Interesting Items 07/20

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

In this issue:

1.  Goya
2.  Woke
3.  Reservation
4.  Testing
5.  StL Guns
6.  Lady A
7.  Aggies
8.  CARES

1.  Goya.  Latest target of the cancel culture is Goya Foods, a Latino-owned and operated family business whose CEO praised Trump in a WH meeting a week ago.  Bob Unanue spoke in glowing terms about his support of the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.  This was Double Plus Ungood and the left announced a boycott of his products.  Response by conservatives was a lot of fun, as they organized a boycott of Goya Foods.  President Trump chimed in with a photo at his desk piled with Goya beans and other products.  As of this writing, Goya products are flying off the shelves.  In pursuing this boycott attempt, the political left may have bitten off more than they thought, as Goya is apparently really popular among Latinos in the US, both due to what they sell, but just as importantly, who owns and operates the business.  Some have described the popularity as similar to what would happen is one would deny pasta to Italians or rice to Orientals.  While massively stereotypical, there are those out there that believe this captures in some small way the popularity of the company and what they sell among Latinos.  Additionally, Goya has been in the forefront of donating food, meals, PPE to families, food banks, schools, and other in-need organizations over the course of the pandemic.  The boycott attempt may very well backfire by driving more Latinos toward Trump in November and it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

2.  Woke.  One of the oddities about the ongoing BLM riots has been the participation and leadership of woke young women in the festivities.  These ladies are also in the forefront of opposition to President Trump.  Stella Morabito writing in The Federalist July 9 wrote Why Do So Many White Women Hate Themselves?  This is a decent read if for no other reason than knowing one’s enemies, much the same way as a lot of us used to read Soviet publications in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.  The notion of a woke white woman may seem to be a contradiction.  After all, she is typically college educated, middle class, suburban, socially aware, and stable.  How do these women become arsonists, terrorists, mobsters, and those who scream into the faces of police officers, race-baiting the black ones?  The commitment to identity politics means she rejects the notion of people as individuals, a dangerous lifestyle choice for everyone else.  The author notes that this has happened before, most notably with the indoctrination of kidnapped Patty Hurst in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army.  They used Maoist indoctrination sessions on her to the point where she participated in armed robberies.  We know this works.  But what has happened to the new cohort?  Appears they are also being subject to constant propaganda for years from the education establishment, media and celebrities.  The approved behaviors and thoughts tend to sink in over time.  Enforcement of this comes in the form of threatened social rejection.  Where do they draw the line?  There appears to be no limit.  She ends with the following warning:

Many more of us must challenge the menace of this psychological weaponry embedded in today’s turmoil. If we don’t, the agitprop machine of Big Tech, the education system, and the media will continue to manufacture these manipulations in an endless feedback loop, with ever more catastrophic consequences.

3.  Reservation.  A little more than a week ago, the SCOTUS in McGirt v Oklahoma issued yet another bizzaro 5-4 opinion.  This one found that the State of Oklahoma cannot prosecute crimes by Native Americans on Creek Lands, holding that nearly 3 million acres (most) of the eastern half of the state is a reservation despite either lack of congressional action to create one or action to disestablish one.  Justice Gorsuch once exercised his textualist bonafides to reach a bizzaro conclusion.  The case involves a really nasty individual serving a 500-year sentence for child molestation because the crime was committed on what the court now defines as reservation land.  The opinion also threw out a murder conviction of another member of the Creek Nation.  Apparently neither will be released but prosecuted under federal rather than state law.  But people in Oklahoma probably never knew half the state was an actual reservation.  Everybody involved promises that no actual land will change hands.  That will last only as long as enterprising lawyers cobble together the next lawsuit demanding title to the land. 

4.  Testing.  There is a growing story about testing results for COVID.  Rush covered a FNC report that 300 labs in Florida were reporting 100% positive testing result, thus artificially inflating the number of positive testing results.  As the week progressed, it appears that the labs were simply not reporting negative testing results up the chain.  Add this to the 30% false positive in CDC testing kits and you have the basis for some real mischief, and more importantly, fodder for blue state mayors and governors to continue the shutdowns until the first week in November.  Late in the week, there was one report that the Trump administration ordered all labs to report their results to HHS rather than just to the CDC, as there is some concern that the CDC is diddling the numbers.  Turns out that the labs have been reporting to both locations all along.  There is clearly something going on.  I don’t think anyone knows what that is yet.  I most certainly understand what is going on other than something is going on.  Keep your eyes and ears open on this. 

5.  StL Guns.  The Soros-backed St Louis local attorney served up a warrant to seize firearms used by the McCloskey’s to defend their home from the BLM mob a couple weeks ago.  There are currently no charges filed against the couple for defending their home from the mob.  Police got the AR.  The couple’s attorney has possession of the handgun.  The prosecutor is up for reelection this year.  PowerLine is posting articles calling for her defeat in the upcoming elections.  Soros has anted up with additional money to help her retain her position.  Here’s the funny part:  Local firearms owners and sellers have stepped up to help out the couple.  One shop offered to give them a brand new AR if they contact the shop.  Better yet, they offered to enroll the couple in free training so as to better prepare them to use the tools safely.  Note that the mob did make a second pass by the home last week, this time staying outside the fence they broke down when they were warned off.  MO Governor has promised to pardon the couple should they be charged or tried.  There are at least a couple reports that President Trump has also offered help.  This couple are hard line democrats, BLM supporters, who are fairly prickly and vigorous litigators, at least according to the raft of hatchet job articles on who they are and what they do running in local media. 

6.  Lady A.  Country band Lady Antebellum (Latin for before a war, generally used in the US to describe the period of time before the Civil War), got themselves on the woke bandwagon early on in the riots last month, changing their name to Lady A.  Their problem was that there was already a Lady A, a 61-year old black blues singer in Seattle.  The band is all white.  Oops.  But no matter, after a bit of negotiation over the new name, the band took the singer to court demanding a summary judgment.  The singer wanted a $10 million check for rights to the name.  The band claims that they hold the federal trademark on the name, apparently filed when they made the name change in June.  Problem is that the singer has been using the name for at least 20 years.  While not seeking damages from the singer, the band intends to strip her of her stage name with no compensation.  The case will turn on what each party can prove about how broadly the names have been used in commerce.  Isn’t it interesting that woke whites are using the courts to hammer a working-class black who never did a thing to them, demonstrating what being woke is really all about?

7.  Aggies.  The Battle of Lawrence Sullivan (Sully) Ross continued last week at Texas A&M  with yet another confrontation between a BLM mob of mostly black student athletes and their liberal arts prof enablers and Former Students.  The protesters were in their late teens and the former students were mostly in their 50s – 60s.  Athletes were most black.  Former students were mixed, but with lots of grey hair.  The game the student athletes played was to attempt to bait any of the former students into saying something they could capture and post.  Names were called and threats were made, almost entirely from the student athletes, aimed at the oldsters.  This time of year, in College Station, the only students on campus are generally those athletes under scholarship.  Neither their coaches nor any of the leadership in the athletic department put a lid on these bored young men marching to change their world.  We Aggies take real good care of our athletes and have supported them with massive amounts of money in recent years.  Those checkbooks may be well on the way to slamming shut unless the coaches and athletic department puts a lid on this foolishness.  One of the star scholarship track athletes leading the protest a week ago was completely clueless about who actually pays for his scholarship.  He may be well on the way to learning an important albeit harsh lesson.  Second story out of A&M was a black senior student who reported racist notes placed under his windshield a few weeks ago.  Local police investigated the event, quickly closing their investigation after viewing security video of him placing the notes under his wiper blades.  No word yet about the senior being summarily expelled.  The former students are watching this one closely too. 

8.  CARES.  The Anchorage Assembly and Mayor are well on their way into the process of stealing CARES money intended for Anchorage small businesses.  The excuse is the burgeoning homeless problem under both he Mayor and his union-backed and elected veto-proof Assembly (9-2 majority).  The plan is to divert something over $22 million to purchase four properties in Midtown and turn them into treatment and housing facilities for the homeless.  CARES Act money is specifically limited to damage done to local small businesses by the shutdown.  The excuse for this diversion (theft) is CDC guidelines required homeless to be housed farther apart than they would have otherwise.  State government and the congressional delegation have been notified but have not as yet stopped the process.  Local residents are outraged that these facilities are about to be plopped down in their midst without any public process.  They have organized and been raising Holy Hell at Assembly meetings over the last month.  And they have done some good, as this sort of thing is generally slammed though the process in the middle of summer while everyone is out of town chasing salmon, filling their freezers.  The fourth meeting on two ordinances takes place Tuesday night.  One of the ordinances purchases the property.  The second bypasses both the Planning and Zoning process and modifies the Municipal Charter on the fly, something that generally takes the vote of the people to do.  They need to get the money spent before anyone can bring the courts to bear.  Mayor Berkowitz has built a real ugly reputation over the course of the pandemic, hammering small businesses in Anchorage every opportunity he gets.  This is the fourth blow following his summary shutdown of bars and restaurants who opposed his alcohol tax in March, the alcohol tax itself, a seemingly endless lingering reopening, shaming bars and restaurants who have patrons come up positive, now stealing CARES money intended to help them through the economic disaster he helped create.  What a guy.

More later –

– AG

One thought on “Interesting Items 07/20”

  1. On the Aggie who reported racist notes left on his windshield, but turns out HE placed the notes, a simple response is the Aggie Honor Code:

    “AN AGGIE DOES NOT LIE, CHEAT OR STEAL, OR TOLERATE THOSE WHO DO”

    But in today’s super-charged political climate I doubt if anything will happen to him and he will be allowed to graduate. Sad, very sad.

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