Texas Attorney General Sues Austin for Breaking the Law

July 31st, 2016

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is so unreasonable as to expect that the City of Austin actually obey the law, and is now suing them for failing to do so:

Section 411.209 prohibits state agencies and political subdivisions from wrongfully excluding handgun license holders from property owned or leased by the government. The law prohibits the City from providing not ice by a communication described in Texas Penal Code § 30.06, or by any sign expressly referring to that law or to a concealed handgun license, that a license holder carrying a handgun is prohibited from entering or remaining on a premises or other place owned or leased by the governmental entity unless the license holder is prohibited from carrying a handgun on the premises or other place by Texas Penal Code §§ 46.03 or 46.035. Id. § 411.209(a).

Snip.

On or about April 4, 2016, the Attorney General received a citizen complaint that the City was in violation of §411.209 based on: (a) the display of a permanent etched glass “no guns” sign; and (b) oral warnings prohibiting the carrying of handguns on the premises of Austin City Hall, a building that does not fall within any exception under Texas Penal Code §§ 46.03, .035.

(Wonky spacing via PDF.)

And this is already after they had taken down one (illegal) sign due to an earlier citizen complaint.

Paxton is asking for $1,500 a day in fines, plus fees.

Austin’s city government evidently feels that they have no need to comply with state law, Because Liberalism. I expect that they’re about to find that the Texas judicial system feels otherwise.

(Hat tip: Stuff From Hsoi.)

LinkSwarm for July 29, 2016

July 29th, 2016

Finally, the Democrats have a presidential candidate that combines the honesty of Bill Clinton, the electrifying personality of Walter Mondale, the down-to-earth demeanor of Adlai Stevenson, the even temper of Lyndon Johnson, and the humility of Barack Obama.

In short: The candidate they deserve.

A LinkSwarm:

  • Angela Merkel decides that she isn’t going to let a little thing like repeated terrorist attacks and mass rape dissuade her from welcoming lots more Muslims into Germany. It’s like she’s a sleeper agent designed to destroy the CDU from within…
  • DNC unable to fill seats, hires actors to fill them up.
  • Did Palestinian flags outnumber American flags at the DNC? I’m sure they did Monday, when the DNC realized they had no American flags…
  • John Stossel explains how Clinton Cash works. (Disclaimer: You just can’t read that site without AdBlock.)
  • Clinton Foundation investigation referred to IRS. I wouldn’t get my hopes up that anything comes of it.
  • It seems some disgruntled DNC delegates altered their HILLARY signs to read LIAR.
  • Seen on Facebook:

  • You’re not allowed to tweet about the Olympics without approval. So much for my live tweeting the 100 Meter Zika Infection…
  • Speaking of futile bans, China bans Internet news reporting. That’s not in any way the last-gasp desperation move of a country whose smoke-and-mirrors economy is imploding…
  • Trump gets big post-convention bounce.
  • UK Union of Students works to make the organization Judenfrei. Funny how “antizionism” starts to look a whole lot like garden-variety antisemitism…
  • Examining top world fighter planes, including the F-22, China’s Chengdu J-20, Russia’s T-50/PAK FA, the Eurofighter and the Sino-Pakistani JF-17. (Hat tip: Bad Blue.)
  • “Nearly 15 Years After 9/11, Retired Colonel Meets the Man Whose Life He Helped Save.” Man, there sure is a lot of pollen in the air today… (Hat tip: Ted Cruz’s Facebook page.)
  • NFL all-pro cornerback Richard Sherman reiterates that all lives matter. I find it hard to believe this is even remotely controversial… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo? Could work pretty well. He was excellent in Hail, Caesar!.
  • Woman assaults man with burrito, then knife.”
  • Florida Man Charged With Picking Magic Mushrooms While Carrying An Alligator. Oh Florida Man, don’t ever change…
  • Wyoming Man Found with 30 Eyeballs in His Anal Cavity. Authorities are keeping an eye on him…
  • Why Poor People Support Trump

    July 28th, 2016

    If you’re looking to figure out the Donald Trump phenomena, you could do a lot worse than reading this interview with J.D. Vance, the author of the book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. It’s a look at rural poverty and desperation most people never witness firsthand.

    And Trump speaks to them in a big way:

    RD: A friend who moved to West Virginia a couple of years ago tells me that she’s never seen poverty and hopelessness like what’s common there. And she says you can drive through the poorest parts of the state, and see nothing but TRUMP signs. Reading “Hillbilly Elegy” tells me why. Explain it to people who haven’t yet read your book.

    J.D. VANCE: The simple answer is that these people–my people–are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.

    What many don’t understand is how truly desperate these places are, and we’re not talking about small enclaves or a few towns–we’re talking about multiple states where a significant chunk of the white working class struggles to get by. Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes. The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.

    The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues, a la Thomas Frank (more on that below). Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.

    From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis. More importantly, these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother.

    Trump’s candidacy is music to their ears. He criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.

    The last point I’ll make about Trump is this: these people, his voters, are proud. A big chunk of the white working class has deep roots in Appalachia, and the Scots-Irish honor culture is alive and well. We were taught to raise our fists to anyone who insulted our mother. I probably got in a half dozen fights when I was six years old. Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy? My military service is the thing I’m most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can’t help but tell myself: I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.

    Also this:

    And what do you have to say to liberals?

    Well, it’s almost the flip side: stop pretending that every problem is a structural problem, something imposed on the poor from the outside. I see a significant failure on the Left to understand how these problems develop. They see rising divorce rates as the natural consequence of economic stress. Undoubtedly, that’s partially true. Some of these family problems run far deeper. They see school problems as the consequence of too little money (despite the fact that the per pupil spend in many districts is quite high), and ignore that, as a teacher from my hometown once told me, “They want us to be shepherds to these kids, but they ignore that many of them are raised by wolves.” Again, they’re not all wrong: certainly some schools are unfairly funded. But there’s this weird refusal to deal with the poor as moral agents in their own right. In some cases, the best that public policy can do is help people make better choices, or expose them to better influences through better family policy (like my Mamaw).

    There was a huge study that came out a couple of years ago, led by the Harvard economist Raj Chetty. He found that two of the biggest predictors of low upward mobility were 1) living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and 2) growing up in a neighborhood with a lot of single mothers. I recall that some of the news articles about the study didn’t even mention the single mother conclusion. That’s a massive oversight! Liberals have to get more comfortable with dealing with the poor as they actually are.

    Read the whole thing.

    (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

    Clinton Corruption/DNC/Election Update

    July 27th, 2016

    Yeah, I’m in a rush, so it’s going to be one big list tar-ball. (Or if you prefer, tarball. Call it clintoncorruption.tar.gz.)

  • Nate Silver at 538 now gives Donald Trump a 55% chance of winning the presidency over Hillary Clinton. This is a big, big reversal, given he had Clinton up by over 87% chance of winning at one point.
  • The Wikileaks drop of DNC emails is starting to yield some very interesting information, especially about just how far in the tank the MSM was for Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders.
  • “The e-mails confirm the party establishment was in the tank for Clinton long before the primaries were decided.” To which I can only reply: Duh. Also this: “In one oddball e-mail chain, a DNC deputy communications director plotted to create a fake Craigslist ad that portrayed Donald Trump as sex crazed.”
  • Here are some quick and dirty highlights. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Washington Post and DNC hold joint fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Despite that being, you know, illegal.
  • Did CBS News actually change poll wording to be more favorable to Hillary and less favorable to Sanders?
  • Indeed, the emails reveal a pattern of the DNC not hesitating to bully news organizations for daring to mention Sanders favorably. “DNC communications director Luis Miranda, expressing his displeasure with “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough in a note to DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach, wrote: “(Expletive) Joe claiming the system is rigged, party against (Sanders), we need to complain to their producer.”
  • DNC confiscates the signs of Bernie Sanders supporters.
  • “Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to get this close to becoming president of the United States.”
  • Is the Clinton Foundation next up on the FBI investigation list. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Man admits to helping funnel illegal foreign contributions to Obama campaign.
  • Sanders supporters file suit over DNC and DNC law firm Perkins Coie LLP illegally favoring the Clinton campaign before Sanders dropped out. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Now it’s time for Hillary’s Thought Police to begin the hard work of grinding those kids down.”

    The idea is to turn those kids into useful political beings by using their own slogans and reference points against them. First, though, they must be softened up by shaming. And the pro-Hillary media (and most of the media is decidedly pro-Hillary) has been relentless at shaming them to keep them in line since that DNC leaks story broke.

    Shaming has been going on relentlessly on social media since these kids first touched a keyboard. They know how it works, they understand its conventions, if not its real purpose, which is to herd stubborn political ideas.

    They’ve been described by some pundits as spoiled children, as whiny babies too witless to understand simple arithmetic, even though the party arithmetic was rigged from the onset. The DNC supplied Superdelegates for Hillary, all but guaranteeing her victory, something first explained months ago by columnist Paul Jacob.

    And now many in my business who consider themselves progressives — even as they cleave to the Establishment Queen — are telling those Sanders kids two things:

    Shut up and behave.

    The goal is to take these scraggly revolutionaries, break them down and deliver zealots in November.

    And so now what you’ll see over the next few days from Philadelphia is the Democratic National Convention transformed into Operation Trust Hillary.

    Also this:

    Those leaked emails tell a story of supreme cynicism: The email asking that Sanders’ religious status be attacked in southern states; the emails outlining collusion between top officials and the Hillary camp. There are more to come.

    The most fantastic part of this moving story is that Hillary decided to blame it all on a singular villain: Russian strong man Vladimir Putin. Team Hillary said Putin was doing it to help Trump.

    (Full disclosure: Putin rode over and insisted on writing my column but my editor just said no.)

    Hackers targeted the DNC emails. And if hackers got Hillary’s vanished emails from her time as secretary of state, let’s hope they have the decency to release them before the presidential election.

    I must admit, there may be a Putin connection with the DNC leaks.

    But here’s the thing:

    Putin didn’t write the emails from the Democratic National Committee. Putin didn’t make fun of a black woman’s name; Putin didn’t scold American journalists and expect them to jump and help shape the news or offer government jobs to donors.

    The DNC officials did all that.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Disruption at the Texas Democratic delegation breakfast.
  • Yes, Hillary does want to ban guns.
  • Lifelong Democrat explains why he’s voting for Trump:

    Clinton Global (and its related entities) is a department store of political, multinational, corruption. The charity is under investigation, it was the middle man in weapons deals to foreign nations, it brokered a treasonous uranium deal to Russia, it stole money from Haiti and small contributors after the earthquake, it was deeply involved in a larcenous private college, Laureate University, it has allied with some of the worst dictators in the world and it may unravel slowly as the greatest charity fraud in history.

  • Hillary’s VP pick Tim Kaine is all over helping big banks dodge regulations.
  • So Paul Simon sang at the DNC. I love Simon’s work, but he’s not exactly the performer I’d pick to connect with today’s voters. However, Ann Althouse’s Meade came up with this inspired rewriting of Bernie’s theme music “America”:

    Let’s not be suckers, we’ll marry extortions together
    I’ve got some emails right here in my bag”
    So you’ll pay all of my campaign debts and I’ll buy your Wall Street lies
    And we’ll walk off and sell out America

  • DNC Day One: Soviet flags and Palestinian flags, but no American flags. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • A wall around the conevntion center wasn’t enough: Democrats actually built a makeshift wall around their own stage.
  • Clinton Cash dominates Facebook trends.
  • What is It With the Clintons Hiring Employees With Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?

    July 26th, 2016

    I can certainly understand the Clinton clan’s self-centered greed and avarice. What I struggle to understand is why they keep repeatedly hiring employees with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Take, for example, former Clinton Foundation employee Gehad El-Haddad, who was just sentenced to life in prison in Egypt for his work as the mouthpiece for Mohamed Morsi’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government.

    Then there are the well documented familial links between perpetual #1 Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood:

    Sheikh Qaradawi is a promoter of jihadist terror. His fatwas endorse terrorist attacks against American personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombing — by both men and women — against Israel. He is a leading supporter of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. He also runs an umbrella organization called the Union for Good (sometimes referred to as the “Union of Good”), which is formally designated a terrorist organization under American law. The Union for Good was behind the “Peace Flotilla” that attempted to break our ally Israel’s blockade of the terrorist organization Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch) in 2010.

    That’s rather interesting — at least to me, though apparently not to Speaker Boehner — because Huma Abedin’s mother, Saleha, who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s female division (the “Muslim Sisterhood”), is a major figure in not one but two Union for Good components. The first is the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR). It is banned in Israel for supporting Hamas under the auspices of the Union for Good. Then there’s the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC) — an organization that Dr. Saleha Abedin has long headed. Dr. Abedin’s IICWC describes itself as part of the IICDR. And wouldn’t you know it, the IICWC charter was written by none other than . . . Sheikh Qaradawi, in conjunction with several self-proclaimed members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    The recently declassified 28 pages of the 9/11 report has more to say about it. “The ‘Abedin family business’ is an academic group called the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs that is based in the London offices of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and its parent organization, the Muslim World League.”

    About the World Arab Muslim Youth Association:

    According to the FBI. Abdullah Bin Ladin [Osama bin Laden’s half-brother] has a number of connections to terrorist organizations. He is the President and Director of the World Arab Muslim Youth Association (WAMY) and the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Science in America. Both organizations are local branches of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    According to the FBI, there is reason to believe that WAMY is “closely associated with the funding and financing of international terrorist activities and in the past has provided logistical support to individuals wishing to to fight in the Afghan War.” In 1998, the CIA published a paper characterizing WAMY as a NGO that provides funding. logistical support and training with possible connections to the Arab Afghans network, Hamas, Algerian extremists and Philippine militants.

    Who else calls attention to the World Arab Muslim Youth Association’s ties to terrorism? Would you believe Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

    Saudi Arabia has enacted important reforms to criminalize terrorist financing and restrict the overseas flow of funds from Saudi-based charities. However, these restrictions fail to include multilateral organizations such as the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), Muslim World League (MWL) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY.) Intelligence suggests that these groups continue to send money overseas and, at times, fund extremism overseas.

    Despite all this, Saudi pressure has helped keep the International Islamic Relief Organization and World Arab Muslim Youth Association off the official list of groups with terrorist ties.

    And as long as we’re discussing Hillary’s ties to terrorism, we should probably mention “numerous ties between Hillary Clinton and members of the shadowy network surrounding Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Muslim cleric who has been called ‘the Turkish Khomeini,’ and whom the Erdogan regime is accusing of instigating the coup that nearly toppled it.” (Just because I don’t think Gulen had any significant role in the coup doesn’t mean he’s not an Islamist scumbag.)

    According to the Caller, the Gulen camp has been one of Hillary’s numerous sources of cash, in exchange for which she gave access to the President: “a Gulen follower named Gokhan Ozkok asked Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin for help in connecting one of his allies to President Obama….Ozkok served as national finance co-chair of the pro-Clinton Ready PAC. He gave $10,000 to the committee in 2014 and $2,700 to Clinton’s campaign last year. He is also listed on the Turkish Cultural Center’s website as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of the non-profit arms of the Clinton Foundation. He’s given between $25,000 and $50,000 to the Clinton charity.”

    Ah, money for access. Now the Clinton ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are starting to make more sense. Maybe they helped the Clinton Foundation bring in money from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi, Nasser Al-Rashid, etc. Indeed, counting speaking fees and money for “walking away” from an investment partnership with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai, the Clintons have collectively pocketed $100 million from Persian Gulf rulers.

    There’s are other angles to the story I haven’t had time to track down yet. Like why did Hillary Clinton’s new VP pick Tim Kaine appoint the President of the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Muslim American Society, Esam Omeish, to Virginia’s state’s Immigration Commission?

    But I’ll have to leave those for another time.

    First Day of DNC Makes RNC Look Like A Lovefest

    July 25th, 2016

    You’ve probably already heard that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned for leaked DNC emails showing the whole DNC was in the tank for Hillary as deeply as we already knew, and that she instantly accepted a position with the Clinton campaign, going from a de facto shill to a de jour one.

    How popular is Schultz? Her own Florida Democratic delegation booed her at their morning breakfast.

    But the booing didn’t end there! California’s Democratic delegation booed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

    In the background of an MSNBC interview, people (presumably Bernie Sanders supporters) chant “Lock her up!”.

    The boos didn’t end at the main stage either. “Sanders supporters booed loudly at virtually every mention of Hillary Clinton’s name and at other times, defiantly led chants of ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!'”

    The logistics do not seem designed to cool tempers either. “It’s about a 30-minute walk and not the most pleasant experience in near-100-degree temperatures.” Reporters are saying the Philadelphia DNC has the worst logistics they’ve seen at any national convention.

    James Woods tweeted this:

    Finally, Ace of Spades offers up the convention schedule the DNC deserves.

    “How to Bank $200 Million as a Public
    Servant and claim to be broke”
    Hillary Clinton
    4:45 PM

    All in all, the DNC is making the boos that greeted Ted Cruz’s RNC speech look like whatever the big story was on December 6, 1941…

    Now a glimpse at a far more august political occasion:

    Texas vs. California Update for July 25, 2016

    July 25th, 2016

    Enjoy another Texas vs. California roundup:

  • June marked the 114th month that Texas was at or below the national unemployment average. Texas also created 246,600 jobs in the service sector.
  • Once again Texas ranks as the best state for business, and California ranks worst. (Hat tip: Fox and Hounds via Pension Tsunami.)
  • Elites watch while California crumbles:

    The basket of California state taxes — sales, income, and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.

    California depends on a tiny elite class for about half of its income-tax revenue. Yet many of these wealthy taxpayers are fleeing the 40-million-person state, angry over paying 12 percent of their income for lousy public services.

    Excessive state regulations and expanding government, massive illegal immigration from impoverished nations, and the rise of unimaginable wealth in the tech industry and coastal retirement communities created two antithetical Californias.

    One is an elite, out-of-touch caste along the fashionable Pacific Ocean corridor that runs the state and has the money to escape the real-life consequences of its own unworkable agendas.

    The other is a huge underclass in central, rural, and foothill California that cannot flee to the coast and suffers the bulk of the fallout from Byzantine state regulations, poor schools, and the failure to assimilate recent immigrants from some of the poorest areas in the world.

    The result is Connecticut and Alabama combined in one state. A house in Menlo Park may sell for more than $1,000 a square foot. In Madera, three hours away, the cost is about one-tenth of that.

  • CalPERS suffers $30.8 billion annual loss. “CalPERS has notoriously minimized the annual pension contribution for its 3,007 government entities by fantasizing that its superior investments expertise will allow its investments to compound every year without loss for the next three decades at an annual rate of 7.5 percent.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • CalSTRS isn’t doing much better: “The California State Teachers’ Retirement System [earned] 1.4% for the fiscal year ended June 30.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Record tax revenues, yet somehow California is still broke:

    California taxpayers are getting taken to the cleaners, but most of them are completely in the dark about how and why.

    I will pose a quick question: Does it seem strange that California has recorded record revenue increases, yet we also see a record number of tax increases and bond issuances on the ballot?

    In other words, the state’s tax system is collecting massive amounts of revenues, record amounts, yet politicians are still asking for a record number of new tax increases. For taxpayer advocates, it just doesn’t seem fair and seems very strange at first glance as to how this can even occur.

    The truth of the matter is that California’s system of public finance is a complete train wreck and is set up such that no amount of tax revenues collected will ever be enough to satisfy “spending needs.” The so-called baseline expenditure increases are on autopilot and deficit projections are generated despite record revenue increases, a trend projected in the Governor’s May Revise.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • “As we roll toward the November ballot, I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s quip that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” We always get it “good and hard” in California given the ever-expanding one-party rule. The worse it gets, the more voters from the GOP high-tail it to Nevada and Texas — and the worse it gets as political competition evaporates. It’s the political equivalent of a death spiral.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Lots of tax hikes are on the California ballot this November, for a variety of different ostensible reasons, but actually for a single reason: Pensions. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • Beaumont, California: “Seven former officials were arrested and charged with stealing nearly $43 million during the city’s development boom. Now, residents are learning that the town’s problems go much deeper than the criminal case.” (Hat tip: Gregory Benford’s Facebook page.)
  • “California’s high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it.” $68 billion and rising. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Teachers union writes a $10-million check for income tax ballot measure.”
  • “Oakland police officer Malcolm Miller more than quadrupled his $107,627 salary to $489,662 with overtime, benefits and other specialty pays last year — making him Oakland’s highest paid employee for the third year in a row.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “C.C. Myers Inc., one of California’s highest-profile freeway builders, has filed for bankruptcy.”
  • Also filing for bankruptcy: California-based developer Criswell-Radovan, which owns the Tahoe Cal Neva casino Frank Sinatra used to own.
  • One tiny bit of dubious good news for the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California: Now they’re only the second in bankruptcy filings in the nation at 45,000, having been overtaken by the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois at 47,535 filings.
  • Nissan and Toyota battle over Texas. “Both automakers are zeroing in on Texas as a key growth opportunity.”
  • California’s Democratic State Controller Betty Yee fined $2,082 for violations during her 2014 campaign.
  • Rent a security robot for $7 an hour. How many human security guards will be left at California’s $15 an hour?
  • Old and Busted: Participation trophies. The New Hotness: California’s Democratic officials giving awards to their own family members.
  • “Judge throws out ex-L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s plea deal, saying six months in prison not enough.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Obama: “I’m Voting for Trump”

    July 24th, 2016

    Obama says he’ll be voting for Trump. Although it’s not clear that he’s an American citizen, and thus eligible to actually vote for President.

    Enjoy this accurate-but-misleading headline on a slow news Sunday.

    LinkSwarm for July 22, 2016

    July 22nd, 2016

    Haven’t been covering the RNC because I have too much going on. So enjoy this LinkSwarm instead:

  • Full text of Donald Trump’s RNC speech. No I didn’t watch it.
  • “It’s telling that so many city leaders hate their state or national governments, but love supra-national governments like the EU. This shows that their real desire isn’t to go it alone in the marketplace, but to create replacement governance structures that are more amenable to their way of thinking, that constitutionally enshrine their preferences, and are insulated from democratic accountability.”
  • Jerry Pournelle on the real problems in the black community:

    An obvious observation, which hardly anyone seems to make, is that blacks suffer less from racism than from poor education. Harvard does not reject black applicants because it dislikes blacks but because they are badly prepared. Blacks do not fail the federal entrance examination because it is rigged to exclude them but because they don’t know the answers. Equality of opportunity without equality of education is a cruel joke: giving an illiterate the right to apply to Yale isn’t giving him much.

    The intelligent policy is to educate black children, something that the public schools of Washington manage, at great expense, not to do. In fact the prevailing (if unspoken) view seems to be that black children cannot be educated, an idea whose only defect is that it is wrong: the Catholic schools of Washington have been educating black children for years. The Catholic system has 12,170 students in the District, of whom 7,884, or 65 percent, are black.

  • Trump takes lead over Clinton according to that notorious right-wing propaganda organ, the Los Angeles Times. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ, who notes “it certainly looks bad for the Beefy Elderly Drunken Crazylady.”)
  • Wargaming the election in November. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Ten reasons Trump could win.
  • Borepatch plays Nostradamus: “Trump 366, Clinton 172”.
  • Michael Moore thinks Trump is going to win. I pay very little heed to Mr. Moore’s opinions, but I admit the possibility that he may have more insight into the day-to-day outlook of blue collar, rust belt Americans than I do.
  • Crony capitalism: “Lobbyists Are Behind the Rise in Corporate Profits.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.”
  • The Nice jihad truck attack wasn’t spontaneous, it had been planned for months. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The EU will likely break its own rules to save Italian banks.
  • Massachusetts Attorney General decides she has the power to unilaterally rewrite the state’s gun laws.
  • How millennials are screwed. That will teach them to dress like idiots and listen to music that sucks…
  • Memphis newspaper forced to apologize over accurate headline on the Dallas police shootings, i.e. “Gunman targeted whites.”
  • Why does Elon Musk get to keep sucking up taxpayer subsidies? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “A talent for teaching simply does not factor into tenure decisions.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • How the Finns kicked the Soviet Union’s ass in the Winter War.
  • Expose a fake Medal of Honor winner? Get fired.
  • The NBA’s Adam Silver goes full social justice warrior over North Carolina refusing to knuckle under over tranny bathroom demands.
  • Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant accuses Democratic State Senator Royce West of stealing endorsement money from him.
  • Welcome to Masdar City, Abu Dhabi’s half-built ghost town of a “sustainable city.”
  • Anti-Trump protester sets self on fire while trying to burn flag. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Remembering the glory of The Poor Man’s James Bond. What red-blooded American teenage boy wouldn’t want to make his own anti-tank missile? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Important legal tip: If you’re going to get naked and drunk and hang out with pigs, make sure they’re your own pigs. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • It’s a bad idea to eat 75 pounds of cocaine. Even if you are a bear. Or Pam.

    With a bonus Waylon Jennings-in-Las Vegas connection.

  • Turkey: Here Come the Death Squads

    July 21st, 2016

    “Turkey will temporarily suspend the European Convention on Human Rights after announcing a state of emergency following the attempted coup.”

    After all, you can’t very well let pesky documents stand in the way of your liquidating your political enemies.

    The Turkish Parliament also passed an Enabling Act national state of emergency giving scumbag Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers in the wake of the Reichstag fire failed coup.

    But I don’t think it’s going to be five years between the Enabling Act and Kristallnacht in Turkey. I suspect the death squads are probably rounding up Erdogan’s enemies right now…