she seems to have made a big impression:

    Especially her takedown of Kamala Harris’ record as a prosecutor:

    How much of that is true? At least some of it seems to be.

    One need not be soft on crime to be outraged by prosecutor abuse of American civil liberties.

    More on the same theme:

    On paper, Kamala Harris is a really strong contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination. But last night, on the debate stage in Detroit, she demonstrated that as good as she is when she’s on the attack, she looks brittle, flustered, and flailing when other candidates attack her.

    Harris’s first move when attacked is to simply deny the accusation. Five times last night, Harris began a sentence with “the reality is. . . ,” and what follows from Harris rarely directly refutes the accusation; she usually emphasizes a slightly different point.

    Dana Bash asked Harris about the Biden campaign’s claim that her health care plan was “a have-it-every-which-way approach.” Harris’s responded, “the reality is that I have been spending time in this campaign listening to American families, listening to experts, listening to health care providers.” Listening to lots of people is nice, but that doesn’t really address whether the plan is an attempt to have it every which way.

    Biden then said that her plan would cost $3 trillion. She responded, “the reality is that our plan will bring health care to all Americans under a Medicare for All system.” That doesn’t address the cost issue. Biden went after her on the cost again, and Harris’s best defense was “the cost of doing nothing is far too expensive. Second, we are now paying $3 trillion a year for health care in America. Over the next 10 years, it’s probably going to be $6 trillion.” Harris was left arguing that we need to spend more in order to ensure that we don’t spend more.

    I don’t know if marijuana prosecutions and death row evidentiary decisions will be enough to derail Harris’s presidential campaign. But I do know that these sorts of examples are real complications to the image Harris wants to project, which is that of tough prosecutor who’s on the side of the typical Democratic presidential primary voter.

    Tulsi Gabbard — who seems to have a genuine animosity towards Harris — ate her Wheaties before this debate and just ripped Harris’s record as a prosecutor: “There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.” That generated applause from the crowd in the Fox Theater in Detroit.

    Gabbard continued: “She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep a bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

    The Harris response was to ignore all of the specific accusations: “I did the work of significantly reforming the criminal justice system of a state of 40 million people, which became a national model for the work that needs to be done. And I am proud of that work. And I am proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work of being in the position to use the power that I had to reform a system that is badly in need of reform.”

    Except Gabbard wasn’t giving a “fancy speech,” she was making specific accusations, and Gabbard had the facts on her side: on the marijuana prosecutions, on the laughing, on the blocking of the evidence, on the prison labor, and on the bail system. Rather than defend any of the specific decisions, Harris preferred to simply assert she had reformed the criminal justice system. Maybe she had, but not on the policies Gabbard listed.

    Gabbard smelled blood and repeated the accusation: “In the case of those who were on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to do so. (APPLAUSE) There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor owe — you owe them an apology.”

    Harris responded, “My entire career I have been opposed — personally opposed to the death penalty and that has never changed.” Again, notice how Harris answers a question that wasn’t asked. Gabbard didn’t say she supported the death penalty, she said she blocked evidence that ultimately exonerated an innocent man.

    But Harris then responded in the worst possible way: “I think you can judge people by when they are under fire and it’s not about some fancy opinion on a stage but when they’re in the position to actually make a decision, what do they do.”

    Yes, Harris dismissed the only Iraq War veteran on the stage as not knowing what it’s like “under fire.”

    Look, a lot of folks in the media world and high-level Democratic circles really like Kamala Harris. She presses a lot of their buttons: black, Indian, woman, daughter of immigrants, Howard University, powerful lawyer. She’s got the profile of the “good” politician that sinister powerful forces want to derail in an uncreative Hollywood thriller. And if Harris didn’t have a media protective bubble around her, she would be getting crucified for that you don’t know what it’s like under fire, you’re just making some fancy opinion on a stage counterattack.

    Boosting Gabbard’s case is the ridiculous overreaction of Democratic Media Complex types in screaming “Russian bot!” at Gabbard and her fans.

    I love the conspiracy theory that the Russian bots are so organized, effective and insidious that they have enough agents strewn in every state between Maine and California to effectively game Google’s IP-based stats system. “Boris, we must plant troll form in Boise to game Google Idaho stats! Get on it, comrade!”

    Evidently the Magic Eight Ball at DNC headquarters has only two settings these days: RACIST and RUSSIAN BOT, and the Russian Collusion Fantasy is going to continue clouding their judgment right up to the 2020 election.

    It’s creepy the way a set of Democratic Media Complex insiders seem outraged at any criticism of Harris. I used to worry about Harris being a strong candidate, and how ruthlessly social justice warrior types would scream “Racist!” at any criticism of her if she won the nomination, but the more I watch her, the more I think she’s a giant bowl of flavorless nothing.