Interesting Items 12/12

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

In this issue –

1.  Oath Keepers
2.  Twitter
3.  Autism
4.  Mirage
5.  NDAA
6.  Repeal
7.  Flop

1.  Oath Keepers.  Two stories out of the Jan 6 fever swamps involving the Oath Keepers this morning.  First is courtesy of American Greatness regarding a pair of men convicted by a DC jury for seditions conspiracy for their involvement in the Jan 6 protest.  Second comes out of Alaska, courtesy of The Federalist, where a democrat is using a lawsuit in an attempt to remove an elected Republican legislator from office. 

  • The Federal judge on the DC Circuit has publicly complained about her frustration that the government wasn’t producing harsher indictments against Trump supporters involved in the Jan 6 festivities.  In response, Federal prosecutor Matthew Graves brought indictments against 12 members of the Oath Keepers on Jan 12. 2022 with seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the protest.  They were accused of conspiring to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of the peaceful transfer of power, violating both the 12th and 20th Amendments.  As with all of these trials, it’s gonna be difficult to stop anything when you aren’t armed, and none of the Oath Keepers were armed.  What they actually did was stand around expecting a confrontation with AntiFa or BLM rioters and Capital Police.  They did manage to defuse an incident when an armed Capital Police officer went ballistic.  Two groups of Oath Keepers entered the capital through open doors about a half hour after the buildings were opened to visitors.  Prosecutors pushed the conspiracy angle relentlessly including nicely orchestrated video compilations of video not available to the defense.  The very government friendly judge did not allow any FBI informants to testify.  She refused to allow jurors to hear evidence about embedded agents provocateur.  Defense witnesses who saw the Oath Keepers act as barriers between Capital Police and unruly protesters were not allowed to testify.  Note that the last time a charge of seditious conspiracy was brought was 2010, and the judge tossed the charge.  The conviction of the pair makes them liable for up to 86 years of jail time.  Note that we have two white men, one from Texas and one from Florida hauled to DC, charged by a DC Grand Jury, tried and convicted in a DC federal court.  So much for the notion of trial by a jury of your peers.  Fueling this fire we continue to have the FBI, which has hidden all information about its informants and agents working the crowd, chiming in and referring to Oath Keepers as a terrorist organization.  Keep that in mind, as it feeds into the local angle.
  • Here in Alaska, we have a sitting state House member, former Army, who just was reelected to his 4th term.  David Eastman (and I know him), was hauled to court in a civil action by a democrat activist in Wasilla attempting to get a state judge to toss him out of office because he was a member of a terrorist organization, the Oath Keepers.  The political left tried this stunt in numerous state courts, attempting to disqualify candidates before elections over the course of the last year without success.  The Alaska case is the only one I know of going to trial.  The democrat activist is attempting to make the case that Eastman’s membership in the organization is a violation of his Oath of Office.  The second part of the lawsuit is a sneaky attempt to empower the state Division of Elections to conduct assessments of every candidate’s loyalty, meaning that voters only get to vote for candidates whose views have been officially approved by the state.  While I am dubious that Eastman will ultimately be convicted, I am convinced that the black-robed politicians in the Alaska judiciary are slavering to give themselves the right to vet and approve candidates, something that will give the lawfare aficionados among the democrats a free run at every single Republican candidate or office holder for foreseeable future.   In this case, the process is once again, the punishment.  Eastman is getting eaten alive by legal bills.  He does have a Go Fund Me page that is still operational.  Part of me wants the democrat to be successful and get the courts to bounce Eastman out of office, setting the precedent that any contact with any organization deemed to be terrorist is grounds for removal from office.  If the Alaska Supreme Court is foolish or arrogant enough to set that precedent, there are gonna be a lot of Anti-Fa-friendly and BLM-friendly democrats at the state and local levels removed from office in the not-so-distant future. 

2.  Twitter.  Since last week, there have been three additional tranches of Twitter files released, the most recent by Bari Weiss Monday.  The best description of what was going on over there is narrative poisoning, where whoever sets the narrative poisons the response.  In the case of Big Tech, it is the CIA (or other unnamed intel agencies) that sets that narrative.  An example of narrative poisoning would be a suggestion to write a single national building code.  Conservative response would be that this is a bad idea because of Federalism, centralizing everything in DC, etc.  All righteous and correct responses.  But these responses eliminate perhaps completely, any recognition that such a thing would eliminate building codes in all 50 states, decreasing the overall regulatory burden.  Most (all?) of us don’t see that.  In the Twitter world before Musk, their groupthink was such that they never considered any other possibility or even knew one existed, than the one they were working from.  They actually believed there was an insurrection, Trump and his supporters were Nazis.  It was genuine.  Social media companies do not create the narrative.  It comes down from above those companies, from the CIA (Brennan and Clapper are too prominent when lies need to be told) who feeds it into the DNC / media which in turn feeds it into social media.  Think mass hysteria fed by industrial grade, professional persuasion.  With the Trump stuff, we are seeing professional grade persuasion laundered through the news.  Twitter only talked about their concern for violence, never about their concern for the future of Twitter or the business.  This was also done with the Russia collusion hoax.  It is now a permanent structure that those of us on the political right do not have outside of Rupert Murdoch, and Murdoch doesn’t use professional grade persuasion.  Another way to describe this is the notion that our opinions are given to us. 

3.  Autism.  One of the sadder stories last week comes out of American Thinker, making the connection between autism and the ongoing trans mania.  Autism in the general community is estimated to run 4 – 14% of the population.  Those on the spectrum feel different, otherness, not understanding social cues, not quite fitting in, not quite connecting with other people, feeling less empathy.  Kids on the spectrum, like all teens, seek affirmation, identity, and attention.  Changing your gender is now a popular way to get that.  Rather than dealing with kids possibly on the autism spectrum, the so-called well-meaning social and medical professionals instantly put the kids on the transition conveyor belt, which ultimately leads to suicide after all the hormone treatments and medical mutilation.  We do not know precisely who is on the spectrum, and there are some indications that spectrum may have 2 – 3 times as many people on it than currently estimated.   And those undiagnosed kids are becoming fodder for the newly lucrative gender industrial complex. 

4.  Mirage.  One of my favorite writers at Watts Up With That is Willis Eschenback.  He is a data dink, crunching numbers in interesting ways.  He is in his 70s and has done some interesting things over the years.  His latest was The Mirage of Electric Vehicles.  The piece kicked off in response to a DoE study claiming that hybrid electric and Electric Vehicles saved about 690 million gallons of gasoline in 2021, 2.5 billion gallons 2010 – 2021.  Note that 61% of all electricity in the US is produced by fossil fuels.  In that generation, 45% of the energy is lost due to inefficiency in burning, 5% lost in transmission, and 5% lost in charging the battery.  So, less than a third of that 690 million gallons is savings, around 230 million gallons of gasoline in 2021, and 750 million gallons 2010 – 2021.  The problem comes with the actual use of gasoline in the US, about 370 million gallons / day.  Do the math, and you end up with the US saving two days’ worth of gasoline via EV use over the last 11 years.  Two. Days. Worth. Of. Gas.  Direct taxpayer subsidies for EVs spent over $10 billion to date.  That subsidy was extended until 2032.  Another $7.5 billion was just approved for EV charging stations.  Total cost?  We are spending at least $23/gallon for each gallon of gasoline saved.  Can you say economic suicide?  I knew you could.  For the class warriors out there, the EV subsidies generally end up in the hands of the top 20% richest Americans.  The problem with EV cramdown today is that they are an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem.  I agree the technology is rapidly changing.  I agree that EVs will be another option sometime in the future for transportation.  Then again, so might flying cars (which I would rather have than an EV).  But they aren’t there yet, and the cramdown only serves to artificially distort the marketplace, needlessly wasting money.

5.  NDAA.  The National Defense Authorization Act made its way through congress last week.  Initially, the legislation was a Christmas Tree that gleeful democrats, RINOs and assorted lame ducks tried to hang their favorite goodies upon.  There were some hair-raising stories over the last week or so about attempts to include the democrat’s media cartel legislation JCPA (Journalism Competition and Preservation Act).  In the end, there were enough Republicans in the Senate to get McConnell (who was reportedly onboard with its inclusion) and his fellow RINOs to back down.  In the end, the JCPA was stripped.  Better news came for vax opponents, with inclusion of language that repealed the Pentagon’s COVID vax mandate, the mandate that the Biden DoD has been using to jettison non-compliant military members from active duty.  I do not know if there is any provision to rehire those separated for refusing to take the vax.  Still, good news for military members.

6.  Repeal.  There are several groups currently working here in Alaska to repeal the Ranked Choice Voting ballot initiative passed Nov 2020 (Prop 2) that rewrote state election law.  As of this writing, it is a real mess, with various groups proposing various long, complex, wonderful rewrites.  Being a KISS kind of guy, I would propose a 3-sentence ballot initiative.  First sentence repeals all provisions of Prop 2.  Second would be to roll state election law back to whatever it was on Nov 1, 2020.  Final sentence would be for the new initiative to go into effect on the day the election was certified.  But KISS is not real popular with several of these groups, who number among their supporters various former legislators and attorneys general, who have managed to come up with versions 26 – 33 pages long.  From my perspective, our job for the next several months is to make a recalcitrant state legislature pass legislation to repeal Prop 2 or make their lives so uncomfortable and miserable they can’t do anything else.  The other thing that needs to be done is raise $4 – 5 million to run the campaign, something nobody is talking about.  Some of the groups are already into “my way, or the highway” mode.  One of the proposals has a very convenient union carveout.  While repeal of this monstrosity is necessary, the beginnings of this do not instill much confidence in success.

7.  Flop.  The final disheartening outcome from the Nov election took place last week when Republican US Senate candidate Hershel Walker lost to incumbent Raphael Warnock by just over a percent.  Walker was unable to get over 50% in either the general or the runoff.  Note that four statewide Republicans all got over 2 million votes, 51.4 – 53.4% in their races.  Walker was rejected by Republicans.  Why?  Hot Air ran a decent analysis on what happened.  As with everything else, your mileage will vary.  First point was the myth of the celebrity candidate.  Celebrity can help with name recognition.  It doesn’t replace competence.  Second is that the national governing party is so bad that voters will rally to any challenger in a general election.  Didn’t happen this year, as voters chose democrat incumbents over Republican candidates in multiple US Senate elections.  Third bad assumption is that the base wins elections.  In this case, they didn’t.  In Georgia this year (and in other states), conservatives win if they have prepared themselves to compete, give voters a positive forward-orientated vision, and stay away from extremist rhetoric and causes.  Candidates this election cycle who focused on 2020 and Trump lost.  Those who focused entirely on Joe Biden and the future generally won.  Walker was Trump’s candidate in Georgia.  Voters who elected four statewide Republicans in Nov clearly rejected that.

More later –

– AG

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