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Reuters reports:

The hugely influential Cult of the Dead Cow, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, is notorious for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft’s Windows. It’s also known for inventing the word "hacktivism” to describe human-rights-driven security work.

END

In writings that Reuters says still exist online, O'Rourke reportedly fantasized about ‘toppling the government,’ but fretted that "the masses would support such a radical move at this time."

O’Rourke also reportedly wrote about murdering children by running them over with a car.

"One day, as I was driving home from work, I noticed two children crossing the street," O'Rourke wrote. "They were happy, happy to be free from their troubles...This happiness was mine by right. I had earned it in my dreams."

END OF MY EXCERPT OF CREEPY QUOTE

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 16, 2019 06:34 AM (tfC+s)

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Gun control may be coming to a legislature near you.

In the wake of the Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, shootings, elected officials on both sides of the political aisle are rallying around "red flag” legislation.

Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), informally known as red flag laws, are gaining traction in legislatures nationwide. Red flag laws are presented as a common-sense proposal to disarm people who allegedly present a danger to themselves or others around them.

Political leaders assure gun owners red flag laws won’t trample over civil liberties and are a middle ground solution that appease pro-gunners and gun controllers alike. But the devil is in the details when dealing with any form of government intervention.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 16, 2019 06:36 AM (tfC+s)

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Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 15, 2019 11:07 AM (rIYC+)

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 16, 2019 06:32 AM (tfC+s)

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Posted by: Dana Mathewson at March 15, 2019 11:18 AM (rIYC+)

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at March 16, 2019 06:31 AM (tfC+s)

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Ex-Israeli security chief slams Dems for tolerating Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism, claims they are using it to get at Trump

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Posted by: David Dickinson at March 14, 2019 07:10 PM (OvaQ5)

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At least nine people were killed at a Brazilian elementary school where two young men were seen entering the building and firing weapons early on Wednesday, according to Sao Paulo police.

Among the dead were five schoolchildren, one adult who worked at the building, one person who was standing just outside the school and the two adolescent shooters, police said.

At least 17 other people, mostly children, were also shot at the Raul Brasil elementary school and taken to hospitals, police said in a written statement. The state of their health was not immediately known.

School shootings are rare in Brazil, even though the country is one of the world’s most violent, with more annual homicides than any other. The last major school shooting was in 2011, when 12 children were shot dead by a former pupil in Rio de Janeiro.

While gun laws are extremely strict in Brazil, it is not difficult to illegally purchase a weapon.

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Just days ago, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) faced rebuke, albeit indirectly, from her own party in a resolution condemning anti-Semitism that had been developed as a response to her repeated anti-Semitic statements -- including the bizarre and paranoid assertion that "Israel has hypnotized the world.” Today, it is clear that if anyone has hypnotized the world, or at least the Democrats, it is Omar herself. She stands victorious as the new master of the Democratic Party.

Omar’s victory is total. The anti-Semitism resolution was turned into a condemnation of "Islamophobia” and "white supremacism,” she remains on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the entire Democratic leadership has made it clear that they don’t dare cross her.

To be sure, the resolution as it was passed contained a condemnation of anti-Semitism, and even of accusations of dual loyalty, in which Omar had indulged when she railed against "the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Nancy Pelosi, however, was quick to insist that the resolution wasn’t referring to Omar: "I thought the resolution should be largely issued to anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, etc., anti-white supremacist, and that it should not mention her name … because it’s not about her.”

All right. So the resolution condemns the practice of "accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel or to the Jewish community than to the United States,” and states that this "constitutes anti-Semitism because it suggests that Jewish citizens cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors.” The resolution was conceived only after Omar denounced "the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” But Pelosi says that the resolution doesn’t refer to Omar.

Indeed, it doesn’t. It was initially drawn up because of her, only her, but her supporters quickly demonstrated their power in the new, avowedly socialist, fanatically anti-Israel Democratic Party. Only then did the resolution get supplemented with references to the Dreyfus Affair (timely!) and to white supremacists demonstrating in Charlottesville (relevant!).

Pelosi later explained that Omar’s words "were not based on any anti-Semitic attitude,” the poor victim just "didn’t have a full appreciation of how they landed on other people where these words have a history and a cultural impact that might have been unknown to her.”

Pelosi sounds as if she has been hypnotized.

And not just her: No one in the Democratic Party leadership has raised the slightest murmur of protest over the fact that Omar remains on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and has essentially suffered no consequences whatsoever for her open expressions of anti-Semitism. The clear lesson of the events of this past week is that the sclerotic Democratic Party establishment lacks the will to tangle with Omar, who is an exponent of a skilled and ruthless propaganda machine that has long been in the Democrats’ corner, but has never -- until now -- turned its brute force against the Democrats themselves.

What Pelosi and her cohorts learned this week is that if they cross Ilhan Omar, they will be accused of "racism” and "Islamophobia” just as swiftly and reflexively as those smear labels are applied to Republicans who dare to speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. The Democrats’ long record of support for mass Muslim migration into the U.S. and resolutely opposing any realistic analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence counts for nothing if they get in the way.

This became clear when Omar’s staunch ally Linda Sarsour railed against Pelosi after the initial anti-Semitism resolution was announced. Pelosi, said Sarsour, was a "typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men. God forbid the men are upset -- no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.”

That’s the kind of rhetoric that Leftists have been using against conservatives for years. Pelosi must have been shocked beyond measure to find it used against her. And given the fact that for decades Leftists have demanded, and usually received, the capitulation of conservatives in the face of such rhetoric, Pelosi could do nothing else but capitulate herself.

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Meet Saikat Chakrabarti, the Rasputin of the 14th Congressional District and arguably the real brains behind the bright new shiny Democrat bauble of Congress now famously branded by the media as AOC, joining the exclusive club (JFK, LBJ, RFK, HRC) of politicians widely referred to by three initials.

In the space of just a few short months, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, with fewer than 16,000 votes in a primary election, went from the role of obscure bartender to perhaps the most famous and powerful freshman member of Congress ever. She instantly became a media darling who drives ratings and Internet clicks. Senior Democrats such as Sen. Ed Markey gush over her and edge in to get their picture taken with her as they appear to hang on her every word.

Ocasio-Cortez was given a plum seat on the House Financial Services Committee. Her placement on the exclusive House Banking Committee, as well as the appointments of other newbie progressives to top committees was part of a larger deal to re-secure the speakership for Nancy Pelosi ahead of the midterms. Pelosi agreed to 40 percent progressive representation on the five top House committees.

How could this have happened? Look behind the curtain. You’ll find her mysterious chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, a well-funded radical left wing activist who, with other veterans of the 2016 Sanders campaign, including "Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur (later purged over past allegedly sexist, racist, pro-rape statements), established a web of campaign organizations and LLC’s, including Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress. As many as 16 groups were housed in the same office space in Knoxville, TN, with no apparent legally-required "walls of separation.”

The larger plot was and remains to recruit attractive people to run for Congress. The longer-term strategy seems to be to gain control of the Democrat Party, Congress and ultimately the United States government itself. Their stated goal "was to run hundreds of Democratic candidates” who do "not take corporate money and serve the voters rather than the donors," as well as "capture a significant amount of Congress with strong progressives" and "overpower the corporate Democrats."

In the 2018 elections, 26 of the 79 candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats won their respective primary elections. Along with AOC, six other of these progressive minority candidates won in the general election: Raúl Grijalva, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal. The districts where they won were all solidly Democrat. This suggests why the far left wing newbies were not only given key committee assignments and but quickly found senior Democrats fawning over them. When Rep. Ilhan Omar was accused of anti-Semitic remarks, Democrats could not find the will to directly condemn her. Instead they passed a watered down meaningless resolution against hate. Pelosi and other establishment Democrats are understandably afraid of who will be targeted by the Justice Democrats in 2020 and they don’t want to antagonize them.

In her primary, Ocasio-Cortez received 57.13% of the vote (15,897) to Joe Crowley's 42.5% (11,761) to defeat the 10-term incumbent. Ocasio-Cortez won the general election with 78% of the vote (110,318) to Pappas's 14% (17,762). The Democrats all got the message.

With the win, Chakrabarti became AOC’s chief of staff. He and his left-wing associates, including her communications chief Corbin Trent, co-founder of Brand New Congress, and Sanders campaign veteran Zack Exley (an open borders advocate) had scripted and produced AOC’s campaign video and organized her entire grass roots campaign effort, including fund raising and social media. They turned her into a brand to take control of the House seat from Crowley. There is evidence that most all of Ocasio-Cortez’s communications are created by these men who appear to tell her what to say.

With Chakrabarti as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Ocasio-Cortez released the highly controversial far-left policy initiative known as the Green New Deal. It is designed to totally and fundamentally make over the American economy and the American political system. Casio-Cortez’s office, led by Chakrabarti, released an "FAQ” which it withdrew after criticism for its extremist positions, including appearing to demand the elimination of animal agriculture, replacing commercial aviation with "high-speed rail,” and providing "economic security for all who are . . . unwilling to work.”Chakrabarti was forced to admit the office’s authorship of the FAQ after Green New Deal supporters retweeted Rep. Ocasio-Cortez asserted quotes from the document about "unwilling to work” were fabricated.

The Green New Deal was drafted over a single December weekend by Ocasio-Cortez’s staffand representatives of like-minded progressive groups including the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots climate organization; the Justice Democrats and a freshly organized policy shop called the New Consensus. Chakrabarti was quoted as saying, "We spent the weekend learning how to put laws together. We looked up how to write resolutions.” It’s unclear whether AOC was even present.

A complaint was filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging that two political action committees founded by Chakrabarti funneled over $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies. The cash transfers from the PACs that he manages make a mockery of her pledges to increase transparency and reduce the influence of "dark money" in politics. His companies appear to have been set-up for the sole purpose of obscuring how the political donations were used.

The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions from federal PACs to candidates, according to the complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center. There was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning they could have been pocketed or used by the company to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.”

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Today Center of the American Experiment released a groundbreaking paper that addresses a relatively mild "green” proposal: legislation that would raise the renewable energy standard in Minnesota from 25% to 50%. Two of my staffers have been working on the paper for months, drawing on publicly available (but rarely consulted) sources to understand what would be necessary to achieve that 50% goal, what it would cost, how it would impact the state’s economy, and what effect it would have on global temperatures.

The paper is titled "Doubling Down on Failure: How a 50 Percent by 2030 Renewable Energy Standard Would Cost Minnesota $80.2 Billion.” With appendices, it runs to 75 pages. I am not aware of a similarly comprehensive analysis that has been done of any "green” proposal at either the state or the federal level. The paper is fully transparent: all assumptions, data and calculations are clearly set forth. The appendices are largely spread sheets. If anyone disagrees with the report’s conclusions, it should be easy to identify where and why those disagreements arise. You can read the paper here.

These are some of the headline conclusions, from the executive summary:

* Building and maintaining "green” wind and solar facilities, along with transmission lines and necessary natural gas complementary plants (to provide electricity when the wind isn’t blowing, i.e. 60% of the time), would cost $80.2 billion through 2050. For a state like Minnesota, that number is out of the question.

* Every household in Minnesota would pay an average of $1,200 per year, in 2016 dollars, through higher electricity rates and otherwise.

* Electricity prices would rise by 40.2%.

* Electricity-intensive industries like mining, agriculture, manufacturing and health care would be hurt the most. Once again, urban greenies are hammering rural, and physically productive, America. [That last is my commentary, not found in the executive summary.]

* Higher electricity prices are a dead loss that will reduce spending in other areas as household budgets are squeezed. Therefore, according to economist John Phelan, using the generally accepted IMPLAN software, achieving the 50% renewable goal would cost Minnesota 21,000 permanent jobs, and reduce the state’s GDP by $3.1 billion annually. It is one small step on the road to Venezuela.

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A very short comment. If I were Kim Jong Un and watched the despicable congressional Democrats perform on split screen TV, why under any circumstance would I offer anything to a President so demonized by those from his own country? When, if ever, will the so-called moderate Democrats, Independents and a huge number of registered Republicans wake up to the fact that the greatest threat to our once great country are the Socialists, Progressives, Globalists, Communists and the Islamists that today, collectively, control the Democrat Party? All of these isms have a common goal of total and absolute control while using hatred and diversity as the tools to defeat individual freedom and the American spirit that has made America the envy of the world. In short, not only is the MSM the enemy but the entire Democrat Party structure and philosophy is even a greater enemy and we are failing to deal with these situations by continuing to pretend that "this is just politics.”

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