Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. BATFE
2. Epps
3. Starship
4. Brand
5. TikTok
6. Goolag
7. Gag Order
1. BATFE. Our Good Friends (/sarc) and Dedicated Public Servants (double /sarc) from the BATFE are back at their old tricks of setting the stage once again for private gun confiscation. The most recent brick in their wall is publication of a new rule that “innocently” requires universal background checks for all firearms sales. The new rule falls out of 2022’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, where the idiotic Senator John Cornyn (R, TX) and several other senate Republicans joined with democrats rewriting the definition of who the feds consider a gun dealer. They blithely brushed aside concerns with the standard, nothing to see here or worry about response. As it turns out, there is something to worry about, as the new BATFE rule requires people who sell multiples of one type of pistol (say, a bunch of different Glocks from a collection), sells firearms for any sort of profit, auctions firearms, or sells online (seller or host) to get a Federal Firearms License (FFL). This is remarkably bad faith rule writing given the ongoing Jihad against home FFL owners all summer long by the very same BATFE. It all but makes private sales at gun shows illegal. It makes anyone who advertises personal firearms for sale a dealer. It essentially criminalizes private sale of firearms as a federal felony by using suitably murky language in both the legislation and the rule, allowing the BATFE to do whatever it chooses to wherever and whenever it wants to. BATFE decides you are one thing, and you spend the next decade in federal court proving something else. As usual, a Republican surrender on tightening firearms sales a bit has been turned into a gaping opportunity the gun grabbers and the BATFE flying monkeys are driving an 18-wheeler through. D Parker writing in American Thinker last week posted a moderately hair-raising piece describing how the new rule sets the stage for confiscation. The sequence of events starts with criminalizing private sales, which this rule will do. Somewhere along the line, the gun grabbers will claim the new controls aren’t working as well as they should, and push for legalization the currently illegal databases the BATFE keeps on firearms sales, thus creating a national gun registration. Historically, in every nation that has confiscated firearms and started murdering their citizens, registration was always the first step, and if they have their way with this new rule, democrats are on the doorstep of making that a reality. The rule also inverts the presumption of innocence. The new assumption under this rule is that if you fall under the vague definition of who may or may not be a dealer, you will be prosecuted as a felon if you do not possess a FFL. Note the other thing happening here. If the feds can figure out how to control private property by eliminating private sales for firearms, how quickly do you think they will expand their new precedent to control other products they have designated as verboten like gas stoves, gas heaters, electric fans, toilets, etc? All this took was cowardly Republicans in congress acting like cowardly Republicans one time.
2. Epps. Last week, Do(In)J indirectly confirmed Ray Epps was a fed, an informant / agent provocateur working to inflame the mob on Jan 6. Their confirmation came in the announcement of a plea bargain for a single misdemeanor charge for disorderly or disruptive conduct of government business in a restricted building or grounds. If convicted, he faces up to a year in Club Fed. Matthew Graves, the US Attorney for the DC District handled the case. Note that this is the same Graves who has been gleefully getting decades long sentences and prison time for grandmothers protesting outside abortion clinics and people who were not even at the Jan 6 protest. Epps is highly visible in video egging the crowd on to enter the Capitol, something he apparently was supposed to do. Various hosts on FNC have accused Epps of being a fed, prompting his defamation lawsuit against FNC. The charge and plea bargain will most certainly help Epps with his lawsuit, which may be the actual reason for the indictment and charge, his masters assisting his lawfare attack on FNC. I would expect little to no jail time, an appropriate sentence for everyone who participated in Jan 6, something Graves has refused protesters who were not federal provocateurs. Media coverage was predictable, even in Breitbart which ran pieces by AP, UPI and AFP all calling a Epps a target of right-wing conspiracy theories. They also painted him as a Trump supporter and a former Oath Keeper. This sort of orchestrated, lockstep media reportage is something we have come to know and love out of the Biden regime, where what the regime wants public is made public. They don’t even bother to change many of the words anymore. Thoughts to the contrary are buried, even by the search engines. This is how we know something funky is going on. Not only is the fix in, but the feds and their media lackeys want us all to know that the fix is in, completely disregarding any pushback.
3. Starship. Robert Zimmerman, writing in Behind the Black reported last week that everything is in place for the second attempt to launch the Starship stack. Problem is that the FAA is waiting on the Department the Interior, Deb Haaland’s little mile high regulatory speed bump, for their approval before they issue the launch license. Interior is in turn waiting for US Fish & Wildlife Service, the locus of green obstruction to launch operations out of SpaceX hub in South Texas. USF&WS claims to be concerned about environmental damage to the barrier island just offshore from where the launch pad is located. Note the change in procedure here. Normally, all the coordinating agencies sign off before the first launch. Afterwards, if nothing changes, those approvals stand, and the FAA approves subsequent launches each time one is requested. Under the Biden regime, the other agencies get a vote. This is unprecedented, demonstrating that the regime will do anything humanly possible to obstruct and financially harm any person or business that is disfavored. And make no mistake that Musk is currently on the fecal matter list. Zimmerman believes the next launch may not happen until Nov or even into next year. Note that this particular barrier island sits only a few feet above sea level, a height that is regularly overtopped by Cat 2 hurricane storm surges, natural environmental destruction. Note also that Starship is vital to national defense, as the aerospace companies are no longer able to support national defense space launch needs. The Biden regime is going after it to make a smarmy little political point. Had Musk not purchased Twitter, none of this would be happening. OTOH, he is defending what little remains of our First Amendment free speech rights, which are all but gone.
4. Brand. Speaking of free speech, we have ongoing cancellation of British actor Russell Brand. Brand poked his head above surrounding din of the acting world by embracing conservative and libertarian positions, and like all nails above the surface, he must be hammered down. Bang. Bang. Bang. The tool used was the reliable Me-Too sexual assault, sexual harassment, and rape charges. Brand was sexually active, claiming hundreds of liaisons, not unlike what Wilt Chamberlain claimed half a century ago. There are a lot of problems with that sort of activity, but in the modern world, the most critical problem is the one of false rape / sexual assault claims. There are numbers floating around that claim anywhere 5 – 50% of all women will claim rape / sexual assault for those who have multiple hookups. The longer you get from the claimed date of the actual event, the more suspect those claims are and the higher the percentage of claims are. Remember the hundreds of false claims made against Brett Kavanaugh. They were all years in the past. Ultimately, they were all completely false. So far, Brand had tours cancelled, YouTube demonetized, comedy specials removed from Paramount+. Rumble refused to kick him off, prompting the cancellation jihadi to go after Rumble advertisers, using Brand as a vehicle to shut down yet another free speech platform used by those of us on the political right. You have to give it to the left, over the years, they have managed to set up a cancellation machine par excellence. And it works almost every time it is used, relying mostly on cowardice of corporations and the infestation of those corporate HR departments and boardrooms with like-minded leftists. This is why earlier I noted that there isn’t a lot of free speech left out there. From here, it looks like the left is clearing the decks of all right-wing voices in the runup to 2024, which should tell us all how important a win is to them.
5. TikTok. One of the most useful political analysis tools we have is the notion of following the money. If you can figure out where the money is coming from and who benefits from it, you can generally figure out why something is happening. For instance, control of a majority of congress critters by the Mexican cartels is the most logical explanation for congressional tolerance of the destruction of the southern border and influx of illegals. This influx is absolutely despised by the citizenry, yet congress won’t lift a finger. Follow the money directly to the cartels. With that in mind, I have long wondered why we are unable to get any congressional action on banning the CCP weapons grade propaganda / brainwashing tool aimed at young American girls / women called TikTok. TikTok is so dangerous that the CCP does not allow its use even in China. Why have we been unable to get it banned over here? One answer is billionaire Jeff Yass, who is fighting a TikTok ban. Yass is one of the few billionaires to donate to Republicans. He also donates substantial money to the Club for Growth, a libertarian PAC. For some reason, the WSJ ran an extended piece on Yass and his support for TikTok a week or so ago. It was picked up widely. Reason for the hit piece? My guess would be twofold. First, as one of the few billionaires to support Republicans, it would be a way to help fend off Republican wins in 2024. Another would be to damage Club for Growth in the eyes of the political right. Sadly, Rand Paul (R, KY), who has been pretty good on most things while in the senate has not supported any TikTok ban, prompting concerns that he too has been purchased. Make no mistake, TikTok is a military grade persuasion weapon aimed squarely at our young girls and women. It is fully owned and controlled by the CCP. It gathers data and sends it all home to servers located in China. It must, must be shut down.
6. Goolag. Anyone else remember when Google’s corporate slogan was “Don’t be evil?” That time is long past though, as they morphed into Goolag, perhaps the definition of modern-day evil. Goolag has likewise morphed into whatever a worldview that whatever Goolag is involved in is by definition not evil. We have a pair of Goolag stories this week. First is search engine expert and psychologist Robert Epstein on Tucker last week who has data supporting a belief that Goolag shifted a minimum of 6 million votes in favor of liberals and democrats. All of this was done by massaging search results. This is the bare minimum estimate, as they haven’t even considered what the maximum could have been. Second story which perhaps tells you everything you need to know about Goolag and its current leadership is a Business Insider story that Goolag and TikTok are in the testing phases of a partnership, aiming to enhance search features within TikTok, creating a seamless and integrated user experience. You don’t partner with TikTok unless you want to push CCP propaganda.
7. Gag Order. Latest little gift from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is a late Friday night request for a gag order on former President Trump. The request was crafted in such a way so that Trump will be prohibited from any criticism of anything associated with the Biden regime during the election campaign, making any claims that Biden is behind the prosecution, or even claiming he can’t get a fair trial in the District of Columbia illegal. This is unprecedented interference in a presidential campaign, something the political left has gotten really good at since the O’Bama years. Smith is salivating over the possibility of jailing Trump for contempt after he violated the gag order. And make no mistake, Trump WILL violate a gag order. We will see how intelligent Judge Chutkin is. She had the request in her hands for a week so far. I expect a quick approval of the entire thing, with a partial approval taking a bit longer. We will see how smart she is. Will she give in to her inner leftism and give the overreaching Smith everything he wants? Or will she ignore it? My guess is that she will attempt to thread the needle between her dislike of Trump and all he stands for and Smith’s predictable overreach. Once issued, expect Trump to appeal claiming election interference by both Smith and the presiding judge. Expect him to be eventually successful upon appeal.
More later –
- AG