Interesting Items 04/22

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

In this issue:

  1. Mueller
  2. #MeToo
  3. Buttigieg
  4. Red Flag
  5. NY Tuition
  6. Omar
  7. Bernie

  1. Mueller. Attorney General Barr dropped the Mueller Report a week ago and I have been mostly waiting for the Usual Suspects to do the Usual Suspect things in response.  Trump and his supporters have been doing their expected victory laps while democrats who support the attempted coup are doubling and tripling down on their view that President Trump must be impeached.  Good luck with that.  The hook Mueller’s merry gang of democrat lawyers left in was a refusal to determine that Trump engaged in obstruction, though it is difficult to obstruct anything if there is no underlying crime.  What strikes me, though is how close of a thing this was.  There were at least 5 FIB informants who tried to get themselves inserted into the Trump campaign at various times.  Most of them were Brits.  Most of them had some sort of foreign policy expertise, which Trump himself and the campaign were short of.  Had any of these guys been hired, they would have obtained and placed Russian misinformation into the campaign, after which they would have gone straight to their FIB handlers with information that they had inserted.  In legal terms, this is called entrapment.  Good luck proving it, though especially when the people in charge of the FIB were the ones orchestrating the entrapment.  Happily, the Trump campaign never hired any of these clowns.  They never listened very long to them.  And the entrapment never happened, which led directly to the use of the dossier as their fallback plan.  The involvement of foreign intelligence assets is the reason that the Brits, Aussies and other national governments don’t want the FISA warrants released, as it would show their involvement and embarrass them completely.  It is not uncommon for US intelligence to use other friendly intelligence community members to do things for it that are illegal under US law.  Final observation is that I have seen it written that this coup initially targeted General Flynn, who both despised the O’Bama intelligence community and knew where all the bodies were buried.  He was (and still is) a strong, vocal supporter of President Trump.  He was going to clean up the intelligence community and they couldn’t allow that to happen, which is why he was destroyed.  Do not put it past Trump to both pardon him completely, pay his debts, and re-appoint him to a position of importance in the WH after the 2020 election if not before.  After all, the swamp must still be drained.  https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/388429-fbi-informant-met-with-three-trump-campaign-advisers-report

 

  1. #MeToo. The Alaska legislature defeated a Dunleavy appointee to the Board of Fisheries (BoF) last week on the basis of an anonymous allegation of unwelcome sexual comments while the nominee was on the BoF last time.  During his first term, he advocated that the BoF actually manage the resource as a shared resource among all four user groups rather than as an adjunct of commercial fishermen statewide.  They couldn’t allow that to happen again and conducted a scorched earth campaign against his nomination.  The nomination went through the requisite committees without much of a problem and by the time it hit the floor during a joint session (where confirmations are voted on), it appeared that the Governor had sufficient votes for confirmation.  At that point, democrat Ivy Sponholtz (D, Dist 16, Anchorage) piped up with the news that the nominee, Karl Johnstone had made “… inappropriate sexual comments, which created a hostile work environment for them repeatedly” to more than two women.  At this point, the entire floor blew up, the nomination tabled, and eventually defeated 24 – 33 (it takes 31 to win nomination).  Sponholtz appeared to be coordinating her last-minute hatchet job with Louise Stutes, a Republican commfish legislator out of Kodiak who also didn’t like Johnstone a lot.  Sponholtz apparently had the information in hand for at least a week but was using it as a last-minute hatchet job in case their other efforts to defeat the nomination failed.  As this happened on the floor at the last minute, Johnstone was afforded no ability to defend himself.  Craig Medred, who is one of the best outdoor writers in the state did most of the research on the event.  During Johnstone’s time on the BoF, ADF&G was headed up by a commfish friendly woman and the BoF Director was also a woman.  Both have gone on to bigger and better things working for fish processors and other commfish-connected businesses.  Neither woman is taking calls.  And there is no record of any complaints filed by women in ADF&G during or after Johnstone’s time on the Board against him.  The fisheries wars here in Alaska are heating up nicely, and the disconnect cuts across party lines, with Republicans on the Kenai peninsula and any commercial fishing in their background in lockstep opposition to Johnstone.  On the other side, a pair of IBEW lawyers have been leading the charge to support sport fishing and a more equitable allocation of the resource.  I predict this event will turn a few seats in the legislature, and I aim to do my level best to make that happen next year.  https://craigmedred.news/2019/04/18/fatal-rumors/

 

  1. Buttigieg. Latest New Hot Thing on the democrat side is South Bend, ID Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a young, telegenic, articulate 37-year old man who also happens to be a homosexual, though he was still in the closet until elected the second time.  In the intersectionality wars, Buttigieg displaced Beto O’Rourke, the Irish faux Latino from El Paso as the new heartthrob of the media.  He also appears to be intelligent, having picked an ecclesial fist fight with Vice President Mike Pence.  Apparently, Pence believes in both the Bible and God, and that is not sufficiently inclusive for Buttigieg who expands the fight to question whether working for Trump is consistent with being a good Christian.  He wondered aloud if Pence stopped believing in scripture when he started believing Donald Trump.  Nice to see anti-Christian bigotry, authoritarianism and demands for ecclesial purity alive and well in the gay community of Indiana.  South Bend is a one-party town, with democrats in charge for decades.  Buttigieg’s father was a communist academic, so don’t expect the acorn to fall too far from the tree.  Buttigieg has a race problem with local blacks and Latinos.  His signature achievement was bulldozing 1,000 abandoned buildings in poor neighborhoods all in the name of urban improvement. The problem is that one man’s urban improvement is destruction of another’s investment property.  And when you take property from local minorities and give it your friends and supporters, all sorts of bad things happen.  It is after all, the Chicago Way.  He also has a problem demoting South Bend’s first ever black police chief in 2012.  There are tapes of conversations between officers before the demotion.  His Sister Souljah moment was in 2015 when he used “all lives matter” when addressing police controversies in 2015, something he now claims to regret.  So far, most of his support is from wealthy white liberals who make over $100,000/year.  We will see how this boomlet proceeds.  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/04/pete-buttigieg-black-voters-and-mike-pence.php

 

  1. Red Flag. Colorado became the 15th state to enact a “red flag” law that allows law enforcement to seize firearms from people deemed to be dangerous.  Passage of the law took place a few weeks after dozens of local sheriffs vowed not to enforce it if passed.  The move is triggering creation of Second Amendment sanctuary counties in Colorado.  The law was passed without a single Republican vote in the legislature.  The law allows family, household members, or local law enforcement to petition a court to have guns seized or surrendered based on a showing that someone poses a danger under the “preponderance of evidence”, a civil standard that means the defendant is more likely than not to be a threat.  In other words, a 50%+1 level of accuracy is all that is needed to deprive one of their Second Amendment rights.  Image the screams of outrage if the same level of evidence was all that is required to deprive a citizen of their other rights.  Courts can extend a seizure up to 364 days, with gun owners only getting them back if they demonstrate with “clear and convincing evidence” that they are not a threat.  This is a much higher standard of proof and shifts the discussion into guilty until proven innocent land.  The guy leading this travesty is the father of one of the kids killed in the 2012 Aurora theater massacre.  He played his victimhood like a Stradivarius to get this passed.  Civil rights are denied without notice, without the ability to defend against the charges, all followed by required mental health services as your attitude is properly adjusted.  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sheriff-fires-back-after-colorado-enacts-red-flag-law-to-seize-guns-from-individuals-deemed-dangerous

 

  1. NY Tuition. As if we didn’t need yet another example of the rather odd priorities of the NY Assembly, last week democrats on the Education Committee blocked a bill that would have expanded in state tuition for the children of diseased and disabled soldiers.  These were the same democrats who approved a state budget the week before that set aside $27 million in tuition aid for illegals.  The Chairman of the committee said the requested expansion was non in the budget that already provides $2.7 million to 145 student dependents of vets who served in combat zones.  So like illegals are worth ten times that of military family members.  And the answer to that is absolutely.  Why?  Because they will be reliable democrat voters and the military family members won’t.  https://pjmedia.com/trending/new-york-assembly-dems-show-where-their-real-priorities-lie/

 

  1. Omar. The PowerLine guys write out of Minnesota and are as such far more familiar with Ilhan Omar than the rest of us, though we are catching up quickly as she revels in her rock-star treatment by the media.  They are making the case that she is not all that smart, a case that bothers me a lot.  For perhaps my entire adult life, democrats and the media have been going after Republican presidents for their lack of intellectual bonafides.  Reagan as an amiable dunce comes immediately to mind.  Regardless, Omar does have a few problems.  One of which is apparently lying on her immigration application claiming to be married to someone other than her brother.  This is something that can or should get her deported.  Whatever else she is or does, she does play the victimhood racket well.  As a Muslim, a refugee, black, and a woman, she ranks very high on the intersectionality sweepstakes.  Worse, she knows she plays it well and is pushing it for everything she is worth and will continue to do so until someone makes her sit down and shut up.  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/04/have-we-been-overestimating-omar.php

 

  1. Bernie. Leading democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders broke the DNC FNC blackout last week with a televised town hall on the network.  Bret Baier walked him through a number of questions.  In his responses, Bernie demonstrated that he is a real live, honest to God socialist, though not in the way you would expect.  One of the things socialists always, always do is exempt themselves from their policies.  There is always an excuse, always a reason, always some higher calling they claim to be chasing.  In Bernie’s case it is that he is recently and rather happily a millionaire.  Though he has been bashing millionaires for decades and one of his campaign promises is a return to the 90% top income tax rate of half a century ago.  Bernie claims to have simply written a book that people purchased, so the money he made is rightfully his.  But he does not offer to write a check for 90% taxes on its proceeds to the US Treasury.  Socialists always are far more interested in taking your money than in giving up theirs.  And they Bernie is no different.  https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/439988-bernie-sanders-claims-his-sister-souljah-moment

More later –

– AG

 

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