Category: Democrats

Ferguson To Holder: “Bring It. Yourself. Buzz Aldrin Could Calibrate You.”

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by Smitty

Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday the Department of Justice is ready to take any and all steps that are needed to reform the Ferguson, Mo., police department, including the potential dismantling of the force.

But was it really racism?

The complex question of the relationship between wealth and race comes into play here, but it might reasonably be said that this practice — of police and prosecutors and courts together — disproportionately affects black communities not because they are black, but because they are poor. They do not have the means to escape the justice apparatus, unlike the comparatively wealthy, who can pay a fine and be done with the matter — or hire an attorney, and inconvenience courts that prefer the ease of collecting fees to the challenge of arbitrating cases. To this effect, Balko quotes Thomas Harvey, an attorney for ArchCity Defenders, a St. Louis–based legal-aid group: “These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. . . . When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.”

It’s not a bad thing to have somebody watching the watchmen. However, after six years of Creep Show Holder wanting to have a conversation about race with every blade of grass in the land, I simply would trust him to tell me the time of day.

And what about the Governor of Missouri? It looks like Nixon is operating slightly above a vegetative state. Is he anxious to avoid the Menendez treatment? It seems yet another example of federalism gone off the rails that there is this abject tool of an Attorney General running around like some kind of authority figure.

It’s time to show the federal bully some resolve. In some pre-Obama America, they’d provide Snidely Whiplash a bit of needful attitude adjustment.

The United Hates of America

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We’re more than six years into the Obama Age — “Hope! Change!” — and everybody hates everybody now:

The Associated Students of University of California, Irvine (ASUCI) voted Tuesday to remove all flags, including American flags, from an inclusive space on campus because of their offensive nature.
The bill, R50-70, was authored by Social Ecology Representative Matthew Guevara, and accuses all flags, especially, the American flag, of being “symbols of patriotism or weapons for nationalism.”
“[F]lags construct paradigms of conformity and sets [sic] homogenized standards for others to obtain which in this country typically are idolized as freedom, equality, and democracy,” the bill reads.
The legislation argues that flags may be interpreted differently; the American flag, for example, can represent “American exceptionalism and superiority,” as well as oppression.
“[T]he American flag has been flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism,” the bill continues, arguing that “symbolism has negative and positive aspects that are interpreted differently by individuals.”
The anti-flag hanging bill adds that free speech, such as flags in inclusive spaces, can be interpreted as hate speech.
“[F]reedom of speech, in a space that aims to be as inclusive as possible[,] can be interpreted as hate speech,” the bill reads.

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque:

They’re calling it “prom-munism.” Seniors at an Albuquerque school want their prom to have a Communism theme. Seniors at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School near I-25 and Paseo del Norte voted online this week for the theme of their prom this year.
“They wanted prom-munism, so that’s what got voted for the most,” said senior Sarah Zachary. . . .
“We have a lot of jokesters in our grade, so they wanted it to be funny and a lot of them are really intense with politics,” Zachary said.
However, students who asked to remain anonymous don’t believe Communism is a joking matter.
“I would hope Cottonwood would realize the seriousness of having a very powerful and destructive idea as the theme for a prom,” one student wrote.
Another said, “While the seniors meant no harm in their choice of theme, it is not appropriate.”
“Our students are in the International Baccalaureate program, so they are very academically focused,” said Sam Obenshain, executive director at Cottonwood. “One of the classes they enjoy the most is a world history class.”

Meanwhile, in Detroit:

The same week President Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder are stirring the pot over alleged systemic racism in the criminal justice system in Ferguson, Missouri, a white federal judge was shot in Detroit as he fought off two Black men trying to rob him outside his home Thursday night.
Judge Terrence G. Berg, who was nominated by Obama to be a United States District Judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 2012, was accosted outside the home he has lived in with his family for decades as he took out the trash around 9 p.m.
According to police and Berg’s wife Ann Sevier, two Black men between eighteen and twenty years old confronted Berg, telling him they were robbing him and to let them in his house. Berg resisted the robbers to prevent them from gaining entry.

The American flag is hate speech. Communism is a prom theme. A federal judge is shot. Republicans demand gay marriage. What?

“A disaster of biblical proportions. . . . Old Testament, real wrath-of-God type stuff. . . . Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.





 

Her Majesty’s Petard Getting Kinda Hoist-y Over This EmailGate Scandal

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by Smitty

Hot Air and Rick Wilson need to talk to some security professionals (not that I’m claiming to be such) emphasis mine:

This isn’t how it is supposed to be. The public’s interest in the scandal involving revelations that Hillary Clinton eschewed the use of a secure email address while serving as secretary of state, preferring instead a “homebrew” email server of her design against Obama administration and State Department guidelines, should be dissipating by now. None of the old tricks are working.

Clinton’s surrogates are failing to distract the press or explain her behavior away by noting that Republicans in high office had often done the same thing. Those Clinton allies who used to effectively scare reporters away from stories by growling at them and threatening their future access have failed to properly intimidate the media. Instead of dying down, this controversy has only grown more damaging as new revelations slowly leak out.

Setting up your own service on the internet is kind of a big deal. Witness all of the break-ins at, by now, a significant number of vendors in the last few years. Was any Republican as overtly stupid as Clinton? Petraeus may have used a private email account to line up some trim. That’s not the same thing as setting up a server, however.

it is a safe bet that some Republican soon will “pounce” and provide the press with ample opportunity to engage in a circular, wishful, pearl-clutching session over the fraught course ahead for the GOP should they “overreach” by daring to notice Clinton’s ethical lapses.

Now, as a political matter, Wilson may be correct. But there is still a point to be made from an Information Systems standpoint: Her Majesty was pretty much a bimbo about making sure she was staffed to go solo on IT infrastructure. And that’s just what’s publicly known. If one were to be so. . .cavalier as to blow off common sense, statute, and regulations and set up one’s own services, one had better staff that system with some 800lb brains. You’re only one zero-day vulnerability away from someone doing something naughty. Installing a spare admin account, for example. Then, later, say, making a  backup of the data.

Basically, you have to assume that every email she herself sent as SecState was compromised. Not just  the ones  to Blumenthal. Could it be that something she said, directly or indirectly, led to four deaths in Benghazi? Really, really hard to disprove that, especially when dealing with an ethical wasteland like Her Majesty. Likelihood that Vladimir is laughing himself silly at how trivial it was to make our foreign policy look like Vladimir and Estragon caught in an extended hangfire? You don’t know how likely. So you have to assume 100%.

There are reasons for the various security rules and regulations. FOIA is certainly important. But when you’re in a high profile, critical billet like SecState, you want that .gov address so that, should the fertilizer hit the air circulator, you know that there is a staff somewhere that will either stop the bleeding, or at least provide a throat to choke.

And we’re talking about a Clinton here. The family seemingly gifted with a “get out of laws free” card. The only way there could potentially be a prosecution would be if the Obama administration thought it expedient. However, Her Majesty, one presumes, has enough dirt on #OccupyResoluteDesk to nullify that threat.

So it boils down to the court of public opinion. If the American people are going to continue to tolerate the kind of third-world thuggery evidenced by these Democrats, then Doom. On. Us. If the GOP wants to go dark on the issue, then fine. But blogs and social media need to keep reminding people that this is how Her Majesty rolls. If eight years of the no-talent rodeo clown have been a creep show, I shudder to consider the rubble Her Majesty will make of Obama’s wreckage.

The #Pluggernaut Must Run

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by Smitty

(Picture source)

Then we got into a discussion of appropriate music for the campaign.

All Dates Are Morally Equivalent; Questions Are Raaaaacist: Shut Up

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by Smitty

This week came word that the Obama Administration had actually begun implementing his executive amnesty plan well before he claimed to. In fact, his administration claimed that the amnesty plan would not be implemented until mid-February.
A few days before the start of implementation, a federal judge in Texas issued an injunction against the implementation based on the Obama Administration’s claims on when implementation would begin. It is clear now that the Obama Administration misrepresented the start date and had already begun implementing his plans before the court’s injunction.
This morning, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a “Motion for Early Discovery.” The motion requests the court grant Texas permission to start delving into the implementation of Expanded DACA to date.”

At what point do we start to wonder if the 4th quarter of the #OccupyResoluteDesk debacle isn’t just an extended troll, begging for impeachment?

After the recent display of incontinence on DHS funding, the rodeo clown could pretty much snort coke in the Rotunda without a word said, as far as I can tell. Lot of pissed veterans out there, who’s sworn to support and defend the Constitution, only to see it dissolve into idiocy.

via Baseball Crank

Liberal Feature; Conservative Bug

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by Smitty

Asymmetries seem to abound these days:

Already Walker has been dogged by alleged improprieties regarding campaign finance laws during the recall campaign and a lack of transparency as county executive
“This is a guy who has literally been in elective office his entire adult life,” said a strategist for one rival campaign. “He has made his living off the government sector, the taxpayer. He has never really, to my knowledge, had any kind of serious existence outside of the public sector.”

Are you also old enough to remember when, say, Her Majesty’s existence as either a public creature or a lawyer was totally a feature? Demoness you know, and all.

Thought experiment: make a reality show where serious candidates have to demonstrate actual problem solving skills. I want to see candidates demonstrate actual:

  • literacy
  • imagination
  • general knowledge
  • leadership
  • stamina
  • stewardship
  • wisdom

The more I think about it, the more some kind of a “Survivor”-style winnowing seems like it could be useful. Not that there is any hope of improvement over the current morass.

The concern about Walker peaking early is well-founded, but I think it’s a feature to get him out there in an early sprint, identify some areas to polish, and see if he is serious about the marathon. Sad to say it, for a variety of reasons, Sarah Palin does not seems to have had the needed  endurance.

Of course, these are only issues for a conservative. At the worse-is-better end of the spectrum, the liberals seem to come up with new to paganisms. On the one hand, I hope somebody duped Her Majesty’s email queue. On the other hand, finding out just how criminal she really was is likely to be TMI by half. I love my country, and finding out about new whoredoms isn’t to be relished.

via HotAir

Server, Serve Her: Clinton Crumbling

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EmailGate is reminding Americans of the scandalous Clintonian habit of deception and corruption. Ed Morrissey scoffs:

Hillary Clinton violated the Federal Records Act for four years, hid all of her e-mails as Secretary of State for nearly six years, and only began giving some of those communications to State a couple of months ago. Now that the FOIA dodge has been exposed, Hillary wants everyone to believe that she’s a paragon of transparency.
No one’s buying this, are they?

No, Ed. Nobody ever expects the truth from a Clinton. The question is whether she can get away with this particular lie:

Democrats and outside allies of the Clintons read that as an invitation to deride the investigation. Media Matters and Correct the Record, two of David Brock’s organizations—one that occasionally defends Hillary Clinton, and the other that does nothing but—have repeatedly called the e-mails story “false” and an extension of the “Benghazi hoax.”

Right: This is the familiar Vast Right Wing Conspiracy defense, wherein the question is not whether Clinton broke the law, but whether defeating Clinton’s enemies is of greater value to Democrats than enforcing the law. Every Democrat is expected to become a Clinton co-conspirator, so that the core principle of the party becomes Getting Away With It.

Is it time for Democrats to start hedging their bets?

Democratic primary voters are about to be reminded on a semiweekly basis of what left a lot of them so ambivalent about Hillary in 2008 — namely, the perception that the Clintons are like an unregulated industry within the party, impervious to scrutiny and contemptuous of anyone who would get in their way.
And this is why, if I were Joe Biden, and if I still harbored designs on the Oval Office down the hall, I’d be inclined to ignore what the insiders were saying. I’d run, and I’d run now.

You know the Democrats must be in a pretty desperate bind when they’re counting on Joe Biden to rescue their party.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 


 

The Flap Over EmailGate Makes No Sense

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by Smitty

Her Majesty wasn’t any more cavalier in offering a Bronx cheer to the spirit and letter of the law concerning official business than she has been at any point in her Hillustrious career. The only surprise is that any peasant scum out there on the plantation are surprised.


No.

Update, as Jazz put it:

I agree with Allahpundit, at least in as far as saying that the Clintons don’t *think* they are above the law. They know it. And as long as the public is willing to look the other way and conclude that anything bad said about Hillary is a media mountain created out of a molehill, they’re not going to change their vote. In order to make this stick in a meaningful way which might result in Hillary either dropping out or losing the election, she would need to be personally brought up on charges. And really… who can be bothered to do that?

The legal system is impotent in the face of this. The only place to do anything about it is the court of public opinion. The only time is 2016. The plaintiffs are the voters.