Interesting Items 11/05

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

 

In this issue:

1. Campaign
2. NBC
3. Wild Fish
4. Media
5. Bolsonaro
6. Birthright

1. Campaign. A few factoids on the election Tuesday for your consideration:

• Andrew Gillum is running for Florida Governor as a democrat.  He is also under investigation for old fashioned graft and corruption as mayor of Tallahassee.  Not only did he accept gifts during his campaign without reporting those gifts, he also doled out favors to developers in return for campaign contributions.  There was apparently a developer-paid trip for Gillum and friends to Costa Rica also not reported.  He is currently running neck and neck with Ron DeSantis.  He is photogenic, well spoken, and an absolute snake.  https://miami.cbslocal.com/2018/10/26/fbi-agent-posing-as-developer-may-have-paid-for-expenses-related-to-gillum-fundraising-dinner/
• John Tester (D, MT) is up for his second reelection.  He was a former sheriff who took advantage of a Mueller and (In)Justice led fraudulent indictment of incumbent US Senator Conrad Burns (R) in 2006.  He is also in big trouble but seemed to be on his way to a small, but safe reelection, that is until his supporters sent out a false flag mailer calling the Libertarian candidate for US Senate for MT the conservative choice.  The libertarian was polling around 4%, which was the margin of error.  The libertarian took it personally and dropped out of the race last week, announcing he backed the Republican much to the chagrin of the state libertarian party.  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrat-testers-campaign-takes-a-hit-after-shady-mailer-prompts-libertarian-to-drop-out-back-gop-candidate
• Final dirty trick out of North Dakota courtesy the state democrat party is that voting could cost you your hunting license.  I rank this one right up there with the occasional suggestion to low information voters that the election day this year has been moved to Wednesday.  But they wouldn’t have tried it if they didn’t think it would work.  Their problem is that it is likely to work better on their supporters than Republicans.  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/north-dakota-democrats-to-hunters-voting-could-cost-you-your-hunting-license
• Young Beto O’Rourke is running as the anti-Trump, friend of the poor, indigent, and especially the Little People among Latinos.  A Project Veritas video documented campaign worker claims that the Beto campaign was funneling some amount of campaign money south to support the caravans enroute to the southern border.  He also married well, having hooked up with a lady whose father is a real estate tycoon worth some $20 billion.  She is his only daughter.  None of this news came out until late last week.  https://spectator.us/beto-orourkes-wife-billionaire/
• There is a ballot initiative in Arizona entitled Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona this fall.  Its goal is a constitutional amendment that will require 50% of the state’s energy to be generated from renewable sources.  Latest campaign finance reports out of the campaign is that the effort is almost entirely funded by billionaire Tom Steyer (over 99% in July).  Less than 50 people donated to the campaign during the second quarter, many of them from out of state.  The largest individual contribution during the second quarter was $25.  Clean Energy submitted over 480,000 signatures to get on the ballot in July.  Steyer’s contributions to the initiative backers was over $8 million in August.  https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/22/one-person-donates-to-steyer-arizona-initiative/

 

2. NBC. A little rain on the Avenatti for President 2020 campaign last week as the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended Avenatti and Julie Swetnick to (In)Justice for possible criminal charges.  NBC News reported hours later that they had found inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman alleging sexual predation by Judge Kavanaugh a generation and a half ago.  The second woman’s statement was submitted to support Swetnick’s wild claims of rape trains.  The problem is that NBC news did the interviews three weeks ago at the height of the Kavanaugh character assassination effort and sat on the news.  To their credit, they did interview and destroy Swetnick during their interview with her on October 1.  The second woman was supposed to support the claim that Kavanaugh was spiking the punch at the parties, so the women targeted could be properly drugged for their participation in serial rape.  Avenatti forwarded the second name on Sept 30.  NBC News made multiple contacts with her between then to Oct 5 (Kavanaugh was confirmed on Oct 6).  None of the additional contacts were able to confirm Avenatti’s submitted claims.  And NBC never went public with their concerns over that period.  As far as the general public and the Senate knew, there was nothing to indicate Swetnick’s statement was false.  Reporting this in a timely manner would have gone a long way toward mitigating the successful character assassination effort of Kavanaugh by the democrats.  This is yet another example of Iowahawk’s observation that “Journalism is about covering important stories.  With a pillow, until they stop moving.”  https://freebeacon.com/blog/nbc-news-sit-evidence-discrediting-kavanaugh-accuser-weeks/

 

3. Wild Fish. Alaska commercial fishermen adopted a protectionist stance against fish farming over 20 years ago.  At the time, fish farming was producing around 15% of all salmon consumed in the world.  Commfish got legislation passed that made aquaculture for finfish illegal in Alaska.  Since its passage, fish farming – onshore and offshore – now dominates all salmon sold for human consumption, today around 75% of all fish, and growing steadily.  The laws of economics generally tend to grind those who willfully chose not to compete in any marketplace into dust, and Alaska commercial fishermen are not immune.  Their response has been threefold.  First, they have been trying to carve out a boutique marketplace for Alaska Wild Salmon, organic, healthy, completely free of impurities.  The second has been to jack up their percentage of Alaska salmon that make it into their nets.  Finally, they have gotten into the fish ranching business, releasing half a billion hatchery pink fry into Prince William Sound to catch and sell a year later.  Their problem with the latter is that there appears to be a real environmental damage to wild stocks of salmon, as the pink fry are out competing them for available biomass (food).  Wild stock numbers are falling as are their sizes when they return to the fresh water to spawn.  Local outdoor reporter Craig Medred noted that the greens are now going after wild salmon, with the claim that they are no longer as clean with as pristine meat as farmed salmon, particularly those raised in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS).  The onshore RAS systems are selling their fish as clean, no pollutants, no pesticides, no micro plastic particles, and no contaminants that are found in ocean water.  And the greens are gleefully getting on board with this movement much to the dismay of an industry furiously trying to carve out a boutique chunk of the marketplace for wild Alaskan salmon.  Protectionism is generally a very poor lifestyle choice for anyone in a competitive marketplace, as it will always ensure that you no longer participate in that competitive marketplace by innovation and improvement in the product and everything associated with the product and its sale.  And protectionism never, ever impacts the marketplace, as it will keep on chugging down the track, usually at an accelerating speed.  Alaska commercial fishermen are as economically dead as a week-old roadkill possum.  https://craigmedred.news/2018/10/31/clean-fish/

 

4. Media. All spending bills are supposed to originate in the House of Representatives.  Last week, the local PBS station, KAKM, whose feed is transmitted statewide held a candidate debate between democrat Alyse Galvin and our incumbent US House Representative Don Young.  KAKM apparently forgot that Young controls their purse strings.  During their debate Friday, Galvin didn’t know the difference between a Coast Guard cutter and an ice breaker, but Young didn’t insult her on the air.  The station ran the chroma very hot on Young to make him look red, like someone with unhealthy high blood pressure.  Color adjustments on Galvin and the panel were normal.  Galvin was also allowed to have her campaign staff in studio while Young’s wife and aide were asked to leave the studio.  Not to be outdone, KTVA is running stories about Young and Galvin carefully selecting images for maximum effect.  Galvin typically is depicted fresh, young, alert and smiling, while Young is depicted with eyes closed and or mouth open.  h/t to Suzanne Downing at Must Read Alaska for catching this.  https://mustreadalaska.com/media-bias-showed-in-coverage-on-young-galvin-race/

 

5. Bolsonaro. Brazil may be pulling itself back from the leftist brink it has been toying with for decades.  Last week they elected Jair Bolsonaro who is described as a “far-right” lawmaker, aka Brazil’s Trump.  The win was 56 – 44%.  Not only is he promising to pull back from Latin American leftism, but more importantly he is promising to clean up the corruption endemic in his part of the world.  The ruling party ran Brazil for 13 of the last 15 years.  It was tossed out two years ago in the middle of a deep recession and political graft scandal.  Like conservatives here in the US, Bolsonaro has been targeted by violence on the left, suffering a near fatal stabbing at the hands of an irate socialist.  The attack severely limited his ability to campaign.  His opponent happily made hay of his inability to show up at presidential debates.  Unable to hit the road, Bolsonaro relied on social media and ran into FakeBook censorship of dozens of his network of supporters, the FakeBook censorship extended to accounts and pages using the excuse they were violating system rules on spam and fake news.  He has vowed to build stronger relationship with the US and was harshly critical of both Cuba and Venezuela after being elected.  The previous party was very chummy with both nations for over a decade.  http://fortune.com/2018/10/29/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-elections/

 

6. Birthright. President Trump took out after birthright citizenship, something that allows a foreign mother to enter the country, give birth, and the baby automatically gets a US passport.  There are hotels along the borders and near international airports that cater to this sort of traffic.  President Trump injected the issue into the final week of the election campaign via an interview with Axios.  Pushback was instantaneous and approaching hysterical from all the usual suspects, especially when he suggested that he has the authority to make the change via Executive Order.  Open borders types believe that this right falls out of the 14^th Amendment, though it has never been litigated through the SCOTUS for illegals.  If Trump does anything, he will at least start the discussion and force the courts to rule.  More importantly he will force congress to get off the dime and act.  And if the election goes well, he will have a much more agreeable congress to work with the next two years.  If not, he will have a great issue for 2020.  Either way, it is yet another example of Trump driving the agenda rather than the agenda driving him.  https://www.axios.com/trump-birthright-citizenship-executive-order-0cf4285a-16c6-48f2-a933-bd71fd72ea82.html

More later –

– AG