This is slightly oldish news. If you follow this blog, you know that former California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee was was sentenced to five years of prison after pleading guilty to one count of racketeering. However, until today I was not aware where he ended up doing his time, assuming he would be sent to one of the many federal prisons in California.
Nope. Actually ended up at FCI Ft. Worth, a low-security prison (maybe that was part of his plea agreement).
Tory Prime Minister David Cameron is resigning. “Mr Cameron announced shortly after 08:15 BST that he had informed the Queen of his decision to remain in place for the short term and to then hand over to a new prime minister by the time of the Conservative conference in October.” Current favorite to replace Cameron is pro-Leave MP Boris Johnson.
The Pound Sterling is at its lowest exchange rate in 30 years.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and London voted heavily to stay in the EU, while Leave won pretty much everywhere else, including Wales. Now there’s talk of a second Scottish Independence referendum.
I would say the panic selling is largely unwarranted; there’s no reason that UK can’t negotiate an orderly exit from the EU and continue to participate in the European Economic Area the way that Norway and Switzerland do now. There was talk before the Brexit vote that the EU wouldn’t go along with this out of spite, but if the endless Greece crisis has shown, Eurocrats negotiate their non-negotiable demands all the time, and I doubt even Angela Merkel is willing to put Europe through a deep recession (which is to say, deeper even than the current one the Euro seems to have engendered in perpetuity) just to “teach the UK a lesson.”
No time to do instant-analysis tonight, but markets will undoubtedly be in panic-rollercoaster mode tomorrow. This will pass, but there’s a real risk this is the event that pishes the world into the cyclical recession that’s been looming for years now. Let’s hope not.
Early tidings were that “Remain” was polling ahead, enough so that even UKIP head Nigel Farage said it looked likely that Remain would pull out a win. But the “Leave” vote seems to be outperforming in areas where “Remain” was expected to be strong, and I’m not seeing any areas where the reverse is true.
Looks like its going to be a long night for global market watchers…
Update: Leave is currently up by about 800,000 votes. Including Wales which is, I think, a significant surprise.
This week’s roundup of Clinton Corruption is being headlined by Guccifer 2.0 revelations. The stuff released so far is interesting, but (and I say this as someone who thinks Hillary Clinton should be in prison) pretty weak sauce.
Oh sure, it’s nice to have documented proof that the DNC and the media were out to support Clinton and to screw Bernie Sanders, but everyone already knew that.
There are dozens of Clinton shoes (especially from Hillary’s own email server and the Clinton Foundation) still to drop…
Rush Limbaugh thinks that Donald Trump’s speech slamming Clinton’s corruption was effective. “She is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”
Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.
She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.
Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public.
Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.
They totally own her, and that will never change.
Clinton’s incompetence caused the State Department to turn off email protection for State systems to accommodate her. Interestingly, the sentence “They were trying urgently to resolve an apparent conflict between the server’s built-in email delivery features with a version of “ScanMail for Exchange” security software from Trend Micro Inc. that had been installed on her server.” has been removed from the original AP story…
Over the weekend, I stopped to buy gas at a Buc-ee’s in Bastrop, Texas, and was greeted by (in addition to a man dressed as a giant aquatic rodent) an A-frame sign advertising Buc-ee’s version of the minimum wage: cashiers, $12 to $14 an hour; food-service and car-wash help, $13 to $15 an hour; team leaders, $14 to $17 an hour; assistant, $17 an hour and up. Each job came with three weeks paid time off each year, which employees are welcome to use, roll over, or exchange for cash. If you want 40 hours a week, there’s 40 hours a week to be had; if you want more than 40 hours a week, that can happen, too.
Everyone’s needs vary, of course, and I am not among those who believe that a two-income household is ideal for every situation. But I also believe that you can raise a family decently on $70,000 a year in Bastrop, where you can buy a perfectly serviceable house for less than $100,000 and where a nice, new one keeps you under the usual 2.5-times-your-income rule. Assuming a couple of raises and a bit of overtime, a married couple both working at a gas station could bring home something close to a six-figure income between them.
He mentions the kolaches but not the fudge. He also omits something the non-Texan audience wouldn’t be aware of, namely of just how large Buc-ee’s is; the Bastrop location is bigger than most supermarkets…
Imagine that there’s a thoughtful, in-depth introduction here that explains the pros and cons of the Leave and Stay positions.
You’ll have to imagine it, because I have no time to write it and the vote’s tomorrow. Instead, have a quick-and-dirty shotgun scatter of Brexit links.
The economic case for Brexit. “The European project is controlled by statists and the one good thing it provides (free trade between members) is easily overwhelmed by the negative things it imposes (protectionism against outsiders, tax harmonization, horrible agriculture subsidies, bad fisheries policy, etc).” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The European Union’s bureaucracy and paper-parliament were set up to be as insulated as possible from the concerns of actual voters. Representatives to the European Parliament are selected by party elites as a kind of highbrow patronage. They invariably defer to the permanent bureaucracy, which acts like a transnational cartel, one that happens to be composed of governments. As Daniel Hannan, the rare Euroskeptic skunk to infiltrate the garden party that is the EU parliament, put it, “faced with a choice between democracy and supra-nationalism, the EU will always choose supra-nationalism.”
Elites ignore the populist revolt against them at their peril.
“A substantial portion of the Leave campaign views the referendum as a rigged process and the EU as conspiring behind the backs of the British people to launch a new round of integration.”
Here’s a debate between UK Tory PM David Cameron and UKIP head Nigel Farage on the subject:
Finally, here’s Brexit: The Movie, a 71 minute film that lays out the case for the UK leaving the EU. Haven’t watched any but a tiny bit of either of these videos, but offer them up here as a public service.
This is more like “this last two months in Jihad,” it’s been so long since I did an update. But there’s a whole host of Orlando updates, and a lot of other jihad-related news, so let’s dig in.
And of course, this is after the Obama Administration’s FBI initially tried to release a censored transcript of Omar Mateen’s 911 call removing all mention of the Islamic State.
“The Obama administration and the liberal media have decided that when a radical Islamic terrorist kills Americans, the one thing the narrative cannot be about is radical Islamic terrorism….In fact, the reason that the administration and the media are so intent on downplaying the role of Islam is because they are afraid that if they told the truth, people might vote Republican in November.”
Speech by Milo Yiannopoulos at University of Central Florida in Orlando cancelled because police couldn’t guarantee his safety. One wonders if police in Orlando are capable of protecting anyone at all…
From here on down it’s mostly old news, but maybe you didn’t read it the first time around.
Two month old Mark Steyn column on Germany’s cowardice in prosecuting that comedian who made fun of Turkey’s scumbag Islamist president? Yeah, because it’s still worth reading if you haven’t already.
Here’s a lesson in caution when buying Chinese-made goods in the global marketplace.
When it comes to the clothes I wear I’m both particular and cheap. I only wear 100% cotton, because Polyester and other artificial materials irritate my skin. I keep hearing that the new “polyfine” materials feel better, but every time I try to put on a poly/cotton shirt, I instantly go “Nope!” and take it off.
Since I live in Austin (and work in high tech, where I can get away with it), I tend to wear cargo shorts in the spring, summer and fall. I used to buy them at Academy, but they haven’t had any 100% cotton cargo shorts in black the last few times I dropped by.
So I did what everyone does when they can’t buy something locally: I bought from Amazon.
So I ordered them, and a few weeks later I get them shipped straight from China. Upon arrival, I see these tags:
(Note that nowhere on the Amazon page did it list “Gaok and Congs” as the manufacturer.) And this is the only material label inside the shorts:
I can’t read Chinese, but I had a firm suspicion what 聚酯纤维 meant in English, and an Internet search confirmed my suspicions. What Amazon sold as “100% cotton” were actually 10% polyester fiber.
There’s always been a bit of caveat emptor when buying goods manufactured abroad, but one of the roles of traditional middle men was verifying the quality and content of goods before accepting them for sale. Amazon’s business model effectively eliminates that quality control role, letting consumers buy directly from global suppliers. This saves money, but frequently Chinese suppliers are willing to forgo such niceties as telling the truth about their products…
“Why it’s called a ‘modern sporting rifle‘ and not an ‘assault weapon.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal ‘betters’ who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.”)
Aside: Is the Washington Examiner paying Ashe Schow enough? She’s like some indefatigable writing machine…
“Right now the debate seems choked with people who don’t know, are proud of not knowing, and think you’re a redneck gun-nut asshole if you want them to know because they feel very strongly about this.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
No charges for officer Brad Miller. He’s the one who shot the “unarmed teen” who had driving his Jeep through a plate glass window and was in the process of vandalizing cars.
And here’s a police shooting where the use of lethal force was clearly justified.
JFK and LSD. Meh. It’s not that I think Kennedy wouldn’t have dropped acid given a chance, but Timothy Leary was basically a con man, and we already know that Nina Burleigh is irrational.
Wow, believe it or not, still another reason to never visit Oklahoma. “I’m going to need your driver’s license and all the money on your prepaid debit cards.”
Your auditor finds huge cost discrepancies in Houston ISD construction costs. Does HISD: A.) Call in an outside auditor, B.) Launch a criminal investigation or C.) Suspend the auditor who found the problems?
