You might want to consider seeing it if you’re the “watching movies in theaters” type.
Here’s the trailer:
Gosnell Opened Yesterday
October 13th, 2018Beto Boomlet Busts
October 11th, 2018Remember all that breathless talk on how Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke was going to beat incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz as part of a giant “blue wave” against President Donald Trump?
New polls say: Not so much.
According to a New York Times poll, Cruz leads Democratic challenger O’ Rourke by nine points. The crosstabs further down the page show a 10 point Republican-over-Democrat edge among respondents, 38% to 28%, which much more closely mirrors previous exit polls than any of the other 2018 Texas Senate race polls I’ve covered. The piece also shows different results based on different turnout models; if the electorate looks like it did in 2014 (the last midterm election), Cruz lead is closer to 16 points. (Hat tip: Empower Texans, which notes that early October polls for Texas races like this have understated Republican support by 4-5 point.)
A Quinnipac poll also has Cruz up by nine points. (That poll had Republican ID at 35%, Democrat at 23%.)
Other links on the race:
There is no way Robert Francis O’Rourke, alias “Beto,” a.k.a. the no-doubt gleaming future of the Democratic Party is as delusional about his prospects for success as his followers. That would be impossible.
The Texas congressman is your average 46-year-old liberal failson politico, the grandson of a secretary of the Navy, the son of a judge, a hanger-on in his party who graduated from playing in an amazingly bad hardcore punk band to a seat on the El Paso City Council. After that, he challenged Rep. Silvestre Reyes, an eight-term Democratic incumbent and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, with the help of outside cash and endorsements from both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The two issues of crucial importance to reviving the fortunes of the working class on which O’Rourke fought his campaign were support for same-sex marriage and drug legalization, both of which Reyes, a Catholic, opposed.
Now O’Rourke is the Democratic nominee facing off against Sen. Ted Cruz. This is not some prize that party leadership granted to its favorite son. Defeating a sitting Republican senator in the Lone Star State is the kind of impossible job you give to someone you know slightly but don’t much care about, someone minimally competent but ultimately expendable, someone whose particular qualities don’t matter all that much because it’s a just a slot that needs to be filled and you’re just happy someone is bored or desperate enough to fill it — the kind of job you give, in other words, to Beto.
Snip.
No single article or tweet could do justice to the brain-destroying tedium of hyperbole, the willful exaggeration, the gushing faddishness, the hipster capitalist complacency, the novelty songwriting contest banality, the experimental filmmaker commercial-directing pseudo-profundity, the sheer late-night TV-level humorlessness of the Beto cult. In a recent column Dana Milbank promised to reveal the ingredients behind “the special sauce that flavors Betomania.” Here they are:
- “O’Rourke’s cool factor: skateboarding at Whataburger, playing the air drums, doing his laundry on Facebook Live, and scoring appearances with Ellen DeGeneres and Stephen Colbert …”
- Fifty thousand people attended a — free — Willie Nelson concert at which he appeared.
- “His partisan jabs are delicate.”
- He sometimes says “pendejo.”
Snip.
It’s worth recalling that excitable rank-and-file Democrats do this to themselves every few years, especially in Texas. Remember Wendy Davis and the famous shoes with which she was going to vault from the floor of the Texas Statehouse to the governor’s mansion, the White House, and, presumably, to infinity and beyond? The last I heard, after losing the governor’s race in a spectacular landslide she was doing wine-and-cheese one-offs with F-listers at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, where she signed the electric pink Nikes for a lucky fan who had purchased them with his own money years earlier at her estate sale.
Beto’s likely downfall: lack of Hispanic enthusiasm for him. Leads Cruz 56%-38% w/ Hispanics, but that’s just not good enough for a D to win statewide in TX. https://t.co/llFcScAtM2
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 11, 2018
Evidently dozens of fawning profiles in national liberal publications doesn’t actually translate into winning over Texas voters. Who knew? Well, besides Wendy Davis…
Official Roll Call Record of the Kavanaugh Vote
October 7th, 2018Since I went looking for this and actually had trouble finding it, here are links to the official roll call records of the cloture and confirmation votes for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court:
One reason I’m putting this up is a saw someone on Twitter stating that Vice President Mike Pence cast a deciding vote, but in fact he was not required to break a tie for either vote. Thus far the only vote Vice President Pence has cast to break a tie in the Senate was the vote confirming Russell Vought as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Kavanaugh Confirmed and Sworn In
October 6th, 2018I was going to post a “Kavanaugh will be confirmed today” post this morning, but then figured an extra large helping of sloth would let me report that he was confirmed. “The Senate confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court Saturday, in a close 50-48 vote that saw just one Republican and one Democrat cross party lines.” The Democrat was Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and the Republican was Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, of whom Sarah Palin is already making noises about primarying.
After being confirmed, Kavanaugh was quickly sworn in:
#Kavanaugh officially sworn in as an Associate Justice pic.twitter.com/BxYiNFnSa4
— Sean Langille (@SeanLangille) October 6, 2018
Now some links on the subject:
A Democratic Party lacking the White House, majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate, and the Supreme Court imitated strength in practicing rudeness. Now, hours before the confirmation vote that they sought to postpone, the Democrats’ boisterousness appears, belatedly at least, as camouflage for weakness. This weakness, which may seem anything but when in earshot of protesters, appears most apparent in the U.S. Senate. Democrats lack the raw numbers to win.
Unable to rely on an institutional or the democratic apparatus to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, they embraced a by-any-means-necessary strategy.
Jackson A. Cosko, 27, a “fellow” paid by an outside group to work for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and a recent employee of Senator Maggie Hassan, appeared in federal court on Thursday on charges related to the doxxing — the unauthorized publication of personal details for the purpose of harassment — of several senators, including Orrin Hatch, Mike Lee, and Lindsey Graham. Cosko allegedly posted personal telephone numbers and home addresses using a Senate computer.
“If you tell anyone[,] I will leak it all,” the perpetrator allegedly told a Democratic staffer who witnessed Cosko accessing a computer in Hassan’s office. “Emails[,] signal conversations[,] gmails. Senators[’] children’s health information and socials.”
The doxxing of Kavanaugh supporters follows death threats to the judge’s family and the repeated interruptions at his confirmation hearings that turned the proceedings into chaos — chaos perpetuated by Kamala Harris and other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — on Day One, which witnessed Capitol police arrest 70 (they arrested over 300 on Thursday). Democrats planned this spontaneous show of outrage on a conference call. Anti-Kavanaugh protesters similarly occupied state offices of Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, resulting in multiple arrests.
More recent confrontations, including two activists trapping Senator Jeff Flake in a Capitol elevator, also initially appeared as grassroots outrage, a perception that evaporated with the revelation that the two women, like one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, work as social-justice activists (yes, and people make a living playing video games, too). They identified themselves as sexual assault survivors. One failed to note her employment as the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a far-left advocacy group.
As one Hill staffer explained to me, the protesters work in shifts the way assembly-line workers do. They clock-in, then shout, hold signs, and hector lawmakers. Some, finding their way to the House side of Capitol Hill, need impromptu education sessions instructing that the lower-chamber does not vote on judges. When their shifts end, they abruptly clock-out and another group of workers takes their place. The insult that liberals protest because they do not hold jobs does not work here. These liberals protest as part of their jobs.
Snip.
Perpetuating this minority status ironically comes at the expense of, and in service to, the minority rule enjoyed by Democrats for decades. Democrats did not need the U.S. Supreme Court to institute Social Security or establish the Peace Corps. But abortion on demand, gay marriage, prohibition on school prayer, the abolition of the death penalty, and much else on the liberal wish list became the law of the land because of the U.S. Supreme Court, a parallel national legislature when controlled by the Left.
A party without the speaker’s gavel or the word “majority” prefixing “leader” struggles to pass substantive legislation. Add to these handicaps widespread public contempt for much of that party’s agenda, and one begins to see why Democrats need the courts so much. Unfortunately for them, the rude, no-holds-barred gambit for the high court (dishonestly used as something other than a court in their hands) makes it even further from their grasp.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Tucker Carlson on how the Democrats lost the fight:
Ironically, the Democrats adoption of scorched-earth #Resistance tactics, partially in response of Trump’s unorthodox methods and willingness to fight back, has had the effect of uniting the Republican Party behind President Trump.
Any rational observer of the Democrats’ non-stop character assassination machine can see that something is seriously sick in our republic. Instead of allowing Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were permitted to use trumped-up, hip-pocketed charges to stage a show trial more in tune with a totalitarian system.
Like Justice Clarence Thomas before him, Kavanaugh has undergone pre-meditated, well-coordinated attacks by Democrat elites who cling to the apron strings of an anti-human brand of feminism to justify this craft. There’s a good term for the practice they’re engaged in: ritual defamation.
Perhaps an apt metaphor for ritual defamation is the gang rape of one’s character and good name. Whatever the end result, this episode represents an underhanded rape of the rule of law, as well as of Brett Kavanaugh’s character.
Also, UT beat OU and James Woods had his Twitter account restored, so all in all the last few days have been very good…
LinkSwarm for October 5, 2018
October 5th, 2018Welcome to the season where ugly monsters in lurid costumes go running around shrieking at the sheer delight at scaring other people. And those are just the Democratic protestors on Capitol Hill!
The Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote today, and the Supreme Court confirmation vote is Saturday. And Kavanaugh links dominate the top of this LinkSwarm:
Let’s say you’re Joe Manchin in West Virginia. What you needed was for this nomination to be uncontroversial, and a sure thing for confirmation. A party-line contested vote the whole country is watching is a nightmare. Why? Because in a red state like the one Manchin represents, the majority will favor confirmation and find it to be a decisive issue in their vote — so Manchin voting against Kavanaugh will set him up to reap the wrath of the voters in a state which went 65 percent for Trump in 2016.
But it’s worse than that for Manchin, because he doesn’t have a good escape from the Kavanaugh confirmation. You’d say his easy way out is to vote yes, except what the Left has done is to so whip up their voters with the Ford allegations and the copycats who followed that Manchin will lose votes from his own side if he votes to confirm the judge.
This isn’t a theory, by the way. It’s what the polls show.
A new poll finds that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia think Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. The Public Opinion strategies poll commissioned by the Judicial Crisis Network found an overwhelming majority of West Virginians (59 percent) thought Kavanaugh’s testimony was more believable than Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the federal judge of sexually assaulting her more than 35 years ago at a drunken high school party. Those who believe Kavanaugh include 81 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independent voters. Manchin is locked in a dead-heat race against Patrick Morrissey, West Virginia’s Attorney General, and his vote is now going to be the defining issue in that race either way.
Manchin’s conundrum isn’t unique. Claire McCaskill in Missouri is already a committed no on Kavanaugh, and her troubles have begun as well…
A new poll released by The Missouri Scout on Saturday shows that Republican challenger Josh Hawley has taken a two-point lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Missouri Senate race just days after she announced she will be voting against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Hawley leads McCaskill by a margin of 48 percent to 46 percent in the poll conducted by Missouri Scout over two days, from Wednesday, September 26 to Thursday, September 27. McCaskill announced her opposition to Kavanaugh on September 19. The second day of the poll was conducted on the same day Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years ago at a time and place she cannot recall and with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Missouri Scout poll had worse news for the incumbent Democrat — in that what’s driving down her numbers is unquestionably the Kavanaugh vote…
Significantly, the poll found that 49 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while only 42 percent said it made them more likely to vote for her.… Among female respondents, 47 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 42 percent said it made them more likely. Among male respondents, 50 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 41 percent said it made them more likely. Among Non-Partisan respondents, 46 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 39 percent said it made them more likely. Among Republican respondents, 85 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them more likely. Among Democrat respondents, 82 percent said the confirmation process made them more likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them less likely. Also, a new poll commissioned by NBC North Dakota News showed the race between Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican challenger Kevin Cramer has the latter with a commanding 51-41 lead. That poll has the Kavanaugh nomination as the most important (with 21 percent) of nine named issues in the race, with 60 percent of North Dakota voters polled saying they support the judge’s confirmation against only 27 percent opposed. Heitkamp has publicly called herself a “no” vote, which amounts to more or less a surrender in the race. Without North Dakota, there is only a minuscule chance of the Democrats winning control of the Senate.
Of all the cohorts measured by the poll (including Independent men and women), Democratic women are the only group to display less enthusiasm for the midterms this week than they did in July. Meanwhile, Republican women seem invigorated. In July, 81 percent of Democratic women said the November elections were very important, compared to 71 percent of Republican women. Now, Republican women are 4 percentage points likelier to view the midterms that way (83 percent to 79 percent). That’s a 14-point swing in female voters’ interest in the midterms—after the hearings, and in Republicans’ favor.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
UPDATED: He also worked or interned with the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as with at least one other unnamed lawmaker. https://t.co/k5QXv4RvYN
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) October 4, 2018
There is no circumstance where everyone involved with those norm-breaking steps suddenly wakes up, has a crisis of conscience, and realizes that they were morally wrong. The only way they decide not to take similar steps in the future is if they conclude that those steps are not effective.
If these sorts of tactics work, we will get more of them. Right now, Kavanaugh could be a squish who wimps out on Roe vs. Wade and I’d still want him on that court, because this isn’t really about him anymore. This is about what kind of proof is needed before you believe a man is a monster. This is about whether decades of respected public and private life can be wiped away by an allegation without supporting witnesses. This is about whether anyone who ever knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind . . . or whether people who never knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind.
Social justice presumes the guilt of certain people because of their politics, their positions, their races and their genders. It creates different rules for different classes of people with some entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence, even in the face of indisputable guilt, and others forced into an equally absolute presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any indisputable proof of their guilt.
America cannot operate under two systems of guilt and innocence, one public and one private. If the majority of Americans are to be judged by a system that presumes their guilt, that attitude will inevitably go on to permeate the courtroom. By eroding the presumption of innocence in public life, the left is eroding it as a legal right. Lynch mobs and kangaroo courts can’t be expected to stop at the courthouse door when they are celebrated and operate freely throughout the rest of the land.
Kavanaugh’s case is about more than the malicious exploitation of the #MeToo movement to destroy a political opponent. It’s the latest assault on the social presumption of innocence by shadowy forces whose ‘scoops’ dominate the media through cut-outs while their sources remain silently invisible.
If kangaroo courts and media lynch mobs succeed in overturning a Supreme Court appointment, they will have proven that their war on the presumption of innocence extends even to the highest court in the land. If a Supreme Court justice can’t be presumed innocent, what hope do the rest of us have?
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
In order to believe that Ford is not lying, we have to believe that Ford's ex boyfriend, Ford's friend, two other witnesses, along with Kavanaugh are all lying. Only a partisan would make that assumption. The rational conclusion is obvious: Ford is a liar.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 3, 2018
Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.
Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?
Iran Tugs On Superman’s Cape
October 4th, 2018Did you notice that Iran threatened to attack U.S. military bases?
Iran has issued a number of threats on Friday following official charges made by leaders in Tehran that Saudi Arabia and the UAE funded a terrorist attack on a military parade in a southwest district last Saturday which killed 25 people, including members of the elite Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
Iranian military officials declared “red lines” against the two Gulf countries, threatening war, while in a separate statement a senior cleric said US regional bases will not be safe if “America does anything wrong”.
“If America does anything wrong, their bases around Iran would not remain secure,” Ayatollah Mohammadali Movahedi Kermani was quoted as saying by Mizan news agency while leading Friday prayers in Tehran.
And simultaneously the Fars news agency quoted Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy head of the IRGC, as saying in reference to the Saudis and Emirates: “If you cross our red lines, we will surely cross yours. You know the storm the Iranian nation can create.”
I would just like to point out to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran that, historically, attacking American military installations has not been a source of continued happiness for the attackers.
It doesn’t help Iran that their economy is on the verge of collapse:
Many economics experts believe that Iran is entrenched in a financial death spiral. Officials within the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) claim that the gravity of economic crisis in Iran is overstated. Furthermore, Islamist regime-sponsored lobby factions in the United States (US), such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), argue that fiscal predicaments that the country is facing are consequences of malign US policies toward the Iranian regime, including the enforcement of crippling economic sanctions. The truth is, precarious economic circumstances in Iran have been primarily – if not exclusively – triggered by a plethora of iniquitous economic policies adopted by the regime…
The conversion rate of Iranian Rial (IRR) to foreign currencies is one of the most important tools by which the country’s economic well-being can be gauged. IRR has lost its value by nearly 70% since April 2018, a month before US President Donald J. Trump reimposed sanctions on the Iranian regime over its rogue nuclear activities.
Continued protests in Iran include a truckers strike. “Hundreds of gas stations and many factories throughout the country are closed as gas and materials for production have no longer been transported by the truckers.”
The United States has also withdrawn from a 1955 treaty with Iran normalizing relations. Which is only proper, since there’s nothing “proper” about the mullahs’ regime.