Posts Tagged ‘Laredo’
Friday, February 23rd, 2024
Lots of travel yesterday and today, so now I’m pooped, so enjoy this slightly shorter than usual LinkSwarm.
“State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs.”
A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the Global Engagement Center still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money…
The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:
The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”
A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”
JP Morgan jumps off the Green Nude Eel.
Mega-bank JP Morgan has officially left a $68 trillion investor coalition that is “focused on pressing the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to decarbonize,” according to Bloomberg.
In other words, the “fight” to decarbonize is imploding.
JP Morgan said it is leaving the Climate Action 100+ because it has “made significant investments in developing its own climate risk engagement framework”, the report says. The bank claims to have 40 professionals now focused on sustainable investing.
And the damage for the Climate Action 100+ may only be getting started. Lance Dial, a Boston-based partner at law firm K&L Gates LLP, told Bloomberg: “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more defections, especially given that there’s now a cost, such as potential litigation, that wasn’t there when companies joined.”
He added: “Attorneys general have subpoenaed firms about their membership of these groups.”
Try to contain your shock, but cell phone data appears to prove Fani Willis and Nathan Wade lied under oath about when they did the nasty. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Remember that Chinese invasion we talked about earlier in the week? Republican U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales thinks it uses Sinaloa cartel.
In FY 2023, over 37,000 illegal Chinese aliens were encountered at the porous southern border, with an additional 20,000 having crossed since October when FY 2024 began. The federal data shows that the United States is seeing foreign invaders from more countries than ever before.
According to Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas), he believes the illegals crossing into California may indeed be staying there, he told the Daily Mail.
“As I’ve spoken to different agencies about why some communities [groups of migrants] to one place and others go another, one: it depends on what cartel controls that pipeline,” Gonzalez said.
‘It’s very clear that the Sinaloa Cartel is the one controlling that operation and sending Chinese more toward the California corridor…California/Arizona corridor that they control. That’s half the equation.’
Another theory: “[Oriel Ortega], the former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.”
More “refugees” behaving badly, with Eritrean, East African, gangs battling it out at an opera house in The Hague.
Results: “Six of Ohio’s eight largest cities experienced a drop in gun crime after the state allowed its citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.”
Why on earth would Dr. Alexander Eastman, the chief medical officer for Customs and Border Protection pressure his staff to smuggle fentanyl lollipops to a September United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York? I can think of many possibilities, none of them good…
Shootout between the Mexican Army and Gulf Cartel leaves 12 dead in Miguel Aleman, which is northwest of Laredo.
Contra Costa County Library’s Antioch Branch in California closes due to drug use, robberies and public sex. Libraries have changed a lot since I visited one…
Oopsie!
New AceMagic mini gaming PC comes with something extra. Namely password stealing malware.
Paramount to cut 800 jobs. Hopefully they’re all out of the “Ruining Star Trek” division.
Beach Boy legend Brian Wilson evidently has dementia, and his family is applying for conservatorship.
Speaking of California musicians who may have done drugs, a trial is brewing over who actually owns the handwritten first draft of lyrics for The Eagles “Hotel California.”
I literally searched for “Hotel California Meme” and the Internet did not disappoint.
Tags:Alexander Eastman, Antony Blinken, Border Controls, Brian Wilson, California, China, Constitutional Carry, Contra Costa County, Crime, data security, Democrats, drugs, environmentalism, Fani Willis, Fentanyl, Georgia, Global Engagement Center, Global Warming, green subsidies, Gulf Cartel, Guns, JP Morgan, Laredo, layoffs, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Mexico, Miguel Aleman, music, Nathan Wade, Netherlands, Oriel Ortega, Panama, Paramount, Sinaloa Drug Cartel, State Department, Texas, The Hague, Tony Gonzales, UN
Posted in Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Global Warming, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | 4 Comments »
Friday, August 7th, 2020
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Rioters, Democrats, Iran and China are all behaving badly.
Remember that this weekend is a sales tax holiday on back-to-school items like clothing and paper in Texas. It should apply to onine shopping as well, so feel free to throw some shirts into your Amazon basket.
The Democratic Party is unfit to govern:
We are fortunate indeed to have real world results that we can look at for how well or how poorly governing philosophies and agendas work. America’s major cities have been dominated by the Democratic Party for decades, and the results are in.
All but 3 of America’s largest cities are run by Democratic mayors. The 3 largest cities – New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, are losing population every year.
Several of the most violent cities in America, including Albuquerque, Memphis, Detroit, Chicago and Washington, DC are run by Democrats.
States that are bleeding population every year due to high taxation, over-regulation, decaying cities and failing public services including New York, Connecticut, California and others are all run by Democrats.
States that have low to no income taxes, are right-to-work and favor energy development do better economically than high tax, forced union and energy unfriendly states. According to the annual economic outlook rankings published by the American Legislative Exchange Council Center for State Fiscal Reform, in 2019 the bottom ten states were all run by Democrats and the top 10 states except two were run by Republicans.
Needless to say, the top 10 states all have higher GDP, better quality public services, and are experiencing net in-migration. Nevada is an outlier in that it recently flipped blue. However, they have no personal income taxes, a low corporate income tax and they are a right to work state.
Finally, all of the bottom ten states have net out-migration, high tax burdens, and lower quality of life.
The evidence couldn’t be more clear. Democrats are incapable of governing well, or in some cases, such as Seattle or Chicago, governing at all. Every single city that has problems with decaying infrastructure, gentrification, crime, violence, homelessness and other social pathologies are governed by Democrats. They promise a boundless cornucopia of “free” (i.e. taxpayer-funded) services and programs to meet every demand of the creeping socialism we’re seeing in America, at the cost of trampling people’s constitutional rights including property rights.
“In Portland, Seattle, Homeland Security Is Facing Organized, Criminal Activity.”
Critics assailing the Department of Homeland Security for “over-stepping their bounds” in Portland have it 100 percent wrong. The department is in the right.
Further, its actions thus far should just be the first step in disrupting the organized violence aimed at intimidating public officials, injuring law enforcement officers, destroying public and private property and making our streets less safe.
Let’s be clear. We are not talking about “peaceful protests.” What is going on in Portland, as well as Seattle and some other is an array of criminal activity: rioting, looting, arson, assaulting law enforcement officers and more. This is flat out criminal activity.
And it is not all spontaneous. This is organized criminal activity.
For starters, the rioters are targeting cities where public officials have created a more permissive environment. They have restricted the actions of local and state law enforcement. When rioters are arrested, they release them quickly, refusing to prosecute.
Moreover, these officials refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement. In sum, they have turned their cities into “soft targets” for criminals.
More in the same same vein: “Violent Crime Explodes Across American Cities Following Nationwide Protests.”
Violence has spiked in cities nationwide following weeks-long anti-police protests over the death of George Floyd, according to government statistics and media reports.
Residents in Minneapolis have created patrol groups to protect themselves after the city’s crime spike, and shootings in Atlanta rose 265% compared to last year during an almost month-long period. Seattle’s “Capital Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) led to a 525% increase in crime, including the death of two teenagers.
As crime rates rose, activists have called to abolish the police, an idea that’s gained traction among liberals. Former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, singer John Legend and women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe have all supported dismantling the police, and protesters have touted the idea during demonstrations.
The Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to dismantle their police department next May, and a school board in Oakland, California, voted to ban the police from its schools.
Amazingly, Austin police managed to avoid the stupidity of other cities who let rioters run amok:
Saturday’s protest activity was billed as the biggest yet, at least in part due to the shooting of Garrett Foster. Foster was the man who apparently pointed his AK-47 rifle at the car window of driver Daniel Perry while protesters surrounded and pounded on his car during an unpermitted protest and illegal taking of the public street just before 10 p.m. on July 25. Perry, an Army sergeant and licensed handgun carrier, fired his weapon after Foster had used his rifle to order Perry to roll his car window down. Pointing a gun at someone can, obviously, be read as hostile action. Texas’s castle law covers drivers in vehicles defending themselves, including the use of deadly force.
APD and the Texas Department of Public Safety were ready for Saturday’s action, making this post short.
Law enforcement officers were deployed and ready downtown. According to a source familiar with Saturday’s events, no officers were injured. Little force was used in shutting down the protest — which illegally blocked streets and was intended to bring violence to Austin. No property was damaged despite the protesters’ plan. They did take roads illegally, briefly including Interstate 35, the main highway that runs through downtown Austin. Protesters harassed innocent diners and others downtown.
These assholes, and the decision to let Austin become bumsville, is why so many downtown restaurants are in danger of closing. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
New York’s Democratic attorney general Letitia James files a lawsuit to completely dissolve the NRA over Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s self-dealing. This is a blatantly political abuse of power that courts will strike down, but LaPierre’s crooked deals with Ackerman McQueen set them up for it.
“Jeffrey Epstein hosted Bill Clinton on his private island, documents reveal.” Alas, I’ve already used the “You Don’t Say” meme…
“The Democrats’ Pro-Iran, Anti-Israel 2020 Platform.”
The Democratic National Committee released a platform 180 degrees off from the spin. It’s so pro-Iran that the National Iranian-American Council, the de facto Iranian regime lobby in Washington, immediately “applauded” the DNC “for its forward-leaning platform commitments on issues of importance to the Iranian-American community.” It demonstrates that President Obama’s curious preference for the supremacists running the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than our traditional regional allies, has become mainstream Democratic ideology.
Trump administration policies have brought the bloody Islamic Republic to its knees. The Democrats seek to restore its vitality by ending sanctions and re-entering President Obama’s odious Iran deal. Every faction across Israel’s notoriously fractious political spectrum agreed that this deal was an existential threat. Biden and the 2020 Democrats take the opposing view: Regime change is wrong; diplomacy and economic engagement can restrain the mullahs.
Next up, the Gulf Arabs: A new generation of leaders have recently expanded women’s rights, confronted Islamism, acted to curb terrorism, deepened ties to the U.S. and moved towards ending the Arab/Israeli conflict. Biden and the 2020 Democrats prefer to “reset” those warm relations in order to keep America’s traditional Gulf allies at arms length.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Speaking of Iran, their accidental sinking of fake U.S. target carrier creates real port blockage.
“Based on the data, there seems to be no relationship between lockdowns and lives saved.”
Despite all that, Democrats want even harsher lockdowns. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Five GOP lawmakers filed a lawsuit against Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott (R) over a contact-tracing contract signed with MTX Group in May. The Frisco-based private company agreed to a $295.3 million dollar deal after defeating several well-known corporations. But lawmakers argue that the bidding process bypassed constitutional requirements and voice concerns about the ability of MTX to mitigate privacy concerns.” The Republicans suing are State Reps Mike Lang, Kyle Biederman, William Zedler and Steve Toth, and state Senator Bob Hall. And the MTX contract does stink.
Everyone hates the MSM, and think that they’re making America worse.
The mainstream media as a whole – especially the political news media in and around the DC/NYC/Beltway area – has two options: They can straighten up their acts and stop insulting the intelligence of their audiences or they can continue to show their (mostly left-wing) partisan stripes and turn audiences off.
If recent history is any indication, however, they’ll be going with option two – because they’ve shown over and over again that when it comes to demonstrating a commitment to objective reporting versus pushing biased political angles that help Democrats, they will choose those biased political angles nearly every time.
50 illegal aliens arrested at Laredo stash house.
Three charged in Twitter hack.
Nima “Rolex” Fazeli, a 22-year-old from Orlando, Fla., was charged in a criminal complaint in Northern California with aiding and abetting intentional access to a protected computer.
Mason “Chaewon” Sheppard, a 19-year-old from Bognor Regis, U.K., also was charged in California with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and unauthorized access to a computer.
A U.S. Justice Department statement on the matter does not name the third defendant charged in the case, saying juvenile proceedings in federal court are sealed to protect the identity of the youth. But an NBC News affiliate in Tampa reported today that authorities had arrested 17-year-old Graham Clark as the alleged mastermind of the hack.
Wfla.com said Clark was hit with 30 felony charges, including organized fraud, communications fraud, one count of fraudulent use of personal information with over $100,000 or 30 or more victims, 10 counts of fraudulent use of personal information and one count of access to a computer or electronic device without authority. Clark’s arrest report is available here (PDF). A statement from prosecutors in Florida says Clark will be charged as an adult.
The strange story about the Russian-born, Cyprus-resident man who abandoned the ship carrying 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate in the Beirut.
Social Justice Warrior Akilah Hughes sues Sargon of Akkad over his fair use of one of her videos, despite the judge telling her that was a bad idea, promptly gets her ass handed to her, and is ordered to pay $38,000 in attorney’s fees. Showing the same level of self-awareness that got her where she is, she attacks the judge and labels Sargon a “white supremacist.”
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson buys the XFL for $15 million.
Remember Wirecard’s financial shenanigans? “Key Wirecard ‘Business Partner’ Turns Up Dead In The Philippines After Mafia Links Exposed.”
Tik-Tok: It’s really bad:
Texas is doing a better job than some states at controlling government spending, but is far from perfect:
“Riotous BLM Protesters Suddenly Realize They’re All White People.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
I LOLed:
This week’s funny dog tweet:
Heh:
Tags:Ackerman McQueen, Austin, Austin Police Department, Beirut, Bill Clinton, Bob Hall, Border Controls, China, coronavirus, Crime, data security, Democrats, Dwayne Johnson, Football, Graham Clark, Greg Abbott, Iran, Israel, Jeffrey Epstein, Kyle Biederman, Laredo, Lebanon, Letitia James, LinkSwarm, Mason “Chaewon” Sheppard, Media Watch, Mike Lang, MTX, New York, Nima “Rolex” Fazeli, NRA, Philippines, Portland, Sales Tax Holiday, Sargon of Akkad, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, Steve Toth, Texas, Tik-Tok, Twitter, William Zedler, Wirecard, Wuhan, XFL
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »
Friday, April 10th, 2020
Happy Good Friday, everyone!
Are we finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel? The Wuhan coronavirus numbers have gone from doubling every two or three days to taking more than a week to double, which suggests successfully bending the curve. If hydroxychloroquine is indeed effective against the virus, we should think about opening the economy back up sooner rather than later, as our ICUs won’t be too overwhelmed to save lives.
Speaking of which…
Are fears of the Wuhan coronavirus overblown? This roundup of reader reports from various hospitals around the country suggests that it is. Lots of hospitals having layoff because so many elective procedures have been cancelled and projected coronavirus ICU cases never materialized. Maybe we’ve flattened the curve enough?
Democrats are going to fight Trump to the death over a stimulus aimed at small business. How are they supposed to get their beaks wet there?
“Dem Governor Who Banned Hydroxychloroquine Gets Caught Hoarding It.”
CNN tells the truth that Democrats blocked GOP funding for small business, then changed it, because telling negative truths about Democrats is always bad. (And speaking of bad, Powerline, I’m really not enamored of you launching a full-screen popup ad every time I click on a story (at least on the machine that doesn’t have Ad-Block for everything.)
“How US bureaucrats deepened the coronavirus crisis to deadly effect“:
Public officials across the United States are flying blind against the novel coronavirus epidemic. Because of a government-engineered testing fiasco, they don’t know how fast the virus is spreading, how many people have been infected by it, how many will die as a result of it or how many have developed immunity to it.
The failure to implement early and widespread testing — caused by a combination of shortsightedness, ineptitude and bureaucratic intransigence — left politicians scrambling to avoid a hospital crisis by imposing broad business closures and stay-at-home orders.
The grand failure of federal health bureaucrats foreclosed the possibility of a more proactive and targeted approach, focused on identifying carriers, tracing their contacts and protecting the public in a more measured way through isolation and quarantines.
The initial outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, was reported at the end of December. The first confirmed case in the United States was reported on Jan. 20, by which time it seems likely that many other Americans were already infected.
At first, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monopolized COVID-19 tests. When the CDC began shipping test kits to state laboratories in early February, they turned out to be defective.
The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration initially blocked efforts by universities and businesses to develop and conduct tests before relaxing the restrictions that made it impossible to assess the progress of the epidemic. Making a false virtue of necessity, the CDC set irrationally narrow criteria for testing, which meant that carriers without severe symptoms or obvious risk factors escaped detection.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Is Twitter using the health emergency to settle political scores?
Nate Jones and I dig deep into Twitter’s decision to delete Rudy Giuliani’s tweet (quoting Charlie Kirk of Turning Point) to the effect that hydroxychloroquine had been shown to be 100% effective against the coronavirus and that Gov. Whitmer (D-MI) had threatened doctors prescribing it out of anti-Trump animus. Twitter claimed that it was deleting tweets that “go directly against guidance from authoritative sources” and separately implied that the tweet was an improper attack on Gov. Whitmer.
I call BS. Hydroxychloroquine has looked very effective in several tests in France and China, but it hasn’t passed any controlled trials, and along with all the other promising drugs, it won’t pass those trials until the wave of death has begun to recede. In a world of bad choices, the drug looks like one of a few worthwhile gambles, as even Gov. Whitmer recognized by reversing course and asking to be allocated a lot of doses. Giuliani was closer to right than Whitmer. But Twitter decided that Giuliani’s view was so far from the mainstream that it had to be suppressed.
To be clear, Twitter management decided to suppress a legitimate if overstated view about how to survive the coronavirus. Twitter readers would not be allowed to see that view. That’s a stance that requires some serious justification.
Only Verified Official Coronavirus views are allowed, because Orange Man Bad.
Point/Counterpoint: National Review says that Sweden’s non-lockdown solution to coronavirus (isolate elders, but no shutdowns) has been better than our own, but Time disagrees. “Sweden has a relatively high case fatality rate: as of April 8, 7.68% of the Swedes who have tested positive for COVID-19 have died of the virus.”
Does the virus have an Achilles heel?
Could the Wuhan coronavirus have been in California already last fall? “[Victor Davis] Hanson said he thinks it is possible COVID-19 has been spreading among Californians since the fall when doctors reported an early flu season in the state. During that same time, California was welcoming as many as 8,000 Chinese nationals daily into our airports. Some of those visitors even arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.”
Another 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment.
Texas is doing comparatively well:
But: “Texas unemployment agency plagued by tech issue, backlogs as claims near 750K.”
Texas local governments need to start trimming their budgets right now.
A World Poker Tour organizer’s diary of the Wuhan coronavirus’ onset. I’m not really interested in poker tournaments, but this piece is really valuable for it’s detailed, almost minute-by-minute breakdown of those crazy days less than a month ago when the Wuhan Coronavirus went from Something We Might Have To Worry About to The Event Horizon of Absolute Change.
“Diamond Comics Announces They Will ‘Hold Payments To Vendors‘ Amid Coronavirus Pandemic.” Also, they won’t ship comics to stores, either. Given that Diamond has a defacto monopoly on comics distribution, this is going to drive a lot of indie comics makers completely out of business. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
Another weird coronavirus wide effect: You can no longer ship packages to Saudi Arabia.
New York Democratic represntative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez draws a well-funded Democratic primary challenger in CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. “Word broke yesterday that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly planning to endorse Caruso-Cabrera, probably because they don’t want to be the first with their backs up against the wall after AOC’s glorious people’s revolution.”
Colleges and universities are already starting to panic over the loss of revenue. “How long will it take for Democrats to propose a higher education bailout? When that happens, Republicans should hold out until schools start cutting pointless administrators and departments.” Like a malware-infected Windows system, what higher education needs is a shutdown, reboot, reformat and reinstall before it’s safe to start up again.
Laredo mandates masks.
Keir Starmer replaces Jeremy Corbyn as head of UK’s Labour Party:
Corbyn’s tenure has cost Labour the trust and patience of millions, including political observers around the world. By rights, it should have been Corbyn’s hidebound socialism and barely concealed tolerance for anti-Semitism that did him in. But what ultimately cost Corbyn the support of his party was electoral defeat. And not just any defeat, but a disastrous one.
British Labourites and voters more broadly knew who Corbyn was well before the summer of 2017. His first shadow cabinet was a mess. His nostalgic Marxism was laid bare in a manifesto that called for the nationalization of infrastructure and industry alike. His fondness for terrorists—from the IRA to Hezbollah and Hamas—was no secret. But the conservative government under Theresa May plodded into the general election with all the grace of a muskox, confirming voters’ fears that the government could not completely manage Brexit and transforming a 20-point margin in the polls into a 13-seat loss for the Tories. Though it was a defeat for Labour, Corbyn’s party managed a halfway decent showing. It was enough to avoid the impression that Labour had suffered a rebuke.
In the interim, Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism problem rapidly became Labour’s anti-Semitism problem. The party was wrought by schism when it pledged to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism but amended it to allow its members more freedom to criticize Israel, all without consulting relevant Jewish organizations or even the party’s Jewish members. The unearthing of a variety of Corbyn’s anti-Semitic online affiliations compelled his own members to openly criticize their party’s leadership. Under Corbyn, his party’s affinities trended steadily in one odious direction, leading to the high-profile resignations of many longtime Labour MPs. “I am sickened that Labour is now perceived by many as a racist, anti-Semitic party,” said outgoing MP Mike Gapes.
All this weighed heavily on British voters. One survey found that 85 percent of Britain’s Jews believed Corbyn was himself anti-Semitic, despite his pro forma denunciations of Jew-hatred. Britain’s chief rabbi denounced the Labour Party’s leader as “unfit for office,” a sentiment with which the Archbishop of Canterbury agreed. By the eve of the 2019 general election, only the most unwavering of Labour voters told pollsters that their primary concern about the prospect of a Labour-led government was “Jeremy Corbyn being prime minister.” But the inevitability of the disaster headed Labour’s way was not acknowledged until it was upon them, and by then it was too late. On December 12, Labour turned in the party’s worst electoral performance since 1935. It wasn’t the anti-Semitism that did Corbyn in. It was his failure to deliver at the polls.
Technically, that’s Sir Keir Starmer, providing just the right amount of irony that a party theoretically representing the interests of the working class is now lead by an Oxford-educated lawyer-knight.
That Hungary emergency act the left was screaming “dictatorship!” about last week: worrisome, but not that worrisome:
The tests are those most people would impose. Is this emergency law within the constitution or a violation of it? And there’s no doubt that it’s constitutional. It was passed by the super-majority that such a law requires. Are there safeguards in it? There are two. First, the constitutional court could reject it in whole or in part, either today or after the epidemic has receded. That is unlikely since all the required constitutional procedures were fulfilled in its passage, but constitutional courts are unpredictable. The second is that Parliament can vote to end the state of emergency at any time by the same two-thirds majority by which it passed the law. I would not entirely rule out that happening if the Orban government were to abuse these powers, but I judge both serious abuse and a parliamentary rebellion against it to be unlikely. Third, are the emergency powers granted to the government too broad? Some of them may be. The fines and prison sentences for breaking quarantine and spreading false rumors, though not unreasonable in themselves when panic and plague are in the air (the latter quite literally), look to me to be too high. But those sentences won’t be imposed arbitrarily; courts will determine them; and the terms of the legislation are tightly written to prevent its being used for political censorship or anything unrelated to the pandemic. So I would urge moderation on the courts and government, and leave it at that. Finally, shouldn’t the legislation have a sunset clause — say of one year on the British model — rather than staying in force indefinitely or until ministers judge the epidemic to be over? And there I think that it should.
Plus it’s not like other European countries haven’t passed similar liberty-abridging laws in response to the crisis.
“‘Voter fraud’? California man finds dozens of ballots stacked outside home.” “The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment.”
Austin’s holy homeless don’t need to practice the social distancing that mere citizens are required to observe:
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is out of the ICU for coronavirus. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Rand Paul has also receivered from his bout with the coronavirus and volunteered to work at a local hospital.
Man steals guns from police firearms store…to sell them to cops. I don’t think you thought your cunning plan all the way through there, sport…
Feminist media personalities have no idea what it takes to run a business, details at 10:
Don’t trust Jussie Smollett in scrubs.
Dwight has a good anniversary roundup on the Newhall shooting.
Beast Mode.
Classic footage of the Gipper, showing what a thoughtful and learned man he was:
Cry. Me. A. Freaking. River. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Here’s a really good essay by Open Blogger over on Ace of Spades about Quintin Tarantino. I was unaware of the Terry Gilliam connection.
FINALLY! Former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich is being inducted into the basketball hall of fame. A long-overdue honor for the man who guided the Houston Rockets to two NBA championships.
Awww:
Tags:2020 Election, aircraft, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Austin, California, Center for Disease Control, China, CNN, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, Diamond Comics, education, F-35, Foreign Policy, Guns, homeless, Houston Rockets, Hungary, hydroxychloroquine, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer, Labour, LAPD, Laredo, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Military, NBA, Nevada, poker, Quintin Tarantino, Rand Paul, red light cameras, Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, Sally Kohn, Steve Sisolak, Sweden, Terry Gilliam, Twitter, unemployment, Victor Davis Hanson, Viktor Orban, Wuhan
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, May 24th, 2019
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! This week: Texas legislative news, foreign elections, and a surprising amount on analog synthesizers…
Theresa May is out as British Prime Minister effective June 7. The only reason she’s not the worst prime minister of the last century is that she didn’t give Czechoslovakia to Hitler…
May’s refusal to offer the UK a real Brexit may result in the Tories being crushed by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party:
Even before [EU Parliamentary] election results are known on Sunday, therefore, there’s a growing sense that the Brexit party may be a permanent factor in British politics. Opinion polls on how people would vote in a general election show that the party would do less well than in European elections but still run about level with the Tories and Labour. There are deep divisions on policy apart from Brexit that have allowed critics to argue that the party would fall apart once its main goal had been achieved. But the divisions don’t seem deeper than those of other parties, and power or its prospect is itself a unifying social glue. Farage’s rallies around the country are hugely successful — packed, good-humored, more diverse socially and politically than those of the other parties, full of confidence and optimism, and notably without rancor. As with Trump’s election rallies, people seem to find them enjoyable as well as genuinely serious. A kind of Brexit party spirit already exists with many different types of people happy to be together on the bandwagon. It seems less class-bound than any of the existing parties.
And if the Brexit party wins one-third or more of Britain’s votes this week from a standing start, it will change British politics. Such a result would have the effect of a second referendum victory for Leave. It simply would not be possible for Parliament and the mainstream parties to push through a Brexit that doesn’t get the effective consent of Farage and his party. If such a thing is attempted, it will be seen to be anti-democratic and will have to be abandoned quite quickly. It would force the EU to confront the fact that there is little chance of getting a deal like May’s withdrawal deal accepted, and that even if one were to make it into the statute book, it could never be effectively implemented. In those circumstances the EU might simply throw up its collective hands and declare that the U.K. has left without a deal.
The third effect of a Farage success in the European elections would be to realign political parties and, in particular, to place the Conservative party in mortal peril. Voting for a political party is a matter of both loyalty and habit. For lifelong Tories, the idea of voting for another party is anathema. Most people who think about it never actually get around to doing it. But the Tories have certainly given their traditional supporters and those new supporters who voted for them in order to achieve Brexit good reason to leave them on this occasion. Many will do so this week. And as with adultery, betraying your party for another is much easier the second time around.
Well:
You know who doesn’t want to impeach President Donald Trump? House Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty.)
But she may not be able to hold off her lunatic party much longer.
And all that despite ample evidence that voters are opposed to the whole charade. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Democrats lying about preexisting conditions again:
“A charity run by the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally.”
Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is a rarity: an actual pro-life Democrat. When Edwards’ wife was “20 weeks pregnant with their first child, a doctor discovered their daughter had spina bifida and encouraged an abortion. The Edwardses refused. Now, daughter Samantha is married and working as a school counselor, and Edwards finds himself an outlier in polarized abortion politics.”
A succinct summary from across the pond:
If you look at what China is targeting in retaliatory tariffs, it’s obvious their hand is incredibly weak:
But based on what we know, what’s even more revealing about China’s choices are the U.S.-made products that haven’t made any tariff list. They include civilian aircraft and their engines and parts, which had a 2018 export total of $17.73 billion. They include semiconductors and their components, which last year had China shipments that totaled several billion additional dollars. They include the equipment needed to manufacture and inspect semiconductors and their parts, which racked up at least $850 million in 2018 exports to China; devices for conducting chemical and physical analyses (with $912 million in China exports last year); laser equipment ($304 million), motor vehicles, auto parts, and plastics resins and polymers (which each produced billions in exports to China); and billions of dollars’ worth of other products that the Chinese either can’t (yet) make or can’t make in the amounts that they need—or that consist of goods preferred by Chinese consumers over their Made in China counterparts.
As I’ve said before, semiconductor equipment is an area where it’s all but impossible for the Chinese to do without American technology.
Narendra Modi wins reelection in India. Forcing Pakistan to stand down over Kashmir probably clinched the victory for him. Modi’s Hindu ethononationalism is not good for India in the long-run, but he’s probably someone President Trump can trust to be a staunch ally against Islamic terrorism. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The election was an outright disaster for Rahul Gandhi, “the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and leader of India’s Congress party,” which is down to 52 seats as opposed to 303 for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. (Remember that Indira Gandhi was the daughter on India’s first prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and is not related to Mahatma Gandhi.)
The Morganza Spillway on the Mississippi to be opened for only the third time in history. The Morganza Spillway is located downstream of the Old River Control Structure.
“60% of male managers are ‘uncomfortable‘ working around women,” a 32% increase over last year. You mean they don’t want false accusations of sexual harassment to derail their careers? Way to go feminists! Once again you’ve made things worse for women living in the real world!
People have known that Chinese manufacturer Huawei has been stealing American intellectual property for at least seven years. Former congressman Mike Rogers: “If I were an American company today, and I’ll tell you this as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and you are looking at Huawei, I would find another vendor if you care about your intellectual property, if you care about your consumers’ privacy, and you care about the national security of the United States of America.”
Social Justice Warriors are ruining Young Adult publishing.
How computer security is actually handled in the wild:
UK foreign minister to Iran: “Bitch, you try to throw down on T-Dog, he gonna go HAM upside yo dome!” Of course I’m paraphrasing a bit…
Good news! It looks like Texas taxpayers will finally be getting some meaningful property tax relief, to the tune of $5 billion, or half the projected surplus. (Kids, if you have any friends in California or Illinois, try to explain to them what a “budget surplus” is.) This follows months of waffling.
Good news! Texas passes constitutional amendment banning a state income tax, which will go before voters in November.
Bad news! Texas House kills election integrity bill.
Bad news! Texas House refuses to pass a taxpayer-funded lobbying ban.
Laredo passes Los Angeles as America’s largest port. (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
Coordinated Instagram troll farm attack on Trump. So the next time you see a Trump-Putin meme, be sure to post that link and ask “How the trolling, Trolly McTrollFace?”
Speaking of trolls: Twitter Permanently Bans Anti-Trump Krassenstein Brothers” for “operating multiple fake accounts and purchasing account interactions.” The overwhelming majority of conservatives I follow think Twitter should lift the ban so these idiots can keep talking, but it will be nice to no longer see these morons as the top reply on every Trump tweet.
Antifa activist ordered to pay Judicial Watch’s legal fees.
Speaking of legal fees, Harvey Weinstein will reportedly pay $44 million to settle various sexual harassment/etc. lawsuits, the money evidently coming from insurance, but will still face criminal prosecution over at least two sexual assault allegations.
“Florida man hid legless fugitive girlfriend in plastic tote.” She sounds like a real winner: “Anderson was wanted for failing to appear in court on charges including false imprisonment related to a 2015 incident when she allegedly held people hostage at a Burger King with a BB gun. It ended in a shooting with police and she lost both legs.”
Speaking of lunatics: “Trump is the devil!” Genuine loon, or suicide by cop? You make the call. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
All teaching “white privilege” does is make leftists more contemptuous of poor white people. Which pretty much explains the Democratic Party’s decline in a nutshell…
Austin Mayor Steve Adler rolls out the welcome mat for antisemetic Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar.
Followup: “Medieval Sex Cult at Center of German Crossbow Murder Mystery. Police now say a German sex guru specializing in medieval bondage directed lesbian sex slaves in bizarre murder-suicide.”
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez frets over colonial cauliflower in her own garden. She really is an idiot. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Moogseum.
And speaking of analog synthesizers, they had features you don’t find on modern digital versions, like secret caches of LSD. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“Facebook Claims Party Celebrating Candace Owens’s Suspension Was ‘An Honest Mistake.'”
A Song of Vanilla Ice and Fire.
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, 87th Texas Legislature, abortion, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, antifa, Austin, Bharatiya Janata Party, Brexit, Brexit Party, Candace Owens, China, Conservatives, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Dan Crenshaw, data security, Democrats, Elections, Elijah Cummings, EU, Facebook, feminists, Florida, Florida Man, Foreign Policy, fraud, Harvey Weinstein, Huawei, Ilhan Omar, impeachment, India, Instagram, Iran, Jihad, John Bel Edwards, Judicial Watch, Laredo, LinkSwarm, Louisiana, Mississippi river, Morganza Spillway, music, Nancy Pelosi, Narendra Modi, Nigel Evans, Nigel Farage, Rahul Gandhi, Scandularity, Semiconductors, Social Justice Warriors, Steve Adler, Texas, Theresa May, UK
Posted in Austin, Communism, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 12th, 2016
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Here in Texas it’s been hitting 104°F during the day. That’s bad enough, but worse is trying to walk your dog at night when it’s still 93° with no wind.
Hillary’s lead over Trump isn’t quite as wide as Dukkakis’ lead over Bush.
Trump raised $80 million in July.
DNC email hack a whole lot bigger than previously thought.
ObamaCare premiums set to explode again in 2017.
Ace of Spades HQ contends we’re in this mess because the GOP establishment is secretly all-in on illegal alien amnesty and think the base is racist for opposing their Olympian insight, but has steadfastly refused to tell voters what they actually think:
The Establishment and establishment-aligned commentators are guilty of the Yeah Yeah Evasion I spoke of above with respect to amnesty.
Oh, sure, in 2014, they’ll run on a super-border-hawk national platform, and vow to oppose, unto their dying breath, Obama’s executive amnesties.
And sure, they’ll trot out a field of 17 candidates, fifteen of whom who have been coached to give the corporate/donor class evasive answer on the border.
Snip.
Now, the Trumpkins come along — I’ll use the Establishment’s slur for them — and the Trumpkins believe that it is standard GOP doctrine that we should have a border wall and be tough on border security, up to and including deportations.
They think there’s broad support for this in the party. They don’t think this position is controversial — they think it’s just a base plank of the platform.
Gee — I wonder where they could have gotten that idea, Establishment, huh?
I guess those stupid Trumpkins did something crazy — the believed the lies pouring out of your mouths every election eve.
So once again we have a political calamity brewing– the Establishment types, the college educated set who has no fear of being displaced by a cheaper foreign worker, misled the white working class into thinking they agreed with them on immigration, while secretly — silently — holding the opinion that anything short of open borders was kinda-sorta (or definitely) racist.
Rahm Emmanuel steals from the poor (Chicago utility users) to give to the rich (union pension funds). (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
New Jersey teacher’s union wants to write its pension gravy train into the state constitution, vows revenge on Democrat who blocked it.
Rotherham is still a center for Muslim child rape gangs. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Alumni have started to decide that if college administrators insist on preemptively surrendering to Social Justice Warriors, then their donations can go elsewhere. (Hat tip: Hot Air.)
“State Sen. Judith Zaffirini and her associates have agreed to pay roughly $38 million to settle a lawsuit in which they were accused of seizing control of a massive real estate inheritance for their own enrichment. The Laredo Democrat still has a chance to get richer. She and her crew will walk away owning 444 acres of prime Laredo real estate that nobody bequeathed to them. They’ll need to continue developing the land to come up with the $38 million, but everything they clear above that will be profit. That’s not including, of course, the millions that the Zaffirini crew has already paid itself in legal and management fees out of the inheritance, including roughly $1.5 million paid to Carlos Zaffirini’s law firm.”
My friend Karl Rehn’s study on just what the best aiming system (red dot vs. laser vs. iron sights) gets a nice writeup by Massad Ayoob. (Hat tip: Stuff from Hsoi.)
Title IX is killing men’s teams at historically black colleges and universities.
British MPs facing a booze ban due to having to move to a Muslim-owned building while Westminster is refurbished (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Hungary says no to more “Syrian refugees.” EU to shove more of them down Hungary’s throat, because joining the EU means signing your national sovereignty away
Wal-Mart acquires Jet.com (which is an online retailer, not an airline).
Facebook to users using Adblock: “Shut up and eat some ads.
“Fisking the Latest Diversity in Sci-Fi Freak Out.”
Buy your own Sherman Tank. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“It’s ridiculous for anyone to worry that the new Ghostbusters will ruin their childhoods retroactively. We should worry about this piece of shit ruining childhoods in real time.”‘
Heh. The Ghostbusters reboot to gross “almost exactly $.78 for every $1 the first one earned.”
In another sign of 2016’s impending apocalypse, corpse flowers are blooming across America.
Crime scene dioramas. Or, as the creator calls them, “dieoramas.” (More here.)
Cat-like typing detected.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Border Controls, cats, college, Democrats, Donald Trump, EU, Facebook, Guns, Hungary, Jihad, Judith Zaffirini, Karl Rehn, Laredo, LinkSwarm, Massad Ayoob, Muslim, New Jersey, Rahm Emanuel, Rio Grande Valley, Rotherham, Social Justice Warriors, tanks, Texas, unions
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Jihad, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »
Friday, July 15th, 2016
Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm, including some recent big stories:
Truck plows into Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing at least 84, including a father and his 10 year old son from Lakeway.
The murderer is evidently a Muslim from Tunisia. And his name is evidently Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. Try to contain your shock.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rules against China in the South China Seas dispute. Whether China heeds the ruling is another question…
Another day, another Democratic congresscritter indicted. “Corrine Brown, the House rep from the 5th District of Florida, was indicted (along with Ronnie Simmons, her chief of staff) on federal charges of mail and wire fraud.”
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are neck and neck in swing states.
“The U.S. State Department funneled tax dollars to a group that worked to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a Senate report released Tuesday.”
Another ObamaCare exchange shuts down, this time in Illinois.
And six of the seven remaining exchanges are in trouble.
Philadelphia airport workers to go on strike during the Democratic National Convention.
Houston City Councilman calls for segregation in police shifts. Next up: Their own drinking fountains… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Previously deported illegal alien sentenced to life in prison for murder in Laredo.
Following in the footsteps of Annise Parker, Austin City Council wants to silence opponents who speak out on politics.
The left’s war on police. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
El Paso police chief Greg Allen calls Black Lives Matter “a radical hate group.”
University of Texas to return athletic ticket sales to a group previously proven to be corrupt.
Ghostbusters reboot toys already on clearance before the movie’s opening.
Strippers, arson and a potato. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Understatement of the Year Award:
An inspection of the truck’s cargo revealed 169 bundles of marijuana with an estimated weight of 3,996 lbs. were on board.
The estimated street value of the marijuana is between $1.6 million and $1.9 million. Perez was charged with Trafficking Marijuana in the Superior Court of DeKalb County, Georgia.
Doraville Police say they are “pretty confident this would exceed personal use.”
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.
Tags:#BlackLivesMatter, 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Austin, Bastille Day, Border Controls, China, Corrine Brown, Crime, Democratic National Convention, Democrats, El Paso, Foreign Policy, France, Houston, Israel, Israeli Elections, Jihad, Lakeway, Laredo, LinkSwarm, Nice (France), Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Permanent Court of Arbitration, Philippines, police, Social Justice Warriors, South China Sea, terrorism, Texas, unions, University of Texas
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | No Comments »