Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Segregation
2. Business Model
3. Theft
4. Trans
5. Infrastructure
6. DoJ
7. Gaming
8. Warming
1. Segregation. It is always instructive how quickly the democrats, their enablers and fellow travelers return to “dance with who brung you”, an old southernism I first recall hearing from former texas university (tu for us Aggies) head football coach Darryl Royal some 50 years ago explaining why he was still running the wishbone rather than passing the football. It is widely used and shows up in a few country songs. Asleep At The Wheel’s version is included below. In today’s context, this means the return to segregation and bigotry by the political party that fought a civil war to make sure it continued. Well, segregation and bigotry is back, this time aimed at some combination of the unvaccinated and Trump supporters, with the media enablers (leaders?) of the democrats making every attempt treat as the same group of people. As I discussed last week, the numbers of who is vaccinated and who is not is all over the place, with the political left blaming it on flyover country Trump supporters, and some on our side, writing in Breitbart, blaming it on minorities. Based on the numbers I’ve seen (and study linked last week), both can be right. Both also can be fake news. It is instructive that Harris – Xiden waited until the end of July to inflict vax mandates on federal employees. There are an awful lot of minorities who work for Uncle Sugar these days and their unions did push back at least for a while. Breitbart columnist John Nolte has been on top of the bigoted calls for segregation and retaliation against the unvaccinated with multiple articles over the last couple weeks. In the end, he refers to the unvaccinated as the civil rights movement of the decade, if for no other reason than the disparate treatment of those with other more politically correct maladies, HIV/AIDS, for instance, who nobody was supposed to retaliate against or segregate. 35 years ago, with HIV/AIDS, there was an immediate pushback from media, academia, and entertainment against what they called persecution of gays. Why? Gays were (and still are) a protected class. The unvaccinated and Trump supporters, not so much. Indeed, it is not only perfectly acceptable to discriminate against them, but it is all but required to refuse to allow them into businesses, refuse to allow them to do commerce, refuse to allow them to leave their homes, and refuse to allow them to go to work. So much for the freedom to live your lives as you see fit. As long as the media can make a credible connection between the unvaccinated and Trump supporters, this all works. When it ends up that they are discriminating against a larger percentage of minorities, that particular house of cards will collapse and they will be on to the next event, neither apologetic nor even acknowledging their mistake, their bigotry, or their newfound joy and glee at getting back into the fondly remembered (by democrats) segregation business.
2. Business Model. For those of you who haven’t noticed, the media has been at the forefront of stirring up political angst since at least 2015 when they swapped over from laughing at the Trump campaign to whipping up every bit of anti-Trump hysteria humanly possible. Of course, it goes back far longer than that. For instance, the pro-tax hysteria whipped up to grease the path for Bush 41’s embrace of tax hikes in 1991 following his no new taxes pledge. HL Mencken touched on that particular technique with his 1918 quote in his In Defense of Women that:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The difference today is that the media rather than the politicians are leading the charge. Essentially, the media’s business model has changed from a “report the news” to a “make something happen” model. Today, the new business model for the media is propaganda aimed at assisting their chosen side to political victory. Leighton Woodhouse made this point in a piece entitled The Algorithm in Kerfuffle a couple weeks ago. And he took it completely apart. Well worth your read.
3. Theft. The FBI, like the democrat party these days, is an organized crime organization. This one is masquerading as a law enforcement operation, though in recent years, it appears to be more of a protection racket enforcer for the swamp than anything else. Latest example comes from a raid on a Beverly Hills safe deposit box business called US Private Vaults. The feds seized over $86 million in cash, jewelry and other valuables. The raid ransacked over 600 safe deposit boxes. One box owner has taken the FIB to federal court with a claim that they FIB stole over $900,000 in cash and other valuables, with the FIB having to explain the legal justification for stealing from this individual. The warrant authorizing the raid expressly forbade the FIB from seizing contents of safe deposit boxes. The business was indicted on a number of charges including laundering money and selling drugs. The FIB and federal prosecutors are attempting to make the case that anyone who did business with the company were automatically suspects and have filed forfeiture proceedings against 369 of the 800 box owners’ contents seized. The FIB and Do(In)J have done everything possible to hide the contents of the warrant while they execute forfeiture proceedings against the owners. So far, the presiding judge has not been amused and has not gone along with the continuing scam.
4. Trans. Ben Bartee wiring in The Daily Bell did an extensive piece entitled How the Gender Industry Weaponizes Empathy to Convert Human Insecurity Into Cash. The piece is a pretty decent tutorial in advertising, persuasion and why they work. The bottom line of the article is that the trans industry – activists and the medical community including pharmaceutical corporations, for-profit hospitals, supportive medical associations – are making a LOT of money preying on the fears and insecurity of the sexually confused and their families, particularly the young, doing everything humanly possible to lower the age of consent into the preschool years. Their use of language is superb, with terms like diversity, inclusion, acceptance, compassion and empathy tossed around like so much popcorn. Oppose this in any way and you are a hateful, myopic bigot. With all persuasion plays, framing the discussion is everything. And the trans industry today is well framed from a persuasion standpoint. What they are doing to the young could not be more evil and destructive.
5. Infrastructure. The latest installment of the annual porkfest from the swamp is the so-called infrastructure legislation. This one was negotiated between Mitch McConnell and Chuckie Schumer directly with little to no involvement of the rest of the senate. By the time they dumped a 2,702 POS on the desks of the senate, they had 12 Republicans on board, including Alaska’s own Lisa Murkowski. By last weekend, that number was up to 18 with our other senator Dan Sullivan joining. As nobody spent much time reading it, we rely on analysis from others to tell us what it in it. And it is worse than expected. At one level, it is a down payment on the Green Nude Eel. On another, it is a federal assault on local zoning, property rights, and the ability to live in a neighborhood of your choice through passage of the O’Bama era AFFH. Not the Bee did a great takedown of its contents last week. Included are the following goodies:
- $250 million to study an invasive plant species
- Studies to tax Americans for driving
- Studies on people hitting deer
- Pilot plan on per mile driving taxes (this requires real time, continuous monitors in your vehicles)
- Canadian Amtrack upgrades
- Breathalyzer mandates for all new cars
- $2.5 billion for green energy, $5 billion for electric vehicles, $250 million for electric ferries, $16 billion for renewable energy programs
- Sale of strategic oil reserves
- More money for NOAA to diddle data and further the climate scam
6. DoJ. Former federal judge and current US Attorney General Merrick Garland is making quite a name for himself as his newly installed racialist Civil Rights division spearheads the race war they have picked with the rest of the nation. First up to bat was a lawsuit against the State of Texas which is at ground zero of the Harris – Xiden open borders scam. Governor Abbott of Texas issued an Executive Order that bans local, state and federal law enforcement officials from providing ground transportation for border crossers and illegals who have been detained by the feds or ordered removed under CDC authority. It allows Texas state troopers to stop any vehicle upon reasonable suspicion of transporting border crossers and illegals to reroute it back to its point of origin or port of entry. Garland issued a threatening letter and took Texas to court. As of weeks’ end, Do(In)J found at least one federal judge who agreed with Garland. The second was a warning shot at the Arizona state senate’s audit of Maricopa County election irregularities. The claim is that election audits illegally discriminate against minority voters. Of course, if the fraud was going on in places other than the blue inner cities, this would be a problem. The Do(In)J logic appears to be that you can’t audit fraud in minority parts of town because they are minority parts of town. Cute. The battle has been joined, however,
7. Gaming. California greens went after gamers with new restrictions that went in place July 1. The California Energy Commission forced a mandatory energy efficiency standard on systems that limits the sale of high end Alienware and Dell gaming systems. The new standard and similar ones apply in five other states (CA, CO, HI, OR, VT and WA). The standards are (as usual) intended to save energy. The high-end, high-power gaming systems have huge power supplies and video cards. So far, you can build your own, but can no longer purchase one new.
8. Warming. Bjorn Lomborg posted a piece in his FB public page saying that he believes that global warming is taking place but goes on to say that it is actually saving lives. His math has temperature increases over the last couple decades meant 116,000 more deaths due to heat. The flip side is that there were also 283,000 fewer cold deaths. Do the math, and you have 166,000 lives saved by higher temperatures. He goes on to say that global warming is a problem that needs to be solved, but we are badly informed when the media only reports the heat death numbers, which is the whole point of the exercise.
More later –
- AG