LinkSwarm for July 30, 2021

July 30th, 2021

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! It’s seems less that I “finish” these than I abandon them…


  • Flu Manchu deaths hit zero in Sweden. Seems like “protect the elderly and go for herd immunity” was a much better strategy than “lock everything down, throw the economy into a steep recession, throw millions out of work, practice ineffective masking theater and let antifa/#BlackLivesMatter burn everything down so the Democratic Media Complex can drag Biden’s ambulatory corpse across the finish line in November.” Who’d of thunk it?
  • “Dem says party will lose House unless filibuster is squashed to pass election bill.” Dems: How can we win if you won’t let us cheat?
  • Supreme Court upholds Arizona’s voting integrity laws. Naturally, Democrats freak out…
  • Also in the courts, a defeat for Biden’s racist reparations policy.
  • Did Republicans surrender on pork-laden infrastructure bill? Sure seems that way. You can brag about how small the shit sandwich you’re eating is compared to the much larger one they wanted to shove down your throat, but it’s still a shit sandwich. Write your senators to express opposition to any infrastructure bill.
  • “North Carolina Congressman Proposes to Kill 2,378 Pet Projects in New Budget.” Good. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of corruption:

    The brother of one of President Joe Biden’s closest advisors lobbied members of the National Security Council for General Motors in the second quarter, according to a new disclosure report reviewed by CNBC.

    The report shows that Jeff Ricchetti, brother of White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, engaged with the NSC for the car-making giant on “issues related to China.” The company paid Ricchetti $60,000 last quarter for his lobbying services.

  • Gavin Newsom just might lose the California recall. How bad do you have to suck to lose a recall election in a one-party state? The answer is “Gavin Newsom bad.”
  • He’s also trying to ban fracking.
  • By a 9-1 margin, Detroit residents are more concerned with controlling crime than police reform:

    By an overwhelming 9-1, they would feel safer with more cops on the street, not fewer. Though one-third complain that Detroit police use force when it isn’t necessary – and Black men report high rates of racial profiling – those surveyed reject by 3-1 the slogan of some progressives to “defund the police.”

    “It’s scary sitting in the house, and when you go outside to the gas station or the store, it’s possible someone will be shooting right next to you,” said Charlita Bell, 41, a lifelong Detroit resident who was among those called in the poll. Last year, when her car was hit by stray bullets during a shopping trip, she hurried home rather than wait for the police for fear the shooter might return.

  • Things that make you go “Hmmmm“: “Why Are Soros And Gates Buying UK COVID Testing Company?”
  • France Warned US in 2015 About China’s Wuhan Lab“:

    In 2015, French intelligence officials warned the U.S. State Department and their own foreign ministry that China was cutting back on agreed collaboration at the lab, former State Department official David Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    By 2017, the French “were kicked out” of the lab and cooperation ceased, leading French officials to warn the State Department that they had grave concerns as to Chinese motivations, according to Asher.

  • 90% of the illegal aliens let in by the Biden Administration don’t report to ICE as required by law. This is my shocked face. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals.”
  • “Liz Cheney Is The Most Unpopular Republican In The Country.” To quote the nameless sage: Duh!
  • Connecticut Democrat arrested for committing that voting fraud that doesn’t exist.

    Bridgeport Councilman Michael DeFilippo has been indicted by a federal grand jury on multiple election fraud charges.

    DeFilippo, 35, a Democrat who represents Bridgeport’s 133rd District and has been a city councilman since 2018, is accused of conspiring to “interfere with and obstruct Bridgeport citizens’ right to vote by falsifying his tenants’ voter registration applications and absentee ballots applications, then stealing tenants’ absentee ballots and forging their signatures in order to fraudulently vote for him,” according to Acting U.S. Attorney Leonard C. Boyle.

    (Hat tip: CTIronman.)

  • “Antifa celebrates as Washington State police officer shot in the head and killed.” (Hat tip: Ian Miles Cheong.)
  • Despite soaring crime rates, left wing idiots on the Minneapolis City Council still want to defund the police. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Who is behind the defunding push? You know who.

    Billionaire financier George Soros directed $1 million to a left-wing group that seeks to cut funding to police departments around the country, according to federal records.

    Soros sent the funds to the Color of Change PAC on May 14, the Washington Free Beacon reported on July 22, citing Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. The contribution was the largest political contribution made by Soros during the 2021 election cycle.

    Color of Change, which describes itself as a racial justice group, has frequently called for the defunding of police departments across the United States, including leading an online campaign to slash funding following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

  • Man threatens to rape, kill woman through her Ring doorbell camera.
  • Speaking of doorbell cameras: Justice is served:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Also speaking of instant justice, Texas style: Everybody must get stoned.
  • MyPillow employee beheaded in Shakopee, Minnesota. Suspect is in custody. “They say Alexis Saborit is also facing previous charges of property damage, arson, and obstruction. The presiding judge, Richard C. Perkins, allegedly ignored claims of mental illness brought forward to the court and [Saborit] was somehow released back into the public.”
  • Joe Biden’s own laws don’t apply to Hunter:

  • Texas Governor Greg Abbott finally preempts localities from imposing capacity restrictions. Better late than never…
  • Sucky cable news channels continue to suck:

  • Dust storm envelops Phoenix.
  • Jackie Mason, RIP. Also one from Dwight.
  • Speaking of Dwight obits, Snort Snodgrass, acclaimed fighter pilot.
  • Scarlett Johansson sues Disney, “alleging that her contract was breached when Black Widow was released on Disney+.”

    Image totally for illustrative purposes.

  • The British definition of happiness is a bit different than ours…
  • Some Mao Tze Lung memes:

  • “Hunter Biden’s Polar Bear Standing by a White Rock in a Blizzard sells for $10 million to unknown buyer.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Saw meets the Lockpicking Lawyer.
  • Maniac MANiac…

  • Austin Pays $10,000 A Day To Indoctrinate APD In Critical Race Theory, Demands Officers Sign “Contract” Before Even Taking Class

    July 29th, 2021

    Austin is paying a consultant $10,000 a day to indoctrinate police in Critical Race Theory under the name of “Groundwater Analysis”:

    The person they contracted with specializes in teaching Critical Race Theory. “Systemic racism,” “equity,” the whole nine yards.

    But wait. It gets worse.

    Attendees are required to agree to a “contract” stating that attendees must agree to certain conditions before taking the class, including:

  • Not taking notes
  • Not to talk about the class outside the class (“Vega rule”)
  • They must agree that the United States, Texas, Austin and APD are institutionally racist.
  • So before even taking the class, student are required to agree with the racist tenets of hard left Critical Race Theory.

    That’s a Soviet May Day parade of red flags, and probably illegal under Texas law, both due to being signed under duress and because there is no “mutual consideration” between the two parties. (Also note how the facilitator made sure that no lawyers were in attendance before offering up this “contract.”)

    Requiring APD officers to attend such a course, and agree to such terms a priori, is both unamerican and probably illegal.

    Democratic Megadonor Ed Buck Convicted Of All Charges

    July 28th, 2021

    Democratic Party megadonor Ed Buck, the perverted creep who lured young black men to his home to administer frequently fatal methamphetamine overdoses to them, has been convicted of all nine charges:

    Ed Buck, a longtime fixture of West Hollywood politics, was convicted Tuesday of charges that he supplied the methamphetamine that killed two men during “party-and-play” encounters at his apartment.

    After about four hours of deliberations, the jury found Buck guilty of every charge in a nine-count indictment that also accused him of maintaining a drug den, distributing methamphetamine and enticement to cross state lines to engage in prostitution.

    Buck, 66, could spend the rest of his life in prison. The convictions for supplying the meth that resulted in death each carry a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

    The verdict concluded a two-week trial that featured harrowing testimony by Black men hired by Buck, who is white, to show off their bodies in underwear and get high on crystal meth and the party drug GHB. Excerpts from Buck’s hundreds of graphic videos and photos of the drugs-and-sex sessions were played at the trial.

    Buck’s obsessive pursuit of his dangerous fetish led to the overdose deaths of two Black men in his apartment: Gemmel Moore, 26, in July 2017, and Timothy Dean, 55, in January 2019.

    It was only in September 2019, after a third Black man nearly died of an overdose, that Buck was arrested — a delay that fueled angry protests by activists who accused law enforcement officials of failing to aggressively investigate a politically influential white man. Buck, a onetime candidate for West Hollywood’s City Council, made more than $500,000 in campaign donations over the last couple of decades, nearly all of it to Democrats.

    Because there were interstate drug distribution and prostitution aspects to the Buck case, Buck caught federal charges:

    A federal grand jury today returned a superseding indictment charging Edward Buck with four additional felonies, including that he allegedly enticed victims – including a man who died at his West Hollywood apartment after he administered drugs to him – to travel interstate to engage in prostitution.

    Buck, 65, was arrested in September 2019 after being charged in United States District Court with providing methamphetamine to a man who died after receiving the drug intravenously. Since that time, federal authorities have continued to investigate Buck for additional crimes.

    The four additional counts charged today – bringing the total number of charges in this case to nine counts – include one count alleging that Buck knowingly enticed 26-year-old Gemmel Moore to travel to the Los Angeles area to engage in prostitution. Buck allegedly provided methamphetamine to Moore, who overdosed on the drug and died on July 27, 2017.

    Buck also is charged with another count of enticing another man to travel with the intent of engaging in prostitution.

    The superseding indictment also charges Buck with one count of knowingly and intentionally distributing methamphetamine, and one count of using his residence for the purpose of distributing narcotics such as methamphetamine, and the sedatives gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and clonazepam.

    Last year, a federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment charging that Buck “engaged in a pattern of soliciting men to consume drugs that Buck provided and perform sexual acts at Buck’s apartment,” which is a practice described as “party and play.” Buck allegedly solicited victims on social media platforms, including a gay dating website, and used a recruiter to scout and proposition men.

    Once the men were at his apartment, Buck allegedly prepared syringes containing methamphetamine, sometimes personally injecting the victims with or without their consent, according to the indictment. Buck also allegedly injected victims with more narcotics than they expected and sometimes injected victims while they were unconscious.

    Another victim, Timothy Dean also suffered a fatal overdose in Buck’s apartment, on January 7, 2019, the indictment alleges.

    For years Ed Buck was protected because of the campaign donations he doled out to Democratic politicians:

    West Hollywood politics has a glimmering rainbow surface, but the authentic underlying powers are real estate interests. The City Council controls the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development projects, a fact reflected in their campaign contributions. “Developers don’t drop tens of thousands of dollars in West Hollywood because they like the City’s position on gay marriage, says former West Hollywood Mayor Steve Martin.

    With a huge war chest supporting them, a small handful of politicians reduced the government of West Hollywood to a game of musical chairs. John Duran, John D`Amico, John Heilman, Jeffrey Prang, and Abbe Land would bounce back and forth between the Mayor’s Office and City Council for decades, winning eighteen out of the last twenty-one mayoral elections between them.

    Ed Buck played a variety of supporting roles in the political machinery, buoying the chosen few.

    D’Amico’s political career was launched on the back of Buck’s support, winning a seat on City Council after marching through West Hollywood with Buck promoting his “Fur Free WeHo” campaign. Buck’s donations and connections to other major donors, including billionaire Gary Michelson, brought tens of thousands of dollars to Buck’s friends on City Council through multiple entities sharing the name ANIMAL PAC.

    Buck’s money also bought him a position on the Steering Committee of the Stonewall Democratic Club, the kingmaker of West Hollywood politics. Buck used his position on the Steering Committee to influence Stonewall’s secretive endorsement process, one “designed to protect incumbents and well-financed, well-connected candidates,” says a former Steering Committee member. Stonewall rank and file must have wondered why the LGBTQ group was promoting candidates for County Tax Assessor and Board of Equalization. Buck was so useful, Abbe Land would open City Council meetings by calling him to recite the pledge of allegiance.

    He also appeared to be a lot of local Democratic politicians’ favorite conduit to evade campaign finance limits:

    Officially retired since his early thirties, Buck would not have had the money to sustain his prolific spending habits relating to drugs, escorts, and politics. His biggest payday was in the 1980s when he flipped his friend’s business, Gopher Courier, to profit just over a million dollars, after which he lost money investing into pay-phones and a restaurant.

    After moving to West Hollywood, Buck was suspiciously cash-rich and asset poor, driving a wreck of a car and living in a rent-controlled apartment. Journalists paint Buck as a wealthy social climber, but his finances and lifestyle suggest he was a dirty political operative.

    Data from California’s political contribution records is highly truncated, but campaign finance rules create patterns that highlight alliances.

    One can skirt contribution limits and obscure contribution origins by breaking up large donations into smaller payments and passing them through family members and political allies, so I looked for donors that matched Buck’s donations.

    He donated varying amounts to plenty of politicians and causes, but there were consistent primary beneficiaries such as Jeffrey Prang, John Duran, Scott Svonkin, Honesty PAC, and of course, his ANIMAL PACs. The highly incestuous top donors who also supported Prang, Duran, Svonkin, and Buck’s PACs were real estate interests, chief among them being Excel Property Management Services managed by CEO Arman Gabay. Arman Gabay and his company funded Jeffrey Prang’s successful 2014 Los Angeles County Assessor bid with the help of Ed Buck, Ed Buck’s future attorney Seymour Amster, ANIMAL PAC, John Duran, West Hollywood activists, and various real estate interests. The same donors also funded periphery candidates who endorsed Prang and Svonkin.

    And don’t forget this classic photo of Buck with California Democratic congressman Ted Lieu.

    Or this one:

    Ed Buck was useful, and that’s why Buck (and his deadly fetish games) were protected from public scrutiny and prosecution. Then the New York Times lied and tried to call him a “small-time Democratic donor.”

    More background on Buck can be found in these Grant Baker pieces here, here, and here.

    Trump Endorses Paxton Over Bush

    July 27th, 2021

    All that sucking up to Trump got George P. Bush bubkis:

    At the end of May, former President Donald Trump said that he liked two Texas attorney general candidates — current Attorney General Ken Paxton and Land Commissioner George P. Bush — “both very much,” but that he would make his “endorsement and recommendation to the great people of Texas in the not-so-distant future.”

    Trump followed through with that on Monday evening and announced his endorsement of Paxton.

    “Attorney General Ken Paxton has been bravely on the front line in the fight for Texas, and America, against the vicious and very dangerous Radical Left Democrats, and the foolish unsuspecting RINOs that are destroying our Country,” said Trump.

    “Ken is strong on Crime, Border Security, the Second Amendment, Election Integrity and, above all, our Constitution. He loves our Military and our Vets. It is going to take a PATRIOT like Ken Paxton to advance America First policies in order to Make America Great Again. Ken has my Complete and Total Endorsement for another term as Attorney General of Texas. He is a true Texan who will keep Texas safe—and will never let you down!”

    Paxton said that he was “honored to receive the endorsement” of Trump.

    Several weeks ago after appearing at an event in South Texas along the border with Trump, the attorney general expressed optimism that the endorsement would “fall towards me at the right time.”

    After the contested presidential election last year, Paxton filed a lawsuit on behalf of the state challenging the constitutionality of the elections in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, though the Supreme Court ultimately tossed his suit out.

    I don’t agree with 100% of Trump’s endorsements, but he got this one right. Among Texas conservatives here is a palpable lack of excitement over Jeb!’s son moving up to Attorney General. Land Commissioner is not an office that usually draws much attention, but all the attention George P. Bush has drawn to it has tended to be negative, especially the Alamo controversy. There’s also a feeling that Paxton has generally done an excellent job and been on the right side of almost every issue, even if he hasn’t won all of them in court.

    Paxton is also outpolling Bush right now 42% to 34% (usual poll caveats apply), and Eva Guzman has not yet made much of an impression on the race. Paxton also has more money on hand, but the Bush clan has a famously deep and effective money-raising machine, and Bush has already raised $2,264,137.95 for the race. How much Trump’s endorsement of Paxton will cool fundraising enthusiasm for Bush remains to be seen. I doubt many the people writing checks to Bush backed Trump prior to 2016, but Trump’s endorsement swings a lot of weight in Republican primaries, and I suspect a certain percentage of Bush donors may now see any further donations as wasted money.

    Whoever wins the primary is likely to face Joe Jaworski in the general, and right now he has more cash on hand than any declared Democrat running statewide in 2022.

    It’s going to be an interesting race…

    Dallas Mayor Wants To Hire 275 More Police

    July 26th, 2021

    While Austin’s leadership remains in the grip of police defunding lunacy, Dallas mayor Eric Johnson has stepped up to request 275 additional police officers:

    Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s proposed budget is due next month, and Mayor Eric Johnson is requesting that it include enough funding to hire 275 additional police officers during the next fiscal year.

    In a press statement on Tuesday, Johnson also called for a pay bump for first responders and said that “public safety must come first.”

    “While we cannot depend on police alone to prevent crime, our officers play a unique role in taking dangerous people — especially repeat offenders — off our streets,” Johnson said. “Our police department has been strained in recent years by short staffing, which has necessitated substantial police overtime spending.”

    The mayor also said that the city should expand its police force “to meet the demands of our residents and to make our communities safer and stronger.” The current fiscal year’s budget and an initial draft of the coming fiscal year’s budget only provide for 150 new officers, according to a July 15 memo from Johnson to Broadnax.

    Adding 275 officers would also be “70 officers above the expected attrition.”

    According to the city manager’s office, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) has hired and trained 77 officers so far this fiscal year, and 144 officers have resigned, retired, or otherwise lost their jobs. This has created a net loss of 67 police officers so far.

    DPD was the center of controversy last year when the city council chose to cut 25 percent of the department’s overtime budget for the current fiscal year. Following the budget cut and a series of other dustups, then-Chief Renee Hall left her post in December.

    Johnson has been an ardent supporter of the department and actively fought a movement to divert funds away from the department during last year’s budget talks. The mayor called the DPD overtime cut “unconscionable” and proposed cutting the salaries of high-level city employees instead.

    While other cities have abandoned police defunding lunacy, Austin’s blinkered far-left city council and mayor still refuses to protect citizens from rising crime rates.

    Reminder: Significant Portions of Russia Are Still Primitive Crapholes

    July 25th, 2021

    The media love to hype Russia as a formidable international foe for lots of reasons (including propping up the Russian Collusion Fantasy they used to attack Trump with and the need to deflect attention from China), but it’s important to remember than, in a lot of ways, Russia is still suffering the debilitating after-effects of 70+ years of communist rule. The United States’ GNP is fourteen times that of Russia, and Russia’s GDP has actually shrunk since 2013, due to an economic crisis and devaluation of the ruble following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a decline in worldwide oil prices. In many ways, Russia is a very large, very broke third world country that happens to have lots of nuclear weapons.

    As a reminder of what Russia can look like outside the big cities, here are some videos from a Twitter thread.

    Kolyma is the far eastern region of Russia where some of the Gulag’s most notorious arctic death camps were located.

    Here’s a video from Mutny Materik on the Reka Pechoria in the Komi Republic. It’s just shy of 1,000 miles from Moscow, but still in the same time zone.

    And now, to round out this post, here’s a video compilation of crazy Russian car crashes:

    Something Resembling A Texas Gubernatorial Race?

    July 24th, 2021

    Does Texas have a competitive Gubernatorial race in 2022? No, not yet. But on the Republican side, we have something that resembles a competitive primary a lot more than we did at any point of the 2018 election cycle.

    In 2018, incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott was running against someone named Barbara Krueger (of whom I have actually no memory whatsoever and who reports show raised literally no money), and gadfly Larry SECEDE Kilgore (yes, that’s how his name appeared on the ballot), whose funding raising totals equaled Krueger’s. Abbott walloped those two with 90.4% of the primary vote in 2018.

    That’s not going to happen in 2022.

    Abbott already has two much higher profile challengers in former state senator Don Huffines and former Florida congressman and former Texas GOP head Allen West, both of whom are campaigning against Abbott from the right. (Humorist Chad Prather is also running in the Republic primary, but I see no signs his is a serious campaign.)

    Abbott had a huge advantage in money-on-hand in the 2018 race, and will likely have the same this time around, with over $55 million on hand this time around. However, Huffines already has over $7 million as well. That’s enough to build out statewide campaigning and fundraising infrastructure. Huffines also pulled in over $4 million in fundraising, indicating there are some deep pocketed contributors out there who are unhappy enough with Abbott to put their money where their mouth is. (West declared he was running July 4, which means he won’t have to file his campaign fundraising reports until the end of the year. But as someone who’s name has been showing up in fundraising solicitation campaigns for at least a decade (and I see he was featured on one of those National Review cruises back in 2013), I have to imagine that he still has something of a national fundraising network to draw on.)

    Huffines also picked up a high profile endorsement from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. That’s going to get him some attention from national Republicans who weren’t even aware Abbott had a primary challenger.

    Then there’s the looming threat of actor Matthew McConaughey possibly getting into the race, something he’s hinted at several times. Though not the level of, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, McConaughey is a high profile star, and celebrity politicians can be quite formidable in a general election (as Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump and Jesse Ventura have all proven). McConaughey claims he’s a centerist, and hasn’t declared which party he would run in. A run in the Republican primary would turn it into a high profile, high-spending battle royal between McConaughey’s fame and Abbott’s money and infrastructure.

    You would think that being locked-out of statewide office victories for over a quarter-century would give McConaughey an easy path to the general election on the Democratic Party side, but that may not be the case. It’s quite possible that McConaughey expressing heretical centrist thoughts on any number of hard-left hot button orthodoxies (election integrity, abortion, illegal aliens, guns, social justice, etc.) would draw a high-profile, hard left outrage candidate into the race just to block him. (Beto O’Rourke can’t win a statewide race against Abbott, but he might very well be able to win a Democratic primary against McConaughey.) While there’s a world of difference between a Hollywood star and an offbeat country musician/mystery writer, Kinky Friedman losing to a non-campaigning nobody in the 2014 Democratic primary for Ag Commissioner tells you Democrats prefer losing to heterodoxy.

    As for non-McConaughey Democratic possibilities, the leading candidate seems to be a Deirdre Gilbert, formerly Deirdre Dickson-Gilbert, whose prime political experience seems to be a third-place finish in a three man Democratic Primary field for Fort Bend County Justice of the Peace Precinct 2. She has all of $617.56 on hand, which is less than the Green Party candidate. Also running is Michael Cooper, who came in eighth in a ten man field in the 2020 Democratic Senator primary. But he still looks good in that bolo tie…

    All this may amount to nothing, and Abbott is still the odds on favorite to be sworn in in 2023. But his lockdown decisions and the ice storm debacle has Abbott looking his most vulnerable since being elected governor. He’s not seriously vulnerable, but he’s at least “Eric Cantor in 2013 vulnerable.” And we all know how that turned out…

    LinkSwarm for July 23, 2021

    July 23rd, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Mostly new links this time around, but some settling of contents may occur…

  • “Republicans Are Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat.”

    The Republican National Committee (RNC) is invested in a comprehensive nationwide effort to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. We’re fighting for election integrity because it’s absolutely vital to protect the sanctity of your ballot from Democrat schemes to undermine voting security. We are involved in 19 election integrity lawsuits nationwide, and we’re winning the fight.

    Our investment is partially driven by polling that consistently shows the American people supporting our common-sense approach to securing elections. A recent poll commissioned by the RNC found that 78 percent of Americans support a proposed voting plan with five key principles: presenting voter ID, verifying voters’ signatures, controlling the ballot’s chain of custody, bipartisan poll observation, and cleaning up voter rolls. The poll also found that 80 percent of voters support voter ID requirements; this sentiment matches up with other polling, including a recent one from NPR which found 79 percent of voters in favor of voter ID. The measures we are pushing are not controversial or dramatic. They are common-sense and they are supported by American citizens.

    Of course, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from trying to generate false outrage and controversy at every level of this conversation. The Democrat election playbook is simple: lie and seek attention until the mainstream media eagerly takes the baton and turns Democrat lies into a false national narrative. You saw this in Georgia, where Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams’ lies about the state’s election reforms pressured the MLB into moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta. These lies cost the good people of Georgia an estimated $100 million. You’re seeing it now in Texas, where local Democrats have stormed out of legislative debates on election integrity not once, but twice. Their latest stunt saw them leave the floor of the Texas legislature and hop on private planes to fly to DC in a juvenile quest for media attention.

    Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media lapped it up. This is their playbook. When it comes to election integrity, Americans need to pay attention to the relationship between Democrat lies and the mainstream media machine.

    (Hat tip: Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.)

  • Is the New York City mayor’s race a reality check for Democrats?

    Back on June 24, the great Peggy Noonan hailed [Eric] Adams’s primary win as a victory of reality over progressive theory. “Adams was a cop for 22 years, left the New York City Police Department as a captain, and was the first and for a long time the only candidate to campaign on crime and the public’s right to safety. He was the first to admit we were in a crime wave.” Noonan observed, accurately, that African-American voters were not necessarily the most progressive voters in the electorate anymore, and that they represented a de facto force of, if not conservatism, then a realist wariness of the fringes of modern progressive thinking.

    The notion of a centrist, tough-on-crime mayor replacing the notorious groundhog murderer and early pandemic denier sounds good, but we’ll see. Every elected official operates within a particular “Overton Window”: the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time. Adams did not win this primary by a landslide. While he received the most votes in the first round, he was the top choice of less than a third of the city’s Democrats. He has 51.1 percent out of the final two.

    New York City desperately needs a dramatic improvement in its policing and prosecution of criminals, but Adams will have to take on a lot of deeply entrenched opponents and a city media and cultural environment that have evolved to reflexively demonize the NYPD. Way back in 2005, Fred Siegel described the New York City of the David Dinkins years as an era of “hysteria that led upstanding liberals to insist that they were more afraid of the NYPD than they were of criminals.” Whatever you think of Rudy Giuliani now, the young(er) mayor of the early 1990s was willing to be utterly hated as he enacted his reforms, convinced that the broader public would look past the controversy and appreciate the effects of lower crime rates. It remains to be seen whether Adams has that same courage to exchange short-term unpopularity for long-term improvement in the city’s streets — or whether he’ll bump up against the city’s Overton Window of what policy changes are acceptable and settle for a series of half measures.

    The irony is that we see the same phenomenon in the opposite direction at the national level in Washington. Many progressives interpreted Biden’s presidential win, the 50–50 Senate, and the slightly shrunken House majority in the 2020 elections as a mandate to enact sweeping changes in the country — and they’re largely hitting brick walls. The national Overton Window isn’t wide enough to accommodate the wildest fantasies of progressives.

    I’m not sure the feasibility of Overton Window possibilities matters to the Social Justice left. There’s is a holy revolutionary cause, and they need to seize control of the Party before they can seize control of the nation. To that end, I suspect many think that letting moderate Democrats lose elections is a small price to pay for continuing their unpopular march through America’s institutions…

  • The Texan brings back The War Room to track 2022 Texas election races.
  • “Texas House Democrats’ COVID-Spreading Publicity Stunt Is Backfiring.”

    Outnumbered by Republicans in Austin 83 to 67, the Texas House Democratic Caucus decided to head to D.C. to publicize its opposition to election integrity bills, fundraise, and drum up support for federal legislation that would nationalize election law by imposing California law as a template on the nation — banning meaningful voter ID, expanding mail balloting while eliminating fraud safeguards, prohibiting proactive voter list maintenance, and mandating same-day voter registration with no checks for eligibility to vote.

    But the Democrats’ trip hasn’t turned out as planned.

    Soon after meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and numerous White House staffers and members of the U.S. House and Senate, three Democrats were diagnosed with COVID-19, then another two, and now a total of six. An aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a White House official tested positive soon after meeting with the Texas Democrats.

    And the attention Democrats were hoping for soon turned sour, with Texas’s major newspapers, none of whom are friends of Republicans and have had little good to say about their election integrity bills, have nevertheless weighed in against the walkout. By two-to-one, Texas voters disapprove of the quorum-busting as well. Even national Republicans have piled on, with this tweet from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s press secretary being emblematic.

    Closer to home, Travis County GOP Chairman Matt Mackowiak said the quorum-breakers had “…engaged in performance theater for weeks claiming Gov. Abbott was putting lives at risk by reopening the state economy and waiving the statewide mask mandate, then they flew to DC on a private jet stocked with Miller Lite without masks, in violation of FAA rules, and now this farce turned into a super spreader event.”

    But there are signs the Democratic solidarity is breaking down. With chairmanships, seniority, and even district boundaries on the line in a redistricting year, powerful Democrats are wavering while those seeking to move up sense an opportunity. A week ago, 80 House members were on the floor. As of Tuesday, 90, including several Democrats, were present. It’s a classic “prisoner’s dilemma” situation. If another 10 Democrats show up, the Texas House will have a quorum and can resume consideration of bills, leaving the other 50 holdouts with nothing for their efforts — except for perhaps being redrawn out of their districts by the Legislative Redistricting Board later this year.

    When the Democrats do return, they will be asked to vote on bills that would bring mail-in balloting up to the standard for in-person voting by asking for ID in the form of writing a driver’s license number, or state ID number, or the last four of the Social Security number inside of a privacy flap in the ballot return envelope. The bill would also prohibit local elections officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, ban last-minute changes to election procedures, and clarify that properly appointed poll watchers must be able to see and hear election workers’ activities.

    Asking for ID for mail-in ballots — one of the measures most vociferously opposed by Democrats — is supported by 81 percent of Texas voters, with voters from all demographic groups and both major parties approving of the safeguards.

    With all due respect to Chuck DeVore, until the Texas election integrity bill is passed, their publicity stunt hasn’t backfired yet. There are few prices Democrats won’t pay for the ability to continue cheating.

  • Judge Orders Thug-Loving Minneapolis City Council, Mayor to Hire More Cops.”

    Barely a year after the Minneapolis City Council voted to to defund the city’s police department after the death of George Floyd, a judge has ordered the city to hire more cops, thanks to a lawsuit filed by fed-up citizens.

    “Minneapolis is in a crisis,” wrote the eight plaintiffs in their complaint, citing the rise in violent crimes, including shootings, sexual assault, murders, civil unrest, and riots, Fox News reports.

    Progressive city council members couldn’t wait to gut the police department and allow a surge in crime, most of which would affect poor black neighborhoods. The tsunami of crime recently took the life of a popular coach who was shot attending a memorial for another victim of Minneapolis’ violent crime surge. He was the 42nd person murdered this year in Minneapolis. No word from Antifa and BLM if they are planning a mostly peaceful riot in his honor.

    The cop-hating Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Jacob Frey were ordered to “immediately take any and all necessary action to ensure that they fund a police force,” according to Thursday’s court order by Judge Jamie L. Anderson. The crime-loving city council and mayor have until June 30, 2022, to establish a police force of 730 sworn officers. They currently have 669 cops. Minneapolis saw nearly 200 cops file paperwork to leave the Minneapolis Police Department in the first three months after the George Floyd riots. No idea how many more will resign or retire by the June 30, 2022, deadline, as the nation has seen a surge in cops walking away from departments nationwide.

  • Matt Taibbi notes that NPR is unlistenable garbage:

    NPR has not run a piece critical of Democrats since Christ was a boy. Moreover, much like the New York Times editorial page (but somehow worse), the public news leader’s monomaniacal focus on “race and sexuality issues” has become an industry in-joke. For at least a year especially, listening to NPR has been like being pinned in wrestling beyond the three-count. Everything is about race or gender, and you can’t make it stop.

    Conservatives have always hated NPR, but in the last year I hear more and more politically progressive people, in the media, talking about the station as a kind of mass torture experiment, one that makes the most patient and sensible people want to drive off the road in anguish. A

    Numerous examples snipped.

    NPR sucks and is unlistenable, so people are going elsewhere. People like [Ben] Shapiro are running their strategy in reverse and making fortunes doing it. One of these professional analysts has to figure this one out eventually, right?

  • Evidently the primary mover behind the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping “plot” was the FBI. It’s FBI “informants” all the way down. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Want to keep track of violence in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago? Hey Jackass has the trending data plants policy wonks crave!
  • Speaking of which: “Many Big-City Democrat Mayors Defunded Police While Spending Heavily on Their Security Details, Watchdog Finds.”

    “In 25 major U.S. cities, officials have proposed cutting—or in 20 cases already cut—police budgets. However, what OpenTheBooks.com auditors found was that mayors and city officials still enjoy personal protection of a dedicated police detail costing taxpayers millions of dollars,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of Open The Books (OTB), said in a statement announcing the new data.

    Snip.

    In San Francisco, for example, the costs of the security detail protecting Mayor London Breed and other city officials spiraled up from $1.7 million in 2015 to $2.6 million in 2020.

    Breed has proposed shifting $120 million from the city’s police department to mental health and workforce training programs. City officials declined to say how many officers are assigned to the security details, according to OTB.

    In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed to be opposed to defunding the police, but OTB found that officials quietly abolished 400 police department positions last year.

    Those positions were eliminated even as the city’s “security detail costs peaked in 2020—up $700,000 over five years: $2.7 million spent on 16 officers (2015); $2.9 million for 16 officers (2016); $2.7 million for 20 officers (2017); $2.8 million for 16 officers (2018); $2.8 million for 17 officers (2019); and $3.4 million for 22 officers (2020)—an all-time high,” OTB stated.

    In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) $6 billion annual budget, including $354 million transferred to mental health, homelessness, and education services.

    But the mayor, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, continues to enjoy tax-paid police protection for himself, his wife, and his son.

  • Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison.” “Shane Sonderman, of Lauderdale County, Tenn. admitted to conspiring with a group of criminals that’s been ‘swatting’ and harassing people for months in a bid to coerce targets into giving up their valuable Twitter and Instagram usernames.” So not only has he gotten people killed, he got them killed for really shitty reasons. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “ERCOT Expands Power Grid Reserve Capacity in Preparation for Summer Heat.” “To prepare, ERCOT has dedicated 38 percent more in generation to reserve capacity from this July compared to last. And they plan to dedicate 56 percent more reserve capacity for August compared to August 2020.” 1.) That’s good, but 2.) Isn’t mid-July a wee bit late to be rolling out such plans? Let’s hope they’ve been working on this a while…
  • California court says that state laws requiring people to use crazy SJW pronouns violates freedom of speech.
  • “Poll: American Women Are Not Fans of Kamala Harris.” You don’t say…
  • Speaking of Harris: “Last month, the Supreme Court smacked down then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ attempt to force charitable nonprofits to turn over the names of their top donors, calling the power-grab ‘facially unconstitutional.'”
  • Gun sales decline slightly from record highs in 2020. Does this mean I might finally be able to pick up an AR-15 without it costing me an arm and a leg?
  • “Wayne LaPierre a Bigger Risk Than Fire and Brimstone.” “Lloyd’s of London is dropping all coverage for the NRA’s Board of Directors through their officers and directors insurance plan.”
  • More Soros-backed DA justice: “Accused murderer set free after St. Louis County prosecutors fail to show up, but found time for McCloskeys.”

    Last week, Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser dismissed charges of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, and unlawful gun possession against Brandon Campbell, 30, when prosecutors from the Circuit Attorney’s Office did not attend hearings for the case in May, June, and July, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

    “The court does not take this action without significant consideration for the implications it may have for public safety,” Sengheiser wrote in kicking the case.

    “Although presumed innocent, (Campbell) has been charged with the most serious of crimes. While the court has a role to play in protecting public safety, that role must be balanced with adherence to the law and the protection of the rights of the defendant,” the judge continued.

    Sengheiser then took aim at Kim Gardner’s office.

    “The Circuit Attorney’s Office is ultimately the party responsible for protecting public safety by charging and then prosecuting those it believes commit crimes,” he wrote.

    “In a case like this where the Circuit Attorney’s office has essentially abandoned its duty to prosecute those it charges with crimes, the court must impartially enforce the law and any resultant threat to public safety is the responsibility of the Circuit Attorney’s Office.”

  • Speaking of revolving-doors for criminals: “Criminal District Court Judge frees repeat violent offender from jail even after he’s charged with murder.”

    Thirty-eight-year-old Brandon Andrus’s criminal history is so lengthy he has more mug shots than some people have selfies.

    But that didn’t stop 185th Criminal District Court Judge Jason Luong from allowing Andrus to be a free man by giving him three felony bonds, one for assaulting a family member last year.

    On June 14, police say Andrus and another man murdered 35-year-old Rodrick Miller.

    (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)

  • More of the same from the happy streets of Chicago: Man on felony bail killed another driver during highway robbery attempt, prosecutors say.” (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Club for Growth slams Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (R-ino) by comparing her to Hillary Clinton. Ouch! That’s gonna leave a scar…
  • The bribery charges against former Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are a big nothingburger.
  • Iran is backing Cuba’s oppressive communist government. Call it the League of Assholes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Amazon’s New World Is Reportedly Frying High-End Graphics Cards.” Nothing like having your $2,000 Nvidia card bricked over a beta game…
  • Netflix to Wall Street: “Did I say we were going to gain two million new subscribers? Yeah, what I actually meant was we were going to lose 500,000 subscribers. Whoopsie! My bad!” Get woke, go broke.
  • Speaking of losing viewers, Nielsen ratings for broadcast are so far down that the networks are threatening to get rid of them.
  • More on that theme: “NBC’s ‘Today’ has smallest audience since at least 1991.”
  • James May launches his own gin. I don’t drink gin, but I bet that stuff sells out instantly, since the Top Gear/Grand Tour trio have one of the largest worldwide fan bases. I did not know that gin started out with neutral spirits before juniper berries were added.
  • Bernie Sanders Heads To Cuba To Tell Protesters To Be More Grateful For Their Excellent Social Programs.”
  • “Inspiring: US Women’s Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated.”
  • “FBI Discovers Building Full Of Dangerous Extremists Organizing Acts Of Terror Across Country…In a shocking twist, the organization is headquartered right in Washington, D.C., at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building.”
  • “Stop using Tik-Tok! It’s Chinese spyware!”

  • Biden Crashes Again

    July 22nd, 2021

    The country is in the very best of hands…

    (Hat tip: Not The Bee.)

    The Return of Urban Blight

    July 21st, 2021

    If you didn’t grow up in the 1970s, you probably don’t remember what the first bout of urban blight in America’s largest cities looked like. High crime, endemic corruption, failing city services and decaying infrastructure were some of the hallmarks. Though cities like Detroit and Baltimore never recovered, others bounced back thanks to the Reagan economic boom, tough-on-crime mayors, and Broken Window policing.

    But thanks to the radical left, high taxes, lockdowns, antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots, George Soros-backed DAs, and the Homeless Industrial Complex, urban blight is back with a vengeance:

    Six Target stores in San Francisco are adjusting their times, opening hours later and closing hours earlier to try to curtail soaring theft.

    They join Walgreens, which has closed 17 stores over five years in direct response to criminal activity. Last month, a video went viral of a hooded and masked man riding his bike into a San Francisco branch of the chain, loading a trash bag with merchandise, and riding back out — past a powerless security guard and two others filming on their phones.

    Early Monday evening, at least nine men and women smashed cases and stripped shelves in San Francisco’s high-end Neiman Marcus store, fleeing with a fortune in designer handbags. The brazenness is out of control, is goaded on by the normalization of masks, and is directly enabled by district attorneys and other politicians.

    The Golden City is joined by nearby Sacramento and Los Angeles, where retail crime has spiked, but across the country as district attorneys from Massachusetts to Missouri to Texas have declared they won’t defend citizens from theft, the story has gone much the same.

    While it’s insane that crime is so severe and law enforcement so nonexistent in a prosperous city that businesses must close their doors early or shut them entirely, there’s more in store. Far more ominous than a sign of how bad things have gotten, darkened windows and shuttered doors reveal just how much worse things are going to get.

    Snip.

    More than 50 years later, over-credentialed activists and politicians once again say they know better, and tell us our neighborhoods will be more just and “equitable” if we don’t enforce laws. Now business owners are telling those politicians they’ll need to close their doors. Residents are left to feel the pain of both the crime and the closures. The boon of life and appreciation is suffocating.

    Crime begets crime begets crime, and changes to enforcement and prosecution policies are entirely to blame. In nearby Oakland, where murder is up 90 percent in the past year and car-jackings up 88 percent while the city council continues to cut police, city leaders dismiss the surge in crime as “a bump in the road,” but for the people who live there, strive to work there, and try to not be murdered there, it’s more than that…

    Rising crime is a direct threat to our towns, our neighborhoods, and our families. Already in great American cities, urban blight is setting in. We’ve down this path before for virtually the exact same bleeding-heart reasons, and we lived through the tremendous pain it brought. We cannot let it happen again — unless we do.

    Things are particularly bad in San Francisco, where George Soros-backed DA George Gascon Chesa Boudin refuses to prosecute shoplifters:

    New York City YouTuber Louis Rossmann takes a walk down 7th avenue from 27th Street to Canal to record all the empty storefronts

    Here’s another, longer walk, showing more of the same, that businesses aren’t returning to NYC, despite which rents remain insanely high. They also pass a guy shooting up.

    Not even Broadway is immune:

    (By the way, here’s a video from the same guy talking about how impossible it is to get an NYC licensing authority to renew a license he had already paid for a year before, which finally got their attention.)

    But it’s not just New York. Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and any other Democrat-run city that’s allowed antifa/#BlackLivesMatter rioting and graft to run rampant.

    Democrats were allowed to run America’s big cities for decades because machine politics mostly worked well enough most of the time to meet the needs of most citizens. There was enough graft, cronyism and featherbedding to keep close party coalition partners happy while still providing a minimum baseline of services. But Social Justice appears to be the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back. No longer content with traditional levels of welfare state clientism, Social Justice demands that all city funding must flow through its sticky fingers, especially police funding that previously keep big American cities mostly safe and livable.

    The security necessary to maintain life, liberty and property is the the most basic function of government. The Democratic Party’s need to replace police with social justice cadres is destroying the quality of life in big cities at the same time telework advances have made living in expensive cities unnecessary for vast swathes of American technology and service workers. With the antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots that destroyed businesses built up over entire lifetimes and you have a recipe for increasing numbers of middle class Americans to flee cities Democratic polices have made unlivable.

    To quote Ernest Hemingway:

    “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

    “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

    “What brought it on?”

    “Friends,” said Mike. “”I had a lot of friends.”

    For “friends” read “cronies” (or “looters” if you prefer). Previously Democratic politicians were mostly content to take their piece of the action to keep the graft coming. That’s the “gradually” part. Social Justice Democrats want the entire pie, and they want it now, all of it, even if it means destroying American cities to do it.

    They’re eagerly devouring America’s seed corn, hoping to bring down the entire system and replace it with their neo-Marxist rule.

    That’s the “suddenly” portion.

    The physical and human capital built up in American cities took innumerable lifetimes to build up, but Social Justice is destroying it all in the space of a few years.