Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Colbert
2. Nancy
3. Redefine
4. Auten
5. Thiel
6. Amazon
7. Whitmer
8. Land
1. Colbert. Nine members of Stephen Cobert’s production crew were arrested July 16 for unlawful entry, identical charges for hundreds of Americans who were arrested after participating in the Jan 6 protest. Unlike the Jan 6 protesters, hundreds of whom have been languishing in jail for months, the federal prosecutor released them a couple days later, refusing to bring charges. Rationale for the different treatment? In order to maintain the Jan 6 insurrection hoax, Do(In)J and the DC federal courts MUST drop the hammer of all the Jan 6 participants. Those on the political left, not so much. This is the sort of politicized, dual track justice we have come to expect from the Merrick Garland Do(In)J and his FBI. Here’s where it gets interesting. There has been some pushback by Capitol Police, reacting with some noticeable level of (likely feigned) outrage at the failure to prosecute by releasing information about what the Colbert people were actually doing, the timeline of the visit, and requests they made for access that were denied. As the Capitol Police exists at the pleasure of the Speaker of the House, I expect they are seeing the writing on the wall of a new, Republican Speaker taking office in January and are furiously covering their corrupt backsides after gleefully participating in the Jan 6 hoax as a full partner for the last 18 months. They are trying not to end up like Carthage did after choosing to war against the wrong nation. Perhaps Do(In)J and the FBI ought to take note. Media reporting on this has been (as usual) abysmal, starting with the argument that the Colbert group was let in the building(s) by democrat congressional staffers. That was true on July 15. It was not true on July 16. Worse, Colbert requests for access on July 16 were specifically denied, but they entered the building anyway, after hours, raising Cain, harassing Republican congress critters. It was a democrat staffer who ended up calling the police on them due to the ruckus they were raising. They entered three buildings during their incursion. Matthew Graves, who is the lead federal prosecutor handling cases against at least 850 Jan 6 protesters, is now being pushed to release all Do(In)J paperwork on the incursion and video. I expect both of those will at best be memory-holed and at worst deleted.
2. Nancy. One of the things the CCP does when it believes it can get away with disrespecting the US is they become bellicose, belligerent, doing everything in their power to intimidate Americans at all levels. Anyone remember O’Bama’s trip to China toward the end of his second term when the airport refused to provide stairs so he could exit Air Force One? He had to exit the jet through a door and stair in the belly. For some reason Xi and his fellow corruptocrats didn’t try that with Trump. Last week’s episode concerned an Asia trip by Nancy Pelosi. Somehow, it became public knowledge that she was going to stop in Taiwan, news that drove the CCP into full run their mouth mode. A former editor of the CCP controlled Global Times Tweeted:
“If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is invasion. The People’s Liberation Army has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down.”
The original tweet including the shoot down threat was quickly deleted, but a later version is available via screen capture below. As a hired propagandist for the CCP, you don’t make this sort of threat without its approval. How did the news get out? Most fingers point directly at the WH, who is not all that happy with the tour. There have been other congress critters visiting Taiwan in the last couple years. Most of them flew in, visited, and flew out without the CCP having sufficient lead time to respond, obviously frustrating the CCP and the PLA. Good. As of this writing, it appears that Pelosi, who was in Singapore over the weekend, will be in Taipei within the next 24 – 48 hours. Watch this one closely, as things may just get real. Remember the last time the CCP tested a new president who they thought was weak? They sent a fighter to intercept a Navy EP-3E operating in international airspace over the South China Sea Apr 1, 2001. This was the second intercept since Jan 2001. This time around, the PLA pilot screwed up the intercept, hit one of the props, and the nosecone of the EP-3. The fighter was lost, and the pilot who did eject, did not live. The EP-3 was damaged and diverted into Hainan Island. Note that the EP-3 is an ELINT aircraft, listening to and recording anything available in the electromagnetic spectrum. The Chinese refused to allow the EP-3 to be repaired and flown off the island. It was disassembled and removed. The CCP ran their mouths early and often following the incident but chose not to screw around with Bush 43 again.
3. Redefine. One of the games played by the left is redefining existing words to mean what they now want them to mean. Weather has been redefined into climate or climate change. Woman has been undefined, that is, unless you are apparently a biologist. Abortion pills are being redefined as contraception. Latest redefinition took place last week in the face of economic reports that would put the US economy squarely in the middle of a recession just in time for the 2022 election campaign. The WH is simply ignoring the formal economic definition of recession in hopes that this will help their case in November. The redefinition is as usual being aided and abetted by Big Tech, with a quick and loud fight in Wikipedia. Other Social Media businesses are simply censoring all mention of recession in FakeBook, Twitter, and other posts. Sadly, they are getting better at censorship, doing it quicker and more thoroughly than they did in 2020. If you do something long enough, you get better at it.
4. Auten. It is always useful to know the Smart Players on the Other Side. One such name would be an FBI Analyst, Brian Auten. He is an intel analyst, an expert in all things Russia, and was instrumental in pushing the Russia collusion hoax. Auten was a key figure in Crossfire Hurricane, the counter intel investigation into Donald Trump. He pushed aggressively for surveillance warrants against Carter Page. He urged the FBI to get FISA warrants against Page based on information in the since discredited Steele Dossier. He and his colleagues failed to disclose that the dossier author was a known liar. Auten interviewed Steele’s primary source who told him that parts of the dossier were exaggerated or inaccurate and failed to pass that information on to the rest of the FBI outside his circle of political true belivers. Well, it turns out that Auten has his grubby little fingers smack in the middle of the Hunter Biden laptop story. He was behind an Aug 2020 report that suggested the laptop story was disinformation. This report was internally published two weeks before the NYP started releasing contents of the laptop and just before the 51 national security / intel officials signed a letter dismissing the laptop story as Russian disinformation. Auten’s job appears to be giving the Swamp information cloaked as actual dispassionate intel analysis that justifies their illegal and immoral traitorous actions. Sadly, he is good at his job.
5. Thiel. Wash Examiner ran a piece a week ago entitled “Peter Thiel is on the verge of winning his secret war for the GOP.” The article documents how Thiel-connected candidates are doing very well in Republican primaries this year, especially with his financial backing. Thiel is making a connection between his inner circle and the populist takeover of the Republican Party. I can’t tell by the tone of the piece whether the writer thinks this is or is not a Good Thing, though the end of the piece does take a pot shot at Thiel. I tend to think it is a Good Thing, as the working grass roots base of this party cuts across all artificial racial and ethnic categories erected by the left. Thiel, like Elon Musk, came out of PayPal. He also had his fingers in helping Facebook start up. He is now a billionaire. Thiel founded the Stanford Review. Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) wrote for the Stanford Review while at Stanford. Thiel made large donations to Hawley’s 2016 campaign in 2015 and 2016. This year, he is backing Republican insurgent senate campaigns in AZ and OH. Thiel managed to make himself a link between college-educated populist Republicans and Trump’s grassroots base. He has Trump’s ear and was an outspoken supporter of Trump. There has been some pushback against Musk and likely Thiel by connection mainly along the lines that “Musk is no conservative.” While true, his “leave me alone” libertarianism sure leaves a better taste in my mouth than the current lefty “shut up, (s)he explained.” We can do a lot worse than Thiel as a backer, I think.
6. Amazon. Another sign of the times is Amazon’s purchase of One Medical clinics for nearly $4 billion. This is a sign that the current Amazon CEO thinks an expansion into healthcare can be a profitable business decision. The VP of Amazon Health Services believes they think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention. One Medical operates a network of 188 medical offices, mostly in the cities and provides virtual medical services. Customers pay $199 annual fee to access its services. Think of it as a consigliere virtual medical service. My recent experience with local Doc in a Box services has been pretty ugly, with service on a walk-in basis being denied for those of us on Medicare by businesses who do not take Medicare. Offers to simply pay for services when provided are refused. The system, as it operates up here, tends to funnel cuts and burns into the emergency room at local hospitals, locations that ought not to be dealing with smaller, messier, problems. Somehow, this needs to change.
7. Whitmer. For gratuitous ugliness, you don’t have to look much farther than Michigan democrat Gretchen Whitmer. Last week, Whitmer vetoed $4 million in state funding for maternity homes, $2 million in adoption tax credits, and $10 million to provide factual information to pregnant women about adoption as an alternative to abortion, including the birth mother’s ability to establish a pre-birth plan. Essentially, Witmer is doing everything in her power to make abortion the single alternative to an unwanted pregnancy in Michigan. In parallel, she is pushing the Michigan courts to find a constitutional right to abortion in Michigan, which will be interpreted as anything from day 1 to the day of birth. The vetoes demonstrate quite nicely that the only thing that Whitmer and her fellow travelers value is abortion. Not mothers. Not fathers. Not children.
8. Land. One of the numerous bits of PC we are swimming in these days is the ubiquitous land acknowledgement, where the white oppressors are supposed to acknowledge that they are using land stolen from indigenous peoples who were there first. No acknowledgement that the various indigenous peoples also stole land from their less capable neighbors, not unlike all humans have been doing over the millions of years since we crawled out of the trees. It is almost as if one group of land thieves, squatters are somehow worse than others. Who knew? Happily, there is pushback against this gratuitous obeisance to White Original Sin. Most recent of these came out of University of Washington, where a prof filed a federal lawsuit against the university after being punished for refusing to put a land acknowledgement in his course syllabus. This is a case where the investigation is the punishment. And the prof is not taking it lying down. Good. More ought to be doing this.
More later –
– AG