Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. McConnell
2. Garland
3. Wish List
4. Terrorist
5. Sinema
6. Merck
7. Astro
8. Lawsuit
1. McConnell. Much has been made of the McConnell cave on the debt limit extension last week. Conservatives and former President Trump went after McConnell as the typical Republican linguini-spined US Senator for allowing 11 Republicans to vote to extend the debt limit through late Dec. I have seen a couple pieces defending him, one via e-mail and the other in American Thinker (AT) over the weekend. The AT piece made (at least to me) a pretty compelling scenario. As usual, your mileage may vary. If there is no debt limit extension, the government will shut down. As most of the people in the WH these days are O’Bamaoids who did their level best to inflict pain during government shutdowns during the O’Bama years, expect the pain level to be cranked up the extreme. It is important to remember that there are NO LIMITS on these people. As long as they win the political fight, it matters not to them who gets destroyed in the process. This is not unlike algore’s concentric circle schematic to his staff during the 2000 Florida recount, where thought he was the very most important thing, the very inner circle at the center of everything, the rest of the citizens and the entire Republic be damned. This is who these people are. It is what they do. Once the shutdown takes place, expect the complete media – Big Tech orchestrated workup, complete with lockstep censorship of any alternative views. Republicans will be blamed for the entire mess early and often. Next push will be to lean harder on Sinema and Manchin to get rid of the filibuster. When and if they fold, the filibuster will be gone, which is what McConnell is fighting to preserve. What did McConnell actually do? He allowed 11 Republicans to step out of the way vote for cloture and allow democrats vote to extend the debt limit. No Republican will vote to approve the debt limit extension. It will take all 50 democrats and VP Harris to do that, and they will have to do the whole mess again in late December, at which time their political position will be just that much more precarious. While they are futzing around with this, they are not pushing the $1.5 T infrastructure or $3.5 T wish list legislation. Essentially this helps kill everything at least for a few months. Think of this as a tactical retreat (debt limit extension) to preserve a strategic advantage (filibuster). Whether you think this is reasonable or simply another cave by Senate Republicans is entirely up to you. From here, the longer we go without the big legislation passing, the better things look for Our Side, which may explain Chuckie Schumer’s ugly response on the Senate floor after the agreement. Schumer doesn’t give that sort of speech if he is winning as he is more of a rub your nose in it kind of guy.
2. Garland. Attorney General Merrick Garland joined the CRT wars on the side of the racists last week, promising to investigate parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. Garland, O’Bama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia in 2016 was at the time touted as a “moderate.” Happily, the Republican-led senate refused to move his nomination forward. Now that he is in charge of the (In)Justice Department, this corruptocrat is going to use the other corruptocrats of the FIB to intimidate parents who are attempting to stop racial indoctrination of their children in the public schools. His action was in response to a letter from a group calling itself the National School Boards Association demanding that the Harris – Xiden administration protect schools from the “imminent threat” of parents sending “threatening letters and cyberbullying” school officials. The association considers such actions “domestic terrorism.” Apparently Garland and his cabal of racialists agree, as Garland ordered the FIB to coordinate with the 14,000 school districts, for federal prosecutors to start identifying threats against school administrators (who by the way, have been lying through their teeth about CRT in the classroom), and “open lines of communications to report threats to administrators and teachers. The other thing fueling parental anger is teachers’ union demanded universal masking mandates, aka child abuse, for public school kiddos. Garland isn’t investigating that either. Garland is repurposing federal law enforcement as political enforcers. I don’t think this going to end up well for anyone in federal law enforcement. But they don’t know how to stop. Final little piece of this passion play is Merrick Garland’s son in law, one Xan Tanner, co-founder and president of Panorama Education, one of the major players in the teacher training and curriculum industry. They push race-focused surveys and conduct CRT trainings, all under the heading “Social Emotional Learning.” Nice when father-in-law gets to use the federal law enforcement apparat to help son in law succeed.
3. Wish List. As the days continue and happily no major democrat legislation is yet passed, stories about what is in the legislation continue to percolate out. Two come to mind this week.
- The first of them is a so-called pilot program to figure out how a mileage tax on vehicles will work. This was (and probably still is) in the Infrastructure Bill. There is $125 million to fund a national pilot program and state and local pilot programs. Apparently if they can’t get a federal one to work, they will let the blue states and cities do their dirty work for them. The program initially will be voluntary. It won’t remain that way.
- The second wish list item comes out of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who wants the IRS to have access to all bank accounts with over $600 balance and monitor transactions. When you hire 87,000 new IRS agents, doubling the current workforce, you gotta give them something to do. Apparently that something is looking over the shoulders of every single American with a bank account for the rest of our lives.
4. Terrorist. Yet another demonstration that a domestic terrorist is only someone who disagrees with democrats comes last week when the democrat senate confirmed the Harris – Xiden nominee for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Tracy Stone – Manning, a former eco-terrorist who cooperated with federal prosecutors to convict a fellow traveler, a tree spiking terrorist. Stone – Manning was an Earth First! member who sent a letter to the USFS in the late 1980s when she was at the University of Montana warning that trees scheduled to be cut down had been spiked. This form of sabotage is both a crime and per the FIB, and act of ecoterrorism. She was investigated in 1989 but was not charged until three years later when the ringleader was turned in by his wife, who also named Stone – Manning as a co-conspirator. She testified in 1993 against the ringleader in return for immunity. She edited a 1991 Earth First! journal mocking the feds for their inability to solve the crime, meaning she was involved up to her ears in it. She ended up being confirmed in a party line vote by democrat senators, 50 – 45. BLM manages some 245 acres of public lands and 700 million acres of mineral lands. For the Harris – Xiden administration and democrats in congress, apparently terrorists these days are only people who disagree with you. For if they agree with you on policy issues, they are good to go.
5. Sinema. One of the uglier demonstrations of the new left was the physical hounding of Senator Kyrstin Sinema last week at Arizona State University. Sinema has long taught a class at the university and was followed into the women’s restroom by a pair of so-called activists and filmed doing her duty. The pair claimed to be from what turned out to be a Soros-funded outfit calling itself Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA). The assault ends up being a violation of Arizona law. It is also probably a violation of federal law, though neither the FIB nor Attorney General Garland seemed to be too concerned, being currently focused on anti-CRT parents at school board meetings. For his part, President Xiden noted that this was simply part of the ongoing political process these days. The USA Today piece on the assault was quite supportive of the attackers. They claimed to be upset at her failure to support comprehensive immigration reform or either of the two massive democrat spending bills. The bathroom trip didn’t end Sinema’s bad day, as they took their animal act onboard an aircraft confronting her on her way back to DC. I’m sure this will garner her support for future votes (/sarc). While this sort of in your face foolishness managed to cow former Arizona Senator Flake during the Kavanaugh hearings, somehow, I think Sinema is made of tougher stuff.
6. Merck. Merck & Company announced an experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 that reportedly cuts death and hospitalization by half, not unlike HCQ, ivermectin or remdesivir. Merck failed to develop a vax and switched their efforts to a pill. They are going to ask the feds for emergency use authorization for the US and worldwide use. This is going to be very interesting when the approval is given, as the feds, the media and Big Tech have done everything humanly possible to destroy any similar use of HCQ or ivermectin over the last 18 months. Merck claims a 50% reduction in hospitalization or death with the new drug. In contrast, HCQ’s success rate was 75%. This pill will be highly touted and backed while less politically correct (and cheaper) therapeutics will be memory-holed. Like other therapeutics, the new drug does not work very good on patients already hospitalized. Merck already scrapped a drug they acquired for nearly half a billion dollars, indicating they plan (hope) to make LOTS of money off this particular Hail Mary, that is as long as they (with the assistance of the feds, the media and Big Tech) can keep HCQ, ivermectin or remdesivir off the market and out of people’s hands. The word “thalidomide” comes to mind with this particular last-minute drug.
7. Astro. If you thought Amazon Alexa, Echo, Google Nest, Sonos, or Siri were creepy intrusions into your privacy, Amazon just upped their game with Astro, a robot with an AI-powered camera that will roam your home, logging and reporting everything it sees back to Amazon’s servers. As with all these devices, it claims to be there to make your life easier, in this case common household tasks. It comes equipped with facial recognition technology and is capable of scanning faces of everyone in your home. It is being sold as the Amazon answer to the sci-fi concept of a robot butler. The problem is that the robot cannot navigate steps as yet and costs a thousand dollars. Remember that in a poker game, when you are unable to tell who the mark at the table is, this is good indication that YOU are the mark.
8. Lawsuit. Final story comes out of the democrat bastion of Fairfax, VA, one of the countries that helped turn Virgina blue, where the public school system is suing a special education mother for being the source of an unflattering Daily Wire story. The mother acquired the records via public records laws and passed them on to the Daily Wire. Another spec-ed mother who runs a blog that published the records was also sued. The documents are billing records that show how the Fairfax County Public Schools paid a law firm that hired current VA gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe as an advisor to do what the parents claim is their dirty work. His work included a request to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed by spec-ed parents who allege their children were systematically physically abused by educators. The school system claims the billing records were “mistakenly” released, containing information that would violate federal law, which systematic abuse of spec-ed kids usually does. The lawsuit highlights the question in the ongoing VA gubernatorial race of precisely who the public schools exist to serve? Parents? Government? Teachers’ unions? Something, anything else? For his part, McAuliffe, last week in the last gubernatorial debate opined that parents should have no say in their kids’ education. It is up to Virginia voters to demonstrate otherwise.
More later –
- AG