LinkSwarm for November 2, 2018

November 2nd, 2018

I already voted and the election is next week, so there is light at the end of the tunnel! And if political bloggers are already sick of this election season, just think how sick of it ordinary voters are. None of which will keep me from live-blogging/live-tweeting it election night…

  • October economic statistics: “250,000 Jobs Added, Wages Increased 3.1%.”
  • How Democrats’ Kavanaugh ambush destroyed their own momentum:

    Six weeks ago, Democrats were expecting a blue wave to rival the Republican victory of 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats. Everything was in their favor. History—the party in power almost always loses seats. Money—Democrats continue to outraise Republicans by staggering amounts. The opposition—some 41 GOP House members retired, most from vulnerable districts where Donald Trump’s favorability is low. Democrats were even positioned to take over the Senate, despite defending 10 Trump-state seats.

    Democrats obliterated their own breaker in the space of two weeks with the ambush of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The left, its protesters and its media allies demonstrated some of the vilest political tactics ever seen in Washington, with no regard for who or what they damaged or destroyed along the way—Christine Blasey Ford, committee rules, civility, Justice Kavanaugh himself, the Constitution. An uncharacteristically disgusted Sen. Lindsey Graham railed: “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it!”

    A lot of voters suddenly agreed with that sentiment. The enormous enthusiasm gap closed almost overnight as conservative voters rallied to #JobsNotMobs. Even liberal prognosticators today forecast that Republicans will keep the Senate and Democrats will manage only a narrow majority in the House, if that. It’s always possible the polls are off, or that there is a last-minute bombshell. But it remains the case that the ascendant progressive movement blew an easy victory for Democrats.

  • Antisemetic hate crimes in New York are on the rise, yet “during the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime has been associated with a far right-wing group.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • More facts about that “refugee caravan“:

    Over 270 individuals along the caravan route have criminal histories, including known gang membership. Those include a number of violent criminals – examples include aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, sexual assault on a child, and assault on a female. Mexican officials have also publicly stated that criminal groups have infiltrated the caravan. We also continue to see individuals from over 20 countries in this flow from countries such as Somalia, India, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “Georgia’s Democratic Candidate For Governor Calls For Banning AR-15s.” (Hat tip: Say Uncle.)
  • Are you ready for the Peak 2018 story? “Bomb Suspect Cesar Sayoc And Stormy Daniels Worked at the Same Strip Club.” I can only assume this is a viral marketing campaign for Florida Man: The TV Show.
  • Daniels, of course, not only had her lawsuit dismissed, but was ordered to pay President Trump’s legal fees. That may detour the Michael Avenatti for President juggernaut…
  • Giant Russian floating dry dock isn’t. It may or may not have damaged Amiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier (antiquated though it is) when it went down. Now the Russian Navy is in a world of hurt in the north because no other dry dock north of the Black Sea is capable of hosting either the Kuznetsov or many of Russia’s largest submarines. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • More reminders of just what sort of Administration Lightbringer McLegTingle ran:

  • President Trump slaps sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sector, denouncing the country as part of a “troika of tyranny” along with Cuba and Nicaragua. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Aww, no one wants to campaign with Bill Clinton anymore. “‘Inability to reckon with his sexual indiscretions’? Does the NYT use the phrase ‘sexual indiscretions’ when writing about other celebrities who’ve been accused of rape and sexual harassment?”
  • Workers walk out of Google in protest of their protecting sexual harassment among executives:

    Perhaps no company deserves to be destroyed by feminists, but if any company does, none deserves it more than Google. Having built the world’s most powerful search engine, the company then developed or purchased a series of other innovations — Gmail, YouTube, etc. After obtaining a hegemonic position in the online world, however, Google then inexplicably sold its corporate soul to “social justice” ideologues.

    The extent to which Google has been captured by left-wing totalitarians, and become an active agent of intellectual repression, became apparent last year after the company fired James Damore for writing an internal memo that criticized their “diversity” policies. Damore sued his former emoployer (“Google Lawsuit Exposes Stalinist Climate Protecting Anti-White, Anti-Male Bias,” Jan. 10) and Google was also subsequently sued by a former member of its “technology staffing management team” who said the company implemented illegal hiring quotas. Only female, black or Latino candidates were eligible for hiring at Google, the lawsuit by Arne Wilberg alleges, and recruiters were ordered to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees.”

  • Texts from the Nevada Democratic Party: “F—K Trump. Stupid Republican retard. Trump is the anti-christ. Trump loves misery and hates Mexicans. Trump wants you to die. Trump wants to murder Mexicans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • What the hell? “North Dakota Democrats Promote Message Telling Hunters They May Lose Their Licenses if They Vote.” (Hat tip: Greg Pollowitz in Twitter.)
  • “Trump declares his first national monument, honoring African-American troops.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • How The Guardian works: “Here are some slanted statistics and biased questions. Now let me know a good interview time so I can ask if you’ve stopped beating your wife yet.”
  • Whitey Bulger whacked.
  • In case it wasn’t clear from Black Mass, he was not a nice man.
  • In the UK, Huddersfield child gang rapists sentenced:

  • Roseanne without Roseanne=Roseanne without ratings.
  • Only one thing can save America: lots of yelling.
  • Game on.

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    How Dallas Democrats Commit Voter Fraud

    November 1st, 2018

    Step into the wayback machine for this one, as some of the stops go back decades.

    First read this piece from Jim Schutze from way back in 2002 about how then-Democratic State Rep. Terri Hodge would bring in mysterious courier bundles of absentee ballots on primary day while her assistant was awaiting trial for absentee ballot fraud.

    Now move forward to 2010 and this release from the U.S. Attorney General’s office from the FBI archives:

    DALLAS—Gladys E. Hodge, also known as “Terri Hodge,” who was to go on trial early next month on charges outlined in a 31-count indictment charging 14 public officials and their associates with various offenses related to a bribery and extortion scheme involving affordable housing developments in the Dallas area, has pleaded guilty, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. As a condition of her plea with the government, Hodge, who was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, District 100, in 1996, and re-elected to the same position in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008, has agreed to resign her office and never seek or hold future public office.

    Hodge entered her guilty plea this morning, before U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn, to fraud and false statements on an income tax return. She faces a maximum statutory sentence of three years in prison, a $100,000 fine, and restitution to the IRS.

    Result: A year behind bars in federal prison.

    Now fast forward to 2017. Who do you think Dallas Democrats have running a session called “Building Better Vote-by-Mail Results?” That’s right: Convicted felon Terri Hodge.

    Which brings us up to the present:

    Dallas Republicans are once again battling local Democrats to stop voter fraud. They were in court today seeking a temporary restraining order against Dallas County’s Democrat elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole to delay opening of suspicious mail ballots, which was scheduled to begin at 7:00 a.m.

    Lawyers for the Dallas County Republican Party asked a judge to sequester about 2,400 mail ballots submitted for the November election that GOP ballot board members identified as questionable. They also flagged 20 mail ballots signed by disgraced ex-state representative Terri Hodge as an “assistant.”

    Hodge, a Democrat, pleaded guilty in 2010 to felony tax evasion in a Dallas bribery scandal and spent a year in prison. Hodge is prohibited from running for public office but continues to assist mail-ballot voters.

    A Democratic judge is hearing the case.

    For Dallas Democrats, not only is a felony conviction not enough to dissuade them from hiring someone to commit the same type of voting fraud they’ve been carrying out for over two decades, they actually hired the convicted felon to teach other activists her methods.

    That’s why it’s so important to get out and vote. You not only have to win, you have to win beyond the margin of Democrat fraud…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Texas | No Comments »

    Ted Cruz Wins Halloween

    October 31st, 2018

    Happy Halloween, everyone!

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    Posted in Republicans, Texas, Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Bombshell!

    October 31st, 2018

    If your liberal friends are wondering why no one trusts the mainstream media anymore, show them this video:

    If the boy cries wolf a thousand times, he can’t blame the villagers if they just tune him out entirely…

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    Posted in Media Watch, video | No Comments »

    I Use Facts and Logic on Popehat. Result: Blocked.

    October 30th, 2018

    I’m on quite a winning streak with Twitter this week.

    Ken White, AKA Popehat, is a lawyer with some experience in First Amendment cases, and to which I’ve linked from time to time. Unfortunately, he seems to have come down with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, attacking not only Trump, but other modern liberal hate objects like Scott Adams (who dares to explain that Trump isn’t a crazy buffoon, but someone using well-honed persuasion techniques to achieve desired goals) and Jordan Petersen.

    Front and center in the discussion: the idea that President Donald Trump is, despite considerably countervailing evidence, a raging anti-Semite.

    Result:

    Strange, and interesting, that both Simon and White blocked me for politely challenging prevailing, fact-free liberal beliefs about President Trump, Israel, and Jews, as though I were attacking not falsifiable assertions to be debated with reason and logic, but deeply held religious dogma.

    Interestingly, here’s another quote from that same Scott Adams piece I linked at the beginning of the exchange:

    When people have actual reasons for disagreeing with you, they offer those reasons without hesitation. Strangers on social media will cheerfully check your facts, your logic, and your assumptions. But when you start seeing ad hominem attacks that offer no reasons at all, that might be a sign that people in the mass hysteria bubble don’t understand what is wrong with your point of view except that it sounds more sensible than their own.”

    Numerous prominent liberals have gone to desperate, ridiculous and distasteful lengths to tie President Trump to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, despite the fact that the antisemitic nutjob was extremely vocal about his own hatred for Trump. Part of it may simply be the MSM’s painfully obvious need to spin every news story as chance to slam Trump. Part of it may be liberal’s increasing electoral desperation that despite two years of throwing everything they had at Trump and the Republican Party, their expected “blue wave” wave has been reduced to, at best, a tiny splash and Republicans will still control most or all of the federal government for the next two years. And part of it may be that, with Kanye West, #WalkAway and #Blexit, their repeated attempts to smear Trump as a racist appear to have backfired big time, so they’re now desperate to cling to their remaining outdated smears against Trump.

    But even with all that, the oversized reactions I got from two very different Twitter personalities on the same issue (Trump, Jews, and Israel) suggests some sort of deeper issue at work.

    Here’s another explanation from Bruce Hayden, one of Ann Althouse’s commenters:

    It all revolves around the reality that Jews primarily fund the antisemitic party, the Democrats, and their candidates. They very likely, anymore, provide more funding than any other source. Jews also provide a significant amount of the top leadership of the Democratic Party (averaging maybe 10% of the Senate for some time, including such notables as Schumer, Feinstein, and Sanders), as well as being its intellectual leaders. [Some historical political comparison between Jews and Mormons not relevant to the current point snipped.]

    Jews, for the most part, in this country, face significant cognitive dissonance with this Faustian bargain that they have made with the Democratic Party. Cognitive dissonance just like we are seeing right now in the desperate attempts to pin the shootings at the PA Synagogue yesterday on Trump and the Republicans, trying to rewrite the reality that this shooter, as well as the perpetrators of almost all antisemitic hate crimes in this country, are leftists, and tied to the Democrats. The Dems can’t afford to lose them financially, but need the votes of the most antisemitic elements of society. You hear this in the ever more outrageous conspiracy theories Jewish Democrats seem to use among themselves to justify continuing to belong to and support the antisemitic party. For example, bring up conservative and Christian support for Israel, and you immediately hear about the Rapture, some Christian Evangelical thing that I only hear about from Jewish Democrats. The reality is much simpler – Jesus, his family, Disciples, etc, were all relatively devout Jews living in and around modern day Israel, which the Bible tells us is the Jewish Promised Land.

    Add to that the fact that the core of the Democratic Party’s young activist base seem to be reflexively pro-Palestinian and thus virulently anti-Israel, and the parameters of American Jewery’s political problems begin to emerge. In places like New York and Los Angeles, to be a good Jew is to be a liberal Democrat, but to be a good liberal Democrat it is required that you hate Israel. This is a circle not easily squared.

    It will be interesting to see if, after next week’s election, defeat will temper Democrats’ Trump Derangement Syndrome, or only make it all the more acute.

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    Posted in Austin | 3 Comments »

    David Simon Makes False Statement. I Correct Him. Result: Blocked.

    October 29th, 2018

    While I’ve long admired the work of David Simon (Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, The Corner, The Wire, etc.), he posted something on Twitter that was not only wrong, but an exact inversion of the truth, contending that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “intervened” in U.S. politics, when in fact it was the Obama Administration that blatantly intervened in Israeli politics in an attempt to defeat Netanyahu.

    So the following Twitter thread ensued:

    Result:

    No wonder our liberal media elites are constantly blind-sided by unexpected events, if they keep constructing reality bubbles around themselves to keep from having to deal with unpleasant facts about the world that run counter to their ideology.

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »

    Austin Boil Notice Lifted

    October 28th, 2018

    Good news, everyone!

    Austin Water lifted the boil water notice on Oct. 28, 2018. Customers no longer need to boil water used for drinking, cooking and making ice. Water quality testing submitted to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has confirmed that tap water meets all regulatory standards and is safe for human consumption.

    How do I know the water is safe?

    Austin Water has worked closely with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and has followed federal and state laws for rescinding a Boil Water Notice. Microbiological testing has been negative and water disinfection levels are within state-required standards. This also includes meeting adequate water pressure requirements in the distribution system.

    Do I need to flush the pipes in my home?

    No, it is not necessary or required to flush the pipes in your home. Water has continued to circulate in the distribution system during the Boil Water Notice. Water used for laundry, showering, or boiling for consumption has created enough flushing effect for most homes. There should be no need to flush water from hot water heaters, irrigation systems, showers, clothes washing machines or outdoor faucets.

    If you choose to flush water from your pipes, please limit the amount of water you use. We recommend following Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines that suggest flushing for two minutes.

    What steps do I need to take for my refrigerator water dispenser and ice maker?

    We recommend drawing and discarding at least one quart of water from your refrigerator water dispenser before drinking. Automatic ice makers should be emptied of any ice created during the boil water order; allow the machine to make new ice and discard any ice produced during the next 24 hours.

    What are the procedures for medical, dental, and food service establishments?

    Medical, dental and food service establishments should contact Austin Public Health at 512-972-5000 or visit http://www.austintexas.gov/department/health for specific guidance.

    Our short regional inconvenience is finally over…

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | No Comments »

    Good Guy With a Gun: One Year After

    October 28th, 2018

    If you read only one story today, read this swell Michael J. Mooney profile of Stephen Willeford, the man who stopped the Sutherland Springs shooter with his own AR-15, one year after the incident.

    As he approached the old white chapel, he screamed as loud as he could, “Hey!” To this day, he’s not sure why—he knows that giving away your position is foolish, tactically—but friends inside the church later told him that when the gunman heard Willeford’s cry, he stopped shooting and headed for the front door. “It was the Holy Spirit calling the demon out of the church,” he tells people.

    Just as Willeford reached the front yard of Fred and Kathleen Curnow, whose house faces the church entrance, a man wearing black body armor and a helmet with a visor emerged from the church. Willeford scrambled behind the front tire of Fred’s Dodge Ram. The gunman raised his pistol and fired three times. One bullet hit the truck. One hit the Dodge Challenger parked behind him. One hit the house.

    Willeford propped his AR-15 on the pickup’s hood and peered through the sight. He could see a holographic red dot on the man’s chest. He fired twice. He wasn’t sure he’d hit him, though he was later told that the man had contusions on his chest and abdomen consistent with getting shot while wearing body armor. Regardless, the gunman stopped shooting and ran for a white Ford Explorer that was idling outside the chapel, roughly twenty yards from where Willeford had positioned himself.

    As the shooter rounded the front of the Explorer, Willeford noticed that the man’s vest didn’t cover the sides of his torso. Willeford fired twice more, striking the man once beneath the arm—in an unprotected spot—and once in the thigh.

    The man leaped into the vehicle, slammed the door, and fired twice through the driver’s side window. Willeford aimed for where he thought his target’s head would be and pulled the trigger, shattering the driver’s side window completely. The Explorer sped away, turning north onto FM 539, and Willeford ran into the street and got off another shot, this time shattering the SUV’s rear window.

    Snip.

    Willeford believes that what happened that day was a battle between good and evil. He says he was terrified, but he thinks the calm he experienced was the Holy Spirit taking over. He tells people he thinks it was the Lord’s hand shielding him as the man doing evil fired over and over again in his direction. And looking back now, he feels like God had been shaping him every day of his life, carving him into the perfect tool for that day.

    He grew up with a deeply rooted love for his community, a devotion that was instilled in him by previous generations. During the Depression, his great-grandfather started a trade route between Sutherland Springs and Seguin, bolstering business and helping farmers and shopkeepers in both towns stay afloat through hard times. Growing up, Willeford worked at a local dairy owned by his family. “I squeezed more tits before I was eight than you will your whole life,” he likes to joke.

    He started shooting when he was 5 years old. His father had him aiming a bolt-action .22 rifle at Coke cans in the backyard. As he grew older, he was drawn to competition shooting. By his mid-thirties, he could hit the string of a moving balloon from a hundred yards away. With his instruction, all three of his kids, who range in age from 23 to 28, were expert pistol shooters by the time they turned 9. For years, his family’s Church of Christ Bible study group met at a local gun range, gathering each week to shoot for a few hours before going over Scripture.

    He’d even had discussions with a police officer friend, long before his encounter with the gunman, about where to aim on a moving target wearing body armor: the side, the hip, the leg. More preparation from God, he believes.

    There was a stretch in his life, starting in 1993, when he felt like the Old Testament character Job. On the day before Willeford’s thirty-first birthday, his parents were both killed by a drunk driver. They’d been out for a Labor Day motorcycle ride when a man with four prior DWIs collided with them head-on. The accident was on FM 539, not far from where he and Langendorff concluded their chase. A few weeks later, an arsonist burned down his parents’ house—before he’d had time to sort through his childhood memories.

    The day after his parents’ funeral, he and Pam learned she was pregnant. But during a second-trimester checkup, there was no heartbeat. And not long after that, Willeford lost his job. “We maintained our faith through all of it, though,” he says.

    So Willeford is “no stranger to pain,” he says, but he remembers crying more the first week after the shooting than he had the rest of his life combined. The first time came on the side of the road, when he was talking to officers. Everything was just so overwhelming.

    He was at the scene for four hours, answering questions from various agencies. Because the chase had crossed county lines and because officers from several different jurisdictions responded, Willeford had to tell his story to representatives from three county sheriffs.Then there was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. And then the Texas Rangers. (Later that night, he’d have to repeat it all over again to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.)

    Snip.

    All he ever prayed for was a simple life. He wanted only to be a faithful man, a good husband and father, an upstanding member of the rural community where his family has resided for seven generations. He finds it strange to be constantly thanked for—and reminded of—one of the most painful experiences of his life. He says he can’t wait for a whole day to pass when it never comes up. He doesn’t consider himself a hero. The word makes him uncomfortable.

    “If you’re breaking it down into heroes and survivors, I’d rather be with the survivors,” he says. “I got shot at too.”

    Read the whole thing.

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    Posted in Guns, Texas, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    In A Van, Down By The River

    October 27th, 2018

    Ready for a detailed, insightful analysis of steroid-abusing, multiply-arrested, fake Seminole Crazy Florida Bomber Guy Cesar Altieri Sayoc, Jr.?

    Yeah, me neither.

    Instead, have a collection of tweets and an old Saturday Night Live sketch (“old” as in “halfway between now and back when it was really funny”) based on the fact that both Sayoc and Rep. Steve Scalise shooter James T. Hodgkinson both lived out of their vans.

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    Posted in Crime, video | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for October 26, 2018

    October 26th, 2018

    Greetings from Austin in October! The skies have finally cleared to deliver some beautiful autumn weather, but we’re still required to boil our water due contamination from the massive rains.

  • The Fort Worth Democratic Party fraud ring we covered Wednesday has widened:

    A former Democratic Party official is accused of funding an organized voter fraud ring busted earlier this month that targeted elderly and incapacitated voters in north Fort Worth.

    In court documents filed Tuesday, state prosecutors allege former Tarrant County Democratic Party executive director Stuart Clegg funneled money to Leticia Sanchez, one of four paid campaign workers arrested and charged with submitting false and forged mail-ballot requests in an organized criminal voter fraud scheme.

    The documents say Sanchez, her co-defendants, Clegg, and others collaborated to cast mail-in votes for down-ballot candidates in the 2016 Democratic primary “without the voter’s knowledge or consent.” The state claims Sanchez used funds from Clegg, now a campaign consultant, to pay her three co-defendants and others for their part in the illegal mail-ballot harvesting scheme.

    Sanchez, her daughter, and two other women are charged with a total of 29 felony voter fraud counts. Sanchez’s charges include one count of illegal voting and 16 counts of providing false information on a ballot application. The court notice filed Tuesday implicates Sanchez in hundreds more crimes for which she hasn’t yet been charged.

  • Cahnman notes how well Republicans are making inroads into Hispanic South Texas:
    • Strong Border Security positions help in November — While Hurd is a sometimes squish, Flores isn’t. That this is happening at the same time as Trump is doing what he’s doing (and the legislature is, however reluctantly, doing what they’re doing) tells you everything you need to know. If the GOP’s immigration position were “toxic,’ they wouldn’t be winning in Southwest Texas.
    • The Democrats are simply too liberal (esp. on Guns and Babies) — We’ve made this observation before, but it remains true.
    • The Failure to address Carlos Uresti has cost Democrats DEARLY — Another observation we’ve made previously. But all they had to do was do the right thing when either the financial or the sexual stuff came out. But they didn’t….
    • Southwest Texas REALLY isn’t into Bobby Francis — These are the same counties that he lost in his primary disaster.
  • Blue wave? Not so much.

    Think about it. You’ve got Hollywood, the media, the Tech giants and big education behind you. You’ve got tends of millions of dollars being spent in races all over the country and you and yours. you’ve got every possible advantage going your way. Add to that you and your allies are completely energized and engaged, literally counting the days until the election so you can defeat Donald Trump…

    …and you STILL lose.

    How will they deal with the realization that their anger, rage and panic over Donald Trump is not shared by the voting public?

  • Voting to confirm Kavanaugh may not be enough for Senator Joe Manchin, who is now two points down to Republican Patrick Morrisey in the state the voted for President Trump by a bigger margin than any other. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Chik-Fil-A more popular than Starbucks among teenagers.
  • “Americans’ support for a ban on semi-automatic guns in the U.S. has dropped eight percentage points from a year ago,” now opposed 57% against to 40% in favor. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • I’m sure you’ll be shocked, shocked to know that Google’s male feminist executive ranks are filled with creepers. Some interesting details:

    Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.

    Also this bit of enlightened thinking:

    In a civil suit filed this month by Mr. Rubin’s ex-wife, Rie Rubin, she claimed he had multiple “ownership relationships” with other women during their marriage, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. The couple were divorced in August.

    The suit included a screenshot of an August 2015 email Mr. Rubin sent to one woman. “You will be happy being taken care of,” he wrote. “Being owned is kinda like you are my property, and I can loan you to other people.”

    Our “moral superiors” sure seem to have a fetish for slavery…

  • Want to read something super, mega depressing? Here’s the New York times on the Walmart of heroin in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington.

    n the summer of 2017, when I first toured the area with Patrick Trainor, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he called Kensington the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast. It’s known for having both the cheapest and purest heroin in the region and is a major supplier for dealers in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland. For years, the heroin being sold in Kensington was pure enough to snort, but that summer, it was mixed with unpredictable amounts of fentanyl. In Philadelphia, deaths related to fentanyl had increased by 95 percent in the past year.

    Philadelphia County has the highest overdose rate of any of the 10 most populous counties in America. The city’s Department of Health estimates that 75,000 residents are addicted to heroin and other opioids, and each day, many of them commute to Kensington to buy drugs. The neighborhood is part of the largest cluster of overdose deaths in the city. In 2017, 236 people fatally overdosed there.

    Snip.

    In the early 2000s, Dominican gangs started bringing in Colombian heroin that was not only purer but much cheaper than heroin imported from Asia, which historically predominated. Kensington’s decentralized market kept competition high and prices low. Most corners were run by small, unaffiliated groups of dealers, making the area difficult to police; if a dealer was arrested, there was always someone there to replace him. The Philadelphia prison system has become the largest provider of drug treatment in the city. The police have realized that they can’t arrest the problem away, and they spend many of their calls reviving drug addicts with Narcan, an overdose-reversal spray. The D.E.A. focused on the high-level drug traffickers, not the guys working the streets, but the arrests did little to curb the growing demand.

    “They call this the Badlands,” Elvis Campos, 47, said about Kensington. “Good people are held hostage in their homes.” Campos, who moved to the neighborhood 22 years ago, lives on a small, crumbling block next to a demolished crack house. “I didn’t know about the drugs when I came,” he said. “I found the house, and it was cheap.” No one on his block used or sold drugs, he said, and his neighbors worked hard to keep it clean. But dealers were always around their homes trying to sell. “I tell them to leave,” Campos said. “I served in Iraq, and I think that’s why I’m good at telling drug dealers to get off the block.”

    Like Campos, many residents had come to Kensington simply because they couldn’t afford housing anywhere else, and though many expressed empathy for the users, they also wanted them to leave. People cleared needles off their lawns, their front steps and the sidewalks where their children played. Some wouldn’t go anywhere unless they were in a car, but a lot of families were too poor to afford a car. They organized cleanups, lobbied City Council members and state representatives and asked for help from church groups, but the problem seemed insurmountable. The drug market, institutional racism, joblessness and the ravages of the war on drugs in the ’80s left the community struggling. “You see everything here,” one female resident told me. “Overdoses, shootings, killings. We are exposed to trauma every day just living here. It’s constant.”

  • Were the “explosive devices” sent to several Democrats fakes? They may or may not have been hoaxes or false flags, but they are at the least very suspicious. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Chuck Todd’s theory? Russians!
  • “‘Segway Jeremy’ — a central character in the 2011 Wisconsin protests — has been arrested for trying to buy a lethal dose of radioactive material.” He’s a far left anti-police loon who ran against Paul Ryan in the 2014 Republican primary on a legalize weed platform. Via Badger Pundit, this is what he looked like back in 2011:

    And here’s his booking mugshot:

    If you’re trying to make the case that marijuana is a safe recreational drug, you’re not helping…

  • Effective weapons for your planned high school murder spree: Guns, bombs. Ineffective weapons: pizza cutters. Do I even need to name the state? Bonus: Preteen girls who claim to be Satan worshipers. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig on Twitter.)

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Texas | 1 Comment »

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