Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Indictment
2. Paxton
3. BATFE
4. Saudis
5. Choir
6. Fires
7. AI
1. Indictment. Hot story this week was Do(In)J’s indictment of former President Donald Trump on 37 counts in connection with what Do(In)J describe as “classified” seized in the Mar a Lago raid last year. With this, the Biden regime stepped smartly down the road to turning the US into a Banana Republic. In doing so, they all but insured that Trump will be nominated as the Republican candidate for president in 2024, something they probably want. It will be our job to give them what they want and give it to them good and hard.
- Julie Kelly, reporting in American Greatness has been for me the go-to reporter for the descent of Do(In)J into politicized “justice”, with investigations and prosecution based on party affiliation rather than actual criminal activity. She has been making the rounds of the talk shows, particularly Clay and Buck (Limbaugh replacement). She has long held that indictments of Trump are all but certain. Sadly, she turns out to be right. Last week, following the first round of federal indictments, she noted that the real threat to Trump was the next round of federal indictments expected in DC for charges in connection to the federally orchestrated Jan 6 protest. Now that the feds have demonstrated they can get an easy conviction of the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, a post-Civil War statute that had never had a conviction, Trump is next up to bat. And he WILL be convicted by a DC jury if indicted.
- Kelly also claimed that the Do(In)J lawfare against Trump and his supporters is not being led by Attorney General Garland. Rather, it is being orchestrated by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, a former, hard core O’Bamaoid. Garland is simply the smiling, elderly face of the corruption. Interesting that democrats have come to exclusively use the old magician’s trick of look at this hand, while the other one is doing its evil in out of sight. They did it during the Mueller investigation, where Meuller was the face of the investigation while lawfare attack dog Andrew Weisman ran the show. In the Biden WH, we have smiling, Scranton Joe as the front man for any number of O’Bamaoids running the show. And now in Do(In)J, we have Lisa Monaco working furiously to undermine the rule of law, using her department to target political opponents.
- One unintended consequence of the indictment is that the democrats have shown that not only Trump, but any Republican and their supporters will be treated like Hitler for the foreseeable future. Kelly thinks they simply don’t care what the rest of us think, as they believe they are bulletproof, able to do whatever they want, to anyone they want, without any concern about pushback. Kelly is very likely correct, as the democrats live in their own media bubble. The rest of the world, OTOH, operates with different constraints. It is never a good lifestyle choice to get into the business of believing one’s own propaganda.
- As to prosecutor Jack Smith, there are already at least three accusations of prosecutorial misconduct including but not limited to an attempt to bribe a witness and doctoring the grand jury transcript presented to the Miami grand jury. Smith was about to be indicted in DC on these charges when Smith realized that he had a jurisdiction problem and convened a second grand jury in Miami. We are in the fog of war on this and will see any number of stories favorable to the prosecution leaked to various media outlets like we have seen since Do(In)J started this process. Note that these sorts of leaks are illegal and federal felonies. An early example is a story last Friday about Trump attorneys resigning.
- One of the things that O’Bama promised was the fundamental transformation of the US. With the rise of the voting fraud machine that won the last 3 elections (2018, 2020 and 2022), we have fundamental transformation. I believe that machine was in operation starting 2010, but it took a bit to figure out how to do what they wanted to do and expand it to nationwide use. His second gift of transformation was complete politicization of the federal justice apparat, and creation of a new class of criminals, the political criminal. You democrats must be very proud.
- Final bit concerns the smarmy, sanctimonious notion that nobody is above the law. Every now and then, you get a word combination that completely unmasks what is going on. For example, every time Biden claims he is not kidding, what follows is a lie. When Soviet or Russian media start(ed) any story with the phrase “It is well known that…” what follows is a lie. Anyone who claims nobody is above the law paints themselves as an instant apologist for political prosecution of political opponents. Mike Pence and Lisa Murkowski, this means you. Nobody above the law? What rot.
2. Paxton. Two weeks ago, the Texas House impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and adjourned their legislation session two days later. Paxton was suspended from his duties the same day. I mentioned the impeachment and Jay Valentine’s reaction to it a couple weeks ago. Valentine believes this was done as a vehicle to keep him from prosecuting election fraud cases, especially in Houston, as a prelude to flipping either Texas of defeating Ted Cruz in 2024. At the time, I took a wait and see position. But as the days passed, the more it looks like Valentine was correct, particularly the impeachment and immediate suspension of Paxton. The next step in this passion play would be the trial in the Texas senate, which is no longer in session. If the impeachment was a vehicle to remove Paxton from the board of play, this is a good gambit, right up to the point when Texas Governor Abbott calls them back into session. Texas is infamous for lawfare, particularly in liberal Austin, most notably for Austin prosecutor Ronnie Early indicting then Governor Rick Perry on multiple charges in 2014. Similarly, Texas practitioners have been after Paxton since at least 2015 on an array of securities allegations. What good is a newly conceived tool to use against your political opponents unless you use it early and often? The final indicator that something is up is a federal indictment of a Texas businessman for making false statements to mortgage lenders to obtain $172 million in loans. This tells me that both Biden’s Praetorian Guard in the FBI and Lisa Monaco’s Do(In)J are fully involved, which means Valentine is spot on that Texas is next up to bat for election fraud.
3. BATFE. Interesting week for the anti-gunners of the BATFE. First up is the newly ensconced ban on pistol braces that went into effect June 1. Gun owners were given the opportunity to register firearms with the braces or destroy them and the attached firearm. Failure to do so will be considered a felony. Upwards of 40 million gun owners are now at risk. Perhaps a quarter million gun owners complied with the new rule by June 1, a whopping 0.02% of all gun owners. The new ban came fast on the heels of BATFE’s unsuccessful defense of the bump stock ban in Jan. Nothing like turning tens of millions of law-abiding citizens into felons at the drop of a hat. There is at least one local federal injunction against BATFE enforcement of the ban. From one perspective, the new ban is an attack on the disabled firearms users, as pistol braces started out as devices that made it easier for the disabled to control firearms. If you take a look at the flow, we had a similar ban on bump stocks that was eventually thrown out. BATFE rewrites the ban, changes a few words, and tries it again. Expect them to be similarly unsuccessful. The parallel story is firearms and marijuana users. If you take a look at the BATFE form you fill out and sign when purchasing a firearm, it asks about drug use. Lying on that form is a federal felony for everyone who is not Hunter Biden. The BATFE lost a case in front of a federal judge in OK in Feb in their attempt to deny firearm ownership to a marijuana user. The judge cited the SCOTUS Bruen opinion. They are back at it again, taking a hard line that until the federal government removes marijuana from the list of Schedule I Controlled Substances, it is illegal for marijuana users to own firearms. Interesting when the BATFE can pick and choose which court opinions they want to follow, but not surprising given the increasing lawlessness of this regime.
4. Saudis. The rolling disaster that is the Biden – Blinken foreign policy continued to grow its fruits. Sadly, they are bitter, anti-American fruits. First up is Saudi Arabia, which got themselves into a name calling exchange with the Biden WH. Over the few years of Biden regime infestation of the WH, the Saudis have become increasingly hostile to the US, and perhaps by extension Israel, who they were working closely with at the end of the Trump term in office. Over the same period, they have gotten chummy with both Russia and Iran. As much of what goes between Israel and Saudi is done out of sight, and closely held, I am not nearly as worried about a breach in their growing relationship as I am the very real breach between Saudi and the US. The question is what is causing that breach? No surprise to anyone that the Biden State Department has elevated human rights lectures to an artform any time they meet with the Saudis. And by human rights, I mean pushing the entire LGBTQWTF agenda for everything they are worth. Saudis being Muslim don’t take that all that well. No surprise. And they are displaying their displeasure at having their collective noses rubbed in the trough every time they meet with the US. In a similar manner, Africa is turning from the West. This time is the obsession with all things green in the West, especially food and energy production. The swing away from the West is why Russian oil sales are back to their pre-war levels. It is why the BRICS meetings are no longer marginal, ignored affairs, but the growth of a new geopolitical block of self-interested nations. Unreliable, expensive, brittle, environmentally unfriendly solar cells and wind are of little interest to nations in the developing world that see Western nations using 23 x more fossil fuel per person than the average African. Kotkin’s piece in New Geography is a good read. One thing he didn’t mention was the COVID lockdowns and restrictions in the West, most of which were rejected by Africa.
5. Choir. Last week’s exercise in democrat ugliness took place in the Capitol when a Capitol Policeman stopped a children’s choir from South Carolina while singing the National Anthem. The cop stopped the performance because he claimed to be afraid of offending someone. The choir had permission from House Speaker McCarthy for the performance. Capitol Police later lied about stopping the kids, first denying it, then saying they allowed the kids to finish the number. Mistakes were made. Miscommunication. Yada. Yada. Yada. These clowns forget that Nancy is no longer Speaker. And if they lie about stopping a performance of the National Anthem by a group of kids, what else are they lying about? Jan 6, perhaps?
6. Fires. Last week’s exercise in environmental lunacy took place in NYC, which spent most of the week downwind from forest fires in neighboring Ontario. This was a national story for a few days, with all sides reacting predictably. As of this writing, the actual story is still being written. Most problematic is that multiple fires started nearly the same time, which might indicate intentional arson, like the Islamists tried to do in Cali and the desert Southwest US a decade or more ago. My guess is that whatever happened was exacerbated by Trudeau forestry policies that limit logging or the ability to remove undergrowth, allowing whatever starts to spread quickly after what was a dry spring. There will be more coming out about this in the future weeks. Here in Alaska, we have some pretty large fires, most recently a very smoky summer three years ago here in ANC. For some reason, we didn’t get national coverage of those fires, though all the local greens made the identical claim of climate change as the cause.
7. AI. The military is going to use AI. And they are going to use it in live fire situations. Every nation is developing their own version(s), with governments, corporate and private groups leading the development. As development proceeds, things will be tested, tweaked, programmed and reprogrammed. Some of these will go well. A lot won’t. Last week’s AI story had a simulation run by the USAF of an AI operated drone. This particular simulation was an AI operated drone tasked with taking out enemy anti-aircraft systems. The AI learned that their operators were keeping it from destroying its objectives. Solution? Kill the operators. When the operators didn’t allow that solution, the drone went after communications facilities between the operators and the drone. The story went public followed by a quick retraction and vociferous denial by the USAF. This is why we do simulations. It is also a reminder how quickly things can (and will) go south with AI. Skynet smiles.
More later –
- AG