Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Adams
2. Hezbollah
3. Musk
4. Robinson
5. Gun Control
6. Amy Wax
7. Racket
8. Campaign
1. Adams. Big political story this week was the indictment of NYC Mayor Eric Adams by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of NY. The 57-page indictment had five counts. These include: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery and to receive contributions from foreign nationals; wire fraud; two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national; and bribery. The feds have been busily rolling up people connected with Adams and his 2021 mayoral campaign. It is a standard fed technique, roll up all the minions and offer them leniency if they rat out someone higher on the food chain. From the indictment, Adams certainly appears to be a thoroughly corrupt politician. The problem is that the US (In)Justice Department under Merrick Garland has also demonstrated that they are thoroughly corrupt. Worse, they are also thoroughly politicized, going after their political enemies with every tool in their kit while ignoring those on their side of the political fence. Note that Hunter Biden wasn’t indicted or tried until Joe Biden was no longer useful to the Powers That Be. Adams claims that the indictment is entirely due to his very public complaints about the damage tens of thousands of Harris – Biden illegals dumped in NYC have been doing. These public complaints caused quite the stir, and apparently triggered the investigation. An alternate theory out over the weekend suggests that Adams response to the pro Hamas Rent-a-Mob action at Columbia so thoroughly embarrassed Harris – Biden that they had to take him out. Apparently, the plan was to ride the pro-Hamas takeover of campuses nationwide all the way to the WH. Adams discovered that over 90% of the demonstrators were in their 30s – 40s, and most from out of state. He got this from NYPD who did the arresting, who still love him. Once the word of organized astroturf protests got out, it was difficult for the regime to keep the pretense of organic protests alive. For this, I apply the guilty / innocent filter: Individuals are always innocent until they are proven guilty. Governments are always guilty until proven innocent. Being a black lefty, I do expect Adams to trot out all the racial excuses for his innocence, which will be a disgusting show. From here, this smells like yet another abuse of the legal system for political payback. Wouldn’t it be nice to actually have equal treatment under the law? Keep electing democrats and you will never see it again until it is used with equal vigor on democrats in response.
2. Hezbollah. How do you roll up a decades-old problem like Hezbollah? The very first step is deciding to do so. The next step is to decide how. The final step is execution. Looks like Israel’s decision was to first disrupt all of Hezbollah’s internal communications (last week’s pager and walkie talkie op) closely followed by decapitating the entire command structure. Do it right, and the pager / walkie talkie step uncovers their entire internal C3I network. It also has the added benefit of disrupting that network to the point where it is ineffective, forcing the remaining leadership to call a meeting at a known safe location that they didn’t know was no longer safe, which is what got Nasrallah killed last week. Even if you have upwards of 100,000 missiles stored for a mass attack on Israel, if you can’t coordinate a mass launch, they are effectively useless for what you want them to do. For a while, it looked like Israel was allowing the top leaders of Hamas (Sinwar) and Hezbollah (Nasrallah) to live while they killed everyone in their command structure. Fairly diabolical, as it gives them something to think about for weeks to months as the hammer was readied to drop on them. Hezbollah went pretty fast. Hamas is still in process, though I read that military objectives in Gaza are mostly met, as Hamas is no longer a fighting force, reduced to a guerrilla movement which will take a while to mop up. I hope the Oct 7 attack nearly a year ago was worth it, guys, as it gave Israel an excuse and an opening to roll up Iran’s strongest proxies in the Middle East. And Iran, for all its bluster, is next. Apparently, their leadership knows it.
3. Musk. There has been some movement in the standoff between Elon Musk and Brazilian censors led by Supreme Federal Tribunal Minister (Justice) Alexandre de Moraes. Over two weeks ago, De Moraes levied a number of account censorship demands against X / Twitter which were rejected by Musk. De Moraes then went after Starlink, seizing assets and revenue streams. Starlink for a while pulled its people out of country as did X / Twitter. Brazil’s embattled conservatives targeted by lawfare led by President Lula and de Moraes turned out in support of Musk in the standoff. Last week, this all changed as X / Twitter announced compliance with the censorship demands, making a lot of Brazilian conservatives very nervous. As the week wore on, both sides ratcheted back their demands, hardened public positions and rhetoric. What is actually going on? Unknown, though it can range from complete capitulation to a decision to pursue free speech goals by other means. My guess is the latter, though I can’t prove it. As of this writing, I would watch this progress for a few months before drawing any conclusions. Note that should Trump win next month, Brazil will be playing their current ball game under brand new rules.
4. Robinson. The other story that confuses me are charges aimed at Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. Nothing like a last-minute sex scandal to torpedo a Republican candidacy in favor of the democrats, and in a swing state, no less. The scandal is tied to a CNN report on “… graphic, offensive and racist comments” posted on an online porn site a decade ago. Robinson has denied everything. All the Usual Suspects are demanding he drop out of the race. And he lost multiple high ranking campaign officials via resignation when the brown stuff hit the rotating machinery. Is this true? Also unknown, though I would suggest they probably are real comments. A reminder to everyone: Any and Everything you post online is forever. It can’t be deleted. It can’t be removed. And it will be dug up by your political opponent and released at a time and place of their best advantage. And if they can’t dig something up, they will simply make it up and dare you to prove it wrong. Will this be enough to defeat Robinson? Unless something large changes, I would say probably. But it shouldn’t.
5. Gun Control. Like most of my readers, I am sick to my teeth of incessant calls for what the anti-gunners call Common Sense Gun Control. All of these laws are floated as a vehicle to increase public safety. But in design and execution, they are little more than attacks on the rights of law-abiding citizens, particularly gun owners and users. With this in mind, I did run across a suggestion at what is called common sense gun control what may actually do something to the criminal rather than the law-abiding. This one comes courtesy of Cam Edwards writing in Bearing Arms last week. He chains off a report that Baltimore seized more than 1,600 guns this year. Most of them were reported as stolen by their owners. There is a move by some lawmakers at the country level to make possession of a stolen gun a felony rather than a misdemeanor. State democrats just voted down legislation that would make stealing a gun also a felony. Writing this so that people who make good faith efforts to purchase or otherwise transfer a firearm will be a bit challenging, but at least have the discussion. Should this approach be adopted, and you open the door for repeal of another 20 existing (and useless outside of turning the law abiding into criminals) gun control laws. Might be a discussion worth having.
6. Amy Wax. UPenn finalized its punishment of conservative Law Professor Amy Wax for heresy. Wax has been under investigation and targeted for punishment for holding unclean thoughts and asking impolitic questions. Wax has been targeted since at least 2018 for questioning the DEI approach to admitting minority students, whom she notes aren’t keeping up with the rest of her students. This Double Plus Ungood observation triggered the expected reaction by her colleagues. Punishment included a one-year suspension, loss of half her pay, loss of her Named Chair, loss of summer pay, public reprimand, and a set of magic words she needs to say before she says anything in public (nice to see incantations are back, now if they can only bring back runes, tea leaves, bones and other magical paraphernalia that really work). Expect Wax to take this to court on free speech grounds and eventually win a large caliber cash award from UPenn.
7. Racket. Eric Hoffer observed that:
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Latest example of this is Utah’s experiment in moving the Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) number from 0.8% to 0.5%, first done in 2019. The move is roundly celebrated and cheerled by all the Usual Suspects in the government transportation world and media who busily and loudly egged them on. Propaganda out of that community echoed what we heard out of the Public Health community in support of COVID vax and boosters. The excuse is if the change saves one life, then it should be worth doing it, essentially the same argument the greens make for their energy solutions. And the NTSB among others dutifully trot out their little statistics in support of the reduction. The problem is that it isn’t the 0.5 – 0.8% BAC drivers having the crashes. Rather, it is the 1.0 – 2.0% BAC drivers having the accidents. Many of them are also repeat offenders. Target them and you target the problem. Of course, this doesn’t manufacture new criminals out of thin air. Happily, tech is quickly moving us to an acceptable (to the public) solution, UBER / LYFT / autonomous vehicles. While the autonomous world isn’t there yet, it will end up providing the same sort of safe solution that UBER / LYFT do today.
8. Campaign. The most notable event last week was release of a pro-Kamala letter signed by 741 so-called national security officials. Quite the Murders Row, with over 230 General Officers, 15 retired four-star generals and admirals, 10 cabinet secretaries, 10 service secretaries, and 148 ambassadors. For a bunch of bright guys, they are pretty dumb. They were organized by an outfit calling itself National Security Leaders for America. The letter is supposed to carry the same anti-Trump cachet that Anthony Blinken’s Oct 2020 letter signed by 51 intel officials calling Hunter’s laptop a Russian disinformation op. That letter did help swing the 2020 election in Biden’s direction. These idiots hope the 2024 version will do the same thing. Now that these clowns have self-identified, I can think of no better response than to pull all their security clearances on Jan 21, 2025, closely followed by the clearances of those who signed the 2020 laptop letter.
More later –
- AG