In an NBC News interview yesterday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago insisted that it was more than acceptable for Pope Francis to refuse to discuss Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s shocking testimony, which implicates a host of Catholic Church leaders — including the pope — in covering up sexual abuse and immorality.
“The pope has a bigger agenda,” Cupich told interviewer Mary Anne Ahern when asked about the pope’s refusal to discuss Viganò’s claims. “He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church.
“What’s a few raped children when we might be able to lower global temperatures a fraction of a degree a century from now?”
“There’s a widespread consensus that at no time in the past 40 years, since Saddam Hussein acquired absolute power and led Iraq into a series of ruinous wars, has Baghdad been as free and as fun as it is now.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Remember Russia’s new T-14 Armata tank? They were going to build 2,300 of them. Now? 132. And that number is split between the T-14 and the T-15 heavy infantry fighting vehicle, which shares the same chassis. Which means Russia will have to continue to rely on older T-72 and T-90 tanks as the mainstays of their armored forces for the foreseeable future. By comparison the United States has over 1,500 M1A2s and over 4,000 M1A1s, both of which proved capable of taking out T-72s in the Gulf War. As Stalin once put it, “Quantity has a quality all it’s own.” And the essential brokeness of Russia is why I’m not worried about their costly adventurism in Syria. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
John McCain was admired by liberals; that is, when they weren’t calling him a senile plutocrat warmonger.
Humphrey would be the last Democratic presidential nominee to represent the values of Truman and JFK: compassionate big government at home, and resolute anti-Communism abroad. Instead, a new Democratic party was born, one that increasingly reflected the radical views of the Chicago protesters: that America, not Communism, was the real force for evil that needed to be contained and transformed. That Democratic party would nominate George McGovern in its 1972 convention and become a party obsessed with social justice, identity politics, and America’s past sins — essentially the party it is today. Meanwhile mainstream Democratic voters began their flight to the Republican party, “Reagan Democrats” who would enable the GOP to win four of the next five presidential elections and who later became the foot soldiers of the Trump insurgency.
This story is pretty amazing, featuring equal parts of both stupidity and chutzpah:
The timeworn apartment building in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood hardly looks like the corporate headquarters of one of the world’s largest shipping companies.
But for a few recent months, that’s essentially what it became — at least as far as the U.S. Postal Service was concerned.
Federal court papers unsealed last week revealed an astonishing but ultimately bungled scheme to file a change-of-address form claiming that shipping giant United Parcel Service had moved its headquarters from a bustling business park in Atlanta to a tiny garden apartment.
Not only did the change go through, but it also took months for anyone to catch on. In the meantime, so many thousands of pieces of first-class mail meant for UPS poured into Apartment L2 at 6750 N. Ashland Ave. that a mail carrier had to bring in a tub to hold it all, a search warrant application filed in U.S. District Court disclosed.
Among the correspondence were letters meant for the company’s CEO and other executives, sensitive documents containing personal information, as well as corporate credit cards and tens of thousands of dollars in business checks, according to an affidavit from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service submitted with the warrant.
It wasn’t until the resident, Dushaun Spruce, allegedly deposited nearly $60,000 in UPS checks into his bank account in late January that UPS was alerted to the alleged scam, court papers say.
In a brief interview last week with a Chicago Tribune reporter, Spruce acknowledged that authorities had served a warrant on him in January and seized mail, checkbooks, bank records and other documents from his apartment.
“They took things they weren’t supposed to,” said Spruce, 24, standing barefoot at the building’s main entrance.
While not disclosing Spruce’s name, the unsealed warrant contained other clues to his identity: both his current apartment number at the Ashland address as well as his previous address in the 1900 block of West Fargo Avenue. Public records listed both addresses for him.
Spruce has not been criminally charged and denies any wrongdoing. The investigation by postal inspectors and federal prosecutors continues, law enforcement sources said.
A spokesman for UPS confirmed that the company was recently notified that mail intended for UPS employees had been “redirected by an unauthorized change of address by a third party.” He declined further comment.
Snip.
It wasn’t until Jan. 16 — nearly three months after the address changes — that a UPS security coordinator caught on to the alleged scheme and notified postal inspectors, the court records show.
The security coordinator notified investigators that not only had UPS not authorized the change but it also appeared that about 150 corporate American Express cards in various employee names — including the CEO and members of the board of directors — had been issued under the Ashland Avenue address, the affidavit said.
It was later learned that only five cards had actually been shipped, and none had been misused, according to the affidavit.
The day after the alleged fraud was detected, postal inspectors interviewed the carrier who delivers the mail to Spruce’s building. The carrier said “voluminous” amounts of UPS mail had been coming to the apartment for months, far more than would fit in the small boxes assigned to tenants, the affidavit said.
To accommodate the deluge, the carrier “had to place the mail in a USPS tub and leave it at (Spruce’s) door,” the affidavit said.
The carrier, who at times also handed mail directly to Spruce, identified him from a photograph shown by the agents, according to the affidavit.
A week later, postal inspectors returned to the building and began retrieving “several thousand” pieces of first-class and registered mail addressed to UPS at Spruce’s apartment, the affidavit said. Agents found that some of the mail “contained personal identifying information of UPS employees as well as business checks mailed to UPS and accounts payable invoices,” according to the affidavit.
That same day, investigators at Fifth Third Bank notified postal inspectors that more than 10 checks addressed to UPS were deposited to a personal account belonging to Spruce. The checks totaled more than $58,000, according to the affidavit.
Agents reviewed bank surveillance footage and matched the person making the deposits to Spruce’s driver’s license photo, according to the affidavit.
The search warrant served on Jan. 26 contained a list of items to be seized from Spruce, including “all mail, parcels and packages” and any credit cards, checks, invoices or financial records “of any kind” that were linked to UPS.
Agents also planned to seize “all items associated with identity theft, including personal identifying information (and) devices used to manufacture credit cards,” according to the warrant.
Spruce has no felony convictions in his background. But a year before his alleged UPS scam began, he was arrested twice in a matter of days by Evanston police on minor drug charges and allegations of bank fraud, records show.
On Nov. 20, 2016, Evanston police pulled over Spruce’s Hyundai and found an open container of alcohol as well as at least 30 grams of marijuana, according to Cook County court records. He was charged with misdemeanor drug possession and driving on a suspended license — a case that prosecutors agreed to drop in exchange for 40 hours of community service.
It’s obvious that Mr. Spruce is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you can’t say he lacks ambition. Protip: If you’re going to commit interstate mail fraud, do not use your home address. You use a third party mail address, address for a dummy company (I would have gone with “United Package Systems”), which is in turn registered to a another dummy company in the Cayman Islands. You deposit the UPS checks in the “United Package Systems” account, then transfer the money to a Cayman Islands account, and then to your secret Swiss bank account, and you shut everything down and skip town at the first sign anyone’s caught on.
Geeze, do I have to tell you people everything?
Mr. Spruce does not seem to have put this much (or indeed any) forethought into his little caper, and he’s very lucky that he’s not headed to a federal prison even as we speak. I’m guessing that both UPS and USPS are trying to figure out how such a stupid fraud worked for any length of time at all. Did UPS just not receive any mail for a few months and not notice?
And did not Mr. Spruce’s local mail carrier express suspicions the first time they deposited a tub full of mail addressed to UPS to his apartment?
“If the Trump administration is serious about controlling illegal immigration and illegal alien driven crime, it should begin by going after employers who hire illegal aliens. The move would not only help to prevent the exploitation of illegal immigrants, but it would also help to foster higher-paying jobs for American workers.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
If Obama is really responsible for Democrat losses, then the party and its donors just bought first class seats on the Titanic. That’s why Democrat autopsies of the defeat remain so explosive. Blame can be apportioned to white people, to racism, Islamophobia and to Global Warming, but not to Barack Obama.
Keith Ellison was the best messenger Sanders had to take a shot at Barry. Black loyalty to Obama is still the third rail of politics. And Ellison is one of the few black people in the Sanders inner circle. Obama’s pricey Wall Street speech offered the opportunity for a more direct attack from Bernie Sanders.
“I just think it is distasteful,” Bernie slurred on CNN. “At a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality … it just does not look good.”
The attack went to the heart of his differences with Obama. Unlike the Clinton era, the split is no longer between the left and the radical left. Obama and Sanders are both representatives of the radical left.
But they don’t represent the same radical left.
Bernie embodies the old left. Its mantra is class warfare. There is a great deal of talk about billionaires, working people and the ruling class. Obama pays lip service to that same rhetoric, but his is the program of the intersectional left. The intersectional left is far more interested in identity than class. It defines its organization around a coalition of racial, sexual and other minorities. Where Bernie wants to talk to the working class, the intersectional left wants to hear from transgender Muslim women of color.
The differences aren’t just intellectual. They define the tactics and agenda of the Democrats.
When Tom Perez, Obama’s DNC boss, recently read pro-life Democrats out of the party, he was following the Obama blueprint. Bernie meanwhile went on campaigning for a somewhat pro-life Dem. Bernie does not really care about abortion, gay rights, transgender bathrooms and the social issues of the intersectional left. The old Socialist follows the older slogan of the hard left. No war, but class war.
Snip.
Democrats and the left had long ago replaced pure class warfare with identity politics warfare. Intersectionality entirely displaced and demonized the old Dem white working class base.
And the Dems paid the price.
Obama’s reign torched most of the last of that white working class base. Trump’s victories would not have been possible if the Dems had not become a party of wealthy bicoastal urban and suburban elites who were out of touch with the South and the Rust Belt. And who were proud to be out of touch with a bunch of “ignorant racist, sexist homophobes” still “clinging to their guns and religion”.
The clash between Bernie and Obama is also over the autopsy of Hillary’s defeat. Did the Dems lose because they failed to turn out the base as effectively as Obama had or because former Obama voters had come out for Trump? Should the Dems try to appeal to working class whites with a class warfare pitch or work harder to turn out the intersectional coalitions of minority voters?
The French have voted to postpone their rendezvous with destiny. But kicking the croissant down the road means another half-decade of demographic transformation that lengthens the odds against ever winning the numbers to halt it….
Yet the fact is that, with the arrival of President Macron in the charmed circle, the leaders of Europe’s biggest economies and of all the European members of the G7 are childless: Germany’s Angela Merkel, Britain’s Theresa May, Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni, and now France’s Macron.
This would have been not just statistically improbable but all but impossible for most of human history. Whatever Euro-politics is about, it’s not, as Bill Clinton was wont to say, the future of all our children. Indeed, of the six founding members of the European Union – France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg – five are led by childless prime ministers: joining Merkel, Gentiloni and Macron at the no-need-for-daycare Euro-summit are the Dutch PM Mark Rutte and the Luxemburger Xavier Bettel. Mark Rutte is single and childless. Xavier Bettel of Lux is married, but gay and, hélas, for the moment without progeny….
That’s the demographics of Western Europe writ small. The Eurocrats are a Continental version of the Shakers: They’re apparently forbidden to breed, and can only increase their numbers through conversion. From Nice to Cologne to Rosengård, a significant proportion of New Europeans seem to think that, au contraire, they’ll be the ones doing the converting.
U.S. Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane finally lands after circling Earth for “an unprecedented 718 days.”
UT stabbing spree followup: The stabber “was suffering from mental illness and didn’t seem to be targeting anyone in particular during his Monday afternoon spree, police said Tuesday.”
Gun-blogger Bob Owens dead of apparent suicide. Unlike many in the blogsphere, I didn’t know Owens personally, but we did follow each other on Twitter. RIP.
Windows 10 on ARM supports x86 apps, and Microsoft says your 32-bit applications should run just fine. Won’t make me use it, but for some people…
Welcome to April Fool’s Eve! Don’t believe anything you hear tomorrow. Especially if it’s from CNN…
Representative Moe Brooks of Alabama offers up a one sentence repeal of ObamaCare: “Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.” Get on it, GOP… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Single-payer’s future is Venezuela’s present: “The communist model for healthcare will result in everyone having a right to healthcare and no one getting any of it. There will be black market health care for those who can afford it, a lovely parallel system for the politically well connected, and a crumbling system of overworked, over-regulated providers working to give some care to all the rest of us.”
Scott Adams: “With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme.”
CrowdStrike, Patient Zero in the “Russia hacked the Democrats” vector, backtracks key claims.
“Filibustering Gorsuch might be a pointless exercise when it comes to keeping him off the court, but it would have the advantage of giving angry Democratic activists something they desperately want: an opportunity to lash out in fury at Republicans.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Hosni Mubarek freed in Egypt. But I mainly want to talk about the Times piece of an example of sins of omission by the newspaper of record. “The first democratic election, in 2012, brought to power a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi. But he lasted only a year, making a series of political blunders that cost him the support of the military, crucial parts of the security apparatus and millions of Egyptians, who gathered in the streets in June 2013 to call for his removal.” Yes, one might call “engineering a murderous rampage and instituting a dictatorship in order to fully Islamicize Egyptian society” a “blunder”…
So how’s that boycott against North Carolina over the tranny bathroom law panning out? Not so hot. “Tourism has thrived: Hotel occupancy, room rates and demand for rooms set records in 2016, according to the year-end hotel lodging report issued last week by VisitNC, part of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.” (Hat tip: Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Twitter feed.)
“Former Obama Official Describes Last-Minute Rush to Spy on Trump Team, Conceal Intel Sources.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Someone in a small circle of Obama intelligence officials who knew the identity of that American No. 1 committed a felony by leaking Flynn’s name to media.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby parts selling scheme indicted on felony eavesdropping charges in California. By an amazing coincidence, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra received donations from Planned Parenthood. What are the odds?
There’s an actual Wikipedia article for a list of grenade attacks in Sweden, which have exploded (ha) since 2012. Many occurred in Malmo. Gee, what could possibly be driving all these grenade attacks?
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s trial venue is being moved, which is a victory for the prosecution. Given the dismissal of the SEC charges the case is based on, I still think the long-term prognosis points to acquittal or dismissal.
“Spiders could theoretically eat every human on earth in a year and still be hungry.” Obviously this cries out for a research grant and a pilot program…
Don McLean’s “American Pie” added to the National recording registry. “I’m really delighted that the government has taken notice of me in this way, and not by tapping my phone or something.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
The actual statistics are considerably less dramatic: “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said that since 2013, more than 150 firearms have been reported stolen from freight trains.” That’s not freight cars filled with guns, that’s a little over one gun stole from trains every ten days nationwide.
Read deeper and it turns out that Chicago gangs hit one big score of 100 Rugers in 2015. Which means that discounting that, just over one gun a month is being stolen from trains.
The entire article looks like the writer tried to tart up a very prosaic story with a sensationalist slant and a bucket of pulp fiction adjectives: “brazen,” “shiny, new guns” (so they were nickle plated?), “ransacking,” “blood-soaked streets” (“Honey, better get out the squeegee! The streets are blood-soaked again today!”), etc.
And then there’s this sentence describing the Ruger score: “In one instance, thieves stole more than 100 new Ruger handguns described as ‘pretty’ in comparison to the shoddy, makeshift guns criminals in Chicago’s rough streets often use.”
Shoddy? Fine. There are plenty of pot metal guns the firearms community regards as shoddy (Lorcin comes to mind). But “makeshift?” Does the author think significant numbers of Chicago gangbangers are using zip guns? Or 3D printed guns?
Chicago has very real crime problems it’s antiquated gun control laws are doing nothing to address. Outside the 2015 Ruger theft, there’s nothing in the piece to suggest that guns stolen from freight trains are a significant part of it.
The Democratic party is an odd apparatus in which most of the power is held by sanctimonious little old liberal white ladies with graduate degrees and very high incomes — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Randi Weingarten — while the manpower, the vote-power, and the money-power (often in the form of union dues) comes from a disproportionately young and non-white base made up of people who, if they are doing well, might earn one-tenth of the half-million dollars a year Weingarten was paid as the boss of the teachers’ union. They are more likely to be cutting the grass in front of Elizabeth Warren’s multi-million-dollar mansion than moving into one of their own. They roll their eyes at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s risible “abuela” act, having actual abuelas of their own.
As in the Republican party, the Democrats have a restive base that is more radical than its leadership, more aggressive, and in search of signs of tribal affiliation. The Democratic base is not made up of little old liberal white ladies with seven-, eight-, and nine-figure bank balances, but the party’s leadership is.
What should a political party that has just lost its white working-class, blue-collar base to a “make America great again” nationalist do to try to regain these voters? Why not appoint as the new head of the party a radical left-wing ideologue who has a long history of supporting an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam racist? Such an appointment will surely bring back rust-belt voters who have lost their jobs to globalization and free trade! Is this really the thinking of those Democratic leaders who are pushing for Keith Ellison to head the Democratic National Committee?
Keith Ellison is, by all accounts, a decent guy, who is well liked by his congressional colleagues. But it is hard to imagine a worse candidate to take over the DNC at this time. Ellison represents the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, just when the party — if it is to win again — must move to the center in order to bring back the voters it lost to Trump. The Democrats didn’t lose because their candidates weren’t left enough. They won the votes of liberals. The radical voters they lost to Jill Stein were small in number and are not likely to be influenced by the appointment of Ellison. The centrist voters they lost to Trump will only be further alienated by the appointment of a left-wing ideologue, who seems to care more about global issues than jobs in Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Ellison’s selection certainly wouldn’t help among Jewish voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania or pro-Israel Christian voters around the country.
Also, Derschowitz is not buying the “friend of Israel” blather put forth by Ellison defenders:
Ellison’s voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a “friend” of Israel. He was one of only 8 Congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen Congressmen to vote “present” rather than vote for a non-binding resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” And in 2010, Ellison co‐authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip as “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents.”
More electorate analysis: “This is a case where the simplest explanation is the correct one: Donald Trump won because he did exceptionally (indeed, historically) well with the white working class, a bloc that until 2016 was resistant north of the Mason-Dixon line to voting Republican en masse.”
Some on the left in the West see certain ideas and even some easily verifiable truths, as plain dangerous, much like the totalitarian communists of yesteryear. Dangerous to public order. Dangerous to the ‘common good’.
Whilst this section of the left has always existed, it now seems to have become more ‘mainstream’. It seethes and obsesses within carefully-policed ideological echo-chambers. It dominates in universities, trade unions and the public sector. And whereas it was once mainly prevalent in fringe far-left outfits, it has now effectively co-opted the Labour party through its membership and leadership.
Anyone who has ever tried to engage with this section of the left will know that it doesn’t ‘do debate’ with conservatives on issues like immigration, multiculturalism and identity politics. For it, “the debate is settled”. Opposing views are intrinsically wicked. Such ideas are to be ignored. Muted. Blocked. Banned. Disrupted. Drowned out with fog-horns.
It does not feel it needs to win the argument nor does it see any reason to engage in one. Where it can apply ‘No Platform’ or ‘Safe Space’ schemes to stymie debate, it will do so assiduously. Where it can’t, it’s adept at innovating campaigns such as #StopFundingHate to help promote the censorship it craves.
The privileged worked hard for Trump. Every time they described his people as uneducated white males, implicit dregs, they drove votes to Donald. And they so described the working class unceasingly.
It made him President. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is how he got in.
The privileged denigrated all whites unlike themselves. Then Hillary made her “deplorables” speech, confirming her contempt for half of America–those uneducated, shapeless, dull-witted proles in Flyover Land, obese, farting and belching, swilling Bud, watching NASCAR for god’s sake in awful trailers. And why not not sneer at them? Why did Hillary need their votes? Did not Rachel Maddow love her?
For Trump it was gold, pure gold. If he had written her speech, he could not have come up with a better line to destroy her. It was the purest product of the establishment’s hubris. She did it to herself. Sweet.
It made him President.
Black Lives Matter also did yeoman work for the Donald. As they and snowflake Brown Shirts and excited millennials blocked highways and beat Trump’s supporters and shut down rallies, and vandalized cars, and of course looted, they presumably thought they were working against the Trump Monster. Not a chance. Out there in the uncharted barbarian lands between Manhattan and Hollywood, in dark primeval forests where Cro-Magnons are still a rarity, people were sick of lawlessness, and of an establishment that tolerated it. It produced more votes, perhaps not for Trump or even against Hillary but against the class that she represented.
Immigration. Here Hillary and Obama did great work for Donald. As Obama frantically brought in as many “refugees” as possible from everywhere, anywhere that might not be compatible with the people upon whom he would force them, Hillary promised to import huge numbers of Muslims. It was luminously stupid politics, but politically she was luminously stupid, so it fit.
It is why she is not President.
She knew that the backward peoples of Flyover Land ought to want hundreds of thousands of Somalis and Pakistanis and who-knew-what to live with, and if they didn’t, she would force them and it didn’t matter because she had big donors and everybody in the media loved her.
However incoherent and ignorant Trump was, the Establishment was determined to elect him. Elect him it did.
Don’t agree with everything in this John Gray essay on the closing of the liberal mind, published right before Trump’s election, but there’s a lot to chew over concerning the post-liberal world order, and especially the Labour Party’s relation to it. “Labour has become unelectable in any foreseeable future.”
Banks in India run out of money thanks to the idiot currency ban:
Many in north India who slept outside banks in freezing conditions woke up in the morning to be told only that no cash had arrived.
“I have been doing the rounds of banks for the past 20 days and have been unable to withdraw my own money,” said Balbir Singh, a junior executive in a private firm in New Delhi. “Even on payday the story was the same: the bank said it simply had no money to disburse, even though I have ample credit in my account.”
Relax, @peterdaou. I put together this scientific peer reviewed analysis of the root causes for Hillary's loss so you didn't have to. Yw. pic.twitter.com/4q0kzj71LF
Another Friday, another LinkSwarm. On a personal note, I am once again looking for a Senior Technical Writing position in the greater Austin area. If you have any leads in that direction, please let me know.
Republicans cave on everything and leave town. But somehow it’s Trump that’s going to sully the spotless reputation of the Grand Old Party…
But at least congress overrode Obama’s veto of bill allowing 9/11 survivors to sue the Saudis 97-1. One wonders why Obama even bothered vetoing the bill, given how he had already stabbed the Saudis in the back with the Iran deal.
Apparently, some in this party really do think they’re going to hand the election to Hillary, and, bizarrely, they think this will bully the rest of us into knuckling under to their agenda in 2020.
Rather than simply getting payback and tanking their candidate in return.
This party is on the verge of self-destructing. The upper class of the party is upset that the lower class has finally had its say, and they’re determined that should never be permitted to happen again.
Why then would anyone of the lower class ever vote for the GOP again? Are they required to sign a piece of paper confirming that they are Lessers who should know their place in order to have the privilege of voting against their own interests?
He’s also turns his fire on #NeverTrump:
we have a hundred people who claim to be #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary but, strangely enough, never talk about the downsides of a Hillary presidency. Oh, they’ll talk up how much of an authoritarian Trump is, but not Hillary’s sense of entitlement, grievance, vengeance, and her own history of authoritarianism and lawlessness in covering up her crimes.
They talk all day about “Principles,” but discard the most basic principles — such as keeping a proven lawbreaker out of the White House, or just honestly admitting which candidate they’re actually supporting to their readers — as convenience may recommend.
In fact, right now they’re howling about Ted Cruz’ “calculations” in endorsing Trump, while not admitting their own pose of “Being Against Both Equally” is in fact a completely contrived lie they’ve calculated will permit them to agitate for their candidate (Hillary) while not compromising their career prospects within Conservatism, Inc. too much.
How much can I agitate for Hillary while still retaining plausible deniability?
How much can I agitate for Hillary to appease my anti-Trump donors while still keeping enough pro-Trump readers that my anti-Trump donors will feel they’re getting enough eyeballs per dollar of their patronage?
The party — not just the party;the writers who are supposed to have telling the truth as their first mission, but instead of become nonstop liars all the time decrying Trump as a liar himself — has declared war on all of the Lessers beneath their station, those not in The Media and who should, therefore, not have quite as much of a say in things as they themselves have.
They’ve made themselves into exactly what they pretend to oppose — and exactly what I do in fact oppose.
Canada launches prescription smack. Part of me wants to see how the experiment turns out. And part of me wants to start offering junkies one-way bus tickets to the Great (China) White North.
There’s a proper and an improper way to turn down an orgy. Proper: “No thank you.” Improper: Getting stabby. Don’t they teach kids basic manners these days?
Its 52 days until the election! At least we can be thankful it isn’t more! (Alternate theory: We’ve all died and gone to Hell, and will be watching this Presidential race for the rest of eternity…)
Donald Trump widens lead in LA Times poll. “The poll shows Trump leading Clinton, 47%-41%.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
Another poll puts Trump up by eight in Iowa. Downside: Same poll has Trump up by only seven in Texas. There’s no way in Hell or Terlingua that’s happening, but let’s hope Battleground Texas cons some national Democratic donors into throwing more money down that particular rathole based on that poll… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
Scott Adams on Hillary’s 9/11 collapse: “The optics of a potential commander-in-chief collapsing at that holy place, and on an important anniversary, rendered her unelectable in my opinion.”
“Hillary Clinton has stage-three Parkinson’s disease and suffers from seizures, according to three sources who have had a personal relationship with the Democratic Party presidential nominee.” Grains of salt, anonymous sources disclaimer, yadda yadda.
Did I miss this from 2015? “The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.” Including Frank Giustra. But why would you trust such a notoriously right-wing news outlet as The Guardian? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“It Was Easier To Cure Trump Of His Trumpiness Than Hillary of Her Hillaryness.” “For Hillary, the problem runs deeper. People think she’s corrupt and dishonest. That’s because she’s corrupt and dishonest.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Email leak exposes Democratic Party Pay-for-Play scheme, despite cleverly hiding their intent by actually using the phrase “pay-for-play.” Just think: This would have been a major story dominating the news for months if it were a Republican Administration. In the age of Obama and Hillary, it’s just another selection on a vast buffet of corruption. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Well, what did they expect when they went all in for Hillary? And now Trump is climbing in the polls — 6 points up in the new L.A. Times poll — and they’ve already squandered their credibility. They can’t help her now. They tried too hard before. Too bad the Democratic Party didn’t give us a democratic experience this time. They foisted a candidate on us, they rigged it, with the assistance of the media. And now the candidate we didn’t want zombie-walks and stumbles to the finish line, and there is nothing the Party or the media can do to stir up our affection. Meanwhile, the man the media loved to hate is powering through to the Presidency, looking only stronger for all the shots he took.
Viktor Orbán, together with the prime ministers of the Visegrad countries and the Ukrainian prime minister, took part in a discussion where he highlighted: a whole generation of European politicians had a “secret dream”, that they can use the EU to achieve the weakening of the member states’ national, religious, and historic identities, and that all this would be replaced by a new European identity. But we found out there is no such identity that could replace the old ones, he said. He added: now it is proven that the only successful countries are the ones with strong identities.
Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services. Who would do this? It doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It’s not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes — and especially their persistence — points to state actors. It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar… The data I see suggests China.
Former Ohio mayor arrested for raping a 4-year old. Guess which party they were a member of, and guess how deeply the Washington Post buried that information.
At Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing for secretary of state, she promised she would take “extraordinary steps…to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Later, more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity, according to foundation disclosures.
Six things a Washington Post reporter found out following Ted Cruz around. “The majority of the undecided voters I have spoken with have said they were very impressed after hearing Cruz speak. Many of them said they were undecided coming into a rally and supported him when it was over.”
“Unfortunately, 2016, the little of it that we have so far seen, is already beginning to look like another year of Grim Slide, of a world stumbling down a slippery slope to become less secure, less stable, and less free.”
Iran and Saudi Arabia have severed diplomatic relations over Saudi execution of a Shiite cleric, and Kuwait has recalled their ambassador from Tehran; don’t be surprised if the other Sunni nations follow suit. Good thing we have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House…
Turkey’s Prime Minister: Hey, you know who was a model of effective leadership? Adolf Hitler.
It looks like Karachi, Basra, and Mogadishu all rolled into one. People sell drugs openly just next to the Gronland subway station.
It’s not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away.
Mass sexual assaults involving up to 1,000 Arab men on New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
Rahm Emanuel’s failure in Chicago is emblematic of the blue model failure in America’s cities. “The city’s bloated pension obligations have already forced Emanuel to make severe education cuts. It will continue to force cuts in city services in various cities, making it harder and harder for mayors to govern, and increasing the antagonism among various constituencies.”
Confessions of a social justice warrior white knight. “Their communities thrive on self loathing disguised as elitism…SJWs insist their goal is to make everyone equal, and for a long time I believed it, but their communities actually enforce factionalism and division.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Last week was incredibly busy for sundry reasons. It would be nice to get the Friday LinkSwarm back to Friday, but in the meantime, enjoy the Monday version:
“One of the reasons why Obamacare remains stubbornly unpopular is because most Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being the sort of people who would punch nuns.”
The idea that the tea-party movement is animated or motivated by racism is pure fiction.
Wait a minute, an actual useful article from Vox on the assumptions underlying the Iran deal, and the case against those assumptions? I’m as shocked as anyone.
One of the greatest advantages of sanctions as a coercive tool is their effect over time. Dismantling this thing, which in a way is what we’re doing, is kind of like taking money out of your retirement account early. As we let these sanctions work over time, by the time we got to 2012, they were really in dire straits. If a deal is signed this year and then in 2017 they cheat, it would take years and years and years of penalizing them before we could ever get back to the situation we had in 2012.
“On the Internet, when all the social context is stripped away and you don’t even have to look at the face of the person you’re being mean to, shame loses its social, restorative function. Shame-storming isn’t punishment. It’s a weapon.”
Old and Busted: Getting Montazuma’s Revenge in Mexico. The New Hotness: Thanks to Obama’s illegal alien amnesty, now it’s coming to you! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Kurds are kicking ISIS’s ass: “Picking a fight with the Kurds is a little like going to war against Lebanon’s Druze or the Israelis. It’s like trying to invade and occupy Texas.”
People are burning and looting immigrant shops in South Africa. “South Africa, with a population of about 50 million, is home to an estimated 5 million immigrants….South Africa’s unemployment stood at 24 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014.” Doesn’t seem like a recipe for social harmony…