Tag: politics

Kid Rock for U.S. Senate

Rockstar Kid Rock set off a political firestorm after teasing his Twitter followers about a potential Senate run in Michigan. News broke this weekend that Kid Rock is LEADING challenger, Dem Debbie Stabenow in a new poll 30% to 26%!

There is absolutely no question that Kid Rock would be vastly preferable Senator for the State of Michigan than anyone the Democratic Party or the Republican Party will put forward. Before we worry about ideology, cultural remoralization, or anything else, America must survive. And Kid Rock is nothing if not America First.

This is Generation X politics. This is 4G politics.

The DNC-Pakistan connection

While NeverTrump and the media is still muttering RUSSIA-RUSSIA-RUSSIA like a crazed homeless man, the FBI is actively investigating the DNC-Pakistan connection:

FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, an individual whom FBI investigators interviewed in the case told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

An additional source in Congress with direct knowledge of the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network” by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.

Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker….

Soon after Imran began working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005, his two brothers and two of their wives — plus Abbas and another friend — began appearing as IT staffers on the payrolls of other House Democrats. Collectively, the Awan group has been paid $4 million since 2009.

Fellow IT staffers TheDCNF interviewed said the Awans were often absent from weekly meetings and email exchanges. One of the fellow staffers said some of the computers the Awans managed were being used to transfer data to an off-site server.

One of the many, many reasons you don’t want to hire Indian or Pakistani IT guys. They can’t even manage to correctly wipe their hard drives when desperately needed to do so.

Mailvox: “May he rot in Hell”

It is being widely reported that Sen. John McCain is terminal with brain cancer. One reader is entirely unsympathetic.

John McCain is dying from the same type of brain tumor that my father is – a Glioblastoma. There is an indirect but pertinent relationship between my father and the dear senator that extends beyond their shared terminal illness.

In early to mid elementary-school ages, I remember my father deploying numerous times to Bosnia/Herzegovania/Kosovo.  At the time, I didn’t understand why it was necessary.  I’m no genius and no one really explained it to me outside of the “America is for freedom” concept.  Almost 20 years later, with a skeptics intuition, I smell bullshit.

My father is a Physician’s Assistant which requires a master’s degree in medicine.  His only health issues in the past were kinetically related because he played soccer and basketball.  We also have no family history of any cancer at all.  He took care of himself; no smoking, regular exercise, good diet.

So it came as a shock to us when we learned he had a brain tumor that was likely to be his end.  When he met with the private oncologist who operates her private practice near a military base we were stunned by what she told us.  Over 70 percent of the patients she sees with Glioblastomas were or are military members who have had exposure to burn-pits.

What’s a burn-pit?  In a base of operations overseas there is no garbage service.  No one makes you differentiate your organic vs recyclable garbage.  You throw everything into a big pit that is set on fire.  This really isn’t a big deal as long as you’re not burning anything hazardous.  Plastic and paper and shit will make you cough, but it’s not likely to give you long-time health problems.  But what if you throw in depleted Uranium casings?

That’s right.  Our military uses depleted uranium ammunition because it’s effective at peircing armor and thick walls.  And what do they do with the remaining ordinance?  They throw it into a fucking fire right next to the camp.

What does John McCain have to do with this?  He’s an acolyte for the Prince of Lies.  Here’s an excerpt of a NYT Q&A w/ McCain concerning his initial disapporval of the Bosnian intervention and his ultimate betrayal of that “belief”:

Q. You, as much as anyone in Congress, know the high costs of war, and yet you and Senator Bob Dole, in a politically unpopular move, pushed for a Senate endorsement of the Bosnia mission. Why did you consider this important?


A. I had been a long-time skeptic, if not outright opponent, of our Bosnia policy. Senator Dole and I and others were strong proponents of lifting the arms embargo. But when the president made his commitment, committing not just Bill Clinton but the United States of America, the entire situation changed. There were significant negative costs associated with repudiating such a commitment — one, the credibility of the United States, two, the lasting viability of NATO, and three, the assurances of leaders of the participants in the war that the conflict would be reignited. I have no doubt that the Congress has the authority to cut off funding, but that was not going to happen. When you vote to cut off funding, with American troops already there, whether you intend to or not you send a message to those troops that you don’t support what they’re doing.

Apparently not funding a war that you supposedly disagree with is now treasonous because you can’t have the perception that the people you’re ordering to fight the war are doing something for an immoral pretense.

John McCain was just diagnosed with the same brain tumor my father was.  I firmly believe that had my father not been exposed to that radiation he would be happy and healthy.  He’s now teetering on a knife’s edge.

The God Emperor has released a statement that asks for thoughts and prayers for Johnny on the trigger.

I will not waste my prayers for John. May he rot in Hell.

Death comes for us all in time. I wonder if the senator has any regrets about his conduct during his time on Earth, or if he is hoping to hear “well done, thou good and faithful servant”, from the Father of Lies.

A leading cause of death

Are you kidding me? ANOTHER Clinton-related “suicide”:

Haiti Official, Who Exposed The Clinton Foundation, Found Dead In Miami

Klaus Eberwein, a former Haitian government official who was expected to expose the extent of Clinton Foundation corruption and malpractice next week, has been found dead in Miami. He was 50.

Eberwein was due to appear next Tuesday before the Haitian Senate Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission where he was widely expected to testify that the Clinton Foundation misappropriated Haiti earthquake donations from international donors.

According to Miami-Dade’s medical examiner records supervisor, the official cause of death is “gunshot to the head“. Eberwein’s death has been registered as “suicide.”

Eberwein, who had acknowledged his life was in danger, was a fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation’s activities in the Caribbean island, where he served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, for three years.

According to Eberwein, a paltry 0.6% of donations granted by international donors to the Clinton Foundation with the express purpose of directly assisting Haitians actually ended up in the hands of Haitian organizations. A further 9.6% ended up with the Haitian government. The remaining 89.8%  – or $5.4 billion – was funneled to non-Haitian organizations.

“The Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace,” Eberwein said at a protest outside the Clinton Foundation headquarters in Manhattan last year.

Are we really supposed to believe in this increasingly unlikely string of timely, but entirely coincidental suicides? That’s two in a week! At this point, “investigating Hillary Clinton” must be rapidly approaching the top ten list of causes of death in America. Typhoid Mary was less lethal.

Can you imagine if she had won the presidency? There would have been an epidemic of “suicide” to rival Japan’s WWII-era Divine Wind.

His name was Peter Smith

At this point, the Clinton emails have a more extensive body count than The Ring. It’s like watching a political horror movie in real time:

GOP operative who sought Clinton’s emails committed suicide

A Republican Party operative who said he tried to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers committed suicide days after speaking to The Wall Street Journal, records acquired by the Chicago Tribune show.

Peter W. Smith, an 81-year-old GOP donor from Chicago, was found dead in a Rochester, Minnesota hotel room on May 14. The Tribune obtained a state death record stating Smith committed suicide in the hotel on the date.

The Journal reported that Smith, a longtime opposition researcher for the GOP, “mounted an independent campaign to obtain emails he believed were stolen by Hillary Clinton’s private server, likely by Russian hackers” and implied he was working with Gen. Michael Flynn, then a senior adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump.

Smith said he had created a team to find the emails that might have been stolen by hackers during Clinton’s tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, although the Journal reported Smith was focused on obtaining the 30,000 emails Clinton claimed she deleted because they were personal.

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all. I’m only surprised that it wasn’t found that he committed suicide by shooting himself three times in the back of the head before being run over by a train on an abandoned railroad track.

A meme, corrected

So, not the DNC and Team Clinton, but rather, the Obama administration, with a connection to Natalia Veselnitskaya.


The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.


This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa.

Megan McArdle is astonishingly stupid

I’ve never had any respect for her; as someone who understands economics considerably better than she does, reading her articles have always been painful. But this is a new nadir for the woman:

On Monday, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story, alleging that a 2016 meeting between a Russian attorney and Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law had been arranged to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton that a Kremlin-connected lawyer might be willing to provide to the Trump campaign. Donald Trump Jr. had been informed via email that this compromising information was part of a Russian government operation to help his father win the presidency.

Facing an accusation like that, Donald Trump Jr. obviously didn’t want to sit around while the Times dribbled out information bolstering the speculation that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. He rushed to confirm it himself, tweeting out the email chain. His response to being informed that Russia was trying to engineer the outcome of an American election, with efforts that included providing damaging information about Clinton? “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Son-in-law Jared Kushner was cc’d on the email.

Is this illegal? Does getting oppo research from a foreign power count as an in-kind campaign contribution from a foreign national, one that might leave Jr. and Kushner vulnerable to criminal prosecution? I have no idea, because as we say on the interwebs, I am not a lawyer. Regardless of whether these actions turn out to be legal, it hardly ceases to be a problem if this somehow manages to squeak through some hole in our federal election laws. What they did is so obviously wrong that a 10-year-old child would know better.

Social media indicates that there are some people out there still trying to defend the Trump camp’s relationship with Russia, so it bears spelling out why this is, as the ethicists and public relations pros say, “not OK.”

Donald Trump is an American. He is an American who ran for office under a slogan of patriotic pride and love of country. People who love their country do not help rival powers intervene in their country’s elections, even if that intervention might have the lovely side effect of getting them elected. Countries gonna country, and spies gonna spy. But Americans running for American office must pick sides: the will of American voters or the influence of a foreign power. Hint: You choose your fellow Americans.

What happened at the meeting could ultimately be irrelevant. The sin to which Donald Trump Jr. has already confessed is egregious enough. A decent person would not give an audience to a foreign power promising to help tear down the opposition. A decent person certainly would not contemplate and suggest timing of any document release — which moves this revelation beyond merely “taking a meeting you shouldn’t have” and into the territory of “a presidential campaign actively coordinating with foreign agents.”

Even Trump supporters seem to be having trouble mustering much of a defense. There was a lot of irrelevant sputtering on social media this morning. One Trump apologist asked me: What about Aipac? (Unfortunately, Twitter offered no way to transmit my response: an astonished, incomprehending stare.) Others mounted standard complaints about leaks and sly implication. We are now past the point of anonymous sources and innuendo. Donald Trump Jr. showed us the primary sources, pleading guilty in the court of public opinion.

The president’s supporters have already retreated to what now looks to be their last rhetorical stand: to say that this isn’t collusion, but just politics. They get creative and postulate that this isn’t unlike what Clinton’s campaign would have done.

Here’s the reality: Once you are given the details of a Russian attempt to change the outcome of an American election, there is only one patriotic thing you can do, and that is to get on the phone to the FBI and say “I have some very disturbing news.” End of story.

Translation: Donald Trump Jr. is not a politician, did not do anything illegal, and did nothing more than what is generally known as “opposition research”. The source is totally irrelevant, as should be obvious considering the large number of US-Israeli dual nationals who would otherwise be entirely barred from any involvement in the U.S. political process.

And to claim that “Trump’s Defeated Defenders Can Only Whimper” is even more ridiculously stupid than the illogical argument she is making in the article itself. We’re not whimpering, we’re laughing at the desperation of the Never-Trumpers. Besides, we all know where tracking down the origins of this story is going to lead.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note, the Daily Meme Wars is now 1,500 strong. If you want to help force-multiply the memes, sign up here.

How to keep your country

Hungary moves even further to the right:

Hundreds of Hungarian right-wing militants gathered in Budapest to launch a political movement that they hope will run in next year’s parliamentary elections on a platform that includes open racism.

Hungary’s main opposition party, Jobbik, has been moving away from its far-right roots and is staking out a more centrist position. This has created space for new hard-right initiatives.

Three groups held a rally in the suburb of Vecsés labelled “unfurling the flag of the far right”. Although attendance was limited its leaders have reached a national audience in the media and plan to take part in the 2018 elections.

The movement, to be called Force and Determination, looks more radical than any organisation targeting a serious political role since the fall of communism, and uses openly racist language to oppose liberalism and immigration.

Balázs László, one of the movement’s leaders, told the crowd of mostly black-clad muscular, tattooed men that Europe showed an ill-conceived tolerance in the face of peril from its existing minorities and the influx of millions more people. “Tens of millions are added to the ranks of the Arabs, Africans and gypsies who will show no tolerance once they realise the power that their demographic significance lends them,” he said. “Our ethnic community must come first … there is no equality.”

That symbol is more than a little reminiscent of Generation Identitaire in France. What is remarkable about this development is that Hungary is already the best-governed nation in Europe, having been on the front lines against Islamic invasion for centuries. I mean, this is how the center-moderate government governs there.

Human rights groups have heavily criticised a vote by the Hungarian parliament to force all asylum seekers into detention camps as the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, called migration “a Trojan horse for terrorism”.

The asylum seekers will be kept in converted shipping containers while they wait for their cases to be heard via video-link as part of measures Orbán said were designed to save Europe. He considers the migrants, many of whom are Muslims, as a threat to European Christian identity and culture.

The measure was fiercely opposed by civil liberties groups in the country and some socialist MPs but was nevertheless passed overwhelmingly by 138 votes to six with 22 abstentions. Support came from Orbán’s Fidesz party and the far-right Jobbik.

It’s important to keep pushing right because as the nationalist parties of the right, the mere act of governance is going to necessitate various compromises. As long as an uncompromising element remains outside of governance, there will be political force to counteract the leftward drift towards ill-conceived tolerance.

And as Hungary grows and prospers while the more tolerant nations of Europe burn and are overwhelmed by rape and violence, the appeal of the Right is only going to grow. Does this look like Germany to you?

Everyone hates liberals

The Left and the Right finally agree on something:

‘‘Liberal’’ has long been a dirty word to the American political right. It may be shortened, in the parlance of the Limbaugh Belt, to ‘‘libs,’’ or expanded to the offensive portmanteau ‘‘libtards.’’ But its target is always clear. For the people who use these epithets, liberals are, basically, everyone who leans to the left: big-spending Democrats with their unisex bathrooms and elaborate coffee. This is still how polls classify people, placing them on a neat spectrum from ‘‘extremely conservative’’ to ‘‘extremely liberal.’’

Over the last few years, though — and especially 2016 — there has been a surge of the opposite phenomenon: Now the political left is expressing its hatred of liberals, too. For the committed leftist, the ‘‘liberal’’ is a weak-minded, market-friendly centrist, wonky and technocratic and condescending to the working class. The liberal is pious about diversity but ready to abandon any belief at the slightest drop in poll numbers — a person who is, as the folk singer Phil Ochs once said, ‘‘10 degrees to the left of center in good times, 10 degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.’’ The anonymous Twitter account ‘‘liberalism.txt’’ is a relentless stream of images and retweets that supposedly illustrate this liberal vacuousness: say, the chief executive of Patagonia’s being hailed as a leader of ‘‘corporate resistance to Trump,’’ or Chelsea Clinton’s accusing Steve Bannon of ‘‘fat shaming’’ Sean Spicer.

This shift in terminology can be confusing, both politically and generationally — as when baby boomers describe fervent supporters of Bernie Sanders as ‘‘very liberal,’’ unaware that young Sanders­istas might find this vomit-inducing. It can also create common ground. Last year, the young (and left-leaning) writer Emmett Rensin published a widely read piece on Vox deriding liberals for their ‘‘smug style’’; soon enough, one longtime adept of the right, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, was expressing his partial approval, writing in Bloomberg View that what contemporary liberalism lacked most was humility. Here was a perspective common to both sides of the old spectrum: that liberals suffered from a serene, self-ratifying belief in their own reasonableness, and that it would spell their inevitable defeat.

When it comes to diagnosing liberalism, both left and right focus on this same set of debilitating traits: arrogance, hypocrisy, pusillanimity, the insulated superiority of what, in 1969, a New York mayoral candidate called the ‘‘limousine liberal.’’ In other words, the features they use to distinguish liberals aren’t policies so much as attitudes. The profane hosts of the popular podcast ‘‘Chapo Trap House,’’ prime originators of the left’s liberal-bashing, spend a good deal of airtime making fun of liberal cultural life, with one common target being fervor for the musical ‘‘Hamilton.’’ ‘‘Nothing has represented them more: a hagiographical musical where they can pretend to be intersectional and pretend to be multicultural,’’ said Felix Biederman, a co-host, on the second episode of the show. ‘‘They have no policy. They’re all cultural signifiers.’’

And now we know what to call moderates…. However, after much reflection, I think I may have finally landed upon a useful rhetorical term: spectator. Mull it over and try it out the next time you happen to have a moderate cluck-clucking and waving his finger at you.