Posts Tagged ‘Ronald Reagan’
Friday, June 7th, 2024
All those “new jobs” created in the Biden Recession have gone to illegal aliens, two Trump court cases appear to be in the process of derailment, more Hunter Biden shenanigans come to light, a whole lot of anniversaries this week, and a chance to own the Ark of the Covenant! It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
This should make even more people with Joe Biden’s illegal open border policy: “All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens.”
The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” [writes] that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.
Does a mistrial loom in the Trump kangaroo court case? Seems like a juror celebrating a guilty verdict before the trial was over on Facebook is yet another reason to throw out the conviction…
Speaking kangaroo Trump prosecutions, the Georgia Court of Appeals has ordered that case halted until the Fani Willis conflict of interest issue is resolved.
In other court news, in Hunter Biden’s defense just blew up.
Hunter’s defense, carefully crafted by attorney Abbe Lowell during his opening statement on Tuesday, was blown up by the testimony of an ex-girlfriend and ex-wife who described the extent of Hunter’s crack-cocaine usage around the time he purchased a firearm in October 2018 — and by the salesman who sold Hunter the gun he allegedly lied in order to purchase.
Hunter is facing two federal charges related to his allegedly lying about his drug addiction on a gun-purchase background-check form and he faces a third charge for allegedly possessing the firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Hunter pleaded not guilty to the charges last year and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Most of the day was taken up by testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, a woman who dated Biden from roughly December 2017 to November 2018, despite being half his age at the time.
Prosector Leo Wise conducted a lengthy direct examination of Kestan accompanied by pictures from her cellphone to corroborate her recollection of events.
Wise and Kestan seemed to get into a rhythm throughout the direct examination, as Kestan recalled large events and small details from her time with Hunter Biden. Kestan remembered exact dates and named the various hotels they stayed at during their time together.
Each time Kestan described an experience with Hunter Biden, Wise asked her if Hunter Biden smoked crack at their hotel or Airbnb, and Kestan always replied affirmatively.
“Every 20 minutes or so,” Kestan said of Hunter Biden’s crack habit during one of the hotel stays. She noted that he smoked crack less frequently in public, and she never noticed a change in his demeanor when he smoked.
Wise shared photos from Kestan’s cellphone showing drug paraphernalia scatted around the bathrooms and tables of their lodgings. One of the images appeared to show Biden in a hotel bathtub holding a crack pipe in the wee hours of the morning. When Wise showed the images, Kestan easily pointed out the drug paraphernalia and explained to the courtroom how the various materials were used to cook and consume crack.
Biden allowed Kestan to withdraw cash from his account when he needed to spend it on drugs, she recounted. Kestan stated the names of drug dealers and described the drug transactions she saw at the hotels and other locations.
Kestan’s testimony and the images allowed Wise to establish that Hunter was smoking crack in September 2018, following his late August rehab stint in Malibu, Calif. She said Biden smoked crack every 20 minutes at a Malibu house he rented, and she did not remember Biden discussing his rehab stint during her time at the house in September 2018.
Wise closed the direct examination by introducing a lengthy text message Biden sent her in December 2018 lamenting how he would always be a drug addict and his attempts to get sober failed.
And this is “the smartest guy” Joe Biden knows…
Also from Hunter’s weapons case, he was caught on tape bragging about how he could score crack in Timbuktu. Which is a neat trick, since it’s an Islamic majority city in Mali, Africa, and is currently under siege by Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a jihadist organization which has incorporated elements formally loyal to both al Qaeda and the Islamic State. To be fair to the crackhead, he apparently said this before the siege was imposed last year…
Also, I would like to apologize to readers for not knowing about the siege and doing at least a LinkSwarm post to it. So much news, so little time..
“Seven Indicted in Houston Public Corruption Scheme.”
On Friday, Mayor John Whitmire and outgoing Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced seven people have been indicted for 14 public corruption felonies ranging from abuse of official capacity to tampering with evidence. The charges are related to a scheme surrounding the City of Houston’s water repair contracts.
Patrece Lee, the lead defendant, and a former city employee, had access to $80 million of city funds for emergency waterline repair.
In the Summer and Fall of 2022, Lee was in a position to recommend vendors for contracts with the City of Houston public works department to repair the water lines. Lee allegedly made agreements with companies to have them hire her as a “consultant” to receive a kickback in exchange for expedited payments and bigger contracts. She also targeted less experienced companies and offered her services to help them “get paid faster, or to get bigger and better contracts in the future” as well.
Lee allegedly received roughly $320,000 in payments from that scheme and then steered contracts to a company owned by her brother, allowing them to be paid more than $400,000 of which she immediately transferred $380,000 to her own company. The total amount she stole from the city was $700,000.
“The cooperation that we’ve received from this administration stands in stark contrast to the last seven years,” said Ogg.
The issue was uncovered during Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration. However, he planned to have it handled as an internal civil or administrative matter rather than refer it to the district attorney for criminal prosecution.
If Kim Ogg would actually go after government corruption (and real criminals) while she’s a lame duck DA, that would be a nice silver lining to the clouds of Houston/Harris County’s soft on crime Democratic leadership.
Methodist Church loses one million congregants in a single day.
The Houston conman who pretended to be a rabbi. “The man accused of spending $15,000 on a dead woman’s credit card has a long history of fraud, according to police, court records and his family. Police say Dustin Mitchell, who goes by Dustin Cohen, posed as a Rabbi, lawyer and possibly a cop to defraud people. They also say they think he spray-painted anti-semitic vandalism on his own truck.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Ukrainian drone hits Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery. Again. And this time they hit the distillation tower.
Modi’s BJP party loses an absolute majority in Indian elections.
Evidently the Chinese are paying the Houthis protection money for safe passage.
“Anti-Israel Protesters Arrested at Stanford after Breaking into President’s Office, Injuring Officer.” Throw the book at them.
ConocoPhillips purchases Marathon Oil for $22.5 billion.
“California fish taco chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill files for bankruptcy after minimum wage law cripples business.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Closer to home, it looks like central Texas locations for Red Lobster are now in danger of closing. (Hat tip: Also Dwight.)
Thieves in California are planting hidden cameras to case homes.
Swatter sentenced.
Beware of “Title Pirates” selling land they don’t own.”
Some Texas locales are using automatic license plate readers. Seems like there are some big privacy and due process concerns.
Complain about Hamas sexual violence in Canada? Enjoy your pink slip.
Critical Drinker confirms that The Acolyte is the idiotic woke garbage we all knew it would be.
More signs of Hollywood’s severe downturn: five Alamo Drafthouse location in north Texas have closed and the franchise partner has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Everyone Draw Mohammed winner Bosch Fawstin was let go from his position at the Freedom Center, so if you ever wanted to buy any of his stuff, now would be a good time.
A lot of notable anniversaries this week. It was the 80th anniversary of D-Day…
…the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway…
…the 50th anniversary of 10 Cent Beer Night…
…and the 20th anniversary of Killdozer. The event, not the great Theodore Sturgeon short story or the medicore TV movie made from it.
Speaking of D-Day, Biden just plagiarized Reagan’s speech.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
And did Biden drop a load in his pants at the Normandy commemoration?
Yotta: “Oh, did we say we’re a savings app? Actually, we’ve decided to become a casino app.”
China’s tallest waterfall is fed by pipes.
Crazy British inventor Colin Furze has ridden on a wall of death and built a drift trike. So now he’s riding a drift trike on a wall of death.
How Hitler’s cloak ended up being worn by a housewife in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Who wouldn’t like to own the actual Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Though it might have brought more money before Disney decided to ruin the franchise…
“No Foul Called After Caitlin Clark Crushed By Anvil.”
10 New ‘Star Wars’ Characters Coming To Disney+. Including C-3PLGBTQ, Admiral Allahu Akbar and Jar Jar Kinks…
The Internet was way ahead of the curve on this one.
Tags:al Qaeda, Alamo Drafthouse, auctions, Biden Recession, Bosch Fawstin, Caitlin Clark, California, China, Colin Furze, ConocoPhillips, Crime, Critical Drinker, D-Day, Democrats, Disney, dogs, Dustin Mitchell, Fani Willis, fraud, gambling, Georgia, Harris County, hate crime hoax, Hitler, Hollywood, Houston, Hunter Biden, India, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, Jihad, Joe Biden, John Whitmire, Kim Ogg, Leo Wise, LinkSwarm, Marathon Oil, Mark Felton, Media Watch, Midway, Military, Narendra Modi, Novoshakhtinsk, oil industry, Red Sea, Ronald Reagan, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Stanford, Star Wars, Texas, Timbuktu, Ukraine, unemployment, WNBA, World War II, Yemen, Yotta, Zoe Kestan
Posted in Democrats, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 7 Comments »
Friday, June 17th, 2022
The Fed goes Volcker, more Welcome Back Carter cosplay, Big Yellow moves to Texas, and Florida Man makes a run for the ocean.
FYI, Blue Host has been acting weird today, giving errors when you tried to save, even though everything appears to be there upon reloading. (Shrugs.)
Fed hike rates 75 basis points. The attempt to Volckerize inflation during the Biden Recession has begun.
Speaking of St. Volcker, there were a lot of other factors that helped kill inflation in the early 1980s:
- Oil was one of the primary causes of the 1970s inflation and everyone remembers the oil crisis. During the decade, oil ran all the way from $2 to $39. However, the flipside to this story is that with a lag, high oil prices will eventually incentivize production. The issue was that the US specifically disincentivized US producers and importers. Ronald Reagan signed an Executive Order in January of 1981 to eliminate oil price controls and then removed Jimmy Carter’s idiotic Windfall Profits Tax a few years later. As expected, global production expanded rapidly and with the removal of price controls, that production flooded into the US. By the middle of the decade, despite repeated production cuts by OPEC, there was a global glut of oil and by 1985, oil had collapsed all the way to $7. It wasn’t interest rates that made oil decline, it was government policy on the deregulation side, along with rapid production increases from non-OPEC countries.
- President Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act was signed into law in August of 1981, designed to reduce tax rates and incentivize investment by rewarding risk-taking by businesses. In particular, the Accelerated Cost Recovery System served to accelerate depreciation, reducing taxes for those that invested in productive capacity. Once again, government policy, not interest rates led to an increase in investment and ultimately supply, helping to tame inflation.
- It wasn’t just Reagan working on de-regulation; The Staggers Act of October 1980, deregulated the railroads, The Motor Carrier Act of July 1980, deregulated the trucking industry, and the Airline Deregulation Act of October 1978 effectively deregulated transport industries. The net effect was dramatic price competition, better ability to invest and innovate, and the ability to eliminate unprofitable business that was funded by profitable business. Almost immediately after passage, pricing for transport services collapsed and the ease of transporting goods expanded.
- Organized labor was also dealt a near-fatal blow when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in August of 1981. This may have reduced the wages for a generation of middle-class workers, but it sure wasn’t inflationary. It also accelerated the decline of unions which had already peaked out as a percentage of workers. More importantly, it reduced the militancy of unions and took the teeth out of their ability to disrupt businesses, leading to better efficiency and lower costs for consumers.
- At the same time, when it comes to macroeconomics, demographics equals destiny. In this case, Volcker simply got lucky. Think of the Baby Boom generation, the last of whom was born in 1964. By 1982, these last Boomers hit 18 and started joining the workforce. The eldest Baby Boomers, born in 1946, were already 36 by then. Look at the massive increase in workers starting in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, which tamped down wages and tamed inflation—especially as female participation in the workforce expanded dramatically. This added labor slowed a key component of the inflation.
The Biden Administration looks capable of pursuing none of those policies, and the Baby Boomers are starting to retire…
More Biden Magic: “The Dow has now had 11 down weeks out of the last 12. This has never happened before… (in Nov 1929, The Dow fell for 10 of 11 weeks)…”
How did we get here? Well, in addition to those SUPERgeniuses in the Biden Administration, decades of deficit spending, and loose Fed money printing, there’s the Flu Manchu lockdowns.
For weird reasons, some people, many people, imagined that governments could just shut down an economy and turn it back on without consequence. And yet here we are.
Historians of the future, if there are any intelligent ones among them, will surely be aghast at our astounding ignorance. Congress enacted decades of spending in just two years and figured it would be fine. The printing presses at the Fed ran at full tilt. No one cared to do anything about the trade snarls or supply-chain breakages. And here we are.
Our elites had two years to fix this unfolding disaster. They did nothing. Now we face terrible, grim, grueling, exploitative inflation, at the same time we are plunging into recession again, and people sit around wondering what the heck happened.
I will tell you what happened: the ruling class destroyed the world we knew. It happened right before our eyes. And here we are.
Last week, the stock market reeled on the news that the European Central Bank will attempt to do something about the inflation wrecking markets. So of course the financial markets panicked like an addict who can’t find his next hit of heroin. This week already began with more of the same, for fear that the Fed will be forced to rein in its easy-money policy event further. Maybe, maybe not; but recession appears impending regardless.
The bad news is everywhere.
More Welcome Back Carter 70s throwbacks: labor unions want to wage war strikes against the U.S. food chain.
A closer look suggests that Democrats are actually doing worse than their horrible polls suggest.
The polling error for the 2020 election was roughly 4% nationwide, the largest in the last 40 years.
Fast-forward to today. Inflation is 8+ percent, the price of food and gasoline is way up, crime is up, there is a nationwide shortage of baby formula, and don’t get me started on the border crisis. Yet Joe Biden’s job approval is close to 40% positive. That means almost four out of every ten Americans think Joe is doing a good job if you believe the RealClearPolitics average. And I don’t.
Snip.
If the polls are overestimating approval numbers for Biden and other Democrats, how bad is it? The political climate today is different since the 2020 election, but the Democrat poll bias seems intact, which was 4% nationwide. Since nonresponse bias, 4%, and registered voter bias, 2.6%, should be mutually exclusive, we can add them together. This gives us a total Democrat bias of roughly 6.5%
What does this mean? Until pollsters switch to sampling likely voters right before the election, you can subtract a solid 6 percent from Joe Biden’s approval numbers. And if nothing changes before the election, any Democrat who leads by 3 percent or less is likely to lose.
Another Russian ship sunk.
“Paxton Wins Lawsuit Against Lax Biden Immigration Policy.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is enjoying a victory against a Biden administration policy that has allowed illegal aliens to cross the southern border without consequence.
In 2021, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security issued a rule giving immigration law enforcement officials the power to decide whether or not to detain illegal aliens who attempt to cross the border (in contradiction to federal law, which says they must all be detained).
This policy caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Paxton and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who sued to stop the rule change, arguing that Biden was violating federal law when refusing to take custody of criminal migrants.
Paxton bashed President Biden, arguing that the policy was contrary to federal law and was instituted without following the proper procedure. Over a year since the original lawsuit was filed, a federal judge issued a ruling against the Biden administration on Friday.
Federal District Judge Drew Tipton said in his decision that the rule was “an implausible construction of federal law that flies in the face of the limitations imposed by Congress.” Tipton added, “Whatever the outer limits of the authority, the executive branch does not have the authority to change the law.”
After a legal fight lasting almost a year, Texas judges ruled a final judgment banning Biden’s detention-discretion rule.
The Sheriff’s Office of Isabella County, Michigan has to stop responding to some 911 calls due to rising gasoline prices.
Sixty years ago came the birth of the New Left via Tom Hayden, Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.
Most of what you know about Watergate is probably wrong. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Leaked internal emails showing Twitter employees debate banning Libs Of Tik-Tok for crimes against social justice.
“Round Rock ISD Trustee Sues Superintendent Over Alleged Illegal Investigation. The saga continues in Round Rock ISD as trustee Mary Bone files against scandal-plagued Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez.”
Caterpillar is moving their headquarters to Texas.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Elon Musk: “Democrats ‘Would Rather Tesla Was Dead Than Be Alive And Non-Unionized.'” Of course they would. If they can’t rake graft off you, or harvest votes from your ghetto, you’re worse than useless to them.
Speaking of Musk: Several snowflakes working at SpaceX circulated a letter calling Musk “an embarrassment” and demanding the company be more “inclusive.” Result: He fired their ass. Good.
McDonald’s gives up on healthy food.
Florida Man Crime Blotter: Accused Medicaire fraudster Ernesto Graveran captured trying to escape to Cuba on a jet ski. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
How bad is the Biden economy? There’s now a Sriracha shortage.
San Antonio symphony orchestra shuts down and files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. “The last bargaining session between the Symphony Society and the Musicians’ Union took place on March 8, 2022 after which the Union declined to return to the bargaining table, despite efforts of federal mediators and the Symphony. The Musicians’ Union has made it clear there is no prospect of the resumption of negotiations, absent the Board agreeing to a budget that is millions of dollars in excess of what the Symphony can afford.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
“School District Announces Summer Enrichment Program For Kids Who Need Extra Grooming.”
Swim like no one’s watching.
Tags:2022 Election, Austin, Border Controls, coronavirus, Crime, Democrats, dogs, Drew Tipton, Elon Musk, Ernesto Graveran, Federal Reserve, Florida Man, fraud, Hafedh Azaiez, inflation, Ken Paxton, Mary Bone, Media Watch, Medicare, Michigan, Military, Paul Volcker, polls, Port Huron Statement, Ronald Reagan, Round Rock ISD, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, San Antonio, SDS, Social Justice Warriors, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Texas, Twitter, Ukraine, unions, Watergate
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Global Warming, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, video, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2021
George Shultz, who served as Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan for six years, died yesterday at age 100.
Reagan assumed the presidency at a time when the existence of the Soviet Union and its domination of eastern Europe was regarded as an immutable fact of world politics. Taking office after Alexander Haig, Shultz helped implement Reagan’s vision of containing and rolling back communism across the globe. From supporting Solidarity in Poland, to backing anticommunist rebels in Reagan Doctrine countries like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, to the liberation of Grenada, to deploying intermediate nuclear missiles in Europe, to a hundred other policies, the Reagan Administration pressed Soviet communism in ways that would eventually force not only the liberation of Eastern Europe, but the demise of the Soviet Union itself. Shultz would play a key role in keeping American allies onboard with the program, and eventually in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that would lead to the end of the Cold War.
Compared to Haig, Shultz was a low-key, drama-free professional who skillfully kept a wide variety of western governments broadly aligned with American goals, and for that he deserves credit. That he was wrong about much outside the Cold War (the gold standard, carbon taxes, and Brexit, to name but three) should not take away from his central achievement. With James A. Baker III, Secretary of State under Bush 41 (who largely followed the policies laid down under Reagan), Shultz presided over the most successful period of post-World War II diplomacy in American history, and his achievements were far more lasting than those under flashier Secretaries of State like Henry Kissinger or Colin Powell.
Tags:Cold War, Communism, Foreign Policy, George Schultz, Obituary, Ronald Reagan, Soviet Union
Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy | No 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 »
Tuesday, December 10th, 2019
July 1979.
Disco still rules, with Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” topping the singles chart. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has declared an Islamic Republic in Iran, but the Iranian hostage crisis remains months in the future, as does the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hotly contested presidential races are getting underway among both Democrats (incumbent Jimmy Carter, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Governor Jerry Brown) and Republicans (Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, John Connally, and Phil Crane). John Wayne just died of cancer at age 72. Horror films are big, with Alien and The Amityville Horror ruling summer box offices.
Know what else was big in July of 1979? Inflation. It was running over 11%, up from 9% to start the year, and would reach nearly 15% in 1980. Indeed, the 70s saw the birth of a new word, stagflation, indicating both high unemployment and high inflation, something believed to be impossible under Keynesian economics.
It’s hard for people who didn’t live through it to imagine just how pervasive the idea was that this was the New Normal, that we’d just have to live with high levels of inflation for the rest of our lives. In 1970 gold went for under $40 an ounce; by 1980, after Nixon had severed the last Bretton Woods ties to the dollar and inflation was raging, it peaked around $600. Inflation was a dark, all-encompassing force that ate away family budgets and destroyed life savings.
On July 25, Carter nominated Paul Volcker to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. Once in office, Volcker oversaw a series of federal fund interest rate hikes, peaking at 20% in 1981. This tough but necessary medicine sent the economy into a recession (two, technically), but managed to kill inflation dead. That, and the Kemp-Roth tax cuts signed into law by Newly elected President Ronald Reagan, primed the American economy for long-term growth. Reagan gave Volcker political cover, refusing calls for his head, despite the short term pain of high interest rates and a serious recession, then renominated Volcker to a second term as Fed chair in 1983.
Volcker was 6’7″, smoked cheap cigars, and died yesterday at age 92. He was the right man for the right job at the right time, and that made all the difference in the world.
Tags:1970s, Economics, Federal Reserve, inflation, Obituary, Paul Volcker, Ronald Reagan
Posted in Economics | No Comments »
Sunday, March 6th, 2016
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has died at age 94.
If you were not alive at the time, you would not believe how much the liberal media loathed her in the 1980s. Just look at how ruthlessly they criticized her for buying enough new White House china for 220 people at state dinners for a total cost (not to the taxpayers, mind you, but picked up by a private foundation) for the cost of about 1/40th the average Obama family vacation…
Tags:Nancy Reagan, Obituary, Republicans, Ronald Reagan
Posted in Republicans | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
Early voting started in Texas Monday, which means I’m way behind on covering state and local races. Oh well, maybe later this week…
Hillary Clinton didn’t do as badly as expected in New Hampshire. She did worse.
Sanders’s margin of victory — 60 percent to 39 percent — was the largest ever by a Democrat who wasn’t a sitting president. It was a come-from-behind win: Eight months ago, Sanders was at 9 percent and Clinton held a 46-point advantage. And Sanders overperformed the polls. Only 1 of the last 15 polls had him above 60 percent; the Real Clear Politics average in New Hampshire had him at 54.5 percent going into the vote.
Then there are the crosstabs. The exit polling for Clinton was brutal. Sanders won men by 35 points; he won women by 11. He won voters under the age of 30 by 67 points. People expect that of Sanders and his children’s crusade. Clinton took home senior citizens, 54 percent to 45 percent. People expect that of Clinton’s boomers. But in the big band of middle-aged Democrats, ages 45 to 64 (who made up 42 percent of the electorate), Sanders beat Clinton 54 percent to 45 percent. He beat her among Democrats with a high school diploma or less; he beat her among Democrats with postgraduate degrees. Among people who’d voted in a Democratic primary before, Sanders won by 16 points; among first-time voters, he won by 57. He won self-identified “moderate” voters by 20 points.
Clinton made gun control a substantial part of her pitch in New Hampshire. Sanders won voters who own guns by 40 points. But he won voters who don’t own guns by 14. He even won voters who said that terrorism was their number one concern.
The biggest problem for Clinton, however, came in the candidate-perception categories. The second-most important quality voters said they wanted in a candidate was someone who “cares.” Sanders won these voters by 65 points. The most important quality people said they wanted was “honesty.” Sanders took those people home 92 to 6. Look at that again. When asked “Is Clinton honest and trustworthy?” 53 percent of all voters — not just Sanders voters, but everyone casting a Democratic ballot — said “no.”
Bernie Sanders has more than ten times the number of staffers on the ground in South Carolina than Clinton does.
Lefty at The Nation: “Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”
The topic is the Clintons, so it’s time for another glimpse of Good Maureen Dowd: “It turned out that female voters seem to be looking at Hillary as a candidate rather than as a historical imperative. And she’s coming up drastically short on trustworthiness.”
Ted Cruz is very electable. “Cruz is electable because he’s the real thing.” (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
People who were actually paying attention during the Gang of 8 fight scoff at Marco Rubio’s assertion Cruz favored amnesty. (Hat tip: Conservatives 4 Ted Cruz.)
Only top Obama Administration officials with high security clearances knew about Hillary’s secret email server. And LinkedIn.
The NRA is saying gun-indifferent Sanders beat hoplophobe Hillary. Hmmm…
Remember how the Obama Administration swore up and down ObamaCare wouldn’t go to illegal aliens? Guess what?
I think this is quite an effective Donald Trump ad, targeting how black Americans have been hurt by illegal alien crime. Rick Perry did quite well with an ad highlighting an illegal alien who murdered a Houston police officer in his race against Bill White in 2010. Too bad too many gutless Republicans have been hesitant about running such ads for fear of being branded racists, xenophobes, etc. by the media.
Muslim immigrants are killing Sweden.
Germany to take in a half million more Islamic “refugees” in 2016. It’s like Merkel wants to destroy her own party… (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
Police in the UK arrest man for criticizing Syrian “refugees” in a Facebook post. (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
Boom! Headshot! (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Current law prohibits transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S., and the military won’t do so until the law is changed, no matter what Obama may want.
“Scalia was not only finest writer ever to sit on the Court, he was one of the best rhetoricians in history.”
Dear naive young voters: socialism sucks in real life.
Behold the ideal government worker under socialism! Every bureaucrat his own Wally….
A look at China’s new stealth fighters.
China is also deploying missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea.
Huge explosion at a military barracks in Turkey. Just occurred before I posted this, so details are scant.
The ACLU continues its long retreat from defending free speech. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Talk like Reagan.
Venezuela’s socialist government appears to have authorized the military to form an oil company.
Notes on the collapse of a tech startup. More than a grain of truth here. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
The Coen Brothers aren’t fans of cramming diversity for the sake of diversity into individual movies. “Not in the least!” Ethan answered. “It’s important to tell the story you’re telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity—or it might not.”
Science fiction writer has book rejected by Harper Voyager because robot characters dared to voice non-PC thoughts.
Because driving I-35 just didn’t suck enough already, enjoy being attacked by thrown rocks.
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, ACLU, Antonin Scalia, Austin, Bernie Sanders, black, Border Controls, China, Coen Brothers, Crime, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrats, Elections, Facebook, Guantanamo Bay, Guns, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, I-35, Jihad, Marco Rubio, Maureen Dowd, Military, NRA, ObamaCare, polls, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Ted Cruz, Thomas Sowell, Venezuela
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, ObamaCare | 1 Comment »
Thursday, May 7th, 2015
Former Texas Democratic congressman and Speaker of the House Jim Wright has died at age 92.
As Speaker, Wright was a hyper-partisan that ran roughshod over the Republican minority while committing sleazy ethical lapses. As Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) once noted, “Jim Wright was like an evil fog that floated over everyone’s head.”
Alas, Wright’s death means I’ll never get a chance to get him to sign my copy of Reflections of a Public Man.*
It’s a slender collection of personal reflections and pithy aphorisms that even at 117 pages is badly padded. It was also a blatant scam to bypass congressional limits on personal honorarium.
The real focus of the marketing effort for Reflections of a Public Man was on bulk sales to trade associations and other groups. Almost 98% of all sales of “Reflections of a Public Man” were bulk sales of 15 or more books. In some instances, Wright’s staff informed various groups Wright spoke to that because he had already reached the maximum limit on outside earned income for that year, he would not be able to keep an honorarium offered to him. The staff then recommended that instead of paying Wright an honorarium, the organization could purchase books for the same amount . . .
For example,) Wright spoke at a Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Assn. trade show in September, 1985, just several weeks after SBCA had purchased 1,680 copies of “Reflections of a Public Man” for $10,000. SBCA testified that although it historically has paid honoraria and expenses to congressmen for their appearances, in this case SBCA’s legal counsel, who arranged for Wright to speak at the trade show, suggested that SBCA purchase the books instead. Thus, Wright received a $5,500 “royalty” for his appearances before the SBCA.
So that works out to a 55% royalty rate. 10-15% royalties for hardbacks is industry standard. It’s possible that J. K. Rowling and Stephen King might (might) get as much as 25%. If J.K. Rowling demanded a 55% royalty rate, her publisher would have no choice but to turn her down, since they’d be losing money on every book sold.
Through Wright resigned, his strong-handed tactics helped lead to the rise of Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America, which helped pave the way for the 1994 Republican takeover of the House. (And don’t let the New York Times obituary fool yeah; Wright had squat to do with bringing peace to Nicaragua, which was achieved through the pressure of the Reagan Doctrine and the crumbling of the Eastern block, which finally realized it was too broke to prop out communist dictators in Central America.)
*Though I did get Newt Gingrich to sign it…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Communism, Democrats, Jim Wright, Newt Gingrich, Nicaragua, Obituary, Reagan Doctrine, Ronald Reagan, Texas
Posted in Communism, Democrats | No Comments »
Sunday, November 9th, 2014
Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
Communism is evil, no ifs, and or buts, and the dramatic difference between freedom and slavery on different sides of the Iron Curtain was too stark for any but the most blinkered leftists to ignore. Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher (among many others) all saw that difference clearly and worked to bring it down. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of the end not only for East Germany and the Warsaw Pact, but the Soviet Union as well. Freedom won and tyranny lost.
Here’s the relevant passage from Reagan’s speech:
And here are scenes of the wall coming down:
Tags:Berlin Wall, Communism, East Germany, Ronald Reagan, video
Posted in Communism, video | No Comments »
