Posts Tagged ‘Joe Barton’

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.”

  • Quick Impressions: Texas Sixth Congressional District

    Thursday, February 1st, 2018

    After Joe Barton’s naked selfies leaked, he announced his retirement, leading to yet another hotly contest U.S. congressional race. The Sixth district runs from Arlington down through Ellis and Navarro Counties. It used to be Phil Gramm’s seat, but in a very different geographic configuration, and is solidly Republican.

    Unlike several of the other U.S. congressional races I’ve covered this year, this one has a clear favorite.

    Republicans

  • Ken Cope: Plus: Ex-military background. Minus: Finished fifth against John Cornyn in the 2014 U.S. Senate primary, which suggests he’s not a serious candidate.
  • Shawn Dandridge: A black Republican with a military background who hates Obama, Dandridge is Cisco-certified and getting an MBA; an interesting background. “Shawn also has been a small business owner and real estate investor since 2008. He has rental properties in three states that have a value of close to $1 million.” That suggests he may have State Rep race money, but not U.S. congressional race money (he’s raised $5,126.)
  • Thomas Dillingham: Not in the district yet. Though he has an interesting Facebook story…
  • Shannon Dubberly: Another guy with ex-military background (counterterrorism, even), who has raised $51,465. Potential dark horse.
  • Jake Ellzey: Another ex-military guy, one who stands out a bit due to one notable endorsement: Rick Perry. That’s a good endorsement, and he’s raised $71,943. Potential dark horse, and right now probably the favorite to make the runoff with Ron Wright.
  • Deborah Gagliardi: Owns her own engineering and architecture firm in a year it’s good to be a woman running for office. “When the City of Arlington spent taxpayer dollars courting a contractor with a history of over-budget, poorly constructed projects, Deborah fought to expose them. If elected, her first priorities will be not only to fix the existing infrastructure in District 6, but to overhaul how infrastructure is built and maintained. High-cost, low-quality vanity projects will be a thing of the past.” Running for U.S. Congress to fix local infrastructure indicates a fairly imperfect grasp of federalism. Plus her campaign news page is blank, suggesting a certain lack of attention to the race.
  • Kevin Harrison: “Founder & President of West Coast Bible College & Seminary.” Maybe he has some ability to self-fund and an in with religious conservatives (though not reflected in the FEC reports, which shows no money raised). Potential dark horse.
  • Mel Hassell: A cipher with no website.
  • Mark Mitchell: A perennial candidate that’s lost a number of state rep races, there’s no reason to believe he’ll be competitive in a heavier weight class.
  • Troy Ratterree: Using a Facebook page as your campaign website is not generally conducive to victory.
  • Ron Wright: Current Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector who has earned the endorsements of State Senator Konni Burton and several others, and right now is the favorite for the seat, despite the bow ties and not having raised any money as of the last FEC reporting period, presumably because of how late Barton dropped out.
  • Democrats

  • John W. Duncan: Gay guy who works for “he largest local non-profit HIV/AIDS service organization in North Texas” and is married to a gay Christian minister. Raised $21,143.05.
  • Jana Lynne Sanchez: A former journalist, so naturally she’s a Democrat. She’s endorsed by the Dallas AFL-CIO, so she’s the establishment candidate in the race, to which she’s raised $137,832.08, the most of any candidate thus far.
  • Levii Shocklee: Navy veteran. No bio on his website.
  • Justin Snider: Locksmith and Bernie Bro.
  • Ruby Faye Woolridge: Lost the race to Barton in 2016. She has a lot of party experience and has raised $92,121.60. Woolridge is black, and the district is just under 21% black, and just over 22% Hispanic, which sets up a black/Hispanic interparty brawl between Woolridge and Sanchez.
  • Expect Wright to be the favorite, but if he doesn’t get his fundraising in gear, Ellzey or another dark horse could lap him. I expect whoever comes out on top in the GOP primary to easily handle Sanchez or Woolridge in the general.

    Texas Republicans Behaving Badly

    Tuesday, December 5th, 2017

    Republican congressmen have not been immune to the sexual harassment revelations sweeping the nation. There’s one that has been swept up, and there’s one that really hasn’t, but who’s been swept up into the “sexual misconduct” category anyway, and who’s retiring, so I’m going to talk about both here.

    First, the not-a-sexual-harasser-but-retiring-anyway is Rep. Joe Barton. Barton decided to retire after nude photos of him surfaced on the Internet. It turns out that those photos were taken during consensual sex after Barton had separated from his wife. A definite lapse in judgement, but by the current standards pretty small potatoes, and arguably Barton is the victim of revenge porn rather than the victimizer. But now comes reports that Barton’s ex-wife has accused him of being a serial adulterer, so, yeah, retirement is probably in order.

    More serious are the problems of Rep. Blake Farenthold, who was fingered as the accused in a sexual harassment suit that lead to an $84,000 payout from the secret congressional slush fund we’ve been hearing so much about.

    Lauren Greene, the Texas Republican’s former communications director, sued her boss in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.

    Greene said another Farenthold aide told her the lawmaker said he had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene. She also claimed that Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” and told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”

    When she complained about comments Farenthold and a male staffer made to her, Greene said the congressman improperly fired her. She filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, but the case was later dropped after both parties reached a private settlement.

    Wasting $84,000 of taxpayer money because you couldn’t keep from sharing your perv fantasies with a staffer is a pretty bad look for a Republican who brags about their budget cutting. Vowing to repay the money isn’t enough. Farenthold should follow Barton’s lead and announce he’s retiring at the end of his term.

    (I should note that I should know Farenthold, since we were both active in the Austin BBS community at the same time. (Kids, go ask your parents what a “BBS” was.) But I don’t remember him, and we may have just managed not to bump into each other.)

    Rep. Joe Barton to Run for Re-Election in 6th Congressional District

    Monday, June 27th, 2011

    Rep. Joe Barton is sticking to the sixth congressional district. That’s good news for Michael Williams, since Barton was rumored to be thinking about running in the newly created 33rd Congressional District, where Williams is running after dropping his Senate bid.

    Williams is a strong candidate, but he has to breathing a sigh of relief, since he won’t have to take on an entrenched, popular and well-funded incumbent…

    Texas 2012 Senate Race Updates

    Thursday, January 20th, 2011

    Ted Cruz is in.

    Michael Williams is resigning from the Railroad Commission effective April 12.

    On the other hand, Ron Paul appears to be out, and is eying a 2012 Presidential bid.

    Congressman Joe Barton is probably out if Dewhurst runs.

    The game is afoot, Watson…