Interesting Items 01/10

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

In this issue –

1.  Kill Shot
2.  Starlink
3.  Snow
4.  Elias
5.  Guns
6.  Treatment
7.  Chicago
8.  Montana

1.  Kill Shot.  One of the things I do is listen to Scott Adams daily on YouTube and Locals.  I spend the time as a continuing education into the field of persuasion, something I am slightly less clueless about today than I was several years ago.  While Adams, as a Cali kind of guy infuriates from time to time with his views on the social side of politics (he calls himself to the left of Bernie) and the Zombie Apocalypse, the time spent learning persuasion is well spent.  His YouTube channel is as good a place as any to start.  With that in mind, he threw a persuasion kill shot at everyone defending the way elections were conducted in 2020.  Too many of us (Trump included) have argued on the level of children or idiots, calling the election unfair or claiming it was rigged.  Note that fairness has always been described as something invented to allow children and idiots to participate in an argument.  It never works.  And it hasn’t so far.  We need to change the framing in the persuasion world via a high ground maneuver.  Simply point out that a non-auditable election bears the full presumption of fraud.  This kneecaps the entire democrat election strategy and Jan 6 argument.  The response from the left will be that all the courts looked at all the claims and found no evidence.  Response to this is that the courts are the wrong vehicle for this solution, as they can only look at what is brought in front of them, what is within their jurisdiction, all within a very short timeframe.  In short, they are the wrong vehicle for a solution, at best addressing 1% at most of the problem.  If a government designs and operates a system that has no transparency and is incapable of being audited, that system must be assumed to be fraudulent.  The presumption of innocence only applies to the individual citizen.  For governments, it operates the other direction, as fraud must be assumed for any non-transparent system unless proven otherwise.  If Our Side adopts this, it solves the problem of democrat election fraud by calling for complete transparency and instant auditability.  It is also a great opening bid in deconstructing the administrative state. 

2.  Starlink.  Screams of pain from the CCP after their space station had a pair of near misses with Starlink satellites.  The CCP complained to the UN.  The first Starlink satellites were launched in 2018.  There are currently nearly 1,900 satellites in orbit, 150 of which are no longer functional.  The planned final constellation is 12,000.  As they put more into orbit, they generate national and international pushback.  We’ve seen their competitor Bezos’ Blue Origin take them to court to obstruct permits to launch, fly and operate.  Looks like other nations are getting involved in the game, with the CCP being the most recent.  Astronomers are complaining with increasing volume about light pollution from the satellite strings.  Even the European Space Agency got itself involved earlier this year.  The Chinese claimed their space station was forced to maneuver out of the way at least twice this year, calling Starlink “… the world’s biggest pile of space junk.”  Nice to see the CCP return to their roots, running their mouths in public.  Nobody has asked as yet why the CCP did not check the orbits of things that might conflict with their space station before launching it.  Note that the CCP has multiple options depending on how irritated they really are.  These range from diplomatic pressure, which will be interesting coming from the world’s source for illegal fentanyl, and the Wuhan Virology Lab virus leak, all the way to direct action against individual satellites (military shootdown), which would trash the orbit and everything intersecting that orbit for a very long while.  Most likely would be action against Tesla, trying to infiltrate the Chinese marketplace. 

3.  Snow.  To an Alaskan just out of a week-long period of subzero weather, who is in his third month of snow, news of a snowstorm in Virginia reported as a major disaster does not elicit much sympathy.  I do get it, though, as the farther south you go, the less experience you have with really ugly driving conditions.  The learning objective from this one is not the snow and ice storm, the day-long shutdown of I-95, but the political yammering following the event, most notably blaming the new Virginia Governor who has not even been sworn in yet.  The storm put 8-14” of snow on the area, preceded by a nice, slick layer of ice.  People were stuck on the interstates into and out of DC for 12 – 24 hours.  For some reason, Virginia Department of Transportation chose not to close the roads as the weather turned bad.  State agencies and outgoing Governor Northam were not responsive to media inquiries.  At this time, no analysis on what happened to the electric vehicles caught for hours on the interstate.  There is a horror scenario written for Miami dated shortly after electric vehicles are mandated by the feds asking precisely what would happen to a major evacuation from Miami for a hurricane when the electric vehicles stuck in traffic on the interstate north out of town simply run out of juice and have to ride out the storm on the roadway.  This is a known issue under discussion in the scientific literature since at least 2017.

4.  Elias.  The latest proposed lawfare axis of attack against Republicans by former Hillary campaign lawyer Mark Elias is an attempt to use the courts to disqualify Republican candidates before the election, clearing the field for the democrat candidate to win unopposed.  Elias was the Hillary campaign general counsel in 2016, responsible for hiring Fusion GPS which created the Steele Dossier and committing the fraud that became the Russia hoax.  He is also among the lead democrat attorneys waging lawfare to change election law to benefit democrats before and after elections.  He worked with the democrat party to exploit COVID-19 fears to change state election rules in the runup to the 2020 campaign.  He is well compensated, good at what he does, and effective.  Know your enemy.  Elias is currently spearheading dozens of legal challenges to various state redistricting maps.  Being out of airspeed and ideas when it comes to issues, democrats have decided to make the Jan 6 Fedsurrection the centerpiece of their 2022 campaign.  He plans on using Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to disqualify members from serving in congress.  This section states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

He referenced this in a couple tweets.  The operative terms here are insurrection and rebellion.  Since the democrats and media have defined any opposition to them as insurrection and rebellion, expect the lawfare to begin early and often.  And given that there are a number of Clinton, O’Bama and Biden judges on the federal bench, expect a lot of successful cases that will garbage up campaigns this fall, whipsawing candidates between disqualification and appeal just as the campaign season gets hot and heavy.  There are multiple arguments against this, first and foremost being that the courts simply have no jurisdiction.  Second it something called the Amnesty Act, passed in 1872, that applies to all persons.  Third, nobody who participated in the Jan 6 festivities was charged with insurrection or rebellion.  Steve Bannon has pointed out that Elias is the only thing standing between today and a 100-seat Republican majority in the House following the 2022 election.  Unfortunately, he is a junkyard dog bare knuckled street fighter.  Republicans?  Not so much. 

5.  Guns.  Even the libs in Hollywood sometime get it.  Today’s example is Beverly Hills Guns, the go-to firearms, security and training shop in Beverly Hills.  The rising crime and refusal of the Soros-backed District Attorney to prosecute those criminals in LA is driving residents to find alternate means of taking care of themselves, their families, and their property.  Local residents and those from surrounding cities are flocking to the store for firearms, ammunition and training.  The store is a consigliere service and operates on a by-appointment basis.  From a gun rights standpoint, this is a bit of a red pill moment.  We will see how far it extends when election season rolls around. 

6.  Treatment.  Another difference between the left and the right is the treatment of race as an issue.  At its most fundamental level, both sides view race as a Bad Thing, at least out loud in public.  The right chooses to minimize the practice of using race to make decisions, while the left tends to maximize it, usually in an attempt to get even with past inequities, real and imagined.  Today’s example comes with NY State’s announcement that they are going to ration the distribution of antiviral pills by race.  Whites must go to the back of the bus quietly and wait their turn, which will never happen.  Whites need to show proof they are at risk for severe illness if the drug is not dispensed.  Non-whites do not, clearly a discriminatory practice based on nothing other than race.  The excuse for this is a severe shortage of the drugs.  Monoclonal antibodies now controlled by the feds are also to be managed via the newly installed discrimination.  The courts rejected a Harris – Xiden attempt to disburse pandemic relief funds based on race multiple times last year.  This isn’t just happening in NY, as MN is also scoring candidates for access to the most effective anti-COVID treatment.  Being BIPOC gives you a higher score and in turn better access to the drugs.  This anti-white discrimination by both states is unconstitutional and being led by public health departments in both states.  I expect NY and MN are not the only ones doing this.

7.  Chicago.  The Chicago teacher’s union went on strike last week after the union voted to stop in-person education.  The excuse for this shutdown is the omicron spike.  The union may have overstepped a bit (or even a lot) with this one, as going to remote learning is a decision made by the Chicago health department which adamantly refused to make that decision.  There are other demands by the union before they return to work.  Chicago Mayor Lightfoot went off on the union, calling it an illegal strike, fear mongering and hysteria.  She also reiterated the damage remote learning has measurably done to black students in Chicago.  This sets up an interesting tradeoff, a public employee union manned mostly by white women damaging the education of minority students.  A red pill moment for Chicago democrats?  Unlikely.  However, it will very likely remove yet another major chunk of defensive armor from the teacher’s unions in Chicago and elsewhere, as the unions are now on the bad side of both a democrat administration and black parents.

8.  Montana.  Missouri is not the only state with a judiciary scandal today.  Montana has been in the middle of one since April when the Montana judges were caught lobbying against legislation that would require more accountability from state judges.  State lawmakers found out that there were multiple e-mails from state judges in opposition to the legislation and issued subpoenas for them.  State judges simply quashed all subpoenas including the state Supreme Court which did the same to subpoenas aimed at it.  The e-mails were highly embarrassing to the judges, detailing their lobbying and coordination to kill the legislation.  The judiciary also demanded the legislature be prohibited from publishing or reproducing any further information from the e-mails, ordering their immediate return.  This was all started by a citizens group of people who had suffered in family courts, false imprisonment, and more at the hands of corrupt state judges.  They drafted legislation that would set up a citizen’s board for judicial complaints.  There was parallel legislation that would allow the governor to appoint judges rather than a political panel (not unlike what we have here in Alaska).  Judges were polled, with 97% in opposition to the legislation.  Whether this passes or not, Montana citizens know they have a real problem, which is the first thing needed to solve it.  Alaska may be next up to bat in this discussion, as we have our own judicial problem. 

More later –

• AG