Interesting Items 12/31

Howdy All, Happy New Year from Interesting Items.  Enjoy –

In this issue:

1. Shutdown
2. Flynn
3. Apollo 8
4. Bots
5. Bernie
6. Test
7. Cakeshop

1. Shutdown. As of this writing, we are in the second week of this year’s version of Shutdown Theater.  When we last saw our congressional heroes, they had adjourned and left town for parts known and unknown.  The biggest surprise, at least to me, was the pleasant surprise that the outgoing House majority passed President Trump’s full request for wall funding.  Senate democrats and likely at least three outgoing never Trump Republican senators refused to act.  President Trump cancelled his Christmas trip to Florida and spent the last week needling congressional democrat leaders with tweets questioning their veracity, judgement, support for American sovereignty, and the number of legitimate parents they may or may not have.  Toward week’s end a 2009 video of Senate Minority leader Schumer waxing eloquently about the glories and necessities about a border wall surfaced that the media mostly ignored.  We are quickly running out of time for the outgoing congress to act on this, as the new house majority will be sworn in and seated on January 3.  Will senate democrats budge?  Unlikely.  Will Senate Majority Leader McConnell pass funding legislation under reconciliation?  Unknown.  Will this extend long into January?  Highly likely, which will turn out marvelously well for President Trump as there are at least 40 newly elected democrat House members who ran pretending to be moderates or conservatives.  Nothing like a series of guts ball votes the first week or two of your first term as a congress critter to focus the mind properly.  I think President Trump is playing this exactly right.  And he has nothing to lose.  https://www.dailywire.com/news/39737/watch-schumer-admits-border-fence-makes-border-far-ryan-saavedra

 

2. Flynn. I wanted to wait a couple weeks for my anger over the persecution of LtGen Michael Flynn to cool a bit before discussing his sentencing.  In short, it was a complete disaster, with Judge Sullivan losing track of what he was there for and going after Flynn for committing a possible act of treason, something nobody brought up in the courtroom previously.  Sullivan later apologized for the comment and rolled back sentencing 90 days.  This affair tells you everything about the sort of prosecutorial misconduct and corruption that Robert Mueller has brought into government over the last 35 years.  The FIB and O’Bama holdover Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates set Flynn up with their decision to send FIB Investigator Peter Strzok and friend over to Flynn to have a discussion.  FIB Deputy McCabe told Flynn that the pair was coming just to talk, and a lawyer would not be necessary.  Following the “discussion’”, it took the FIB perpetrators a mere 6+ months to prepare a Form 302 documenting the discussion, something required 5 working days after the meeting.  This document is thought by many observers to be among the documents McCabe changed after the fact, committing yet another felony.  Neither FIB agent thought Flynn lied during the discussion.  Comes Robert Mueller’s Merry Band of democrat Party Legal Hacks, and they have another view of the discussion, and go after Flynn for lying to the FIB, which is what he took a plea bargain for.  In this case, the prosecution was the punishment, as they have all but bankrupted Flynn, burying him in lawyer bills.  They finally threatened to go after his son for being an unregistered foreign agent.  At that point Flynn fell on his sword and took the plea bargain.  Note that the punishment for being an unregistered foreign agent is normally a requirement to register as one.  Not so for Mueller and Company, jail time is necessary to properly punish the perpetrator.  So, Flynn gets to dangle slowly, slowly in the wind for yet another 90 days while this very expensive legal farce grinds on.  This is not justice.  Rather, it is (In)Justice, and a demonstration to all of us of the two-tiered justice system in place these days, where anyone associated with Trump gets targeted and destroyed while anyone associated with democrats who are doing far, far worse, get a free pass.  Keep this up guys, and there will be some well-earned and richly deserved Vigilance Committees in your not so distant future.  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/what-we-have-learned-so-far-3-2.php

3. Apollo. In happier news (or unhappier, depending on your point of view), last week was the 50^th Anniversary of Mankind’s first visit to another body.  This was the flight of Apollo 8 to the moon, where Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, took the first manned launch of the Saturn-V to the moon in an Apollo command and service modules, entered lunar orbit for a day and successfully returned home.  While in orbit, they took the famous Earthrise photo and on Christmas Eve read from the first 10 verses from Genesis to a worldwide audience while a live camera broadcast the lunar surface passing beneath the capsule.  The launch was Dec. 21, with the landing on Dec. 27, 1968.  1968 was a truly awful year for many of us here in the US.  This flight ended it with style and no small amount of hope.  https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/apollo-8-fifty-years-ago/

 

4. Bots. Question for the Assembled:  When is the use of Russian bots in an American Election tolerated, celebrated and encouraged?  Answer:  When it is done to defeat a Republican candidate.  The NYT dropped a little bombshell last week describing how democrat tech experts adopted Russian tactics they claim were used against Hillary to defeat Roy Moore for US Senate from Alabama in 2017.  The project created a fake FakeBook account which they posed as conservative Republicans and orchestrated a false flag operation against Moore.  The operation amplified the support that Moore was getting by setting up thousands of Russian accounts that began following Moore’s campaign on Twitter.  There were over 20,000 Russian bots claiming to be Moore followers.  In the end, there were 600 Twitter accounts linked to the false flag operation.  These accounts pushed 20 – 25,000 tweets every day.  The effort was funded by Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley billionaire, co-founder of LinkedIn, who apologized for funding the operation with $750,000.  The operation was intended to give the impression that the Russian government was supporting Republican Roy Moore.  But if your guys win and the Republican loses, apologies afterwards don’t mean doodly squat.  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/liberal-billionaire-apologizes-for-funding-false-flag-effort-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-in-alabama-senate-race

 

5. Bernie. Once you embrace the heady wine of socialism, the willingness to use the power of the State to destroy your enemies is never far behind.  Eventually you call out the Death Squads.  US Senator from Vermont and putative candidate for President in 2020 Bernie Sanders is using his influence as a US Senator to get the Vermont Attorney General to bring a case against a business owner who has been running ads against him since 2014, “just to make a point.”  The point being, never, ever mess with a guy who wields political power.  Sanders’ office met with the State Attorney General’s office a week after the ad was launched.  While the State did not bring any legal action against the business owner, Sander’ press aide did correspond with a pair of attorneys interested in bringing a class-action lawsuit against the business owner.  In June 2015, the firms brought a $100 million lawsuit against the owner and three other companies accusing them of price fixing.  The owner is a prominent Republican donor who owns 45 gas stations in Vermont and neighboring states.  As part of the lawsuit, the businessman’s attorney filed a subpoena to force Sanders’ press secretary to testify during discovery.  Sanders’ office violently objects.  This is another demonstration of the slippery slope of socialism, where it gets ever easier to use and abuse the power of government that you install, expand and wield to punish your opposition.  And if Sanders gets away with this, he and his acolytes will do much worse while they travel their path toward their goal of turning the United States into Venezuela.  https://pjmedia.com/trending/vendetta-bernie-sanders-brought-the-power-of-the-state-on-vt-business-owner-behind-attack-ad/

 

6. Test. Female democrat senators are busily crafting a religious test for judicial nominees.  Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) went after Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings for the 7^th Circuit.  Feinstein opined about Barrett, a devout Catholic, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”  Now that Feinstein opened the door to anti-Catholic bigotry among democrats, her co-conspirators Kamala Harris (D, CA) and Maizie Hirono (D, HI) are busily kicking it in with written questions to Brian Buescher, nominated by President Trump to the US District Court in Nebraska.  They would like to know if his membership in the Knights of Columbus is appropriate.  KofC were among the top contributors to California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex-marriage.  Harris, who got her political start by virtue of being Willie Brown’s girlfriend, called KofC “an all-male society”, asked if he was aware of its anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage positions when he joined and that given the organizations positions, would his continued membership be appropriate as a federal judge?  Buescher responded that the KofC was a charitable organization whose official positions as an organization do not reflect those of individual members.  We are close to the point where democrat senators will be asking devout Christians of all stripe “Are you now or have you ever been a member of (place name of Christian organization here)?”  I wonder if Catholics who vote for democrats will care?  https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/12/two-dem-senators-question-judicial-nominees-membership-in-knights-of-columbus/

 

7. Cakeshop. Colorado continues its anti-Christian jihad against Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop, who won total a victory against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in June 2018.  The SCOTUS opinion supporting his position that as a practicing Christian he is not required to create a work of art that disagrees with his religious views was 7-2.  On the afternoon the opinion was announced, a Denver lawyer called the shop and demanded he create a cake celebrating his / her transition as a transgender person.  When Phillips refused, she went directly to the very same Colorado Civil Rights Commission who just got slapped down hard by the court to start the process again, something the Commission, smarting from their punishment was happy to do.  And the entire process started again.  In yet another example of the process being the punishment, the activist left intends to destroy the owner and his business by crushing him in legal fees.  The SCOTUS in its ruling noted that the Commission showed anti-religious bias when it sanctioned Phillips for refusing to do the gay marriage cake.  Apparently, that bias is baked in deeply among the Commission members and its staff.  This time around, Phillips counter-sued demanding $100,000 in punitive damages from the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division.  The Colorado Attorney General’s office wants the lawsuit dismissed because the Commission got cute this time around and did not mention religion in their ruling against Phillips.  What a surprise.  In addition, the tolerant left of Denver have harassed Phillips with death threats and vandalism of his shop during the legal festivities.  I always find it fascinating when the left turns into that which they claim to hate the most.  And the fascism is strong in Colorado these days.  https://abc7chicago.com/society/colorado-baker-back-in-court-after-refusing-to-make-cake-celebrating-gender-transition/4930768/

More later –

– AG