In this issue –
1. 10-year-old
2. Alba
3. Trump
4. Starship
5. Discovery
6. Hoax
7. NY Gun Law
1. 10-year-old. One of the oddest stories over the last couple weeks was that of an Ohio 10-year-old getting pregnant, and immediately whisked away to Indiana for an abortion. The story was breathlessly presented by the usual pro-abort advocates as proof, proof, I say, of the inhumanity of the pro-life crowd. Problem is that little of the story actually took place as reported nationally, and there are real questions about the actual pregnancy, as it is pretty difficult for a 10-year-old to get pregnant. A week ago, the Ohio Attorney General went public with the announcement that he had scoured law enforcement statewide and found no reports of any girl that young impregnated. That announcement was contradicted a few days later with the announcement of the arrest of a 27-year-old illegal on rape / sexual assault charges connected with the case, an arrest that instantly made the Attorney General look at best uninformed. After arrest, the perp admitted to the rape. Here’s where it gets weird. The mother defended the perp. So, what happened?
- Appears that an Indiana aborto-doc, a female pro-abortion activist named Dr Caitlin Bernard, somehow got herself involved. Instead of notifying law enforcement of an underage pregnancy, she took the story directly to local media, who ran with it. Barnard has been in this sort of trouble before, for failure to report underage abortions. Indiana Right to Life dug thru consumer complaints in 2018 and found 9 docs involved in 48 complaints. Barnard was one of those. Barnard listed the perp at 17, when in reality he was 27. Theoretically, this should result in the loss of her medical license.
- Victory Girls had the best writeup of the festivities late last week. Turns out that Bernard filed a report with the Indiana Department of Health on July 2, the day after the Indianapolis Star reported the story. Nobody bothered to notify anyone in Ohio. Essentially, she chose to play aborto-gotcha, using a lazy and incredibly partisan media to make a smarmy little political point. And it worked, as the fossilized inhabitant of the WH used the story to bash Republicans and the SCOTUS on Feb 7. Mom’s defense of the perp smells a lot like the typical coverup, with the perp likely being her boyfriend or significant other. Children can be removed from the home for failure to protect them from a dangerous situation.
- As an aborto-activist, Dr Bernard knows the exact legal limits of her chosen profession. She is out fundraising as I write this, not in the interest of getting the kid the professional help she needs, but rather to fund more abortions and legal services.
- The Ohio Attorney General noted that a 10-year-old can get an abortion in Ohio under a medical emergency exception to the law. But if you are actively trying to cover your backside and that of your boyfriend, crossing state lines to hide it is a tried-and-true avenue. Mom’s problem is that she chose an aborto-activist who in going public blew the whole thing up.
- Final point on this is aimed directly at the media, who took the story, spread it instantly nationwide, and used it as a blunt instrument against Republicans for a solid week in the abortion wars. Not a single reporter, editor, or publisher asked the obvious question (does Ohio prohibit abortions based on rape or incest?) for most of a week, being content with assisting the lie (hoax) spreading far and wide. Only when enough facts started dribbling out and that position became untenable, did long delayed fact checking begin, most notably by the Washington Post which by July 10 listed the story as unverifiable. Legal Insurrection had a pretty good analysis of media play in this a week ago.
2. Alba. Woke prosecutor story of the week comes out of NYC this week, with a NYC bodega (small grocery store) clerk Jose Alba fending off a knife attack, killing the second attacker, being arrested and charged with murder. A black chick enters the store. Doesn’t have enough money to pay for a bag of chips. Clerk tells her to put them back. She gets enraged and gets her ex-con boyfriend, who pulls a knife on the clerk. In the ensuing knife fight, the boyfriend gets killed by the clerk. Somewhere along the line, the woman also pulls a knife and gets it into the clerk at least 3 times before leaving. She is currently roaming the streets a free woman after attempted murder. The woke NYC prosecutor Alvin Bragg did not lift a finger to charge either of the perps with attempted armed robbery, a Class B felony, punishable by a maximum of 25 years in prison. Early in his term in office, Bragg decided that armed robbers would only be prosecuted for petty larceny, as long as no victims weren’t seriously injured and there was no genuine risk of physical harm to anyone. Penalty for petty larceny is up to a year in jail and $1,000 fine. There are two things that makes this interesting. First is the surveillance video footage of the attack. Second, is that Bragg serves at the pleasure of NY Governor, currently Kathy Hochul, up for election in November. Bragg’s office charged Alba with murder, initially demanding a whopping half million-dollar bail. After public outcry, that was lowered to $50,000, $5,000 posted. The screaming lefties at Go Fund Me removed a fundraising page for Alba’s bail and legal fees after $20,000 had already been raised on the grounds that it was a violation of its terms of service, criteria never applied to either BLM or AntiFa rioter defense accounts. Manhattan DA Bragg is a Soros DA, recipient of over a million dollars funneled into his campaign last year. Social Justice DAs like Bragg are more interested in prosecuting cops or people who defend themselves than actual criminals, and people are starting to notice. They tossed Chesa Boudin in SF. LA DA Garcon is next up to bat. If Cali residents can start tossing elected wokesters, can NY be far behind? Expect this episode to have some impact on the gubernatorial race between Kathy Hochul and Lee Zeldin this fall. How much remains to be seen. It also depends how many NYC residents are sick and tired of being afraid in their homes or stores or streets.
3. Trump. Donald Trump came to Anchorage a week ago, doing a rally in support of his endorsed US Senate (Kely Tshibaka) and Congress (Sarah Palin) candidates. The rally was held on the UAA campus, Alaska Airlines Center. Campus lefties made an attempt to get the event cancelled that was quickly swatted away. The Center seats 5,000. Lines formed the day before. Doors opened for first come, first served seating at 0600. Trump spoke around 1600. For the most part, a good time was had by all. Trump was in good form, going after RINOs with large caliber weapons. He and Alaska senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski don’t get along at all, and he saved most of his biting invective for Lisa, who is up for reelection in November. Alaska incumbent governor Mike Dunleavy was also endorsed by Trump. Dunleavy did not make the rally, likely because he is not all that popular among Republicans for failure to fight for conservative causes, though he will most likely be reelected. Palin was there, though. Interesting dynamic in the congressional race, as Palin, a rock star on the national level, has no problem with campaign funding, though most of it (like Murkowski’s) is from outside Alaska.
4. Starship. The first flight-ready Starship first stage booster is on the pad in South Texas, prepping for a possible launch this month or next. Last week during testing, its base was engulfed in a brief fireball. SpaceX is proceeding with an ambitious testing schedule on this one, as they have never launched the first stage. They not only hope to put the Starship upper stage, which has flown multiple times and landed successfully at least once, into orbit, but fly the first stage booster back to the launch pad and catch it. The fireball took place during what is described as an engine spin start test. There are 33 upgraded Raptor engines on the super heavy booster and another six on the upper stage. Given the carnage of early Falcon testing and flights, I would not be surprised if there were multiple failures until they learn how to operate the new machinery. We do hope for all success, as they are aggressively moving the ball down the field. Achieving an operational Starship stack will be as huge for SpaceX as the ability to recover Falcon 9 first stages and fairing halves.
5. Discovery. There is a lawsuit filed by the states of MO and LA aimed at uncovering the connection and work between the Biden administration and Big Tech. This connection has been long suspected. Last week, a federal judge granted the state requests for expedited discovery aimed at the Biden administration and the companies suspected of colluding with or working at the behest of the politicians. At issue is censorship of conservatives, violating their First Amendment rights. How and why is this being done? Are the feds demanding this and the companies complying? Are they actively working together as fellow-travelers in the political wars? Something else? If the companies are doing this, it is not a clear First Amendment violation, and you attack it treating the companies as common carriers. But if there is active collusion between government agencies and the companies to censor speakers, viewpoints, and content currently disfavored by the regime, the companies can no longer hide behind the fiction that they are independent corporate entities, as they are acting as an arm of the various agencies of the government. The discovery granted last week allows the states to look under the hood of this machine for the first time.
6. Hoax. I had a partial list of Scott Adams’ list of democrat anti-Trump hoaxes a couple weeks ago. What follows is the complete list as of a week ago. A couple thoughts about this list. One is that if they have done this many in the last 7 years, starting in 2015, what is to keep them from popping another one just in time for the Nov midterms? Second: The harsh sentences and time in solitary inflicted on those arrested in connection to the Jan 6 protest are entirely being done to prop up the Jan 6 insurrection hoax, to make it real in the eyes of American Citizens. The Republican presidential candidate ought to announce he (or she) will issue complete pardons on everyone arrested, held, tried, and convicted on Day 1 of the term in office. Hoaxes as follows:
- Russia collusion
- Steele dossier / Russian hookers
- Russia paying bounties on US troops killed in Afghanistan
- Trump called neo-Nazis participating in the Charlottesville protests fine people
- Trump recommends drinking or injecting bleach to fight COVID
- Trump overfed Koi fish in Japan during a visit
- Trump had protesters cleared with tear gas during the Church photo op
- Elections were fair and clean because no court found fraud
- Jan 6 was an insurrection to overthrow the government
- Hunter’s laptop story was Russian disinformation
- Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of The Beast on Jan 6
- Border patrol agents whipped Haitians
7. NY Gun Law. I was originally going to write about the in-your-face outrage that was the recently passed and signed NY gun control legislation that turned the entire island of Manhattan into a sensitive, gun free zone. This sort of legislation is not uncommon from the political left. We saw a similar style of legislation out of the NY legislature a few years ago that all but legalized infanticide, passed to the cheers of democrat legislators after the vote was complete. A couple years before that, we saw similar legislation proposed by the newly ensconced democrat legislative majority in VA that went even further, attempting to legalize post-birth abortion. Happily, that legislation did not pass following public outrage. Over the weekend, we found in-your-face legislation making its way through the Idaho legislature removing exceptions for rape and incest and banning over the counter sale of morning after (artificial miscarriage) pills. While there are probably good arguments in support of all three actions (especially the morning after pills), my gut reaction is that we aren’t gonna beat their crazy with our crazy. Somewhere along the line, less crazy ought to be on the list of desirables.
More later –
– AG