Brexit Aftershocks

June 24th, 2016

It’s shaping up to be an interesting day:

  • Tory Prime Minister David Cameron is resigning. “Mr Cameron announced shortly after 08:15 BST that he had informed the Queen of his decision to remain in place for the short term and to then hand over to a new prime minister by the time of the Conservative conference in October.” Current favorite to replace Cameron is pro-Leave MP Boris Johnson.
  • Under terms of the Lisbon Treaty, it will take about two years to negotiate the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.
  • World markets are going crazy.
  • The Pound Sterling is at its lowest exchange rate in 30 years.
  • Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted heavily to stay in the EU, while Leave won pretty much everywhere else, including Wales. Now there’s talk of a second Scottish Independence referendum.
  • Euroskeptic parties across the continent are calling for their own independence votes.
  • Obama continues to demonstrate his magic touch at persuasion.

    • I would say the panic selling is largely unwarranted; there’s no reason that UK can’t negotiate an orderly exit from the EU and continue to participate in the European Economic Area the way that Norway and Switzerland do now. There was talk before the Brexit vote that the EU wouldn’t go along with this out of spite, but if the endless Greece crisis has shown, Eurocrats negotiate their non-negotiable demands all the time, and I doubt even Angela Merkel is willing to put Europe through a deep recession (which is to say, deeper even than the current one the Euro seems to have engendered in perpetuity) just to “teach the UK a lesson.”

    More later…

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    Posted in Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    Brexit Wins

    June 23rd, 2016

    BBC News just called the election for Brexit. “UK votes to leave European Union with 309 out of 382 results declared.”

    No time to do instant-analysis tonight, but markets will undoubtedly be in panic-rollercoaster mode tomorrow. This will pass, but there’s a real risk this is the event that pishes the world into the cyclical recession that’s been looming for years now. Let’s hope not.

    More tomorrow.

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    Posted in Elections, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    Could Brexit Win? Update: Leave Up By 800,000 Votes

    June 23rd, 2016

    Short answer: Yes.

    Medium Answer: Answer cloudy, ask again later.

    Early tidings were that “Remain” was polling ahead, enough so that even UKIP head Nigel Farage said it looked likely that Remain would pull out a win. But the “Leave” vote seems to be outperforming in areas where “Remain” was expected to be strong, and I’m not seeing any areas where the reverse is true.

    Looks like its going to be a long night for global market watchers…

    Update: Leave is currently up by about 800,000 votes. Including Wales which is, I think, a significant surprise.

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    Posted in Elections, Foreign Policy | No Comments »

    This Week in Clinton Corruption for June 23, 2016

    June 23rd, 2016

    This week’s roundup of Clinton Corruption is being headlined by Guccifer 2.0 revelations. The stuff released so far is interesting, but (and I say this as someone who thinks Hillary Clinton should be in prison) pretty weak sauce.

    Oh sure, it’s nice to have documented proof that the DNC and the media were out to support Clinton and to screw Bernie Sanders, but everyone already knew that.

    There are dozens of Clinton shoes (especially from Hillary’s own email server and the Clinton Foundation) still to drop…

  • Leaked Memo Teaches Clinton Staffers How To Break Campaign Finance Laws And Get Away With It. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Rush Limbaugh thinks that Donald Trump’s speech slamming Clinton’s corruption was effective. “She is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”
  • Here’s the text of that speech. Excerpt:

    Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.

    She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.

    Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public.

    Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.

    They totally own her, and that will never change.

  • Clinton’s incompetence caused the State Department to turn off email protection for State systems to accommodate her. Interestingly, the sentence “They were trying urgently to resolve an apparent conflict between the server’s built-in email delivery features with a version of “ScanMail for Exchange” security software from Trend Micro Inc. that had been installed on her server.” has been removed from the original AP story…
  • “Clinton IT specialist invokes 5th more than 125 times in deposition.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Judicial Watch Releases State Department Inspector General Investigation Records Related to Hillary Clinton Emails.” But I’m not seeing a “Download here” link… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections | No Comments »

    National Review Does Buc-ee’s

    June 22nd, 2016

    I can hardly resist throwing up a link to this Kevin D. Williamson National Review piece on Buc-ee’s, can I?

    Over the weekend, I stopped to buy gas at a Buc-ee’s in Bastrop, Texas, and was greeted by (in addition to a man dressed as a giant aquatic rodent) an A-frame sign advertising Buc-ee’s version of the minimum wage: cashiers, $12 to $14 an hour; food-service and car-wash help, $13 to $15 an hour; team leaders, $14 to $17 an hour; assistant, $17 an hour and up. Each job came with three weeks paid time off each year, which employees are welcome to use, roll over, or exchange for cash. If you want 40 hours a week, there’s 40 hours a week to be had; if you want more than 40 hours a week, that can happen, too.

    Everyone’s needs vary, of course, and I am not among those who believe that a two-income household is ideal for every situation. But I also believe that you can raise a family decently on $70,000 a year in Bastrop, where you can buy a perfectly serviceable house for less than $100,000 and where a nice, new one keeps you under the usual 2.5-times-your-income rule. Assuming a couple of raises and a bit of overtime, a married couple both working at a gas station could bring home something close to a six-figure income between them.

    He mentions the kolaches but not the fudge. He also omits something the non-Texan audience wouldn’t be aware of, namely of just how large Buc-ee’s is; the Bastrop location is bigger than most supermarkets…

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    Posted in Texas | 1 Comment »

    Shotgun Brexit Megapost

    June 22nd, 2016

    Imagine that there’s a thoughtful, in-depth introduction here that explains the pros and cons of the Leave and Stay positions.

    You’ll have to imagine it, because I have no time to write it and the vote’s tomorrow. Instead, have a quick-and-dirty shotgun scatter of Brexit links.

  • The economic case for Brexit. “The European project is controlled by statists and the one good thing it provides (free trade between members) is easily overwhelmed by the negative things it imposes (protectionism against outsiders, tax harmonization, horrible agriculture subsidies, bad fisheries policy, etc).” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Britain Doesn’t Need the EU to Thrive. (Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)
  • “The fight over Brexit is symptomatic of a much larger crisis facing out-of-touch elites on both sides of the Atlantic.” More:

    The European Union’s bureaucracy and paper-parliament were set up to be as insulated as possible from the concerns of actual voters. Representatives to the European Parliament are selected by party elites as a kind of highbrow patronage. They invariably defer to the permanent bureaucracy, which acts like a transnational cartel, one that happens to be composed of governments. As Daniel Hannan, the rare Euroskeptic skunk to infiltrate the garden party that is the EU parliament, put it, “faced with a choice between democracy and supra-nationalism, the EU will always choose supra-nationalism.”

  • Elites ignore the populist revolt against them at their peril.
  • “A substantial portion of the Leave campaign views the referendum as a rigged process and the EU as conspiring behind the backs of the British people to launch a new round of integration.”
  • Everyone knows the Brexit vote is a sham.
  • A generally good piece about the myths of both sides of the Brexit debate, but when he tags Geert Wilders as a “genuine fascist,” he’s talking out his ass.
  • Brits buying gold.
  • Here’s a debate between UK Tory PM David Cameron and UKIP head Nigel Farage on the subject:

  • Finally, here’s Brexit: The Movie, a 71 minute film that lays out the case for the UK leaving the EU. Haven’t watched any but a tiny bit of either of these videos, but offer them up here as a public service.

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    Posted in Economics, Foreign Policy, Regulation, video | No Comments »

    This Week in Jihad for June 21, 2016

    June 21st, 2016

    This is more like “this last two months in Jihad,” it’s been so long since I did an update. But there’s a whole host of Orlando updates, and a lot of other jihad-related news, so let’s dig in.

  • “My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” I’m reminded of Gene Wolfe’s The Citadel of the Autarch, where there’s a character named Loyal to the Group of Seventeen.
  • And of course, this is after the Obama Administration’s FBI initially tried to release a censored transcript of Omar Mateen’s 911 call removing all mention of the Islamic State.
  • They even tried to change “Allah” to “God”. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instaundit.)
  • “The Obama administration and the liberal media have decided that when a radical Islamic terrorist kills Americans, the one thing the narrative cannot be about is radical Islamic terrorism….In fact, the reason that the administration and the media are so intent on downplaying the role of Islam is because they are afraid that if they told the truth, people might vote Republican in November.”
  • An early entry in the timeline on just how badly the FBI farked up the Mateen investigation.
  • Evidently the FBI dropped the investigation immediately after Mateen played the Islamophobia card.
  • And that was even after Mateen threatened to have al-Qaida kill a sheriff’s deputy and his family. Mateen didn’t have warning signs, he had warning billboards…
  • If you hadn’t already heard, Mateen was at the very least bijihad curious.
  • He also checked Facebook to see if he was trending during the massacre.
  • London’s new mayor and Muslim child rape in the UK. Zero Hedge offers a month of UK jihad news.
  • “At some point we’ll have a president who cares about destroying ISIS.” Clearly we don’t have one now… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Bahrain strips Sheikh Isa Qassim, the country’s leading Shiite cleric, of his nationality for being too cozy with Iran. Is this something? Maybe. Bahrain’s royal family is Sunni, they’re not quite the scumbags the Saudi and Qatar royal families are, and there’s a significant American military presence there.
  • Muslims attack Radiohead listening party in Istanbul. Cause I’m a creep…
  • Facebook bans gay magazine critical of Islam.
  • Speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at University of Central Florida in Orlando cancelled because police couldn’t guarantee his safety. One wonders if police in Orlando are capable of protecting anyone at all…

    • From here on down it’s mostly old news, but maybe you didn’t read it the first time around.

  • Two month old Mark Steyn column on Germany’s cowardice in prosecuting that comedian who made fun of Turkey’s scumbag Islamist president? Yeah, because it’s still worth reading if you haven’t already.
  • Islamic State’s brutality makes Kurds abandon Islam for Zoroastrianism. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Taliban kill over 60 in Kabul. They were evidently targeting Kabul’s VIP security team. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Woman hitchhiking to prove Muslims are peaceful raped and murdered in Turkey. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Muslims riot in Greece.
  • The Islamic State is openly recruiting members at the employment office in Malmo, Sweden. (Hat tip: Blazing Cat Fur.)
  • Is Saudi Arabia reigning in their religious police?

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    Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »

    “100% Cotton” Means “10% Polyester” in China

    June 20th, 2016

    Here’s a lesson in caution when buying Chinese-made goods in the global marketplace.

    When it comes to the clothes I wear I’m both particular and cheap. I only wear 100% cotton, because Polyester and other artificial materials irritate my skin. I keep hearing that the new “polyfine” materials feel better, but every time I try to put on a poly/cotton shirt, I instantly go “Nope!” and take it off.

    Since I live in Austin (and work in high tech, where I can get away with it), I tend to wear cargo shorts in the spring, summer and fall. I used to buy them at Academy, but they haven’t had any 100% cotton cargo shorts in black the last few times I dropped by.

    So I did what everyone does when they can’t buy something locally: I bought from Amazon.

    Here are the precise shorts I ordered: All black, the right look, under $20 and 100% cotton.

    Or so the Amazon listing said:

    Amazon Shorts

    So I ordered them, and a few weeks later I get them shipped straight from China. Upon arrival, I see these tags:

    Shorts Tags

    (Note that nowhere on the Amazon page did it list “Gaok and Congs” as the manufacturer.) And this is the only material label inside the shorts:

    Shorts Label2 1

    I can’t read Chinese, but I had a firm suspicion what 聚酯纤维 meant in English, and an Internet search confirmed my suspicions. What Amazon sold as “100% cotton” were actually 10% polyester fiber.

    There’s always been a bit of caveat emptor when buying goods manufactured abroad, but one of the roles of traditional middle men was verifying the quality and content of goods before accepting them for sale. Amazon’s business model effectively eliminates that quality control role, letting consumers buy directly from global suppliers. This saves money, but frequently Chinese suppliers are willing to forgo such niceties as telling the truth about their products…

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    Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for June 17, 2016

    June 17th, 2016

    Today is a quadruple witching hour for markets, so try not to freak out if there’s more than the usual market volatility today.

  • “Obama Is Bringing 100 Syrian Refugees Into U.S. Every Day.”
  • And Syrian refugees are blowing big holes in Sweden’s welfare budget. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” they’re paying everyone’s share. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Swiss overwhelmingly turn down “guaranteed income,” the latest pie-in-the-sky socialist scheme to rob every Peter to pay every Paul.
  • David Horowitz believes that Donald Trump’s post-Orlando foreign policy speech is a game changer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Not a game-changer: Continued vapid liberal cheer-leading for multiculturalism at all costs. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Orlando wasn’t about ‘gun violence’ or ‘homophobia.’ It was about Islam. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Yet another MSM journalist caught lying about guns.
  • “Why it’s called a ‘modern sporting rifle‘ and not an ‘assault weapon.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal ‘betters’ who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.”)
  • Aside: Is the Washington Examiner paying Ashe Schow enough? She’s like some indefatigable writing machine…
  • The Corrosive Politics of the New York Times Editorial Board Led to the Orlando Shooting. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Right now the debate seems choked with people who don’t know, are proud of not knowing, and think you’re a redneck gun-nut asshole if you want them to know because they feel very strongly about this.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • No charges for officer Brad Miller. He’s the one who shot the “unarmed teen” who had driving his Jeep through a plate glass window and was in the process of vandalizing cars.
  • And here’s a police shooting where the use of lethal force was clearly justified.
  • JFK and LSD. Meh. It’s not that I think Kennedy wouldn’t have dropped acid given a chance, but Timothy Leary was basically a con man, and we already know that Nina Burleigh is irrational.
  • Wow, believe it or not, still another reason to never visit Oklahoma. “I’m going to need your driver’s license and all the money on your prepaid debit cards.”
  • “The prohibition of comments that are considered biased or hateful is an explicit denial of freedom of speech.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Australia’s women’s Olympic soccer team defeated by teenage boys.
  • Are shipping containers the future of farming?
  • Your auditor finds huge cost discrepancies in Houston ISD construction costs. Does HISD: A.) Call in an outside auditor, B.) Launch a criminal investigation or C.) Suspend the auditor who found the problems?
  • New UT President Greg Fenves is a vast improvement over Bill Powers merely by being mediocre.
  • Land’s End decides to commit suicide.
  • Father buys car for son to go to college. Son decides to smoke pot and hang with no-good friends instead. Father sells car.
  • You’re not authorized to know the dire secrets of the Amtrak snack car! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Affluent buyers snapping up Hill Country land and building mansions.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Austin Police Blotter Roundup

    June 16th, 2016

    More Dwight’s bailiwick than mine (and I think he’s covered two of these), but several stories of interest have popped up:

  • Suspected I-35 rock thrower arrested. “The Austin Police Department has made an arrest in the rock assailant case. Patrick Eugene Johnson a former tow trucker of Austin was arrested on Thursday by APD. Johnson has been charged with Attempted Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Third Degree Felony. He is currently being held in the Travis County Jail. Bond is set at $250,000.”
  • Austin woman killed in dog attack. Seems like she entered their yard on a business matter. Address is 12316 Fay Street, which is only a couple of blocks off East Parmer, but it looks pretty rural on Google Maps. It’s considerably different than a woman in Dallas being killed by a pack of wild dogs
  • Austin closes their DNA lab due to concerns about being able to meet new regulatory standards.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime | No Comments »

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