Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. FBI
2. Lawfare
3. Lisa
4. Putin
5. DeSantis
6. Trans
7. Persuasion
8. Common Carrier
1. FBI. The FBI had themselves quite the week, starting with seizure of Mike Lindell’s cell phone. The games then extended to numerous whistleblower complaints that they were manufacturing white supremacists out of thin air at the behest of the Garland Do(in)J. This one led to an FBI agent being escorted out of a local FBI building in Florida because he complained about the political activity of his beloved agency. So much for respecting whistleblowers. The transition of what was once a respected law enforcement agency to a democrat Stasi continues apace. Two extended thoughts for your consideration:
- Seizure of cell phones and computers is fast becoming a problem, as the game currently is to grab the device, and make the user wait some number of months to get it back. As our entire lives are on those devices, this quickly turns into punishment by process. It takes very little time to take a backup of phone, laptop or desktop. Congress is going to have to get itself involved in limiting this sort of abuse.
- Second would be the problem of Ray Epps. The FBI and Do(In)J have told us that they are not going to tell us how many FBI or other federal informants participated in the Jan 6 festivities. When Republicans demand answers and promise investigations, they are making it their problem. This is a mistake. We need to make it Do(In)J’s problem. How? We make it their problem by publicly stating we assume there were FBI and other federal informants participating in Jan 6 and will proceed on that assumption. Base that conclusion on the Whitmer kidnapping fiasco, where FBI informants outnumbered idiots. Then force Do(In)J to prove otherwise. Make it their problem. Which it is.
2. Lawfare. One of the hallmarks of Banana Republics is the use of the legal system to go after political opponents of the regime currently in power. We are seeing it on a daily basis with the abuse of Merrick Garland’s Department of (In)Justice FBI. We are seeing it increasingly used at the state level, most recently NY Attorney General Letitia James civil indictment of the Trump organization for hoodwinking banks on his property valuation. James is apparently unaware, perhaps intentionally so, that banks routinely conduct their own valuations on property before agreeing to loans. The game is generally played with commercial property owners choosing a high valuation for their property and the lending institutions choosing a low valuation. The loan, if it happens, is for a valuation somewhere between those two numbers. With that in mind, A second District Attorney in Albany (state capital, residence of current NY Governor Kathy Hochul) announced last week that the Albany County District Attorney’s office and the State Board of Elections were starting an investigation into possible duplicate signatures on nomination petitions for Independence Party gubernatorial nominee Lee Zeldin. There has been yammering about legal signatures for his petition ever since it was first filed in May. Timing of the announcement was beyond convenient, as Zeldin is now polling within a few percent of Hochul. It was a busy week in her campaign, as the same day as the investigation was announced, Hochul was tied into a pay to play sole source contract with Digital Gadgets. The owning family has so far given Hochul around $300,000 in campaign donations. In return, Hochul signed off on a no-bid, $600 million contract with Digital Gadgets to supply COVID tests at roughly twice the commercial rate for the testing kit. Note that Digital Gadgets is not a manufacturer of the kits.
3. Lisa. Alaska senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski is in the fight for her life in her reelection run this year. Her minions knew it was going to be tough, and figured they needed rewrite the way Alaska conducts statewide elections to make sure she didn’t have to make it through an actual Republican primary to make the ballot this time around. They were successful doing that with a ballot initiative in Nov 2020 that needed over $7 million in Outside money and an assist from the state courts to hit the ballot. There are a lot of reasons to be unhappy with Lisa over the last six years, most of it being her seething hatred of all things Trump. She managed to have the worst working relationship with the former president of any Republican not named Mitt Romney. This hatred shows itself from time to time, last week triggering one of the stupidest comments out of her in the last 25 years. On a local podcast, she opined that Alaskan voters ought not to question the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Rather than acknowledge concern about the FBI being used as political enforcers, Stasi, for the administration, she prattled on claiming that “Trump brought it upon himself”, channeling once again her inner Orange Man Bad. Murkowski has been in DC for 21 years so far, about 19 years longer than she should have been, and in doing so, has become One with The Swamp. One of the things the Alaska congressional delegation has been good at doing over the years is bringing home the bacon, free money given to political supporters. Former US Senator Ted Stevens was very good at it. And Lisa learned her craft at his knee. She is quite proud of her role in passing the infrastructure legislation and promises to keep working with the Biden administration should she be reelected. As a Republican, that sort of loud and proud position would be a political death sentence. As the vast majority of her voters in this election are democrats, that would be a help rather than a hindrance. I continue to believe that her support has topped out, as there are far more people out there that are done with her than those who support her. And we are doing everything humanly possible to ensure Republican US Senate Candidate Kelly Tshibaka beats her in November.
4. Putin. I have mostly stayed away from predictions about what is going to or not going to happen in the ground war in Ukraine, mostly due to the propaganda coming out of both sides. Thought at the beginning that a Russian blitz was the initial plan, crushing the nation in a week or so, jailing the current government, and installing a friendly puppet like he did in Georgia. When that didn’t happen, and the longer it went on, worst the outcome for Putin would be. I think strategy switched from a quick win to the old, scorched earth Soviet Strategy, of simply leveling Ukraine and killing everything that moved. Remember that annihilation was one of the Principles of War for the Red Army. Some things never change. Last week, Russian President Putin demonstrated that things are going poorly for him and his military by taking three public actions. First, was thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against those who would threaten Russian territory. Easy peasy, that. Simply define capture Ukraine as Russian, and then you are defending the Motherland with everything you have. Second, was a partial mobilization of another 300,000 conscripts to fight. This may go as high as another million. Of course, you need to arm them and get them to the front lines. Logistics are hardly a Russian strength these days. Finally, a halt in travel out of the country for men aged 18 – 65, apparently the next cadre of conscripts. You don’t take these actions if you are winning. You take these actions if you expect to be dead if you don’t win.
5. DeSantis. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made big news with an airlift of 50 illegals into the heart of blue sanctuary virtue signaling in Martha’s Vineyard, MA. Talk about kicking an anthill. The left came completely unglued. The illegals, happy to be in their new digs, were quickly evacuated to a holding facility at a military base on Cape Cod. At the same time, he also introduced illegals into Chicago. Mayor Lightfoot immediately removed them from Chicago and dumped them into surrounding counties. From a persuasion standpoint, this was brilliant. You sanctuary city guys aren’t worried about our problems with millions of new illegals? Fine. We’ll make it your problem. And he did. Texas Governor Greg Abbott continues to bus illegals into DC, with Delaware being next on the list. The Bexar County Sherriff, a democrat, announced an investigation into the Martha’s Vineyard flights but was quickly unable to find any Texas laws that had been broken. This was an event that everyone won. DeSantis gets national attention on his problem. Texas gets rid of another 50 illegals on someone else’s dime. The sanctuary cities get to demonstrate their sanctuary-ness. And the media gets to emote endlessly on the unfairness of it all (remember that fairness is a child’s argument). Note that the DeSantis crew were recruiting illegals for the trip. They all went happily and voluntarily, though there is at least one lawsuit in the process of being created in MA.
6. Trans. I last wrote about the scam that is the ongoing trans ideology in late August. That story was triggered by investigation into Boston Children’s Hospital and the first trans lawsuit aimed at doctors and health officials filed in Oz. Since then, it has become apparent that this movement is little more than a money grab by a medical establishment unable to grab anymore free COVID money. Latest example comes out of Vanderbilt University Medical Center via a Daily Wire investigation. The medical mutilation of children, aka “gender reaffirming treatment” is a big bucks enterprise. Surgeries bring in around $40,000/patient. Hormone treatment, aka chemical castration, can bring in several thousand dollars per year with only a few visits per year. Female to mail surgeries could bring in a whopping $100,000/patient for the hospital. This sort of mutilation is intensive with multiple follow-on visits required. It is any wonder that the evil people participating in this world are going everything humanly possible to make sure parents DO NOT KNOW what is going on until it has started and too late to reverse? Vanderbilt, which has been doing this since 2018 is so committed to the new money stream that they are actively threatening medical staff that choose not to play along with unspecified consequences. COVID was a disruptive event for health care, destroying all public credibility for public health at all levels nationwide, a good result. That disruption continues as the left rolls out the cult of the trans money grab. There will be a reckoning. And it will not be a pretty one as the cult is sacrificing the bodies of confused children (and most of us are confused at varying levels at various times in life). Being young and dumb ought not to be a permanently disfiguring or disabling malady.
7. Persuasion. One of the most visual outrageous stories late last week was a shop teacher in Ontario, Canada who showed up to school in a dress, huge artificial breasts, makeup and a blonde fright wig. Everyone clanged to the expected public positions. Those in support of the trans cult were full throatedly in support. Those of us who aren’t had some combination of yuck or worse. But there may be a longer game underway here, with the teacher trolling the school, the school board, and his union. An anonymous posted made a claim that the teacher is most assuredly not woke, and may be simply trolling the wokesters at the school and the district. He reportedly got in trouble the previous year for not going along with the trans stuff, opposing trans bathrooms. He was apparently almost fired. Now that he has adopted the other side, the game appears to be to trigger a firing and then sue for discrimination, which would be a fun jury to be part of. This is the only explanation that makes sense.
8. Common Carrier. Given the near seamless connection between Big Tech and DC democrats these days, the action in opposition to censorship needs to happen at the state level. First out of the chute is Texas, with legislation that defines Big Tech platforms as common carrier utilities, making it illegal for them to censor users. The opinion by the Fifth Circuit was a 2:1 split in support of Texas that will likely make it to the SCOTUS. Some of it is quite lively reading, with the judge noting that the company in question is inverting the very definition of First Amendment protection of free speech for their own purposes. The implications are staggering, in Big Tech’s view, anyone can cancel accounts of anyone who sends an e-mail, makes a phone call or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate or business. Worse, the platforms hold that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself open to everyone (like Facebook and Twitter), then having cemented itself as the monopolist modern public square, can turn right around and unapologetically argue that it can ban all speech its employees want to ban (like all speech about COVID therapeutics). Note that the history of common carrier legislation stretched all the way back to the telegraph. At the turn of the century, legislators were concerned about the use of the amazing new technology to manipulate the flow of information when doing do was in the economic or political self-interest. The first of these laws was passed in NY. They started being applied to the telephone in 1885. I think Big Tech is next up to bat. I also think they will lose badly.
More later –
– AG