Posts Tagged ‘Asian Americans’

LinkSwarm for March 4, 2022

Friday, March 4th, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Hunter Biden’s bestie’s going to the big house, a massive voting problem (and possible fraud) winds up in court in Harris County, and a tiny bits on both Amazon and anime.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

Not in this LinkSwarm: links on the Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian nuclear reactor, since I’m not sure I can trust any of the information sent out by either side.

  • Have Ukrainians already won the first battle of Kiev? A closer look at The Battle of Bucha.

    It is not foreordained that Russia wins and Ukraine loses. Winning a war is not merely an exercise in numbers or technology. As General George S. Patton observed, “Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”

    Since Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to quickly topple the Ukrainian government and kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the war has widened into a contest involving almost the entire border region shared by the combatants along with the stretch of border between Belarus and Kyiv some 80 miles to the north of Ukraine’s capital city.

    Much media attention has been given to Russia’s advances along the Sea of Azov in the south and on the approach to Ukraine’s third-largest city, Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea as well as the remarkable attack that captured Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. These Russian successes are discouraging for Ukrainian defenders but, in the grand contest, they matter far less than the battle for Kyiv.

    Snip.

    There are fascinating signs coming out of what may be a decisive battle to the northwest of Kyiv on the long, winding, secondary road from Chernobyl. This is the road where a 40-mile-long column of Russian vehicles was spotted by satellite. Most of the vehicles are supply trucks. They would be carrying fuel, ammunition, and food for the Russian forces that have advanced to the very outskirts of Kyiv itself but have seemingly been stalled for several days.

    Snip.

    Out of this come three reports that, if true, suggest the beginnings of a devastating reversal for Russian forces operating northwest of Kyiv.

    First, reports today in multiple outlets that Russian Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was killed in combat by a sniper. Sukhovetsky, 47, was an elite Russian Spetsnaz commando and veteran of Russia’s war in Syria. The commander of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, he was assigned the mission of leading the Russian thrust from Belarus to Kyiv. Men like Sukhovetsky have an outsized presence on the battlefield. They’re inspirational. Their personal leadership at the point of the spear often means the difference between victory and defeat during the fast-paced controlled violence of war. His loss would be devastating to his men and to the organizational momentum of the forces he commanded.

    That Sukhovetsky was killed by a sniper suggests that he was personally trying to regain the initiative against Ukrainian forces who had fought him to a standstill.

    The second report of merit is the heavy damage sustained in the town of Irpin on the northwest border of Kyiv’s city limits. The damage to this city suggests a major battle — an effort by the Russians to breakthrough. They didn’t.

    The final piece of the puzzle is the Battle of Bucha. Ukrainian forces claimed the recapture of Bucha hours after the devastation visited on Irpin. The timing is important here. The Russians tried and failed to take Irpin and then the Ukrainians retook Bucha two miles to the northwest of Irpin.

  • Also from DeVore: That long column of Russian vehicles we keep hearing about may mean that the Kiev offensive is bogged down.

    The roughly 80-mile route from the Belarus-Ukraine border from the Chernobyl salient to Kyiv on the western side of the Dnieper River runs over a secondary asphalt road. This road frequently crosses rivers, runs through small villages, or is bordered on both sides by the eastern extent of the mighty Pripyat Marsh — the geographical feature which defines the border between Ukraine and Belarus.

    The road is not able to support a large military force, even if unopposed in an exercise, especially during the spring and fall months during a time the locals call “Rasputitsa” — the mud season. Unfortunately for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military commanders, Ukrainian soil never froze solid this winter, so the fall Rasputitsa is still a factor.

    This is why there have been so many photos coming out from the conflict that show all manner of Russian military vehicles bogged down in the mud. As soon as a vehicle on a narrow road becomes disabled or is destroyed in combat, or as the vehicles maneuver off-road in response to combat, they risk becoming mired. Even if they don’t get stuck in the mud, they end up consuming far more fuel that must be delivered to them than they would were the ground frozen solid.

    Thus, that 40-mile-long column of “tanks” is more likely mostly trucks carrying fuel, ammunition, and food to the advanced forces of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army on the outskirts of Kyiv. That this column hasn’t apparently moved much may mean that the Russian forces just north of Kyiv are running low on basic supplies.

    This greatly increases the importance for the Russian army to achieve success to the east of Kyiv where the road network is far more developed and, if the terrain is captured and secured, capable of bringing in the volume of supplies needed to properly surround Kyiv and place it under siege.

    In the meantime, the forces near Kyiv may be vulnerable to a Ukrainian counterattack. While some of the Russian conscript soldiers and even the veteran contract troops may be more likely to surrender due to low morale exacerbated by a lack of food and fuel.

  • “Ukraine claims more than 5,800 Russian troops and 2,000 civilians killed.”
  • Russia has blocked Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Deutsche Welle.
  • Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell have all announced that they’ve stopped doing business with Russia.
  • Russian oil company Lukoil also called for an end to the war.
  • In one way Ukraine has already won.

    In about three weeks, we’ve seen a Vladimir who was “off” go from chess to raising on a busted flush in something that is well beyond “off.” The nuclear escalation is not exactly unexpected, at least if you know a bit about the Soviet playbook for such things. What matters is if he still has full control, and/or the extent to which Dead Hand has been brought online. All I will say is that if his ability to give certain orders has been unofficially curtailed, it would not be the first time. If it hasn’t, it is not a good idea to poke the crazy man with the button via official actions.

    And there are a lot of official actions out there that are not going to help in regards the deteriorating man. Among others is Switzerland deciding that they are neutral, but not that neutral. Add to it firm allies who have told him no, even after he just helped them out literally a few weeks ago… Even Xi has said no on some fronts. None of this is likely to slow down the deterioration. Or provide enough of a reality check to get through to him as he rages in his bunker with his captive oligarchs.

    And while we are at it, let’s look at the attack itself and the absolute fuck up that it, and subsequent actions by STAVKA (call it what it is), truly are. It was billed as a demonstration of the new Russian way of war, their version of “Shock and Awe.” Problem is, S&A or any other form of blitz is heavily dependent upon superior logistics, something the Soviets nor the Russians have ever had. You need massive amounts of ammo, fuel, parts, and replacement troops to pull it off. Replacement troops not only because of losses, but the need to detail out troops to hold key points as you go. It also requires highly trained troops who know land nav inside and out.

    From what I am learning, the order went out to make this happen. The actual order, however, may not have even approached what would be given for a small-unit special ops strike. Contingency plans? Decap. No? Then try for decap again. Decap. Decap. Try it again damnit! There are differing reports on the number of Wagner troops killed or captured, but a good number were sent in on assassination missions. They were not alone. Problem was, they were all alone as the original push down got bogged down; the efforts to do airmobile and airborne ops were shot down (literally in some cases); and, the public is now on high alert to the saboteurs and assassins roaming major cities trying to mark targets, etc. Don’t expect rules of war for those caught marking civilian buildings for strikes. For now, expect a return to grinding Soviet bombardment, civilian casualties be damned.

    The fact is, Vladimir has already lost simply because he didn’t win. He is committed, and is committing Russia and all its people, to a long, grinding, bloody slog that is going to have severe economic impacts. Just replacing ammunition, gear, people, is going to have a severe impact. Add to it the growing official and unofficial sanctions? The Russian people are going to feel this one, in ways they never have before. Current Vladimir does not care. He’s lost to that. He has no way to go in and control the country, or even the parts he’s tried so desperately to annex. Even those are likely to slip from him given the current state of “uppitiness” on the part of the Ukrainians.

    The Ukrainians have not won. At best they have pushed things into a long grind with some chance of a stalemate. Yet, by doing this they have won. They have prevented the cheap and easy victory on which Vladimir counted. They have forced him into committing military and economic resources he does not have over the long term. Heck, even the short term. Russia’s economy was already teetering, current operations and responses are going to crater it unless something major happens. I’ve lived through a couple of power struggles in the Kremlin; under these circumstances, I hope we all do live through what is to come. A quick clean change of leadership seems unlikely given the Keystone gang we’ve seen so far, but it may be our best hope.

    All we can do is wait and see what happens. While current circumstances are not new or unique on many levels, I will note that in my lifetime I’ve never seen a situation like this where key leadership was this insecure. Xi is in some ways hanging by a thread, and knows his enemies in the CCP are looking for any excuse to bring him down. Vladimir we’ve discussed. The Europeans, particularly the Germans? They are not secure either, especially since the Green policies have caused them to firmly place their mouth around Putin’s, er, finger, in regards energy. To see them decide to fund their own military, back off on the idiocy of green (maybe), and truly support the Ukraine strikes more as a desperation move than a rational push. Johnson is a non-entity right now, and not to be taken seriously. Our own dementia patient? Hell, he’s just waiting for his ice cream and to be allowed to go back upstairs to watch Matlock. Those behind him, however, are desperate beyond belief. Not one major stable leader anywhere in the world. That’s a new one and I thought I had about seen it all after watching the Soviets/Russians for more than 40 years now.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • No NATO no-fly zone. Good. I very much want to see Putin defeated, but clearly NATO can’t be expected to respond to an attack on a non-member country, and that would be a dangerous escalation.
  • Dramatic pictures of destroyed Russian armor. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Mirya no more:

  • “A former business partner of Hunter Biden was sentenced Monday to more than a year in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe of some $60 million in bonds.”

    “More than a year” for $60 million in fraud? Seems a little lite.

    The defendant, Devon Archer, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison by Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who said the crime was “too serious” to let him just walk.

    “There’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people,” Abrams said, noting that the defrauded tribe, the Oglala Sioux, is one of the poorest in the nation.

    Archer will also have to pay more than $15 million in forfeiture by himself and more than $43 million in restitution with his co-defendants in the case.

    The convicted fraudster has maintained his innocence and intends to appeal the conviction and sentence, his attorney, Matthew Schwartz, said in court Monday.

    In brief statements to Abrams just before Archer was sentenced, he and Schwartz claimed he was taken advantage of by corrupt businessmen who wanted to use him in the scheme.

    “He came under the influence of a person he trusted too much and didn’t ask enough questions,” Schwartz said.

    “Trusted too much.” Yeah, he trusted he wouldn’t get caught because of his powerful friends.

    What are the odds this was the only crooked deal Archer had his fingers into? I’d say pretty close to zero.

  • One of the biggest reasons Democrats will get clobbered in November is bringing back the octopus of inflation.

    The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms.

    This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.

    The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.

    First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed.

    Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.

    The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad.

    Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber.

    Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.

    The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacher’s car payments stretch from six to 10 years.

    The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.

    Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotent—and humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide.

    Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.

    It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your child’s braces.

    Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish “every man for himself” mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a “war of all against all.”

    Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is dying.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • New Zealand vaccine mandate struck down.
  • “Federal Court Declares Diversity Initiative At Thomas Jefferson High School To Be Unconstitutional.” “Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the county unconstitutionally engineered the reduction of Asian-American students to achieve greater racial diversity.”
  • Did you know that one of the biggest freight management companies in America was temporarily locked down by a cyberattack? “Expeditors International, a top-five freight management company by revenue, disclosed Wednesday that last month’s cyberattack will have a “material adverse impact” on finances and that it will be late filing its 2021 annual report because of difficulty accessing information on its accounting systems.”
  • The usual anti-cop lunatics want to abolish gang member databases.
  • Holly Hansen has been all over a story about Harris County being unable to count primary votes.

    Once again Harris County has drawn scrutiny over a slew of election day problems and may need a court order to continue counting votes beyond a state proscribed deadline.

    Issues with elections procedures began days before March 1 as election judges found that supplies were not available for pickup at the appointed time on Friday, February 25. Even after the delayed distribution of supplies on Saturday, election workers complained that many kits were lacking essential equipment.

    The situation worsened by Tuesday, and during a conference call with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) and representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties, Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria notified the state that her department may not be able to count all early and election day ballots by the statutory deadline of 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 2.

    According to a statement from Secretary of State John Scott, the counting delay was “due only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location.”

    “Our office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results. We want to ensure that all Texans who have cast a ballot in this year’s Primary Elections can have confidence in the accuracy of results.”

    According to the state election code, however, any votes counted after the statutory deadline may not count unless the county obtains a court order. Furthermore, under laws in effect since 1986, failure to deliver precinct election returns by the deadline is a Class B misdemeanor.

    Calling the county’s elections problems the “worst in 40 years,” Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) Chair Cindy Siegel told KPRC news, “This has been a complete mess. We’ve had equipment delays, we’ve had equipment problems, equipment wasn’t delivered, we had polls that were unable to be set up.”

    In a statement to The Texan, HCRP said that after consulting with the SOS, “if the count does not appear to be near completion in all races by [Wednesday] afternoon, the parties have tentatively agreed to seek a court order to require the Harris County Election Administrator to continue counting beyond the 24-hour deadline required by law, and to enjoin the law to allow the count to continue.”

    Responsibility for conducting primary elections falls to the two main political parties, but they have contracted with the Harris County elections division to administer the elections.

    Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) who formerly served as the Harris County voter registrar, called for immediate changes to the elections division.

    “[Harris County Judge] Lina Hidalgo must fire her hand-picked election administrator,” Bettencourt told The Texan. “Because if she doesn’t, I don’t think we’re going to have an election in November.”

    In 2020, the three Democrats on the Harris County Commissioners Court overruled objections from two Republican commissioners and the Democrat elected voter registrar Ann Harris Bennet to create the new office of elections administrator. Prior to the revamp, the elected county clerk and elected voter registrar managed elections in the state’s largest county.

    The commissioners court then appointed Longoria, a former staffer for state Sen. Sylvia Garcia (D-Houston) who had previously run unsuccessfully for Houston City Council, with an annual salary of $190,000.

    Under Longoria’s guidance, the county approved $54 million for the elections division last summer which included $14 million to purchase new voting equipment.

    Earlier this year, Longoria told commissioners the March primary would cost more than $8.8 million.

    In 2020, Harris County received nearly $10 million in grants from Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life and another $1 million in 2021 just before the Texas Legislature restricted such private grants.

    According to sources familiar with the equipment, the second page of the paper ballot has been jamming machines and now requires entry by hand. Allegedly, although the early voting period ended Friday,

    The question, of course, is whether this is a sign of manifest incompetence, or a sign of widespread attempted vote fraud?

    If it was a fraud attempt, we should be grateful that it was bungled so badly in the primary that a lot more attention will be paid.

    And the judge didn’t sound pleased:

  • Speaking of Texas turnout:

  • Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signs bill banning men from women’s sports. I’ll take “Headlines no one would understand 20 years ago” for $400, Alex.
  • Heh:

  • Democratic Party Gaslighting: The Continuing Journeys:

  • 54% inflation in Turkey.
  • Amazon closes all it’s physical bookstores. One wonders why they bothered trying to open them in the first place…
  • Funimation is being folded into Crunchyroll. If that sentence means nothing to you, feel free to keep scrolling.
  • Pro-Tip: Try not to wear your influencer shoes out when you’re out committing armed robberies. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson has successful Kickstarter. $22 million successful. And 27 days left to go…
  • Bill Burr sings the praises of Chuck E. Cheese.
  • “Are Your Kids Going To Grow Up To Be Democrats? Know The Warning Signs.”
  • The Final Boss:

    • Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »

    Pumping The Brakes On That “Natural Democratic Majority”

    Monday, November 22nd, 2021

    We touched on this last month: For a long time, Democrats have boasted that immigration (legal and otherwise) would make them the “natural majority party” in short order. Well, looking at the results from the 2020 and 2021 elections, there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.

  • Why immigrants might not support left-wing causes.

    For years, progressives have prophesied that a more culturally diverse America would be a more Democratic America, with a grand coalition of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans teaming up with liberal whites to put the Republican Party on a path to extinction. If anyone could have summoned this coalition into being, through opposition, it was Donald Trump, the president who made hardline stances on issues like immigration a cornerstone of his politics. Yet Trump actually increased his share of the minority vote in 2020. One exit poll suggested that he had received the highest share of the black vote of any Republican over the past 20 years. The GOP expanded its support among Hispanics, too, to its highest level since 2004.

    Digging deep into neighborhood-level results, the New York Times unearthed some surprises. “Across the United States, many areas with large populations of Latinos and residents of Asian descent, including ones with the highest numbers of immigrants, had something in common this election: a surge in turnout and a shift to the right,” the paper noted. Much of this movement toward Trump occurred in heavily Hispanic communities in South Texas, many bordering Mexico. The liberal Democratic theory that a less-white America will be bluer politically appears less and less plausible. In fact, Joe Biden may owe his 2020 victory to shifts in the white vote.

    This presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the Republican Party and conservatives more broadly. The 2020 election results suggest that they can find support among some immigrant communities, but the GOP is also home to America’s immigration skeptics, who worry that progressives have judged the situation correctly—that as America grows more diverse, it will also become more socially and culturally liberal. But if the progressive narrative about immigrants and their political allegiance is flawed, then so, too, is the electoral basis for conservative skepticism about immigration.

    In 1996, California had one of the most contentious ballot-initiative fights in its history. Proposition 209 gave voters the choice to end the state’s system of racial preferences, used in the university system and elsewhere to extend opportunities to members of certain minority groups. The battle lines were clear: liberals overwhelmingly opposed Prop 209; conservatives supported it.

    Voters went on to approve Prop. 209, and a Los Angeles Times exit poll conducted that year showed that white votes made the difference. Majorities of every other ethnic group opposed the referendum.

    Last year, liberals organized to overturn Prop. 209 with Proposition 16, which would once again authorize the state explicitly to consider race in college admissions and public hiring. It’s easy to see why organizers were optimistic about their chances. For one, California was much more Democratic in 2020 than it was in 1996: Joe Biden won the state with 63 percent of the vote, compared with Bill Clinton’s 51 percent. The progressive narrative about demographic destiny provided even more reason for optimism. California was a majority-white state in 1996; by 2020, whites had become a minority, and Latinos a plurality, of residents.

    Prop. 16’s endorsers included virtually every top Democratic official in the state, including now-vice president Kamala Harris, as well as major corporations like Uber, Twitter, and Facebook. This was also the year of America’s great racial reckoning, when liberals everywhere were openly encouraging institutions to transfer opportunities—even for cartoon voice actors— from whites to nonwhites.

    Yet when the votes were counted, Prop. 16 had failed—and by a slightly larger margin than Prop. 209 succeeded in 1996 (57 percent in 2020 vs. just under 55 percent in 1996). California’s increased diversity had done nothing to improve the proposition’s chances. Even worse, polling conducted a few weeks before the vote suggested that just 37 percent of Latinos supported Prop. 16, only 3 percentage points higher than whites.

    Though Prop. 16 supporters raised small sums of money compared with other referendum fights, they outraised the measure’s opponents by more than 16 to 1. The opposition to Prop. 16 was made up of a ragtag group of grassroots activists. Many were immigrants who came to America because of its promise that hard work and ingenuity would determine their success, not the color of their skin. Take Ronald Fong, a California-based doctor who emigrated with his parents to the United States from Hong Kong in the 1960s. “The public school system actually was pretty decent,” he said of the United States. “And there was a great deal of trust [among] my parents that the school system would educate us. And for the most part they did fine. It really was that sort of, you know, ethics of hard work, and keeping your nose to the grindstone, good things would happen,” he explained.

    Over time, Asian-American immigrants like Fong came to believe that elite college admissions processes were designed to discriminate against them. They have sued institutions like Harvard, alleging that such schools are penalizing Asian applicants to balance student demographics. The campaign against Prop. 16 offered a chance to strike a blow against such a system.

    Though Fong didn’t have much political experience, he reached out to others who felt similarly, both inside and outside immigrant communities. They set out to mobilize opposition to Prop. 16. “We did YouTube videos, we did a lot of . . . literal and figurative door-knocking,” he explained. “We had home-made signs, we tried to do car rallies as much as we could. It was . . . a bake sale and car wash mentality and tenacity in terms of getting our message out.”

    Snip.

    In 2018, Gallup released a set of global surveys asking people whether they wanted to relocate permanently to another country. Of the more than 750 million people whom Gallup estimated would like to move, about one in five (21 percent) preferred the United States as a destination. The second-most popular country, Canada, was the chosen destination for 6 percent of respondents.

    This number may surprise Americans who get their views of global attitudes from cable news and social media, which often serve as the propaganda arms of the country’s oikophobic elite. But America’s immigrants take a different view. A 2019 Cato Institute study found that three out of four naturalized U.S. citizens said they were “very proud” to be American—higher than the 69 percent of native-born Americans who said the same. A higher percentage of immigrants also believed that “the world would be better if people in other countries were more like Americans” (39 percent of immigrants shared this view versus 29 percent of natives). Almost 70 percent of native-born Americans said they were “ashamed” of some aspects of America; only 39 percent of immigrants agreed. These differences also show within minority communities. Seventy-three percent of immigrant Muslims, for instance, told Pew they agreed that the “American people are friendly to Muslims,” compared with 30 percent of native-born Muslims who say the same.

    We can only speculate about why these differences exist, but it’s important to recognize that immigrants have something most native-born people don’t: a basis for comparison.

    My own parents came to this country from Pakistan in the 1970s. They described America to me as a country with some of the kindest, most welcoming people in the world. As a child, I had a hard time believing them. But the more I traveled abroad myself and studied global problems, the more I came to the same conclusion.

    Immigrants don’t come to the United States just because they like the people. They largely come here to work, and many are a living testament to the American Dream. As a group of academics showed in one 2019 working paper, “children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.”

    There is, of course, a world of difference between assimilated, upwardly mobile legal immigrants and a permanent underclass of unassimilated illegal alien Mexican laborers, but it seems like Democrats fully expect the former to vote like the latter. And people who came to America for economic opportunity are really pissed off when you lock them out of earning a living for months on end.

  • Democrats desperately need to amnesty illegal aliens, because American Hispanics are getting tired of their bullshit.

    The Democratic Party has historically taken Latinos for granted, something that we just witnessed play out in several elections across the country. Driven by two main issues–education and public safety–Latinos are emerging as a significant voting bloc capable of flipping blue seats red and realigning either party in regard to platform and policy.

    In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Clintonista Democrat Terry McAuliffe for governor. Youngkin ran on school choice, an issue dear to Latinos who understand that education is the key to prosperity and the middle class. A survey by AP VoteCast showed that black voters supported McAuliffe by nearly 8-to-1. Latino voters, on the other hand, appear to have favored Youngkin, who received 55 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to only 43 percent supporting McAuliffe. If Latinos had voted in the same pattern as other minority voters, it would have guaranteed a Democratic victory. They didn’t, which does not portend well for the future of the Democratic Party, since President Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 percentage points a year earlier.

    So did Latinos leave the Democratic party, or did the Democratic party leave them?

    The Democrats have lurched left towards socialism, embracing values that vilify private property and individual rights. During Barack Obama’s 2008, 2012, and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaigns, Latinos were solidly Democratic voters, second only to African Americans in their loyalty. However, the Barack Obama that ran in 2008 and captured the hearts of Americans would be considered a right wing Republican by today’s standards.

    The Democratic Party and Latinos have changed over the past decade and now seem irreconcilable. This is especially worrisome to Democrats since Latinos are the largest of the fast-growing demographic groups in the nation, growing by 23 percent from 2010 to 2020. Latinos now account for 62.1 million or 18.7 percent of the U.S. population.

    Last year, the Biden-Harris ticket won a comfortable majority of Latinos across the country, but the administration’s poor handling of the border crisis directly impacts Latinos, and it is a serious mistake for anyone to believe that Latinos favor open borders. In fact, polls routinely demonstrate that helping illegal immigrants achieve legal status is of low concern to most American Latinos, who list jobs, education, housing, crime, and other such matters as of higher importance.

    In South Texas, which has long been seen as the gateway to the rest of the region, there have been signs that the Republican Party is making headway with Latinos. In the runoff for the 118th Texas House district, which includes San Antonino–a majority 73% Hispanic city–Republican John Lujan eked out an upset win against Democrat Frank Ramirez by 300 votes. Lujan is a veteran firefighter and former Bexar County sheriff’s deputy, and ran on a platform promising to fight efforts to “defund the police.” Democratic also-ran Robert “Beto” O’Rourke campaigned heavily for Ramirez, claiming that the nation is “watching and paying attention about what happens here, because national Republicans are saying this is a stepping stone to … South Texas.” He’s probably eating his words now.

    It should be noted that O’Rourke—a white man of Irish descent who was given the nickname “Beto” as a child initially to distinguish him from his namesake grandfather—is not Latino.

    And speaking of Beto and Texas…

  • Maybe Texas Democrats shouldn’t make such a show of proclaiming how they’re the party that represents Hispanic citizens if they’re unwilling to run and elect any of them statewide.

    For decades, Texas Democrats have banked on the growth of voters of color*, particularly Black and Latino voters, as the key to their eventual success in a state long dominated by Republicans.

    But with less than a month left for candidates to file for statewide office in the 2022 elections, some in the party worry Democrats could see their appeal with those constituencies threatened by a Republican Party that is rapidly diversifying its own candidate pool.

    The GOP slate for statewide office includes two high-profile Latinos: Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, who are both running for attorney general.

    I bet it really sticks in the craw of Texas Democrats that a Bush is Hispanic and Beto isn’t.

    It also includes two Black candidates who have previously held state or federal office: former Florida congressman Allen West and state Rep. James White, who are running for governor and agriculture commissioner, respectively.

    By contrast, the Democrats’ most formidable candidates are white — Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor, and Mike Collier, Matthew Dowd and Michelle Beckley, who are running for lieutenant governor.

    They then list some Democratic Party minority candidates. If I every do a roundup on the Attorney General’s race we’ll cover them, but none of the people they mention look like they have a chance.

    In MSM pieces on Democrats, it always seem to be the “messaging” that’s the problem, not the fact that their ideas are unpopular:

    [Political scientist Sharon] Navarro said Democrats will have to perfect their messaging on this point to be successful, not simply rely on voters of color to side with them. Earlier this month, Republicans in Virginia flipped the major statewide offices by making the election about wedge issues like so-called critical race theory and forcing Democrats on the defensive. Texas Republicans could do the same on issues like border and election security.

    “So-called” Critical Race Theory. As always, the Democratic Media Complex idea that they can warp the fabric of reality by insisting that only SJW-approved words can be used to frame the debate is another reason why they lose.

    “Republicans have a better understanding of how to create the message and how to flip it for the audience,” Navarro said.

    Jean Card, a Republican political analyst, said that strategy paid off in Virginia, where the GOP elected Winsome Sears, a Jamaican-born Black woman, as lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares, the son of a Cuban immigrant, as the state’s first Latino attorney general.

    “What we saw here was policy over personality,” Card said. “That’s why they were so effective as candidates.”

    (Hat tip: TPPF’s Cannon.)

    Also, Republicans can actually address issues without worrying that telling the truth will offend some intersectional Democratic Party faction.

    And truth is always a powerful weapon.

    *”Voters of color” and “people of color” are both politically correct catchphrases intended to paper over the vast difference between different groups. These phrases essentially mean “minorities that should be voting for Democrats” and, as such, their use should be avoided. And it seems that an awful lot of Democrats recently decided that Asians are secretly white people…

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for November 27, 2020

    Thursday, November 26th, 2020

    This Black Friday LinkSwarm is coming to you absolutely free!

  • President Donald Trump pardons former National Security advisor Michael Flynn. Good. He was railroaded and then held prisoner by a rogue judge long after the Department of Justice ordered him released.
  • The thing that really bothers the establishment about Trump is all his supporters they prefer to pretend don’t exist:

    Election Day definitively confirmed the existence of hidden Trump voters. Undetected by polls and long denied by the establishment media, Trump’s surprising surge had to come from somewhere. Either these supporters were hiding from pollsters or pollsters were hiding them. Regardless, their existence raises disturbing questions about the role played by the establishment media and pollsters in influencing this election.

    Election Day provided the startling revelation that a contest that supposedly had been over for months, actually would not be decided for days, and perhaps longer. In reality, the “blowout” proved a nail-biter. More unsettling is the fact that the race probably had been this close all along and that the false impression likely influenced the outcome.

    As recently as October 12 the RealClearPolitics average of national polling had Biden at 52.3 percent and Trump at 41.7 percent. The average on Election Day was 51.2 percent to 44 percent. As of November 18, the actual popular vote figures are Biden at 51 percent and Trump at 47.2 percent.

    From his October 12 level, Trump’s support increased over 13 percent. How could an error of such magnitude occur? Clearly a lot of hidden Trump voters came from somewhere. The question is whether they were hiding or were hidden.

    Whether this was a sin of omission or one of commission has enormous implications for America’s elections. After years’ worth of concern about whether there had been Russian interference in our elections, it bears considering whether America has just fallen victim to internal tampering to a far greater degree.

    The establishment media’s preferred answer to how the polls failed to detect millions of Trump voters is that the error was stupid, not sinister. “Whoops, we just missed them” — despite this being pollsters’ business, their assurance that they had “fixed” their polls’ problems from 2016, and the mistake being of incredible size. As results show, 2020’s error is greater than 2016’s.

    The establishment media has readily blamed the pollsters, essentially exonerating itself by saying that it was just reporting what it was told. Yet neglected is the fact that the polls’ results were confirming the establishment media’s own bias. This bias has been repeatedly cited for decades and has never been clearer than over the last four years. As testament to the miraculous coincidence of pro-Biden polls and establishment media’s pro-Biden bias, consider the reverse: Would the establishment media have so readily regurgitated polling data showing the race as close as it turned out to be?

  • An obituary for the Trump-era press:

    We say goodbye, then, to journalists elevating as worthy of public notice obvious liars and lunatics, including convicted felon Michael Avenatti, gossip columnist Michael Wolff, mental health quack Bandy Lee, and conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch — all because they oppose the administration.

    Goodbye to weekly “bombshells” that land with a “splat!” instead of a “boom!”

    Goodbye to near-daily input from presidential historians turned political assassins.

    Goodbye to members of the press acting as if the cover artwork of the latest edition of a prestige news magazine is in some way provocative, stunning, or even particularly interesting.

    Goodbye to White House correspondents pretending as if they are reporting from an active war zone or claiming they feel safer covering authoritarian regimes.

    Goodbye to the Holocaust being invoked against the administration on a near-daily basis.

    Etc. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • If Biden makes it to the White House, get ready for more green crony graft. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Governor Abbott sends the Texas Rangers to Dallas.

    Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the Texas Rangers and other officials to help the City of Dallas respond to a spike in murders and other violent crimes that has gripped the city.

    Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to send help to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) which will include special agents, state troopers, two helicopters, and two patrol planes.

    “The rise in violent crime in the City of Dallas is unacceptable, and the Texas Department of Public Safety will assist the Dallas Police Department in their efforts to protect the community and reduce this surge in crime.”

  • Fifth circuit to judge to Planned Parenthood: No, you don’t have a right to Texas taxpayer money. Not yours.
  • “Six MS-13 Gang Members Indicted in Houston for Murder Could Face Death Penalty.” Good.
  • Why does the media keep trying to make a saint of commie Angela Davis?
  • Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell fined $1,000 for violating his own stay at home order to visit his grandson’s birthday party. Not quite a lobbyist-funded trip to The French Laundry, but still not a good look…
  • Austin leftwing journalists go after (checks notes) moms and sex trafficking victims for daring to oppose police budget cuts. Next up: The cishetronormative oppression of apple pie.
  • What real hope and change looks like in the Middle East:

  • More on the same theme:

  • Social Justice Warriors have to get rid of meritocracy because it doesn’t let them discriminate against Asians.
  • How Erdogan’s Turkey destroyed the value of the Lira.
  • “Google, Facebook and Twitter threaten to leave Pakistan over crackdown on speech offensive to Islam.”
  • The modern welfare state in action: “Dutch Doctors Can Now Drug Dementia Patients Before Killing Them to Prevent Resistance.”
  • “Walmart-exclusive router and others sold on Amazon & eBay contain hidden backdoors to control devices.”
  • Over at Penguin books, the inmates are trying to run the asylum with staffers in “revolt” over publishing Jordan Peterson’s new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
  • Fleas from rescued squirrels bit Johnny Rotten’s sex pistol. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
  • Florida man who wrestled puppy from an alligator speaks.

  • Dancing Weasel.
  • Like a boss:

  • Most Shocking fodder.
  • I don’t know how I missed this rare actually funny Funny or Die bit when it came out in 2013. “Try parodying one of my songs now, you stupid bastard!”
  • “State Governor Frees All Drug Dealers To Provide Prison Space For Families Celebrating Thanksgiving.”
  • “Never Trumpers To Be Granted Special VIP Section Of Gulags When Dems Take Over.”
  • “Just Hours After Being Placed In Cuomo’s Possession, Emmy Statue Dies Of COVID.”
  • “Joseph Stalin To Receive International Emmy For His Outstanding Hunger Relief Efforts.”
  • Not news: Dog reunited with owner thanks to microchip. News: After seven years.
  • Nice one, Muttly:

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Texas, Welfare State | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for June 5, 2015

    Friday, June 5th, 2015

    Another Friday, another LinkSwarm!

  • Democrats believe illegal aliens should be allowed to vote. “The Obama Administration has lost faith in the electorate and has decided to appoint a new one.” (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)
  • The ObamaCare death spiral is still coming.
  • Doctors leaving practice due to federal mandates. “EHR is health care’s Solyndra.”
  • Vermont: A funny thing happened on the way to Socialized Medicine.
  • “If there’s a more renewable resource than Clinton lies, I’m hard pressed to think what it might be.”
  • Hillary’s event ticket sales: Not setting the world on fire. (Hat tip: Moe Lane)
  • Democrats panicking over Hillary’s sleaze contemplate breaking the glass case around Michael Bloomberg.
  • And speaking of old rich white male Democrats, Lincoln Chafee joins the Presidential race, comes out against drone strikes, for the metric system and belt onions.
  • Minneapolis teacher takes middle school students on field trip to sex shop. Bonus: “Gaia Democratic School”
  • America: There’s an App for that. Cuba: There’s a line for that.
  • Another day, another Islamist suicide bombing killing 10 in Nigeria. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Professional pro-Putin Internet troll now suing her former masters.
  • France insists those damn elected representatives can’t be let anywhere near their precious global warming treaty.
  • Planned Parenthood goes ballistic over OTC birth control. It’s all about the Benjamins…
  • Consultants advise college applicants how to appear less Asian.
  • Did you know there’s a national egg shortage on?

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, ObamaCare | 2 Comments »