LinkSwarm for July 17, 2020

July 17th, 2020

Another Friday, another boatload of links. In fact, too many to wrangle into shape right now. I may have to do another mini LinkSwarm on Saturday.

  • Kurt Schlichter has a warning for our elites:

    Would you be shocked to learn that a big hunk of the citizenry is absolutely convinced that Donald Trump will not only be re-elected but re-elected in a landslide? It’s true, and it’s not an ironic or performative belief, but rather one drawn from a perspective that the mainstream media utterly ignores. This means you probably have no idea it even exists, and that could lead to an unpleasant surprise in November.

    Well, unpleasant for you.

    Remember that apocryphal anecdote about how Pauline Kael moaned that she did not know anyone voting for Dick Nixon? If you’re here, then that’s very likely you.

    You can dismiss these people as stupid – many of them really believe that Jesus stuff, deny systemic racism, and have no fear of civilization being destroyed by the weather in a decade or so.

    After all, President Hillary Clinton did.

    Didn’t there arise in your mind, that agonizing Wednesday morning after Mrs. Clinton’s ruination, just the faintest notion that you had been lied to? You tracked the polls, and you reviewed the percentages – most hovering above 90% – that assured you that the glass ceiling was in for an epic shattering. And yet, no shattering was forthcoming. Whether expressly or by omission, you were lied to.

    And it is happening again.

  • “Trump Admin Tells Minnesota Governor To Get Bent Over $16 Million Aid Request Following Riots.” If Democratic officials refuse to defund their own cities from hard-left rioters and thugs, how is that the rest of the nation’s problem?
  • Cancel culture is real.
  • President Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was great.

    First, let’s be clear on who is waging the “culture war” for which the media blames Trump. Trump did indeed blast the “cancel culture” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” so that “in our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.”

    Trump here is just speaking the truth. There has long been an established, deeply admirable civic culture in this nation; it is the radical left who now wages war against it. All over the country, people are being fired for the mere utterance of inconvenient or unwanted thoughts, even anodyne thoughts. People are being physically (and dangerously) hounded from public forums. And it is an utter assault on the rule of law itself to deface or destroy public art, as opposed to removing it through legitimate representative processes. To defend the civic culture against such assaults is not an affront, but a duty.

    Moreover, as Trump said, it is a duty rooted not in suppression but in a commitment to continued expression of the values and virtues that have “rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”

  • “Chinese Virologist Flees Hong Kong, Accuses Beijing Of COVID-19 Cover-Up.”
  • Plagues, compared. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Texas governor Greg Abbott says still no lockdown order.
  • Democrat M. J. Hegar won her runoff with Royce West to face incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn in November. Cahnmann thinks Hegar is a much better candidate than West, but she’s not going to get the mountains of money and fawning media Beto O’Rourke got in 2018, nor are the demographic voting dynamics of a presidential election year going to be nearly as friendly to her.
  • Other Texas runoff election results. Fort Bend County Sheriff beating Troy Nehls beating Kathaleen Wall 70% to 30% is interesting, especially since Wall poured $8 million of her own money into the race, more than 16x what Nehls raised. As Ted Cruz proved in 2012: Money isn’t everything.
  • On the other hand, Ilhan Omar’s Democratic primary opponent raised $3.2 million to Omar’s $471,000.
  • Speaking of which: “Ilhan Omar’s Payments To Husband’s Firm Top $1 Million.” She’s certainly adapted quickly to the Washington Way…
  • Former Auburn football coach and Donald trump-endorsement recipient Tommy Tuberville wins Alabama senate primary over Jeff Sessions. I fully expect Tuberville to crush fluke democratic incumbent Dough Jones in the fall.
  • How remote work could destroy Silicon Valley:

    Perhaps no phenomenon is more studied, marveled, and desired in the world of high tech and science than the mystery of serendipity. In seemingly every industry, CEOs pay millions in consulting, design, and architectural costs to multiply and optimize the number of chance encounters between their most creative employees — and hopefully profit from the blockbuster new products that might result. If only they could engineer the cubicles just so, or the indoor waterfall at the right angle, they might orchestrate providential encounters, or at least load the dice in their favor.

    No place on the planet generates more such interest than Silicon Valley. For decades, cities everywhere have tried to replicate the Valley’s record of producing one trend-setting tech giant after another, but none has quite measured up. Like history’s other hubs of outsized accomplishment — Athens in 450 B.C., Hangzhou in the 12th century, and Florence in the 16th century — Silicon Valley has entrenched itself as the world’s centrifugal force for the biggest thing of its age, tech.

    But now Silicon Valley seems to be under a little-noticed threat. Amid Covid-19, the deep recession, and renewed antitrust pressure from Congress and regulators, the Valley faces a very different challenge — the disruption of its very essence, the serendipitous encounter. The culprit is a rush by many of the Valley’s leading companies to permanently lock in the coronavirus-led shift to remote work. In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees they were no longer required to turn up in the office. Slack said more or less the same to its workers, and the trend was made official by industry colossus Zuckerberg, who announced that he expected up to half his employees would become permanently remote.

    In the years before the pandemic, talent in San Francisco and the Valley were already conflicted about whether to stay, increasingly exasperated by the cost of living. The concentration of highly motivated creators has produced enticing jobs, but also driven up prices. In Palo Alto, the median home now costs $3.2 million. In nearby Mountain View, it’s $1.7 million, and in San Francisco $1.8 million. In other words, the Valley has priced out almost anyone not making high six-figures, and even many of them. The temptation has been to flee elsewhere, and some tech talent had already been doing so.

    But now, if engineers, designers, and venture capitalists are geographically disbanding, working via the cloud instead of walking Google’s halls, surfacing at Buck’s Restaurant, or the cafes on University Avenue, how will future serendipity happen?

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at instapundit.)

  • Lincoln Project co-founder is literally a registered agent for Russia. “The media can keep calling you ‘Republicans,’ but if you support Democrats, take Democratic Party positions, make voting for Democrats all the way down the ticket a binary choice and moral imperative, and then take most of your money from big Democratic Party donors, you’re a Democrat.”
  • Another good word is “Grifter”:

  • Iran’s nuclear facilities mysteriously explode. (Scratches chin.)
  • Another day, another fake hate crime, this one at Texas A&M.
  • How idiots destroyed Brooks Brothers. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Austin response times for emergencies has gotten progressively worse over the years.

    The City would cut the number of cops despite increasing response times for emergency calls and increased violent crime in the city. I suspect other cities will be facing similar budget decisions under similar circumstances.

    I don’t know anyone who thinks we shouldn’t improve officer training and use of force guidelines to minimize harm to citizens. I know a number of cops who have been saying such things for years. I fail to see how decreasing the number of cops will enhance public safety.

  • Oopsie!
  • ESPN suspends “NBA insider and reporter Adrian Wojnarowski after he sent an email to Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley reading, ‘F— you.'”

    The Republican senator asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver last week if he would allow players to wear jerseys with the message: “Free Hong Kong.” Hawley was criticizing the league after officials announced “pre-approved phrases” would be allowed on the back of jerseys while “censoring support” for law enforcement and criticism of China, according to Fox News.

    Wojnarowski responded to Hawley with the two-word email, which Hawley shared on social media. The columnist soon issued an apology for the message.

    Wojnarowski (or “Woj” as NBA followers call him) still hasn’t clarified which was offensive to him: Supporting American law enforcement officers or supporting freedom for Hong Kong.

  • The Houston Rockets’ Russell Westbrook tests positive for coronavirus.
  • RoadRich will be very sad at this story.
  • “Ca-..ca-…ca-Candygram!”
  • “Black Conservative Informed By White People That He’s Racist.”
  • “Elizabeth Warren Declares Herself Warlord Of Eastern Oklahoma Autonomous Zone.”
  • “Trump 2020 Campaign To Simply Air Unedited Footage Of Democrats Talking.”
  • My friend Dave Hardy has a free swashbuckling SF novel on Amazon through Sunday.
  • “It’s like confetti, but with human bodies!”

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Texas 23rd Congressional District Runoff Results on Knife’s Edge

    July 16th, 2020

    Various Wuhan coronavirus delayed runoffs finally happened in Texas on Tuesday, settling the general election slate for November.

    Well, for all races, that is, except the Texas 23rd U.S. Congressional District, the seat Republican Will Hurd is retiring from, where the Republican runoff between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes is still too close to call.

    On Wednesday, with all polling locations reporting, Tony Gonzales had a seven-vote lead over his opponent for the 23rd Congressional District Republican nomination in Texas – not counting late mail-in, military, and overseas ballots.

    Former Navy cryptologist Gonzales trailed retired Air Force Lt. Col. Raul Reyes for most of Tuesday evening and into the early hours of Wednesday, but they flipped later Wednesday morning. According to the Texas secretary of state Wednesday, 12,346 people voted for Gonzales while 12,339 voted for Reyes.

    The Bexar County Elections Department still must count mail-in ballots that it receives Wednesday, as long as those ballots were postmarked by Tuesday, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said. Military and overseas ballots can be counted if the department receives them by Monday, so those results will not be available until next week.

    District 23 covers a large swath of Texas, spanning from western San Antonio to just outside of El Paso. The seat is held by Rep. Will Hurd (R-Helotes), who declined to run for reelection.

    And, with the thinnest of justifications, here’s an Emerson, Lake and Palmer prog rock jam from (gulp!) half a century ago:

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas, video | No Comments »

    Bari Weiss Resigns In Protest Of The NYT SJW Wokecult

    July 15th, 2020

    The purge of those daring to express non-approved thought at the New York Times continues apace, with op-ed staff editor and writer Bari Weiss penning a letter of protest on her way out the door:

    It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

    I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

    I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

    How dare an editor hired to bring in diverse opinions bring in diverse opinions? Look at those exhibitors of wrongthink! Letting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nick Gillespie and Glenn Loury express non-approved thoughts just proves how guilty Weiss was!

    But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

    Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

    Ouch!

    As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

    My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

    For those in the Party, everything. For those outside the Party, nothing.

    There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

    She should sue. I suspect the discovery process would be instructive.

    I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.

    I do. The nail that stands up must be hammered down. Weiss wasn’t hired to bring real diverse opinions to the New York Times, she was hired to give the veneer and illusion of same.

    And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

    Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

    Trump Derangement Syndrome and Social Justice Warrior pieties: It’s what’s for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch. And every snack in-between.

    What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

    Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

    I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: The first and post immediate goal of Social Justice is to enforce ideological conformity on the left. It’s not enough to be a good liberal who reliable votes for Democrats and supports liberal causes. You must swallow the entire panoply of hard left victimhood identity politics talking points. Express unorthodox thoughts on Palestinians or express doubt that someone with XY chromosomes and a penis is a woman and expect to face the woke inquisition for your heresy.

    It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

    Indeed.

    The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

    Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

    Never underestimate the power of sucking up to continue receiving a paycheck.

    Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

    The ranks of American business are filled with people who oppose the wokecult, but are too scared to speak out.

    All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers.

    Why would any independent-minded young writer or editor come to work for the New York Times at all anymore? In fact, do journalism schools even turn out such creates anymore? That ship probably sailed decades ago. I suspect it’s all woke, all the way down.

    Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

    It’s been like this for quite a while. The only difference is that they’re not even pretending otherwise anymore.

    For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

    None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

    Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

    None of that has been present in the New York Times for a long, long time…

    (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

    Reminder: Your Taxes Are Due Tomorrow!

    July 14th, 2020

    Remember the relief you felt that the Wuhan Coronavirus had delayed tax day from April 15 to July 15?

    Well, that reprieve is expiring, and your taxes are due tomorrow.

    If your taxes are simple (mine aren’t), you can probably use the free IRS filing tool. H&R Block also has a free filing tool.

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    Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    PSA: Texas Election Runoff Today

    July 14th, 2020

    If you live in various parts of Texas, today is the Wuhan coronavirus-delayed runoff date.

    The long-awaited Lone Star State runoff elections are tomorrow, postponed from May 26. At the federal level, 16 nominations will be decided, one for the Senate and 15 more in U.S. House races.

    In Texas, if no candidate secures a 50 percent majority in the primary, which, in 2020, was all the way back on Super Tuesday, March 3, a runoff election between the top two finishers is then conducted within 12 weeks. Because of COVID precautions, the extended runoff cycle has consumed 19 weeks.

    Sen. John Cornyn (R) will learn the identity of his general election opponent tomorrow night, and the incumbent’s campaign has seemingly involved itself in the Democratic runoff. The Cornyn team released a poll at the end of last week that contained ballot test results for the Democratic runoff, a race that seemingly favored original first-place finisher M.J. Hegar, but closer examination leads one to believe that the Cornyn forces would prefer to run against state Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas).

    The TargetPoint survey identified Ms. Hegar as a 33-29 percent leader but points out that among those respondents who claim to have already voted, the two candidates were tied at 50 percent apiece. They further used the poll to identify Sen. West as the most “liberal” candidate in the race as an apparent way to influence Democratic voters that he is closer to them than Ms. Hegar.

    Snip.

    In the House, six districts host runoffs in seats that will result in a substantial incumbent victory this fall. Therefore, runoff winners in the 3rd (Rep. Van Taylor-R), 15th (Rep. Vicente Gonzalez-D), 16th (Rep. Veronica Escobar-D), 18th (Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee-D), 20th (Rep. Joaquin Castro-D), and 35th Districts (Rep. Lloyd Doggett-D) will become largely inconsequential in November.

    The 2nd District originally was advancing to a secondary election, but candidate Elisa Cardnell barely qualified for the Democratic runoff and decided to concede the race to attorney and former Beto O’Rourke advisor Sima Ladjevardian. Therefore, the latter woman became the party nominee against freshman Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) without having to face a second election. The congressman is a strong favorite for re-election, but Ms. Ladjevardian had already raised will over $1 million for just her primary election.

    The 10th District Democratic runoff features attorney Mike Siegel, who held Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Austin) to a surprisingly close finish in 2018. Mr. Siegel is favored to top physician Pritesh Gandhi who has raised and spent over $1.2 million through the June 24th pre-runoff financial disclosure report, which is about $400,000 more than Mr. Siegel.

    District 13 features runoffs on both sides, but it is the Republican race that will decide who succeeds retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Clarendon/Amarillo) in the seat that gave President Trump his second strongest percentage (79.9 percent) in the entire country. Though finishing second in the primary election to lobbyist and former congressional aide Josh Winegarner, former White House physician and retired Navy Admiral Ronny Jackson, armed with President Trump’s vocal support, has now become the favorite. According to a Fabrizio Lee & Associates’ late June poll for an outside organization supporting the retired Admiral, Mr. Jackson leads 46-29 percent.

    Former Congressman Pete Sessions is attempting a political comeback after his defeat in 2018. Moving to his boyhood home of Waco to run for the open 17th District, Mr. Sessions placed first in the primary, well ahead of second-place finisher Renee Swann, a local healthcare company executive. Being hit for his Dallas roots in the district that stretches from north of Waco to Bryan/College Station, it remains to be seen how the former 11-term congressman fares in his new district.

    If he wins, the 17th will be the third distinct seat he will have represented in the Texas delegation. He was originally elected in the 5th CD in 1996, and then switched to the 32nd CD post-redistricting in 2004. Of the three elections he would ostensibly face in the current election cycle, most believed the runoff would be Mr. Sessions’ most difficult challenge.

    The open 22nd District brings us the conclusion to a hotly contested Republican runoff election between first-place finisher Troy Nehls, the Sheriff of Ft. Bend County, and multi-millionaire businesswoman Kathaleen Wall. The latter has been spending big money on Houston broadcast television to call into question Nehls’ record on the issue of human sex trafficking, which is a significant concern in the Houston metro area.

    With her issues and money, versus a veritable lack of campaign resources for Sheriff Nehls, Ms. Wall has closed the primary gap and pulled within the margin of polling error for tomorrow’s election. The winner faces Democratic nominee Sri Preston Kulkarni, who held retiring Rep. Pete Olson (R-Sugar Land) to a 51-46 percent victory in 2018.

    In the 23rd District that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, and is the only true swing district in Texas, retired Navy non-commissioned officer Tony Gonzales and homebuilder Raul Reyes battle for the Republican nomination tomorrow. Mr. Gonzales, with President Trump’s support, has the edge over Mr. Reyes, who did earn Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R) backing. The winner faces general election favorite Gina Ortiz Jones (D), who held retiring Rep. Will Hurd (R-San Antonio) to a scant 926 vote victory in 2018.

    Back in the DFW metroplex, Democrats will choose a nominee for the open 24th District. Retired Air Force Colonel Kim Olson was originally considered the favorite for the nomination, but it appears that former local school board member Candace Valenzuela has overtaken her with outside support from Hispanic and progressive left organizations. The winner challenges former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne (R) in what promises to be an interesting general election. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Coppell) is retiring after eight terms in federal office. Prior to his election to Congress, Mr. Marchant spent 18 years in the Texas House of Representatives.

    Finally, in the 31st District, Democrats will choose a candidate to oppose veteran Rep. John Carter (R-Round Rock). Physician Christine Mann and computer engineer Donna Imam ran close to each other in the primary, and the winner will face an uphill climb in the general election. Though 2020 Senate candidate M.J. Hegar held Mr. Carter to a 51-48 percent win two years ago, the congressman will be considered a much stronger re-election favorite this year.

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    Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    BidenWatch for July 13, 2020

    July 13th, 2020

    Biden drifts left, embraces the Green New Deal, and lifts his platform from Bernie Sanders. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Joe Biden signs up for the Green New Deal. You know, if primary voters wanted a socialist takeover of the economy, they could have just voted for Bernie Sanders…
  • Speaking of which: “Joe Biden’s Unity Task Force recommendations copy and paste word-for-word from Bernie Sanders quite a bit.”
  • Even the Washington Post has noticed how far left Biden has drifted:

    Joe Biden is looking at building 500 million solar panels, slashing U.S. carbon emissions within 15 years, and rapidly expanding a government-sponsored health care plan. He wants to overhaul the way policing is conducted on American streets and the way success is measured in primary schools.

    Over the past week, the presumptive Democratic nominee has offered the biggest burst of policy proposals since he effectively won the nomination, including a plan to spend $700 billion on American products and research. It marks a significant move to the left from where Biden and his party were only recently — on everything from climate and guns to health care and policing — and reflects a fundamental shift in the political landscape.

    The new plans, which have come in speeches, interviews, and a 110-page policy document crafted with allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), provide a window into how Biden would govern, and they kick off a new phase in a campaign that until now has focused mostly on President Trump’s performance. As Biden releases more plans — including one on climate and clean energy investments this week — he appears to be drafting a blueprint for the biggest surge of government action in generations.

    “I think the compromise that they came up with, if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR,” Sanders, a democratic socialist who does not offer such assessments lightly, told MSNBC.

  • Biden wants to make Little Sisters of the Poor bend the knee:

    Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden issued a statement Wednesday evening in which he said he is “disappointed in today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision” in the case Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania.

    “I will restore the Obama-Biden policy that existed before the [2014 Supreme Court] Hobby Lobby ruling,” Biden said.

  • Biden wants to transform America:

    Barack Obama famously (infamously?) said that he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America. Thankfully, he was unable to completely do that. Now Obama’s senile Mini-Me, Joe Biden, is parroting his former boss and going on about “rebuilding” and “transforming” our beloved country.

    Snip.

    America is just fine, thank you. Warts and all, this 244-year-old experiment in freedom is — put mildly — freakin’ glorious. Every leftist who says America needs to be rebuilt or transformed is lying.

    What’s really disturbing is that Joe Biden is the most moderate of the Dems to emerge from that large primary field. If he’s going on about transformation then the center of American politics has moved too far to ever get it back to anything resembling “normal.”

    We’re fine here, Joe. We won’t be needing your help.

  • More on the same subject:

    Putting aside the fact that Biden almost certainly doesn’t have the capacity to consistently write his own tweets, one is left wondering exactly what he plans to transform “this nation” into. Given how much the nation has already been transformed over the last several months, with the continued tolerance of the destruction of cities and America’s history, the promise of some higher level of radicalism coming should worry everyone.

    Biden is not a moderate and never has been. The fact that he likely didn’t write the above tweet is perhaps worse than if he had. He’s surrounded by radicals, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to his actual campaign staff, some of whom are alumni of the Sanders and Obama campaigns.

    I’d go further and say that it’s not playing into Trump’s messaging but that it’s reality. Biden is telling us who he is and he has continuously done so. The idea that he’s a moderate is a myth perpetuated by people who want it to be true, i.e. voters who are not comfortable with the current cultural revolution but still want to vote for Biden. They are deluding themselves, believing that he’ll flip a switch when he’s president. He won’t and there’s absolutely no reason to believe he won’t govern exactly as he’s campaigning.

  • Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones: “I Am Black And I Am A Democrat. But ‘I Ain’t’ Voting For Joe Biden This November.”

    Since that day in May when I announced I would support Donald Trump for president, my motives have been questioned, my integrity assailed, even my intelligence challenged. That’s okay.

    I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I am also a black man, the son of a World War II veteran and a proud American.

    In recent weeks, there have been absurd calls to defund and disband police departments across the country by Democrats in response to the unjust murder of George Floyd. These are extreme calls that will only lead to more pain and suffering in our most vulnerable communities.

    As the former Chief Executive Officer of DeKalb County, Georgia, I’ve had to manage one of the largest police departments in the state. I’ve had the experience of dealing with police shootings and comforting the families of victims. But at the same time, I’ve also had the experience of losing two black police officers. I’ve had to comfort their families in the middle of the night and console their young children. I know firsthand when others are running away from chaos, police officers are running into the fight to protect and serve.

    President Trump was sickened by the death of George Floyd and fully committed to ensuring that he will not have died in vain. The president has taken a commonsense approach to heal our nation. President Trump made clear that he will protect all Americans, serve as an ally to peaceful protesters and always uphold law and order.

    But the protesters were determined to sow chaos and destruction, all in the name of racial equality. Listen, during my first legislative session in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1993, I filed the first bill in my career to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. But I also understand the preservation of our history — the good and the bad. And still I bow to no one in my advocacy for the black community.

    But unlike other Washington politicians, this president actually backed up his words with actions. He signed an Executive Order on police reform — taking steps to build a better bridge between law enforcement men and women and their communities.

    The landmark Executive Order encourages police to implement best practices to protect the people they serve. It sets the highest professional standards for law enforcement officers, while promoting peace and equality for all Americans.

    Under the order, the Trump administration will now prioritize federal grants from the Department of Justice to police departments that meet these high standards. Additionally, the order pushes forward the creation of a national database of police misconduct. This database will root out bad cops and help create accountability between police agencies.

    Where were Joe Biden and the previous administration for 8 years in the White House on this issue? I’ll tell you. They were absent in unifying this country.

  • How the chaos Democrats have sown will end up biting them in November:

    The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.

    It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.

    This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

    It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil America is.

    And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around.

    Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

  • Mike Huckabee on how those policies would hurt the economy:

    Employing the same pro-growth policies that turned the stagnant Obama-Biden economy into a record-setting dynamo in recent years, President Trump is orchestrating an unprecedented “V-shaped” recovery as our country emerges from pandemic-related lockdowns. The past two months have both seen blowout new records for job creation — 2.7 million new jobs in May, followed by an even more incredible 4.8 million new jobs in June.

    The recovery has been rapid, but our progress remains fragile, and America’s beleaguered workers and business owners could not withstand the strain of Biden’s new taxes and regulations.

    Biden’s proposal to halt all fracking would be particularly disastrous, both economically and geopolitically. Over the course of just four years, Biden’s fracking ban would destroy an estimated 19 million jobs and shave over $7 trillion from our national GDP.

    But Biden’s radical environmentalism gets even worse.

    For the first time in over half a century, America has become a net exporter of fossil fuels under President Trump, whose common-sense deregulatory agenda has allowed our country to become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. This means our country is now less reliant on Middle Eastern dictators for its oil, and American consumers are paying less at the pump and on their energy bills.

    Joe Biden, however, wants to restore the sort of punitive regulations that were the centerpiece of the “war on coal” waged during the Obama-Biden administration.

    Economic growth and innovation would also be severely undercut in other ways by a Biden presidency. In 2018, the Commerce Department calculated that total regulatory costs were equivalent to approximately 10 percent of the entire national economy — an alarming statistic that President Trump has made it a priority to correct.

    As the most far-left of any Democratic presidential nominee in history, Biden’s platform is replete with proposals to increase the burden of bureaucracy even more.

  • “Joe Biden must release the results of his cognitive tests — voters need to know.” Good luck with that…
  • Does Jill Biden want to run things?

    I truly believe Jill Biden wants to be Edith Wilson 2.0. Woodrow Wilson’s wife basically ran the White House after his stroke in 1919. She only had to do that for two years. I’m pretty sure that Jill Biden would like at least an eight-year run at the gig.

    When Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep’s handlers first began letting him do videos from his quarantine basement, Jill was often sitting at his side, grinning like a proud mother whose idiot underachieving kid had just successfully recited the alphabet for the first time. It was, quite frankly, very creepy to watch.

    I’m still convinced that the overarching Democratic National Committee plan is to get Biden elected, whisk him back to the basement until Inauguration Day, then tell everyone that he’s had a medical situation of some sort shortly after that. Then his progressive VP can take over the job of running the country off a progressive cliff.

    I am also firmly convinced that Jill Biden has other plans.

    For reasons beyond my comprehension, Team Biden keeps releasing videos of this drooling moron. They are all painful to watch, and it seems at times to be a little cruel to mock him. He is, however, making a bid for becoming the most powerful man in the world. As long as he is running, Biden is fair game.

    Jill Biden knows that and she doesn’t care.

    The longer the Joe Biden Obvious Decline Circus is allowed to go on, the more I’m convinced that Jill Biden is a power-hungry madwoman who so desperately wants to be in the White House that she is willing to subject her husband to what has now become bipartisan ridicule.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Joe Biden presidency will bring disaster for the Supreme Court.”

    Progressive activists see Biden as an opportunity to secure the Supreme Court for the left over the next several decades. Some have even floated the idea of expanding the number of Supreme Court justices to “pack” it with liberals the next time a Democrat wins the White House. Biden has rejected that idea, but the enthusiasm it has from progressive activists says plenty about what the left wing of the party wants from him.

    Liberal organizations have seized upon the promise of Biden to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, urging him to consider someone like Leslie Abrams, the sister of Stacey Abrams, or liberal academic Michelle Alexander, who compared the nation of Israel to apartheid South Africa. Though Biden himself has not yet released his own shortlist of potential nominees, progressive activists who would wield immense power in his potential administration are already narrowing down the names.

    Progressive activists see Biden as an opportunity to secure the Supreme Court for the left over the next several decades. Some have even floated the idea of expanding the number of Supreme Court justices to “pack” it with liberals the next time a Democrat wins the White House. Biden has rejected that idea, but the enthusiasm it has from progressive activists says plenty about what the left wing of the party wants from him.

    We cannot afford to give Biden the opportunity to appoint new Supreme Court justices. With so many important cases decided along such narrow political lines, and with the “conservative majority” becoming increasingly fragile as Chief Justice John Roberts continues to drift leftward, the way to prevent a liberal takeover of the highest court in the land is to ensure that the next few vacancies are filled by reliably conservative judges.

  • Don Surber thinks Trump will win 37 states.

    Biden finished fifth in Iowa to Hillary and Obama in 2008. And Biden has not aged well in the intervening 12 years.

    In the past month, Democrats have made the same mistake they have made in every election they have lost since 1968. They turned their backs on patriotism.

    The liberal scorn of patriotism will once again backfire. Democrats are burning down their cities. Conrad Black sees this destruction as re-electing the president.

    He wrote, “This is some new form of farce noire, a nightmare of outright idiocy, part slapstick and part horror, playing on a gigantic stage. Fortunately, we know it has to end on November 3, but the audience will likely tire of it and bring down the curtain well before then. No society can tolerate this for long. The arsonists will not burn down society; the society will awaken and banish the arsonists.”

    There is an element of extortion in all this. Democrats are saying everything will return to normal only if we elect Biden.

    Otherwise…

    The attacks on the flag and the nation’s Founding Fathers (as well as Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) show an arrogance and tone-deafness. Americans still love their country. Be they the sons and daughters of slaves or slave owners or people who were neither, Americans are proud of their country and proud of their heritage.

    I said 37 states in January. I say 37 states in July because Democrats have done not one thing to win over Trump voters, who were enough in number to win 30 states and the presidency in 2016. Seven more Hillary states will flip. I mean, does anyone seriously believe Minnesotans will not switch to President Trump after the George Floyd riots?

  • Here’s a long, flattering portrait of Michigan Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin, who came in the semi-blue-wave of 2018. Ignore the fawning and the credence given the now-debunked “Russian bounty” scandal and read the part where she thinks Democrats are deluding themselves if they think 2020 is in the bag:

    “I don’t believe it,” Slotkin says matter of factly. “Listen, if anyone tells me they can accurately predict what major events are coming in the remainder of 2020, I’ll give them a thousand dollars. I mean, this has been the year of black swans. … I don’t for one minute think this [presidential] race is safe in anyone’s column. I’ve been literally begging people to ignore those polls. They are a snapshot in time. And if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we have no idea what’s coming next.”

    I stop Slotkin there. Is her gripe that these snapshots—the polling, both public and private, that shows Republicans bleeding support across the board—are accurate in the present, yet subject to so much volatility in the future as to be worthless? Or does she believe the snapshots themselves are inaccurate here and now?

    “I think they’re inaccurate,” she replies without hesitation. “Here’s the thing. When I started to run and I had to hire a pollster, I interviewed a bunch of different folks and I decided to do what we do sometimes at the Pentagon, which is to take a ‘bad cop’ approach to the interview. … It was five or six folks that I interviewed, and I said, ‘You got something wrong. You screwed up in 2016. What did you get wrong? And how are you going to fix it?”

    Only one pollster, Slotkin says, admitted that he got it wrong. That was the person—Al Quinlan of GQR, a large Washington-based firm—she hired.

    “He told me that they fundamentally undercounted the Trump vote; that the Trump voter is not a voter in every single election, that they come out for Trump, so they’re hard to count,” she explains. “On a survey, if someone says, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to vote,’ you don’t usually continue the conversation. And some of them didn’t have any desire to be on those poll calls; they didn’t have the 20 minutes to talk to somebody. They didn’t want to do it. And so, they were fundamentally undercounted.”

    Slotkin, ever the intel analyst—identifying trends, compiling a report, presenting a conclusion—tells me, with a high degree of confidence, “I believe that same thing is happening right now.”

  • “Biden wins Puerto Rico primary.”
  • Veepstakes: “The Biden VP Pick Who Would Satisfy Both Ilhan Omar and George Will. California Representative Karen Bass’s low-key manner and progressive credentials could strengthen Biden’s campaign when he needs it most.”
  • Veepstakes: Profile of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Because being less strident while letting the city you lead burn less than Minneapolis is evidently a qualification.
  • “Culture…culture…culture…”

  • Wrong again, Joe:

  • Joe Biden: Steady and Pathetic:

  • Pandering to the hard left again:

  • Reminder:

  • “To Save Time, The Babylon Bee Will Now Just Republish Everything Biden Says Verbatim.”

    • Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





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    How to Skew a Poll: Texas 2020 Edition

    July 12th, 2020

    Another Texas poll, another skewed sample.

    This is the poll that purports to show Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by five points and Senator John Cornyn under 50% against either M.J. Hegar or Royce West.

    The nice thing about this Dallas Morning News/UT Tyler poll is that it tells you how the poll weighting is skewed right up front:

    Democrat 39%
    Republican 42%

    So it oversamples Democrats by at least 7% compared to the 2016 Presidential election. I assume that they’re using Beto O’Rourke’s narrow loss in a semi-blue-wave year against Ted Cruz in the 2018 U.S. Senate race as the baseline, not Lupe Valdez’s twelve point pasting by Greg Abbott in the Governor’s race. Neither Hegar are West are going to be awash in money and fawning media coverage the way O’Rourke was.

    Presidential year voter turnout has distinctly different patterns than off-year election turnout. The 2020 general election is more likely to resemble the 2016 election, when Trump beat Clinton by nine points in Texas, than the 2018 election.

    Even money says that the next Texas Tribune and Texas Lyceum polls you see will be just as skewed.

    There are plenty of things to worry about in November. Trump and Cornyn losing Texas should not be among them.

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    Social Justice Warriors: The Cartoon

    July 11th, 2020

    A parody, but still:

    This is evidently from the No Safe Spaces documentary.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

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    LinkSwarm for July 10, 2020

    July 10th, 2020

    China buys Pakistan, the Supreme Court gives Oklahoma back to the Indians, another cartel shootout in Nuevo Laredo, and cancel culture comes for everyone! Enjoy another Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “In a major Supreme Court decision Thursday, justices decided that a large swath of [Oklahoma], including part of Tulsa, is still an American Indian reservation. Tribal members can no longer be prosecuted by the state for crimes that happen in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.” I have not had time to read the decision, but my impression is that it’s somewhat less sweeping than the MSM is making it out to be.
  • The Trump Administration officially withdraws from WHO.
  • Interesting piece on the Sino-Indian conflict:

    China has become the ultimate fiscal lifeline for Pakistan. Decades of deficits, growing corruption, excessive defense spending and military domination have left Pakistan broke and few willing to give or lend enough cash to keep Pakistan solvent. A recent example of how this works was seen when despite economic recession and a public debt crisis (no one will lend to Pakistan anymore), the Pakistani defense budget was increased twelve percent for 2020, with annual spending now $7.85 billion. Spending on dealing with covid19 has averaged about $100 million a month and by the end of the year military spending will be at least five times what was spent on covid19. The India defense budget is also up (13.6 percent more) in 2020 to $66 billion.

    The only economic relief available to Pakistan is China and CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic corridor). CPEC is a vast Chinese investment and construction effort that depends on vigorous support of the Pakistani military to succeed. China needs the Pakistani military to keep Islamic terrorists and tribal separatists from attacking the Chinese construction projects. Pakistan also helps China by keeping Indian forces occupied in Kashmir and the northwest Indian portion of the Pakistani border.

    Northwest India (Ladakh State) is the current a hot spot because India has been building roads to the border and threatening to take back the portion of Kashmir Pakistan illegally, according to the agreement that established the India-Pakistan border after the British left in 1947, seized from India. Pakistan signed that agreement but had second thoughts as it was being implemented. Pakistan urged Pakistani Pushtun tribes in the area to “liberate” Kashmir from the Hindus and managed to grab about half of the disputed area. This dispute has remained unresolved ever since and led to several wars with India. Pakistan always lost but India never sent troops into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The current Indian leader is openly questioning the wisdom of that policy.

    India controlling all of Kashmir is a major economic threat to China, which has invested over $10 billion to build a highway and rail line from China to the Pakistani coast and it goes through Pakistani occupied Kashmir. This link is part of the Chinese OBOR/BRI (belt and road project) which aims to revive the ancient Silk Road that for thousands of years was the main economic link between East Asia and the rest of Eurasia. The Pakistani portion is called CPEC and is costing China at least $62 billion (so far). The Indian threats to the Kashmir road-rail link are minor compared to the problems China is having with Islamic terrorist and tribal violence against CPEC projects as well as the high levels of corruption in Pakistan which are also damaging CPEC projects. This is driving up costs while lowering quality and slowing progress. But China also claims ownership of much Indian territory so helping Pakistani keep what they have grabbed is considered something of a professional courtesy. At the same time the Pakistani military have gained an ally they cannot abandon or say no to.

    In June China revived the border war over Pangong Lake, which is largely in Tibet and patrolled by a small Chinese naval force. This is the longest lake in Asia and part of the 134-kilometer long lake extends 45 kilometers into the Indian Ladakh region. China is using its usual “sneak, grab and stay” tactics to slowly move the border into territory long occupied by India. The portion of the lake shore in dispute has no native population. The only people who visit the area are soldiers from India or China.

    Given this newly declared foreign threat China has, since 2019, sent new Type928D Patrol Boats to guard the lake. This fast (70 kilometers an hour) boat is armed with an RWS (Remote Weapons System) using a 12.7mm machine-gun plus two or more smaller (7.62mm) machine-guns that can be outed elsewhere on the boat and operated by one of the ten sailors on board. There is also seating below deck for up to twenty troops. India has smaller boats patrolling it portion of the 4,200-meter high lake, except for the few months when the entire lake is frozen over.

    In the last decade China has been building roads into remote and formerly inaccessible (via vehicle) portions of the lake coastline. China has built some of these roads into areas claimed by India but not regularly patrolled because special mountain troops must be employed to get into these areas without coming in by boat or on foot over the ice.

    India admits that the Chinese aggression along its northern border is active again and the Chinese are now actually taking control of Indian territory and apparently plan to continue doing so. Despite Indian nuclear weapons China believes it can get away with gradually gaining control over more than 100,000 square kilometers of Indian territory it claims. This will be done by grabbing a few square kilometers at a time without triggering a nuclear exchange. Fortune favors the bold, even in slow motion.

  • Bank runs in China?
  • “Stony Brook professor Helmut Norpoth says Trump has a 91% chance of winning in November.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at instapundit.)
  • Twelve members of a cartel hit squad killed in Nuevo Laredo shootout.

    The dead were allegedly members of the Tropa del Infierno, or Hell’s Army, the armed wing of the Northeast Cartel, who attacked soldiers while they were patrolling the highway to the airport. No military personnel were reported injured in the shoot-out.

    Investigators at the scene recovered two of the squad’s vehicles that were reported stolen in the United States, as well as 12 guns including two Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles and eight AR-15s.

    The Northeast Cartel, a faction of Los Zetas, is headed by Juan Gerardo Treviño Chávez, alias El Huevo. A reward of 2 million pesos (US $89,000) has been offered for information leading to his arrest. Treviño is the nephew of the former leader of Los Zetas who was arrested in Houston in 2016.

    Nuevo Laredo, which is right across the Mexican border from Texas, was also the scene of two previous massive cartel shootouts, in 2012 and 2018.

  • “As Black children are killed in spiking urban violence, where’s the outrage from the white and the woke?”
  • New Jersey Democrat-to-Republican U.S. Representative Jeff Van Drew won his primary. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s Life on the Lam.”

    Her business, first and foremost, was keeping Jeffrey Epstein happy. He shared much with her father: a humble origin, a vast fortune derived by mysterious means, even rumors of ties to the Mossad and other intelligence agencies. Like Robert Maxwell, Epstein also attached himself to a woman of higher status. In those days, Manhattan was party central, a place where connections were made at night, person to person. “Ghislaine was at the epicenter of all that,” says Euan Rellie, a British investment banker who knew Maxwell in both London and New York. “She befriended everybody and had a massive Rolodex of influential people.”

    Those connections proved pivotal to Epstein. “I always say that Ghislaine helped Jeffrey become who he became,” says one of Epstein’s victims. “He had the money, but he didn’t know what to do with it. She showed him.” Epstein built a 21,000-square-foot mansion on a 10,000-acre ranch in New Mexico, which he boasted made his New York town house “look like a shack,” and named it the Zorro Ranch. He also acquired a 72-acre island in the Virgin Islands and an 8,600-square-foot home in Paris, which is said to have featured a specially built massage room. Maxwell is said to have shared Epstein’s bed in each of the residences, as his girlfriend, before moving on to become his “best friend,” as he called her in Vanity Fair. (“When a relationship is over, the girlfriend ‘moves up, not down’ to friendship status.”)

    Maxwell soon had a bed of her own in a five-story town house on the Upper East Side, tended by a live-in couple who served as her housekeeper and driver, two secretaries (one for her and a second for Jeffrey), and an immense budget for the six properties she was managing for Epstein. She had found a path back to the lifestyle she’d lost when her father died. “She was used to living very well,” says a friend who knew her then. “She didn’t want to go back to where she was.”

    She wore a large diamond ring Epstein had given her, which she called her engagement ring, according to one of Epstein’s victims. “She would say things like she was the only one who Jeffrey slept with,” the woman says. “I know that she would have died to marry him. She would have done anything for him. He trumped everybody and everything.”

  • Former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao in 2011: “Sure, everyone knew Ghislaine Maxwell provided underage girls for sex.” Decent people: “Did you go to the police?” Pao: [LOCKS TWITTER ACCOUNT]
  • “Authors of Study on Race and Police Killings Seek Retraction Because Conservatives Cite It.”
  • “British Media Outlets Wake Up, Begin Distancing Themselves From UK Black Lives Matter Organization.”

    There is, of course, a big difference in saying you believe black lives matter versus saying you agree with the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a very important, key distinction to make in this debate. Unfortunately, “woke” reporters here in the U.S. often deliberately blur the lines by conflating the two as if they mean the same thing, so they can play the exact type of word games they did with [White House press secretary Kayleigh] McEnany over Trump’s tweets.

    Across the pond in the UK, however, there’s been an unexpected development on this front. Unlike the mainstream media here that routinely fails to make the distinction between saying “black lives matter” (blm) versus saying you support Black Lives Matter (BLM), a growing number of media outlets there have started distancing themselves from the political group because of their calls to defund the police and after a series of anti-Israel, anti-Semitical tweets posted by BLM-UK were recently posted.

    Is it too much to ask for our own MSM to start waking up as well?

  • Another week, another fake hate crime.
  • “It Wasn’t My Cancelation That Bothered Me. It Was the Cowardice of Those Who Let It Happen.”

  • Cancel cultures comes for Steven Pinker. “This transparently idiotic diatribe, previously dissected by folks such as Jerry Coyne and Barbara Partee — the latter of whom notes Pinker’s role in recruiting female and minority linguists to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — can’t possibly succeed. Can it?” I wouldn’t want to bet money on that proposition. Reason and logic play no role in cancel culture.
  • “Anyone Who Claims Cancel Culture Is Real Is A Bigot Who Should Lose His Job.”
  • On the other hand, Kurt Schlichter sees an opportunity to kill off academia as we know it. “Academia today is a pack of rabid reds, and we need to put it down like Old Yeller. And academia itself has loaded up the 12 gauge.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Fairly horrific F5 load balancer security bug discovered. Those things are pretty much everywhere in tech, so this is a big deal.
  • “Media Begging for a ‘Second Wave.”‘
  • “Governors Reinstate Lockdowns To Combat Recovering Economy.”
  • Physicians: ObamaCare deserves to die.
  • “This Was Russia’s Version of the F-22 Raptor. And It Was a Big Failure.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Mayor of Seoul dead in possible suicide.
  • This is indeed an extremely good parody. For me the giveaway was her saying she was running for Florida’s 28th congressional district…

  • Old and busted: Banning Jews. The new hotness: Banning “Jews.”
  • Good catch.
  • Ivy League cancels fall athletics.
  • While the Big 10 is moving to a conference-only schedule.
  • “I Survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Here Are the Lessons I’d Like to Pass On.”

    I would, first, urge future generations of Europeans to remember my generation as we really were, not as they may wish us to have been. We had all the same vices and weaknesses as today’s young people do: most of us were neither heroes nor monsters.

    Snip.

    Second, just as there is no such thing as a “heroic generation”, there is no such thing as a “heroic nation” – or indeed an inherently malign or evil nation either.

    Snip.

    Third, do not underestimate the destructive power of lies. When the war broke out in 1939, my family fled east and settled for a couple of years in Soviet-occupied Lwów (now Lviv in western Ukraine). The city was full of refugees, and rumours were swirling about mass deportations to gulags in Siberia and Kazakhstan. To calm the situation, a Soviet official gave a speech declaring that the rumours were false – nowadays they would be called “fake news” – and that anyone spreading them would be arrested. Two days later, the deportations to the gulags began, with thousands sent to their deaths.

    Those people and millions of others, including my immediate family, were killed by lies. My country and much of the continent was destroyed by lies. And now lies threaten not only the memory of those times, but also the achievements that have been made since. Today’s generation doesn’t have the luxury of being able to argue that it was never warned or did not understand the consequences of where lies will take you.

    Confronting lies sometimes means confronting difficult truths about one’s self and one’s own country. It is much easier to forgive yourself and condemn another, than the other way round.

    (Hat tip: ASM826 at Borepatch.)

  • Couple plot to ambush the wife’s ex-husband and new wife, drive from North Carolina to Ohio to murder them. Big mistake:

    According to the transcript of his Feb. 12 interview with sheriff’s deputies, Lindsey said he owns a gun, but had left it in the house earlier, and so he asked Molly if her gun was in the car. Both Duncans have Ohio conceal carry permits, which they told investigators they had obtained out of fear that Cheryl Sanders wanted to do them harm. They obtained the permits when they moved about four years ago to the area, where Molly has family nearby.

    With Molly’s gun in hand, Lindsey said he exchanged fire with the man later identified as Reed Sanders. Lindsey said his ex-wife then pulled up in a vehicle, got out and also threatened them with a gun before being shot by Duncan.

    The Greene County coroner said in February that the apparent cause of death for the Sanderses was multiple gunshot wounds. Investigators reported finding three weapons at the scene and multiple shell casings. The Duncans were not physically hurt in the altercation.

    The ambush took place in February, but due to coronavirus-related court closures, the grand jury didn’t no-bill them until recently.

  • Heh:

  • Say Uncle on The Great Pickle Shortage of 2020, which I’ve also noticed here.
  • Sounds like Amber Heard is a really shitty person.
  • Dwight has a nice collection of things that blew up real good.
  • Much crypto. Many monies.
  • “It’s time to put Facebook away.”

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    Another Austin Lockdown Coming?

    July 9th, 2020

    Right now it’s answer cloudy, ask again later:

    Austin commerce is on the brink.

    Worrying trends in the community spread of the Covid-19 virus may prompt further action to shut down commercial activity or beef up enforcement measures against reported health and safety violations. It’s a critical decision for businesses that may have to quickly shut down, scale back or alter their operations on the fly once again.

    Local public health and government officials have repeatedly stressed that they want to prevent the seven-day average of new Covid-19 hospitalizations from topping 70 per day. That threshold could put the area back to “Stage 5,” when only essential businesses should be open.

    “We have not made the determination to enter Stage 5 yet,” interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority Mark Escott told county commissioners during a July 7 briefing.

    Austin Mayor Steve Adler said that 69 new hospital admissions on July 6 puts the area on the edge of the “trigger place for us” — that seven-day moving average reaching 70 hospitalizations per day.

    Under the city’s updated risk-based guidelines, what matters is the region’s trajectory on hospitalization rates as it passes that benchmark.

    “If we went screaming into 70, then we need to pull back or we would overwhelm the hospitals,” Adler said on a July 6 Facebook Live broadcast. “If we were able to slow down the trajectory, then we have more space.”

    “One of the things we’re going to have to make a determination on this week is just how rapidly we’re moving,” he added.

    Escott said the entry to Stage 5 could happen at 70 hospitalizations per day all the way up to 123 hospitalizations per day “depending upon the trajectory of the curve.”

    “This is the piece that we’re waiting on an update on from UT tomorrow,” Escott said, referring to the University of Texas at Austin.

    Statewide, assuming the data is accurate, there appears to be a significant jump in Wuhan coronavirus fatalities over the last two days. Unfortunately, Travis County’s tracking dashboard doesn’t track day-by-day fatalities.

    Governor Greg Abbott has indicated that he will not allow another shelter-in-place order, but given how quickly he’s caved on a host of other coronavirus measures, who knows?

    Stay tuned…

    Update: Not yet.

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 3 Comments »

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