Dispatches from the Ukraine Corruption Investigation

November 21st, 2019

Well, this seems like kind of a big story:

An indictment drawn up by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General against Burisma owner Nikolai [Mykola] Zlochevsky claims that Hunter Biden and his partners received $16.5 million for their ‘services’ – according to Ukrainian MP Alexander Dubinsky of the ruling Servant of the People Party.

Dubinsky made the claim in a Wednesday press conference, citing materials from an investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma.

“Zlochevsky was charged with this new accusation by the Office of the Prosecutor General but the press ignored it,” said the MP. “It was issued on November 14.”

“The son of Vice-President Joe Biden was receiving payment for his services, with money raised through criminal means and money laundering,” he then said, adding “Biden received money that did not come from the company’s successful operation but rather from money stolen from citizens.”

According to Dubinsky, Hunter Biden’s income from Burisma is a “link that reveals how money is siphoned [from Ukraine],” and how Biden is just one link in the chain of Zlochevsky’s money laundering operation which included politicians from the previous Yanukovich administration who continued their schemes under his successor, President Pyotr Poroshenko.

“We will reveal the information about the financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko. This system is still working under the guidance of the current managerial board of the National Bank, ensuring that money flows in the interest of people who stole millions of dollars, took it offshore and bought Ukrainian public bonds turning them into the Ukrainian sovereign debt,” said Dubinsky, adding that “in both cases of Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and companies she controls were investing the stolen funds.”

According to Interfax-Ukraine, MP Andriy Derkach announced at the same press conference that deputies have received new materials from investigative journalists alleging that the ‘family’ of ex-President Yanukovych funneled $7.4 billion through American investment firm Franklin Templeton Investments, which they claim have connections to the US Democratic party.”

“Last week, November 14, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO), unnoticed by the media, announced a new suspicion to the notorious owner of Burisma, ex-Ecology Minister Zlochevsky. According to the suspicion, the Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments, an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4 billion,” said Derkach, adding that the money was criminally obtained and invested in the purchase of Ukrainian debt in 2013 – 2014.

“The son of Templeton’s founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of President Obama’s major campaign donors. Another fund-related character is Thomas Donilon. Managing Director of BlackRock Investment Institute, shareholder Franklin Templeton Investments, which has the largest share in the fund. It is noteworthy that he previously was Obama’s national security advisor,” Derkach added.

Jack Posobiec has a related thread on Derkach’s press conference.

  • Caveat the first: ZeroHedge is occasionally a little fringy and has a well-known pro-Russian bias.
  • Caveat the second: Interfax-Ukraine is owned by Interfax Russia, so add another measure of salt to the allegations.
  • Caveat the third: This is not the first time Derkach has made such claims. This doesn’t mean he’s wrong, or a crank, but it’s at least slightly curious that no other news agency seems to have picked up the story.
  • In summary: This is potentially a huge story, but I’m suspicious of it because it fits too neatly into my preexisting belief of endemic corruption in the Obama Administration, and I don’t want to fall victim to confirmation bias. I’d like to see more proof, and more Ukrainian officials than just Derkach speaking out.

    In other news from the Ukraine corruption investigation, officials there widened the probe into Burisma:

    Ukraine’s top prosecutor announced Wednesday that the country is expanding its probe into the founder of Burisma, whose whereabouts are currently unknown to authorities, to include suspected embezzlement of state funds.

    Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky is suspected of “theft of government funds on an especially large scale,” but did not provide any further details of the allegation, Reuters reported.

    However, a trio of Ukranian lawmakers released a document at a separate news conference on Wednesday showing that Zlochevsky was suspected of using his position as Ukraine’s minister of ecology and natural resources to embezzle the equivalent of $33 million, Reuters added.

    Zlochevsky served as minister of ecology and natural resources from 2010 through 2012.

    In addition, Ryaboshapka said the investigation into the Burisma founder is effectively on hold as his whereabouts are currently unknown to Ukranian authorities.

    Ryaboshapka launched a review of 15 criminal investigations involving Zlochevsky and Burisma when he assumed the post of Ukraine’s prosecutor general in late August.

    More on Zlochevsky via Wikipedia: “Through his sole ownership of Cyprus-registered Burisma Holdings, he owns the Ukrainian gas and oil producers Aldea, Pari, Esko-Pivnich, and the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company and the investment group Brociti Investments.”

    Another Posobiec thread offers additional information on the timeline of the original Ukrainian corruption probe and Joe Biden’s interference in it.

    Joe Rogan Interviews Matt Taibbi

    November 20th, 2019

    Another interesting Joe Rogan interview, this one with Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi. Taibbi may be a lefty, but he’s willing to call bullshit when he sees it, including on the Epstein murder “suicide” and the lack of any center in today’s hate-click driven media.

    Rogan: “The more you censor conservatives, the more they’ll vote against liberals.”

    Taibbi also notes that the very first people newspapers started getting rid of when the cash crunch hit was long-form investigative reporters, and the second were fact-checkers.

    I would ignore the baseless speculation of Trump being on speed, but some of the commentary on other topics is pretty hilarious. “Biden, to me, is like taking a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long walk in the woods. It’s not going to work out.”

    Taibbi’s new book is Hate, Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

    Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for November 19, 2019

    November 19th, 2019

    Patrick jumps in, Bloomberg is running Heisenberg’s Campaign, Buttigieg is up big in Iowa, Warren falls, Tulsi draws all the boys to the yard, and Biden won’t puff or pass. It’s your Democratic Presidential clown car update!

    Polls

  • The Hill/Harris X: Biden 30, Sanders 18, Warren 15, Buttigieg 7, Harris 4, Bloomberg 3, , Yang 2, Castro 2, Delaney 2, Booker 1, Klobuchar 1, Gabbard 1, Steyer 1, Bennet 1, Patrick 1.
  • Quinnipiac (South Carolina): Biden 33, Warren 13, Sanders 11, Buttigieg 6, Steyer 5, Yang 4, Harris 3, Booker 2, Klobuchar 1, Williamson 1. Got to think this is evidence Steyer is dropping big bucks on South Carolina…
  • CNN/Des Moines Register (Iowa): Buttigieg 25, Warren 16, Biden 15, Sanders 15, Klobuchar 6, Yang 3, Gabbard 3, Booker 3, Steyer 3, Harris 3, Bloomberg 2, Bennet 1.
  • CBS/YouGov (Iowa): Sanders 22, Biden 22, Buttigieg 21, Warren 18, Klobuchar 5, Harris 5, Steyer 2, Booker 1, Yang 1, Bullock 1, Castro 1. 856 sample size.
  • CBS/YouGov (New Hampshire: Warren 31, Biden 22, Sanders 20, Buttigieg 16, Klobuchar 3, Harris 3, Steyer 1, Booker 1, Yang 1. 535 sample size.
  • CBS/YouGov (Nevada): Biden 33, Sanders 23, Warren 21, Buttigieg 9, Harris 4, Booker 2, Steyer 2, Klobuchar 2, Yang 1, Castro 1. 708 sample size.
  • CBS/YouGov (South Carolina): Biden 45, Warren 17, Sanders 15, Buttigieg 8, Harris 5, Steyer 2, Booker 2, Delaney 1, Klobuchar 1, Gabbard 1, Bullock 1. 933 sample size.
  • Fox News (Nevada): Biden 24, Sanders 18, Warren 18, Buttigieg 8, Steyer 5, Harris 4, Yang 3, Gabbard 2, Klobuchar 2, Booker 1, Castro 1.
  • Fox News (North Carolina): Biden 37, Warren 15, Sanders 14, Buttigieg 6, Harris 4, Booker 2, Gabbard 2, Steyer 2, Yang 2, Bennet 1, Bullock 1, Klobuchar 1.
  • Economist/YouGov (page 173): Warren 26, Biden 23, Sanders 17, Buttigieg 9, Harris 5, Yang 4, Klobuchar 2, Gabbard 2, Castro 2, Delaney 1, Booker 1, Steyer 1, Bullock 1.
  • Real Clear Politics
  • 538 polls
  • Election betting markets. If you think Deval Patrick has a chance, now’s a great time to put down your money: he has no bets backing him, not even the 0.1% laid on the departed Hickenlooper…
  • Pundits, etc.

  • Tough times for longshots:

    Voters cast ballots in less than three months, and the Democratic primary is still crowded with little guys. Roughly a half-dozen candidates in the very bottom tier of the Democratic presidential primary are soldiering on, hoping that even after months of campaigning without catching fire that there’s still a chance. Their resolve reflects, in part, some Democrats’ insistence that the lineup of top contenders is deeply flawed and the race is primed for some late twists and turns.

    “I truly believe that that person is as likely to be someone polling at 1% today as it is to be the people that are leading in the race today,” Bennet told reporters after filing his paperwork. “Stranger things have happened than that.”

    Candidates like Bennet have some reason for optimism. Polls show many Democratic voters, even in early-voting states, have not made up their minds. In Iowa, the first state to weigh in, the front of the pack is crowded, another sign of ambiguity, some argue. Worries about the strength of the front-runners prompted Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, to move toward a bid, threatening to expand the field just as the party thought it would be winnowing.

    Some higher-profile aspirants, including New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand or former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, weren’t able to stick it out, after months of poor polling and lackluster fundraising. Some middle-tier candidates, meanwhile, have had to scale back their operations. California Sen. Kamala Harris pulled staff from New Hampshire this past week, while former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro cut positions there and in early-voting South Carolina.

    But Bennet and others seemed to have prepared for a long, very slow burn. Bennet and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock never expected to raise much money and built small-scale operations that could carry them until the first part of February, when Iowa and then New Hampshire vote.

    “Everybody goes up and down, and what I need to be is organizing and catching fire as voting starts,” said Bullock, another candidate mired in the bottom tier who has announced an initial $500,000 advertising campaign in Iowa.

    Bennet and Bullock stand out in the crowded bottom tier as two well-regarded moderate politicians who got into the race late — in May — and appear to have the same strategy: wait for former Vice President Joe Biden’s support to collapse and hope they’re the best centrist standing. A Bloomberg bid would immediately add another contender — and millions of dollars — to the competition on that front, though the former mayor’s team says he will likely stay out of early states.

    Other perennial 1% polling candidates have plans that are far less clear. They include spiritualist and best-selling author Marianne Williamson, who moved from Los Angeles to Iowa for the race; former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, who just concluded a walk across New Hampshire to attempt to draw attention to his campaign; and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, a wealthy businessman who is self-funding much of his race.

    Delaney explained his continued campaign with a “why not?” rationale. After millions spent and countless hours of time, “it just seems kind of crazy for me to get out before the caucus,” he said.

  • “The left smells a rat in Bloomberg, Patrick bids”:

    Aides and allies to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among other liberals, perceive the eleventh-hour campaign launched last week by Patrick — and the prospect of an impending Bloomberg 2020 bid — as an attempt to crush an ascendant left wing that would expand government more than any other Democratic president in decades.

    In their view, Patrick and Bloomberg are stalking horses for moderate Democrats, high-dollar contributors and bundlers desperate to halt the momentum of the economic populists at the top of the polls — and regain control of the party levers.

    It’s no minor intra-party spat in an election where all wings of the Democratic Party will need to be working in concert to beat Trump.

    They’re not wrong, but note that the word “unelectable” is strangely missing from the piece. Finally, an actual excuse for using a silly image:

  • Obama takes veiled shot at Warren and Sanders, warns 2020 Dems Americans don’t want to ‘tear down the system.'”

  • CBS does some early delegate counting. Apply the usual sodium chloride.
  • Not even Democrats want to pay for socialized medicine. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Now on to the clown car itself:

  • Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. Gets a Military Times questionnaire. He held a town hall meeting at New England College in New Hampshire. In fact, Bennet is staffing up in New Hampshire and opening three new offices. Will his “all in on New Hampshire” strategy work? Probably not, but at least it’s a strategy, it provides a rational counter to almost every other candidate going “all in on Iowa,” and likely won’t be any worse than anything else he’s tried.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Inside the war on Biden-Ukraine reporting. Man, Alexandra Chalupa’s name shows up in so many places. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Comes out against marijuana legalization. While I think that’s the wrong opinion, I’ve got to admit that it’s a bit gutsy for Biden to stick to his guns on this one, as it would be so easy to give lip-service to legalization the way most other candidates are doing. Promises he can work with Republicans once that evil mastermind Trump is gone. Caveat: It’s a garbage article full of far-left talking points like “more and more men on the right turn to political violence,” as though a Bernie Bro hadn’t started shooting at Republican congressmen.
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg: Getting In? Twitter. The Bloomberg campaign is currently in a quantum superimposition state, since he’s running (applied for ballot access in Alabama) and not running (hasn’t officially announced) at the same time. So don’t make too much fun of him, or he might not run:

    Name the Democrat who is super-excited to have Michael Bloomberg barge into the Dem primaries like some nutty ex-girlfriend who gave you crabs popping in at your wedding. Where is the groundswell of support behind this pint-sized presidential aspirant? Perhaps the Democratic consultants who didn’t sign up with one of the other goofy candidates are happy. The micro-zillionaire may not have charisma or a vision or actual human support, but he’s got endless bucks to squander on electoral parasites.

    So, those jerks will love him getting in. And so will us Republicans – Trump already has a nickname laid upon the numismatic gnome, “Little Michael.”

    Real talk: the guy is delusional. Can you hear the excitement about the Verne Troyer of American politics bubbling over in the Midwest where this election’s going to be won?”

    “Hey Lou, good news. That Bloomberg guy is in the race. I’ve been lookin’ for a miniature Manhattan finance snob who wants to ban Cokes, take our deer rifles, and who makes the New York Times happy.”

    “Yeah Phil, I’m sure getting tired of all this great economic good news and my kids not coming home in boxes from Whocaresistan.”

    “We need a guy who’s thinks he’s smarter and better than us and isn’t afraid to tell us how to live our lives!”

    Snip.

    Bloomberg is the kind of pursed-lipped, uptight scold the Normals are saluting with a single digit. You get the distinct impression that he spends a lot of his time being very, very upset that we are choosing to live our lives without his approval, and that it grates on him. Electing him president would be like electing your kindergarten teacher POTUS, if your kindergarten teacher was tiny, 77, and jetted away for every weekend to Bermuda in her Gulfstream after lecturing you on how you can’t have chocolate because of global warming.

    Snip.

    But that’s okay, because his ego trip is going to cause amazing, glorious disruption within the Democratic race and help Donald Trump immeasurably. Blue on blue is the best kind of conflict, and this uncivil war is going to send popcorn sales through the roof. I know I’ll be gobbling it down, while sipping a Big Gulp just to tick him off.

    Do you think Joe Biden, who now occupies the “fake moderate” lane Bloomberg wants to run in, will just go quietly? It was Gropey’s age-fueled decline, magnified by his snortunate son Hoover’s coke-fueled Slavic shenanigans, that made the creepy veep vulnerable. But Joe won’t stagger away quietly. He’ll stagger away loudly, incoherently, and bloodily. Joe may be utterly confused – “Whaddya mean the Blue Man Group is running against me?” – but those around him, those investing in his success, those planning to actually control things should the American people be dumb enough to elect the empty figurehead, are not going to just throw in the towel.

    It’s not like Bloomberg has a lot of love out there in Dem land, or in Republican land, or in any land. He wants to claim the centrist slot, but the Dems are in no mood for puny moderation. And we Republicans are not fooled by Lil’ Duce. He’s a liberal schoolmarm just like the rest, except his business acumen won’t let him support the trillions in giveaways Chief Sitting Bolshevik and the rest are touting. He knows their numbers are literally insane, and he’ll say so, but just because you can count doesn’t make you moderate.

    He faces a Democratic Party iceberg:

    Bloomberg sees another gap, this one in the Democratic presidential field, where no center-left candidate dominates. Both Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg have obvious weaknesses and Amy Klobuchar has all but disappeared. Bloomberg is right in saying the whole field is weak, most candidates are too far left to win in November, and the center lane is not too crowded. He’s also right in saying that President Trump is vulnerable despite the strong economy. And he’s right in thinking that his age is no barrier. At 77, he is still energetic and sharp enough to do the job.

    Where Bloomberg is wrong is thinking he can captivate a Democratic base that has moved sharply left since Barack Obama left office. He’s wrong, too, if he thinks policies that worked in New York City will appeal to contemporary Democrats.

    Bloomberg’s problem is not that primary voters hate his notorious tax on Slurpees or his strong stance against guns. They like them. Party activists don’t drink Big Gulps; they sip fair-trade coffee and craft beer. They don’t drive pickup trucks with gun racks. Au contraire. They think restrictions on gun sales are long overdue and will reduce urban crime. They adore government policies crafted by experienced professionals, not gasbag populists. Some remember Bloomberg’s New York as a very competently run city, one that became cleaner, safer, and more prosperous during his tenure (2002-2013). So far, so good.

    The problem is that Bloomberg made the city safer by cracking down on petty criminals (“broken windows” policing) and frisking lots of people to lessen gun violence. Those policies, begun under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and continued under Bloomberg, worked well—but they made enemies, especially in poor, minority neighborhoods. Today, those policies are despised by party activists, especially African Americans.

    Being strong on crime is the surest way to alienate today’s Democratic primary voters. The same black politicians who backed tough laws during the crack cocaine epidemic now reject them and blame their passage on white racists. (That’s why Joe Biden, who voted for these bills, now apologizes for them.) Actually, black politicians were among their strongest advocates. Back then, they had plenty of support from minority voters living in communities ravaged by crack and the gangs that sold it.

    Those days are gone. The politicians who previously supported such policies now revile “mass incarceration” and the “prison-industrial complex.” For them, Black Lives Matter means no more intrusive policing, no more arrests for “broken windows” or jumping turnstiles, no more street stops to frisk for illegal weapons.

    Gone, too, are the days when reform-minded Democrats supported charter schools, as Mayor Bloomberg did. Teacher unions have waged war on them in Democratic cities across the country.

    This shift in attitudes means Bloomberg can tell primary voters he made New York more livable, but he cannot tell them how. His successful policies are now politically toxic, at least among Democrats. They are major obstacles to winning black support, an essential element in the party’s coalition. Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete face their own obstacles with this vital constituency, where they badly lag Barack Obama’s vice president.

    Bloomberg’s second problem is yet another one that would be a huge asset in a sane world. He is the very embodiment of an American economic success story. He is immensely rich, and he made it all himself. Republicans love that kind of story. Democrats once did, too. No more. It doesn’t matter that Bloomberg made his riches honestly by adding value to the economy. He didn’t throw poor people out of work, run sweatshops, mine coal, or slaughter cuddly animals. It hardly matters that he’s given away billions to charity. What matters is that he is not embarrassed by his riches, that he made them in the financial sector, and that he opposes the activists’ anti-growth policies, such as the Green New Deal. For the socialist wing of the party, those are the indelible marks of Cain. The hard left will never back him, even if he wins the nomination. Some might hold their noses and vote for him in the general election, but his nomination would rip the party apart.

    Bloomberg faces other problems, too. He is the opposite of charismatic. He lacks a national, grassroots organization. His money can buy consultants and advertisements, but it cannot coax volunteers to ring doorbells.

    “History Says Bloomberg 2020 Would Be a Sure Loser“:

    If Bloomberg is concerned about the rise of Elizabeth Warren, the Thompson campaign should prompt him to think very hard about the ramifications of getting into the 2020 race. By splitting the moderate vote with Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, a Bloomberg candidacy might wind up delivering key states to Warren or Bernie Sanders.

    Granted, none of the other latecomers has brought a fleet of Brinks trucks into a campaign. And the sheer volatility of primaries, along with the unpredictability of politics, warns against putting too much stock in history. Still, if Bloomberg or anyone else is seriously thinking of launching a campaign, it’s worth remembering that when it comes to a presidential run, the last has never been first.

    It’s not that Bloomberg doesn’t suck, it’s just that everone else sucks so much harder:

    Now that Bloomberg has hinted that he might get into the race, he must be considering how he’ll defend his record as mayor to an increasingly left-leaning Democratic voter. Though conservatives often deride Bloomberg for his nanny-state initiatives, like wanting to ban “big gulp” sugary drinks, a considerable part of what the Wall Street tycoon accomplished in New York—from carrying on Rudy Giuliani’s essential policing initiatives to knocking down barriers to real estate development and encouraging the rich to come to New York because “that’s where the revenue comes [from]”—will be far more noxious to the progressive voter than Biden’s policy transgressions. How Bloomberg defends himself will be significant because we’re entering a phase in which moderate, pro-business Democrats (and he was always a Democrat, even when he ran as a Republican) like him are disappearing from the political landscape of America’s big cities, to be replaced by progressives whose views on everything—especially public order—appear to be regressions to the disastrous urban policies of the 1960s and 1970s. The disorder rising in places like San Francisco and Seattle suggests what the fruits of such policies will be.

    Bloomberg will supposedly make a decision before Thanksgiving, which means next week have even more turkey than usual…

  • New Jersey Senator Cory Booker: In. Twitter. Facebook. Fox Anchor apologizes for saying he dropped out already. Easy mistake to make. He was merely pinning for the fjords. (Over/Under for cumulative times I will reference the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch in all clown car updates: 127.) Boston Globe reporter asks what he thinks of Patrick getting into the race.

    BOSTON GLOBE: I think that I get the premise of the campaign. You have someone highly educated, very energetic, inspiring on the stump, has some executive experience, with a beautiful, bald head —

    CORY BOOKER: Thank you for finally stating the truth!

    GLOBE: Oh, well I am talking about Deval Patrick.

    BOOKER: [Laughter] Touché! Touché! Another reporter did that to me, like a mayor, Rhodes Scholar, and thank you, thank you. “Oh no, I am talking about Mayor Pete.’’

    Points for being a good sport…

  • Montana Governor Steve Bullock: In. Twitter. Facebook. He didn’t qualify for the November debate. He wins a fact-check. “Bullock is right he’s the only Democratic presidential candidate to win a statewide race in a state Trump won in 2016.” Winning a fact check is a nice consolation prize for someone who won’t win any delegates…
  • South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. CNN tries to explain his surge in Iowa. “It all has to do with the fact that a lot of caucusgoers had and have a highly favorable view of Buttigieg.” That’s putting the cart before the horse: They have a favorable view of him because he’s poured a ton of money into the state to introduce himself favorably to Iowans. Is he peaking too soon? Maybe, but most of the Democratic candidates this cycle never even broke into double-digits anywhere. He may be up big in Iowa, but South Carolina? Not so much:

    The Democratic nomination remains very much up for grabs, but a big question hanging over Buttigieg’s head is whether he can make sufficient inroads with African-American primary voters to capture the nomination.

    Black voters make up about a quarter of the Democratic primary electorate, but two thirds of South Carolina primary voters are black, and Buttigieg remains stuck in the single digits in the Palmetto State. A Monmouth poll of South Carolina conducted after the October Democratic debate, where Buttigieg went toe-to-toe with Elizabeth Warren and won, pegged the mayor’s support at 3 percent, while a Change Research poll conducted at the same time showed Buttigieg at 9 percent.

    Buttigieg’s weakness in South Carolina is partly a function of the fact that Joe Biden, former vice president to America’s first black president, retains a commanding lead among black voters. But Buttigieg’s weakness is also partly a function of his sexual orientation, as David Catanese reported in The State last month: “Internal focus groups conducted by Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign this summer reveal a possible reason why he is struggling with African-American voters: some see his sexuality as a problem.”

    “I’ll go ahead and say it,” one African-American man said in a focus group. “I don’t like the fact that he threw out there that he lives with his husband.”

    Buttigieg pitches a plan for black Americans. Unfortunately, he used a stock photograph of black Kenyans in an ad promoting the plan. Oops. Double-oops: Names of supporters of the plan (but not necessarily Buttigieg) appearing in a Buttigieg ad.

  • Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He didn’t qualify for the November debate. Castro hates Mayor Pete. He gets a Military Times questionnaire as well.
  • Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not? But she says that “many, many, many people” want her to run in 2020. I’m sure that’s true: There’s an army of Clinton sycophants, toadies and consultants who would love one last ride on the gravy train. “‘We Would Be Delighted To Have Hillary Clinton Run In 2020,’ Says Democratic Party Chair As Several Laser Dots Dance Around On Forehead.”
  • Former Maryland Representative John Delaney: In. Twitter. Facebook. He’s airing 30 minute infomercials in Iowa. When you’ve got nuthin’, you got nuthin’ to lose…
  • Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. 538 looks at her cult status:

    Gabbard doesn’t have a ton of supporters: She’s averaging 1 to 2 percent in national surveys and 2 to 4 percent in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But she’s managed to meet the higher polling thresholds for debate qualification, so her support has grown at least a little bit — and what’s more, a chunk of it seems to be exclusively considering backing Gabbard. Back in October FiveThirtyEight partnered with Ipsos to dig into candidate support before and after the fourth Democratic debate. Our survey found that 13 percent of Gabbard’s supporters said they were only considering voting for her, a larger share than all Democratic candidates other than former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom have more support overall.

    So what do we know about Gabbard’s base? For one thing, it’s overwhelmingly male —according to The Economist’s polling with YouGov, her support among men is in the mid-single digits, while her support among women is practically nonexistent.

    This trend is evident in other recent polls as well. Last week’s Quinnipiac poll of Iowa found Gabbard at 5 percent among men and 1 percent among women, and Quinnipiac’s new survey of New Hampshire found her at 9 percent among men and 4 percent among women. A late October national poll from Suffolk University found her at 6 percent among men and 2 percent among women.

    Her predominantly male support shows up in other ways, too. An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found that only 24 percent of Gabbard’s itemized contributions had come from female donors,1 the smallest percentage of any candidate in the race. And while she doesn’t lead on the prediction markets, which tend to skew heavily young and male, as of publication, bettors do give her a slightly better chance of winning the Democratic nomination than Sen. Kamala Harris on PredictIt, though still not better than internet favorite Andrew Yang.

    Gabbard’s supporters are also likely to fall outside of traditional Democratic circles. Her supporters, for instance, are more likely to have backed President Trump in 2016, hold conservative views or identify as Republican compared to voters backing the other candidates. An early November poll from The Economist/YouGov found that 24 percent of Democratic primary voters who voted for Trump in 2016 backed Gabbard. By comparison, 12 percent of these voters backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 11 percent backed Biden and 10 percent backed Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Primary voters who identified as conservative also overwhelmingly backed Gabbard in that poll (16 percent) — only Biden and Harris enjoyed more support from this group (27 percent and 17 percent, respectively).

    All reasons for woke Democrats to hate her even more…

  • California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. California Democrats are openly wondering why she won’t fold her failing campaign and start acting like a senator.

    … many privately expressed the view that Harris should begin seriously considering leaving the race to avoid total embarrassment in the state’s early March primary. Her continued weakness in the presidential contest could even have a more damaging effect, several said — encouraging a primary challenger in 2022, when Harris is up for reelection.

    “I don’t think she can last until California,’’ says Garry South, a veteran strategist who has advised [CA Governor Gavin] Newsom and former presidential candidate Joe Lieberman. “I don’t wish her ill, but she’s got a decision to make: you limp in here and get killed in your home state, and it damages your reputation nationally. Or you pull out before the primary like Jerry Brown did in 1980 … and you at least avoid the spectacle of being decisively rejected.”

    […]

    Interviews with a half-dozen veteran Democratic campaign insiders at the convention who spoke on condition of anonymity — many out of fear of angering a sitting senator — echoed South’s view.

    Harris has qualified for both the November and December Democratic debates, so it’s highly unlikely she’ll drop out before then unless she just no longer has the campaign resources to go on.

  • Former Attorney General Eric Holder: Probably not? Not seeing any news since last week’s trial ballon, and maybe Patrick’s entry stole any potential thunder he could have generated.
  • Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Twitter. Facebook. Meet Amy Whinehouse:

    Klobuchar’s rise in Minnesota politics is attributable in good part to her father’s prominence as a sports reporter and daily columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune. By the time she jumped into electoral politics everybody knew the name Klobuchar.

    In Minnesota politics Klobuchar has led a charmed life, but so have a few other DFL politicians who lacked the advantage of a widely known name. Her popularity among Minnesota voters is not a credit to us. From my perspective, the most notable fact about Senator Klobuchar is what a phony she is.

    She is not nice. She is not funny. She is not a moderate. She is not an accomplished legislator. She is an incredibly boring speaker.

  • Update: Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick: Jumped In. Because Massachusetts just isn’t sufficiently represented by Liawatha in the race. 538 articulates the reasoning behind Patrick’s run:

    Democrats, as I wrote earlier this week, have a somewhat unorthodox set of front-runners — at least when compared to past nominees. Joe Biden is on the old side (76). Pete Buttigieg is on the young side (37). Elizabeth Warren is very liberal. And Bernie Sanders is both very liberal and old (78). The last two Democrats to win a general election — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — were 40-somethings who ran on somewhat safe ideological platforms.

    Patrick, meanwhile, is 63 years old — not young, exactly, but not in his upper 70s either. He served two terms as Massachusetts governor. He’s liberal, but unlikely to push more controversial liberal policies such as Medicare for All or more drastic ones such as a wealth tax. I assume that Patrick, who is friendly with Obama, is himself wary of the current Democratic field and its lack of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama style figure, and that his circle includes a lot of Democratic Party operatives and donors who see this void and encouraged him to run. (Or at least didn’t discourage him.)

    You might think that Patrick’s logical path is to compete with Biden for black voters, and with Warren and Sanders for New Hampshire voters (all three come from neighboring states). And sure, it would help Patrick if he can peel off some of Warren’s well-educated liberal voters, particularly in New Hampshire. And to win the nomination, he will probably have to close the big lead that Biden has with African-Americans. But I think the real opening for Patrick is essentially to replace Pete Buttigieg as the candidate for voters who want a charismatic, optimistic, left-but-not-that-left candidate. Patrick, I think, is betting that there’s a “Goldilocks” opportunity for him — “Buttigieg but older,” or “Biden but younger” — a candidate who is viewed as both safe on policy and safe on electability grounds by Democratic establishment types and voters who just want a somewhat generic Democratic candidate that they are confident will win the general election.

    After all, in his rise in Massachusetts politics, Patrick was not that reliant on black support — the Bay State has a fairly small black population (9 percent). Instead, he won a competitive 2006 Democratic primary for governor by emerging as preferred candidate among the state’s white, educated, activist class.

    On paper, Patrick seems fairly similar to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris — charismatic, black, left-but-not-that-left. But he has two potential advantages over them. First, Patrick has a last-mover advantage — he’s seen how the other candidates have ran and can begin his candidacy to take advantage of perceived weaknesses. As a new candidate, voters might also give him a fresh look in a way that perhaps the two senators haven’t been able to get. But more importantly, Booker and Harris both spent the first half of the year trying to win some of the more liberal voters, who are likely now with Warren and Sanders. That may have made Harris, in particular, appear as though she was trying to be all things to all people. Patrick can now enter the race knowing that he is trying to win Democrats who self-identify as “moderate” and “somewhat liberal,” basically conceding the most liberal voters to Warren and Sanders.

    Patrick currently works at Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Democrats spent 2012 criticizing because Mitt Romney had long worked there. That looked like a huge liability this time last year, when Patrick flirted with but ultimately ruled out a run. Back then, it seemed like the party’s left was ascendant and Patrick’s Bain work would be a deal-breaker. Now, I expect Patrick to be more unapologetic about his work, essentially leaning into the idea that he is more moderate and pro-capitalism than Warren or Sanders.

    It all sounds pretty good on paper, right? You can almost see why Patrick decided to launch such a late, long-shot bid.

    There is a potential problem, though: I’m not sure voters really want Buttigieg-but-older or Biden-but-younger. Whatever the Democratic elites think, Democratic voters like the current field, as I noted above. That makes me think that people in Iowa, where the South Bend mayor is surging, are not looking for Buttigieg-but-older. They’re probably well aware of how old Buttigieg is — he talks about it all the time! Biden, meanwhile, has led in national polls most of the year and has solid leads in Nevada and South Carolina — it’s possible many voters view his age and related experience as a feature not a bug. Patrick will be a fresh candidate and perhaps have a more honed message, but in the end may register with actual voters not much differently than Booker or Harris or any of the other lower-tier candidates, black or non-black.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

    Matt Taibbi is not impressed with the rationale for a Patrick candidacy:

    Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts and newly-resigned executive of Mitt Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital, has entered the Democratic primary race, which is shaping up to be the biggest ensemble-disaster comedy since Cannonball Run.

    Patrick’s entry comes after news that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put himself on the ballot in Alabama and Arkansas. It also comes amid word from Hillary Clinton that “many, many, many” people are urging her to run in 2020, and whispers in the press that an “anxious Democratic establishment” has been praying for alternate candidacies in a year that had already seen an astonishing 26 different people jump in the race.

    A piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago suggested Democratic insiders, going through a “Maalox moment” as they contemplated possible failure in next year’s general election season, were fantasizing about “white knight” campaigns by Clinton, Patrick, John Kerry, Michelle Obama, former Attorney General Eric Holder (!), or Ohio’s Sherrod Brown.

    The story described “concern” that “party elites” have about the existing field:

    With doubts rising about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s ability to finance a multistate primary campaign, persistent questions about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s viability in the general election and skepticism that Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Ind., can broaden his appeal beyond white voters, Democratic leaders are engaging in a familiar rite: fretting about who is in the race…

    LOL at the non-mention of Bernie Sanders in that passage. If Bernie wins the nomination, “Buttigieg Finishes Encouraging Fourth” is going to be your A1 Times headline.

    Snip.

    People like Bloomberg and Patrick seem to believe in the existence of a massive electoral “middle” that wants 15-point plans and meritocratic slogans instead of action. As befits brilliant political strategists, they also seem hyper-concerned about the feelings of the country’s least numerous demographic, the extremely rich. A consistent theme is fear (often described in papers like the Times as “concern”) that the rhetoric of Warren and Sanders might unduly upset wealthy folk.

    Snip.

    From Donald Trump to Sanders to Warren, the politicians attracting the biggest and most enthusiastic responses in recent years have run on furious, throw-the-bums-out themes, for the logical reason that bums by now clearly need throwing out.

    Snip.

    You can’t capture the widespread discontent over these issues if you’re running on a message that the donor class doesn’t deserve censure for helping create these messes. It’s worse if you actually worked — as Patrick did — for a company like Ameriquest, a poster child for the practices that caused the 2008 financial crisis: using aggressive and/or predatory tactics to push homeowners into new subprime mortgages or mortgage refis, fueling the disastrous financial bubble.

    If we count Bloomberg, Patrick marks the 28th person to run in the 2020 Democratic race. Pundits from the start have hyped a succession of politicians with similar/familiar political profiles, from Beto O’Rourke to Kamala Harris to Buttigieg to Amy Klobuchar to John Delaney, and all have failed to capture public sentiment, for the incredibly obvious reason that voters have tuned out this kind of politician.

    They’ve heard it all before. Every time a long-serving establishment Democrat gets up and offers paeans to “hope” and “unity” and “economic mobility,” all voters hear is blah, blah, blah. They’re not looking for what FiveThirtyEight.com calls a “Goldilocks solution,” i.e. “Buttigieg, but older,” or “Biden, but younger” (or, more to the point in the case of this Bain Capital executive, “Mitt Romney, but black”); they’re looking for something actually different from what they’ve seen before.

    The party’s insiders would have better luck finding a winning general election candidate if they randomly plucked an auto mechanic from Lansing, Michigan, or a nail salon owner from Vegas, or any of a thousand schoolteachers who could use the six months of better-paid work, than they would backing yet another in the seemingly endless parade of corporate-friendly “Goldilocks solutions.” That’s assuming they can’t see past themselves long enough to at least pretend they can support someone with wide support bases like Sanders or Warren.

    And the dirt-drop begins: “In 2014, Patrick fired the head of the state’s Sex Offender Registry Board in part because she questioned why [Patrick’s ex-brother-in-law Bernard] Sigh wasn’t required to register for a 1993 spousal rape conviction.”

  • Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. Sanders slams mandatory gun buybacks as unconstitutional. (Hat tip: Say Uncle.) Says they hit the 4 million contributions mark. Shoe stans for Bernie’s chances. Does MSNBC have it in for Bernie? (See also: Andrew Yang.)
  • Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. Guess who else gets a Military Times questionaire?

    Our military is excellent in many regards, but it is insufficient in its readiness to meet all the threats of the 21st century and needs to be truly transformed. You can see this in the U.S. commander of the Pacific’s comment that China now commands the Western Pacific. In the face of a rising China, along with authoritarian regimes from Brazil to the Philippines to Turkey to Russia, and the constant presence of belligerent non-state actors, we need to reform our military to deal with asymmetrical threats.

  • Billionaire Tom Steyer: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tom Steyer Spending 67% of All TV Ad Dollars, Still Getting 1% in the Polls.” Time to deploy this again:

  • Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Warren climbs onboard the free health care for illegal aliens train. “Medicare for All, as I put this together, covers everyone regardless of immigration status…And that’s it. We get Medicare for All, and you don’t need the subsidies because Medicare for All is fully paid for, and that’s the starting place.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.) But she’s also ever-so-slightly scaled back her $40 trillion socialized medicine scheme, and Sweet Jesus are the loony left upset over it. And I’ve got to hand it to Team Bernie for this one:

    She’s staffing up in Texas:

    Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is expanding her staff in Texas, giving her easily the biggest organization devoted to the state of any primary campaign.

    In an announcement first shared with The Texas Tribune, her campaign named six senior staffers Friday morning who will work under its previously announced state director, Jenn Longoria. The staff for now will be spread across offices in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth.

    The campaign also announced it will hire full-time organizers in north, central, east and south Texas.

    The Texas team, according to the campaign, “will focus on traditional, digital and data-driven voter contact and dedicated outreach to communities of color across the Lone Star State.” The delegate-rich Texas primary is on March 3, or Super Tuesday.

    Here are the senior staffers that Warren’s campaign announced Friday morning, starting with where they will be based:

    • San Antonio area: Matthew Baiza, deputy organizing director. Baiza was the 2019 campaign manager for San Antonio City Councilwoman Ana Sandoval and an organizer for Gina Ortiz Jones’ 2018 bid for the 23rd Congressional District.
    • Austin area: Sissi Yado, organizing director. Yado most recently worked as senior field manager for the Human Rights Campaign in Texas and previously was training manager for the Florida Democratic Party.
    • Austin area: Michael Maher, operations and training director. Maher has worked for Battleground Texas in a number of roles, including 2018 programs director and 2016-2019 operations and finance manager.
    • Austin area: Beth Kloser, data director. Kloser was managing director of Battleground Texas from 2015-2018 and a regional organizer for Wendy Davis’ 2014 gubernatorial run.
    • Dallas area: Jess Moore Matthews, mobilization director. Matthews most recently served as chief content officer for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and previously was digital director for de Blasio’s 2020 presidential campaign.
    • Houston area: Andre Wagner, community organizing director. Wagner is a former staffer for state Sen. Carol Alvarado of Houston and Houston City Councilman Dwight Boykins whose campaign experience includes organizing for Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 U.S. Senate bid.

    Yes, Battleground Texas, Wendy Davis and Bill de Blasio alums, that’s your surefire ticket to success in Texas…

  • Author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson: In. Twitter. Facebook. She’s more popular in South Carolina than Buttigieg. She’s visiting Sparks, Nevada, a city I had never heard of before I started doing the clown car updates, but lots of Democrats have visted there. It’s the fifth largest city in Nevada and part of the Greater Reno area. Maybe it’s less depressing than Reno…
  • Venture capitalist Andrew Yang: In. Twitter. Facebook. Again: “MSNBC apologizes after leaving Yang out of presidential poll graphic.”

    Andrew Yang and Dominique Wilkins shoot hoops, talk election.” Being a semiserious presidential candidate has its perks…

  • Out of the Running

    These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running, who declared then dropped out, or whose campaigns are so moribund I no longer feel like wasting my time gathering updates on them:

  • Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti
  • Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams
  • Actor Alec Baldwin.
  • Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
  • Former California Governor Jerry Brown
  • Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown
  • Former one-term President Jimmy Carter
  • Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Jr.
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
  • New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (Dropped out September 20, 2019)
  • Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti
  • New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dropped out August 29, 2019)
  • Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum
  • Former Vice President Al Gore
  • Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (Dropped out August 2, 2019)
  • Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (Dropped out August 15, 2019; running for Senate instead)
  • Washington Governor Jay Inslee: Dropped Out (Dropped out August 21, 2019; running for a third gubernatorial term)
  • Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine
  • Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry
  • New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
  • Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
  • Oregon senator Jeff Merkley
  • Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (Dropped out August 23, 2019)
  • Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In, but exiled to the also-rans after raising $5 in campaign contributions in Q3.
  • Former First Lady Michelle Obama
  • Former West Virginia State Senator Richard Ojeda (Dropped out January 29, 2019)
  • Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (Dropped out November 1, 2019)
  • New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (constitutionally ineligible)
  • Ohio Representative Tim Ryan (Dropped out October 24, 2019)
  • California Representative Eric Swalwell (Dropped out July 8, 2019)
  • Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
  • Like the Clown Car update? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    There Is No Clown Car, Only Zuul

    November 18th, 2019

    I’ve successfully managed to post the clown car update every Monday since January, but today is going to break the string thanks to a task that took up several hours on Sunday. But tomorrow should still see a one-day late Clown Car Update, so the weekly streak will continue.

    Instead, enjoy a handful of tweets on more-or-less the same subject:

    Most Sophisticated Bluehost Phising Scam Yet

    November 17th, 2019

    So, a few days ago I got one of the most sophisticated phising scam messages I’ve ever received. Message:

    Bluehost.com

    2:46 PM (5 hours ago)

    to me
    Hello, LAWRENCE PERSON

    We are contacting you today because we have disabled your outbound email services temporarily. The reason for this is because you've got a forum that spammers were subscribing to to get messages sent out. They used a spam trap email address that actually resulted in our mail server getting blacklisted.

    We need you to add protection to it so it isn't being exploited in the future. You will need to contact us and let us know this has been resolved for us to restore your email services.

    For protection, we ask that you require an account to subscribe to topic notifications if you haven't already. We also ask that you add protection to your sign-up page so that spammers cannot automate it. You can do this by using a captcha or something similar to that.

    To activate your account, please visit our BlueHost account reactivation center. Use the link below:
    http://my.bluehost.com.313e7d092611f0c58251064957ca6b4c.
    cajunhomeservices.com/account/58961/reactivation.html

    Thank you,
    BlueHost.com Terms of Service Compliance
    http://www.bluehost.com
    For support go to http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/
    Toll-Free: (888) 401-4678

    Note the relatively good English and the fairly sophisticated “You have a technical spam problem” hook. The all caps name and the fact I don’t have any “forums” is the only giveaway, besides an examination of the actual link provided, that it’s not kosher.

    Note that the link actually points to “cajunhomeservices.com”.

    Raw source:

    Delivered-To: l********@gmail.com
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    Thu, 14 Nov 2019 12:46:12 -0800 (PST)
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    X-Received: by 2002:aca:52c2:: with SMTP id g185mr5152898oib.45.1573764372228;
    Thu, 14 Nov 2019 12:46:12 -0800 (PST)
    ARC-Seal: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; t=1573764372; cv=none;
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    ARC-Authentication-Results: i=1; mx.google.com;
    spf=fail (google.com: domain of support@bluehost.com does not designate 192.185.143.39 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=support@bluehost.com;
    dmarc=fail (p=NONE sp=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=bluehost.com
    Return-Path:
    Received: from gateway31.websitewelcome.com (gateway31.websitewelcome.com. [192.185.143.39])
    by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id f84si4367574oig.42.2019.11.14.12.46.11
    for
    (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
    Thu, 14 Nov 2019 12:46:12 -0800 (PST)
    Received-SPF: fail (google.com: domain of support@bluehost.com does not designate 192.185.143.39 as permitted sender) client-ip=192.185.143.39;
    Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
    spf=fail (google.com: domain of support@bluehost.com does not designate 192.185.143.39 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=support@bluehost.com;
    dmarc=fail (p=NONE sp=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=bluehost.com
    Received: from cm13.websitewelcome.com (cm13.websitewelcome.com [100.42.49.6]) by gateway31.websitewelcome.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD99FD53F0 for ; Thu, 14 Nov 2019 14:46:11 -0600 (CST)
    Received: from box2082.bluehost.com ([50.87.249.228]) by cmsmtp with SMTP id VM0Ji8N6s3Qi0VM0JiRiqR; Thu, 14 Nov 2019 14:46:11 -0600
    X-Authority-Reason: ss=1
    Received: from [162.248.225.8] (port=55837 helo=support) by box2082.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1iVM0J-003aX1-95 for l*******@gmail.com; Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:46:11 -0700
    Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:48:38 -0500
    Message-ID: <1332064982.webi20191114154838@bluehost.com>
    Subject: Disabled your outbound email services temporarily
    To: l********@gmail.com
    From: "Bluehost.com"
    X-Priority: 4 (Low)
    Mime-Version: 1.0
    X-Mailer: Php_libMail_v_2.11(webi.ru)
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
    X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
    X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - box2082.bluehost.com
    X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - gmail.com
    X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
    X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - bluehost.com
    X-BWhitelist: no
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    X-Source-L: No
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    (Note: Line breaks added on ARC lines.)

    Note the authentication fails in the raw source of the message.

    Let’s do a whois for cajunhomeservices.com:

    Domain Name: CAJUNHOMESERVICES.COM
    Registry Domain ID: 1987624026_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.fastdomain.com
    Registrar URL: http://www.fastdomain.com
    Updated Date: 2018-12-16T00:21:49Z
    Creation Date: 2015-12-16T00:22:33Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2019-12-16T00:22:33Z
    Registrar: FastDomain Inc.
    Registrar IANA ID: 1154
    Registrar Abuse Contact Email:
    Registrar Abuse Contact Phone:
    Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
    Name Server: NS1.BLUEHOST.COM
    Name Server: NS2.BLUEHOST.COM
    DNSSEC: unsigned
    URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
    >>> Last update of whois database: 2019-11-15T02:46:01Z <<<

    The interesting thing here is that cajunhomeservices.com is actually registered to bluehost.com. I launched a chat window with technical support (offshore, it seemed like), and they promised to alert the proper security staff.

    Lesson: If you receive a message alerting you to some sort of online fraud, never click any link in the message. If it's a domain or service you use, go there by your saved bookmark or by typing the domain URL directly into your browser.

    Eternal vigilance is the price of IT security...

    South Park Takes On Tranny Madness

    November 16th, 2019

    Slaughtering the sacred cows other comedians won’t touch for fear of cancel culture, South Park takes on the madness of men competing in women’s athletics:

    On Wednesday, South Park illustrated the absurdity of allowing men who identify as women into female athletic competitions, in a way only South Park can, in the episode titled “Strong Woman.”

    PC Principal’s girlfriend and mother of his PC Babies, Vice Principal Strong Woman, sought to defend her title at the Strong Woman Competition, but not all went as planned when a trans athlete in the mold of former WWF wrestler Macho Man joined in and beat up on the competition…

    Strong Woman was disappointed to have come in second place, and PC Principal wondered if it’s unfair, “I guess she just started identifying as a woman a few weeks ago. Doesn’t really seem fair.”

    “Just don’t,” Strong Woman stopped him. “You’ll upset the PC Babies.” So true. You can’t question even the tiniest thing about trans identity or the PC Babies of the world will go off.

    Here’s a clip

    And the entire episode is online.

    LinkSwarm for November 15, 2019

    November 15th, 2019

    Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm filled with news from the impeachment farce:

  • Summary of George Kent’s testimony:

    Kent is not a first-hand witness and much of his testimony is based off of second-hand knowledge. [Page 206-207]

    Kevin Bacon has fewer degrees of separation to the Trump Zelensky call than George Kent.

    That being said, his closed-door testimony revealed far more devastating pushback on the Democrat narrative than anything else.

    Kent testified that it is appropriate for the State Department to look at the level of corruption in a country when evaluating foreign aid. [Page 103]

    (Reminder: The Trump administration sent Ukraine lethal aid.)

    Kent also testified that Hunter Biden being on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma while Joe Biden was VP was a conflict of interest. [Page 226-227]

    And according to his testimony, when he raised corruption concerns with the Obama White House, he was rebuffed and was told “There was no further bandwidth to deal” with Hunter. [Page 226-227]

  • Summary of Bill Taylor’s Testimony:

    Reminder: Chargé d’affaires for Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is not a fact witness to the Trump Ukraine call.

    Taylor was not on the July 25th call and he did not read the transcript until it was publically released for the world to see.

    Furthermore, Taylor doesn’t have relationships with any of the players involved. He has previously testified that he did not have direct communication with President Trump, Rudy Giuliani or Mick Mulvaney. [Pages 107-108]

    Yet even worse for Democrats’, Taylor’s closed door testimony has undermined their phony narrative.

    Taylor testified that at the time of President Trump’s call with Ukraine, the Ukrainians were unaware of the hold on the U.S. aid. [Page 119]

    Taylor also testified that combatting corruption in Ukraine is a “constant theme” of U.S. foreign policy. [Pages 86-88]

    (Preceding two links both from Director Blue.)

  • Even some Democrats are getting tired of the impeachment sham:

    Surprisingly, McDaniel reports that opposition to the hearings among Democrats is up 6 points. Could it be that there are still some sane members left in the Democratic Party who see this spectacle for what it is? Regardless of what new information is learned, no matter how favorably it may reflect on President Trump, there are a large number of Democrats who will not be swayed. Most Democrats hate Trump so much that, even though they’re well aware of how unfairly he’s been treated, they’re willing to go along with anything that will remove him from office. A six point shift doesn’t seem like much, but even a small move can swing an election.

    This shift also makes sense in light of the recent rally data released by Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale…He reported that 27% of those who attended Trump’s Tupelo, MS rally on November 1st identified themselves as Democrats. At an October 17th rally held in Dallas, TX, 21.4% identified as Democrats. These figures are stunning.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Ten signs the impeachment farce is actually a coup:

    1) Impeachment 24/7. The “inquiry,” supposedly prompted by President Trump’s Ukrainian call, is only the most recent coup seeking to overturn the 2016 election.

    Usually, the serial futile attempts — with the exception of the Mueller debacle — were characterized by about a month of media hysteria. We remember the voting-machines-fraud hoax, the Logan Act, the Emoluments Clause, the 25th Amendment, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux coup and various Michael Avenatti-Stormy Daniels-Michael Cohen psychodramas. Ukraine, then, isn’t unique, but simply another mini-coup.

    2) False whistleblowers. The “whistleblower” is no whistleblower by any common definition of the noun. He has no incriminating documents, no information at all. He doesn’t even have firsthand evidence of wrongdoing.

    Instead, the whistleblower relied on secondhand water-cooler gossip about a leaked presidential call. Even his mangled version of the call didn’t match that of official transcribers.

    He wasn’t disinterested but had a long history of partisanship. He was a protégé of many of Trump’s most adamant opponents, including Susan Rice, John Brennan and Joe Biden. He did not follow protocol by going first to the inspector general but instead caucused with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff’s impeachment inquiry. Neither the whistleblower nor his doppelganger, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, was bothered by the activities of the Bidens or by the Obama decision not to arm Ukraine. Their outrage, in other words, was not about Ukraine but over Trump.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Rep. Jim Jordan rips apart the sham witnesses. None of them have any first-hand knowledge of anything.
  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez admits that the entire point of the impeachment hearings is to unite the Democratic Party. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Whistleblower Revealed To Be Recently Hired White House Janitor Hillarita Clintonez.”
  • A transnational elite racing its way to a revolution.
  • “Capitol Building To Be Decorated As Giant Circus Tent For Duration Of Impeachment Hearings.”
  • TPPF looks in-depth at firearms and crime in Texas:

    At publication, Texas’ crime rate is the lowest it has been since 1965. Similarly, violent crime in Texas is at a 40-year generational low with 410.8 incidents per 100,000 residents, a rate not seen since 1977. This trend follows a decades-long aggregate decrease in both violent and property crime rates. As illustrated in Figure 1, murder—the most heinous crime that can be committed using a firearm—has mimicked the decline as well with the drop in constituent subcategories of homicide. (Note that the rifle and shotgun homicide rates are reflected on the secondary vertical axis on the right in order to display the drop in these rare incidents.)

    Further, the percentage of total homicides committed with a firearm in Texas has been trending downward as well. Similar to Figure 1, Figure 2 shows declines across all major categories of firearm homicide, with rifles and shotguns being displayed on the right-hand vertical axis. During the preceding two decades, a handgun has been used in an average of 46.53 percent of all homicides, while rifles and shotguns were used in 3.57 percent and 4.10 percent, respectively. For handguns, the highest use was 54.55 percent in 2005; the lowest was the most recent year, 2018, at 40.12 percent.

    Also: “These trends persist in tandem with a proliferation in concealed carry permits being issued. Between 1998 and 2018, the number of concealed handgun licenses issued have increased 568 percent.”

    Writer Derek Cohen examines possible solutions to violence involving guns, and finds all of them but one wanting:

    The Legislature should consider implementing and funding a Texas program similar to federal initiatives, which uses a multi-pronged strategy of policing and prosecution, agency integration, and identification of violent crime hot spots. The focus would be on criminals with guns, not law-abiding Texans (Governor’s Texas Safety Action Report).

    Of all the recommendations made in this report, this enjoys the strongest scholarly backing. This essentially describes what is known as “focused deterrence,” a holistic public safety strategy that includes law enforcement, prosecutors, social services, and analysts. The process begins when on-the-street law enforcement describes gang conditions in the area they patrol, both in terms of geography (what is the gang’s “territory”) and identifying key members. The analysts then create a gang map as well as a relational network of the gang. Those in the gang are notified that they have been identified as such and invited to a “call-in.” During this meeting, attendees are informed of the strategy and, should violence persist associated with the gang, not only will state and federal prosecutors seek the maximum punishment for all potential criminal charges, but gang members stand to face these charges should others within the network be responsible for furthering violence. Conversely, attendees are offered the option of enrolling in relevant social services to ease the transition to a more law-abiding life.

    These programs have gone by multiple names during their ascendency: Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), Operation: Ceasefire, and the like. Their efficacy has been demonstrated in individual and meta- analyses, suggesting “that focused deterrence strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, medium-sized crime reduction effect.”

  • After protecting Jeffrey Epstein, ABC is still looking for the whistleblower who revealed that fact.
  • “New Emmy Category Announced: Best Covering For A Pedophile.”
  • Speaking of child sex predators, ICE arrested over 3,700 of them in FY2019. They’re just molesting the children native Americans won’t…
  • Denver business owner fined by government for not cleaning up the feces left by homeless people attracted by local government policies. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Probably should have included a link to this in my Austin homeless roundup, but there’s a YouTube channel dedicated to drunken brawls on Sixth Street, which seems to have gotten much worse in the last year or so. (Hat tip: Paul Martin of KR Training.)
  • Nine deaths at USC since August? That starts to seem like a startlingly high number. And, accord to feminists, there must have also been thousands of student rapes in the same period…
  • “Chinese Communists Infiltrate British Universities, Confiscating Papers and Cancelling Events.” All universities outside China should close any “Confucius Institutes” they’ve allowed to operate.
  • Related: “South Korean, Chinese students face off over Hong Kong protests.” Note that this was in Seoul.
  • Venice floods (even worse than usual, due to high tides and rain). (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales resigns over voter fraud.
  • Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton became the first the secure his reelection in 2020. How? Within hours of the filing deadline closing, his legal team challenged false statements by his only Democratic opponent, who promptly withdrew.
  • ProTip: Try not to drop your four baggies filled with cocaine. Especially at the airport. Especially if you’re Democratic state representative. Texas Democratic State Representative Poncho Nevarez evidently had to learn that the hard way, and now he’s not running for reelection.
  • Massachusetts to seize cars of people caught with untaxed vaping products. Even by the standards of Massachusetts crazy that’s Massachusetts crazy, and likely both and Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual) and a Ninth Amendment (neither necessary nor proper) violation.
  • Michael Chabon on Star Trek and his dying father. It’s a really good essay and you should read it. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
  • Japan’s (mostly) failed attempts to firebomb the U.S. via balloon. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Classic Onion piece relinked by Instapundit: “Marxists’ Apartment A Microcosm Of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work.”

    Despite the roommates’ optimism, the system began to break down soon after its establishment. To settle disputes, the roommates held weekly meetings of the “Committee of Three.”

    “I brought up that I thought it was total bullshit that I’m, like, the only one who ever cooks around here, yet I have to do the dishes, too,” said Foyle, unaware of just how much the apartment underscores the infeasibility of scientific socialism as outlined in Das Kapital. “So we decided that if I cook, someone else has to do the dishes. We were going to rotate bathroom-cleaning duty, but then Kirk kept skipping his week, so we had to give him the duty of taking out the garbage instead. But now he has a class on Tuesday nights, so we switched that with the mopping.”

    After weeks of complaining that he was the only one who knew how to clean “halfway decent,” Foyle began scaling back his efforts, mirroring the sort of production problems experienced in the USSR and other Soviet bloc nations.

    At an Oct. 7 meeting of the Committee of Three, more duties and a point system were added. Two months later, however, the duty chart is all but forgotten and the shopping list is several pages long.

    The roommates have also tried to implement a food-sharing system, with similarly poor results. The dream of equal distribution of shared goods quickly gave way to pilferage, misallocation, and hoarding.

    “I bought the peanut butter the first four times, and this Organic Farms shit isn’t cheap,” Eaves said. “So ever since, I’ve been keeping it in my dresser drawer. If Kirk wants to make himself a sandwich, he can run to the corner store and buy some Jif.”

  • Narwhale the Unipuppy. Which was trending over the impeachment hearings two days ago…
  • In keeping with all that global warming, Austin had an unseasonably early hard freeze this week. Stay warm out there…

    Bill Burr on ABC Spiking the Epstein Story

    November 14th, 2019

    Enjoy comedian Bill Burr’s pungent take on ABC burying the Epstein story. Very little new information, but a good articulation of the outrage most of the nation feels over the story, at perhaps a slightly higher level of profanity.

    “Oh you mean the part where you had evidence of these f*cking super rich people banging kids, that’s a private moment of frustration, and it all goes away?”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Joe Rogan on California’s Homeless Problem

    November 13th, 2019

    Joe Rogan discusses homeless problems in San Francisco and Los Angeles with Rich Benoit (who’s evidently a YouTuber who salvages wrecked Teslas):

    Benoit talks about the huge number of homeless people on the streets of San Francisco, while Rogan discusses how crazy Los Angeles’ skid row section has become (which I discussed here).

    They also discuss Los Angeles’ new ban on living in mobile homes. On one hand, I’m quote sympathetic to homeowners who wake up one day to find RV recidivists reenacting segments of Breaking Bad in front of their house. On the other hand, California’s endless environmental regulations and rent control have made it very difficult to build new housing, and lawful citizens living respectfully in their own RV without breaking the law shouldn’t be penalized for doing so, especially if they do it someplace legally (like a Walmart parking lot).

    Austin Half-Asses Its Homeless Problem

    November 12th, 2019

    The problem with posting about Austin’s ongoing homeless problem is where to stop gathering data and throw up a post, since the left-wing politicians who created the problem refuse to do anything about solving it. So let’s just dig in:

    When last we checked, Austin’s downtown areas had become increasingly overrun by homeless drug addicts thanks to Austin mayor Steve Adler and the City Council repealing the urban camping ordinance. After watching this clown show, a little over a month ago Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared that if Adler wouldn’t fix his own problem, the state would. As per his word, last week the Texas Department of Transportation started clearing homeless camps from underpasses.

    In between then, faced with obvious evidence of a how massively they screwed up, and that actual citizens hated their newly trashed city, Adler and the city council boldly decided to half ass the issue:

    After the Austin City Council voted to lift a ban on homeless camping, sitting and lying, city leaders have decided to make some changes at a council meeting Oct. 17.

    The changes mean camping on all city sidewalks will be banned, but sitting and lying down will not – unless it is 15 feet from an operating business. Camping, sitting or lying downtown around the ARCH will be banned, within a quarter mile of the area. That rule will eventually apply to the South Austin homeless shelter when it is built.

    Camping, sitting and lying will also be banned in high wildfire risk zones, which is 14% of the city, or if it is endangering the health or safety of the public. It was approved by a 7-4 vote.

    The four nays were Kathie Tovo, Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen and Alison Alter, who supported a more specific plan that would add bans in more areas and make the ordinance clearer for enforcement.

    Underpasses were not addressed in the changes on Thursday.

    So transients camping on business sidewalks are right out, but open public spaces next to ordinary citizens are evidently A-OK to camp and shoot-up on.

    Two days ago, the Texas Department of transportation opened a camp for the homeless near 183 and Montopolis Drive. (Montopolis is one of the last ungentrified black neighborhoods in Austin.) DPS troopers are patrolling the camp 24 hours a day. My prediction is that this will help some, but the majority of homeless won’t avail themselves of it because they won’t be permitted to buy and use drugs there.

    The City Council is also considering buying a motel for $8 million to house the homeless:

    The Austin City Council on Thursday will consider allocating $8 million to purchase an motel in South Austin to provide housing for people who are homeless.

    The property is a Rodeway Inn at 2711 Interstate 35 South, between Oltorf Drive and Woodward Street, with 82 units.

    “The property is an ideal location given the proximity to areas where individuals who are experiencing homelessness live, accessible by public transportation, close to major arterials, and within reasonable distance of health care facilities,” city documents say.

    That seems to be about four times what it’s actually worth:

    I’m sure property owners in the Riverside/Oltorf area, which had been undergoing gradual gentrification from it’s immediate sleazy past, will be happy to have drug-using transients imported into their neighborhood on a permanent basis.

    Chuck DeVore, who fled California’s dysfunction only to see it crop up again in Austin, has some clear-eyed observations on the problem:

    Last summer, the all-Democratic 10-member Austin City Council voted to lift the city’s ban on sleeping or camping on public property, such as sidewalks and parks – except for City Hall itself.

    Immediately following the vote, Austin’s visible homeless population soared, with people passed out in the doorways of businesses, erecting tents along busy parkways and, according to police, getting hit and killed by cars.

    Responding to criticism from city residents, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (who lives in downtown Austin in the governor’s mansion), the City Council passed an amendment to its homeless camping ordinance last month. The new rules made it illegal for the homeless to camp within a quarter-mile of a large downtown homeless shelter.

    The amended ordinance quickly pushed more of the homeless into the city’s business district, leading a manager of one of Austin’s famous food trucks to note that the increased chaos on the streets was threatening to his customers.

    In his Fox News interview, Adler, a Democrat, repeatedly said the homeless problem can only be solved by giving people homes. He blamed the homelessness issue on the high cost of housing.

    Adler also claimed that the new ordinance didn’t create more people experiencing homelessness, but rather simply drew them into the open from the woodlands and greenbelts where they had previously been staying, mostly out of sight.

    However, a Fox News reporter recently interviewed a homeless man in Austin who had a different take, saying: “This is a famous place to live on the streets. Everybody knows that. If you want to live on the streets, go to Austin. You don’t even have to buy food. Everybody feeds you, give you money. You can party, it’s a blast.”

    Adler referred to getting the homeless into homes at least a half-dozen times during his interview, mentioning medical care once. This is what’s known in policy circles as a “housing first” strategy. The mayor’s intent was made clear when, near the end of his interview, he claimed that Austin needed “no barrier housing.”

    What is “housing first” and “no barrier housing”?

    “Housing first” is a federal policy that prohibits nonprofits receiving federal grants from requiring the people they serve to comply with service participation requirements like sobriety or job training – this is also the “no barrier housing” to which Adler referred.

    So, in short: Sturdy beggars comes to Austin to get high and mooch off bleeding hearts. We should start calling them “Adlers.”

    Because up to 75 percent of unsheltered people struggle with substance abuse disorders, a one-size-fits all “housing first” policy often ends up harming the very people it purports to help – recovering addicts and domestic violence survivors – by placing them in close proximity to addicts and abusers. This incentivizes program models that don’t work.

    Unlike the Trump administration’s successful approach to the opioid crisis – which recognizes individual needs – “housing first” failed to address the root causes of homelessness. For many people, the root cause of their homelessness is drug addiction and untreated mental illness. In that sense, “housing first” threatens to undermine the progress being made on the national opioid crisis.

    So why haven’t Adler and the City Council reversed course despite huge public opposition to their move? Some say because of all the money to be raked off for the “Homeless Industrial Complex”:

    Here’s how the process works: Developers accept public money to build these projects to house the homeless – either “bridge housing,” or “permanent supportive housing.” Cities and counties collect building fees and hire bureaucrats for oversight. The projects are then handed off to nonprofits with long term contracts to run them.

    That doesn’t sound so bad, right? The problem is the price tag. Developers don’t just build housing projects, they build ridiculously overpriced, overbuilt housing projects. Cities and counties don’t just collect building fees, they collect outrageously expensive building fees, at the same time as they create a massive bureaucracy. The nonprofits don’t just run these projects – the actual people staffing these shelters aren’t overpaid – they operate huge bureaucratic empires with overhead and executive salaries that do nothing for the homeless.

    Many examples of how this works in California snipped.

    Recognize that a special interest, the Homeless Industrial Complex – comprised of developers, government bureaucrats, and activist nonprofits – has taken over the homeless agenda and turned it into a profit center. They are not going to solve the problem, they are going to milk it. Their PR firms will sell compliant media a feel-good story about someone who turned their life around, living in a fine new apartment. What they won’t tell you is that because of the $400,000 they charged to build that single apartment unit, dozens if not hundreds of people are still on the street with nothing.

    For examples of what Adler and company’s decisions have wrought:

    More:

    And it’s had extreme negative effects on Austin businesses:

    Even former mayor Lee Leffingwell (hardly a conservative) says that the repeal of the camping ban was a huge mistake.

    More complaints from the citizenry:

    And Rep. Dan Crenshaw weighed in as well:

    And today Austin is getting its first seasonal hard freeze, with homeless shelters expecting an influx.

    None of the actions Adler and the Austin City Council have taken since repealing the camping ban have addressed the central issue: their actions made Austin streets a Mecca for sturdy beggars and drug-addicted lunatics. Either they restore the ban, or Austin voters need to recall and/or vote them out.