Interesting Items 02/20

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

In this issue:

  1. Correction
  2. Flynn
  3. Coal
  4. DeVoss
  5. Trump
  6. Oroville
  7. Spying
  8. Puppy

  1. Correction. In last week’s Interesting Items I inadvertently referred to the confirmation of new Attorney General John Ashcroft rather than Jeff Sessions; off by a mere 16 years.  Sometimes the fingers type what the brain tells them to and the brain looks as the handiwork and sees what it wants to see rather than what is there.  Many thanks to sharp-eyed readers for pointing out the error.  I updated the web site.  Apologies for the confusion.
  1. Flynn. O’Bama’s Deep State claimed its first scalp last week securing the forced resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  Flynn made up to five phone calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in December around the time O’Bama levied sanctions on Russia for meddling in the US election last year.  Sanctions were mentioned.  President Elect Trump knew about the phone calls and the nature of the conversation pretty quickly after they were made.  A couple of weeks ago, VP Pence was on his way to speak to the media when information on the phone calls started to leak to the media.  He asked Flynn about the details of the calls.  Apparently what Flynn told Pence was not precisely what was on the calls, allowing Pence to tell the media something that was less than the full truth.  The discrepancy led to President Trump requesting Flynns’ resignation, which was offered and accepted.  Make no mistake, this was a political hit by embedded O’Bama political appointees and supporters in the Intelligence community, with at least the CIA, FBI and NSA being involved.  Portions of the phone call(s), which were all recorded by the NSA were selectively leaked to the NYT.  Flynn was not afforded the opportunity to review transcripts of the phone calls before being fired.  After an initial round of braying by the usual suspects, it became clear to one and all that this was a political hit by the intelligence agencies.  One interesting question would be why.  Was this simply another round in the fully body contact sport that is Washington politics, or is there something deeper involved?  One bit of speculation would be Flynn’s adamant opposition to the Iran deal.  Another would be O’Bama advisor and Iran deal architect Ben Rhodes role in putting together the deep state opposition.  Is there something in that deal and its myriad side deals that they don’t want to see the light of day?  Likely, though it would have to be awful to surprise me.  What does Trump need to do?  A thorough and systematic house cleaning of every single O’Bama loyalist remaining in the agencies would be a good start.  Prosecution and hard jail time for the nine high level O’Bama toadies who leaked classified materials (means and methods) to the NYT and other media in this affair.  As of this writing, it appears that the Ambassador was the one who brought up sanctions with Flynn being non-committal in response.  Note that O’Bama’s sanctions were levied by his favorite governing technique – the stroke of a pen.  They were neither brought before congress nor approved by congress, as such they can be lifted by the stroke of a pen just as easily.  Final thought, is that Flynn was an O’Bama general, elevated to his rank in no small part due to his left wing political acumen.  While head of the DIA, he did thoroughly point out the incompetence of the CIA in 2012 which was why they were lying in wait for him.  http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/15/virgil-deep-state-bumps-off-general-flynn-whos-next-target/
  1. Coal. The first piece of legislation across President Trump’s desk last week was a repeal of an O’Bama rule finalized in December by the Office of Surface Mining called the Stream Protection Rule.  It was a draconian rule that would all but shut down coal mining in the US.  Along with it, he also signed legislation that repealed financial disclosure requirements for energy companies, a requirement to give the democrat trial lawyers all the information they would ever need to bury energy companies under an endless series of lawfare lawsuits.  This is what draining the swamp is all about and it is a start.  http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/319938-trump-signs-bill-undoing-obama-coal-mining-rule
  1. DeVoss. What is it about democrats standing in the schoolhouse doorway, making sure minorities don’t have the ability to get a solid education?  Last week, following her confirmation by the Senate, new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss visited a Washington DC public school.  A bunch of democrats and their professional protesters were waiting for her and barring her entrance to the front door.  Like their spiritual godfathers, George Corley Wallace (democrat), J. William Fulbright (democrat) and Orval Falbus (democrat) 60 years ago, these democrats and their rent a mob did want to allow anything better to happen in their government entity.  DeVoss was physically threatened and ended up with additional security because of the actions of these democrats (paid and otherwise).  Democrats standing in the front door of schoolhouses.  Some things never change, even three generations later.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/protesters-rally-at-dc-school-ahead-of-visit-by-education-secretary-betsy-devos/2017/02/10/faad4962-ef06-11e6-b4ff-ac2cf509efe5_story.html
  1. Trump. After a day of full-fledged media fueled feeding frenzy following General Flynn’s resignation, President Trump showed up at the daily press briefing at the WH Thursday.  He made a brief statement ripping the media, leaks of classified to the media, and fake news published in the media.  Then he took questions.  The whole event took 1+17 and was masterful.  It has been a very long time since a president went after these vermin in the manner that they so richly have asked for and deserved.  As always, Scott Adams has the best description of the festivities, and it is all about perception.  The Trumpists continue to laugh their back sides off at the festivities and the consternation and frustration of the media and their democrat masters.  The other side saw the entire affair as a validation of their worldview that Trump is criminally insane or worse and wrote stores demonstrating precisely that worldview.  Adams believes that we are seeing two different movies depending on our own personal levels of psychosis – for or against Trump.  And it really doesn’t matter which one if any is accurate as we have not evolved to depend on making that accurate distinction as a requirement for a successful life.  Great press conference.  It is a wonderful world when someone on Our Side picks up the axe and goes after the Other Side with vigor, gusto and humor.  We elected Trump as a warrior in the political wars and he is not disappointing.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/feb/17/donald-trumps-press-conference-in-full-video
Oroville dam showing both damaged spillways. Photo courtesy Toronto Star https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/02/14/government-disregarded-warnings-about-oroville-dam-in-california.html
  1. Oroville. As mentioned the last few weeks, Mother Nature is busily gifting California with precipitation withheld over the last decade.  The only problem is that it all seems to come at once in an arid state. But that is how arid regions work.  Last week saw continued failure of the main spillway of the Oroville Dam and use of the emergency spillway which was little more than a rearranged hillside below the dam.  Problem with dumping large quantities of water over a dirt hillside is that erosion takes place, moving much of the hillside down into the river below, which in turn leads to fears of erosion taking down that portion of the dam itself.  At that point, finger pointing began and will continue early and often for years.  Money that should have been spent on dam upkeep over the last decade was redirected elsewhere by the Rocket Scientists in Sacramento.  Local greens were involved, demanding that the emergency spillway be paved.  It wasn’t.  Work on the primary spillway which failed was put off after inspections found it to be structurally safe (it wasn’t).  Instead, they requested another $200 million which was not forthcoming.  Because of all this, nearly 200,000 were forced to evacuate last week.  They may get to do it again as the next rainstorm hits Cali.  So what is going on?  The democrats in charge of Cali are more interested in chasing unicorn farts associated with high speed rail, wind farms and big solar than in taking care of existing infrastructure.  Worse, that infrastructure was built to serve a population half what lives in Cali today, making it twice as stressed and twice as impactful to maintain.  Something is going to break, something expensive and it is going to kill a lot of people as Sacramento does not yet appear to demonstrate that they have a clue.  https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2017/02/how-did-the-oroville-dam-get-so-bad/516429/
  1. Spying. One recurring question out of the Flynn affair is why did the O’Bama intel community have recorded phone calls from Trump campaign workers and supporters.  That is a very good question.  The answer would be that O’Bama authorized the intelligence community to spy on the Trump campaign throughout the campaign, at least as early as summer if not before.  While the secret FISA court did not authorize requested surveillance of Trump himself it did approve surveillance of his campaign aides.  It is this surveillance of phone calls, e-mails, texts and other modes of communications that are being serially leaked to friendly media sources in an attempt to do the maximum damage to Trump after he took office.  The other brown floater that O’Bama tossed out was approval of all intelligence agencies to share and analyze shared data, meaning that anything collected by any single agency ended up with all agencies.  I expect this unprecedented sharing of data only applied to the Republican candidate as everyone else knew what Hilly was doing and didn’t care, at least officially.  In this the O’Bama WH chose sides and pointed the national security apparatus at the Trump campaign and its supporters.  http://madworldnews.com/trump-names-obama-spies/
  1. Puppy. Alaska Congressman Don Young sponsored a House Resolution to roll back O’Bama regulations on that hunting of predators on federal lands here in Alaska.  The left is happily referring it to the Puppy Killing Act of 2017 as they claim that it will allow Alaskans to kill wolf pups in their dens.  Not that it such a bad thing as their pelts make great shoe shine rags, though black bear cub pelts are better as there is simply more square footage per animal.  Interior’s regulation applied to only Alaska rather than the rest of the nation, where other states retain the ability to manage fish and game on all lands.  But here in Alaska, we are but simple serfs, dependent on the whims of our Betters in Washington DC and their supporters among the green NGOs.  Of course, none of the claimed horrors of the repeal take place in Alaska nor have been approved by the Board of Game.  But there is a problem with predators, as wolves will take down ungulates (moose and caribou) as a teaching exercise to their pups and eat only noses or bellies, wasting most of the animal which are usually young calves, so they quickly run out of lesson plans as the ungulates are unable to reproduce at a rate sufficient to support that sort of wanton destruction of the resource.  So, we Alaskans instead do something about the wolves and bear much to the consternation of the greens.  As of this writing, the legislation has passed the House and is on its way to the Senate for action. http://www.alaskapublic.org/2017/02/14/predator-reg-debate-veers-from-puppy-killing-to-bull-poop/

More later –

– AG

2 thoughts on “Interesting Items 02/20”

  1. Ugh, not again. Alex, almost everything said about George Wallace isn’t correct. What you’ve been taught is, mostly, a lie. That incident at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama was staged. If you want to mention a Democrat governor from Alabama that was racist/segregationist, George Wallace was not the one you want. You want his predecessor.

    I knew people who were there (they’re deceased now) and I’ve met the late Governor. I knew people in the ‘movement’ who knew and worked with Governor Wallace, behind the scenes (for political reasons) to do what Governor Wallace wanted, which was to get rid of Jim Crow, not on ‘foreign’ terms; but on Alabama’s terms, which he did, in part, by staging that incident. Little known these days is that the University of Alabama had been re-segregated. The two students involved that day both were quietly registered and attended classes, under police protection. Sure, they dropped out, yet not only were they re-enrolled, hundreds then thousands of other ‘non-whites’ enrolled. About 10 years after the stunt, over 1000 non-whites were enrolled and attended as undergraduates, including international students, which was about a twelfth of the overall undergraduate class. I am a graduate of said University, and when I graduated, some 2000 non-whites were enrolled, as undergraduates and graduate students.

    1. Howdy CDQ – many thanks for setting the record straight and for the continuing education.

      FWIW, the first vote I ever cast was for your Governor in the Texas presidential primary in 1968. As I remember it, everyone on both sides of the fence along with the media seemed to hate him which made him interesting to this fledgling, uneducated voter. Don’t regret that vote, though he was the last democrat I ever voted for.

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