Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Paxton
2. Granholm
3. Grisham
4. FBI
5. Musk
6. ANWR
7. Lawfare
1. Paxton. The impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ended Saturday with him acquitted on all charges. The closest vote was 16 – 14, with all democrats voting in a block joined by a pair of Republicans to convict. This left impeachment supporters 6-7 votes short of what they needed to remove him from office. Paxton was immediately reinstated and issued a blistering statement, ending with a warning to the Biden regime to strap on their Big Boy pants because he and Texas will be coming after them. The trial in the senate was most interesting, with Paxton’s defense attorney utterly destroying prosecution witnesses on cross examination, likely why the House Speaker and his leadership didn’t allow Paxton to participate in the impeachment process. Nobody had any evidence that Paxton had done anything wrong. Even improvements on Paxton’s home, the vehicle the FBI and Do(In)J used to convict Ted Stevens in 2008, were never done. The funniest part was cross examination of a pair of whistleblowers who would not tell the Senate who had been paying their legal bills for them. While it will be a lot of fun to engage in no small amount of Trumpian payback for this outrage, I think Paxton and his supporters will be busy protecting Texas from the Biden regime for the next couple years. What happened? Depending on which liar you choose to believe (while not knowingly a liar, I may be depending on your POV suitably full of crap), this was entirely a Red on Red affair, Republican intraparty payback, led by the remaining Bush / RINO faction in the state angry at Paxton for having the temerity to defeat George P Bush 68 – 32% for the 2022 nomination for Attorney General Paxton went on to defeat the democrat in the general election 53 – 44%, a 781,000 vote win. Both Bush and the democrat in the general election made the same charges against Paxton during their campaigns as the House indicted him on 10 months later, charges voters statewide rejected. For democrats in the House, this was a target of opportunity, a chance to really muddy the waters, and hopefully damage an effective politician on the right. We will see how well it works. Any payback among Republicans should and hopefully will be done at the House district level over the next year, where House members who voted sight unseen in lockstep with democrats to impeach will have some ‘splain’ to do. For his part, I expect Paxton to go after both the Biden regime and election fraudsters (particularly those in Houston) with a chainsaw. It should be a lot of fun to watch. A lot of the charges about Paxton’s behavior in office and illegalities were made by people who worked for him in the Attorney General’s office, not unlike what Alexander Vindman did to Trump during the first impeachment. This means that Paxton and by inference, other elected statewide Republicans have the same problem Trump had, a disloyal, fifth column, deep state, working hourly to undermine and destroy them while in office. I predict a house cleaning somewhere along the line.
2. Granholm. (No)Energy Secretary orchestrated a 4-day EV road show over the summer to demonstrate how wonderful EVs were. Instead, the trip turned into a clown show, that at one point got the police called on the Secretary’s entourage for blocking a recharging station. The goal of a PR road show like this is to demonstrate what a dream and joy road trips in EVs are. What Granholm’s trip demonstrated was that EVs aren’t ready for prime time yet. Sure, they are shiny and new and quiet, but they don’t have long legs, take an inordinate time to recharge, and most importantly, the infrastructure is not yet sufficient to support them. The clown show ensued at Grovetown, an Augusta, GA suburb, where they were supposed to recharge. Of the four stations, one was inoperable, two were in use and the fourth was empty. Granholm’s advance team blocked it with a gasoline powered vehicle cordoning it off for Granholm’s use when she got there. A young family with a baby didn’t much like the extra wait (it was a hot, humid, southern summer day), and called the police on the advance team when they refused to move. Hilarity ensued. It turns out that it is not illegal to block an EV charging station in GA. That may change. It is normal enough for an entitled bureaucrat / politician to shove average Americans out of the way so they can butt into the head of any line. Normally the politician needs to be careful of the negative PR after doing this, while a bureaucrat doesn’t. Even Granholm’s choice of vehicles was a political mistake, opting for Ford and GM vehicles that are far less American than Teslas, which are the most American made EVs in the nation. Reason to ignore Teslas? The regime hates Musk, despite Tesla leading the way in both EV performance and infrastructure and has one of the highest customer satisfaction levels among EV owners. Additionally, Musk runs a non-union shop. The Biden plan to shove everyone into EVs ends up being little more than a way to shove people around and steer money into the pockets of Biden allies.
3. Grisham. NM Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham served up the opening bid in the next round of gun grabbing with an Executive Order suspending firearms concealed and open carry statewide. The order concentrates on Albuquerque. Grisham classified gun violence as a public health emergency, attempting to chain off the successful suspension of civil rights during the COVID years. It was a bold move, uncoordinated with anyone in the state, though I expect the Biden regime was watching closely and cheering her on. What did they see? They saw a blizzard of lawsuits, sheriffs statewide refusing to enforce the newfound law, and calls for her impeachment. Even gun grabber David Hogg came out against the EO. The attempt finally died when the newly elected state Attorney General, a man responsible for a rise in murder and violence rates in Albuquerque during his years as a Soros DA announced the EO was unconstitutional, and he would not be defending it. This prompted a rewrite to apply only to parks and playgrounds, still unconstitutional, by the way. Neither the attempt to suspend civil rights via executive edict nor the public outrage at the attempt should be any surprise, as once governments figure out they have a new vehicle to force the citizenry to sit down and shut up, they will use it early and often until they are forced not to. It is our job to make those attempts just as painful and dangerous for them as humanly possible. This was a first attempt. There will be more.
4. FBI. Today’s reminder that the FBI is now owned, operated, populated, and supported by complete liars comes courtesy of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which reports that the FBI has completely cooked the books on cases where civilians stop attacks. The Active Shooter database keeps track of active shooting incidents and defensive gun use that stops those attacks. Between 2014 – 2022, the FBI reported that armed citizens stopped 14 of 302 active shooter incidents. The FBI defines such an incident as those which and individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated public area. It does not include those related to other criminal activity such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. The CPRC found a total of 440 active shooter incidents and that an armed civilian stopped 157. There were another 27 incidents where an armed civilian stopped armed attacks, but the suspect didn’t fire his gun. The FBI reports that armed citizens stop 4.6% of active shooter incidents. That number is actually 35.7%. In 2022, that number is at least 41.3%, and if you exclude gun free zones, it is over 65.3%. Why the discrepancy? First, shootings are misclassified. Second, there are overlooked incidents. And the media bases their garbage reporting directly from the FBI’s garbage data, which is why we rarely see these reported or when they are, the citizen with a gun is tarred as a Bad Actor (Kyle Rittenhouse, for instance).
5. Musk. Last week’s orchestrated attack on Elon Musk was a widely reported claim that he refused to activate Starlink satellite communication during a critical moment in the Ukraine war. He was roundly painted as a traitor by all the Usual Suspects in the media, prompting solemn faced democrats to opine about the role of private companies in international affairs. Some even publicly called for the nationalization of Starlink. This claim fell out of a Walter Isaacson biography of Musk claiming Musk ordered his engineers disable Starlink satellite communications to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the Russian naval fleet in the Black Sea. The claim was that Ukrainian underwater drones lost connectivity at a critical point during the attack. Musk claimed that he was concerned about potential nuclear response from Russia. As it turns out, the entire Isaacson story was a lie. Musk noted that Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything. There was a Ukrainian request to activate Starlink coverage all the way to Sevastopol, with the obvious rationale as an attempt to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor in the Crimea. Had Musk agreed, it would have been complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.
6. ANWR. Last week’s Biden assault on Alaska was cancellation of all oil and natural gas leases in the 1002 Area of ANWR. ANWR was opened by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by President Trump in 2017. It took a few years for the Trump administration to offer the leases Dec 2020. They were bid on Jan 6 with Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) the only bidder. None of the producers bid on the leases based on President Elect Biden’s promise to shut down all oil and natural gas exploration on public lands. It only took him and his henchmen 3 years to cancel the leases. AIDEA promises to go to court to defend the leases. Note that there is thought to be as much oil and natural gas in ANWR as the Prudhoe Bay oilfields, at least a trillion dollars’ worth. Interior Secretary Haaland, whom both Alaska’s US Senators supported because she is a native (Laguna Pueblo) woman, justified the cancellation entirely on climate change grounds ignoring both US Law (the 2017 legislation was never repealed) and laughable promises to support Alaska’s ability to develop its natural resources. To celebrate the cancellation, Biden stopped over here in ANC last Monday and gave a dog’s breakfast of a speech in honor of the 9-11 attack 22 years ago. Alaska congress critter Mary Peltola rode back with him on Air Force One.
7. Lawfare. It was an awful week on the lawfare / dual standards of crime and punishment front. I will touch on several examples.
- A Fargo man who ran over and murdered a teen claiming he did so because the teen was a Republican extremist got five years in prison. He was initially charged with intentional homicide. Police interview with him had a political argument with the kid that escalated. The light sentence was partially justified based on a diagnosis that the perp was somewhere on the Autism spectrum, giving him a medical excuse for both driving while angry and subsequent murder of someone he didn’t politically agree with.
- Contrast that sentence with that of Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio, who received 22 years in Club Fed for his part in the Jan 6 festivities. Note that Tarrio was not at the protest but did contact other members of the group before the riot. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy with a side helping of terrorism, giving Judge Kelly, a disappointing Trump appointee to the DC Circuit, the excuse he needed to dollop up the record-breaking punishment. 18 years was the previous maximum.
- Three more pro-life protesters were found guilty Friday of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act during a protest Oct 2020. The three women, 74, 72, and 40 were protesting at a DC clinic notorious for late term abortions. The three women face over a decade in prison, a likely death sentence for the oldsters.
- Liberty Safe is under fire for giving FBI investigators in a Jan 6 back door access to an electronic lock on one of their firearms safes. The FBI did not present a warrant. They just requested access which the manufacturer fell all over itself to provide. Liberty Safe joins Bud Light as a brand name that has chosen poorly in the ongoing war between the feds and people who don’t much like them. While there was a search warrant for the premises, there was no warrant for the safe.
- Final story is happier, coming out of VA, where Governor Youngkin pardoned the father of a girl who was sexually assaulted by a student wearing a dress in a Loudoun County high school. The father protested the School Board coverup at a meeting, was arrested and eventually convicted of disorderly conduct under the former democrat administration. The sexual assault and complete denial and lack of accountability by the school district and its Board led directly to Youngkin’s election as governor.
More later –
- AG