Archive for 2019
April 2, 2019
THERE’S A SHOWDOWN COMING BETWEEN DEM PROGS AND MODS: AOC’s threat to primary Democrats with doubts about the Green New Deal isn’t sitting well with more than a few of her colleagues.
This one has all the markings of, as DUCKOFD3ATH might say, a real hair-pulling, blood-spitting, teeth-flying bar brawl.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: NRA is back, ‘highest ever’ membership.
The National Rifle Association has recovered from a membership drop after President Trump’s 2016 election and is now at the highest levels ever in its history.
New figures put the membership at approximately 5.5 million.
Typically the gun lobby membership dips after elections, especially in nonelection years like this year. But officials said it is “holding steady” at unusually high levels, an indication that members are steeling for the upcoming presidential election. . . .
The most recent spike in membership came after the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which prompted several Washington lawmakers to renew calls for gun control and an assault weapons ban.
The NRA’s membership numbers indicate that the gun control advocates overreached and actually helped the group, while winning nothing from Washington.
Many new gun advocates signed up as annual NRA members after the latest gun control fight and have since continued their membership.
What’s more, there are expectations that membership in the NRA will continue to grow going into the 2020 elections that will pit NRA fan Trump against gun control Democrats. The group is just at the beginning of its series of annual events around the country where new members typically join, such as the upcoming April 26-28 national convention in Indianapolis.
The NRA is America’s oldest, and currently America’s most important, civil rights organization.
WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF SUBJECTIVE MORAL REASONING? Ravi Zacharias was asked that not long ago and, while he could have ended his response with his hilarious opening sentence, he went on and engaged the questioner in quite a useful and interesting discussion that speaks to many of the most important issues regularly considered on these venerable digital pages.
WELL, GOOD: Man gets 20 years for deadly “swatting” hoax.
Tyler Barriss, whose hoax call to Wichita police led to the shooting death of an innocent man, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the Associated Press reports. The sentence in Kansas federal court is a stark reminder of the serious consequences of the deadly prank called “swatting.”
The December 2017 death of Andrew Finch began with an online feud over a Call of Duty game. Casey Viner, then around 18 years old, allegedly recruited Barriss to “swat” the Wichita home of Shane Gaskill, who was about 19. Barriss called Wichita police pretending to be a deranged man with a gun holding members of his family hostage, giving what he believed was the target’s address.
As Barriss expected, the police responded by dispatching a SWAT team. But Gaskill lied to Barriss about where he lived. As a result, police surrounded a home occupied by the Finch family, which had nothing to do with the online dispute.
It wasn’t a hoax — it was premeditated murder, using the police as the murder weapon. What gets lost in the shuffle though is that too many SWAT teams are just too trigger-happy.
OCASIO-CORTEZ SHOULD HELP THERE: Democrats still need rural voters to defeat Trump.
THEY’RE OUT OF WATER, BUT THEY’RE GETTING PLENTY OF RUSSIAN SOLDIERS AND WEAPONS: The Kremlin Prepares to Defend Venezuela’s Maduro Regime by All Means.
The decision to send around 100 military advisors, support staff and possibly some combat-experienced special forces personnel (as guards)—all led by the Army chief of staff—to market weapons to the insolvent and beleaguered government of President Nicolás Maduro at first glance appears wholly incongruent. Tonkoshkurov is a combat-experienced top Land Forces commander, not an arms dealer. Instead, his mission could be to thoroughly assess the current military/security situation in Venezuela, the deficiencies and real capabilities of the pro-Maduro military and security forces, and to prepare a list of concrete measures Moscow needs to take to ensure the survival of the regime and the defeat of the opposition, led by the self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido. Moscow views Guaido as Washington’s puppet and part of the alleged imperialist conspiracy headed by the United States to oust Maduro. According to Russian reports, the 35 tons of cargo just delivered to Venezuela was mostly food, but not for the starving locals. Rather, the foodstuff will feed the military mission in a situation where logistics have virtually collapsed. The Russian mission is apparently not a combat force per se, but will be assessing the situation and “taking measures” to mobilize and “put together” the pro-Maduro forces. It is preparing for a lengthy operation (Ura.news, March 25). The above-mentioned “measures” could involve additional shipments of arms, munitions and other equipment, the deployment of more Russian specialists and advisors and also a possible limited combat unit—presumably the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno-Kosmicheskiye Sily—VKS) and anti-air assets—mirroring the Russian deployment in Syria in 2015 to keep in power the beleaguered regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The fact that President Trump has warned Russia to “get out” of Venezuela just goes to show what a crafty Putin stooge he is, I guess we’re supposed to believe.
GOVERNANCE: Divided Democrats may forgo a budget resolution. “The House Budget Committee may punt on a fiscal 2020 budget resolution to avoid exposing Democratic caucus fissures over tax and spending policy. But an effort to reach a deal to raise spending limits for the coming fiscal year could prove just as dicey, as Lindsey McPherson explains.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Many Private Colleges Are In Trouble. “But the real challenge facing many colleges and universities at the moment is that their business model is fundamentally broken. ‘Business model’ isn’t a popular phrase in higher education, either, but all colleges have one. When we use the term, we are referring to the revenue that an institution must take in to support the resources and processes it uses to deliver on its value proposition. Many colleges and universities are increasingly unable to bring in enough revenue to cover their costs.”
If only there had been some kind of warning.
PRO-AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BALLOT INITIATIVE PENNILESS IN SEATTLE?: The plan to repeal Washington State’s Initiative 200, which prohibited discrimination and preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, or ethnicity in public education, public employment and public contracting, has hit a snag. The repealers evidently have no money. And they owe lots to the folks who collected the signatures to get them on the ballot.
I hope the new initiation–called Initiative 1000—fails. Efforts to repeal Proposition 209 in California have failed, which is a good thing, since Proposition 209 was initially very successful and continues to have some good effects.
MARK BAUERLEIN: More Diversity, Lower Standards.
CONVERSION THERAPY: U.S. Navy Turned A British Amphibious Ship Into A Mine-Clearing Sea Base Packed With Drone Tech. “Being able to readily turn any ship into a mine-sweeping platform is a major part of the Navy’s future plans.”
Minesweeping is serious business, but doesn’t always get the institutional attention it deserves due to more-glamorous aircraft carriers, attack subs, and surface combatants. More creative thinking like this, and we can get up to a 355-ship Navy sooner than hoped.
#JOURNALISM: Washington Post Complicit in #MeToo Coverup.
NOBODY TELL THEM ABOUT MIKE PENCE: New York Times Shocked to Discover Pompeo Is a Christian.
LET THEM DRINK EVIAN: Millions without water as Venezuela crisis deepens.
Millions of Venezuelans were left without running water Monday amid a series of massive blackouts, forcing President Nicolas Maduro to announce electricity rationing and school closures as the government struggles to cope with a deepening economic crisis.
Maduro announced 30 days of power rationing on Sunday, after his government said it was shortening the work day and keeping schools closed due to blackouts.
The measures are a stark admission by the government — which blamed repeated power outages in March on sabotage — that there is not enough electricity to go around, and that the power crisis is here to stay.
Angry Venezuelans meanwhile took to the streets of Caracas to protest the power cuts and water shortages.
“We have small children and we aren’t able to give them a drop of water to drink,” said Caracas resident Maria Rodriguez.
If you’re opposed to socialism, it’s because you don’t care about children and other living things.
A REAL EPIDEMIC OF FAKE HATE: “Determined to promote the paranoid belief that ‘hate’ is everywhere in the Trump age, progressives now attack anyone who reports the good news that it’s not. . . . To the Left, the fact that Trump is president means the hate must be real, even if they have to fake the ‘evidence’ to prove it.”
GOOD LORD: Mika Brzezinski Defends Joe Biden: He Was Just Being ‘Flirtatious’ and ‘Affectionate.’ “Whoopi Goldberg took it a step further: ‘I don’t want Joe to stop doing that’.”
Anything short of rape-rape is OK with Whoopi, provided it’s committed by the right people, of course.
IT’S SATIRE, BUT IS IT REALLY? Movement That Demands Forceful Silencing Of All Opposing Viewpoints Unsure Why Nation So Divided. “Representatives of the left, who recently campaigned for advertisers to tank a show they did not like and for a magazine to fire a man they did not agree with, expressed their bewilderment that the nation can’t just unite and all get along. A barrage of social media posts and opinion pieces by progressives all expressed similar confusion at the nation’s polarization.”