SDF Begins Final Assault on Hajin

September 12th, 2018

After months of preparation, and while the world’s attention (such little of it that can still be focused on Syria) focused on Idlib in NW Syria, Syria Democratic Forces finally launched their much anticipated final push against the Islamic State’s Hajin pocket in SE Syria.

The final phase of the assault to capture the remaining Islamic State-held territory in eastern Syria has begun, according to the U.S.-led Coalition and Syrian Democratic Forces, its main partner on the ground in Deir Ezzor.

“The last phase of Operation Roundup kicks off soon with the Syrian Democratic Forces leading the way in the Lower Euphrates River Valley to destroy the final remnants of ISIS,” Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, told The Defense Post on Monday, September 10.

“The Iraqi Security Forces have supported the SDF’s maneuver by establishing blocking positions along the southeast portion of the Iraqi-Syrian border and conducting precision strikes against ISIS targets.”

An SDF source told The Defense Post that an official announcement was imminent.

Earlier, AFP reported that the Coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces launched a fierce assault against the pocket of territory held by ISIS around Hajin in eastern Deir Ezzor province, citing an SDF commander.

An SDF commander said the assault, relying heavily on artillery and U.S.-led Coalition air strikes, had killed at least 15 ISIS fighters.

“Our forces today began attacking the last bastions of Daesh in Hajin, with intense artillery and air support,” said the SDF commander.

More news of the operation:

he US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured 27 positions around the villages of al-Baghuz Fawqani and al-Kasrah, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, during the last 48 hours, the SDF’s media center reported on September 12.

According to the media center, US-backed forces killed 41 ISIS fighters and destroyed several artillery pieces and bulldozers. Furthermore, US-led coalition warplanes conducted 10 airstrikes on positions of the terrorist group in al-Baghuz Fawqani and al-Kasrah.

Here’s the livemap look at the theater:

Some tweets:

Hopefully this will be the final push to eliminate the last Islamic State-held Syrian territory east of the Euphrates, though there have been previous operations that looked to do exactly that. The biggest difference is that the SDF has now cleared the big remaining Islamic State pocket along the Iraq/Syria border. That means that all their forces in theater (as well as coalition aircraft and Iraqi artillery) can concentrate on eliminating the Hajin pocket. Despite all that concentrated firepower, expect urban warfare to be as grinding and bloody as it was in Raqqa and Mosul, albeit it in a much smaller area…

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 1 Comment »

Houston Chronicle Reporter Resigns Under Suspicion of Making Quotes Up

September 11th, 2018

Another day, another press scandal, this time in Texas:

Another Houston Chronicle journalist flagged me with questions about the accuracy of a story written by veteran Austin reporter Mike Ward. Ward joined the Chronicle in 2014 after a long career with the Austin American-Statesman. Specifically, questions were raised about whether individuals quoted in one of his stories were real people.

Our own researchers, after an initial review, had difficulty finding a number of sources cited in Ward’s most recent reports.

Ward has insisted that his work was truthful, that his work involved real people, and that we would eventually find the individuals behind his “man-on-the-street” interviews. However, given the questions this review raised, he offered to resign and I accepted that resignation last week. If we were in another business, that might be enough.

As a journalism organization, we owe the public more. We owe our readers the truth and to tell you if, in fact, there were inaccuracies in anything we published. We simply do not know the full story yet.

To help us ferret this out, we have hired an independent, highly respected journalist to review Ward’s work for the last year, or further, if necessary, and determine whether any reporting transgressions occurred. We have given that journalist full access to our archives and promised access to our editors as well. Investigative work takes time, and it can be tedious. Tracking down and verifying sources, especially across a year or more of work, requires significant legwork.

Ward frequently reported on state politics.

At least the Chronicle was kind enough to make a public statement about it.

Once again: If members of the media want to know why the public has lost faith in them, they need only look in the mirror.

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Posted in Austin, Media Watch, Texas | 2 Comments »

Texas in the Driver’s Seat of U.S. Oil Revival

September 10th, 2018

The Dallas Federal Reserve meeting featured a discussion of where growth in the global oil supply will come from, and the answer is Texas:

“We expect almost all the growth in 2019 to come from the United States, Canada and Brazil,” she said. “This strong growth in global supply is expected to help moderate pricing.”

The EIA forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will grow by 1 million barrels per day next year. Almost 70 percent of that growth is expected to come from the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford.

“Next year, one out of every three barrels of crude oil growth in the world is expected to come from Texas and New Mexico,” Capuano said.

(Hat tip: Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.)

Remember all that talk of “peak oil” supply around 2010-2012? Now they’re talking about peak oil demand around 2023…

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Posted in Texas | 2 Comments »

The Five on Democrats’ Fake Civility

September 9th, 2018

Lots of Democrats issued fake calls for a “return to civility” recently, all the while carrying out the most unprecedentedly uncivil campaign against a Supreme Court nominee in history.

Greg Gutfeld and The Five note that it’s all hooey.

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Posted in Democrats, video | 1 Comment »

American Flag 1, Beto O’Rourke 0

September 8th, 2018

Once again, the SUPERgeniuses running the Beto O’Rourke senate campaign have found a brand new way to alienate Texas voters: asking a VFW hall to take down American flags:

Ted Cruz’s Challenger, Beto O’Rourke has made a name for himself by saying that he can think of “nothing more American” than kneeling during the National Anthem. We can now add stripping American flags from a VFW hall to things he thinks are good.

According to the Examiner, O’Rourke’s campaign had rented out a Veteran of Foreign Affairs Hall for a campaign rally in Navasota, TX, and requested that the VFW Post 4006 Commander Carl Dry take down the American flags in his building ahead of the event.

From the Navasota Examiner:

“I do not normally attend rental events, but I attended Saturday to make sure things ran smoothly,” said Dry, who noted there were only two requests he could not allow at the VFW Post. “They wanted to open the doors (to the Flight Deck Lounge) and I couldn’t allow that and they wanted to take the flags down, I didn’t only say no, I said hell no, you don’t take the flags off the wall. I can’t believe any American would ask us to do that and I don’t know why he wanted them down or what he was going to put up instead.”

If O’Rourke thinks that average Texans share the disdain his fellow leftists feel for the American flag, I suspect he’s going to find out he’s very sadly mistaken…

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Posted in Democrats, Texas | 3 Comments »

LinkSwarm for September 7, 2018

September 7th, 2018

The sheer stupidity of Democrats at the Brett Kavanaugh is driving most other news out of the headlines, so this LinkSwarm may seem a little light…

  • “Huge Number Of Illegals Opting Out Of Welfare Programs Fearing Trump Admin Crackdown.” Good. Let Democrats run on restoring welfare to illegal aliens this fall.
  • “MS-13 gang members arrested in five Houston-area murders, including machete death of informant.” (Hat tip: Governor Abbott’s Twitter feed.
  • Sen. Chuck Schumer admits that Senate Democrats want to impeach President Donald Trump.
  • This just in: Democratic base wants red-state Democratic senators to commit lockstep electoral suicide.
  • Leftist befuddled by how black men can join “white nationalist” groups like Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer. Here’s a hint, dumbasses: They’re not white nationalist groups.
  • “U.S. weekly jobless claims drop to near 49-year low.” (Hat tip: Hugh Hewett’s Twitter feed.)
  • Blue collar workers surveyed stated that they could, in fact, get some satisfaction. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Problem: Voters oppose uncontrolled Muslim immigration into Germany. Solution: Adopt stricter immigration policies in line with German voters. Ha! Just kidding! Have the Stasi put the Alliance for Germany political party under surveillance.
  • Social Justice Warriors attempt to slip their usual political bullshit into open source licensing terms and get smacked down hard. “Less than 24 hours after I posted this, the license change was revoked and its committer expelled from the project.​” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Frankenplane.
  • #Gamergate Social Justice Warrior lunatic “Brianna Wu” lost her a bid for Massachusetts’ 8th U.S. congressional district by 49 points.
  • Theranos, the biotech company fraud built, is shutting down. Now all that remains is for Elizabeth Holmes to go to federal prison on pending wire fraud charges.
  • Memorial to the victims of communism opens in Estonia.
  • Bert Reynolds, RIP.
  • Johnny Rotten slams Corbyn and his Labour Party for antisemitism. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Also: Previously.)
  • Destroy shareholder value? Just do it!
  • “Literary Theorists Admit They Still Have No Idea What Animal Farm About.”
  • “Snopes Rates Babylon Bee World’s Most Accurate News Source.”
  • Speaking of which: “The Bee Explains: Common Racist Hand Signals.”
  • A Tweet:

  • Another:

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    Posted in Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Military, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Welfare State | 1 Comment »

    Tucker Carlson on NBC’s Burgeoning Weinstein Scandal

    September 6th, 2018

    First came this story about NBC spiked Ronan Farrow’s story on Harvey Weinstein:

    In February 2015, Farrow lost his daytime show on MSNBC and began working with NBC News’ investigative unit. In November 2016, Farrow and a producer named Rich McHugh decided they wanted to do a story about Hollywood’s “casting couch,” the longtime practice of producers and other powerful men exchanging sex with women for film roles, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The story was timed to be released around the Academy Awards, these sources said.

    They presented the idea to NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, who suggested the team look into a October 2016 tweet by actress Rose McGowan that she was raped by a Hollywood executive, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

    Over the next several months, Farrow collected evidence that suggested Weinstein had a pattern of inappropriate behavior toward women, according to the sources and previous reporting by The Daily Beast, HuffPost, and The New York Times. Weinstein has repeatedly denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. Sources familiar with the matter previously told The Daily Beast that at least eight women accusing Weinstein had agreed to go on camera, including two alleged victims with their names and faces.

    In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday night, McHugh accused “the very highest levels of NBC” of later stopping the reporting.

    “There was not one single victim or witness to misconduct by Harvey Weinstein who was willing to go on the record. Not one,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

    By February, according to the sources, Farrow had secured an on-the-record interview with McGowan in which the actress said she had been sexually harassed by a powerful producer, though she did not name Weinstein. (McGowan subsequently named Weinstein during the NBC investigation, according to a source with knowledge of the story, but reportedly pulled her interview after being legally threatened by Weinstein, who had reached a $100,000 settlement with her in 1997 after she accused him of sexual assault.)

    Farrow and McHugh also obtained a bombshell audio recording from a NYPD sting in which Weinstein admitted to groping Filipina-Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez in 2015. (The Battilana audio was subsequently published by The New Yorker.)

    “The tape on its own was color, it added to an already known accusation,” an NBC spokesperson said. While it was “absolutely significant” to hear Battilana’s voice, the spokesperson said, the tape alone would not expose Weinstein as serial sexual predator, as has been alleged.

    NBC’s reluctance stoked Farrow and McHugh’s concerns about NBC’s commitment to the story, the sources said. Farrow did not respond to a request for comment. Ari Wilkenfeld, McHugh’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that his client “has no comment.”

    In spring 2017, according to the sources, Farrow played Oppenheim the audio of Weinstein with Battilana admitting that he was “used to” groping women’s breasts. At one point during their meeting, according to two sources, Oppenheim had asked if people still cared about Weinstein.

    “That is absolutely false,” a NBC spokesperson said, “and it is clearly contradicted by the fact that Oppenheim assigned the story on Harvey Weinstein in the first place. Obviously he understood him to be and believed him to be a newsworthy figure.”

    Farrow had begun to suspect that Oppenheim—who moonlighted as a Hollywood screenwriter—was potentially communicating with Weinstein directly about the story, according to the sources.

    During a meeting in summer 2017, Oppenheim mentioned to Farrow that Weinstein had raised objections to Farrow’s reporting—even though Farrow had not yet asked Weinstein to comment on the allegations, according to individuals briefed on the meeting.

    “Externally, I had Weinstein associates calling me repeatedly,” McHugh told the Times. “I knew that Weinstein was calling NBC executives directly. One time it even happened when we were in the room.”

    Read the whole thing.

    NBC news not only spiked the Weinstein story, but provided an ever-changing list of excuses why and made legal threats against Farrow.

    Here’s Tucker Carlson on how NBC keeps changing their story, and how MS/NBC News honcho Chuck Todd has a lot of explaining to do:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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    Posted in Crime, Media Watch, video | No Comments »

    Man Crashes Truck Into Fox 4 Station in Dallas

    September 5th, 2018

    Fox Derangement Syndrome: Truckmageddon Edition:

    A man was arrested Wednesday morning after crashing a truck into the side of the FOX4 building in downtown Dallas.

    The man, after repeatedly crashing his vehicle into a side of the building with floor to ceiling windows, got out of his vehicle and began ranting.

    FOX4 photojournalists were able to film him placing numerous boxes next to a sidedoor filled with stacks of paper. The papers were also strewn across the sidewalk and street adjacent to the building.

    He does not look like a well individual:

    Update: The man was evidently ranting about a a 2012 police shooting where he was a passenger. So probably an individual nutcase than a political nutcase…

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    Posted in Crime, Texas, video | No Comments »

    Cruz and the Kavanaugh Circus

    September 5th, 2018

    I’m not going to detail the Democrat’s lunatic circus at the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation periods, except to marvel at how they’ve adopted the same crazy screaming strategies that didn’t work for the Wisconsin recall.

    Instead, I want to focues on Ted Cruz’s rational, reasonable arguments for Kavanaugh:

    First Cruz talks about “what this hearing is about and what it is not about,” proving that the Democrats have offered no substantive objections to Kavanaugh, as no such objections can plausibly exist, and so turn to “pounding the table” and making beef over silly procedural objections about how many documents they’ve received.

    Snip.

    When he asks, “So what is this hearing all about?” He says it’s all about the Democrats being unhappy about the voters’ considered choice in 2016, and wanting to overturn that. But he notes that this was the first election since Eisenhower which occurred with an open Supreme Court seat in play, and thus the next Supreme Court nominee indirectly on the ballot. And he notes that the issue of judicial appointments was vigorously contested by both Trump and Hillary Clinton, the issue being asked about in every single debate, and with both candidates stating the type of judge they would nominate.

    Cruz points out that Trump took the “unprecedented” step of publishing a list of his likely Supreme Court picks. He implies without directly stating that Kavanaugh was on this list. (Kavanaugh was in fact on the short list.)

    Therefore, Cruz concludes, Kavanaugh has something he calls “super-legitimacy” as a Supreme Court nominee, as the voters were already told that he might well be a Supreme Court choice by Trump and chose to elect Trump. Cruz calls this a de facto “referendum” on the acceptability of Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice.

    Finally, Cruz points out that progressives use the courts to win policy fights they cannot win at the ballot, and points out that America has been debating big policy issues that the left would like to win via the courts. And in the face of that, they chose Trump, who promised to appoint constitutionalists. He specifically notes that every Democrat Senator voted to gut the First Amendment, and that many Democrat Senators voted to repeal the Religious Freedom Act signed into law by Bill Clinton, and that almost every Democrat wants to effectively repeal the Second Amendment.

    Watch for yourself:

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    Posted in Democrats, Supreme Court, video | No Comments »

    Waco Biker Trial Update: No Prosecutions Under Abel Reyna

    September 4th, 2018

    The much-delayed Waco biker trials will be delayed again until defeated McLennan County DA Abel Reyna is out of office:

    A judge, who said Friday he has been “troubled by the whole Twin Peaks matter from its inception,” put off the trials of bikers in his court until after the first of the year because he wants the new McLennan County district attorney to review how the remaining Twin Peaks cases will be handled.

    Judge Ralph Strother, the morning after conducing a daylong pretrial hearing in Twin Peaks defendant Tom Modesto Mendez’s first-degree felony riot case, decided on his own to postpone Mendez’s trial, which was set to start Sept. 10.

    Strother denied a motion Thursday by Mendez’s attorney to throw out the indictment after prosecutors agreed to amend language in the riot indictment that more closely tracks wording in the statute.

    Both sides have been preparing for weeks for the Mendez case, and each side had scheduled witnesses, some from out of state, to be ready to go Sept. 10.

    The sexual assault trial of former Baylor University football player Shawn Oakman had been set for Sept. 10 as a backup to the Mendez case, but it, too, was pushed back Friday. Strother granted the delay in that case, which Oakman’s attorney requested a few hours after Mendez’s delay, saying a character witness who is out of state cannot be subpoenaed in time for Sept. 10.

    It was Strother, even more than Mendez’s attorney, Jaime Peña, who questioned prosecutors Thursday about the riot indictment and expressed concerns that they, in effect, had turned what normally is a Class B misdemeanor into a crime that possibly subjects the defendants to life in prison.

    And remember that all this is after most of the original, overbroad charges against various bikers present at the Twin Peaks shootout were dismissed.

    Snip.

    “I think a fresh set of eyes re-evaluating how the state is pursuing these cases is warranted,” Peña said. “That is essentially what the judge is saying. He wants to push it into the new year and let the new DA look at this.”

    Barry Johnson beat incumbent DA Abel Reyna by 20 percentage points in the March Republican primary and will run unopposed in November. Johnson, who takes office in January, said during the campaign that one of the first things he will do is assemble a team to review the remaining Twin Peaks cases.

    Reyna has not attended any of the numerous hearings involving Twin Peaks defendants since he lost the primary.

    The judge’s position is reasonable, but if I were a resident of McLennan County, I would be pissed not only that Reyna so badly screwed up prosecution with his unconstitutional “collective guilt” approach, but that he can’t even be arsed to do his damn job since voters handed him his walking papers…

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    Posted in Crime, Texas | No Comments »

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