The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Why Vote-By-Mail Is The End Of The Republic

Posted on | November 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Why Vote-By-Mail Is The End Of The Republic

by Smitty

Hypothetically speaking (not purely, I had anecdotal awareness of at least one occurrence a few election cycles ago), one can use ballots sent to addresses in multiple states to vote more than once in an election.

Who would know?

So, what is to prevent some wiseguy from registering in every state that automatically pushes ballots to addresses, unless removal is explicitly requested by the voter? (I supported one such case last Tuesday as an election officer here in the Old Dominion).

As far as  I can tell this is Moral Hazard writ large. If there is no substantial means of detecting such fraud, and the Demsheviks can’t be arsed to enforce laws on non-conservative perpetrators anyway, then we can be relatively confident that ballot boxes will be stuffed, stuffed, and stuffed.

But it’s worse than that.

Part of what makes democracy work is the secret ballot. When the voter goes to a polling place, that voter is afforded a private place to mark and cast the ballot without interference. If we need to be all-in for Bernie to maintain domestic tranquility, fine. But when it’s just us and the ballot, we should be at liberty to vote any way that our conscience dictates.

It is quite possible, even likely, that people are marking their vote-by-mail ballots without coercion. Except that we cannot guarantee that. At a polling place, if the voter requests assistance (Virginia, anyway) requires an explicit voter assistance form just to keep everything tidy, so that the appearance of unwanted kibitzing is minimized.

Beside personal security, there  is ballot security. It astounds me that getting ballots printed so that they can be physically marked and scanned on the spot is a challenge. In ten years of supporting elections, I have  had one time that a rover had to be called in to clean the scanner portion when it got a bit dusty. We had a second scanner, so no one was inconvenienced.

But all of the ballots are packaged and tamper-sealed and there just aren’t any physical security questions. We closed the precinct and reported results in 1:15 (one hour, 15 minutes).

What the WHAT, Arizona?

Having supported elections for a decade, one is sympathetic to the need to minimize the level of effort for everyone, from voters, to the itinerant election staffers like myself, to the regular county election folks. Legal voters are paying customers. Let them participate.

However, “Election Season” is disgusting.

A credible election:

  1. Requires voters to put on their Big People Pants and be registered in the state of primary residence. Only.
  2. Ensures voters cast their ballots securely, in private. Maybe the county visits nursing homes?
  3. Doesn’t spray ballots at random addresses like Ed McMahon getting his Publisher’s Clearing House on. (Did I date myself there? Vulgar Hunter Biden metaphor is left as an exercise for the reader.)
  4. Maintains a credible chain of custody for the ballots. Note that counting them all on Election Day really cuts down on risk.

Same day registration is insane

On the one hand, the Demsheviks have same-day registration in place, and then stand out beyond the exclusion zone limit and pass out sample ballots. Perfectly legal. Smart, too. For them. Before too many more election cycles, all of those homeless encampments in the blue cities will suddenly get all mobile, show up in swing districts long enough to obtain an address, get their same-day registration on, vote a sample ballot, and then migrate.

The same cadre might, with enough early voting opportunity, be able to (optionally) wash, rinse, and repeat the performance a few times per election.

Legally!

Oh no, no, no, Smitty is just a paranoid and bigoted member of the Binary, Intersectional, Tyrannical, Cis-Hetero, Slave-Lord Anti-Woke Patriarchy (BITCHSLAP). Who would do such a thing? That would be like starting a land war in Asia, funneling taxpayer dollars to a foreign government, which, while under attack, somehow has time to collaborate with a crypto currency exchange whose main brain is a huge Democrat Party donor. Just crazy talk.

Bonus denunciation of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)

As if bulk-mailed ballots and same-day registration were not stupid enough, this RCV idea has really got to go. It may be OK for your HOA, where you actually know everyone and such a device could save time.

But, as Jonah Goldberg noted, “Complexity is a subsidy”. The same people who decry “disparate impact” are keen on inflicting it upon voters. Runoffs have the virtue of slowing down the process and allowing voters a second thought WITHOUT any loss of election integrity. You can judge this idea by a glance at its proponents: insiders.

Summary

Our election system needs reform with an eye toward integrity and a side glance at simplicity. Other than deployed military, the use-cases for ballots in the mail are weak. Prioritize participation in the election. Move Veterans Day to Election Day and make it a twofer–they are not unrelated.  Americans have not perished supporting this Constitution to have a bunch of godless Commies destroy our elections.

If the GOP is not making election reform a priority, there is probably a reason, and that reason is not a good one.

Category: Election

Sam Bankman-Fried: MIT-Educated Crypto Swindler Scammed Billions, Donated Millions to Democrats

Posted on | November 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Sam Bankman-Fried: MIT-Educated Crypto Swindler Scammed Billions, Donated Millions to Democrats

How could a Ponzi schemer hide in plain sight so long? That’s the real question at the heart of the story of how Sam Bankman-Fried, the son of two Stanford University law professor, became a celebrity in the financial world — rubbing shoulders with Bill Clinton and Tom Brady, among others — even while critics were pointing out that his crypto-currency empire appeared to be a swindle similar to multi-tier marketing schemes.

Universally known by his initials SBF, Bankman-Fried was nothing if not well-connected. His father, Joseph Bankman, is the Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School, while his mother, Barbara Fried, is the William W. and Gertrude H. Saunders Professor of Law at Stanford. SBF attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where “he graduated with a degree in physics and a minor in mathematics” in 2014. This is an important data point — whatever else you may say about Samuel Bankman-Fried, he is not stupid.

This is important, I say, because as you examine the rise and fall of SBF’s crypto empire, there are two possible explanations for what happened: (a) incompetence or (b) deliberate fraud. Given his academic pedigree, it’s difficult to believe it was (a) and therefore . . .

Say hello to SBF’s girlfriend/business partner, Caroline Ellison who, like Bankman-Fried, comes from an academic family. Her father, Glenn Ellison, is the Gregory K. Palm Professor of Economics at MIT. Caroline Ellison graduated from Stanford University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. So the MIT/Stanford nexus is strong here and, if you’re old enough to remember the Vietnam War, you’re probably thinking about The Best and the Brightest — very smart people with degrees from elite schools who bring about catastrophic failure.

The details of what went wrong with SBF’s scheme are only partially known at this point. Until a couple of weeks ago, there was little awareness of any problem at the Alameda Research/FTX operation, and only in the past week has SBF’s world come crashing down. Basically, SBF created Alameda Research, “a quantitative trading firm specializing in cryptocurrencies,” in 2017. Then in 2019, he launched FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that attracted over a million clients. He then started robbing Peter to pay Paul, making unauthorized use of funds belonging to FTX customers to prop up Alameda — allegedly, I hasten to add, as a responsible journalist. Predictably, there came a time when the money started running out, and SBF sought a new investor to rescue his enterprise; when that would-be investor did their “due diligence” research, they discovered that FTX’s bookkeeping was a toxic dumpster fire and — KABOOM! — the whole thing went bankrupt in a matter of days. The collapse was sudden, but it wasn’t as if people had no warning.

In April, FTX co-hosted the Crypto Bahamas conference at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in Nassau. The conference reportedly drew more than 2,000 people who paid $3,000 to attend. FTX’s cohost for the conference was “global thought leadership forum SALT” and the “alternative investments firm SkyBridge,” founded by Anthony Scaramucci. Among the headliners at the conference were NFL quarterback Tom Brady, former President Bill Clinton and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Literally every article written at the time about that conference referred to Sam Bankman-Fried as a “30-year-old billionaire,” and he appeared in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers, which are apparently the only kind of clothes he owns. That was his chosen image — the billionaire slob.

Never trust people like that. Such behavior is disrespectful.

There was something else about SBF’s carefully crafted image, namely his oft-asserted claim to be an “effective altruist.” He wasn’t one of those greedy capitalists — no, Samuel Bankman-Fried was just making money so he could give it away as charity benefiting worthy causes. And, of course, by “worthy causes,” I mean woke liberal bullshit like “climate change” and massive campaign contributions to the Democratic Party.

“Sam Bankman-Fried . . . donated more than $40 million to Democrat candidates and super-PACs, including providing the initial funding for the Protect Our Future PAC. He was the second largest donor to the 2020 Biden campaign, pouring over $10 million into Biden-related campaign organizations.”
— David Strom, HotAir.com, Nov. 10

Is anyone really surprised by this? Of course, there are shady people in the financial world who are Republicans, but the 30-year-old MIT-educated billionaire slob? The “effective altruist” who cares about climate change and has a girlfriend who’s a Harry Potter fan?

No, he’s a Democrat. It only makes sense. As the tangled web of SBF’s multi-billion-dollar swindle is unraveled, we should keep this in mind: Democrats collected tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from a scammer who defrauded investors around the world. The damage inflicted by Sam Bankman-Fried is only beginning to become apparent. It’s possible that SBF’s swindle may collapse the entire crypto-currency market and, I repeat, people were warned it was a Ponzi scheme.

 

Click and watch that video, which was posted to YouTube in April, just about the time SBF was hosting his Crypto Bahamas conference. Stephen Findeisen, a/k/a “Coffeezilla,” is a Texas A&M alumnus who got interested in exposing fraud because of his personal experiences with friends who got involved in a multi-tier marketing scam. As Findeisen points out, there were interviews in which Bankman-Fried more or less admitted he was running a Ponzi scheme. There were numerous clues that SBF’s business wasn’t legit but . . . “30-year-old billionaire”!

Some people want to believe that the economic “system” is rigged, and that successful people are beneficiaries of unearned “privilege.” In such a worldview, the most successful people are the worst people and all the truly good people are impoverished failures. This belief system functions as a balm to soothe the injured pride of people who secretly envy the ultra-wealthy. Such people like to think that the reason they’re not rich is because (a) capitalism is inherently corrupt and (b) they themselves are too ethical to do whatever it takes to get rich. Having no such illusions myself — I’m just too lazy and disorganized, so once my “Become a Famous Rock Star” plan didn’t work out, I basically had no choice but to become a journalist, a notoriously ill-paid occupation — I don’t hate or envy rich people, and would be very happy if my kids became rich, because then I could just sponge off them in my retirement years. Meanwhile, I’m just rattling the tip jar in hopes that readers get enough entertainment value out of this blog they’ll be willing to spare some cash to keep it going, a “business plan” (if you can call it that) which has worked out surprisingly well over the past decade-plus.

If you believe the “system” is rigged, however, the phenomenon of a 30-year-old billionaire tends to confirm your worldview, showing the economy to be a circus in which any sort of clown can win.

When this bushy-headed slob in sneakers was CEO of a company once valued at $32 billion, people could point to him and say, “See? Capitalism is just a gigantic crapshoot. All that ‘work hard and save your money’ stuff is just a lot of moralistic bullshit.” Now that Bankman-Fried is bankrupt (and quite likely to end up in prison), however, what lesson have we learned? We have learned what I’ve been saying for years: If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably neither good nor true.

 

Sticking the Big Yellow Button in here because this blog has always been in favor of shameless capitalism. There’s no “get rich quick” secret here, no something-for-nothing flimflam, just me writing stuff that I hope you’ll enjoy reading. A simple fee-for-service transaction that I’ve often summarized as The Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

So far, this arrangement has worked out OK. And unlike a certain 30-year-old crypto billionaire, I’m not heading to federal prison. Life is good.

UPDATE: As might be expected, while I was writing this, Ed Driscoll (who unlike me is neither disorganized nor lazy) published a succinct roundup of news about the FTX meltdown.




 

Category: Crime

FMJRA 2.0: Ludwig II Von Bayern

Posted on | November 13, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Ludwig II Von Bayern

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Another week of .400 baseball – Marichal got us a win at San Francisco, and Joe Coleman held the A’s to two runs while we scored six, so we wound up with two wins out of five games. Could have been worse.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Everybody has problems, but we have more than most teams.

Joe Biden and the ‘Path to Chaos’ (He’s Living Underground Like a Wild Potato)
First Street Journal
American Free News Network
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Seeking Light Amid the Gloom: Thoughts on the Brain-Damaged Election Results 
Stately McDaniel Manor
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

 

Gosh, Some People Seem Awfully Worried About Election ‘Misinformation’ Now
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Minuet
A View From The Beach
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: HMS Eskimo
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL

The ‘Blood Moon’ Eclipse and Other Cosmic Portents of a ‘Red Wave’
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

A Cliché of a Stereotype: Kathy Griffin and the Pathetic Fate of Liberal Cat Ladies
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

The Other Podcast: Special Election Night ‘Let’s Vote to Kill Democracy’ Episode
Okrahead
EBL

MIDTERM ELECTION RESULTS HQ: ‘Not a Red Wave, That’s For Darn Sure’ 
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.08.22
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 11.10.22
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

‘Progressive Rock Star’ Katie Porter Spends $24 Million for Reelection
The DaleyGator
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Top linkers for the week ending November 11:

  1.  EBL (14)
  2.  357 Magnum (9)
  3.  A View From The Beach (8)
  4.  Proof Positive (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: FMJRA Award

‘… After Receiving a Call About a Suspicious Man in the Area …’

Posted on | November 12, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘… After Receiving a Call About a Suspicious Man in the Area …’

Antonio Michael Rushford

Gosh, I don’t why anyone thought he looked “suspicious”:

A Belding [Michigan] man was arrested for possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver after leading police on a brief car chase.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 10, a pickup truck was spotted running a stop sign on Deaner and Wyman Road in Home Township.
When a deputy with the Montcalm County Sheriff’s Office attempted to the pull the truck over, it drove off.
The driver, Antonio Michael Rushford, of Belding, was with a woman passenger who texted dispatch and claimed that Rushford was not allowing her to leave the truck.
The deputy lost sight of the vehicle, but the passenger informed dispatch that Rushford crashed the truck and took off on foot.
Officials said they found methamphetamine in the truck after searching the scene where it was abandoned.
Deputies were able to locate Rushford when daylight broke after receiving a call about a suspicious man in the area of the crashed truck.
Further investigation determined that the passenger was friends with Rushford and willingly rode in the truck before he drove off from the traffic stop, officials said. She was treated minor injuries and later released.
Rushford was arrested and taken to jail by the Montcalm County Sheriff’s Office.
He has been charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine and fleeing and eluding police.

As a journalist, I’ve long been fascinated by the vast distance between (a) the way crime is portrayed in popular entertainment and (b) the reality of criminality. In movies and TV dramas, the criminal is always cunning — sometimes even a brilliant “mastermind” — and his crimes are a mystery which can only be solved by the most careful detectives.

This Criminal Super-Genius motif is very useful as a fictional plot device, but in the real world, most criminals are stupid, and their crimes aren’t usually mysterious. Imagine a show called CSI: Montcalm County, and this episode’s called “The Missing Meth-Head Mystery”:

(SCENE: Interior, Sheriff’s Office.)

SHERIFF: The suspect wrecked a truck full of meth and disappeared. I’ll put my best detectives on the case and . . .

(PHONE RINGS)

SHERIFF: Sheriff’s office.
DISPATCHER: We just got a call about a suspicious man not far from where that car wrecked.
SHERIFF: What do you mean, suspicious?
DISPATCHER: His face is completely covered with tattoos.
SHERIFF: Thanks. (Hangs up phone.) The mystery is solved!

See what I mean? This episode wouldn’t last 10 minutes.

Look, I don’t want to be accused of aiding and abetting criminals, but if you’re driving around with felony quantities of dangerous drugs, maybe it’s not a smart idea to be running stop signs. Just sayin’ . . .




 

Category: Crime, Michigan

Crazy People Are Dangerous: ‘Transgender Influencer’ Arrested After Getting Naked, Causing Disturbance at Miami Hotel

Posted on | November 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: ‘Transgender Influencer’ Arrested After Getting Naked, Causing Disturbance at Miami Hotel

Nicholas Nguyen, a/k/a “Nikita Dragun,” was arrested Monday and charged with felony battery on a police officer after causing a disturbance at a Miami hotel. According to reports, Nguyen/“Dragun” was naked in the pool area and had been engaging in disorderly conduct before police were called. When they arrived, police went to the room where Nguyen/“Dragun” was staying, and were spat on by the defendant. This was first reported by TMZ with the usual let’s-play-along-with-the-delusions female pronouns, and Time magazine is upset because Nguyen/“Dragun” was “misgendered” in the arrest affidavit.

Permit me to suggest that if you get naked at the hotel pool and thereby display your penis to the general public, the police who arrest you can be expected to presume you are male. Because, in fact, you are male.

Chances are that you have never heard of this person before, but we are living in an age when it is possible to become a “celebrity” even though the vast majority of people have no idea who you are. And so that you may be fully informed, here’s the boilerplate paragraph from Time:

The 26-year-old content creator, who is transgender, became popular in the beauty YouTube space in 2015. Since then, her candor about her transition and popular makeup videos have helped her to amass a following of more than 29 million combined followers on social platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Last year, Dragun revealed her struggles with her mental health to her followers on social media. The beauty influencer uploaded a post to Instagram in which she said that she was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility for eight days following a manic episode on Thanksgiving Day. She then uploaded a YouTube video—which has since been deleted—in May, where she revealed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Oh, “her candor about her transition” attracted “a mass following” and Nguyen/“Dragun” is now a “beauty influencer” with 29 million followers.

The fact that this person is a dangerous psychotic? Like the man said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, and you’ve got to admit that weirdness is everywhere nowadays.

Nicholas Nguyen is a “woman” and Joe Biden is “president,” and it’s a hate crime to express skepticism about either of these assertions.

See? The before-and-after passport photos, helpfully posted to Instagram by the “transgender influencer,” demonstrate that the federal government is now playing along with these delusions. If you believe you’re a woman, you are a woman, as far as the U.S. State Department is concerned, and they’ll issue you a passport that declares this to be the case.

But a delusion is still a delusion, even if government agencies are willing to pretend otherwise, and then one day the cops show up because you’ve been parading around naked at the hotel pool — the unmistakable reality flopping around for all to see — and you end up in handcuffs at the county jail, pleading with a judge not to put you in a cell with other men.

Just so you know, Miami-Dade Corrections officials say that Nguyen/“Dragun” was never actually housed at the county jail:

“Inmate Dragun never made it beyond the booking process prior to release; therefore, she was never placed in a men’s unit,” corrections spokesperson Juan Diasgranados said in a statement. “All inmates undergoing our intake process remain in an open seating (open booking) area, in the presence of correctional staff.”
Diasgranados added Dragun was placed in a holding cell by herself due to her “high-profile status” before being released, and that she was escorted by an LGBTQ officer throughout her time at the facility.
“Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department (MDCR) is committed to protecting the rights of the transgender community and of all LGBTQ people,” the statement read. “MDCR has procedures in place for the appropriate intake, housing, and medical needs of transgender inmates, and we are committed to ensuring that all inmates in our custody, including transgender persons, are treated appropriately throughout our intake, classification and placement process.”

So they’re “treated appropriately” — although I suppose there are different opinions about what the appropriate treatment might be.

Speaking of treatment, TMZ reports Nguyen/“Dragun” is now “receiving professional mental health care in a facility”:

Nikita’s rep, Jack Ketsoyan, tells TMZ … “We want to thank everyone for the overwhelming love and support for Nikita during this time. She is in a safe environment addressing her mental health. We ask for continued respect for her privacy and the sensitivity of this matter as she seeks treatment and healing.”
We’re told Nikita began seeking treatment Wednesday evening.
The transgender influencer has been open about her mental health struggles — in May she shared on her YouTube channel that she had been diagnosed as bipolar.
Nikita said she has a family history of bipolar disorder, though she was initially surprised by her diagnosis, because she didn’t quite understand what it meant to be bipolar. As a result, she says she didn’t relate her own symptoms to the disorder.

And by being “in a safe environment,” of course they mean, strapped in a straitjacket, locked in a padded room and injected with Thorazine.

Can’t wait for Nikita’s next TikTok video, doing the Haldol shuffle.

Y’know, it just now dawned on me that I missed the opportunity to do a really clever “Florida Man” headline on this story. Too bad.

Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Celebrities, Crime, Florida, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | November 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Happy Veterans’ Day to all my brothers & sisters in arms. Mind you don’t get sick from all the free/cheap goodies.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Shouko Komi wishes you a happy Friday.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Veterans Day
Twitchy: Chris Cillizza Knows Who’s To Blame If The GOP Doesn’t Take The Senate, also, Hillary Posts A Shameless Veterans’ Day Pic
Louder With Crowder: More conservatives get turned off after Donald Trump’s latest anti-DeSantis rant, also, Kathy Hochul flies to Puerto Rico, satisfies her fetish of being maskless around masked children
Vox Popoli: Twitter Flirts with Bankruptcy, Elon Lied, and The Oathkeepers Glowed
According To Hoyt: We’re Not Going Back, Cancer, and Oh, PLEASE!
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E18: What’s In A Name? (The Importance of Character Names)
Stoic Observations:  Letterkenny
Gab News: The Path Forward – Build & Balkanize

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The States Choose Death, Old Notre Dame Man Yells At Hallucination, and Old Mar-A-Lago Man Yells At Cloud
American Greatness: Texas Judge Blocks Biden’s Student Loan Debt Plan, also, McCarthy May Not Have The Votes To Become Speaker
American Power: With House Majority in Play, a New Class Takes Shape, Red States Are Growing, While Blue States Are Mired in Decline, and Trumpism Is Toxic
American Thinker: Why Do You Still Hate Donald Trump?, Why Democrats Accuse Us of What They Do, and Three Primary Factors Stopped That Red Wave
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Shoplifting Friday
Babalu Blog: Mother of Cuban toddler murdered in Bahia Honda Massacre taken into custody by State Security, Forget all the Republican political “experts” and all their blatherings, scribblings and hocus-pocus–It’s as PLAIN AS DAY!–and very simple: all America needs for its salvation: is MORE CUBANS!, and Most repulsive postage stamp of the year
BattleSwarm: Breaking News: Russian Retreat Complete, Kherson City Liberated
Behind The Black: SLS rides out hurricane; engineers now assessing damage, Advanced Space wins lunar orbiter contract with Air Force, Divers for documentary discover large piece of Challenger, and Pushback: VMI alumnus cancels $1 million bequest because of the school’s support of critical race theory and its slandering of those who disagree
Cafe Hayek: On Moving Beyond Covid
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: At the Tomb of Couperin – Thoughts on a Centenary
Da Tech Guy: Elections, Perspective and the Triumph of Count Rugen
Don Surber: Woke is just another word for plagiarism, also, MAGA is bigger than one man
First Street Journal: Another Federal Judge Says Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Illegal, also, We’re Saved: Actor Changes Name To Spread Awareness Of Climate Apocalypse Or Something
Gates Of Vienna: It’s Hard Being Green, Trolling for the Teeny-Bopper Vote, and Special Class
The Geller Report: Montana Votes to Deny Medical Care for Born-Alive Infants And Let Them Die, also, Biden’s Student Loan Handout Struck Down By Federal Judge
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, JWST Looks at a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy, and I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
Hollywood In Toto: Chandler Juliet Wages Hysterical War on All Things Woke, also, Sam & Kate Flashes Upside of Star Power, Nepotism
The Lid: Biden’s New Methane Rules Will Affect Human Lifestyles
Legal Insurrection: Two More Eastern Oregon Counties Vote to Join ‘Greater Idaho’, Legacy Media and Lincoln Project Now Bashing DeSantis, Promoting Trump, Biden Border Official Chris Magnus Told to Resign or be Fired But Won’t Do It, Cornell University “Apologizes” To Ann Coulter, and E-Bikes Catching Fires Four Times a Week in NYC
Nebraska Energy Observer: Veteran’s Day
Outkick: Deion Sanders Makes It Clear That He Is Not Talking To Nebraska About Head Coaching Job, NFL To Honor John Madden’s Legacy With Special New Tradition On Thanksgiving Day, Houston Astros Fire General Manager Week After Winning The World Series, Paige Spiranac Rushes To Olivia Dunne’s Defense, and Al Michaels Trolls Benched Baker Mayfield For Being An Idiot
Power Line: What’s the matter with Arizona?, Thoughts from the ammo line, and Unquiet flows the Don
Protein Wisdom Reborn: “Now Who’s Being Naïve, Kate?”
Shark Tank: Florida Encourages Veterans To Become CRNAs
Shot In The Dark: Dubious Identity, Veterans’ Day, Berg’s Law – On Final Approach, and The Future Is In The Best Of Hands
The Political Hat: When Even Academia Honored The Brave
This Ain’t Hell:  Veteran’s Day, The Wall at 40, Valor Friday, and School board elections became a ‘red undercurrent’
Transterrestrial Musings: Covid Amnesty, Elon Is Right, and Life-Support Milestone
Victory Girls: Trump And Certain Democrats Are Sore Losers, also, Paladin’s AMERICAN GOMORRAH ™ — “PYRRHIC POTATO VICTORY” Edition
Volokh Conspiracy: Biden Administration to Require Federal Contractors to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Watts Up With That: Polar bear habitat update, USA Facing a Dangerous Shortage of Heating Fuel, and THE CURSE OF COP27
Weasel Zippers: Biological Male Wins Miss America Pageant In New Hampshire, White House Refuses To Say Why Biden Has A “List” Of Reporters, and Jemele Hill: MSNBC Racist For Firing [Racist] Black Host
The Federalist: Midterm Voters Rewarded Elected Officials Who Stood Up To Covid Tyrants, Democracy Dies When Americans Stop Scrutinizing Partisan Election Administration, Rubio Suggests Senate Republicans Should Consider Ousting McConnell From Leadership, Delayed Results Are Killing Americans’ Trust In Elections, and Democrats Who Were Counting On Demographics Being Destiny Had It All Wrong
Mark Steyn: Minor League, Live Around the Planet: Friday November 11th, and Out for the Count

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | November 11, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.11.22 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Normal Friday post will follow sometime between 7-9 PM Pacific.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: What Should A Woman Do If A Man Climbs In Her Window?
EBL: Happy Birthday USMC Rule 5
Twitchy: Stephen King Dragged For Saying He Liked It Better When The Little People Had No Voice On Twitter, also, Desperate Rick Wilson Thinks He Can Crawl Aboard The DeSantis Train
Louder With Crowder: Kevin Costner reveals the true reason he endorsed Liz Cheney, also, MSNBC: Hey, you know who would make a good president?
Vox Popoli: Mailvox: On Suicide, 1918 Finally Ended, and The Good Immigrants

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #156 – Interview with Tony Lowe, also, The Importance of Regular Spiritual Nourishment
American Conservative: The Most Dangerous Post-Election Lie
American Greatness: Why Are We Not Being Told the Truth About Ukraine?, also, Progressives Launch ‘Don’t Run Joe’ Anti-Biden Campaign
American Power: Ron DeSantis: The New Champion of Trumpism
American Thinker: What on Earth Happened with Brazil’s Election?, also, DeSantis in 2024
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s 2022 Election Postmortem
Babalu Blog: Cuban dictatorship forcing survivors of Bahia Honda Massacre to give false statements on video, ‘Inspectors monitor the sale of tomatoes in Cuba as if they were lobster tails’, and Some blockade! Cuba bought over $31 million of chicken from U.S. in September
BattleSwarm: Russia Starts Bugging Out
Behind The Black: Atlas-5 completes last launch at Vandenberg, Rocket Lab sets date for 1st launch from Wallops, November 10, 2022 Quick space links, and Today’s blacklisted American: Student mob shuts down Ann Coulter speech at Cornell
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Why This Week’s Results Are a Shock in Two Stories, also, We have officially become the Peoples Republic of Marxachusetts
Don Surber: After the election, the truth emerges, also, Thank you, Donald Trump
First Street Journal: Is Trump Done After The Red Sprinkle Election?, also, Brandon’s Pushing “Nature Based Solutions” For Hotcoldwetdry Or Something
Gates Of Vienna: The Great American Divide Isn’t What You Think, Finally, Term Limits, We Wants the Digital Euro, Precious, and Fettermania
The Geller Report: ELECTION FRAUD: Nevada Finds 60K Ballots in Drop Boxes, Delays Will Stretch into Next Week, Arizona Announces Election Results Delayed AGAIN ….. Until Next Week, Maricopa Officials Say, and 27 Illinois Counties Have Voted to Split the State
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, also, Seeing Different Times Simultaneously Through Gravitational Lensing
Hollywood In Toto: Airplane! Director: ‘They’re Destroying Comedy’, also, How Hello, Bookstore Threatens Its Bipartisan Charm
The Lid: Biden Scoffs At Hunter Laptop Investigation While Encouraging One Into Elon Musk
Legal Insurrection: Democrats Backing Trump-Endorsed GOP Candidates in Primaries Worked, Ukraine: Russia Withdraws Troops From Key Southern City, U. Pittsburgh Student Newspaper Whines – Elon Musk Makes Twitter an ‘Unsafe’ Environment, and No, Spanish Language ‘Disinformation’ Didn’t Cause Hispanics to Support DeSantis, GOP
Nebraska Energy Observer: There is no end
Outkick: Lakers’ Hopes Come Crashing Down As LeBron James Suffers ‘Significant’ Injury, Jemele Hill’s New Book Ranks #2,961 On Sales Chart, Buffalo’s 30-Year-Old, Former Navy SEAL Defensive End Damian Jackson Is A Full-Grown Man With An Amazing Story, Olivia Dunne Hits Back At The NYT With Outstanding Photo, Aaron Rodgers’ Teammates Reportedly Growing Tired Of His Behavior, and ESPN Stupidly Let Erin Andrews Leave And Now We Know Why
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The Political Hat: Post-Election Ballot-Counting Musical Interlude
This Ain’t Hell: Noon Wednesday: Republicans tank, Happy Birthday Marines!, and Post-election soul searching? The Elephant in the room
Transterrestrial Musings: SLS and Nicole, also, Inside The Climate Model Black Box
Victory Girls: Are We Really Ready To Quit Donald Trump?
Volokh Conspiracy: What’s Next For FedSoc?, also, The Secret Breast Connections of the Internet, Here of Mastodon
Watts Up With That: The Warming that Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas
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The Federalist: The Big Midterm Lesson: Defensive ‘Victories’ On The Right Aren’t Going To Save The Country, Why New York’s GOP Midterm Loss Is More Of A Win Than You Think, The Case Against Mitch McConnell For Leader, Arizona’s Election Administration Is An International Embarrassment, and EXCLUSIVE: McCarthy Demands House Managers Open Up The Capitol
Mark Steyn: Asymmetric Warfare, They’re Lying to You, Warm Front, and The Red Rain Drop

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Category: Linkagery

‘Progressive Rock Star’ Katie Porter Spends $24 Million for Reelection

Posted on | November 11, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Progressive Rock Star’ Katie Porter Spends $24 Million for Reelection

California Rep. Katie Porter and her mentor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Apologies for the lack of blogging Thursday, but because today is Veterans Day, my day job required me to do two days of work in advance, blah blah blah. Anyway, I happened to click on a Hot Air item by John Sexton, toward the end of which, this part caught my attention:

Finally, another race I’ve been watching is the one to decide who will be my representative in California’s 47th district. At the moment, progressive rock star Katie Porter leads GOP challenger Scott Baugh by a slim margin of 1,552 votes with 58% of the total vote counted. That’s a pretty impressive showing for Baugh so far who was massively outspent in this race. Porter ran ads nonstop for weeks spending over $21 million dollars to save herself.

For a “rock star,” she’s kinda fat, isn’t she?

Southern California used to be all about “the beautiful people,” and I can’t help but think that the election of this pudgy dumpling to Congress was somehow symbolic of how the Golden State has fallen into ruins in the 21st century. Porter’s district includes some of the most beautiful (and expensive) beach towns in Orange County, and it was once a Republican stronghold. The congressional districts have been redrawn three times since GOP Rep. Christopher Cox represented the 47th in 1990s. Katie Porter was first elected in 2018 to represent the 45th District, another former Republican stronghold that once sent the likes of Duncan Hunter and Dana Rohrabacher to Congress. After the most recent redistricting, Porter sought reelection in the 47th District.

Although I was vaguely familiar with Porter — I recognized her name — I didn’t know much about her, so I clicked onto her Wikipedia page:

Porter . . . grew up in the small farming community of Fort Dodge, Iowa. . . .
After graduating from Phillips Academy . . .

(Whoa! Stop right there! Phillips Andover is one of the most elite private schools in America, where the cost of attendance is currently $61,950 a year. How does a kid from small-town Iowa end up in this posh East Coast boarding school? But never mind . . .)

Porter attended Yale University, where she majored in American studies, graduating in 1996. . . . Porter also interned for Chuck Grassley during this time.
Porter later attended Harvard Law School . . . She studied under bankruptcy law professor and future U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, and graduated magna cum laude with her Juris Doctor in 2001. . . .

(Again with the expensive elite East Coast schools, you see.)

Porter was a law clerk for Judge Richard S. Arnold of the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in Little Rock, Arkansas. She practiced with the law firm of Stoel Rives LLP in Portland, Oregon . . .
Porter was Associate Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Law. In 2005, she joined the faculty of the University of Iowa College of Law as an associate professor, becoming a full professor there in 2011. Also in 2011, she became a tenured professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. . . .
In March 2012, California Attorney General Kamala Harris appointed Porter to be the state’s independent monitor of banks in a nationwide $25 billion mortgage settlement.

This is why people spend big money to send their kids to elite schools, to put them on the fast track to wealth and power. I don’t know if you kept track there, but Porter was already a law professor at UNLV prior to joining the faculty at Iowa at age 31, and six years later she got tenure at UC-Irvine. Become a tenured law professor before age 40? Man, you got it made in the shade. Porter is fiendishly clever. According to this article, she went to Phillips Andover as some sort of psychology research project about gifted kids after she got a perfect score on the SAT in seventh grade, but I don’t know if that’s actually true, because Porter is so fiendishly clever that I suspect some of her life story has been embellished, or at least dramatized, for the sake of presenting a useful narrative. For example, this article says, “The daughter of an Iowa farmer-turned-banker, Porter grew up during the farm crisis, watching ‘the entire economy around me go to hell.’” Wait a minute here — “farmer-turned-banker”? How common is that career track?

Then I check that against the other story, which says that, in attending Yale, “Porter broke away from a family tradition of going to Iowa State University.” Oh, so there was a “family tradition” of university education? How many generations of college-educated Porters were there before Katie broke the “family tradition” by choosing Yale over Iowa State? Because I’m guessing that her “farmer-turned-banker” father wasn’t just some random rural clodhopper, y’know? Anyway . . .

As an expert in bankruptcy law and a “consumer advocate,” Porter made a point of not accepting PAC money in her 2018 campaign, but I’m looking at her reelection campaign and she’s spent $24 million.

Man, I remember when even $1 million was considered a lot of money for a congressional campaign, but now Democrats — you know, The Party of the Working Man™ — are rolling in so much big money that Porter’s Republican opponent raised $2.7 million and was outspent 9-to-1 by the incumbent Democrat. That’s not counting whatever “dark money” outside groups may have spent to defend Porter’s California seat. And this pattern of Democrats vastly outspending their GOP opponents has been repeated in many races across the country. It has been said, for example, that the race in Michigan’s 7th District is the most expensive congressional campaign in American history. The Democratic incumbent, Elissa Slotkin, raised more than $9 million while her Republican challenger raised about $2.5 million, but that’s just a fraction of the total spending in MI-7. In the second week of October, more than $27 million had been spent on the race, more than half of which was from outside groups. The most recent count shows outside groups spent about $12 million on each side in MI-7, including spending by the party national campaign committees, so that the final tally is going to be more than $35 million for this one House seat. Meanwhile, in the eight most competitive Senate races (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire), a combined total of $858 million was spent by outside groups, and in none of those states did the Democrats get outspent by the Republicans.

Well, guess what? Money matters: “Of the House races called so far, 96% were won by the biggest spender, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.”

Every conservative blogger and pundit is pointing fingers of blame for the failure of the GOP to produce a “Red Wave” this year. Some are blaming Trump and others are blaming the Republican establishment, but the reality is that the “Red Wave” was stopped by a Democratic “Green Wave” of campaign cash. And, by the way, I noticed something almost immediately after Joe Biden was “elected” (nudge, nudge), namely that the liberal media started talking about the 2022 midterm before Biden was even inaugurated. That is to say, having seen big losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterms, Democrats and their media friends knew very well what they’d be facing this year, and one of the things they did — it is now obvious in hindsight — was get an early start feverishly raising money for this year’s midterms, and organizing “dark money” operations to help support their effort to stem the anticipated midterm backlash.

It now appears that the progressive pudgeball’s $24 million has bought her another term in Congress, and while the Super Genius™ Pundits are busy with all their big-brain “What Does It Mean” post mortem analyses of the midterms, I didn’t ace the SATs in seventh grade, so my dumbass guess is that maybe we should start trying to figure where Democrats are getting all this money? Because it seems strange to me that a political party grimly determined to strangle capitalism and install a Weimar America regime would be so popular with big-money fat cats.

Is this some kind of kinky BDSM thing? Corporate CEOs kneeling before leather-clad Mistress Katie, begging her, “Demonize me in your rhetoric! Destroy my business with regulations! Tax me more, please!”

Meanwhile, please explain to me how somebody in Iowa with a “family tradition” of university education becomes a “farmer-turned-banker,” because that story seems too weird to be true . . .




 

Category: California, Congress, Election
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