CONRAD BLACK: Democrats in 2020: Unelectable Nonentities. “It is now almost too late for the Democrats to shift lanes into plausible electability.”
Don’t get cocky, kid.
Archive for 2019
April 4, 2019
21ST CENTURY CRIME: Teenager hit with 73 counts for “swatting” calls. “A 17-year-old from Ohio placed dozens of fake emergency calls to police.”
The investigation was triggered by an August call to the sheriff’s department in Putnam County, New York. A caller claimed he had shot his wife and was holding his son hostage with an AR-15.
Thankfully, that turned out to be a lie. The house was unoccupied, and the police were able to check the story without anyone getting hurt. But the sheriff’s department didn’t let the issue drop. They began investigating who had placed the call.
“Investigators were able to get information about the phone used to make the fake emergency call,” a Putnam County press release states. “They also learned that there were similar incidents in other jurisdictions around the United States.”
More at the link.
I’m usually in favor of leniency for stupid teens pulling harmless pranks, but SWATting can be deadly, and ought to be dealt with by prosecuting to the max.
A REMINDER FROM SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Trump disclosed his tax returns for 8 years to the Obama IRS.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: NY college pres.: ‘A campus is not the place for free speech.’
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYT ‘sources’ unhappy with Barr ‘narrative’ and much, much more. “The New York Times published a gossip piece yesterday, trying to revive their demoralized Trump-RUSSIA cult readers that the Mueller report is, in fact, bad for Trump.”
Spin, spin, spin.
WHAT IF UNICORN FARTS CAUSE PMS? What if Toxic Masculinity Is The Reason For Climate Change?
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: BookGate expands. Another $100K in Baltimore Mayor’s pockets.
“UNEXPECTEDLY,” NOW IN STEREO: “’New York Times’ Journalist Describes An ‘Almost Unimaginable’ Crisis In Venezuela,” NPR reports.
CTL-F “Socialism” yields zero returns. And the photo atop the article, of an elderly woman dramatically holding a candle in a dark room, is particularly rich coming less than a week after the left’s annual “Earth Hour” blackout stunt, and blanket coverage of AOC’s Green New Deal fantasies.
BOW DOWN TO THE RACE-HUSTLING ANTISEMITE: Democrats are so afraid to piss off Al Sharpton.
This week, nearly every single Democratic candidate for president — save the otherwise-distracted Joe Biden — has or will appear at Sharpton’s annual convention for his National Action Network, which he calls a charity.
A more rational observer might call it a personal piggybank funded by shakedowns.
This is a man who, as The Post exclusively reported in December, sold the rights to his life story to his own “nonprofit,” paying himself $531,000 — on top of his $244,661 salary to run NAN in 2017.
When asked by The Post when he would see that half-million, Sharpton — who was covering the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth in South Africa for MSNBC, itself a sacrilege — took offense.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
Such is Al Sharpton’s M.O., one that’s kept him in public life for over 30 years: dodge, deflect, deny, distract — and then cry racism.
Well, he is a Democrat.
THERE SHOULD BE FEDERAL CORRUPTION INVESTIGATIONS: Pushback: White House cites $91 billion for Puerto Rico, hits corruption, incompetence.
The Trump White House Wednesday said that it is prepared to spend up to a record $91 billion to help Puerto Rico recover from a September 2017 hurricane even though it cited the island’s history of corruption and mismanagement.
With President Trump under fire for being critical of Puerto Rico on Twitter, and Democrats blocking a disaster funding bill if the administration doesn’t cough up more cash for the island, the White House pushed back, claiming it has given historic levels of money so far.
“Puerto Rico is on track to receive an historic level of aid for disaster recovery, in spite of the fact that it has repeatedly failed to manage its finances appropriately,” said the administration.
The Trump administration says it has allocated over $40 billion so far and could spend up to $91 billion, “far exceeding funding for states hit by other recent disasters.”
Ever since Hurricane Maria hit, the president has been criticized by congressional lawmakers and Democrats on the island for not doing more to help it recover from the disaster, despite pouring historic levels of resources into the effort.
With Democrats pushing for more help, the president went on Twitter to push back and the White House offered facts and figures to back him up today as the fight escalated.
Punch back twice as hard.
“TACTILE POLITICS:” The New York Times Has a New Way of Describing Inappropriate Touching, Reserved Exclusively for Democrats.
“Kudos to the NY Times Department of Euphemisms for ‘tactile politics,’” Iowahawk deadpans.
THE OBAMA/HOLDER PRECEDENT: Most targets in House’s Trump corruption probe haven’t provided docs.
HMM: Police body cameras have little effect on officer, citizen behavior.
Police body cameras are not providing the type of irrefutable evidence that law enforcement and civil rights advocates had expected, according to the most comprehensive study of the technology to date.
“Although officers and citizens are generally supportive of [body camera] use, [they] have not had statistically significant or consistent effects on most measures of officer and citizen behavior or citizens’ views of police,” says a recent report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Key findings show that body-worn cameras tend to reduce complaints against police. But researchers said it is unclear whether that is because improved officer conduct has led to fewer complaints or because citizens who know they are being recorded are less likely to file complaints.
But have they led to increased accountability?
JOHN HINDERAKER: Why Should the Partisan SPLC Be Tax-Exempt?
Given what we’ve learned about our intelligence establishment over the last two years, anyone in this White House might be wise to rely on end-to-end encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp or Wickr.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Magpul Begins Shipping All Magazines to California Customers.
WELL, GOOD: Ted Cruz Threatens Maduro With ‘Every Lever’ If He Doesn’t Release Six Captive Americans.
GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz met Tuesday with the families of the “CITGO six,” American oil executives held captive in Venezuela, and called for their release.
CITGO is a U.S.-based oil company that is majority-owned by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro imprisoned CITGO’s former vice president for refining Tomeu Vadell, former vice president for supply Jorge Toledo, former vice president for shared services Jose Luis Zambrano, former Corpus Christi refinery director Alirio Zambrano and former head of public affairs Gustavo Cardenas in November 2017.
“For over a year, they’ve been imprisoned,” Cruz told reporters after the meeting. “[Their families] haven’t spoken to them in nearly a month, as communications have been cut off. They’ve seen their family members drop weight precipitously. They’re kept away from sunlight – often away from human contact, denied basic human rights.”
Socialist hospitality.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: Joe Biden and the deranged policing of personal space: Have the grounds for feminist complaint ever been lower?
Well, Woke Joe has been endorsing the new, lowered standards for guilt when they applied to other men.
Related: The bonkers assault on Joe Biden. “Weird Joe, who’s been showing keen affection to members of the fairer sex since before he became a big Democratic macher, has done the unforgivable in this humorless age. He’s shown genuine human warmth of the male variety to females in the scary era of #MeToo. And he’s demonstrated that the vast suspicion, bordering on hatred, of men — even dudes on the political left — is a force so powerful, he has only one choice: Pack in your presidential hopes, Joe, and repent. The feminists of America are coming for you with torches and pitchforks.”
But no more bonkers than he’s been, and he was happy to carry a pitchfork himself until now.
MARK ELLIS: If Mexico Won’t Lift a Finger, President Trump Should Lower the Boom. “The time has come for the commander-in-chief to cut through the dross and do something.”
NICK SHORT: Southern “Poverty” in the Cayman Islands. “So why would the SPLC need an offshore account in the Cayman Islands? Below is from their latest 990 filing.”
Obviously, I need to travel there and do some extensive on-the-ground reporting.