Posts Tagged ‘Star Wars’

LinkSwarm for June 1, 2018

Friday, June 1st, 2018

We told liberals they wouldn’t like the new rules being applied to them, but they didn’t listen. Liberals get Roseanne Barr fired, conervatives get Samantha Bee’s sponsors to pull out. (Disclaimer: I didn’t watch either of their shows.)

  • How #NeverTrump came to be a lifestyle choice: “These people aren’t operating from principle. The are operating from pique. Trump’s mere presence offends them because they just know they are his social and intellectual superiors.”
  • President Donald Trump has stopped apologizing and started innovating:

    Indeed, how many of these widely accepted (sometimes downright cherished) assumptions can one man challenge (disrupt) in such a brief period of time? The answer is plenty. He does it by questioning what often goes unquestioned in Washington, D.C. He simply asks “Why?” Why help fund a Shiite crescent in the Middle East? Why send tax dollars to a terrorist-friendly PLO? Why support anti-American programs at the U.N.? Why a “One China” policy? Why placate deadbeat NATO partners? Why pay premium prices for the F-35 and a new Air Force One? Why force nuns to provide birth-control coverage? Why tolerate sanctuary cities and a porous border?

  • British man goes to jail for telling the truth about Muslim rape gangs.
  • What it’s like to live on the border with Mexico:

    Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. There are three types of people in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens.

    If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.

    It is not even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country. Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going through the circular motions of catch and release.

    They have high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border, they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.

    We are the deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other. Disposable.

    The reason I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’ stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families, strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary. They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals across, because they have seen it happen.

    All of my neighbors have had encounters with illegals. Every single family. Everyone knows dozens of families whose homes have been broken into and worse—loved ones tied up, kidnapped, threatened, shot, permanently crippled by a hit and run attack, when they made too much of a fuss to authorities.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Get woke, go broke, college edition:

    Evergreen State College is eliminating dozens of staff positions as it struggles to cope with plummeting enrollment in the wake of the protests that engulfed campus last year.

    John Carmichael, the chief of staff and secretary to the Evergreen State College Board of Trustees, announced in a memo to staff and faculty members on Tuesday that the school has already cut 24 faculty lines and eliminated 19 vacant staff positions, and warned that up to 20 additional staff members could soon be laid off.

    “Over the past several days, 20 staff members have been notified that they are at risk for layoff,” Carmichael wrote. “These layoffs, although necessary to stabilize the college’s budget, represent a profound loss felt by many.”

    The staffing cuts, which include not renewing contracts for several adjunct faculty members, come shortly after the college revealed that it would be cutting $5.9 million from the budget in anticipation of a shortfall in applications of up to 20 percent.

  • Republicans have been using the Congressional Review Act to kill some of the worst regulations from the final days of the Obama Administration.
  • Came to Iraqi to join the Islamic State? Iraqi courts have no sympathy for you. Even if you’re a woman.
  • You may think you’re rich, but how much money does it take before an investment banker thinks you’re rich? Short answer: $25 million.

    Twenty-five million dollars in investable wealth. The kind of money you could afford to see dip into the red for a quarter or three, maybe even a year or two, without breaking a sweat. With $25 million, maybe, just maybe, you’re starting to be rich.

    Because in this era of hyper-wealth and hyper-inequality, that is simply where rich begins—a ticket, in truth, to the first, lowly rung of rich. For most of the planet, $25 million represents unfathomable wealth. For elite private bankers, it buys their basic service.

    Call it economy-class rich. Business class? That’s $100 million. First class? $200 million. Private-jet rich? Try $1 billion.

    I grew up thinking that rich was owning a two-story house, so I’ve got it made. Top of the world, ma! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Texas Supreme Court strikes down short-term rental rule. The only surprise this time is that it was San Antonio rather than Austin making the stupid law.
  • A small pro-life victory.
  • A-10s to get new wings. Good. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Did Tranny Traitor Bradley Manning just threaten to off himself?
  • WisCon gonna WisCon. (Previously.)
  • Solo underperforms. I’m not sure there are any larger lessons to be drawn. For what it’s worth, I saw Deadpool 2 last Saturday, and recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original Deadpool.
  • Related: Fans call for Common sense Star Wars control.
  • LinkSwarm for May 4, 2018

    Friday, May 4th, 2018

    (Insert labored Star Wars reference here.)

  • “There’s a big ‘God gap’ between Republicans and Democrats — 70 percent of Republicans believe in the God of the Bible compared with 45 percent of Democrats — but there’s an even larger God gap within the Democratic party. Only 32 percent of white Democrats believe in the God of the Bible, compared with 61 percent of nonwhite Democrats — an almost 30-point gap.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Black male approval for President Donald Trump doubles in one week. No wonder they’re terrified of Kanye West thinking for himself.
  • Republicans could pick up nine senate seats in November:

    Republicans have serious leads in West Virginia, where incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin trails by 14 points; North Dakota, where incumbent Democrat Heidi Heitkamp trails by 8; Indiana, where incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly trails by 5; Missouri, where incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill trails by 5; Montana, where incumbent Democrat Jon Tester trails by 5; Florida, where incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson is locked in a near-deadlock with Rick Scott; and Pennsylvania and Ohio, where incumbent Democrats Bill Casey and Sherrod Brown are leading by less than two points each, plus Virginia, where Tim Kaine leads by just 3 on the generic ballot.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Believe it or not, this is not a parody tweet:

  • In the UK, seeking to keep your child alive can make you a criminal.
  • Bill Clinton Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski have been expelled from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Forty years of tolerating a Hollywood director anally raping a 14-year old is enough!”
  • Tesla earnings show record revenues with record losses.” Remember my previous Tesla roundup: “The more cars it makes the more cash it burns.” At least they’re consistent…
  • Israel steals a ton of documentation that proved that Iran lied about the nuke deal. Duh. Everyone in the world except Obama’s moronic clutch of idiot weasel sycophants knew Iran was lying.
  • China’s low-fertility trend is no longer reversible.”
  • The multiple cascading policy cock-ups that cost students lives in the Parkland shooting. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Via Ace, a nicely-done ad for Georgia Congressional candidate Brian Kemp:

  • “Mystery pooper at N.J. high school’s track turned out to be superintendent.” Maybe the school board should fire him over doing a shitty job…
  • Aubrey Plaza officially more famous than Joe Biden. Good.

    I’m just giving readers what they want…

  • Heh.
  • Nothing but Star Wars

  • LinkSwarm for March 18, 2016

    Friday, March 18th, 2016

    I hope you’re not too hung over from St. Patrick’s Day (and didn’t get stabbed to death on the Ides of March). Here’s a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Marco Rubio says that Ted Cruz is the only conservative left in the race. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • John Boehner calls Ted Cruz “Lucifer.” With that even-tempered perspective, it’s impossible to figure out why he’s no longer Speaker…
  • Ted Cruz unveils his national security coalition. Media reports on this have been particularly poor…
  • African-Americans living in poor neighborhoods cannot rely on Democratic leaders to take the decisive steps needed to ameliorate the problem as long as the Democratic Party can take the black vote for granted. The question, then, is how long can Democratic Party leaders and candidates continue to rely on African-American voters before African-American voters take matters into their own hands.”
  • No amount of primary wins will make Hillary Clinton’s email troubles go away.
  • And if the FBI doesn’t get her, the NSA might. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.”
  • Got to hand it to Donald Trump: this is an effective ad. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Jews leave France in record numbers. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Obama Administration finally comes out and admits that the Islamic State has committed genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shiites. That’s like Harry Truman finally declaring the Holocaust genocide two years after the liberation of Auschwitz…
  • Putin takes his toys and goes home.

    Contrary to his expectations of finding a pliable ally in Iran, he found the Iranians in control, glad to borrow his air force, arrogant and disdainful in Damascus (and Baghdad) and well on the path to dominating a vast stretch of strategically vital territory. And Iran has no interest in playing junior partner to anyone—least of all a traditional Christian enemy.

    Suddenly, Putin had a vision of a nuclear-armed, radical-Shia empire on Russia’s southern flank. Those Iranian missiles that can reach Israel? They can reach major Russian cities, too.

    Putin’s initial bet on Shia Iran also backfired by turning the Islamic world’s Sunni majority against him — not least Saudi Arabia, which can continue to hold down the price of oil and gas, punishing Russia’s economy far more than it wounds American fracking efforts. And Sunni terrorists have taken a renewed interest in Russia.

  • Hellfire missile intercepted in-route to Portland, Oregon.
  • Minimum wage hike causes fast food restaurants to start investing in automation. Just like conservatives said it would.
  • Texas Public Policy Foundation vs. Bureau of Land Management is now TPPF and The State of Texas vs. BLM. (More background here.)
  • Penny Arcade on Gawker:

    Gawker is poison AIDS cancer. In the same way that the Cross is the symbol for the redemptive power of Christ’s blood, Gawker is the symbol of a metastasized social media. Gawker is Nidhogg, the dragon which gnaws at the root of the World Tree. The causes they enunciate are tarnished, just for being in their mouths.”

    I don’t wish ill on anyone who works there, obviously. I mean, I guess their every action technically does sustain a legitimately evil beast of legend, some Revelations type shit, and they ruin lives for profit whenever they aren’t simply wasting your time.

  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rules that state contractors must continue using E-verify.
  • Everything you know about Altamont is wrong. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • The story behind that memorial mural on the pillar at the Lamar underpass right before Fifth Street.

    Lamar Mural

  • Man the pollen in the air is really bad this time of year in Austin…
  • Dog shows up safe a month after being presumed lost at sea. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Will the last Elvis impersonator to leave Las Vegas please turn off the neon.
  • Darth Vader Replaces Lenin in Ukraine

    Saturday, October 24th, 2015

    In Odessa: “A recent law banning Communist symbols in the country meant that a Soviet-era statue of Vladimir Lenin in Odessa needed to come down. Instead, the city opted to transform it into a monument to one of pop culture’s greatest villains: Darth Vader.”

    What’s the difference between Lenin and Darth Vader?

    One was a power-mad dictator who crushed the people’s freedom, ruthlessly put down rebellion, and brought death and destruction in his wake.

    The other was voiced by James Earl Jones.

    October Surprise: Cubs Not In World Series

    Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

    Gloria Allred is getting ready to release her October surprise, and you won’t believe the magnitude!

    Are you ready?

    Brace yourself!

    It seems that during the divorce proceeding of Staples founder founder Tom Stemberg 20 years ago, Mitt Romney may have misvalued the profit potential for shares of Staples, with the result that the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo. While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events—

    Oh wait, sorry, I accidentally spaced out for a moment and started channeling the opening crawl from The Phantom Menace, probably because it was the only thing I could think of less interesting than a stock valuation issue from a 20-year old divorce proceeding. Indeed, if the general public is given a choice between ancient divorce/stock value questions, or Jar Jar Binks reciting The Federalist Papers, then meesa thinksa yousa gonna be called ona to deliberate ona thisa newa Constitution!

    This is a game-changer only if the game is “see if you can bore yourself to sleep.” A real game-changer would be something like “In Baghdad in 1990, Tom Stemberg, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and I all snorted blow off Fawn Hall’s ass.” That’s about as likely as Mila Kunis showing up on my doorstep asking to be my love slave. The whole reason Mitt is poised to win this thing (beside Obama’s mind-numbing incompetence and the senses-dulling numbness of the Liberal Reality Bubble) is because he’s no fun at parties. If he had any real baggage New Gingrich’s opposition people would have unpacked it a long time ago. He’s so clean he squeaks, which must infuriate Obama’s dirty tricks team to no end. “Damn your clean nose and upright moral values, you vile Mormon!”

    Sure, illegally unsealing an opponent’s divorce records is Obama’s finishing move, but given the distinct lack of any prurient interest angle, even the most devoted Journolista will struggle to breath life into this pathetic non-scandal.

    Messa thinksa yousa wasted a lota tima!