Posts Tagged ‘Berlin’

LinkSwarm for November 8, 2019

Friday, November 8th, 2019

Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Trump is derailing the elite’s gravy train:

    Like the garbage French elite of long ago, our American garbage elite of today has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. For four years, it has been focused entirely on deep sixing Donald Trump for his unforgivable crime of demanding that our ruling caste be held accountable for its legacy of failure. Instead of focusing on not being terrible at their job of running America’s institutions, our elitists have decided that the real problem is us Normals being angry about how they are terrible at their job of running America’s institutions. So, let’s imagine that they finally vanquish Trump, though every time they come up against him they end up dragging themselves home like Ned Beatty after a particularly tough canoe trip.

    What happens then?

    What happens then is that it’s back to business as usual, and for decades, business as usual for our garbage elite has not merely been running our institutions badly but pillaging and looting our country for power, prestige and cash.

    The difference is that in the future they will be much more careful to ensure that no one who is not in on the scam will ever again come anywhere near the levers of power. You can already see it – the demands that we defer to the bureaucrats they own, the attacks on the idea of free expression, and the campaign to disarm us. Their objective is no more Trumps, just an endless line of progressive would-be Maduros with the march toward despair occasionally put on pause for a term by some Fredocon Republican who hates us Normals just as much as the Dems, but won’t admit it until after he’s out of office.

  • So #NeverTrumpers are upset because Trump called them scum? Well boo freaking hoo:

    If you were involved in the 2016 election and, at any point, decided that Hillary Clinton was very bad for the nation and that Evan McMullin was a f***ing bug-eating tool and that Donald Trump was not Beelzebub incarnate, then you became the target of abuse. In my personal experience, there are people who I’d considered friends for several years who I would no longer pee on if they were on fire today because of the abuse and scorn the heaped upon people who disagreed with them and the cheap bullying that they engaged in. Trumpkin. Trumptard. Trumpaloo. Trumphumper. And all manner of other cute names.

    Snip.

    For three years these people have degraded, demeaned, and libeled anyone who simply decided that, for all his flaws, Trump was better than any Democrat. No grace was offered to people who had considered them friends and colleagues. No common cause was allowed to be made. They stopped being conservatives and Republicans who simply disliked the candidate and then the president and became active Democrat partisans who simply called themselves something else. Every hoax and bad faith allegation made against the President and his administration, from the Russia bullsh** to defending illegal FISA warrants to the “Muslim ban” to “kids in cages,” was spearheaded by NeverTrumpers flagellating themselves with their principles and yodeling “we’re better than that.”

    In 2020, these people have a choice to make. They can either earn their way back in–Prodigal Son, and all that–or they can stay gone. I don’t care who they vote for because Trump won last time without them and he’s in a much stronger position today than he was in November 2016. But, no matter what path they choose, there should be no forgetting of how these people have acted and what they’ve done. No one should allow them to forget why no one–right or left–wishes to have anything to do with them. No one should ever forget that they are dangerous, timorous and unfaithful allies and should not be allowed to do any more than hold the coats for the rest of us.

  • Full State Department review of Hillary Clinton’s emails show nearly 600 security violations.
  • Former Virginia democratic governor forgives current Virginia democratic governor for wearing blackface. “We’ve moved on,” says former Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe. As Stephen Green says, “it’s easy to move on when your side can’t be held accountable.”
  • President Donald Trump begins process to formally withdraw from the Paris climate accord. I’m not sure this is strictly necessary, as it was never binding on the U.S. because it was never submitted to the senate for ratification. As opposed to being nonbinding on the rest of the world because they’re just lying about following it anyway.
  • Sanctions against Iran really biting into its oil revenues, especially as the U.S. becomes more sophisticated about counter attempts to evade it.

    As recently as mid-2019, Iranian leaders openly boasted of selling its oil to foreign customers despite the 2017 sanctions. At the time of that boast, Iran was getting a million BPD (barrels per day) out to export customers. In contrast, before the sanctions, Iran exported two million BPD. But by July 2019 exports had been reduced to 365,000 BPD and in August it was a record low 160,000 BPD and that did not change much in September. What the Iranians don’t issue press releases about is how well sanction enforcement efforts have been at reducing those illegal exports to record lows.

    (Hat tip: Austin Bay at Instapundit.)

  • The UK is finally having a general election after essentially a year of deadlock. If history is any guide, parties promising to deliver Brexit will win, then not deliver Brexit…
  • “Maryland Officials Drop Sanctuary Policy After Illegal Alien Sex Crimes.”
  • Related: Sanctuary city proposition goes down in flames in Tucson. Funny how not enforcing laws against illegal aliens enjoys crushing defeat when actual voters get a chance to chime in.
  • Meanwhile, the illegal alien debate in the Democratic Party is between the hard left and the loony left. “While the rest of America frets about illegal alien criminals escaping authorities with the eager help of liberal politicians, liberals are more concerned about proving to each other how wonderful and tolerant they are by opening the border and allowing anyone and everyone with a sob story to be welcomed and cared for.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Comedians Taking Sides In The Woke Wars.”

    A recent string of high-profile comments brought “Cancel Culture” to the fore. Stand-up routines by Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Sebastian Maniscalo forced the subject back into the limelight.

    “No Safe Spaces,” a documentary about the Left’s serial attacks on free expression, debuts this weekend at the near-perfect time. Comedian Adam Carolla and syndicated radio star Dennis Prager unite to explore how universities are clamping down on healthy debate, and why that woke sentiment is leaking into society at large.

    “Joker” director Todd Phillips, who previously helmed the “Hangover” series, amplified the cause. He told Vanity Fair he created “Joker” because making comedies is no longer fun.

    “Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” he says. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore—I’ll tell you why, because all the f***ing funny guys are like, ‘F*** this s***, because I don’t want to offend you.’

  • Science Fiction tries to erase its past over crimes against Social Justice Warrior orthodoxy. To be fair, the people who handed out the (now being renamed) James Tiptree Award were always far-left radical feminist lunatics. The question is why have the theoretically more sober people behind the John W. Campbell and World Fantasy Awards also given in to this Orwellian, history-erasing lunacy?
  • Is anyone really surprised when a progressive treats institutional charity money as a personal slush fund?

    The former head of the L.A.-based anti-poverty nonprofit Youth Policy Institute improperly used the organization’s funds to pay the property taxes on his house, buy furniture for his home office and make national political donations, the group alleged in court documents filed this week.

    Dixon Slingerland, who was fired as the group’s chief executive in September, spent the nonprofit’s money on an array of unauthorized and personal expenses, including private tutoring for his children, contributions to his wife’s pension, and “lavish” dining, travel and entertainment, according to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing lodged by the nonprofit in federal court.

  • “Federal agents raided a Long Island tech firm early Thursday and arrested its top executives amid concerns the company was selling Chinese-made equipment to the U.S. military while claiming it had been manufactured in the United States. According to federal prosecutors, Aventura Technologies of Commack has been running the alleged scheme since 2006, selling equipment with “known cybersecurity vulnerability” to government and other customers.”
  • MSM amnesia:

  • Out-of-state Justice Democrats money props up Texas candidate:

    Texas candidate Jessica Cisneros has been one of the most high profile candidates backed by Justice Democrats, the liberal group seeking to defeat incumbents they perceive as insufficiently progressive. While Cisneros has received praise from freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), local residents appear more skeptical. She has received just $3,585 of her $190,000 (1.8 percent) in itemized contributions from inside the San Antonio district she hopes to represent.

    Cisneros is primarying Democratic incumbent Henry Cueller for the Texas 28th Congressional District. She does not appear to be former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros’ daughter.

  • “Democrat Elizabeth “Eliz” Markowitz and Republican Gary Gates are headed to a runoff to decide who will fill the unexpired term of State Rep. John Zerwas (R–Richmond)” for Texas House District 28. Gates is a seven time loser, the founding money behind the “Texas Citizens Coalition” (whose mailers I have not seen recently), and was last seen running a dishonest campaign against Wayne Christian for the Railroad Commission. Still, I can only imagine that he’ll be preferable to a Democrat, and even though Markowitz garnered more votes in the election, all the other candidates were Republicans for a Republican-leaning seat, giving Gates a good chance to retain it.
  • Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman tried to illegally transmit voting information over the Internet. (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
  • Disruptive Democrats crushed in The Woodlands.
  • Plastikov 3D printed AK. 900 rounds on the front receiver, 550 on the rear – with no signs of damage. 7.62×39 goodness in a 7 dollar PLA receiver.” Not quite a revolution, since he used metal parts for the ejector and rails, and spent a total of $393 for all the parts, but definitely interesting, since the receiver is what the federal government counts as the “gun.” Caveat: 7.62x39mm evidently generates lower firing pressure than 5.56 NATO. But I’m hardly an expert here. Still: interesting. (Hat tip: Sal the Agorist.)
  • Samsung lays off it’s entire Austin design team. I used to work in the building where it was housed, a few jobs ago…
  • Rudy Boesch, decorated Navy SEAL. He was also evidently on some reality TV show.
  • America: Hey Berlin, you want a statue of Ronald Reagan? You know, “tear down this wall” and all of that? Berlin: Nein. America: Too bad.
  • Another day, another fake hate crim—wait, a real one? Oh, against a Catholic Church. In New York City. Now I get it.
  • “Fringe Conspiracy Theorist Believes Epstein Just Killed Himself.”
  • LinkSwarm for December 23, 2016

    Friday, December 23rd, 2016

    I hope everyone has plans for the Christmas weekend, even if they’re only “eat as much food and watch as much football as humanly possible.”

    Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Suspect in Berlin jihad truck attack shot dead. I was going to do one of my increasingly irregular jihad updates, but Stuff and Things got in the way.
  • One possible benefit of a Trump presidency: a restoration of federalism:

    America owes President Barack Obama an enormous debt of gratitude for showing how truly dangerous the federal government can be when our Constitution’s checks and balances start failing. With the active collusion of congressional Democrats, President Obama’s presidency has been one long series of body blows to the separation of powers that has protected our democracy since the Founding.

    The results have been stark. Never has a president trampled so much on the prerogatives of Congress. Obama’s executive orders, suspending parts of our immigration laws and even his own prized Obamacare, have been sheer usurpations, going far beyond even the breathtaking delegations of legislative authority granted by the brief Democratic supermajority in Congress in 2009–10.

    Sad to say, Obama’s trampling on the prerogatives of state governments has been even more unprecedented, and potentially far more damaging. His agencies’ “Dear Colleague” letters, addressing such sensitive issues as local school districts’ bathroom policies and the standards by which institutions of higher education review claims of sexual assault, have wrested away the core functions of state leaders, local boards, and even administrators.

    The separation of state and federal authority is one of the most essential principles of our Constitution. It explains the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers as much as the division between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. If we lose the separate and independent existence of state governments, we will lose our Constitution.

    And Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is walking point on the issue.

  • Trump’s election marks the overthrow of the media: “This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.”
  • Ten ways Obama broke the American system. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Outside California, Trump outdistanced Hillary by 1.41 million votes, 47.8% to 46.6%. As I have noted before, Hillary’s support was so geographically narrow that she won a popular vote majority in only 13 states (plus DC), the fewest of any major-party candidate since Bob Dole.”
  • Remember how Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison looked like a shoe-in for DNC head after Howard Dean withdraw from the race? Yeah, not so much. Although some of the dirt (like his ties to Louis Farrakhan) are decades old, there’s enough of it that lots of Democrats are getting cold feet about his candidacy:

    Despite the support of the first couple of populist progressivism — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — the controversy has emboldened the opposition: Last week, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a buddy of President Barack Obama (who called him “wicked smart” last week), jumped into the race. The effort to boost Perez, paradoxically and to Ellison’s irritation, is led by operatives allied with the country’s first black president, who view the Minnesotan as too tied to the identity politics they think cost Hillary Clinton the election.

    “We like Keith,” one longtime Obama political ally, who was pushing Perez, told me in November. “But is he really the guy we need right now when we are trying to get all of those disaffected white working-class people to rally around our message of economic equality?”

  • Texas officially removes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid.
  • “Feminism Is a Synonym for ‘Shut Up.’

    A major goal of feminism is to silence opposition. Because their ideology cannot withstand informed and articulate criticism, feminists therefore requires a dishonest vocabulary of jargon that functions to disqualify and discredit their opponents. A man expressing disagreement with a feminist will invariably be accused of “sexism” or “misogyny,” and if he persists in his criticism, he will be accused of “harassment.” What these terms actually mean — other than as pejorative labels, deployed to smear the movement’s enemies — is seldom examined. It is quite often the case that men who ostensibly support feminism engage in abusive behavior toward women (e.g., Jian Ghomeshi), whereas men who oppose the movement are branded “misogynists” for no other reason than their willingness to state their criticism honestly and openly.

  • “New York State Employee Demands Death For Trump Supporters, Still Employed.” Bonus: Openly calling for Republican women to be raped and cheering the death of American soldiers. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • 5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of “Wounded Aleppo Children”.
  • Funny how “hate crime” hoaxes are the fake news the media wants to keep reporting:

    n all four cases, there were reasons for the media to doubt the stories. In all four cases, the narrative of white and/or conservative and/or Trump-supporting and/or bigoted “people of privilege” persecuted and/or harassed and/or discriminated against some variation of minority. In all four cases, the hoax was reported before confirmed and later it was revealed by law enforcement or conservative media that we had all been duped.

    Here’s the core of the problem. Mainstream media has a narrative agenda that has failed miserably. They did everything they could to hand the White House and Senate to the Democrats. In the past, that’s all that needed to happen; if the media united behind a cause, they could bend the will of the people. In the case of the 2016 election, their agenda backfired, so they now have two choices. They could learn their lessons and return to a bygone day when reporters actually reported and commentators made absolutely certain their perspectives would not be confused with news.

    Predictably, mainstream media has chosen option two. They’re doubling down. The lesson they think they learned from their mistake is that they can’t allow a sliver of doubt to creep in. They actually think they were too easy on Donald Trump. They think they didn’t push enough of their narrative on Senate races. They think they now need to promote their agenda in full force, working overtime if necessary.

  • The media lies again.
  • Baby Boomers increasingly having their Social Security garnished to cover their student loans.
  • Snow falls in the Saraha.
  • Scott Adams on cognatize blindspots and worst-case-scenarios on global warming.
  • Obama to world: (10,000 word speech all about him.) World: (Ignores him). President Elect Trump: “Hey! Don’t do that! World: “Yes, Mr. Trump.” (Hat Tip: Chuck DeVore on Twitter.)
  • Of course, the entire issue is a final attempt for Obama to stick it to Benjamin Netanyahu out of personal vindictiveness, never mind how badly it might affect U.S. and Israel foreign policy. Because Obama is a spiteful, petty little creep.
  • Know who Obama doesn’t hate? Cocaine dealers. “President Barack Obama has commuted the sentences of 657 cocaine dealers since Aug. 3, a Daily Caller analysis reveals. That represents nearly 80 percent of the commutations the president has given since August.” I’m a “legalize it, regulate it, tax it” sort of guy, but the fact that admitted cocaine user Barack Obama would commute more cocaine dealers over mere mere marijuana users or dealers is more than a little odd. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Snopes Co-Founder Accused Of Embezzling Company Money, Spending It On Prostitutes.” And as Fark would say, “the rest he just wasted.” Bonus: Alleged prostitute is now allegedly a Snopes staffer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Navy decision to use PC titles reversed. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • F4-J retired from flying. From aerial target to ground target. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • This is the sort of story headline writers live for: “Pensioner pleases neighbours with his massive flashing cock.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Cthuloid horror devours the Pope.
  • Merry Christmas, everyone!