Since I didn’t comment on the “Let’s tongue North Korea’s brutal dictator’s brutal sister” incident, here’s Greg Gutfeld doing it for me:
Greg Gutfeld Reviews the Winter Olympics
February 20th, 2018Trump Derangement Syndrome: Max Boot Edition
February 19th, 2018Once again we have a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that’s beyond parody, this time from “conservative” Max Boot:
Imagine if, after 9/11, the president saw the attack as a political embarrassment to be minimized rather than as a national security threat to be combated. That’s roughly where we stand after the 2nd-worst foreign attack on America in recent decades. Me: https://t.co/MatJYEJO9g
— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) February 19, 2018
If you find yourselves comparing a terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people with thirteen trolls stirring up trouble online, maybe it’s time to step away from the Internet…
Texas Democratic State House Candidate Uses Picture of William Shatner in Campaign Flyer; Shatner Not Pleased
February 18th, 2018Brandy K. Chambers, a Democratic candidate for Texas House District 112, currently held by Republican incumbent Angie Chen Button, used a picture of her with William Shatner taken at a convention in a campaign flyer.
Shatner was not pleased.
Hey @winemind17 using a convention picture in a political ad is NOT ALLOWED‼️ That implies endorsement which never will happen. Please remove my photo and destroy all copies of whatever this is immediately. Am I clear? 🙄 @TX_Ethics https://t.co/TVdAtOKJUU
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 17, 2018
@KenPaxtonTX does the @TXAG look into political brochures that use a person’s image as implied endorsements without permission? This person took a convention photo with me & is now using it in her campaign ads as if I know her & endorsing her. I never gave permission for its use. pic.twitter.com/j4nivxjIeI
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 17, 2018
Please don’t play stupid. It’s beneath you and an insult to your possible future constituents. I want the photo removed immediately and to attempt to shame me: https://t.co/u3xvRlkwEJ is really low. Are you going to remove my image? https://t.co/qxcXCa4lCm
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 17, 2018
Did Chambers then apologize and promise to take it down? After all, that would be the logical, simple, respectful thing to do.
Of course she didn’t.
And I am sincerely sorry you don't stand for women's rights and education.
— BKC (@winemind17) February 17, 2018
DID YOU READ THE FREAKING PIECE???????????????? I DID NOT MISREPRESENT ANYTHING.
— BKC (@winemind17) February 17, 2018
All other things being equal, it’s best not to use celebrity pictures in campaign literature unless they’ve, you know, actually endorsed you…
Why You Can’t Have A Debate on Gun Rights With Liberals
February 17th, 2018Anytime there’s a shooting incident in the U.S., liberals reenact their sacred knee-jerk kabuki theater:
Etc.
There can be no honest debate about gun control because the left’s real goal (expressed every time a shooting happens) is complete civilian disarmament.
Now some tweets:
Republicans said "Okay lets talk about bump stocks.." and then Democrats said "Great! Oh and also suppressors and magazines" proving the right's entire point about the gun control debate. That's what killed it. https://t.co/GettorB1XI
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) February 15, 2018
— Rhett Hawk (@Linington1971) February 15, 2018
So, in closing, show me the specific steps / regulations that would prevent the majority of these shootings and I’ll listen.
But the second you come up at me with bogus stats, the conversation is over.
— RBe (@RBPundit) February 15, 2018
So media running with the "Trump caused this shooting because of the obama rule regarding mentally-ill and guns" are now going to explain if a 19 year old kid was collecting social security benefits, right?
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) February 15, 2018
Hear me out on this people – all we need to do is issue 70 or 80 million search warrants, hire 2-3 million fanatically anti-gun SWAT teams with tanks, and I guess some lunch boxes from Jimmy John'shttps://t.co/RjZYlImALf
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 17, 2018
And those liberal who boldly declare “If complete civilian disarmament were passed, you gun owners would have to give up or the cops/troops would kill you!”, I suggest you read this.
The Meaning of Patty Hearst
February 15th, 2018It’s one of those “too much to write about and not enough time to do it” weeks. So instead of a scanty Clinton Corruption update, here instead is an interesting piece on the meaning of Patty Hearst. It covers a lot of the social context for those those who were not around (or too young at the time) to appreciate.
The thing you have to understand about Patty Hearst, the reason that her fantastically sui generis story resonated so deeply within so many millions of ordinary American households, is that back then a lot of girls like her were disappearing. They were not California publishing heiresses, certainly; nor was the agency of their disappearance abduction at gunpoint. But disappear they did. One moment their lives could be summed up in a series of photographs not so different from the ones flashed on the nightly news over and over again: Patty in a first-communion dress at age 8; smiling with her gaggle of glossy-haired sisters as a young adolescent; sitting quietly—dreamily, inwardly—on the floor beside her mother’s chair as a teenager, staring off into the mists of girl land. And the next moment—gone.
One day my older sister—the smart and dutiful one, the daughter everyone had placed their bets on—was helping my mother pin McCall’s patterns to paisley linen, and the next she had crammed a sleeping bag and a passport into a rucksack and made her way to San Francisco International Airport with just enough money for a Eurail Pass, and although she did come back from Europe, she never really came back home. One of my friends had a glamorous older sister who fed the seals at Fairyland—she was long-legged and pretty, and she’d stand in her red miniskirt on a platform, tossing the fish—but then something happened; she went to live down in the flats, and her mother didn’t want to see her anymore. There were boyfriends who brazenly took girls out of their houses without chatting up the fathers; there were blue jeans (it is hard to convey the chagrin that middle-class mothers once felt at seeing their daughters in the loathed and stigmatized garment of their own Depression-era childhoods, instead of skirts and ironed dresses and lightweight cardigans). And most of all, underneath it all, there was the line connecting the dots of the Eurail Passes and the screaming matches and even the blue jeans: sex.
Also this:
“The SLA was probably the first band of revolutionaries to marry a commitment to radical feminism with the use of systematic rape as a means of recruitment.”
Few people today realize just how violent American leftwing radicals like the SLA and the Weathermen were in the late 60s and early 70s…
(Headline fixed)
U.S. Blows Up Russian Tank in Syria
February 14th, 2018Now the question is whether it was a Russian tank or a Russian tank:
An American drone destroyed a Russian-made T-72 battle tank operating in eastern Syria on Saturday, according to the U.S. military’s command unit responsible for forces in the Middle East — which added the strike was in “self defense.”
No U.S or allied troops were hurt in the incident, but three people inside the tank were killed by a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, a defense official told Fox News on Tuesday.
The strike was the second by the U.S. against “pro-regime” forces since Wednesday, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command.
The U.S. airstrike took place the same day an Iranian drone was shot down over Israel on Saturday, prompting a counter-attack by the Israeli Air Force into Syria against Iranian and regime targets. An Israeli F-16 was shot down during that mission, and it crash landed inside Israeli territory.
The T-72 tank came from the “same hostile forces” which attacked U.S. special operations troops and allied Syrian fighters last Wednesday in eastern Syria, officials said.
“The tank had been maneuvering with coordinated indirect fire on a defensive position occupied by Syrian Democratic Forces and Coalition advisers,” U.S. Central Command said in the statement. “The defensive position was within effective range of the tank’s weapon system. Coalition officials maintained regular contact with Russian counterparts via established de-confliction lines to avoid misperceptions and miscalculations that could endanger each other’s forces.”
The latest U.S. airstrike came less than a week after a massive strike killed 100 “pro-regime” forces, including what defense officials told Fox News were Russian contractors.
That suggests it was a Russian-made tank, rather than a Russian army tank. The T-72 was (and probably still is) used extensively by both the Iraqi and Syrian army, and the Islamic State captured some.
There were reports of Russian ground troops in Syria back in 2015, but I don’t see many reference to Russian regulars (as opposed to special forces) in combat in Syria.
The strike appears to have occurred near Khusham, east of Deir ez-Zor, indicated by the blue circles.
It seems unlikely that Russian army troops attacked American troops and got their asses kicked. But if that did happen, they’ll think twice before trying it again…
Israel Hits Multiple Targets in Syria
February 13th, 2018Here’s a story you may have missed (I certainly did) over the weekend.
In summary:
The New York Times has a piece up discussing the situation that runs the gamut from “commonplace” to “tendentious” to “wrong.” In particular, the assertion that Israel can’t prevent Iran from establishing a conventional force presence in Syria is probably wrong; I suspect Israel can more easily pay for and replace expended material than Iran can, especially with the latter beset by extended domestic unrest. Even more unsupported is the assertion that Russia must “pick a side” in the conflict. I’m pretty sure the Russians have no desire to tangle militarily with another highly-trained nuclear power in a peripheral theater of conflict in a move that would doubtlessly provoke an American response, and Assad has no leverage by which to compel Russia to do any more for him than they’re already doing against the remnants of the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic State. “Shoot down some Israeli planes, or I won’t let you fight for me anymore!”
Iran is establishing bases in Syria for essentially irrational dick-measuring reasons, i.e. to be able to say it’s doing more to oppose “the Zionist Entity” than any other country in the Muslim ummah, as well as support Hezbollah and Assad’s Syria, two of it’s most important clients/allies in the Shia/Sunni civil war.
Iran would not be so bold had it’s sugar daddy Obama not lifted sanctions and showered it with cash for a meaningless agreement. The world will be living with the baleful consequences of the Obama administration’s feckless policies for a long time to come.
Democrats Have Scam PACs Too
February 11th, 2018You may remember my exposes of Dan Backer’s wide array of scam PACs, where money is raised under false pretenses, the vast majority of which disappears into the pockets of Mr. Backer and his associates.
It may warm the cockles of your heart to learn that liberals have scam PACs, too:
Cash for Coalition Against Trump Going Into Consultants’ Pockets Instead
As Trump ran for president, the group raised money promising to stop him—while dedicating more than 90 percent of its expenditures to paying its own members.
Omar Siddiqui couldn’t make it to an August fundraiser in Beverly Hills for the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. But he ponied up the $2,000 ticket price after the group’s senior adviser, Scott Dworkin, sent him a personal invitation.
Months later, Siddiqui, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), was surprised to discover his money—or three of every four dollars of it—had gone to the coffers of consultants and lawyers the group leaned on to fight a libel suit, rather than pushing back against the president.
Snip.
The Democratic Coalition, one of the many new progressive-minded organizations to bloom in the age of anti-Trump fervor, brought in nearly half a million dollars last year. Its donors include Siddiqui, a pair of Hollywood television producers, a former Real Housewife of Miami, and a member of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. The vast majority of its funds, however, have come from people whose names don’t make it into Federal Election Commission disclosures: the small, “unitemized” donors who give $200 or less.
It’s what the group has done with its money—not how much it has brought in—that has raised eyebrows among other operatives.
The Democratic Coalition paid more than half of the money it raised last year to its employees or their consulting firms, according to Federal Election Commission records. Dworkin’s Bulldog Finance Group was the chief beneficiary, drawing more than $130,000 from The Democratic Coalition.
The breakdown in 2016, when the Democratic Coalition declared its goal was “making sure that Donald Trump never became President,” was even starker. That year, Dworkin and other staff members received more than 90 percent of all of the Democratic Coalition’s expenditures, either personally or through a consulting company, according to FEC records.
Mr. Dworkin appears to be treating the “resistance” the same way Backer treated the Tea Party…