Posts Tagged ‘Illegal Aliens’

LinkSwarm for March 15, 2019

Friday, March 15th, 2019

In one of the more important but confusing stories this week, UK’s Parliament rejected PM Theresa May’s Brexit deal, rejected a no-deal Brexit, and rejected a second referendum, but voted to delay Brexit until June. Whether the EU will consent to this delay or not remains to be seen. Borepatch thinks not, mainly due to EU elections coming up.

Enjoy a complimentary LinkSwarm:

  • Democrats have a race problem:

    In the Trump era, Democrats are so intent on appealing to immigrants and minority voters they will tolerate insults to Jews, a constituency that voted for Clinton by better than a 3-to-1 margin in 2016. This is not inconsequential, as Jewish conservative Jeff Dunetz pointed out last week: “According to the FBI, almost 60% of the hate crimes in 2017 based on religion were against Jews.” Liberals would like us to believe that Trump supporters are responsible for this, but who is to blame when, for example, Somali immigrant Mohamed Mohamed Abdi is charged with attempted murder for allegedly trying to run over two men outside a Los Angeles synagogue? How can liberals claim Trump is responsible for three black men attacking Jews in Brooklyn? Police are alarmed by increasing anti-Semitic violence in New York City, which probably has a lot more to do with the “progressive” politics of that Democrat-run fiefdom than it does with who’s occupying the White House. Meanwhile, 11 white people were attacked in New York over the weekend, and a black transgender suspect has been arrested in what police say was an apparent hate-crime spree. Such is the toxic racial climate in the city that sends to Congress such Democrats as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spent her weekend trashing Ronald Reagan for a capacity crowd of liberals in Austin, Texas.

    Democrats and their media allies have spent years building this bonfire of racial resentment. CNN devoted hour upon hour of coverage to the “Black Lives Matter” movement that provoked riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and by the time of the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland, anti-Trump protesters were marching with Communist posters advocating revolution. Barely six weeks before Election Day 2016, a “Black Lives Matter” riot erupted in downtown Charlotte, N.C., and does anyone still wonder why Hillary lost North Carolina, a state that Obama had carried twice? Trump got 63 percent of the white vote in North Carolina, carrying the state by a margin of more than 170,000 votes. Is it likely that Democrats can reverse that verdict by doubling-down on identity politics? Yet liberals continue intensifying their incendiary rhetoric that has sparked incidents like the smearing of the Covington Catholic boys, the Jussie Smollett hoax, and a spree of attacks on Trump supporters across the country. Democrats and their media allies have done everything in their power to demonize the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016, and what does that foreshadow for November 2020?

    Certainly by now, working-class white voters must be tired of deranged Trump-haters getting in their faces and shouting, “RAAAAACIST!” Perhaps that’s why the latest Iowa poll shows Democrat primary voters favoring two old white guys, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. However, the crowded field of Democrats contending for the 2020 presidential nomination, cheered on by their Greek chorus of left-wing journalists, will probably make it easier for Trump to get re-elected. The more white voters become alienated from the Democrats, the more extreme the Democrats become, and the media are so out of touch with voters in places like Iowa that Democrats are caught in a sort of feedback loop of extremism.

  • The left-wing crackup:

    The constituent elements of the American left have radicalized and they are tearing the Democratic Party apart. Meanwhile Donald Trump has delivered on a growing economy, deregulation, strong borders, the rule of law, and he is apparently going to leave the cows and their diapers for later.

    The radicalized Democrats are now running as socialists. In the middle of a growing economy they are casting their lot with Venezuela. They expect to win in 2020. Call it the left-wing crack-up.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Is Corbynism coming to America?

    Less than four years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was an obscure backbencher in the British Parliament. In his 30 years as a member of the Labour Party, his greatest legislative accomplishment was paradoxically the lack of any: From 1997 to 2010, when Labour was last in government, Corbyn was the MP who voted against his own party more than any other. Despite his perpetual insubordinations, successive Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown declined to expel Corbyn from their party. “There was no threat,” a deputy Labour chief whip told the Financial Times about Corbyn and his small band of hard-left rebels in 2016. “These people were tolerated because no one had ever heard of them.”

    Today, everyone in British politics has heard of Jeremy Corbyn, who, as leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, has utterly transformed the Labour Party. Once a broad-based movement that could command large parliamentary majorities, today it is a sectarian personality cult, offering meager resistance to a shambolic Conservative government. Once the party whose leaders created NATO and stood stalwart against the threat of international communism, today Labour is led by people who sing the praises of anti-Western despots and terrorists. And once the natural political home of British Jewry, Labour today is mired in an anti-Semitic morass, to the point where 40 percent of Jews say they would “seriously consider” leaving the country were Corbyn to become prime minister. Indeed, Labour has become so toxic that, last month, nine MPs quit the party, calling it “sickeningly, institutionally racist,” “a threat to national security” and “a danger to the cohesion of our society, the safety of our citizens, and the health of our democracy.”

    How Labour reached this deplorable condition is one that should seriously concern liberals in the United States, where a similar dynamic is playing out in the Democratic Party. An insurgent progressivism favorably disposed to socialism, hostile to Jews and openly admiring of Jeremy Corbyn and all that he represents is steadily making inroads against an aging, centrist Democratic establishment. Here, a constellation of elected officials, media personalities, and activists are mimicking the tactics of their ideological comrades in Britain to take over and transform the Democratic Party into a vehicle for their extreme agenda.

  • Related: Jexodus.
  • “Migrants Use Almost Twice The Welfare Benefits As Native-Born Americans.”

    According to a report by Breitbart, in recently released research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), analysts discovered that about 63 percent of non-citizen households, those who live legally and illegally in the U.S., use some form of public welfare while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare.

  • “Five adults arrested at compound in Taos County indicted on terrorism charges.”
  • “Twice-Deported Illegal Alien Charged With Raping 12-Year-Old Girl.”
  • Illegal alien arrested for murder of 59-year old woman. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents tried to deport Carranza nine times before, but their detainer requests were not honored in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties, both so-called ‘sanctuary cities.’ In every occasion, local authorities declined to cooperate with a federal request to hold Carranza in jail due to his immigration status — as is often the policy with “sanctuary cities” and counties — and he was released back on the street.”
  • At a 10-year high, wage growth for American workers likely to keep accelerating.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Meanwhile, some manufacturers can’t fill open jobs. (Hat tip: TPPF’s Cannon.)
  • Never Trump Bulwark writer attempts to take down Victor Davis Hanson. The attempt goes very, very badly for him.

    [Gabriel] Schoenfeld only fuels the popular perception of The Bulwark Never Trumpers as an angry, coastal elite who are anguished that their warnings about Trump were ignored by both hoi polloi and their conservative “grifters and trolls.” In careerist fury, he now damns others for his own self-immolation — as if the country must suffer for the sins of not listening to his own genius, which would probably have given the country a 16-year Obama-Clinton regnum.

    That Never Trumpers at The Bulwark were wrong about the Trump nomination, the general election, and the first two years of the Trump administration seems only to have fueled their spitefulness. If Schoenfeld is representative of this rump movement, then they are engaging in projection.

    Read the whole thing for a detailed, comprehensive takedown.

  • Another big money Democratic donor caught up in the college admissions scandal.
  • The CDC’s “gun violence” numbers are useless, says that well-known pro-gun outlet, 538.
  • How China is screwing Vietnam out of energy opportunities.
  • Another week, another UK Muslim rape gang.
  • SPLC founder Morris Dees fired, though evidently for sexual harassment rather than smearing innocent conservatives.
  • “California Veterans Home Threatens to Eject 84-Year-Old Widow for Bible Study Group.”
  • Some of the power has been restored, but Venezuela’s water runs black.
  • Venezuela’s premier university destroyed by socialism. A sad photo essay. (Hat tip: Wretchardthecat on Twitter.)
  • Related tweet:

  • “Son defends parents caught in college admissions scandal while smoking blunt.” Can’t imagine why such a fine specimen of academic scholarship would need a leg up in their college admissions. (Had tip: IowaHawk via Andrew Wimsatt.)
  • “Media Matters President Wrote Blog Posts About ‘Japs,’ ‘Jewry’ And ‘Trannies.’” Political correctness for thee, but not for me. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Democratic Governor of overtaxed New Jersey wants to hike taxes even more.
  • What if Ayn Rand was right?
  • “The Army’s Next-Generation Combat Helmet Has Arrived.”
  • “To Avoid Confusing Words, Ilhan Omar Will Now Respond To All Questions With ‘I Am Groot.'”
  • You know, Hayek’s Nobel Prize would look good on my mantle.
  • Random tweet:

  • LinkSwarm for March 8, 2019

    Friday, March 8th, 2019

    Turning and turning in a widening gyre…

    You would think a simple condemnation of antisemitism would be an easy thing for House Democrats to do. You’d be wrong. Like the UK’s Labour Party, the Social Justice Warrior rot has crept into the Democrats to the point where they are institutionally hostile to Israel and Jews. The need for Muslim votes outweighs forthright condemnation of one of the world’s oldest (and deadliest) prejudices.

    So enjoy a LinkSwarm while you wait for the blood-red tide of anarchy to be loosed on the world:

  • The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism: “No educated human believes [Democratic Rep. Ilhan] Omar inadvertently accused “Benjamin”-grubbing Rootless Cosmopolitans of hypnotizing the world for their evil. These are long-standing, conspiratorial attacks on the Jewish people, used by anti-Semites on right and left, and popular throughout the Islamic world.” (Hat tip: Sean Davis on Twitter.)
  • And the hits keep coming! New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for and end to the U.S.-Israel special relationship. I’m sure such a position could never negatively impact reelection chances for a congresswoman representing New York City…
  • “More than 76,000 migrants crossed the southern border illegally last month, the highest number in 12 years. So much for all those media “fact checks” arguing that there’s no emergency to justify President Trump’s wall.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Mexico is helping the Trump Administration enforce border controls. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • “Federal judge temporarily blocks Texas from purging voters in citizenship review. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery called the review “ham-handed” and ordered counties not to remove any voters from the rolls without his approval and “a conclusive showing that the person is ineligible to vote.” I know it will shock you to learn that Biery is a Clinton appointee. Can’t purge those precious illegal alien votes for Democrats off the rolls…
  • “Last week a new pro-illegal alien organization launched in the Lone Star State: Texans for Economic Growth. The group, which appears to contain more chambers of commerce than actual businesses, is directly tied to Partnership for a New American Economy, a “comprehensive immigration reform” (pro-amnesty) organization headed by two billionaires, the anti-gun former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch; a host of other media elites; big business CEOs; and mayors.” They oppose ending state subsidies for illegal aliens.
  • UPS stops delivering to Muslim no-go zones in Sweden.
  • India’s “cold start” military doctrine against Pakistan.
  • Is Pakistan finally doing something about terrorism? “Pakistan intensified its crackdown against Islamist militants on Thursday, with the government announcing it had taken control of 182 religious schools and detained more than 100 people as part of its push against banned groups.” Don’t believe it. As sure as the heat is off, expect those same militants to be released and go right back on the ISI payroll…
  • The government is approaching the opiod epidemic all wrong. “‘Today’s non-medical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients.’ Medical users usually do not become addicts.” (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • We have a winner for Stupidest tweet of the Year:

  • It’s ten years since Obama’s Russian reset. “By the time Trump took office, just over two years ago, a greatly emboldened Russia had effectively digested Crimea, was engaged on a rapidly expanding scale in joint military exercises with China, was energetically cultivating such clients in the Western Hemisphere as the USSR’s old comrade Cuba and Putin’s pals in Venezuela, and was militarily entrenched in Syria as a mainstay of the Assad regime.”
  • Speaking of Venezuela, the Magic Power of Socialism™ has reached the point where they can’t even keep the lights on.
  • F-35C declared ready for combat. The “C” designates the aircraft carrier variant, which was first rolled out 10 years ago. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Is Rep. Dan Crenshaw the future of the GOP?

    Crenshaw might be the congressional GOP’s best answer to AOC, but he decidedly doesn’t want to be seen as a Republican version of the 29-year-old New York Democrat, who is “always trying to embrace radicalism,” he told me during a recent interview in his new office on the fourth floor of the Cannon House Office Building. He wants to take his party in a more traditional—not radical—direction. “We have to make conservatism cool and exciting again,” is how he described his mission in politics when I first met him a year ago. “We have to bring back that Reagan optimism.”

    Crenshaw’s combination of traditional conservatism and rising popularity put him in an unusual position in Congress. He describes himself as a “plain old conservative”—he supports free trade, wants to reform Medicare and Social Security, and thinks American troops should stay in Afghanistan (where an IED took one of the veteran’s eyes) as long as they’re needed to prevent another 9/11. That puts him at odds with Trump, whom Crenshaw has been unafraid to criticize, going so far as to call his rhetoric “insane” and “hateful” during the 2016 presidential campaign. But Crenshaw is more “Sometimes Trump” than “Never Trump.” He is not pushing for a 2020 Republican primary challenge and is not trying to write off Trump’s wing of the party—hence, his warm reception at CPAC. In fact, Crenshaw has praised the president for his policies on immigration, even recently voting in support of Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a border wall, a move many conservatives opposed.

    Ignore the “dares to take on Trump” angle of the article. Crenshaw’s biggest advantage is a temperament almost completely opposite from Trump’s, which voters may look for in 2024.

  • New Jersey city agrees to pay $27M to lease property it sold for $1.” Corruption? In New Jersey? Try to contain your shock…
  • Follow-up: Police officer involved in deadly Houston shooting decides to retire. How convienant. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Guy behind Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was literally a paid KGB stooge.
  • Former Texas congressman Ralph Hall died at age 95. Hall was a conservative Democrat who endorsed George W. Bush for President in 2000, then switched to the GOP in 2004, one of the last conservative Democratic office holders to leave the party. “Hall had always been a thorn in Democrats’ side even before he changed parties. In 1985, he voted ‘present’ rather than support then-Speaker Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill’s, D-Mass., reelection. ”
  • How Buc-ees conquered the world (or at least Texas).
  • Eyeglasses are a ripoff. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Titania McGrath unmasked. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Captain Mary Sue:

    Two years ago, Wonder Woman proved a female-led superhero movie could reach the highest levels of the genre, with Gal Gadot proving robust and redoubtable, yet also charming and feminine. I spent Captain Marvel waiting for Gadot. What I got was Brie Larson: charmless, humorless, a character so without texture that she might as well be made out of aluminum.

    Captain Marvel might be the first blockbuster movie whose animating idea is fear. Every page of the script betrays terror of what people might say about the film on social media. Give Carol Danvers a love interest? Eek! No, women can’t be defined by the men in their lives! Make her vulnerable? OMG, no, that’s crazy. Feminine? What century are you from if you think females should be feminine? Toward the end of the movie, when a villain preparing for an epic confrontation with Carol, the fighter pilot turned Superwoman, chides her that she will fail because she can’t control her emotions, there is no tension whatsoever. We’ve just spent two hours watching her be utterly unfazed by anything. Giving Carol actual emotions would, of course, lead to at least 27 people calling the film misogynist on Twitter, and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are petrified of that.

    Just to be completely, unerringly, let’s-bubble-wrap-the-universe safe, Boden and Fleck decided to make Danvers stronger than strong, fiercer than fierce, braver than brave. Larson spends the entire movie being insouciant, kicking butt, delivering her lines in an I-got-this monotone and staring down everything with a Blue Steel gaze of supreme confidence. Superheroes are defined by their limitations — Superman’s Kryptonite, Batman’s mortality — but Captain Marvel is just an invincible bore. The screenplay by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with a story by the three of them plus Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, presents us with Brie Larson’s Carol being amazingly strong and resilient at the beginning, middle, and end. This isn’t an arc, it’s a straight line.

  • Jerry Merryman, co-inventor of the pocket calculator, RIP.
  • “Ilhan Omar Withdraws Support From Bill To Save The Earth After Learning That’s Where Israel Is.” “When I made the Green New Deal, I thought weather like storms and earthquakes were all caused by climate change, but now I’ve learned from Representative Omar that lots of that is actually from Jewish-controlled weather machines.”
  • The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity…

    More of That Texas Voting Fraud Democrats Swear Doesn’t Exist

    Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

    Election season is here, which means it’s time for more of that voting fraud Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist:

    A review of the presidential votes cast in Texas in 2008, 2012, and 2016 by the data analysis firm Votistics found a disturbing number of duplicate registrations and multiple votes. This means that inaccurate voter rolls are not harmless, forgivable mistakes.

    According to Votistics, data provided by the Texas secretary of state indicate that 104,800 people appear to be registered more than once. That is, the list contains thousands of name/date of birth pairs. Of course, some cases could reflect unusual coincidences. But most are the same person. The State of Texas and county registrars have the information necessary to confirm duplicate registrations and remove the extra ones.

    Votistics found that 2,159 of these “voting pairs” appeared to have cast ballots in the same election. The firm found another 272 cases of registrants who lacked fully matching middle names but also apparently voted more than once, as confirmed by data matching at various commercial sites that track personal information. While Votistics had no detailed information on these ballots, at least some of them were cast erroneously or fraudulently.

    Moreover, 45,854 registrants appeared to have voted more than once in at least one general election according to the records provided by the Texas State Board of Elections.

    Texas also has a problem of the dead, or presumed dead, voting. For instance, Votistics discovered that more than 3,000 of those who cast ballots apparently were older than the world’s oldest known person. Remarkable!

    In 2016 alone, nearly 800 people above the age of 100 appear to have voted, most of them in person. Either the location of the Fountain of Youth is a few hundred miles off, or there’s a lot of voter impersonation going on. Regardless of whether these ballots were fraudulent, the secretary of state should lead a determined effort to fix election rolls across the state.

    The problems are systemic. The American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) has been reviewing the role of inaccurate registration lists across the country. In Texas, 39 counties have more people registered than the number eligible to vote. One of the worst offenders is Starr County, with roughly 16 percent more registrants than qualified residents.

    In 2014, the ACRU secured a consent decree with Terrell County, Texas requiring officials to clean up their voter rolls by eliminating outdated and duplicate names. As a result, the analysis by Votistics showed the number of “surplus” registrants down markedly.

    And other cases of voting fraud keep cropping up:

  • Four women arrested in a voter fraud ring in Fort Worth:

    Members of an organized voter fraud ring have been arrested and indicted on charges they targeted and, in one case stole, the votes of elderly voters on Fort Worth’s north side.

    Four people were arrested — Leticia Sanchez, Leticia Sanchez Tepichin, Maria Solis and Laura Parra — after being indicted on 30 felony counts of voter fraud, according to a statement from the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

    These people allegedly were paid to target older voters on the north side “in a scheme to generate a large number of mail ballots and then harvest those ballots for specific candidates in 2016,” the statement read.

    “Ballots by mail are intended to make it easier for Texas seniors to vote,” Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “My office is committed to ensuring that paid vote harvesters who fraudulently generate mail ballots, stealing votes from seniors, are held accountable for their despicable actions and for the damage they inflict on the electoral process.”

    Vote harvesting typically happens in two stages. There’s seeding and then harvesting.

    The AG’s office explains that applications for mail-in ballots are first sent to “targeted precincts.” Then, “harvesters attempt either to intercept the ballots outright or to ‘assist’ elderly voters in voting their ballots while ensuring that the votes are cast for the candidates of the harvesters’ choice.”

    Let’s take a closer look at the accused fraud ring, shall we?

    • Leticia Sanchez, 57, of Haltom City, faces 17 counts. She is accused of marking a voter’s ballot without his consent in March 2016, and altering and submitting applications in January and February 2016 to request ballots by mail for the Democratic Party for 2016 elections for 13 people who had made no such requests. She is also accused of providing forged signatures for three people on applications. Sanchez remained in the Tarrant County Jail at noon Friday with bail set at $1,500.
    • Laura Parra, 24, of Fort Worth, faces one count. Parra is accused of providing a forged signature in January 2016 on an application for an early voting ballot. She was released from jail Thursday on a $1,500 bond.
    • Leticia Sanchez Tepichin, 39, of Haltom City, faces nine counts. Tepichin is accused of providing forged signatures on two applications for early voting ballots in January and February 2016. She is also accused in seven of the counts of soliciting, encouraging, directing, aiding, or attempting to aid others in altering and submitting false information on early voting ballot applications. The false information was submitted, according to the indictment, to request ballots by mail for the Democratic Party for 2016 elections by people who had made no such request. She was being held in the Tarrant County Jail Friday at noon with bail set at $1,500.
    • Maria Rosa Solis, 40, of Haltom City , faces two counts. Solis is accused of providing forged signatures in January 2016 on two applications for early voting ballots. She was released from jail on Friday on a $1,500 bond.
  • Democrats sent prefilled voter registration applications to non-citizens with the checkbox indicating citizenship already checked.

    It’s a Class B misdemeanor under the Texas Election Code to make a false statement, or attempt to induce another person to make a false statement, on a voter registration application.

    The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a non-profit law firm dedicated to election integrity, sent the alert to district attorneys in Hidalgo and Starr counties, Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas.

    PILF explained that because it represents a sworn statement—and is the only verification of an applicant’s citizenship status required to register—“the voter must answer the important citizenship question on their own.”

    It’s a state and federal crime for non-citizens to register to vote or cast ballots, and illegal registration or voting can prevent legal residents from becoming citizens.

    The mailers were marked “URGENT!” and read, “Your voter registration application is inside. Complete, sign and return it today!” The TDP further urged recipients—which included already-registered voters, ineligible non-citizens, and deceased individuals—“Mail IMMEDIATELY to be registered to vote in the November 2018 Election!”

  • Here’s a real go-getter in the ballot fraud department:

    For the second time in two weeks, a South Texas woman has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of voter fraud.

    Modesta Vela of Roma was arrested October 4 on four voter fraud charges relating to mail-in ballots. Vela is accused of approaching an elderly voter, taking the voter’s mail-in ballot for the November 2018 election, then filling it out herself and mailing it.

    District Attorney Omar Escobar said his office began investigating Vela last month after the Starr County Elections Department notified him of the allegations. Vela was charged with felony counts of illegal voting, knowingly possessing a ballot or ballot envelope of another person with the intent to defraud, and election fraud, as well as a misdemeanor count of unlawful assistance of a voter.

    Vela was arrested again Friday on four new voter fraud charges of tampering with a government record, namely voter registration applications. Starr County Special Crimes Unit made the arrest.

    Snip.

    Escobar said the AG’s office is advising local authorities on what evidence to collect in Vela’s case. Vela, a former Starr County Precinct 2 employee who was fired earlier this year, assisted over 200 mail ballot voters in Starr County’s March 2018 Democratic primary. She was also arrested in 2010 on a voter fraud charge involving improper mail ballot assistance during that year’s Democratic primary.

    I know you’ll all be shocked at this revelation of the accused malefactor’s party.

  • But despite these setbacks, Democrats press on, trying to register one of their most reliable voting blocs: the dead. Including one woman who has been dead 29 years…
  • How Many Illegal Aliens Can Fit In A Car?

    Saturday, October 20th, 2018

    You might be surprised:

    The soldiers are wearing the flag of the Dominican Republican, so presumably those are Haitans in the clown car.

    LinkSwarm for September 21, 2018

    Friday, September 21st, 2018

    And you may ask yourself how did I get here why I didn’t do any blog posts about the “bombshell” Brett Kavanaugh allegations earlier this week? Simple: They were as obviously stupid as they were predictable. Thanks to my sloth foresight, I managed to avoid writing about the mess before the Democrats’ unpopular ploy collapsed into the stinking pile of garbage it always was!

  • More on the Democrats’ Kavanaugh stupidity:

    The tactics they’re now employing against Kavanaugh, while extreme, are nothing new for them. They’ve always shot from the hip and aimed for the heart, hoping to sway public opinion by means of passion rather than reason. The more convinced they are of the righteousness of their cause—call it their “higher loyalty” to the arc of history—the more antic they get, like chimps in the zoo at feeding time, moving from whingeing servility to outright viciousness the hungrier they get. Left unchecked, even the cuddliest Cheetah eventually will rip off your face.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • There should be a big difference between vague accusations of sexual assault 35 years ago and documented instances of assault from last year, as in the case of Keith Ellison. But the media seem strangely incurious about the congressman and DNC vice-chair…
  • Do all-girl preppie high schools typically approve of blackout drinking and teenage sex? I can’t even imagine anyone even trying to document such antics in my own high school yearbook.
  • “Trump Hit Iran With Oil Sanctions. So Far, They’re Working.” Or so says those notorious pro-Trump shills at the New York Times
  • “Foreign money bankrolls climate change lawsuits against US oil companies.” (Hat tip: Steve Malloy on Twitter.)
  • Japan issues warning to China by conducting military exercises in the South China Sea.
  • Donald Trump’s race against death.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • This seems worrisome:

    The real news is that Linux, the project, adopted the “Contributor’s Covenant” code of conduct and thereby acknowledged SJW ideological supremacy. The CC is an SJW vehicle promulgated by Coraline Ada and a related group of activist malcontents. While the CC appears on the surface to be a call of civility, it’s actually the tip of a very long and exsanguatory anti-meritocracy spear, one that ultimately seeks to elevate high-verbal-IQ non-technical politics-playing San-Francisco-residing cliques of social justice advocates into positions of recognition and authority in the free software world and beyond. If you write code and you’re good at it, these people are a direct threat to your status, your hobby, and your livelihood, because if these people get their way, your technical excellence becomes secondary to their wokeness.​

  • #MeTooFar:

  • Republican congressmen demonstrates provable sexual misconduct. GOP: “Resign, sleazeball.” Democratic state senator demonstrates sleazy, felonious personal conduct. Democrats: “We shall defend him to our last breath! Or, you know, until he’s actually convicted.” Result: Republicans now hold all those seats.
  • Beto O’Rourke says we need an illegal alien amnesty so Mexicans can work cotton gins. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Want a healthier heart? Eat a steak.
  • Bert and Ernie are not gay. So says their actual creator.
  • Solar Observatory closed by the FBI. Old and Busted explanation: Aliens! The New Hotness: Child porn server.
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wait, Solzhenitsyn wasn’t already awarded the Medal of Freedom? (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • “A US tech company was found guilty of abusing the H-1B visa.” That’s People Tech Group, for those of you playing along on the home game…
  • Apple-1 computer for sale. 1 MHz processor, 4K of memory. Current bid: $175,000.
  • Suge Knight pleads guilty to manslaughter, to spend 28 years in the big house. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Oh Florida Man, don’t ever change:

    The operator of a Florida-based animal sanctuary says she was the target of an Oklahoma zookeeper who was indicted last week on federal murder-for-hire charges.

    Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue said she’s clashed in the past with Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who goes by the nickname “Joe Exotic.”

    “He’s been threatening me for many, many years,” Baskin told The Oklahoman after Maldonado-Passage’s arrest last week.

    Prosecutors allege that Maldonado-Passage tried to hire two separate people to kill an unnamed woman, who wasn’t harmed. One of the unidentified people he sought to hire connected him with an undercover FBI agent, who met with Maldonado-Passage in December 2017. The indictment was unsealed Friday and Maldonado-Passage remains jailed in Florida. He didn’t reply to an email seeking comment and court records don’t list an attorney for him.

    Is there a mugshot? Why yes. Yes there is.

  • Facebook Adjusts Algorithm To Show You Even More Terrible Content.” I’m glad they mentioned that super-annoying Ray-Ban tag spam. Also this:

    Content will also appear in a completely jumbled, totally incoherent order, even more so than before. “Something that was posted a few minutes ago you’ll probably never see, even if you try. But stuff that got posted three weeks ago, we’ll plaster your screen with it to no end.”

  • LinkSwarm for September 7, 2018

    Friday, September 7th, 2018

    The sheer stupidity of Democrats at the Brett Kavanaugh is driving most other news out of the headlines, so this LinkSwarm may seem a little light…

  • “Huge Number Of Illegals Opting Out Of Welfare Programs Fearing Trump Admin Crackdown.” Good. Let Democrats run on restoring welfare to illegal aliens this fall.
  • MS-13 gang members arrested in five Houston-area murders, including machete death of informant.” (Hat tip: Governor Abbott’s Twitter feed.
  • Sen. Chuck Schumer admits that Senate Democrats want to impeach President Donald Trump.
  • This just in: Democratic base wants red-state Democratic senators to commit lockstep electoral suicide.
  • Leftist befuddled by how black men can join “white nationalist” groups like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. Here’s a hint, dumbasses: They’re not white nationalist groups.
  • “U.S. weekly jobless claims drop to near 49-year low.” (Hat tip: Hugh Hewett’s Twitter feed.)
  • Blue collar workers surveyed stated that they could, in fact, get some satisfaction. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Problem: Voters oppose uncontrolled Muslim immigration into Germany. Solution: Adopt stricter immigration policies in line with German voters. Ha! Just kidding! Have the Stasi put the Alliance for Germany political party under surveillance.
  • Social Justice Warriors attempt to slip their usual political bullshit into open source licensing terms and get smacked down hard. “Less than 24 hours after I posted this, the license change was revoked and its committer expelled from the project.​” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Frankenplane.
  • #Gamergate Social Justice Warrior lunatic “Brianna Wu” lost her a bid for Massachusetts’ 8th U.S. congressional district by 49 points.
  • Theranos, the biotech company fraud built, is shutting down. Now all that remains is for Elizabeth Holmes to go to federal prison on pending wire fraud charges.
  • Memorial to the victims of communism opens in Estonia.
  • Bert Reynolds, RIP.
  • Johnny Rotten slams Corbyn and his Labour Party for antisemitism. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Also: Previously.)
  • Destroy shareholder value? Just do it!
  • “Literary Theorists Admit They Still Have No Idea What Animal Farm About.”
  • Snopes Rates Babylon Bee World’s Most Accurate News Source.”
  • Speaking of which: “The Bee Explains: Common Racist Hand Signals.”
  • A Tweet:

  • Another:

  • LinkSwarm for June 22, 2018

    Friday, June 22nd, 2018

    The whole “OMG, we lock up illegal alien kids!” panic the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have ginned up is a sign of just how good the economy is under President Donald Trump, and just how desperate Democrats are to find an issue to run on in November. Faced with the prospect of running on tranny bathrooms, gun control and calling ordinary Americans racists (yet again), they hit upon screeching about the fate of some 2,000 illegal alien minors as the only naked emotional appeal left in their arsenal.

    Here it is, folks: the only tactic Democrats could agree to run on this fall.

    So naturally, President Trump defused the issue he inherited from Obama with an executive order, causing Democrats to turn on a dime from “OMG, this is the most important moral crisis of our time!” to “That’s not good enough, you heartless monster, we want immediate full amnesty or we keep screaming our heads off!” Ditto for Sen. Ted Cruz’s legislative fix, which was instantly labeled a “cynical ploy.” You know, just like Democrats manufacturing the whole issue.

    Expect Democrats to to start bloviating about something equally ludicrous but completely different with the same overheated emotional furor next week…

  • Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Manuel Padilla says the entire problem stems from Obama-era laxness:

    “It’s a very complex situation,” he told “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King. “When you have high levels of activity, and a lack of resources – personnel, technology, infrastructure – it creates this kind of chaotic environment.”

    I know this is complicated for you and your team, but what people are talking about is cruel and inhuman behavior, is how it’s perceived,” said King. “Do you actually agree with this policy?”

    “I do agree that we have to do something. We created this situation by not doing anything,” Padilla said. “So what happened with zero tolerance is, we were exempting a population from the law. And what happens when you do that, it creates a draw for a certain group of people that rises to trends that become a crisis.”

    “I’m going to give you an example: Because we were releasing family units, May 2, just last month, we had a full-blown MS-13 (gang member) accompanied by his one-year-old child. He thought he was going get released into the community; that was not the case.”

  • Congressional Democratic candidates are more left-wing than ever. I’m sure a platform of repealing tax cuts will go over swell among ordinary voters… (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Actor Peter Fonda (who you may remember as The Devil in Ghost Rider) went off on an “unhinged even by the standards of blue checkmark liberals on Twitter” rant in which he called for Barron Trump to be raped by pedophiles. To which reporter Juan Williams said Fonda’s rant was “poorly worded.” Oh really? Just how should someone word an appeal that the children of one’s political opponents be raped by pedophiles? Where does Miss Manners stand on this vital issue of 21st century American etiquette?
  • Related tweet:

  • Eric S. Raymond on the mathematics of gun confiscation. “The critical fraction of American gun owners that would have to be hard-core enough to resist confiscation with lethal violence in order to stop the attempt is lower than 1 in 317. Probably much lower. Especially if we responded by killing not merely the doorknockers but the bureaucrats and politicians who gave them their orders. Which would be more efficient, more just, and certain to follow.”
  • More on American gun owners:

    The Small Arms Survey estimates there are 393,300,000 civilian-owned firearms in the United States. The survey, performed by the Graduate Institute of Geneva, estimated the United States military has about 4.5 million firearms. It put the number of firearms owned by police throughout the United States at just over 1 million.

    That means American civilians own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the U.S. military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement.

    Federal Bureau of Investigation background check records suggest that civilians bought more than 2 million guns in May alone, which means civilians purchase more than double the number of firearms owned by police departments. The number of gun-related civilian background checks in May and April, at over 4.7 million, is greater than the number of firearms currently owned by the American military.

    The FBI reported processing more than 25.2 million gun-related civilian background checks in 2017, which is more than the 22.7 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are currently held by every law enforcement agency in the world combined. Between 2012 and 2017, the FBI reported conducting more than 135 million civilian gun checks—more than the 133 million guns the Small Arms Survey estimates are in all the world’s military stockpiles.

    The Small Arms Survey estimated there are about 1 billion firearms currently in circulation throughout the world. By its estimate, about 85 percent are owned by civilians and American civilians own nearly 40 percent of all the guns in the world. Researchers said worldwide firearms ownership was up since the last time they studied the issue about a decade ago.

  • In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that cell phone metadata is protected from warrantless search and seizure:

    “We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of the deeply revealing nature of CSLI, its depth, breadth, and comprehensive reach, and the inescapable and automatic nature of its collection, the fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection.”

    Roberts was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    This is the rare case where I side with the court’s liberal wing against its conservative wing. If there is a constitutional right to privacy, then surely metadata, which reveals your minute-by-minute physical location, among many other things, should be covered.

  • Federal court rules that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional for exercising executive authority but putting its director beyond the each of Presidential power.
  • Turkish jihadist scumbag president Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls a snap election, a tactic that could backfire.
  • The Southern Poverty Law Center just paid $3,375,000 to British politician Maajid Nawaz for smearing him as an “anti-Muslim extremist.”
  • In the wake of that settlement, the SPLC could be facing dozens of lawsuits from anti-jihad organizations and activists it has similarly smeared.
  • Germany just gave in to President Trump’s tariff reduction demands. Our President just might know more about negotiation than his critics would admit… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Evergreen State College professor warns that the campus Social Justice Warrior crisis is worse than people think. (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)
  • Texas Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti resigns after his felony conviction.
  • The Texas Supreme Court smacks down Austin’s plastic bag ban. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • D.C. votes to eliminate tipping.
  • Portland feminist bookstore closing. Naturally they blamed their poor business decisions on white male patriarchy. Insert your own Portlandia joke here.
  • West Virginia Democratic House candidate Richard Ojeda said he voted for Donald Trump.
  • As he himself foretold, Charles Krauthammer has died. He was a welcome voice of reason during the initial burst of Obamamania.
  • Commie soldier boy given an other-than-honorable discharge.
  • A long, sad profile of actor Johnny Depp. Stoned and broke because you can’t stop stupidly spending your money is no way to go through life, son…
  • Onion Social Embraces Diversity By Adding Prophet Mohammed Emoji.”
  • Ted Cruz kicks Jimmy Kimmel’s ass.
  • Hong Kong banks don’t want your stinking money.
  • “Stop! Hammertime!” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • The Amnesty That Refused To Die

    Thursday, June 14th, 2018

    Like a dog returning to its own vomit, Republican congressional leaders just can’t stay away from illegal alien amnesty. Evidently because they love creating new Democratic voters, ignoring the rule of law and depressing their base.

    A leaked draft of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) amnesty deal could lead to the “biggest” amnesty for illegal aliens in United States history, experts tell Breitbart News.

    Ryan’s immigration deal would go beyond giving amnesty to only the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

    According to a leaked draft of the amnesty deal, obtained by Breitbart News, Ryan’s plan would allow the entire “DACA population” to be eligible for amnesty so long as they meet low educational, work and criminal requirements, prompting the amnesty to explode in size.

    A draft of the leaked GOP amnesty deal

    That DACA population could include the nearly 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens, and even more illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S. to fraudulently obtain the amnesty.

    NumbersUSA Governmental Affairs Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart News that Ryan’s amnesty will — at the least — allow 1.8 million illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.

    “This has the potential to turn into the biggest amnesty we’ve ever had,” Jenks said.

    The leaked amnesty deal reveals that Ryan and the Republican establishment may even be considering going beyond giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.

    A second amnesty is included in the leaked draft, one that would allow the children of temporary foreign guest workers and “anyone who has a ‘contingent nonimmigrant status’” to apply for the amnesty.

    How about “No”? Does “No” work for you? How about “Hell No!”?

    What needs to be done is:

  • Increased border enforcement
  • Implement E-Verify
  • Build the wall
  • All that needs to be done before any sort of amnesty is even considered.

    Why is this message so hard for congressional Republicans to understand?

    LinkSwarm for May 18, 2018

    Friday, May 18th, 2018

    At some point I will grapple with all the unraveling Clinton/Mueller/Fusion GPS/FISA/Brennan Scandularity…but not today.

  • Democrats, rather than maximizing their chance at a blue wave, have insisted on electing far left-wing candidates over more-electable party moderates. Those national results replicate what the Texas Democratic Party did to themselves: Push moderates out of the party. Result: More Republicans elected. They appear hellbent on replicating those results at the national level…
  • Former New York speaker of the House Sheldon Silver found guilty of a kickback scheme yet again. The first conviction was overturned on appeal over a technicality.
  • “The people who’ve lost their way are the liberals and civil libertarians, blinded by their rage for Trump, who have dropped their principles in a moment of political threat and are taking out their anger on a man who has been their staunchest ally. Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.” Caveat: Writer suffers from usual “Fox News and Trump are the Devil” derangement. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • President Donald Trump: “Members of the violent MS-13 gang are animals.” MSM: “Trump just said all undocumented immigrants are animals!” Also: “Trump supporters are fleeing the media not because they want cheerleaders, but because they are tired of a secular, coastal, liberal press that not only cannot relate to heartland voters but thinks it is beneath them to even try.”
  • Rep. Lou Barletta wins Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary, to face Bob Casey in the general. Barletta earned a lot of nationwide Republican gratitude for taking out Stupak block flip-flopper Paul Kanjorski in 2010.
  • China, Russia and other scumbag authoritarian countries are lying about their GDP. This is my shocked face. This also why you should take all those “OMG China’s economy will overtake the U.S. in 20XX!” panics with several grains of sand.
  • Seattle thinks that golden goose would taste mighty fine cooked in a white wine reduction.
  • Class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over revelations that the company logged users’ text and call logs using the Facebook smartphone app on Android phones. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • EU: here’s a statement condemning the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania: LOL, no. BLOCKED. (Hat tip: Pat Condell on Gab.)
  • Tom Wolfe, RIP.
  • Another case of illegal alien voter fraud that Democrats swear doesn’t exist.
  • President Trump wrings airline agreement out of gulf states.
  • The mathematician who cracked horse racing. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Joe Straus backed a lot of liberal Republican state candidates in March, to the tune of $1 million, and they all got walloped.
  • More scandal at the University of Texas law school:

    Jason Shoumaker, the law school’s facilities director until November 2017, is the subject of an ongoing probe by the Travis County District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Rangers. Though Shoumaker was taken into custody Thursday over tampering charges, he is at the heart of a major fraud investigation – one that potentially involves “several million dollars of questionable expenses,” a source familiar with the probe said….During multiple pay periods, Shoumaker logged regular 8-hour days with the university while he was actually cavorting out of state, according to the affidavit.

  • George Soros pulls out of Hungary.
  • #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob. But they obviously nailed the one for writers:

  • Death by Snu Snu! (Hat tip: Slone’s Twitter feed.)
  • LinkSwarm for March 30, 2018

    Friday, March 30th, 2018

    Happy Good Friday! Spring has sprung and I’m knee-deep in my taxes.

  • The sitcom Roseanne‘s return features the titular character as a Trump supporter and enjoys smash ratings.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron talks about sending forces to Syria to block Turkey, then almost immediately walks it back, offering to “mediate” between Turkey and the coalition-backed, Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces. That’s…interesting.
  • What will Middle East Studies academics do now that Saudi sugar daddy Alwaleed bin Talal is out of favor? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More ObamaCare rate hikes coming, as Democrats in blue states scramble to avoid the inevitable results of their own policy choices. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Headline: “POPE SAYS HELL DOESN’T EXIST!” (tiny print) “According to a 93 year old atheist who has been wrong before, didn’t tape him, and is quoting from memory. And the Pope himself denies it.” Guess I’ll have to cancel that hooker and blow party I was going to throw Easter Sunday, just in case…
  • Gun ownership rates say absolutely nothing about homicide statistics.

    When a media source such as Mother Jones or Everytown for Gun Safety implies that “we have a gun problem,” they are making exactly the same reasoning error as if they said, “we have a black people problem.”

    And black population was six times more predictive than gun ownership was.

  • Harris County hit with lawsuit for refusing to turn over voter roles so non-citizens can be purged.
  • Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is running for reelection on a platform of opposing Muslim immigration and George Soros.
  • Texas booze lobby defeated in court, paving the way for Sam’s Club, Costco, and other national chains to start selling hard liquor. (Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings.)
  • Mozilla launches a “condom” extension to thwart Facebook spying on other sites.
  • Of all the things to be adopted by the InfoWars right as a bulwark against the radical left, an Austin vegetarian cat café would seem to be among the most unlikely.
  • What happens when an airliner crashes in your front yard.
  • Oracle vs. Google heads back to trial.
  • Karl Rehn attended the 2018 Rangemaster Tactical Conference and brought back lots of insights on things like engaging active shooters. That’s just the first of four after action reports, and all are worth your time to click through.
  • Latest Hollywood bigshot to sexually exploit underage women: Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.

    In an extensive report from BuzzFeed, cartoonist John Kricfalusi—the creator of iconic Nickelodeon series Ren & Stimpy—has been accused of sexually exploiting teenage girls, promising them careers in animation at his studio Spumco while allegedly grooming them for sexual relationships. One of the women, Robyn Byrd, says it all began in 1994 when she was only 13, after she sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about how she wanted a career in animation and how important Ren & Stimpy was to her. Kricfalusi, who was 39 at the time, responded by sending her packages of toys and art supplies, and eventually he helped her set up an AOL account so they could communicate more regularly.

    Kricfalusi visited Byrd at her home and told her that she could “become a great artist,” and later he invited her out to Los Angeles, where she says he “touched her genitals through her pajamas” while they were at his house. She was 16. In 1997, Kricfalusi gave Byrd an internship at Spumco; she lived with him during this period, prompting him to allegedly call her “his 16-year-old girlfriend.” Convinced that he was helping her launch the career of her dreams, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi once she graduated from high school.

    Apparently, this was all an open secret in the animation world at the time, partly due to an interview Kricfalusi gave with Howard Stern in which he creepily noted that a “hot chick with big cans and nice legs” he had drawn for a comic book was “underage, too.” People working at Spumco allegedly shrugged off the relationship between Byrd and Kricfalusi, with another former intern noting that Kricfalusi once “left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her.”

  • Via Dwight comes a followup to yesterday’s Waco biker trial roundup: “Yesterday a judge ordered the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office to stop distributing what his attorney calls “private, intimate sexual images” of former defendant Cody Ledbetter and his wife.”
  • All good things must come to an end. And all bad ones.
  • Polish man kayaks across the Atlantic. Three times.