Category: Red State

‘Streiff’ Doxxed and Dooced

Posted on Comments

Back in the misty dawn of blogging, to be dooced meant losing your day job because of something you wrote on your blog. Now it has happened to Red State managing editor “Streiff” who, we unfortunately learn, has been working for more than a decade as a public-affairs official for the National Institutes of Health. He has reportedly retired after being doxxed by Lachlan Markay of the Daily Beast. On the one hand, this is bad news — almost certainly, Streiff was making six figures at this job — but on the other hand, it’s good that he had enough time in to retire, because his prior Army service counted toward his retirement.

How did Streiff get busted? A hint from the Washington Post:

According to his biography on RedState’s website, the user “streiff” has been a member of the publication’s community since its founding in 2004. In 2018, the website laid off a number of writers, including its editors Caleb Howe and Jay Caruso. At the time, the company insisted the move was financial, although the former writers and their allies pointed out that several of those laid off were the most vocal Trump critics writing for RedState.com.

Probably it was one of the disgruntled former Red Staters who decided to strike back by tipping Markay to Streiff’s identity. However, it must be noted, there was sufficient visible evidence to corroborate the ID, demonstrating once again how difficult it is to conceal any online alias.

As bad as this is for Streiff and Red State, it will probably have few substantial ramifications beyond that — a one-day story of little interest to anyone outside the world of political media.

Be careful out there, kids. The Internet can be a dangerous playground.




 

In Praise Of Erick Erickson For Curb-Kicking A Discourteous Cur

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Ol’ EE is taking some Twitter heat for the following act =>
I Have Disinvited Donald Trump to the RedState Gathering.
This blog is in staunch support of Erick on the point. The Presidential election is what amounts to the world’s most painful job interview. For a Chief Executive. Name another Chief Executive whom you’d expect to hear making even oblique menstrual remarks in any context. That CEO would be gonzo in a New York second, and the firm’s stock would be thrashed as every Social Justice Warrior in the Racism Industrial Complex arsenal arrived in a simultaneous time-on-top strike.

(And are the SJW knives coming out for The Donald? That should tell you something about the farce underway.)

One can defend Trump’s anti-Political Correctness stance. Political Correctness is just a variation on the theme of authoritarianism. And American irreverence is something this blog holds very, very dear. Irreverence is the spice of liberty.

But that’s not the same thing as boorishness. Hating aristocracy and the decadence it implies is not barbarism. Just because we’re not kissing Her Majesty’s ring doesn’t mean we’re embracing the sort of crudeness that doesn’t pass muster in church. That irreverence is like spice in the food: a little dab’ll do ya. And it’s hard to remove. So, less is more.

Trump seems the same sort of triumph of style over substance that Barack Obama himself has proven to be. Where are Trump’s substantive policy ideas? The Donald sure appears to be a provocateur, operating in GOP territory and saying outlandish things so that the Democrat base can say: “See? Look what those conservatives tolerate.”

No. Donald: it’s not too late to grow up. You’ve been an affluent, spoiled, vaguely teenage lout for many decades. We need a President, not Sideshow Donald.

Thanks to Erick Erickson for being the Adult in the Room.

Update: Darleen (and co-blogger Jeff on Twitter), are most decidedly NOT in agreement with me on this. I see their point, but stand by Erick on this. Babysitting Trump is not my idea of a good time. Red State is certainly not the GOP. To say that Red State’s actions are those of the GOP is to conflate them, in my opinion.

Sounds Like A Business Opportunity

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

I agree that isolation of conservatives is an obvious goal for the Left, but Erickson’s worry doesn’t seem such a threat:

And now, Apple and Facebook are set to develop news platforms that will have a human curator, instead of a computer algorithm. Twitter, likewise, is engaging humans on trending news topics, etc. It is only a matter of time because Google works its algorithm magic to drive down links to those who oppose the new cultural agenda.
So we will see orthodox Christian voices disappear from most news channels. The left are master propagandists. One of the chief tricks of the propagandist is to convince you that you are all alone. Everyone else thinks otherwise. So an Apple that celebrates gay rights and bans what it thinks is hate is only one step from prohibiting a Russell Moore piece through its news service.

As long as there are blogs like Red State and Hot Air, I guess I don’t see the worry.
Outfits like Salem Media Group might grow to include more services, including conservative social media indexes and Twitter/FaceBook replacements. The blueprint for building these parallel digital ecosystems already exists among independent developers, who routinely bypass mainstream app store chokepoints to host everything from encrypted peer-to-peer communication networks to the best betting app for international sports markets. By adopting this decentralized server infrastructure, conservative media networks can completely insulate their content from Silicon Valley’s algorithmic interference and arbitrary platform bans.
Capitalism has taken some hits in recent decades, but there is still a market for media with a shred of moral clarity. I hope.

Sen. McCain And Intellectual Integrity: Let His Carcass Caucus With Democrats

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Breitbart has the video of a certain grumpy old man, far past his sell-by date, pretending to lecture others about “intellectual integrity”. Enough. The old duffer has been in office for decades, while the integrity of the American government itself has spiraled down like an A-4 Skyhawk hit by Commies over enemy territory arriving at the Healthcare.gov crash.

And yet this Ryan-Murray budget debacle funds ObamaCare, while backstabbing the veterans that have been the backbone of Republican Party support:

Ahead of the final vote, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tried unsuccessfully to use a parliamentary tactic to force a vote on the amendment, which he wrote to undo the cuts for military retirees.
A provision in the already House-passed bill would cut retirement benefits for military retirees by $6 billion over 10 years.
Sessions wanted to instead eliminate an estimated $4.2 billion in annual spending by reining in an IRS credit that illegal immigrants have claimed.
He and fellow senators argued the bill unfairly sticks veterans and other military retirees with the cost of new spending.

Precisely whom do you think you’re fooling, Senator McCain? Fox echoes your point on the Senate floor in the Breitbart clip about avoiding another shutdown:

The Republican-led House passed the bill last week in an effort to avoid another stalemate leading to a potential government shutdown, like the one in October that polls showed was largely unpopular with voters.

The unpopularity has very much to do with the perception that Congress, as a whole, is just a pack of liars.

The GOP is supposed to be the adults in the room, John Sidney, but this budget deal increases spending for the next two years. That’s like vowing to quit cheating on your wife in the future, and referring to your new commitment as “fidelity”, while on your way to the strip club. “To really do what we want, we’re going to have to win elections,” said Rep. Paul Ryan.

What would also help the GOP win elections would be to purge the deadwood, e.g. YOU, Senator McCain, to clear the way for some conservative candidates.  An actual reform platform, articulated by fresh, uncompromising faces of integrity: that would have voters saying “Maybe the Republicans aren’t a lying pack of swine, after all.”  The indifferent majority, too disgusted with the spectacle of you selling out time and again (Amnesty? Do we hear amnesty?), might be motivated to show up at the ballot box and return the GOP to power.

So either snuggle up with Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and the boys, or just retire, but please relieve stop torturing the Republican Party with your presence. And take your fatuous daughter with you.

@TedCruz & The Broken Immigration Record: Heard This Bef–Heard This Bef–

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Senator Cruz at Red State:

On Monday at 5:30pm, the United States Senate will vote on the most sweeping immigration reform proposal it has considered in almost 3 decades – and it will do so having only seen the nearly 1200 pages of text for approximately 72 hours. Americans – including myself, my fellow senators and our staffs – are still trying to figure out exactly what is in the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven “deal.”
Sound familiar? Pass it to find out what’s in it? Reminiscent of Obamacare, the lengthy amendment to replace the Gang of 8’s original bill was crafted behind closed doors and introduced late on Friday, after many members had left town. In the 2007 immigration debate, close to 50 amendments were considered. But this year, we have only debated 9 – with some of us being completely shut out.
Given only a weekend to review the language, we will now vote on whether to end a debate that never really began. To be clear – this is not a difficult vote. On process alone, we should all vote “no.“ This was by design – the President, Harry Reid and the Gang of 8 preferred all along to ram through a “deal,” and not have a real debate – just like Obamacare.

Read the whole sordid account.
Via his petition link:
There really isn’t terribly much hope in the Senate. Meanwhile, to clip Drudge:

And as if all that didn’t suck enough:

Opponents of the Gang of Eight immigration bill have spent the weekend looking for hard-to-find changes in a piece of legislation that was substantially re-written by the Hoeven-Corker amendment. But there’s one big change that’s right out in the open — impossible to miss, in fact.
The original Gang bill ended with a section designated Title IV, which was headlined REFORMS TO NON-IMMIGRANT VISA PROGRAMS. The Hoeven-Corker version of the bill added a Title V, with the headline JOBS FOR YOUTH. The measure would provide $1.5 billion in the next two years to provide jobs for Americans between the ages of 16 and 24. It was originally pushed by Democratic Sen. Bernard Sanders, who wanted to come to the aid of young workers who were “hard hit by the Wall Street-caused recession.” Now, Sanders says immigration reform will further damage youth job prospects.

How rich would we all be if they’d just taken all of the giveaways, divided by the population, and cut us all a check? The answer is: no more rich, because proper economics don’t work the way this tooth-fairy government seems to think they do.
John Boehner, you’d better not go wobbly.

Jeremiah Wright Rates A Second Look In The Light Of D’Souza’s 2016

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Red State serves the mix:

If we’re subscribing to the 2016 thesis that BHO Junior is informed by Senior’s anti-colonial politics, then Jeremiah Wright’s black liberation theology dovetails nicely with the anti-Colonialism to demonize the United States and offer the country up as a target for punishment. That’s a fairly crude and simplistic connection of dots. Let’s call it a theory for now, and see how much explanatory power the idea has with respect to Obama’s record, for example, acting as a roadblock to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Generalizing a bit, it seems that a vast amount of our political dialogue is what I’ll call argumentum ad culpam (for which coinage I feel kinda bad). The capacity to manipulate feelings of guilt in you positively  (the 1787 U.S. Constitution was silent on the scourge of slavery) and negatively (you may not be culpable for your monstrous hormonal urges) is weapons-grade political plutonium, currently dropping economic bombs on a country near you.

When having a discussion with another, pay attention to what degree the arguments in play are straightforward appeals to how you should feel bad about something to which you’ve no connection, and how we ought to expand government to ‘solve’ this matter.

More at Nice Deb.

Update: linked at Jackie Wellfonder

Update II: why am I surprised, Bill? I guess I’m taken aback by the complicity of the mainstream media, not to team up and get their dude elected, but to commit suicide like this.

‘Bainers’

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

I can’t force the video to begin at 1:30, but Tommy Chong* serves up the basis for a ‘Bainers’ theme song:

Red State:

It is well established that Mitt Romney left Bain to go salvage the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. It is also well established that his name remained on some SEC documents. This stems from winding down his partnership interest in Bain Capital. It is a quirk in the law. It has been well vetted. Even FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are unpersuaded by Team Obama’s hyperbole.
Really? A felon? Hey! Let’s accuse Barack Obama of being a foreign born Muslim! There’s about the same validity to both. Meet the Bainers — they are the members of Team Obama demanding proof from Mitt Romney that he is a liar or a felon. Next they’ll ask when he stopped beating his wife.

And with that, I’m packing up to head over nearby Manassas National Battlefield Park to document something akin to an expression of deep affection for Barack Obama, only the opposite.

via Instapundit

*My Heaven favor you on the prostate cancer, Tommy. Lot of that about, these days.

ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED

Posted on Comments

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The news reached me by phone tonight, just as I was trying to get to sleep: Someone has targeted Red State’s Erick Erickson with the same dangerous hoax that had previously been used against Patterico.

UPDATE: Erickson writes at Red State:

Last week we spent a lot of time writing about Brett Kimberlin and the incident involving blogger Patterico where someone spoofed his phone number and told 911 he had shot his wife.
Tonight, my family was sitting around the kitchen table eating dinner when sheriffs deputies pulled up in the driveway.
Someone called 911 from my address claiming there had been an accidental shooting.
It wasn’t nearly the trauma that Patterico suffered, but I guess the Erickson household is on somebody’s radar.
Luckily it was two sheriffs deputies who knew me and I had already, last week, advised the Sheriff’s Department to be on the look out for something like this.

It’s no secret that I sharply criticized Erickson during the 2012 presidential primary campaign, but last week he mentioned me in writing about the Kimberlin case, which was a gracious gesture. This situation is more important than individual personalities.

UPDATE II: Instapundit: “Really, if the goal is to keep people from writing about Brett Kimberlin, this doesn’t seem like the way to do it.”

Indeed, given that Erickson is a CNN contributor, this incident certainly should provide the mainstream media a solid reason to stop ignoring the Kimberlin case.

UPDATE III: Patterico: “Anyone else think CNN is going to talk about SWATting now?”

UPDATE IV: Now the top thread at Memeorandum.