$572 Million Round Rock ISD Bond Issue Saturday

May 4th, 2017

There’s a $572 million Round Rock ISD bond issue coming up this Saturday.

(The sound you here is all my national readers hitting the Back button on their browsers. But since I’m in Round Rock ISD and Holly Hansen moved, if I’m not going to cover an RRISD bond issue, who is?)

Unlike most RRISD bond issues, this one has engendered the most opposition I can remember since I moved into the district in 2004, with numerous signs sprouting up in people’s yards opposing the bonds.

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Empower Texas makes the case against the bonds:

Unsurprisingly, RRISD officials are also advertising a misleading “repayment cost” in order to downplay the actual impact of the debt. They are advertising the $572.1 million in additional debt (closer to $950 million with interest) as costing the average homeowner only $2.23 per month – when basic calculations put that figure closer to twelve times that amount.

Round Rock Parents and Taxpayers – a group organized against the bond and the district’s misleading tactics – isn’t having it.

“What concerned me most was how dishonest they were about the cost,” said Patrick McGuinness, one of the founders of RRPT. “They represented the cost at $2.23 a month. That doesn’t even cover a fraction of the debt service – the actual cost – to homeowners. It is actually closer to $348 per year.”

“It’s like telling voters to look at the tip of an iceberg and ignore what’s below the surface,” said David G. Schmidt, one of the other activists who spoke against the propositions. “You are insulting our intelligence.”

It’s a game that bureaucrats all over the state play when it comes to selling debt. They obfuscate the real cost of a debt package by playing a misleading shell-game and using non-specific terms such as tax “impact” or “change.” Using these kinds of terms, along with convenient timing around the simultaneous repayment of previous debt, allows them to disguise the actual, total cost of the proposed debt.

In layman’s terms, it’s a lot like paying off a mortgage around the same time a homeowner takes on a car payment for a similar same amount. The impact on monthly expenditures is negligible – but that doesn’t mean the car is free.

Worse yet, RRPT also argues that the pro-bond side has engaged in unethical and illegal tactics in selling the bond by using taxpayer-funded district resources to disseminate pro-bond messaging.

“Round Rock ISD has used district resources, teacher and staff time, as well as taxpayer funds to communicate to parents and teachers about the $572 million bond propositions with an intent to influence them on this package,” said McGuinness. “In the process, they have engaged in actions that appear to violate Texas legal prohibitions on using public funds for electoral advocacy.”

For starters, the administration had principals send emails to parents in the district touting the projects to be completed with the bond, using the same misleading $2.23/month repayment figure.

“It’s dishonest, it’s gimmicky marketing, and it’s advocacy,” said McGuinness. “When you use district funds to advocate, it’s illegal.”

In addition, teachers and other staff were forced to attend mandatory ‘bond election sessions’ on district work time. “Again, the $2.23 figure was presented, and again, the intention was advocacy,” claimed McGuinness.

Even more alarming, some teachers have reported being told by senior officials that their raises were dependent on the bond – a statutorily untrue scare tactic, as salaries are not funded with debt service.

Lastly, the pro-bond PAC ‘Classrooms for Kids’ – which gets a staggering 93 percent of its financial resources from contractors and debt financiers – looks to have obtained teacher email addresses for the purpose of mass-emailing their pro-bond political ads to teachers.

Voting is Saturday, May 6.

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Posted in Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »

Cinton Corruption Update for May 4, 2017

May 4th, 2017

The big Clinton Corruption news is the the felonious sharing her top aide committed of classified emails with said aide’s scumbag husband:

FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday that Huma Abedin, an aide to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, forwarded emails containing classified information to her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey said that Weiner had classified information on his laptop.

“His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him, I think, to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state,” he said.

So she illegally forwarded classified emails from Hillary’s illegal server to her scumbag, non-security-cleared husband’s laptop to illegally print them out for Hillary.

Oh, that makes everything better.

Amid all these felonies, one has to ask: Why couldn’t Abedin pay for her own freaking laptop??? She was working something like four jobs and pulling down $490,000 a year. And yet she never thought to buy her own laptop to illegally print out classified emails rather than using her husband’s?

Or, like Hillary, she wanted to use something she thought (erroneously) was beyond judicial reach.

Oh, and those forwarded emails number in the thousands, and include 29 previously unknown classified emails. You can’t keep up with the Clinton felonies without a scorecard. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

In other Clinton Corruption news:

  • “Wikileaks Posts Unclassified Email to Hillary Clinton From Foreign Policy Advisor: ‘Al Qaeda is on Our Side in Syria.'” Assad is a scumbag, but he didn’t attack us on 9/11. Yet more indication of the moral idiocy at the heart of Obama’s Syrian policy.
  • Andrew Sullivan wonders why Democrats feel sorry for Hillary Clinton:

    I’ve done what I could in this space to avoid the subject of Hillary Clinton. I don’t want to be the perennial turd in the punchbowl. I’d hoped we’d finally seen the last of that name in public life — it’s been a long quarter of a century — and that we could all move on. Alas, no. Her daughter (angels and ministers of grace defend us) seems to be positioning herself for a political career. And Clinton herself duly emerged last week for a fawning, rapturous reception at the Women in the World conference in New York City. It simply amazes me the hold this family still has on the Democratic Party — and on liberals in general. The most popular question that came from interviewer Nick Kristof’s social-media outreach, for example, was: “Are you doing okay?” Here’s Michelle Goldberg: “I find myself wondering at odd times of the day and night: How is Hillary? Is she going to be all right?” Seriously, can you imagine anyone wondering the same after Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis or John Kerry blew elections?

    And everywhere you see not an excoriation of one of the worst campaigns in recent history, leading to the Trump nightmare, but an attempt to blame anyone or anything but Clinton herself for the epic fail. It wasn’t Clinton’s fault, we’re told. It never is. It was the voters’ — those ungrateful, deplorable know-nothings! Their sexism defeated her (despite a majority of white women voting for Trump). A wave of misogyny defeated her (ditto). James Comey is to blame. Bernie Sanders’s campaign — because it highlighted her enmeshment with Wall Street, her brain-dead interventionism and her rapacious money-grubbing since she left the State Department — was the problem. Millennial feminists were guilty as well, for not seeing what an amazing crusader for their cause this candidate was. And this, of course, is how Clinton sees it as well: She wasn’t responsible for her own campaign — her staffers were. As a new book on her campaign notes, after Clinton lost the Michigan primary to Sanders, “The blame belonged to her campaign team, she believed, for failing to hone her message, energize important constituencies, and take care of business in getting voters to the polls.” So by the time the general-election campaign came round, they’d fix that and win Michigan, right?

    In case you forgot just how somewhat unhinged the 2016 election was.

    Let us review the facts: Clinton had the backing of the entire Democratic establishment, including the president (his biggest mistake in eight years by far), and was even married to the last, popular Democratic president. As in 2008, when she managed to lose to a neophyte whose middle name was Hussein, everything was stacked in her favor. In fact, the Clintons so intimidated other potential candidates and donors, she had the nomination all but wrapped up before she even started. And yet she was so bad a candidate, she still only managed to squeak through in the primaries against an elderly, stopped-clock socialist who wasn’t even in her party, and who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. She ran with a popular Democratic incumbent president in the White House in a growing economy. She had the extra allure of possibly breaking a glass ceiling that — with any other female candidate — would have been as inspiring as the election of the first black president. In the general election, she was running against a malevolent buffoon with no political experience, with a deeply divided party behind him, and whose negatives were stratospheric. She outspent him by almost two-to-one. Her convention was far more impressive than his. The demographics favored her. And yet she still managed to lose!

    (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)

  • “FBI got subpoenas from grand jury targeting Hillary Clinton.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Another tidbit from Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign: After Clinton lost in 2008, she went on a witch hunt to pubish Democrats disloyal to her:

    Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created “loyalty scores” to measure how loyal Democrats were to her after her failed 2008 campaign, according to a new book on her latest campaign failure.

    Clinton had two staffers “toil” to rate every Democrat members of Congress on a scale of one to seven — one being the most loyal — after she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008. Her husband Bill Clinton then deliberately campaigned against the disloyal “sevens” in subsequent primary elections, and succeeded in getting some of them removed. Some of those who remained apparently took note, and were quick to endorse Hillary in 2016.

    Here’s the relevant excerpt from “Shattered,” a tell-all on her 2016 bid from Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes:

    “After the 2008 campaign, two of her aides, Kris Balderston and Adrienne Elrod, had toiled to assign loyalty scores to members of Congress, ranging from one for the most loyal to seven for those who had committed the most egregious acts of treachery. Bill Clinton had campaigned against some of the sevens in subsequent primary elections, helping to knock them out of office. The fear of retribution was not lost on the remaining sevens, some of whom rushed to endorse Hillary early in the 2016 cycle.”

    Clinton was especially paranoid after losing the 2008 election to former President Barack Obama, Allen and Parnes say in the book, believing that leaks on negative information and disloyal Democrats had led her to lose the presidency in 2008. “Over the course of the summer, the confidence of party insiders had been replaced by a degree of paranoia that nearly matched Hillary’s own outsize phobia,” they wrote. “She was convinced that leaks of information had helped doom her 2008 campaign.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Naturally, after Shattered came out, Hillary launched Witch Hunt II: Traitor Boogaloo to punish staffers who might have spoken to the authors. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • In response to a question commenter pouncer asked in this thread, yes, that almost certainly is Stan Lee at the same party as Hillary Clinton and convicted felon Peter Paul, as Paul was a co-founder of Stan Lee media.
  • She still doesn’t get it. “All the money in the world didn’t stop Clinton from having sky-high untrustworthy numbers. Poll after poll, throughout the campaign, showed that most voters didn’t think Clinton was honest or trustworthy. At the end of the day, Clinton was responsible for her election loss. It’s sad that even months after Election Day, Clinton can still not take the blame for her own massive failures as a candidate.”
  • Wow, even David Axelrod has had enough of Hillary’s BS: “Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin.”
  • Hillary Clinton is launching a new PAC. How can we miss you if you won’t go away? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections | 6 Comments »

    DeMint Out at Heritage Foundation

    May 3rd, 2017

    We now have confirmation of the rumors that were flying all weekend: Jim DeMint is out as head of the Heritage Foundation:

    The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, by a unanimous vote, has asked for and received the resignation of Jim DeMint as president and CEO of the organization. The Board elected Heritage Founder Ed Feulner as president and CEO while we conduct a thorough search for his successor.

    After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.

    This was a difficult and necessary decision for the Board to take. As trustees, we have governance and oversight responsibilities for this organization and our 500,000 members. We were compelled to take action.

    Founder Ed Feulner will be reclaiming his old job, thought at 75 it remains to be seen how much gas he has left in the tank.

    Many believe that DeMint was ousted for reasons of organization and approach rather than ideology:

    DeMint isn’t being forced out because of his politics. The firebrand will be extinguished because of complaints about his leadership, several sources confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

    When DeMint left Congress for Heritage in 2013, it seems that he never left the Senate behind. “The reason why the board got upset with him was his mismanagement,” a source with knowledge of the situation explained. “DeMint and his people just tried running the place like a Senate office rather than a think tank. It didn’t work.”

    While few fault the South Carolina conservative for mixing it up with Capitol Hill, his critics complain that the former senator didn’t secure a proper policy footing before throwing political punches. That supposed disconnect manifested itself in the apparent disconnect between Heritage and Heritage Action, the organization’s 501(c)4 lobbying arm.

    “The board just wants Action to keep doing its job,” the source explained. “But that means they need to be backed up by the think tank side of things.”

    Ahead of a massive grassroots army, Heritage Action can easily blow up legislation they find ideologically unacceptable. But after the dust settles, those conservative politicos complain that their corresponding wonks haven’t equipped them with a policy substitute to offer lawmakers.

    Others pinned DeMint’s ouster on Mike Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, the organization’s political arm, and DeMint’s apparent coziness to the Trump administration. That Atlantic piece says Needham wanted to take over from DeMint. This Washington Examiner piece says no, he was just trying to restore Heritage, having seen it go off the rails. It also paints Heritage as an organization in (cue Scott Adams persuasion word) chaos:

    Just as Capitol Hill prepares to tackle healthcare reform, the biggest conservative voice in politics is choking on itself. Already DeMint’s influence seemed like it was waning. The Policy Services and Outreach Department (which DeMint founded and which regularly competed with Heritage Action for influence) curiously stood up congressional staffers for a meeting and inexplicably deleted its Twitter account.

    Finally, here DeMint defends his tenure. It’s a bit pro forma.

    This is all a shame, and a rather surprising outcome given that DeMint stepped down from the Senate to take the reigns at Heritage.

    Heritage was a real powerhouse in the 1980s, providing much of the intellectual underpinning of the Reagan revolution. Their various Mandate for Leadership documents provided blueprints for much of Reagan’s reforms.

    I rejoined Heritage as a supporter when DeMint in hopes that he could wake a sleeping giant. But I let my membership lapse because I never saw notable signs of action out here beyond the beltway.

    Hopefully whoever takes over Heritage next can restore it to some of its former glory.

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    Posted in Republicans | 1 Comment »

    Texas Stabbing/Shooting Followups

    May 2nd, 2017

    Here’s followups on both of yesterday’s Texas attempted spree-killers:

    Dallas shooter Derick Lamont Brown

  • The firefighter/paramedic he shot is still alive in critical but stable condition. “A bullet broke the firefighter’s leg and he lost a lot of blood. In surgery, he was resuscitated three times after his heart stopped.”
  • “A Dallas police officer, later identified as Sgt. Robert Watson, saved the firefighter’s life when he went in alone, pulled the firefighter out, put him in his squad car and took him to the hospital.”
  • Brown killed his godfather, 66-year-old Arthur Riggins. Still not seeing any report of the dead neighbor’s name.
  • Brown was “national minister of defense for the New Black Panther Party and once served as the chairman of that organization.” (As I reported yesterday.) Brown “also went by the name Brotha DK.”
  • More: “According to [Babu] Omowale, the founder of Dallas’ Huey P. Newton Gun Club, Brown was the Black Nationalist defense group’s gunsmith. “He put some of our weapons together and if we needed extra supplies or if we needed anything added to our weapons, he was the person who made that happen for us.”
  • Brown had “a long criminal history, including an assault charge, several DWIs, and gun offenses.” More:

    In 2008, he was involved in a car accident in Dallas, records show. Responding Dallas PD officers approached his vehicle. He yelled, “I’m high… I’m high and I have a gun!”

    Police arrested him for felony possession of PCP. Brown pleaded guilty and got two years of probation.

    Then, about two years ago, Brown obtained a concealed carry license from the state of Florida.

    In 2015, he was involved in another car accident in Dallas. This time, when officers approached the vehicle, they observed Brown “holding a loaded magazine in his (right) hand” and “a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun” in his left hand, according to records.

    In that incident, officers smelled what they thought was PCP. They arrested Brown for being under the influence of a narcotic and for unlawful carry of a weapon by a license holder.

    Brown went to jail and was released two months ago.

    • UT stabber Kendrix J. White

  • “The student killed in Monday’s stabbing attack at the University of Texas at Austin has been identified as freshman Harrison Brown of Graham.”
  • White was recently arrested for DWI and had taken Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). There have been a small number of additional spree killings where the murderer was on a SSRI.
  • This piece, which suggests Kendrix J. White was an antifa protestor who deliberately stabbed frat boys, seems more speculative than not. And reports saying White stabbed “three whites and one Asian” appear to be wrong (or incomplete), as one black man (who did not appear to be badly hurt) was shown being carted away to an ambulance at the scene.
  • His Twitter feed doesn’t look like a typical Antifa supporter. Here’s one tweet he forwarded:

  • Weirdly enough, there were two other, completely unrelated stabbing incidents in west UT campus that same day. Plus a random dead body. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Stabbing Attack at UT

    May 1st, 2017

    What the hell is going on today? One dead, three wounded in UT stabbing spree.

    You can’t even blame the heat, as the last few days a nice cool front has been blowing through…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    Update: Suspect in custody:

    Update 2:

    Unless this is the first five seconds of the arrest, why haven’t they already disarmed the suspect?

    Update 3: The person doing the stabbing was evidently a UT student.

    Here’s a Tweet showing one of his victims being tended to.

    Update 4: Accused stabber’s name is Kendrex J. White, a 20-year old student.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    Active Shooter in Dallas? Update: Dead

    May 1st, 2017

    One Dallas Fire & Rescue EMT killed and an unidentified civilian wounded in what police are describing as an active shooter situation.

    Demographically that area (east of Fair Park and South of I-30) is where the predominately black section of south Dallas comes closest to downtown.

    If you’re in the area, now would be a good time to go over Karl Rehn’s advice on dealing with an active shooter situation.

    Update: Current reports say the EMT is in critical condition in surgery, not dead as previously reported. Dallas Morning News is doing regular updates.

    Update 2: Description of the shooter: “The shooter was described as bald black male in a green shirt in jeans. He walks with a limp.”

    Update 3: Two more dead, including suspect and his neighbor.

    Shot Paramedic in “critical, but stable condition” after surgery.

    Update 4: Dead shooter has been identified as Derick Lamont Brown, 36.

    The incident seems to have started as a dispute between neighbors.

    Note: A Derick Brown in the Dallas area was an active member of the New Black Panther Party for many years. Indeed, the ADL reported a Derick Brown proclaiming “We’re ready to die in self-defense” at a Black Panther rally in 2004, and here’s a pro-NBPP blog that calls Brown the chairman of the NBPP. Just about all the quotes that mention Brown and the New Black Panther Party seem to date from 2004-2008. It’s not certain the the two Derick Browns are the same man.

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    Posted in Crime, Guns, Texas | No Comments »

    Remembering Victims of Communism Day

    May 1st, 2017

    Once again it’s May 1, a very important date of observance: Victims of Communism Day.

    VictimsofCommunismDay

    Remember that communism killed some 100 million people.

    As Ilya Somin notes, this year will mark the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution:

    This year is a particularly important time to remember the victims of Communism because of the approaching one hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution – Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The Soviet Union was not the most oppressive communist regime. It probably did not match the even more thoroughgoing totalitarianism of the Khmer Rouge and North Korea. Nor did it kill the most people – a record held by Mao Zedong the Chinese communists. But the Soviet experiment was the principal model for all the later communist states, and it is hard to imagine communists seizing control of so much of the world without it. In addition to the significant material aid that the Soviets provided to communists in other nations, the communist seizure of power in Russia also greatly boosted the ideology’s prospects elsewhere.

    To this day, some claim that Soviet communism was originally a positive development and only went bad later, after Joseph Stalin came to power. But Stalin’s crimes were largely extensions of the earlier practices of Lenin.

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    Posted in Communism | 2 Comments »

    Breaking: John Wiley Price Walks

    April 28th, 2017

    Just after I hit post on today’s LinkSwarm, I see this:

    In a stunning defeat for federal prosecutors, John Wiley Price, the veteran politician who wields vast power and influence over Dallas County, was on Friday found not guilty of bribery and fraud.

    The jury that considered whether he was abusing his public office to rake in about $1 million in secret profits over a decade also couldn’t reach a verdict on charges of tax evasion. The judge declared a mistrial on the deadlocked charges.

    The U.S. attorney’s office will decide whether or not to retry Price on the tax charges.

    The prosecutors badly mishandled their case, being forced to turn over evidence withheld from the defense on multiple occasions. While I have ample reason to believe Price is guilty, I also believe the jury’s verdict was a logical one given how poorly the case had been presented.

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    Posted in Democrats, Texas | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 28, 2017

    April 28th, 2017

    It’s been a week, so enjoy an extra-late Friday LinkSwarm

  • There’s lots of meat in President Trump’s tax reform proposal:

    Individual Reform

    Tax relief for American families, especially middle-income families:

  • Reducing the 7 tax brackets to 3 tax brackets of to%, 25% and 35%
  • Doubling the standard deduction
  • Providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses

    • Simplification:

  • Eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers
  • Protect the home ownership and charitable gift tax deductions
  • Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax
  • Repeal the death tax
  • Repeal the 3.8% Obamacare tax that hits small businesses and investment income

    • Business Reform

  • 15% business tax rate
  • Territorial tax system to level the playing field for American companies
  • One-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas
  • Eliminate tax breaks for special interests
  • Texas House passes anti-Santuary City bill that fines officials for violating federal immigration laws.
  • North Korean ballistic missile test fails. Cue the sad trombone.

  • Obama’s Iran deal was even worse than we thought. “By dropping charges against major arms targets, the administration infuriated Justice Department officials — and undermined its own counterproliferation task forces.”
  • If Democrats keep moving left, they could experience another election like 1972:

    The highest-profile Democratic-party supporters are increasingly smug Hollywood actors, rich Wall Street and Silicon Valley elitists, and embittered members of the media, along with careerist identity groups and assorted protest movements — a fossilized 1972 echo chamber.

    Democrats’ politically correct messaging derides opponents as deplorable racists, sexists, bigots, xenophobes, homophobes, Islamophobes, and nativists. That shrill invective only further turns off Middle America. Being merely anti-Trump is no more a successful Democratic agenda than being anti-Nixon was in 1972.

  • If the election were held today, Trump would still beat Clinton.
  • Former Mayor of Hubbard, Ohio pleads guilty to raping a four year old. Go ahead, guess which party he’s a member of.
  • The Other McCain does his part for sexual assault awareness month.
  • The media does indeed live in a bubble, both geographic and ideological, of its own making.
  • Hundreds of illegal voters in North Carolina. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Nancy Pelosi: tried, drunk or stroke? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 107 Cancer Papers Retracted Due To Peer Review Fraud. But don’t worry: All climate science is completely on the level…
  • When Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke swore up and down he never hire any campaign consultants, what he meant was he’d hire some.
  • “Facebook and Google confirmed as victims of $100M phishing scam.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • President Trump as a systems thinking President.
  • NYPD corruption scandal. Bribes? Check. Guns? Check. Prostitutes? Check. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Marine Le Pen heads to a runoff with Emmanuel Macron on May 7. Is there a better figurehead for modern Globalism than a Socialist investment banker?
  • Dishonest medical equipment startup Theranos used a shell company to secretly buy outside lab equipment to actually run the lab tests they were faking as coming from their own equipment. And check out that picture caption: “[CEO] Elizabeth Holmes speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.” Because of course she did.
  • Liberals love denouncing the imaginary Christian theocracy of The Handmaid’s Tale (now a miniseries) because it keeps them from having to think about the real Islamic ones oppressing women all over the world right at this very moment.
  • Related: “Lesbian Couple Discover Islamic Culture During Exciting International Trip.”
  • “When God sends a Plague of Wild Boars against you, he’s done sending messages, and is now sending armored bacon.”
  • Less than half of Democrats know a gun owner.
  • Richard Gere blacklisted in Hollywood on China’s orders.
  • Sonny Bunch has some “helpful” advice for Democrats. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Nordstrom selling $425 fake muddy jeans. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • You too can own a baseball inscribed to Justice Antonin Scalia by Joe DiMaggio.
  • “My Boyfriend Ate Nothing But Pineapple For A Week And Now His Dick Is Covered In Bees.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »

    SchadESPNfreude

    April 27th, 2017

    You may have heard that ESPN has laid off at least 100 on-air employees. ESPN is the latest company to choose between being liberal and being profitable, and choosing liberal.

    You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots. You want to see the box scores of today’s baseball games? You can watch those at the bottom of the hour, but right now some D-list network talent would like to lecture you about gun control. After that we’ll have a panel discussion about how much courage it takes to turn your back on the American flag.

    The most interesting aspect of the mass layoffs on Wednesday isn’t that they happened, it’s who the network targeted. Not the high-priced carnival barkers and the know-nothing loudmouths doing their best to make Rachel Maddow proud. Nope. ESPN targeted sports reporters. In an effort to cut some fat from its bottom line, ESPN exchanged a scalpel for a chainsaw, skipped the fat entirely, and went straight to cutting out muscle.

    If ESPN wants to once again be the worldwide leader in sports, it should refocus on covering sports, which used to be a refuge from politics and the news. America is politicized enough already, and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else in the world: cover live sports.

    To be sure there were a lot of other contributing factors (rising fixed costs from overpaying for sports, people dropping cable, etc.), but the relentless left-wing culture war slant was among the most avoidable of all ESPN’s self-inflicted wounds.

    More reactions:

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »

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