“Greece, EU/IMF lenders resume talks over bailout reforms”

April 25th, 2016

That’s an actual headline today. I throw in “today” because that same headline could have been run just about any time over the past five years, because Greece is endlessly willing to talk as long as they keep getting bailout money.

The one thing they have proven absolutely unwilling to do is actually implement reforms, at least any reforms that would involve the government spending less money than it takes in. Instead they’ll ask for more debt write-downs, write-offs and haircuts for lenders rather than stop spending other people’s money.

And I could have written the preceding paragraph any time over the last five years or so as well…

Cruz-Kasich Detente in Indiana, New Mexico, Oregon

April 24th, 2016

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have evidently come to an understanding about clearing the way for the other to fight Donald Trump in the states they’re respectively strongest in:

Tonight, Kasich for America chief strategist John Weaver issued the following statement:

“Donald Trump doesn’t have the support of a majority of Republicans – not even close, but he currently does have almost half the delegates because he’s benefited from the existing primary system. Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the Party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee.”

Blather about Kasich’s awesomeness snipped.

Due to the fact that the Indiana primary is winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district, keeping Trump from winning a plurality in Indiana is critical to keeping him under 1237 bound delegates before Cleveland. We are very comfortable with our delegate position in Indiana already, and given the current dynamics of the primary there, we will shift our campaign’s resources West and give the Cruz campaign a clear path in Indiana.

In turn, we will focus our time and resources in New Mexico and Oregon, both areas that are structurally similar to the Northeast politically, where Gov. Kasich is performing well. We would expect independent third-party groups to do the same and honor the commitments made by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns.

This is a smart move against Trump, and one that keeps Cruz’s real hopes (and Kasich’s delusional ones) alive.

This is not only the strangest Presidential election of our lifetimes, it’s probably the strangest Presidential election since 1876 (the last time the House of Representatives choose Republican Rutherford Hayes over Democrat Samuel Tilden due to double sets of returns from southern states still undergoing reconstruction), and possibly since 1860…

Ted Cruz Cleans Up On Delegates Yet Again

April 24th, 2016

Once again, Ted Cruz has outflanked the Donald Trump Campaign:

While Donald Trump is winning big delegate states and trumpeting his presumptive-nominee status, GOP presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz and his campaign are quietly fighting — and winning — delegate support, the latest coming Saturday night in Maine.

Cruz won 19 of 20 delegates Saturday night at the Maine GOP convention.

Snip.

On Saturday, the Cruz campaign picked up a total of 65 delegates, including nine in three Minnesota congressional districts, one in a South Carolina congressional district and at least 36 of 37 national delegates in Utah, after winning the state’s GOP caucus last month, according to Politico.

Again, none of this matters if Trump can secure a first ballot victory at the Republican convention. But if he doesn’t, Cruz is exceptionally well-positioned to become the Republican nominee on the second or third ballot.

Trump is great at getting free media attention, but he sucks at actually dealing with the Republican grassroots. That, his inability to hire and lead a first-rate campaign team, and his unwillingness to learn from his mistakes, could very well cost him the nomination.

De Blasio: Kickbacks, Unions, Cops, Hookers, Horses

April 24th, 2016

Just because current New York mayor Bill De Blasio is a left-wing loon doesn’t mean he’s not also corrupt up to his eyeballs:

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has his sights set squarely on the political operative turned chief executive.

It’s a sprawling probe, but the main line appears to be following the money trail the Daily News’ Greg B. Smith, NY1’s Grace Rauh and others have extensively tracked since de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013.

That was when a union run by his cousin and a top donor to him both wrote six-figure checks to an anti-carriage horse group run by big developers that days later cut checks for the exact same amount to another group — very ironically named New York City Is Not For Sale — that promptly spent the cash, not disclosed until well after the damage was done, on TV ads that brought down then-frontrunner Christine Quinn.

Wait, Democrats and unions involved in corruption? What are the odds?

That happened just as de Blasio found religion on the carriage-horse issue, repeatedly vowing to end on “day one” of his administration an industry that very few New Yorkers saw as a scourge but that would open up what’s now vastly valuable land where the stables now sit on Manhattan’s Far West Side. The developer behind that push, Steve Nislick, wrote a “Shermanesque” statement to the Voice of the People last year vowing he wouldn’t personally profit from their closing.

And it’s not just ponies: “The feds are also looking at how the city helped turn a nursing home for AIDS patients into luxury condos and at a series of scandals involving hookers for top cops and diamonds for their wives.” Among many other transgressions.

That cops and hookers scandal (which took place on a plane to Las Vegas, a nice plus for a juicy sex and corruption story) involved Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz, both of whom are De Blasio donors.

Given that Bharara took down former Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, there’s a good chance he’ll succeed in taking down De Blasio. Then it might finally be Andrew Cuomo’s turn in the barrel…

(Hat tip: Instapundit’s Twitter feed.)

Reminder: Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday Starts Today

April 23rd, 2016

Today starts the Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday the Texas legislature passed last year.

The following items qualify:

Less than $3000

  • Portable generators
  • Less than $300

  • Hurricane shutters
  • Emergency ladders
  • Less than $75

  • Batteries, single or multipack (AAA cell, AA cell, C cell, D cell, 6 volt or 9 volt)
  • First aid kits
  • Fuel containers
  • Ground anchor systems and tie-down kits
  • Hatchets
  • Axes
  • Mobile telephone batteries and mobile telephone chargers
  • Nonelectric coolers and ice chests for food storage
  • Nonelectric can openers
  • Portable self-powered light sources (hand cranked flashlights)
  • Portable self-powered radios, including two-way and weather band radios
  • Reusable and artificial ice products
  • Smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and carbon monoxide detectors
  • Tarps and other plastic sheeting
  • The sales tax holiday lasts through Monday. At the very least make this your weekend to buy batteries…

    LinkSwarm for April 22, 2016

    April 22nd, 2016

    As today is a made-up celebration called “Earth Day,” be sure to have beef for dinner…

  • Reminder: “Officials at VA’s Phoenix hospital manipulated wait-time data to make it appear they were connecting doctors and veterans seeking appointments much faster than they actually were. This was done so VA managers at the Arizona facility could keep getting generous performance bonuses. They got their bonuses but dozens of waiting veterans died.” So how did the VA address the problem? They hired someone accused of doing the exact same thing at another hospital.
  • Huge ObamaCare premium hikes are coming down the pike in 2017. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “The largest health insurer in the U.S. has started pulling out of select Obamacare exchanges.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Eight more ObamaCare co-ops are about to bite the dust.
  • Meanwhile, ObamaCare is helping enourage opioid addiction.
  • Thanks to Obama’s supergenius management, the Taliban are now winning in Afghanistan.
  • “The National Labor Relations Board suspended a top-ranking Philadelphia official after receiving complaints that he helped raise money from unions for his pro-union charity.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Following a congressional subpoena over Benghazi, Hillary’s state department staff hid requested files in another department. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Is Rhode Island closing 66% of polling places for next week’s presidential primaries? Something smells.
  • How Ted Cruz could beat Hillary Clinton. “Clin­ton is en­ter­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion with glar­ing vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of her own. Her im­age is tox­ic to Re­pub­lic­ans and in­de­pend­ents, and her pop­ular­ity among Demo­crats is now at an all-time low as a pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate, ac­cord­ing to Gal­lup’s polling. It won’t take a top-tier Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate to win.” Also: “Cruz con­sist­ently runs far more com­pet­it­ively against Clin­ton than Trump does.”
  • “It’s not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
  • Donald Trump jumps on the social justice warrior tranny bathroom bandwagon.
  • Evidently accused pedophile Terry Bean is the one whose organizations are pushing tranny bathroom bills down America’s throats. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Trump convention manager Paul Manafort engages in the time-honored traditional rhetorical device know as “lying your ass off.”
  • Thomas Sowell on campaign lies and dodgy statistics.
  • “Although our panel’s original estimates had Trump finishing with 1,175 pledged delegates, my revised deterministic projections have him at 1,155, and the probabilistic version has him at 1,159.”
  • Ted Cruz has done heavy organizing in California.
  • Man indicted for selling school supplies to Detroit schools he didn’t actually deliver…with the connivance of several principles receiving kickbacks. Now, remind me: Which party has controlled Detroit for half a century?
  • Venezuela instituting four hours of blackouts a day, in addition to the previously mentioned three day weekends. That socialist paradise just keeps
  • Brazil impeaches their President.
  • Won’t someone please think of poor, penniless Boeing?
  • When low-fat dogma trumped science: hamburger study data showed exact opposite of study’s conclusions.
  • Navy chief starving Marine air corps.
  • What Women Really Want Is The Patriarchy.”
  • ‘White Privilege’ Is a Racial Slur.”
  • Walden is less a cornerstone work of environmental literature than the original cabin porn: a fantasy about rustic life divorced from the reality of living in the woods, and, especially, a fantasy about escaping the entanglements and responsibilities of living among other people.”
  • Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano erupts. Popocatepetl is less than 50 miles from Mexico City…
  • Goldman Sachs pays $5 billion fine to “settle claims that it misled mortgage bond investors during the financial crisis.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Pratt & Whitney pushing a B-52 engine upgrade.
  • The woman who can’t remember her own past. (Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
  • Lileks: “Who wouldn’t want to lounge around in a set from a 1970s failed Gene Roddenberry pilot?” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Son, that’s no way to treat steaks. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Pat Condell: “Feminist Whores for Islam”

    April 21st, 2016

    Once again, Pat Condell brings the wood to the logic-defying spectacle of radical feminist apologists for fundamentalist Islam.

    Some samples:

    If, like me, you want to live in a world where men and women are completely equal, not just in theory but in actual practice, then you’d better get used to being called a racist by women who call themselves feminists. Progressive feminists, to be precise, or third wave feminists, as they’re sometimes known. Personally, I’m happy to be called any number of ugly names if it helps to draw attention in some small way to the glaring fact that progressive feminists are traitors to their gender. It’s entirely thanks to their poisonous influence that when it comes to Islam the words “feminist” and “hypocrite” go together as seamlessly as the words “dickless” and “jihad.”

    Snip.

    The number one rule of progressive feminism is that you never draw any kind of attention to the plight of women in the Muslim world being abused and persecuted every day by Muslim men. Being forcibly married, being punished for being raped. And whatever you do, don’t mention the thousand women a year in Pakistan who are murdered by members of their own family.

    Snip.

    The progressive sell-out to Islamic misogyny has been so total, we’re witnessing the death of feminism. There’s now such a complete lack of credibility, nobody takes it seriously any more. Feminism is now seen as merely a playpen for crybabies and bullies. Censorious small-minded safe-space harpies who hate being women, and who want everyone else to compensate them for it. And they’re such incorrigible whores to Islam, especially to Muslim men. They defer to them so eagerly on women’s rights, as if they have an unhealthy desire to be dominated by Muslim men.

    Watch the whole thing.

    John Stossel: “I have lung cancer”

    April 20th, 2016

    This is one of those bad new/good news things:

    I write this from the hospital. Seems I have lung cancer.

    My doctors tell me my growth was caught early and I’ll be fine. Soon I will barely notice that a fifth of my lung is gone. I believe them. After all, I’m at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. U.S. News & World Report ranked it No. 1 in New York. I get excellent medical care here.

    Cancer sucks, catching it early doesn’t. But it being Stossel, he has some observations on the process:

    But as a consumer reporter, I have to say, the hospital’s customer service stinks. Doctors keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say, “I’m running late.” Few doctors give out their email address. Patients can’t communicate using modern technology.

    I get X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms, blood tests. Are all needed? I doubt it. But no one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly. Government or insurance companies pay.

    And ObamaCare hasn’t made it any better.

    Customer service is sclerotic because hospitals are largely socialist bureaucracies. Instead of answering to consumers, which forces businesses to be nimble, hospitals report to government, lawyers and insurance companies.

    Whenever there’s a mistake, politicians impose new rules: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act paperwork, patient rights regulations, new layers of bureaucracy…

    Snip.

    Leftists say the solution to such problems is government health care. But did they not notice what happened at Veterans Affairs? Bureaucrats let veterans die, waiting for care. When the scandal was exposed, they didn’t stop. USA Today reports that the abuse continues. Sometimes the VA’s suicide hotline goes to voicemail.

    Patients will have a better experience only when more of us spend our own money for care. That’s what makes markets work.

    Something Something Something Danger Zone

    April 19th, 2016

    “Dems fear their primary has reached danger zone”

    That’s the actual headline on this actual story from the Hill.

    This offers me a chance to cram as many Archer memes into one post as possible do an update on the Democratic Presidential race.

    The upshot of the piece is that the Democratic establishment was fine and dandy with Bernie Sanders when he had no chance of winning, but now that he’s kicking Hillary Clinton’s ass and actually threatening to upset her coronation, there’s finger-wagging and pearl-clutching like you wouldn’t believe.

    “Anxiety is rising among Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New York, with some fearing the battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has reached a danger zone.”

    Translation: Sanders attacks are hurting Clinton. And we just can’t let that happen!

    “‘While this is the NFL, and everyone understands that it’s a full-contact sport, even in the NFL one gets a yellow flag for a late hit at the knees intended to hurt the other player,’ said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane.”

    I know you’ll be shocked, SHOCKED to learn that Lehane “served as a lawyer, spokesperson and expert in opposition research for the Clinton White House.”

    The Vermont senator has long drawn contrasts between himself and Clinton, but his attacks have grown more caustic of late, particularly with regard to the former first lady’s links to big financial companies.

    At a huge rally in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on Sunday, Sanders said a speech Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs must have been delivered in “Shakespearean prose,” given the $225,000 fee she received.

    He was equally scathing during last week’s debate when Clinton insisted that, during her time as a New York senator, she had “called out” banks for poor mortgage practices.

    “Secretary Clinton called them out. Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this,” Sanders responded. “And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements? So they must have been very, very upset by what you did.”

    The left of the Democratic Party has long been uneasy about Clinton’s coziness with the corporate world. But the emphatic, persistent way in which Sanders is attacking her on the topic risks painting her as a cipher of Wall Street — and such a charge could drain liberal grassroots enthusiasm if she locks up the nomination.

    Translation: Queen Hillary owns Democratic voters, and that pipsqueak Sanders has no right to “drain liberal grassroots enthusiasm.”

    “‘I am worried about the increasingly harsh tone and tenor of this campaign [that could] turn off Sanders supporters in the general [election],” said strategist Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has endorsed Clinton. ‘I’m afraid they’re going to stay home.'”

    Funny how this piece keeps quoting Clinton toadies and Democratic insiders, isn’t it?

    How nice of The Hill to offer Hillary this in-kind donation…

    Venezuela Returns to the Dark Ages. Literally.

    April 19th, 2016

    Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™, Venezuela is getting to experience the joy of living in a postindustrial society.

    Indeed, Venezuela has returned to the dark ages. Literal dark ages, in that this petroleum-exporting country can no longer keep the lights on. That’s why they’re instituting an extra half-hour of daylight savings time to avoid turning on lights.

    A hydroelectric plant at Venezuela’s Guri Dam, which produces two-thirds of the country’s power, is being affected by a severe drought.

    Officials have warned for weeks the water level has fallen to near its minimum operating level and could soon be shut down completely.

    Unlike other countries that use hydropower as a significant energy source, such as the US, Venezuela has no sufficient reserve energy system.

    The South American nation has grappled with blackouts for years. Caracas occasionally shuts down because of citywide losses of power and some rural areas are living mostly in the dark.

    More of that genius socialist foresight at work.

    SuperGenius Socialist President Nicolas Maduro also instituted mandatory three-day weekends to save energy.

    This is what happens when socialists run out of other people’s money. They get power blackouts, yellow water and water truck hijackings, 500% inflation and chronic food shortages.

    One wonders how much longer the populace is willing to take it…