BidenWatch for July 20, 2020

July 20th, 2020

Malarkey poll numbers, the basement campaign continues, and more Green New Peal pandering. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Not even Democrats are stupid enough to believe Biden’s poll numbers:

    Since the beginning of the 2020 campaign season, Donald Trump has been behind in almost every single poll.

    When there were 16 Democrats running, America was presented with polls showing that he’d lose to almost every single one of them — and now that the nominee is former Vice President Joe Biden, we are shown polls weekly that have Mr. Biden ahead by more than 10 points, as well as winning every battleground state. Those numbers seem not only illogical, but unbelievable — because they are — and the behavior of Democrats backs that up.

    Democrats are acting with the same grasping-for-straws panic that they have been since 2016.

    Snip.

    Actions speak louder than words — and where Democrats continue to spike the football with their words by touting double-digit leads by the former vice president over President Trump, their behavior remains panicked, violent and desperate. Winners exert confidence and understand that their time is coming. There’s no need for them to continue to pile on their opponent and burn the system to the ground — but they know they aren’t winning and their time isn’t coming.

    On the opposite side of the spectrum, losers would scratch and claw, scream and bring violence into what should be peaceful. They get louder and flail when they know their time is coming to an end. Ever watch a playoff football game when it’s a blowout? The losers always start pushing and mouthing off at the winners when they know the inevitable loss is coming.

    That’s why, if Democrats believed the polls, there wouldn’t be riots. They would instead only need to wait a few months to take control of our government, defund the police and erase the American history that they claim offends them.

    Democrats don’t believe the polls.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Biden has to leave the basement and face Trump sometime.

    This result is not a resounding vote of confidence among likely voters for Joe Biden and his ability to debate President Trump. One could wonder how yesterday’s speech on his climate change proposal might drive that number lower. With several gaffes reading from a teleprompter, Biden took no questions from reporters after unveiling a $2 trillion package. It seems freeform interactions are being discouraged by the campaign, which should raise concerns.

    Presidential candidates have had televised debates since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. It is the way many voters assess candidates and their policy proposals. It may not be a perfect forum, but it is a staple. That they are more infotainment than substance is a function of the quality of the moderators, but that does not make them less relevant.

    Unless you live and breathe politics, you might not know the history of Joe Biden being soft on China. His acquiescence may matter more to voters after Beijing caused a worldwide pandemic and the realization we are dependant on them for essential supplies. Likewise, because of media bias, it one of the only forums where President Trump can make his case to the voters based on his record and agenda in his own words. This kind of information is why debates matter.

    The New York Times tried to give Biden an out by setting preconditions for the debate that President Trump must agree to. The two conditions are the president disclosing his tax returns and agreeing to fact-checking during the debate. This idea was proposed because even supporters are worried about Biden being extemporaneous for a few hours without preplanned questions.

    There may not be any excuses as far as voters are concerned. Rasmussen Reports found 68% of voters think it is important for the debates to occur. A full 56% percent believe it would hurt his candidacy not to debate Trump.

    A refusal could undoubtedly increase the chances of additional voters questioning his ability as the pretext is rather thin. Fact-checking occurs in post-debate commentary, and Trump’s tax returns are a years old conflict that is in the courts. His failure to provide them did not prevent Hillary Clinton from debating him. Why should it be a precondition for Biden now?

    Because Hillary was only physically weak, not mentally weak…

  • “Not Coming to a Town Near You—Joe Biden’s Invisible Presidential Campaign“:

    We’ve all been joking that Biden has been campaigning from his basement since the plague hit, but no one has really proven the joke wrong so far. For all we know, Dr. Jill has him duct-taped to a recliner and only lets him go when it’s time for another one of his now-trademark disastrous virtual campaign events.

    Stacey wrote a couple of days ago that Biden was going to have to eventually leave the basement and prove to the American public that he isn’t the drooling fool that so many of us now believe him to be.

    As we have discussed here many times, Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep has benefited greatly from the Coronapocalypse excuse to avoid the campaign trail. He can’t spend 3 minutes on camera reading a teleprompter without barking nonsense. He may not even be able to speak English if he’s off-leash at a campaign event. It’s a given that his handlers want to keep him away from public campaigning for as long as possible.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Rich Lowry calls Biden’s campaign shockingly adequate:

    The Biden campaign has been lucky most of all, but it’s also been smart, at least smart enough.

    To go, as Joe Biden did, from left for dead to sweeping to the nomination and quickly thereafter emerging as the favorite in November is a run of success that would be the envy of any national politician.

    It’s easy to consider this a mere accident given the weakness of Biden’s opponents, first a socialist in the Democratic primaries who had a ceiling on his support and now an incumbent president whose ratings have sagged.

    The Biden team certainly isn’t going to rewrite any campaign playbooks or dazzle anyone with its brilliance, but it has avoided serious mistakes and demonstrated an understanding of the basic political terrain and its candidate’s strengths.

    Snip.

    Above all, the campaign has avoided the most politically perilous ideological excesses throughout. This has required some discipline, given how influential woke Twitter is on the left.

    Biden’s theory of the Democratic Party, even if it seemed doubtful at the outset, proved correct — that the center of gravity of the party was still with, as he put it, Obama-Biden Democrats rather than with the avowed socialists and social-justice warriors.

    Biden hewed to this line when other candidates went the other way. It might seem obvious that endorsing “Medicare for All,” which involves yanking away the private health insurance of more than 100 million Americans, is foolish and politically indefensible, but several candidates in the Democrat race did it anyway.

    He’s steered clear of other pitfalls since locking up the nomination. He’s said he wouldn’t ban fracking. He didn’t endorse defunding the police. He defended the statues of America’s founders.

    He’s indisputably slid left. This has been his MO his entire career — to stay smack in the middle of whatever is the consensus position of the Democratic Party at any given time. He’s running on the leftmost platform of any Democratic nominee in a couple of generations but has tried to soften the edges as much as possible.

  • Young voters: “Biden who?” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Beware the Biden-Sanders radical lefty manifesto.”

    Joe Biden signed the death warrant for his campaign last week, even if he doesn’t know it. The joint manifesto he released with Bernie Sanders is 110 pages of radical far-left policies — from a job-killing $2 trillion climate agenda to eliminating cash bail and dismantling border protection.

    It betrays the working-class voters Biden claims to represent and destroys any pretense that he is a “moderate.”

    As Sanders has boasted, Biden would be “the most progressive president since FDR.”

    Well-meaning people might stick their fingers in their ears and vote for Biden out of nostalgia for a Democratic Party that no longer exists or out of exhaustion at the relentless anti-Trump barrage.

    But with his “Unity Task Forces” document, Biden has proven only that he is an empty husk. Old Joe, who was for police and working people and law and order, is long gone. His body is there but, like his party, it has been invaded by the socialist left.

    Under Biden’s manifesto, “Climate change is a global emergency” which requires “decarbonizing” American industries and eliminating carbon dioxide emissions to “net zero.”

    It is the Green New Deal on steroids.

    It will eliminate fossil fuel power by 2035, aka “commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035.”

  • Biden also promises to “fight gentrification.” Because America’s inner cities just aren’t enough like Detroit…
  • “Joe Biden Calls Arizona ‘an Important City’ in 2020 Election.”
  • Read between the lines of various Democrats saying how “powerful” and “consequential” Joe Biden’s running mate pick will be, and it’s obvious they don’t expect him to be up to the job. Or in office long.
  • “Biden campaign staffer mocked cops as worse than ‘pigs,’ called for defunding police.” The Biden staffer is Sara Pearl. (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
  • Billionaires back the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

    The largest donor, supplying $1 million, was billionaire hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel Jr., founder of Lone Pine Capital, according to Federal Election Commission filings released Wednesday.

    Other supporters include Hollywood billionaire David Geffen (who donated $100,000), Boston media magnate Amos Hostetter Jr. ($100,000) and Silicon Valley investors Michael Moritz ($50,000) and Chris Sacca ($10,000). Martha Karsh, who is married to private equity billionaire Bruce Karsh, gave $50,000.

    This group of donors is following in the footsteps of Walmart heiress Christy Walton, who gave $20,000 to the Lincoln Project in January. Apparently pleased with her investment, she contributed another $10,000 in May. All of the donors except Walton have also contributed to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign or a super-PAC supporting the former vice president.

  • No, Biden didn’t introduce a blackface singer. Besides, hasn’t Ralph Northam proven that no Democrat will ever be dragged for blackface?
  • Here comes the tax hike!

  • Boom!

  • Biden and the Green New Deal:
    

  • Are we not doing “phrasing” anymore?

  • Personally I would have gone with “Battle Without Honor Or Humanity” for Trump:

  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

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    LinkSwarm, Jr. for July 19, 2020

    July 19th, 2020

    Enjoy a LinkSwarm of stuff I just didn’t have time to include in the regular Friday LinkSwarm:

  • Why Is Hillary Clinton Support In 2016 Correlated With Cities’ 2020 Riots?

    If Baltimore’s Democrat leaders gave $20 million of “space to destroy” in 2015, the price tag ballooned 100-fold in cities governed by the hard left in the 2020 round of urban violence.

    The left and major media say the urban violence often accompanying protests following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 is a direct descendant of America’s past paroxysms of racial unrest. As such, the looting and arson in major cities is claimed to be the righteous child of Baltimore (2015), Ferguson (2014), Los Angeles (1992), and even the widespread riots in America’s major cities following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

    But is it really? Or could it be something entirely different?

    In past urban riots, a single spark ignited a mixture of anger and resentment over racial discrimination, poverty, or police brutality. When the cities burned, the damage concentrated in and around the neighborhoods of the urban poor. I witnessed this first-hand as an Army National Guard officer deployed to Los Angeles in 1992. The city was calm in the morning, and by the evening there were widespread murders with businesses being looted and burned.

    In 2020, Floyd’s death appeared to trigger something different. Rather than a spark, a signal flare was sent aloft, with prepared cadres launching protests in cities across the nation often followed by violence late into the night.

    Unlike Baltimore in 2015, cities like Minneapolis and Seattle featured leftwing mayors and governors, none of whom appeared interested in restoring order. This was due to those elected officials’ deep sympathy towards the protesters’ stated goals: defund the police, or, at the very least, reduce the apparent incidence of police brutality while shifting public funds out of law enforcement to more social welfare spending.

    Snip.

    Comparing the above factors in a multivariate regression analysis with the incidence of violence as the dependent variable shows a statistically noisy and weak link to the number of police.

    Of note, considering an additional variable—the share of a city’s population with a college degree or post-graduate degree—generates an even higher correlation to violence than does police per capita, suggesting that the protests and allied rioting are not the result of a working-class movement.

    But none of these factors is convincingly determinative. There was one variable that did correlate strongly to urban violence: a city’s percentage of vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. The more a city voted for Clinton, the more violence it saw in conjunction with the protests. (For the statisticians, the regression provides a significance of 0.0019 with the 2016 vote variable yielding a P-value of 0.003). The greater percentage of support for Clinton in 2016, the more likely a city was to suffer wanton destruction in connection with the “mostly peaceful” protests.

    Snip.

    Tellingly, out of the top ten cities for violence, looting, and arson, the average vote for Clinton was 77 percent. In the ten cities with the least destruction, Clinton won 53 percent of the vote.

    That a city’s political leanings are more likely to lead to a breakdown in law and order in service of political protest shouldn’t be a surprise. In this, Seattle, with a black population of 7 percent, San Francisco (5 percent), Portland, Oregon (6 percent), and Madison, Wisconsin (7 percent) have one big thing in common with Washington D.C. and Atlanta, with black populations of 47 percent and 52 percent, respectively: They are all governed by the far-left.

    Why did the leaders of the hardest-hit cities decide to give space to destroy? Some mayors saw the protest organizers as political supporters. A few may have calculated that widespread coverage of burning cities would harm President Trump’s reelection chances. And some just didn’t want the responsibility of ordering their police to restore order.

    Unfortunately, it is often the case in politics and revolutions that the common people—the proletariat—are sacrificed for the movement. In this case, it will be those living in dangerous neighborhoods who will end up being murdered, robbed, raped, and extorted in greater numbers if the misguided call to “defund the police” becomes a widespread reality.

  • Yeah, sure, it’s all about “the kids”:

    A major Los Angeles teachers union said in a research paper issued Thursday that the reopening of schools should be conditioned upon the passage of Medicare-for-All at the federal level, along with a slew of other left-wing policy staples at the state and local levels.

    “It is time to take a stand against Trump’s dangerous, anti-science agenda that puts the lives of our members, our students, and our families at risk,” United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a statement unveiling the paper. “We all want to physically open schools and be back with our students, but lives hang in the balance. Safety has to be the priority. We need to get this right for our communities.”

    The paper outlined a lengthy list of health and safety measures the union identified as necessary measures to ensure schools can operate safely amid the coronavirus pandemic, including robust testing, contract tracing, sterilization regimens and physical distancing in the classroom.

    The union said the costs to implement the measures necessary to restart Los Angeles schools safely could exceed $250 million, funds it said would be available if “federal, state and local governments are willing to finally prioritize pupils over plutocrats.”

    The UTLA called for at least $500 billion in additional federal assistance to K-12 schools, in addition to the passage of Medicare-for-All.

    The union also called for California to implement both a wealth tax on unrealized capital gains for the state’s billionaires, and surtaxes on state residents that earn over $1 million a year. The UTLA estimated the two measures would bring in a combined $14.5 billion a year in tax revenues.

    At the local level, the union called for the Los Angeles police to be defunded, saying “police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue.”

    The UTLA also called for a moratorium on new charter schools, saying that the charter schools already operating in the city of “double-dipping” by accepting federal CARES act funding while also receiving state funding, which did not decline amid the pandemic.

    Sounds like the UTLA should be decertified…

  • The fallacy of white privilege:

    Upon immigrating from India when I was 4, my family suffered tremendous economic hardships and cultural challenges. My father drove a taxi at night and my mom worked many menial jobs as a cook, housecleaner, barista and motel cleaner. It’s fair to say my family never had success handed to them on a silver platter. But more than a decade post-immigration, we have found our footing in Western society, with my dad making nearly six figures operating his own software company.

    Rising from poverty to economic prosperity is a common narrative for immigrants from all backgrounds in the West. For example, after the communist takeover of Cuba in 1959, many refugees fled to America, leaving most of their wealth behind and having to start from the bottom. But by 1990, second-generation Cuban Americans were twice as likely to earn an annual salary of $50,000 than non-Hispanic whites in the United States.

    Snip.

    And the concept of white privilege can’t explain why several historically marginalized groups out-perform whites today. Take Japanese Americans, for example: For nearly four decades in the 20th century (1913 – 1952), this group was legally prevented from owning land and property in over a dozen American states. Moreover, 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. But by 1959, the income disparity between Japanese Americans and white Americans nearly vanished. Today, Japanese Americans outperform whites by large margins in income statistics, education outcomes, test scores and incarceration rates.

    One could argue the successful stories of my family, Cuban Americans and Japanese Americans are cherry-picked cases. But whites are far from being the most dominantly successful group in Western society. A wealth of data collected in a longform Quillette analysis, shows overwhelming white underachievement relative to several minority groups among health outcomes, educational achievement, incarceration rates and economic success.

    According to median household income statistics from the US Census Bureau, several minority groups substantially out-earn whites. These groups include Pakistani Americans, Lebanese Americans, South African Americans, Filipino Americans, Sri Lankan Americans and Iranian Americans (in addition to several others). Indians, the group I belong to, are the highest-earning ethnic group the census keeps track of, with almost double the household median income of whites. In Canada, several minority groups also significantly out-earn whites, including South Asian Canadians, Arab Canadians and Japanese Canadians.

    Interestingly, several black immigrant groups such as Nigerians, Barbadians, Ghanaians and Trinidadians & Tobagonians have a median household income well above the American average. Ghanian Americans, to take one example, earn more than several specific white groups such as Dutch Americans, French Americans, Polish Americans, British Americans and Russian Americans. Do Ghanaians have some kind of sub-Saharan African privilege?

    Nigerian Americans, meanwhile, are one of the most educated groups in America, as one Rice University survey indicates. Though they make up less than 1 percent of the black population in America, nearly 25 percent of the black student body at Harvard Business School in 2013 consisted of Nigerians. In post-bachelor education, 61 percent of Nigerian Americans over the age of 25 hold a graduate degree compared to only 32 percent for the US-born population.

    These facts challenge the prevailing progressive notion that America’s institutions are built to universally favor whites and “oppress” minorities or blacks. On the whole, whatever “systemic racism” exists appears to be incredibly ineffectual, or even nonexistent, given the multitude of groups who consistently eclipse whites.

  • The Atlantic publishes a “power” story of how a police shooting scarred the writer as a young girl. Tiny problem: It never happened.
  • “Five Guys Fire/Suspend Employees Who Refused to Serve Police Officers.”
  • “Michael Avenatti is broke, can’t afford legal fees, lawyer claims.” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh…

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    Detailed Analysis of Michigan Police Shooting

    July 18th, 2020

    Yesterday’s LinkSwarm embedded a bodycam video of an Eaton County deputy fatally shooting a knife-armed suspect who had just stabbed a 77-year old man. Today we’ve got an after-action breakdown of the shooting, including additional footage from a home surveillance camera.

    A few thoughts:

    1. She did an admirable job of clearing the error quickly.
    2. Talking about the bump and rack being unnecessary, I think it all happened so fast she just hadn’t processed that the perp had managed to put her gun back in battery.
    3. The bodycam clearly shows this was a justified shooting. The sad truth of the madness running rampant in 2020 is that if the perp had been black, boundless multitudes would be calling for (at the very least) her firing for using “excessive force.” And, if she was employed in a locale run by a certain type of Democrat, she probably would be fired to appease the rage mob.
    4. I emailed Karl Rehn to get his reaction: “I thought she performed well. The ASP analysis is solid regarding bad grip.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    LinkSwarm for July 17, 2020

    July 17th, 2020

    Another Friday, another boatload of links. In fact, too many to wrangle into shape right now. I may have to do another mini LinkSwarm on Saturday.

  • Kurt Schlichter has a warning for our elites:

    Would you be shocked to learn that a big hunk of the citizenry is absolutely convinced that Donald Trump will not only be re-elected but re-elected in a landslide? It’s true, and it’s not an ironic or performative belief, but rather one drawn from a perspective that the mainstream media utterly ignores. This means you probably have no idea it even exists, and that could lead to an unpleasant surprise in November.

    Well, unpleasant for you.

    Remember that apocryphal anecdote about how Pauline Kael moaned that she did not know anyone voting for Dick Nixon? If you’re here, then that’s very likely you.

    You can dismiss these people as stupid – many of them really believe that Jesus stuff, deny systemic racism, and have no fear of civilization being destroyed by the weather in a decade or so.

    After all, President Hillary Clinton did.

    Didn’t there arise in your mind, that agonizing Wednesday morning after Mrs. Clinton’s ruination, just the faintest notion that you had been lied to? You tracked the polls, and you reviewed the percentages – most hovering above 90% – that assured you that the glass ceiling was in for an epic shattering. And yet, no shattering was forthcoming. Whether expressly or by omission, you were lied to.

    And it is happening again.

  • “Trump Admin Tells Minnesota Governor To Get Bent Over $16 Million Aid Request Following Riots.” If Democratic officials refuse to defund their own cities from hard-left rioters and thugs, how is that the rest of the nation’s problem?
  • Cancel culture is real.
  • President Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was great.

    First, let’s be clear on who is waging the “culture war” for which the media blames Trump. Trump did indeed blast the “cancel culture” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” so that “in our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.”

    Trump here is just speaking the truth. There has long been an established, deeply admirable civic culture in this nation; it is the radical left who now wages war against it. All over the country, people are being fired for the mere utterance of inconvenient or unwanted thoughts, even anodyne thoughts. People are being physically (and dangerously) hounded from public forums. And it is an utter assault on the rule of law itself to deface or destroy public art, as opposed to removing it through legitimate representative processes. To defend the civic culture against such assaults is not an affront, but a duty.

    Moreover, as Trump said, it is a duty rooted not in suppression but in a commitment to continued expression of the values and virtues that have “rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”

  • “Chinese Virologist Flees Hong Kong, Accuses Beijing Of COVID-19 Cover-Up.”
  • Plagues, compared. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Texas governor Greg Abbott says still no lockdown order.
  • Democrat M. J. Hegar won her runoff with Royce West to face incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn in November. Cahnmann thinks Hegar is a much better candidate than West, but she’s not going to get the mountains of money and fawning media Beto O’Rourke got in 2018, nor are the demographic voting dynamics of a presidential election year going to be nearly as friendly to her.
  • Other Texas runoff election results. Fort Bend County Sheriff beating Troy Nehls beating Kathaleen Wall 70% to 30% is interesting, especially since Wall poured $8 million of her own money into the race, more than 16x what Nehls raised. As Ted Cruz proved in 2012: Money isn’t everything.
  • On the other hand, Ilhan Omar’s Democratic primary opponent raised $3.2 million to Omar’s $471,000.
  • Speaking of which: “Ilhan Omar’s Payments To Husband’s Firm Top $1 Million.” She’s certainly adapted quickly to the Washington Way…
  • Former Auburn football coach and Donald trump-endorsement recipient Tommy Tuberville wins Alabama senate primary over Jeff Sessions. I fully expect Tuberville to crush fluke democratic incumbent Dough Jones in the fall.
  • How remote work could destroy Silicon Valley:

    Perhaps no phenomenon is more studied, marveled, and desired in the world of high tech and science than the mystery of serendipity. In seemingly every industry, CEOs pay millions in consulting, design, and architectural costs to multiply and optimize the number of chance encounters between their most creative employees — and hopefully profit from the blockbuster new products that might result. If only they could engineer the cubicles just so, or the indoor waterfall at the right angle, they might orchestrate providential encounters, or at least load the dice in their favor.

    No place on the planet generates more such interest than Silicon Valley. For decades, cities everywhere have tried to replicate the Valley’s record of producing one trend-setting tech giant after another, but none has quite measured up. Like history’s other hubs of outsized accomplishment — Athens in 450 B.C., Hangzhou in the 12th century, and Florence in the 16th century — Silicon Valley has entrenched itself as the world’s centrifugal force for the biggest thing of its age, tech.

    But now Silicon Valley seems to be under a little-noticed threat. Amid Covid-19, the deep recession, and renewed antitrust pressure from Congress and regulators, the Valley faces a very different challenge — the disruption of its very essence, the serendipitous encounter. The culprit is a rush by many of the Valley’s leading companies to permanently lock in the coronavirus-led shift to remote work. In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees they were no longer required to turn up in the office. Slack said more or less the same to its workers, and the trend was made official by industry colossus Zuckerberg, who announced that he expected up to half his employees would become permanently remote.

    In the years before the pandemic, talent in San Francisco and the Valley were already conflicted about whether to stay, increasingly exasperated by the cost of living. The concentration of highly motivated creators has produced enticing jobs, but also driven up prices. In Palo Alto, the median home now costs $3.2 million. In nearby Mountain View, it’s $1.7 million, and in San Francisco $1.8 million. In other words, the Valley has priced out almost anyone not making high six-figures, and even many of them. The temptation has been to flee elsewhere, and some tech talent had already been doing so.

    But now, if engineers, designers, and venture capitalists are geographically disbanding, working via the cloud instead of walking Google’s halls, surfacing at Buck’s Restaurant, or the cafes on University Avenue, how will future serendipity happen?

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at instapundit.)

  • Lincoln Project co-founder is literally a registered agent for Russia. “The media can keep calling you ‘Republicans,’ but if you support Democrats, take Democratic Party positions, make voting for Democrats all the way down the ticket a binary choice and moral imperative, and then take most of your money from big Democratic Party donors, you’re a Democrat.”
  • Another good word is “Grifter”:

  • Iran’s nuclear facilities mysteriously explode. (Scratches chin.)
  • Another day, another fake hate crime, this one at Texas A&M.
  • How idiots destroyed Brooks Brothers. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Austin response times for emergencies has gotten progressively worse over the years.

    The City would cut the number of cops despite increasing response times for emergency calls and increased violent crime in the city. I suspect other cities will be facing similar budget decisions under similar circumstances.

    I don’t know anyone who thinks we shouldn’t improve officer training and use of force guidelines to minimize harm to citizens. I know a number of cops who have been saying such things for years. I fail to see how decreasing the number of cops will enhance public safety.

  • Oopsie!
  • ESPN suspends “NBA insider and reporter Adrian Wojnarowski after he sent an email to Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley reading, ‘F— you.'”

    The Republican senator asked NBA Commissioner Adam Silver last week if he would allow players to wear jerseys with the message: “Free Hong Kong.” Hawley was criticizing the league after officials announced “pre-approved phrases” would be allowed on the back of jerseys while “censoring support” for law enforcement and criticism of China, according to Fox News.

    Wojnarowski responded to Hawley with the two-word email, which Hawley shared on social media. The columnist soon issued an apology for the message.

    Wojnarowski (or “Woj” as NBA followers call him) still hasn’t clarified which was offensive to him: Supporting American law enforcement officers or supporting freedom for Hong Kong.

  • The Houston Rockets’ Russell Westbrook tests positive for coronavirus.
  • RoadRich will be very sad at this story.
  • “Ca-..ca-…ca-Candygram!”
  • “Black Conservative Informed By White People That He’s Racist.”
  • “Elizabeth Warren Declares Herself Warlord Of Eastern Oklahoma Autonomous Zone.”
  • “Trump 2020 Campaign To Simply Air Unedited Footage Of Democrats Talking.”
  • My friend Dave Hardy has a free swashbuckling SF novel on Amazon through Sunday.
  • “It’s like confetti, but with human bodies!”

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Texas 23rd Congressional District Runoff Results on Knife’s Edge

    July 16th, 2020

    Various Wuhan coronavirus delayed runoffs finally happened in Texas on Tuesday, settling the general election slate for November.

    Well, for all races, that is, except the Texas 23rd U.S. Congressional District, the seat Republican Will Hurd is retiring from, where the Republican runoff between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes is still too close to call.

    On Wednesday, with all polling locations reporting, Tony Gonzales had a seven-vote lead over his opponent for the 23rd Congressional District Republican nomination in Texas – not counting late mail-in, military, and overseas ballots.

    Former Navy cryptologist Gonzales trailed retired Air Force Lt. Col. Raul Reyes for most of Tuesday evening and into the early hours of Wednesday, but they flipped later Wednesday morning. According to the Texas secretary of state Wednesday, 12,346 people voted for Gonzales while 12,339 voted for Reyes.

    The Bexar County Elections Department still must count mail-in ballots that it receives Wednesday, as long as those ballots were postmarked by Tuesday, Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said. Military and overseas ballots can be counted if the department receives them by Monday, so those results will not be available until next week.

    District 23 covers a large swath of Texas, spanning from western San Antonio to just outside of El Paso. The seat is held by Rep. Will Hurd (R-Helotes), who declined to run for reelection.

    And, with the thinnest of justifications, here’s an Emerson, Lake and Palmer prog rock jam from (gulp!) half a century ago:

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    Bari Weiss Resigns In Protest Of The NYT SJW Wokecult

    July 15th, 2020

    The purge of those daring to express non-approved thought at the New York Times continues apace, with op-ed staff editor and writer Bari Weiss penning a letter of protest on her way out the door:

    It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

    I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

    I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

    How dare an editor hired to bring in diverse opinions bring in diverse opinions? Look at those exhibitors of wrongthink! Letting Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nick Gillespie and Glenn Loury express non-approved thoughts just proves how guilty Weiss was!

    But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

    Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

    Ouch!

    As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

    My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

    For those in the Party, everything. For those outside the Party, nothing.

    There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

    She should sue. I suspect the discovery process would be instructive.

    I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.

    I do. The nail that stands up must be hammered down. Weiss wasn’t hired to bring real diverse opinions to the New York Times, she was hired to give the veneer and illusion of same.

    And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

    Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

    Trump Derangement Syndrome and Social Justice Warrior pieties: It’s what’s for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch. And every snack in-between.

    What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

    Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

    I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: The first and post immediate goal of Social Justice is to enforce ideological conformity on the left. It’s not enough to be a good liberal who reliable votes for Democrats and supports liberal causes. You must swallow the entire panoply of hard left victimhood identity politics talking points. Express unorthodox thoughts on Palestinians or express doubt that someone with XY chromosomes and a penis is a woman and expect to face the woke inquisition for your heresy.

    It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

    Indeed.

    The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

    Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

    Never underestimate the power of sucking up to continue receiving a paycheck.

    Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

    The ranks of American business are filled with people who oppose the wokecult, but are too scared to speak out.

    All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers.

    Why would any independent-minded young writer or editor come to work for the New York Times at all anymore? In fact, do journalism schools even turn out such creates anymore? That ship probably sailed decades ago. I suspect it’s all woke, all the way down.

    Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

    It’s been like this for quite a while. The only difference is that they’re not even pretending otherwise anymore.

    For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

    None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

    Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

    None of that has been present in the New York Times for a long, long time…

    (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

    Reminder: Your Taxes Are Due Tomorrow!

    July 14th, 2020

    Remember the relief you felt that the Wuhan Coronavirus had delayed tax day from April 15 to July 15?

    Well, that reprieve is expiring, and your taxes are due tomorrow.

    If your taxes are simple (mine aren’t), you can probably use the free IRS filing tool. H&R Block also has a free filing tool.

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    Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

    PSA: Texas Election Runoff Today

    July 14th, 2020

    If you live in various parts of Texas, today is the Wuhan coronavirus-delayed runoff date.

    The long-awaited Lone Star State runoff elections are tomorrow, postponed from May 26. At the federal level, 16 nominations will be decided, one for the Senate and 15 more in U.S. House races.

    In Texas, if no candidate secures a 50 percent majority in the primary, which, in 2020, was all the way back on Super Tuesday, March 3, a runoff election between the top two finishers is then conducted within 12 weeks. Because of COVID precautions, the extended runoff cycle has consumed 19 weeks.

    Sen. John Cornyn (R) will learn the identity of his general election opponent tomorrow night, and the incumbent’s campaign has seemingly involved itself in the Democratic runoff. The Cornyn team released a poll at the end of last week that contained ballot test results for the Democratic runoff, a race that seemingly favored original first-place finisher M.J. Hegar, but closer examination leads one to believe that the Cornyn forces would prefer to run against state Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas).

    The TargetPoint survey identified Ms. Hegar as a 33-29 percent leader but points out that among those respondents who claim to have already voted, the two candidates were tied at 50 percent apiece. They further used the poll to identify Sen. West as the most “liberal” candidate in the race as an apparent way to influence Democratic voters that he is closer to them than Ms. Hegar.

    Snip.

    In the House, six districts host runoffs in seats that will result in a substantial incumbent victory this fall. Therefore, runoff winners in the 3rd (Rep. Van Taylor-R), 15th (Rep. Vicente Gonzalez-D), 16th (Rep. Veronica Escobar-D), 18th (Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee-D), 20th (Rep. Joaquin Castro-D), and 35th Districts (Rep. Lloyd Doggett-D) will become largely inconsequential in November.

    The 2nd District originally was advancing to a secondary election, but candidate Elisa Cardnell barely qualified for the Democratic runoff and decided to concede the race to attorney and former Beto O’Rourke advisor Sima Ladjevardian. Therefore, the latter woman became the party nominee against freshman Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) without having to face a second election. The congressman is a strong favorite for re-election, but Ms. Ladjevardian had already raised will over $1 million for just her primary election.

    The 10th District Democratic runoff features attorney Mike Siegel, who held Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Austin) to a surprisingly close finish in 2018. Mr. Siegel is favored to top physician Pritesh Gandhi who has raised and spent over $1.2 million through the June 24th pre-runoff financial disclosure report, which is about $400,000 more than Mr. Siegel.

    District 13 features runoffs on both sides, but it is the Republican race that will decide who succeeds retiring Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Clarendon/Amarillo) in the seat that gave President Trump his second strongest percentage (79.9 percent) in the entire country. Though finishing second in the primary election to lobbyist and former congressional aide Josh Winegarner, former White House physician and retired Navy Admiral Ronny Jackson, armed with President Trump’s vocal support, has now become the favorite. According to a Fabrizio Lee & Associates’ late June poll for an outside organization supporting the retired Admiral, Mr. Jackson leads 46-29 percent.

    Former Congressman Pete Sessions is attempting a political comeback after his defeat in 2018. Moving to his boyhood home of Waco to run for the open 17th District, Mr. Sessions placed first in the primary, well ahead of second-place finisher Renee Swann, a local healthcare company executive. Being hit for his Dallas roots in the district that stretches from north of Waco to Bryan/College Station, it remains to be seen how the former 11-term congressman fares in his new district.

    If he wins, the 17th will be the third distinct seat he will have represented in the Texas delegation. He was originally elected in the 5th CD in 1996, and then switched to the 32nd CD post-redistricting in 2004. Of the three elections he would ostensibly face in the current election cycle, most believed the runoff would be Mr. Sessions’ most difficult challenge.

    The open 22nd District brings us the conclusion to a hotly contested Republican runoff election between first-place finisher Troy Nehls, the Sheriff of Ft. Bend County, and multi-millionaire businesswoman Kathaleen Wall. The latter has been spending big money on Houston broadcast television to call into question Nehls’ record on the issue of human sex trafficking, which is a significant concern in the Houston metro area.

    With her issues and money, versus a veritable lack of campaign resources for Sheriff Nehls, Ms. Wall has closed the primary gap and pulled within the margin of polling error for tomorrow’s election. The winner faces Democratic nominee Sri Preston Kulkarni, who held retiring Rep. Pete Olson (R-Sugar Land) to a 51-46 percent victory in 2018.

    In the 23rd District that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, and is the only true swing district in Texas, retired Navy non-commissioned officer Tony Gonzales and homebuilder Raul Reyes battle for the Republican nomination tomorrow. Mr. Gonzales, with President Trump’s support, has the edge over Mr. Reyes, who did earn Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R) backing. The winner faces general election favorite Gina Ortiz Jones (D), who held retiring Rep. Will Hurd (R-San Antonio) to a scant 926 vote victory in 2018.

    Back in the DFW metroplex, Democrats will choose a nominee for the open 24th District. Retired Air Force Colonel Kim Olson was originally considered the favorite for the nomination, but it appears that former local school board member Candace Valenzuela has overtaken her with outside support from Hispanic and progressive left organizations. The winner challenges former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne (R) in what promises to be an interesting general election. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Coppell) is retiring after eight terms in federal office. Prior to his election to Congress, Mr. Marchant spent 18 years in the Texas House of Representatives.

    Finally, in the 31st District, Democrats will choose a candidate to oppose veteran Rep. John Carter (R-Round Rock). Physician Christine Mann and computer engineer Donna Imam ran close to each other in the primary, and the winner will face an uphill climb in the general election. Though 2020 Senate candidate M.J. Hegar held Mr. Carter to a 51-48 percent win two years ago, the congressman will be considered a much stronger re-election favorite this year.

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    Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    BidenWatch for July 13, 2020

    July 13th, 2020

    Biden drifts left, embraces the Green New Deal, and lifts his platform from Bernie Sanders. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • Joe Biden signs up for the Green New Deal. You know, if primary voters wanted a socialist takeover of the economy, they could have just voted for Bernie Sanders…
  • Speaking of which: “Joe Biden’s Unity Task Force recommendations copy and paste word-for-word from Bernie Sanders quite a bit.”
  • Even the Washington Post has noticed how far left Biden has drifted:

    Joe Biden is looking at building 500 million solar panels, slashing U.S. carbon emissions within 15 years, and rapidly expanding a government-sponsored health care plan. He wants to overhaul the way policing is conducted on American streets and the way success is measured in primary schools.

    Over the past week, the presumptive Democratic nominee has offered the biggest burst of policy proposals since he effectively won the nomination, including a plan to spend $700 billion on American products and research. It marks a significant move to the left from where Biden and his party were only recently — on everything from climate and guns to health care and policing — and reflects a fundamental shift in the political landscape.

    The new plans, which have come in speeches, interviews, and a 110-page policy document crafted with allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), provide a window into how Biden would govern, and they kick off a new phase in a campaign that until now has focused mostly on President Trump’s performance. As Biden releases more plans — including one on climate and clean energy investments this week — he appears to be drafting a blueprint for the biggest surge of government action in generations.

    “I think the compromise that they came up with, if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR,” Sanders, a democratic socialist who does not offer such assessments lightly, told MSNBC.

  • Biden wants to make Little Sisters of the Poor bend the knee:

    Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden issued a statement Wednesday evening in which he said he is “disappointed in today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision” in the case Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania.

    “I will restore the Obama-Biden policy that existed before the [2014 Supreme Court] Hobby Lobby ruling,” Biden said.

  • Biden wants to transform America:

    Barack Obama famously (infamously?) said that he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America. Thankfully, he was unable to completely do that. Now Obama’s senile Mini-Me, Joe Biden, is parroting his former boss and going on about “rebuilding” and “transforming” our beloved country.

    Snip.

    America is just fine, thank you. Warts and all, this 244-year-old experiment in freedom is — put mildly — freakin’ glorious. Every leftist who says America needs to be rebuilt or transformed is lying.

    What’s really disturbing is that Joe Biden is the most moderate of the Dems to emerge from that large primary field. If he’s going on about transformation then the center of American politics has moved too far to ever get it back to anything resembling “normal.”

    We’re fine here, Joe. We won’t be needing your help.

  • More on the same subject:

    Putting aside the fact that Biden almost certainly doesn’t have the capacity to consistently write his own tweets, one is left wondering exactly what he plans to transform “this nation” into. Given how much the nation has already been transformed over the last several months, with the continued tolerance of the destruction of cities and America’s history, the promise of some higher level of radicalism coming should worry everyone.

    Biden is not a moderate and never has been. The fact that he likely didn’t write the above tweet is perhaps worse than if he had. He’s surrounded by radicals, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to his actual campaign staff, some of whom are alumni of the Sanders and Obama campaigns.

    I’d go further and say that it’s not playing into Trump’s messaging but that it’s reality. Biden is telling us who he is and he has continuously done so. The idea that he’s a moderate is a myth perpetuated by people who want it to be true, i.e. voters who are not comfortable with the current cultural revolution but still want to vote for Biden. They are deluding themselves, believing that he’ll flip a switch when he’s president. He won’t and there’s absolutely no reason to believe he won’t govern exactly as he’s campaigning.

  • Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones: “I Am Black And I Am A Democrat. But ‘I Ain’t’ Voting For Joe Biden This November.”

    Since that day in May when I announced I would support Donald Trump for president, my motives have been questioned, my integrity assailed, even my intelligence challenged. That’s okay.

    I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I am also a black man, the son of a World War II veteran and a proud American.

    In recent weeks, there have been absurd calls to defund and disband police departments across the country by Democrats in response to the unjust murder of George Floyd. These are extreme calls that will only lead to more pain and suffering in our most vulnerable communities.

    As the former Chief Executive Officer of DeKalb County, Georgia, I’ve had to manage one of the largest police departments in the state. I’ve had the experience of dealing with police shootings and comforting the families of victims. But at the same time, I’ve also had the experience of losing two black police officers. I’ve had to comfort their families in the middle of the night and console their young children. I know firsthand when others are running away from chaos, police officers are running into the fight to protect and serve.

    President Trump was sickened by the death of George Floyd and fully committed to ensuring that he will not have died in vain. The president has taken a commonsense approach to heal our nation. President Trump made clear that he will protect all Americans, serve as an ally to peaceful protesters and always uphold law and order.

    But the protesters were determined to sow chaos and destruction, all in the name of racial equality. Listen, during my first legislative session in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1993, I filed the first bill in my career to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag. But I also understand the preservation of our history — the good and the bad. And still I bow to no one in my advocacy for the black community.

    But unlike other Washington politicians, this president actually backed up his words with actions. He signed an Executive Order on police reform — taking steps to build a better bridge between law enforcement men and women and their communities.

    The landmark Executive Order encourages police to implement best practices to protect the people they serve. It sets the highest professional standards for law enforcement officers, while promoting peace and equality for all Americans.

    Under the order, the Trump administration will now prioritize federal grants from the Department of Justice to police departments that meet these high standards. Additionally, the order pushes forward the creation of a national database of police misconduct. This database will root out bad cops and help create accountability between police agencies.

    Where were Joe Biden and the previous administration for 8 years in the White House on this issue? I’ll tell you. They were absent in unifying this country.

  • How the chaos Democrats have sown will end up biting them in November:

    The forces of anti-Trump hatred comprise not just Democratic aspirants to high office but also, and more significantly, the media (social and otherwise), the spoiled, pajama-boy Left, and—above all, perhaps—the entrenched administrative apparatus of government, the self-engorging bureaucracy of the state whose fundamental allegiance is to the principle of self-perpetuation.

    It is all of that which Donald Trump came to office to sweep clean, like Hercules confronting the Augean stables. The first time around the reaction was a compact of contempt and ridicule, but that was only because Trump could not win. The smartest people in the world—Bill Kristol, Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow—they all knew he couldn’t win. So they didn’t come together in a single caterwauling primal scream to stop him.

    This time they have. And since they control almost all the major megaphones, it can sometimes seem that everyone is against Donald Trump and no one is for him.

    It can seem that way, but of course it is not. And that is chiefly for two reasons. First, there are those 63 million voters—perhaps it will be 66 or 68 million this time. Voters whose voices you don’t hear in the pages of the New York Times and whose rigged Google searches and Facebook hot spots somehow leave out of account. They’re sitting at home watching their cities burn, watching monuments to Columbus, to Washington and Thomas Jefferson be defaced or toppled. They see that, and they hear a nonstop litany telling them how racist they are and how evil America is.

    And just about now, a great chasm is opening up. The choice, they see, is not so much between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is between the America they love—that Donald Trump celebrates—and the out-of-control forces of anti-American hatred that, though he does not understand them, Joe Biden manages to blink and nod and gibber around.

    Everything that is happening between now and November 3 is about November 3. But the fundamental choice is not really Donald Trump or Joe Biden. It is civilization and America on one side, anarchy and woke tyranny on the other. The Democrats thought they could ride the tiger to victory. Instead, they will be consumed by the monster they created but could not control.

  • Mike Huckabee on how those policies would hurt the economy:

    Employing the same pro-growth policies that turned the stagnant Obama-Biden economy into a record-setting dynamo in recent years, President Trump is orchestrating an unprecedented “V-shaped” recovery as our country emerges from pandemic-related lockdowns. The past two months have both seen blowout new records for job creation — 2.7 million new jobs in May, followed by an even more incredible 4.8 million new jobs in June.

    The recovery has been rapid, but our progress remains fragile, and America’s beleaguered workers and business owners could not withstand the strain of Biden’s new taxes and regulations.

    Biden’s proposal to halt all fracking would be particularly disastrous, both economically and geopolitically. Over the course of just four years, Biden’s fracking ban would destroy an estimated 19 million jobs and shave over $7 trillion from our national GDP.

    But Biden’s radical environmentalism gets even worse.

    For the first time in over half a century, America has become a net exporter of fossil fuels under President Trump, whose common-sense deregulatory agenda has allowed our country to become the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. This means our country is now less reliant on Middle Eastern dictators for its oil, and American consumers are paying less at the pump and on their energy bills.

    Joe Biden, however, wants to restore the sort of punitive regulations that were the centerpiece of the “war on coal” waged during the Obama-Biden administration.

    Economic growth and innovation would also be severely undercut in other ways by a Biden presidency. In 2018, the Commerce Department calculated that total regulatory costs were equivalent to approximately 10 percent of the entire national economy — an alarming statistic that President Trump has made it a priority to correct.

    As the most far-left of any Democratic presidential nominee in history, Biden’s platform is replete with proposals to increase the burden of bureaucracy even more.

  • “Joe Biden must release the results of his cognitive tests — voters need to know.” Good luck with that…
  • Does Jill Biden want to run things?

    I truly believe Jill Biden wants to be Edith Wilson 2.0. Woodrow Wilson’s wife basically ran the White House after his stroke in 1919. She only had to do that for two years. I’m pretty sure that Jill Biden would like at least an eight-year run at the gig.

    When Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep’s handlers first began letting him do videos from his quarantine basement, Jill was often sitting at his side, grinning like a proud mother whose idiot underachieving kid had just successfully recited the alphabet for the first time. It was, quite frankly, very creepy to watch.

    I’m still convinced that the overarching Democratic National Committee plan is to get Biden elected, whisk him back to the basement until Inauguration Day, then tell everyone that he’s had a medical situation of some sort shortly after that. Then his progressive VP can take over the job of running the country off a progressive cliff.

    I am also firmly convinced that Jill Biden has other plans.

    For reasons beyond my comprehension, Team Biden keeps releasing videos of this drooling moron. They are all painful to watch, and it seems at times to be a little cruel to mock him. He is, however, making a bid for becoming the most powerful man in the world. As long as he is running, Biden is fair game.

    Jill Biden knows that and she doesn’t care.

    The longer the Joe Biden Obvious Decline Circus is allowed to go on, the more I’m convinced that Jill Biden is a power-hungry madwoman who so desperately wants to be in the White House that she is willing to subject her husband to what has now become bipartisan ridicule.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Joe Biden presidency will bring disaster for the Supreme Court.”

    Progressive activists see Biden as an opportunity to secure the Supreme Court for the left over the next several decades. Some have even floated the idea of expanding the number of Supreme Court justices to “pack” it with liberals the next time a Democrat wins the White House. Biden has rejected that idea, but the enthusiasm it has from progressive activists says plenty about what the left wing of the party wants from him.

    Liberal organizations have seized upon the promise of Biden to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, urging him to consider someone like Leslie Abrams, the sister of Stacey Abrams, or liberal academic Michelle Alexander, who compared the nation of Israel to apartheid South Africa. Though Biden himself has not yet released his own shortlist of potential nominees, progressive activists who would wield immense power in his potential administration are already narrowing down the names.

    Progressive activists see Biden as an opportunity to secure the Supreme Court for the left over the next several decades. Some have even floated the idea of expanding the number of Supreme Court justices to “pack” it with liberals the next time a Democrat wins the White House. Biden has rejected that idea, but the enthusiasm it has from progressive activists says plenty about what the left wing of the party wants from him.

    We cannot afford to give Biden the opportunity to appoint new Supreme Court justices. With so many important cases decided along such narrow political lines, and with the “conservative majority” becoming increasingly fragile as Chief Justice John Roberts continues to drift leftward, the way to prevent a liberal takeover of the highest court in the land is to ensure that the next few vacancies are filled by reliably conservative judges.

  • Don Surber thinks Trump will win 37 states.

    Biden finished fifth in Iowa to Hillary and Obama in 2008. And Biden has not aged well in the intervening 12 years.

    In the past month, Democrats have made the same mistake they have made in every election they have lost since 1968. They turned their backs on patriotism.

    The liberal scorn of patriotism will once again backfire. Democrats are burning down their cities. Conrad Black sees this destruction as re-electing the president.

    He wrote, “This is some new form of farce noire, a nightmare of outright idiocy, part slapstick and part horror, playing on a gigantic stage. Fortunately, we know it has to end on November 3, but the audience will likely tire of it and bring down the curtain well before then. No society can tolerate this for long. The arsonists will not burn down society; the society will awaken and banish the arsonists.”

    There is an element of extortion in all this. Democrats are saying everything will return to normal only if we elect Biden.

    Otherwise…

    The attacks on the flag and the nation’s Founding Fathers (as well as Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) show an arrogance and tone-deafness. Americans still love their country. Be they the sons and daughters of slaves or slave owners or people who were neither, Americans are proud of their country and proud of their heritage.

    I said 37 states in January. I say 37 states in July because Democrats have done not one thing to win over Trump voters, who were enough in number to win 30 states and the presidency in 2016. Seven more Hillary states will flip. I mean, does anyone seriously believe Minnesotans will not switch to President Trump after the George Floyd riots?

  • Here’s a long, flattering portrait of Michigan Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin, who came in the semi-blue-wave of 2018. Ignore the fawning and the credence given the now-debunked “Russian bounty” scandal and read the part where she thinks Democrats are deluding themselves if they think 2020 is in the bag:

    “I don’t believe it,” Slotkin says matter of factly. “Listen, if anyone tells me they can accurately predict what major events are coming in the remainder of 2020, I’ll give them a thousand dollars. I mean, this has been the year of black swans. … I don’t for one minute think this [presidential] race is safe in anyone’s column. I’ve been literally begging people to ignore those polls. They are a snapshot in time. And if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we have no idea what’s coming next.”

    I stop Slotkin there. Is her gripe that these snapshots—the polling, both public and private, that shows Republicans bleeding support across the board—are accurate in the present, yet subject to so much volatility in the future as to be worthless? Or does she believe the snapshots themselves are inaccurate here and now?

    “I think they’re inaccurate,” she replies without hesitation. “Here’s the thing. When I started to run and I had to hire a pollster, I interviewed a bunch of different folks and I decided to do what we do sometimes at the Pentagon, which is to take a ‘bad cop’ approach to the interview. … It was five or six folks that I interviewed, and I said, ‘You got something wrong. You screwed up in 2016. What did you get wrong? And how are you going to fix it?”

    Only one pollster, Slotkin says, admitted that he got it wrong. That was the person—Al Quinlan of GQR, a large Washington-based firm—she hired.

    “He told me that they fundamentally undercounted the Trump vote; that the Trump voter is not a voter in every single election, that they come out for Trump, so they’re hard to count,” she explains. “On a survey, if someone says, ‘I’m not sure I’m going to vote,’ you don’t usually continue the conversation. And some of them didn’t have any desire to be on those poll calls; they didn’t have the 20 minutes to talk to somebody. They didn’t want to do it. And so, they were fundamentally undercounted.”

    Slotkin, ever the intel analyst—identifying trends, compiling a report, presenting a conclusion—tells me, with a high degree of confidence, “I believe that same thing is happening right now.”

  • “Biden wins Puerto Rico primary.”
  • Veepstakes: “The Biden VP Pick Who Would Satisfy Both Ilhan Omar and George Will. California Representative Karen Bass’s low-key manner and progressive credentials could strengthen Biden’s campaign when he needs it most.”
  • Veepstakes: Profile of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Because being less strident while letting the city you lead burn less than Minneapolis is evidently a qualification.
  • “Culture…culture…culture…”

  • Wrong again, Joe:

  • Joe Biden: Steady and Pathetic:

  • Pandering to the hard left again:

  • Reminder:

  • “To Save Time, The Babylon Bee Will Now Just Republish Everything Biden Says Verbatim.”

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    How to Skew a Poll: Texas 2020 Edition

    July 12th, 2020

    Another Texas poll, another skewed sample.

    This is the poll that purports to show Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by five points and Senator John Cornyn under 50% against either M.J. Hegar or Royce West.

    The nice thing about this Dallas Morning News/UT Tyler poll is that it tells you how the poll weighting is skewed right up front:

    Democrat 39%
    Republican 42%

    So it oversamples Democrats by at least 7% compared to the 2016 Presidential election. I assume that they’re using Beto O’Rourke’s narrow loss in a semi-blue-wave year against Ted Cruz in the 2018 U.S. Senate race as the baseline, not Lupe Valdez’s twelve point pasting by Greg Abbott in the Governor’s race. Neither Hegar are West are going to be awash in money and fawning media coverage the way O’Rourke was.

    Presidential year voter turnout has distinctly different patterns than off-year election turnout. The 2020 general election is more likely to resemble the 2016 election, when Trump beat Clinton by nine points in Texas, than the 2018 election.

    Even money says that the next Texas Tribune and Texas Lyceum polls you see will be just as skewed.

    There are plenty of things to worry about in November. Trump and Cornyn losing Texas should not be among them.

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