LOOKING AT SOME OF THE SUBURBAN VOTES IN TEXAS AND FLORIDA AND NEVADA, I want to re-up on this “welcome wagon” idea: “If I were one of those conservative billionaires (hello, Koch brothers! hi, Sheldon Adelson!) who are always donating tens of millions to support Republican candidates, I think I might try spending some of the money on something more useful: A sort of welcome wagon for blue state migrants to red states. Something that would explain to them why the place they’re moving to is doing better than the place they left, and suggesting that they might not want to vote for the same policies that are driving their old home states into bankruptcy.”
Archive for 2018
November 7, 2018
MCSALLY VS. SINEMA: What’s next in Arizona’s Senate race?
I hope the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division will investigate this obvious effort to intimidate someone out of engaging in protected speech.
OPEN THREAD: Was there any news today?
2018, MAN: “A Nevada brothel owner and reality TV star who died last month after fashioning himself as a Donald Trump-style Republican candidate has won a heavily GOP state legislative district. Dennis Hof defeated Democratic educator Lesia Romanov on Tuesday in the race for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District, which includes rural communities and large stretches of desert in the southern part of the state.” As John Hinderaker writes at Power Line, “you gotta like a district where voters prefer a dead brothel owner to a Democrat.”
UPDATE: Iowahawk tweets, “Forget Libertarians, the Dead Pimps are the 3rd party that can actually win.” Heh, indeed.™
PROGRESSIVES: WHITE WOMEN NEED ACCOUNTABILITY AND ‘A LOT OF LEARNING’ AFTER FAILING TO VOTE UNIFORMLY FOR LEFT-WING CANDIDATES.
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald plays race card, embraces his inner anti-Semite with this insane shot at Alyssa Milano.
Why, it’s as if the mainstream left and the alt-right are mirror images of each other.
NOW THAT THE ELECTION IS OVER, A REMINDER: Under Obama, the CIA Suffered a ‘Catastrophic’ Disaster.
PLAYING INTO TRUMP’S HANDS: Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury.’
LIKE THE SONAR-ABSORBING COATINGS ON SUBMARINES: Sound-absorbing fur helps moths avoid bat predation. Cool.
AT AMAZON, save on Craft Supplies.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE ELECTIONS: Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle.
JOHN LEO: Why This Is A Very Scary Time For Young Men.
When a recent Canadian study of about 30,000 students between 7th and 12th grade found that more boys than girls were victims of physical dating violence, the reaction was one of disbelief. Accusations of male sexual harassment were exploding from the university campuses to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, begetting the #MeToo movement.
The most memorable perpetrators of sexual assault against women committed heinous acts: some women had been drugged and raped; others had been fired after they rebuffed an overt sexual assault. But many other acts were considered by both men and women to be normal fun and flirtation. During the media frenzy, abuse against men was never even reported as a footnote as men—good and bad—were accused and labeled as sexual predators.
In the past 38 years, more than 270 studies, with an aggregate sample size of more than 440,000, have found that “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners” from teenage years on. Since studies of teen dating violence began in the eighties, researchers have found that female high school students are four times as likely as male high school students to be the sole abuser of the other sex (5.7% vs. 1.4%).
The best studies of dating violence differentiate by the severity of violence (according to the Conflicts Tactics Scale). For example, a study conducted by Caulfield and Riggs found that 19% of women vs. 7% of men slapped their female partner. However, when it came to kicking, biting or hitting their partner with a fist, 13% of women vs. 3% of men engaged in those more severe forms of violence. The more specific the questions are, the more both sexes acknowledge the women were between two and three times as likely to hit, kick, bite, or strike their partner with an object.
Among all populations, most violence was mutual. But when it was unilateral, it was more likely to have been initiated by the woman. For example, in a study of over 500 university students, women were three times as likely (9% vs. 3%) to have initiated unilateral violence.
Yet these studies have rarely made headlines.
Female privilege.
I’M GONNA LOVE YOU IN MY SELF-DRIVING CHEVY VAN AND THAT’S ALL RIGHT WITH ME: Self-driving cars could function as moving brothels, academics predict.
NOW THE IMMIGRATION COURTS ARE REALLY JAMMED: The backlog of immigration cases suddenly jumped to the highest level ever, 1,098,468 cases, according to data tracked by the Transactional Records Analysis Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. This news comes just as three large groups of new potential cases are making their way north from Central America via Mexico toward the southern U.S. border.
Don’t miss the neat map of the states that lets you click on one to get the number of immigration cases there. If you aren’t familiar with TRAC, you should be, especially if, like me, you can never get enough data about government operations and mis-operations.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Range Review: Ruger AR-556 in 450 Bushmaster.
WELL: Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury.’
Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed plans for House Democrats to investigate and impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh for alleged perjury and investigate and impeach President Donald Trump for alleged treasonous collusion with Russia.
In post-election chats with various callers while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, Nadler gave advice to a newly elected representative and discussed potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominees with another. He also lamented identity politics and the thriving economy and worried about Democrats losing working-class voters while gaining elite former Republicans and suburban women.
Nadler was headed to DC for a two-day planning session with his staff and Judiciary Committee staff. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing,” he explained in a phone call with a friend. Nadler requested that the friend’s name be concealed on the grounds he is a private citizen.
The two discussed two routes for investigating new Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.
The Kamikaze Wing is in charge and they haven’t even been sworn in yet.
DEMOCRATS DON’T DO AS WELL AS HOPED/EXPECTED, GUESS WHO LINDA SARSOUR BLAMES: If you guessed, “the Joooz,” you win.
This illustrates a serious point about antiSemitism: it’s not “left” or “right,” it’s a conspiracy theory where you blame a phenomenon that you don’t like and don’t understand on Jews. Socialism or capitalism, sexual promiscuity or sexual repression, etc.; it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense, or if it’s directly contradictory to what you’re ideological opposites are blaming the Jews for. So just as you will see right-wing troglodytes blaming the Jews for enabling the left, you will find Linda Sarsour and company blaming Jews for disabling the left when it “underperforms.”
BAMN, BAMN, BAMN–THE ROOTS OF THE ANTIFA: I mentioned earlier today that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was approved by voters on this day in 2006, a decade after the almost-identical Proposition 209 in California. In both campaigns, major opposition came from a Trotskyite group (and I don’t use the word “Trotskyite” lightly here) called the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. Its members go by the acronym “BAMN,” and they are apparently an offshoot of the Revolutionary Workers Party. Knock me over with a feather if these guys aren’t wearing Antifa masks these days.
During the California campaign, we mostly laughed BAMN off. But in Michigan (and later in Arizona) there started to be real reason to fear for the safety of the initiative’s supporters, including its signature gatherers:
Just one among dozens of examples of [BAMN’s] willingness to use “any means necessary” was its attempt to intimidate the Michigan Board of Canvassers into refusing to certify MCRI for the ballot. BAMN brought in busloads of protesters who shouted down officials, jumped on chairs, and stomped their feet, flipping over a table in the process. As the director of elections for the Michigan Secretary of State put it, “Never before have I seen such absolutely incredible and unprofessional behavior from lawyers urging this disruption.”
BAMN’s co-chair and attorney saw things differently: “We cannot allow our opponents to determine what our tactics should be,” she said. “Our tactics win. That’s the bottom line.” They did not, however, win before the Board of Canvassers. Board members voted to certify the initiative for the ballot as the law required them to do. The following November, the voters approved it 58% to 42%.
I wasn’t there at the Board of Canvassers meeting, but I’ve seen the video. Alas, I couldn’t find it today (though I confess I didn’t look that hard). But I did find a more recent video of BAMN storming a meeting of the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Finding the second video is even better, since it vividly shows that the Board of Canvassers meeting was part of a pattern.
Oh yeah, and they filed the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court too. BAMN is well funded.