Trump Nominates Gorsuch

January 31st, 2017

President Trump has just nominated Neil Gorsuch to the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Antonin Scalia last year.

President Trump gave a very brief, concise speech in announcing Gorsuch (Trump announced his pick less than two minutes into his speech, at the point where Obama would still be saying “Let me be clear”) and praising the life and legacy of Scalia, including introducing his widow Maureen in the audience. He noted that Gorsuch was approved unanimously to the Tenth Circuit court.

Gorsuch gave a very polished speech about the influence the judges he had clerked for had on his life.

Trump concluded by asking both Democrats and Republicans to come together and approve him.

It was a very solid, brief and substantive announcement, President Trump’s first.

Powerline offers a very approving look at Gorsuch and his jurisprudence.

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Your Worst Fears About Furries Realized

January 31st, 2017

If you thought furries were perverted freaks before, this story is going to confirm your worst fears:

A Pennsylvania boy told state prosecutors that he was forced to dress as “Tony the Tiger” at perverse fetish parties in which he was repeatedly sexually abused by men dressed in animal costumes.

Prosecutors said the 14-year-old’s allegations paint a horrifying portrait of members of a child predator ring that took turns raping him at “furry” parties held in Bucks County beginning in 2009.

Police have arrested five people who they say were involved in the ring, a multi-state sweep that began when a federal agent lured the first defendant to what he thought was a meeting with a 13-year-old for sex.

The fifth person, a Quakertown man, was arrested last week. Kenneth Fenske, 57, was charged Friday with child rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and unlawful contact with a minor.

“This child victim was repeatedly abused over a 7- or 8-year period by a group of criminals who cared only about their gratification,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said after announcing charges against Fenske. “They cared nothing about this young boy.”

Court documents don’t list an attorney for Fenske, who posted bail and was released from custody. A message left Monday at his listed phone number wasn’t immediately returned.

The boy told authorities that Fenske at times would dress up in a furry red fox costume with “full long sleeves and pants, a zipper in the back, paw gloves, and a fox head with pointy ears” before raping him.

Four other men who are accused of participating in the abuse at Fenske’s home were arrested in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Disclaimer the First: Again, all of this is “allegedly.” Insert your usual “innocent until proven guilty” disclaimer here.

Disclaimer the Second: I like to think that most furries are simply harmless perverts who yiff with fellow deviants their own age. (Though there was one furry artist who pled guilty to possessing child pornography in 2013.)

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More on the Qubec Mosque Shooting

January 30th, 2017

The latest news on the Quebec mosque shootings goes to show that, once gain, early media reports on active shooters are usually horribly wrong.

Where once we were told that there were three shooters, then two, both of whom were in custody, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now saying that Alexandre Bissonnette (AKA The Whitest Guy in the Chess Club) is now the only suspect, and that the aforementioned Mohamed Khadir is only a witness.

Bissonnette is described as an anti-feminist troll. Pro-tip: Despite feminists’ best efforts, there are not a lot of feminists to be found in mosques.

Also, here’s a handy guide:

  • Trolling people on Twitter or Facebook: Free speech.
  • Shooting people in a mosque: Not free speech.

    • Here’s Mr. Mackey to provide a visual reminder.

    Feel free to use that, just in case anyone was unclear on the concept.

    Ironically, the mosque Loner DuChessClub (allegedly) shot up had a reputation for being moderate as mosques go.

    My working assumption is that the “AK-47” Bissonnette used in the shooting is in fact a semi-automatic knockoff rather than a true full-auto capable AK-47. But even the semi-auto AK-47 variant is explicitly prohibited in Canada, so where did he get it? He either broke Canada’s gun laws, or those of the United States (unless he had a valid hunting license for some U.S. state), or both.

    I get the feeling that that we still don’t know the full story of the attacks, Stay tuned…

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    Posted in Crime, Guns, Jihad | No Comments »

    Quebec Mosque Shooting Followup

    January 30th, 2017

    Some updates to yesterday’s Quebec mosque shooting story, including the identities of the gunmen:

    One of two gunmen who shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’ as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six men.

    The terror suspects were identified as Mohamed Khadir and Alexandre Bissonnette, the CBC reported. The two men were arrested soon after the shooting at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre Sunday night and were expected to appear in court later Monday, police told reporters.

    Also: “The attackers were students at Université Laval, a school in Quebec, a source close to the investigation told Radio Canada, saying one was Moroccan. Police said the suspects were not on their radar.”

    And this is an interesting tidbit: “The French-speaking province of Quebec has been embroiled in a lengthy debate about race and religious accommodation. The previous separatist government of the province called for a ban on ostentatious religious symbols such as the hijab in public institutions.”

    I also noticed this statement:

    Safwan Choudhry, the national spokesperson of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, one of the largest Muslim communities in Canada, told CTV Toronto he was in disbelief.

    “Nothing like this, on this scale, has ever happened in Canada to my knowledge,” Choudhry said on Sunday night. “Never has a mosque been shot up quite like this during prayer time and during worship.”

    I’ve read comments on Twitter saying that this was Ahmadiyya mosque. As Ahmadiyya are considered heretical to both Sunni and Shia, that would greatly increase the scope of possible attackers if that were true.

    Arguing against that theory, though,m is the fact that Alexandre Bissonnette really doesn’t look like your typical jihadi. In fact, between the blue blazer, the horse, and the chess set, he looks super-mega-extra white.

    His Facebook page reveals few details about his reasoning for the shooting, and appears similar to other 20-something college students. His last public post, on January 20, was a photo of a dog wearing a Dominos pizza delivery outfit, with the caption, “I want one! #fridayfeeling.” Other photos show him with family, with friends at parties and in a Halloween costume, as the killer from the movie “Scream.” He has also posted recently about discoveries on Pluto, camping and wanting to travel one day to Torngat Mountains National Park. He also shared a video last year about a brewery owned by members of the band Megadeth. Bissonnette likes the Facebook pages of U.S. President Donald Trump and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, but he does not express support for them elsewhere on his page. Other likes include the Israel Defense Forces, United With Israel and Parti Québécois of Université Laval.

    Nothing about him screams “jihadi,” and if he’s a convert, he would seem to be an extremely recent one.

    By contrast, there’s next-to-nothing coming out about the purportedly Moroccan-born Mohamed Khadir.

    Stay tuned…

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    Posted in Crime, Jihad | No Comments »

    8 6 Dead in Canadian Mosque Shooting, Attackers Shouted “Allah Akbar”

    January 29th, 2017

    Numerous people are dead after a shooting at a Canadian mosque in Quebec City.

    A witness, who asked to remain anonymous, told CBC’s French-language service Radio-Canada that two masked individuals entered the mosque.

    “It seemed to me that they had a Quebecois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot they yelled, ‘Allahu akbar!’ The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head,” said the witness.

    Initial reports were saying five people were dead; now I’m reading on Twitter that it was eight.

    Assuming the reports of attackers yelling “Allah Akbar” were true, it does rather suggest that the spin the media was desperately hoping to pin on this shooting (“hate” and “Islamophobia” ginned up because President Trump signed some executive orders) is untrue.

    Early reports have been silent on whether this is a Sunni or Shia mosque; that’s fairly key information for determining who the attackers might be. (The Islamic State loves little more than slaughtering Shia, and has a history of doing so in Shia mosques.)

    Keep in mind that early reports on active shooters are often wrong. Initial reports said there were three shooters, the ones I’m looking at now say two are in custody. Reports are they had AK-47s; 90% of the time that’s wrong and they’re using an AR-pattern MSR. Even the “Allah Akbar” part could be wrong.

    But it was certainly a terrorist attack.

    Stay tuned…

    Update 1 Some news outlets have fallen for a fake report from a fake Twitter account that the attackers were “white supremacists.”

    Update 2: Report from Twitter and Reddit: “Canadian Police Scanner: ‘The two suspects are Bashir al-Taweed and Hassan Matti, Syrians who entered Canada as refugees last week.'” I would take this with several grains of salt until confirmed; like the “white supremacist” shooter, it just seems too pat.

    Update 3 Current death toll seems to be six killed, eight injured.

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    Posted in Crime, Jihad, Media Watch | 1 Comment »

    Bill Burr on Election Night

    January 28th, 2017

    Want to watch a bunch of drunk comedians, lead by Bill Burr, offer profane commentary on the 2016 election returns as they come in?

    If so, this is your lucky day!

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    Posted in Elections, video | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for January 27, 2017

    January 27th, 2017

    Welcome to the Friday LinkSwarm! The first week of President Trump’s administration has been incredibly active and consequential! Not everything will be covered here (and I have a few posts on various issues and executive orders at various stages of assembly), but it touches on a lot.

  • One thing President Trump has taught conservatives: never give your critics an inch:

    Mr. Trump’s version of stray voltage has a number of effects beyond just causing chaos and distracting his opponents. When everything is an outrage, nothing is an outrage. And when everything is an outrage, you expose yourself as a purely partisan actor, turning off large swaths of the American public.

    Trump’s lack of fear of touching politically incorrect third rails that millions of Americans felt, but which had not been articulated so bluntly by a national politician, served him well. Incidentally, it also allowed him to shift the Overton Window on critical issues like immigration and Islamic supremacism.

    When attacked for taking these positions, unlike those to come before him, Trump did not avoid the fray. Rather, he jumped into it, counterpunching.

    Lulled into a false sense of security by Republicans who fought with their hands tied behind their backs, constrained by suicidal rules of political engagement for decades, the Left did not know how to react when hit.

    Leftists could not believe that a political opponent had the gall to actually fight tooth and nail.

    Trump does not give an inch to his critics, and neither should any other Republican. He defines the rules of engagement, and so should all on the Right.

    Watching the confirmation hearings to date, we see many on the Left jabbing as if we are in a pre-Trump world. Their questions all hew to the same old narrative that if you are not a racist, sexist, or bigot, then you are an out-of-touch plutocrat or a shill for some special interest or other.

    Like Trump, Republicans should challenge these charges head on. They should take issue with the Left’s premises from the start, showing that it is the Left who is projecting when it tries to discredit those who believe in capitalism, the power of the individual, and the sanctity of the individual’s rights, the rule of law, national sovereignty, federalism, and the Judeo-Christian morality on which the country is based.

  • How President Trump has freed the right from caring what liberals think.

    Donald Trump isn’t the bully; he only insults and abuses people in power who have attacked him. They’re the fucking bullies. The left, with their smears, their witch hunts, their slanders, their insults and their weaponizing of the federal bureaucracy.

    There aren’t any rules anymore because the left only applies them one way. And in doing so, they’ve left what once was a civil compact between the two parties in smoldering ruins.

    I have no personal investment in Donald Trump. He is a tool to punish the left and roll back their ill-gotten gains, no more and no less. If he succeeds even partially in those two things, then I’ll consider his election a win.

    Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I’ll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because fuck these people.

    This new philosophy has freed me of more emotional angst that I can describe. Literally nothing the left says or does matters to me anymore. I don’t care about their tantrums. I don’t care about their accusations. I don’t care if they say Trump is lying. I don’t care if Trump is lying.

    They created this Frankenstein. They own it. I am free of all obligation. I will never play defense again. I will attack, attack, attack, attack using their own tactics against them until they learn their lesson.

    What I will not do is let them play my values against me ever again. I don’t need to prove that I’m better than them. I already know it.

  • President Trump had barely entered the White House, and yet the mainstream media was already falling all over themselves to prove what biased, lying partisan hacks they were. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Scott Adams says that President Trump is flooding the field with so much activity that his critics can’t focus their outrage on any one thing.
  • President Trump has been replacing Obama’s feckless political national security appointments with universaly respected military men. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Obama was not the Reagan of the left.
  • A better than usual example of one of those “How could those inbred redneck freaks of JesusLand possibly vote against their enlightened betters” thumbsuckers, this time about Wisconsin. Some quotes:
    • “I think they thought the liberal elite was looking down on them, and I guess, in some ways, we were.”
    • “They got this picture that we’re all country bumpkins, the locals are, that we’re not educated. The people who move in talk down to the natives. I don’t know how you want to word that, but that’s the persona given off.”
    • “I didn’t want to deal with these people. I didn’t want to be a part of what they were a part of. You’re talking about people from the Cities who are very progressive. I call them tree-huggers, a bunch of tree-huggers. They referred to us, meaning the people who’ve lived here and worked here all our lives, as a bunch of hicks. They just think they’re a little bit better than everybody else, and that we’re not as smart.” (And that’s from a former Democratic Party county chairman who switched to the Republicans.)
    • “The bastards out here in the country are sick of the bullshit.”

    Alas, it also includes that sturdy modern liberal journalism cliche, The Single Confederate Flag Mentioned To Suggest All Trump Voters Are Secret Racists.

  • You know all that talk of how Democrats own America’s emerging majority? Not so fast. “An electoral strategy that starts by assuming you’ve lost a plurality of the country is a rough ticket to victory.”
  • While the liberal rabble was off rioting inauguration weekend, Media Matters head honcho David Brock was throwing a private event attended by big money Democratic Party donors. Six of the seven DNC candidates attended. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Speaking of Brock, he’s working on a Twitter-like website for liberals only. And he expects them to pay for it. Get ready for the resounding economic success of Air America 3.0.
  • Instapundit says that Trump has the media’s number:

    Why are the relations between Donald Trump and the press so bad? There are two reasons. One is that Trump is a Republican, and the press consists overwhelmingly of Democrats. But the other reason is that Trump likes it this way, because when the press is constantly attacking him over trivialities, it strengthens his position and weakens the press. Trump’s “outrageous” statements and tweets aren’t the product of impulsiveness, but part of a carefully maintained strategy that the press is too impulsive to resist.

    Snip.

    The killer counter-move for the press isn’t to double down on anti-Trump messaging. The counter-move is to bolster its own trustworthiness by acting (and being) more neutral and sober, and by being more trustworthy. If the news media actually focused on reporting facts accurately and straightforwardly, on leaving opinion to the pundits, and on giving Trump a clearly fair shake, then Trump’s tactics wouldn’t work, and any actual dirt they found on him would do actual damage. He’s betting on the press being insufficiently mature and self-controlled to manage that. So far, his bet is paying off.

    If it comes to the press reforming to ensure their own institutional survival, or clinging to their liberal bias, my guess is that the current press will choose the way of the dodo…

  • Trump advisor Steve Bannon goes still further in calling out the MSM:

    “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

    “The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”

    “The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He did not name specific reporters or editors.) “That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”

    “You’re the opposition party,” Mr. Bannon said. “Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.”

  • CNN has gone from in-the-street news reporting to pundits on panels.
  • CNN is so desperate to smear President Trump they lied about Nancy Sinatra criticizing Trump.
  • “Iran deal supporters call Schumer a greedy, disloyal Jew.”
  • Is President Trump the good cop on Russia with congress playing the bad cop? Problem: The Henry Ford anecdote is a Just So Story masquerading as a serious analogy.
  • Is the British Army’s actual army fighting force down to a single brigade? “The last time the fighting division was sent to war was in 2003 during the Iraq War but according to experts if they were to be deployed now, at best they would only be able to deploy a brigade of 10,000 troops.” I thought this might be some Daily Mail exaggeration, but Wikipedia states the British Army now consists of just 87,610 regulars. Keep in mind the British Army contributed 46,000 troops to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • President Trump announces plans to announce his Supreme Court pick February 2nd:

  • Ted Cruz plays down talk that he’ll be President Trump’s supreme court nominee.
  • Speaking of Cruz, President Trump just just hired Paul Teller, his ex-Chief of Staff, be be his chief liaison to Capitol Hill conservatives. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • You too could own something from Tom Clancy’s estate.
  • The usual liberal idiot protesters block buses in Portland. Police take their asses down. Onlookers cheer.

  • Meanwhile, in the world of fashion:

  • I’ll give the final word to Steve Hayward over at Powerline: “I’m starting to think Trump really is a one-person wrecking crew for the left delivered by divine Providence.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Military, Republicans, Supreme Court | No Comments »

    Ted Cruz/Deadspin Follow-Up

    January 26th, 2017

    After Ted Cruz pwned Deadspin, the rag’s previously quiescent editor Tim Marchman inexplicably started talking smack.

    Keep in mind that Marchman had not exactly been an active tweeter before:

    But this did not deter him:

    This was odd for a number of reason, not least of which is that after you’ve been brutally pwned, it’s best to not draw attention to how badly you’ve been pwned. If you’re Marvis Frazier, and Mike Tyson has just put you down for the count 30 seconds after the opening bell, the last thing you should do is start bragging about what a badass you are.

    But that’s precisely what Marchman did:

    Like his minion’s original Cruz tweets, it appears that Marchman did not think his cunning scheme all the way through:

    Tim Kennedy is a retired professional MMA fighter out of Austin whose record was 24-18.

    Strangely, since then Marchman’s Twitter feed has gone silent again…

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    Posted in Media Watch, Republicans | 3 Comments »

    Trump Starts Bringing a Rogue EPA to Heel

    January 25th, 2017

    President Trump is wasting no time in cleaning up Obama Administration messes where it’s possible to do so by executive order. One over the weekend started reigning in the EPA. “The Trump administration instituted a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and barred staff from awarding any new contracts or grants. Emails sent to EPA staff since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday and reviewed by The Associated Press, detailed the specific prohibitions banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the agency’s social media accounts.”

    Under Obama the EPA was a rogue agency perusing a radical environmental agenda at the expense of congressional intent. Texas alone has sued the EPA numerous times. A few of the lawsuits currently in progress over EPA overreach:

  • The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.
  • The “Endangerment Finding” over greenhouse gas emissions congress never authorized the EPA to regulate.
  • The unconstitutional Clean Power Plan to regulate coal power plant carbon dioxide emissions.
  • The “Waters of the U.S. Rule,” allowing the EPA to micromanage the way farmers run their own farms.
  • Pollution Control Permitting, where the EPA illegally disapproved of Texas’ permitting program.
  • The 2016 Regional Haze Plan Suit. “Once again, the Obama Administration is misinterpreting and misusing federal agencies to force through a radical agenda based more on the beliefs of his environmentalist base than on common sense.” There was also a lawuit over the 2012 Haze Plan.
  • A lawsuit over the EPA’s failure to analyze job losses from coal regulations.
  • The Qualified Facilities Program for oil and gas drilling.
  • The Flexible Permit Program.
  • The Mercury Rule.
  • Industrial Plant Regulation.
  • Two separate Sulfur Dioxide Rule lawsuits. one still pending.
  • Multiple Greenhouse Gas rule lawsuits.
  • A lawsuit over Freedom of Information Act requests over the EPA colluding with various environmental groups to issue laws.
  • There are probably a few I’ve forgotten.

    • U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey has said that the agency “evidences the continued hostility on the part of the EPA to acceptance of the mission established by Congress.”

    Says Powerline’s John Hindraker:

    The EPA was created by Congress and owes its powers exclusively to Congressional enactment, but over time it has become contemptuous of its democratically-elected master, and has come to view itself as a superior and independent power, entitled to enforce those legal provisions that it likes, and ignore those that are inconvenient. Agencies like the EPA are the single greatest threat to the freedom of American citizens.

    The EPA is a rogue agency long overdue for reining in.

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    Posted in Regulation, Supreme Court, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Ted Cruz Makes Deadspin His Bitch

    January 24th, 2017

    Upon finding out that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz started a regular senate basketball game, Deadspin asked for pictures of Cruz playing. Cruz himself posted a reply:

    Heh. I’m pretty sure that’s Duke freshman Grayson Allen, who does indeed look a little bit like Cruz.

    Instead of laughing it off (“Nice try!” would have been a good response), Deadspin decided on a response that was…disproportionate.

    That just goes to show: You can take Deadspin out of Gawker, but you can’t take the Gawker out of Deadspin.

    (As for those who object to this post’s title: I thought it was important to pitch it at an intellectual and emotional maturity level that Deadspin staffers were sure to understand…)

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    Posted in Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | 5 Comments »

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