Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Chicago
- InfoWars
- Heng
- DACA
- Signs
- Abortion
- Chicago. The latest example of liberals as locusts comes from Chicago, home of the Dailey Machine, Saul Alinsky, Barack Hussein O’Bama, Valerie Jarrett, Jessee Jackson, and current mayor Rahm Emanuel. Gang violence has been rampant for years in certain parts of the city. A few weekends ago, 63 people were shot over the course of a weekend, with ten of them dead. While not an outrageously large number in Chicago terms, this number of shootings is certainly large in comparison with most other American cities. So, what is going on in Chicago? The answer seems to be that democrats who have been running Chicago since 1931 have turned to street gangs rather than unions for muscle and enforcement in recent years. The democrats in charge steer money to the gangs and keep the police off their backs. In return, the gangs turn out the vote and punish those who would step out of line. Of course, the gangs continue to do what gangs normally do in their spare time. The violence is particularly bad in the 6th, 10th and 11th Districts, all black, all poor, and all 110% (including dead voters) democrat. Gang leaders make demands of city leaders for their part in the operation and get money in the form of city subcontractors, jobs for youth, and second chances. Everyone wins except the citizenry who continues to turn out and vote for democrats in Chicago. Following last week’s awful weekend, Emanuel and the Chief of Police were in front of the media talking about “values” or something. President Trump offered to send in the National Guard early in his first year. This suggestion was ridiculed and blasted as racist by all the Usual Suspects among local community organizers, union thugs, gang bangers, democrats and their sympathizers. This rampant corruption includes not only elected Aldermen, but extends to the Mayor, legislators, and elected judges. All actively go to the gangs asking for support. The machine’s problem is that the voters may be in the process of waking up. Their other problem is that Trump is a solution kind of guy rather than an get reelected kind of guy. And somewhere along the line, he and perhaps SECDEF Mattis will attempt a solution. http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/
- InfoWars. Big Tech in concert with democrat cheerleading from Washington DC, the national media and their boardrooms executed their first coordinated takedown of what they quaintly refer to as voices of hate. Note that in today’s world, hate is anything that disagrees with liberals. The initial target was Alex Jones’ InfoWars. The initial excuse was hate speech and violation of various standards, codes of conduct, and community guidelines, all of which are indeterminate. Apple started the festivities by taking down InfoWars downloads and podcasts from iTunes. This was closely followed by FakeBook, YouTube and Goolag. Entire takedown was complete within 12 hours. While I am not a fan of InfoWars, I am smart enough to know that once you get in the business of censorship for whatever reason, it becomes easier every single time you do it. I have also watched with no small amount of bemusement at the number of high level former O’Bama and Hillary people and campaign officials who have been hired into positions of authority at Apple, FakeBook, Goolag, Twitter, YouTube, etc. and have ended up on the various Boards of Directors. InfoWars was an easy target because of their play on the conspiracy theory end of the political spectrum. Blowback did not come from DC Republicans. Rather it came from online, talk shows, and FNC. As this is a practice run, expect more of this as we approach the 2018 and the 2020 elections. We will see more of this, and in response, I would also expect significant market-related payback. For example, FakeBook lost over $100 billion of market capitalization in a single day a couple weeks ago. This will not the last one of these stock price crashes we will see. Anthony Watts at WUWT believes the democrats at Big Tech will target the climate skeptic community as their next play. Richard Fernandez “Wretched” writing in The Belmont Club believes this sort of corporate censorship will backfire badly on Big Tech, as they are shutting off voices of opposition. But shutting people up does not make them go away. Rather it locks the aggressors (in this case, the liberals who confuse silence with assent) into what is essentially a self-reinforcing worldview that is exponentially diverging from what is really going on outside their self-enforced echo chamber. You need all voices in the public square. The free market requires it. When you silence one side rather than deal with them that stops absolutely nothing. Rather, it accelerates whatever is going on, and guarantees the correction (crash) will be even more abrupt, disruptive and painful than it would otherwise have been. Conservatives will take their business elsewhere. There are other platforms out there. The demise of Big Tech will be a free market-based correction. It is inevitable. https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/a-hole-in-the-water/
- Heng. Elizabeth Heng is a Republican candidate for Congress in the California 16th District, around Fresno. That district went strongly for Hillary in 2016 and has been represented by Jim Costa for 14 years, a reliable democrat congressional seat. California has what is called a jungle primary, where the top two candidates in the primary regardless of party go on to the general election unless one of them gets 50%+1 of the vote. This typically ensures that no conservative or Republican makes it to the general election. Heng came out of nowhere, pointing out that Fresno is one of the poorest congressional districts in the entire state, asking what Costa has done to make things better. She came within a few thousand votes of actually winning the primary. She is also the daughter of Cambodian immigrants. She posted a FakeBook introduction campaign video describing her parents’ escape from Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. She has an impressive resume. FakeBook, listening to democrat complaints, took her video down for violating their community standards telling her via the online takedown notice that “Your ad wasn’t approved because it doesn’t follow our Advertising Policies. We don’t allow ads that contain shocking, disrespectful, or sensational content, including ads that depict violence or threats of violence.” Heng included stock photos of the Cambodian genocide in her ad. Democrats on FakeBook used that as the excuse to take her video down. In a lot of ways, Heng is the anti-Ocasio-Cortez, though in her case she has actually accomplished something other than sitting for a makeover and getting new makeup. November may be very interesting in central California. I wonder how many more of these are out there in what are currently thought to be safe democrat congressional seats? https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/heng-gets-facebook-blocked/
- DACA. President Trump’s attempt to eliminate O’Bama’s unconstitutional DACA program has been fought tooth and nail by federal judges who believe they know better. There were two opinions, one out of SF and one out of Brooklyn that attempt to remove policy decisions from the executive and place them in the federal judiciary because the executive is Donald Trump. Last week saw a third, perhaps even more outrageous opinion out of a Bush 43 2001 appointee who gave the Trump administration 20 days to reinstate DACA fully. Rationale? The DACA rescission was arbitrary and capricious. He went further to state that “… the Court simply holds that if DHS wishes to rescind the program – or to take any other action, for that matter – it must give a rational explanation for its decision.” To this judge, an explanation is only rational if the presiding judge agrees with it. But DACA has always been an end run. It started out as an end run around congress. Now it is used by members of the resistance populating the federal bench to end run the rest of the constitution. Expect this to be appealed and overturned, though I would love President Trump to do his best Andrew Jackson “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” impression. It is long past time. https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/08/this-will-not-stand-judge-orders-daca-fully-reinstated/
- Signs. One of the primary modes of political campaigns up here in Alaska are signs on the side of the road. They are in the 3’ x 4’ range and generally represent a way to end run campaign spending on media ads. Alaska passed a ballot initiative sponsored by the Alaska Center for the Environment that permanently banned billboards in 1998. The measure got over 70% of the vote. While there was an exception made for real estate signs, there was no exemption made for political campaign signs, likely because they were all temporary. Since the passage of the initiative, political campaigns and the State of Alaska managed to live well with each other, with political signs treated as temporary features and immediate enforcement ignored. The Walker campaign in 2014 ignored the law. The Walker administration ignored the law again in 2016. Not so this year, with Walker getting his backside kicked by a democrat candidate and a pair of Republicans. All the sudden, the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) started enforcing the law in a new and creative way, with first a warning and then seizing the offending sign. The Walker campaign removed all their political signs from the roadways a couple weeks before enforcement was announced. They also purchased banner ads on city busses in Anchorage. Walker’s campaign teenager claims the enforcement decision was not political, a remarkably hilarious claim, as the decision to enforce is nothing but political. The Walker administration was put together by former Knowles Attorney General Bruce Botelho, who presided over weaponization of the state bureaucracy by the democrats and union members infesting it. Interesting thing about weaponization of a state bureaucracy or any government bureaucracy, is that you bloody well better pray that the other party never, ever takes control of that bureaucracy, for after the ritual housecleaning of political appointees, there will be a general swamp draining while the new administration uses all your newly minted creative precedents against you. And the union members who are now gleefully removing political signs that do not belong to them are about to get set free from their unions. Given the Janus decision, I would recommend the next governor no longer require union membership to be a state hire. Further, I would also halt completely State of Alaska deducting union dues from paychecks of state employees. If the public employee unions want to collect dues, let them figure out how to do so without state assistance. SECDEF Mattis while a Marine General, often notes that the enemy gets a vote in combat. So also do political opposition, especially when they have long memories. http://mustreadalaska.com/campaign-signs-banned-by-state-on-all-rights-of-way/
- Abortion. A report out of UNC-Charlotte found that induced abortion is the leading cause of death in the US and accounts for 61% of deaths of African Americans. It kills people at nearly twice the rate of heart disease and cancer, 1.15 million abortion deaths, 599,000 heart disease and 576,000 cancer deaths. Abortion was responsible for 32% of all deaths in the US in 2009. CDC statistics on abortion find that 35% of all abortion deaths 2009 – 2010 were black babies, this from a black population making up 13% of all Americans. Other stats find that blacks abort at 3.6 times the rate of whites. The legacy of Margaret Sanger lives on. https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/04/report-abortion-accounts-for-61-of-black-deaths-in-america/
More later –
– AG