Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Automation
- Terrorism
- Resistance
- Suicide
- Replacement
- Seals
- Flynn
- Rice
- Automation. Illegal immigration is supported by the dual edge sword of democrats wanting to create more democrat voters via importing more victims to put on the government teat, and the Chamber of Commerce types among Republicans who want to keep wages low. Both sides of the coin are profoundly distorting – first to the voting rights of the rest of us, and second to the basic economics of employment. Ran across a story last week out of Bloomberg View that describes the nearly complete automation of cotton picking. Our robot masters have replaced slave labor at last. Now if the Chamber of Commerce types will finally figure it out. New design cotton strippers work eight rows at a time. They cost a whopping $700,000 a pop but can harvest 100 – 120 acres a day. The owner interviewed figures that the new stripper replaces up to 1,000 people, being able to pick as much cotton a day as that many used to do. Robots are taking jobs, menial jobs, and have been doing so for over 60 years. While there are lots of winners and positive economic fallout from automation, there are also losers, particularly among those with low skills and little ability to learn new skills. This has been particularly hard in the old Cotton Belt. It will spread as automation is adopted in other parts of the economy. There must be a humane, uplifting way to address this without resorting to the profoundly destructive century-old Blue model. It will be up to we conservatives to figure out how to do that – variations on the Salvation Army’s motto of a hand up, not a hand out. Illegal immigration has so far helped fend off this sort of automation in farming and construction. But the longer you fend off adoption of disruptive technology, the faster that and more disruptive that adoption will take place. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-09/lessons-from-a-slow-motion-robot-takeover
- Terrorism. Somebody sent Donald Trump Jr. a letter filled with white powder. His wife, Vanessa Trump opened it and was hospitalized until the powder was tested and found to be non-hazardous. A hazmat team was called to the scene and began decontamination procedures shortly after the incident. Democrats on Twitter had a grand old time yucking it up. This got the attention of both local law enforcement and the Secret Service. The By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) progressives are living the dream, now celebrating terrorism against political opponents. They went as far as to dox Trump Jr. By all measures, this is terrorism, aimed at political opponents. Sooner or later, someone on my side of the political fence is going to return the favor, and I don’t think that the left is going to enjoy playing under the new rules. Look at how far the left has gone over the last decade. They’ve trotted out a Bernie supporter who tried to take out the Republican house leadership at a baseball practice. They sicced the IRS on TEA Party groups organizing to participate in the political process. The FIB and the intelligence community can purchase manufactured evidence, lie to a secret court, and use it as an excuse to spy on political opponents. Now they are yucking it up after one of their fellow travelers sent fake Anthrax to one of Trump’s kids. And the silence from democrat leadership and the media is deafening. Why? Because anything goes, especially when you have labeled your opposition as inhuman or subhuman. This will not end well, and it is up to the democrat leadership to take the lead to rein it in. https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/02/15/progressives-must-stop-using-terror-to-try-and-intimidate-conservatives-n2448847
- Resistance. Democrat appointees on the federal bench are doing their level best to obstruct and delay Trump immigration and national security efforts. This normally involves democrat lawyers judge-shopping in the Ninth Circus or the newly self-identified Fourth Circus, bringing lawsuits against Trump travel ban EOs and his announced end to DACA. Last week Wesaw both, with a second Ninth Circus judge in SF who wrote an opinion that rejected Trump’s analysis of O’Bama’s DACA as unconstitutional. The opinion equates a disagreement on policy to a lack of policy. While ending DACA may be a policy choice that the court disagrees with, that policy choice belongs to both congress and the president. These judges are precipitating a constitutional crisis, one where they are trying to wrestle policy decisions on immigration away from the Executive branch. In the first opinion rejecting Trump’s decision to end DACA, a federal judge in NY wrote that the government “… can’t come into court to espouse a position that is heartless.” Not unlawful, but heartless, which is not his job. In the long run, this sort of judicial resistance to Trump and his turn away from O’Bamaism, is going to do as much damage to the federal courts as it has done to the FIB, DoJ, and the intelligence establishment. Perhaps it is time. https://lawfareblog.com/judicial-resistance
- Suicide. One of the sadder stories I came across last week was at PJ Media. It discussed the growing problem of male suicides. Over the last 20 years, young men are suiciding out at 4 – 6 times the rate of young women. And they are doing the deed at a younger age these days. Today the life expectancy of men is seven years less than females, compared with a two-year difference a century ago. Today, college age men make up only 37% of students on campus. Public education at all levels has become remarkably hostile to men and boys. And they are responding accordingly. Family Courts have long been hostile to men, leaving the vast majority of children of divorce to be raised by women, single women. The problem is worst in the black inner cities, though whites at all levels are doing their level best to catch up. Today’s emphasis on #MeToo, where any accusation is sufficient to lose a job, get kicked out of school, is yet another step on our long national embrace of misandry as a way of life. https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/men-misandry-suicide-rates/
- Replacement. Here in Alaska, when a legislator steps down, the governor appoints a successor pending the next election. We’ve had three so far: a pair of Bush democrats chased from office for sexual harassment and abuse, and a Republican State Senator who stepped down to run for governor. Traditionally, the district party forwards three names to the governor and he selects from the list. Politically, the governor will try to appoint the nominee most in line with where he is taking the state. The process is modeled after the judicial selection process, though not actually done in law. The replacement of the two Bush democrats worked normally, with the governor’s office working with the district democrats to get a decent appointee. One district really botched the list nominating a pair with outstanding legal problems. The replacement for the Republican hasn’t gone all that well and is still in process. The district forwarded three names. A few days later, the governor appointed someone not on the list from Talkeetna who was a long time Walker supporter. This gambit was intended as a vehicle to flip the current Republican majority in the senate. The senate majority refused to seat the nominee. The governor responded with a fit of pique and appointed one of the three who promptly withdrew his name citing his need to stay local to work as a care provider. Some pro-life social media postings didn’t help his case any. Bad words were exchanged on all sides with the governor and Republican Party Chairman getting into it via letter exchange and other names were supplied by the district. As of this writing the seat has yet to be filled. http://mustreadalaska.com/dunleavy-seat-senate-republicans-turn-governors-pick/
- Seals. One of the little games played by the greens is the use and abuse of the Endangered Species Act to designate endangered species and then lock up the territory they live in as habitat necessary for their survival and recovery. In recent years, they have glommed onto the loss of ice on the Arctic Ocean half a century from now due to manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions. The first designation was polar bears, whose numbers were significantly depleted a couple of decades ago due to over hunting. More recently, they have started designating polar bear food, ringed and bearded seals, as threatened and endangered. Once again, the rationale is the loss of Arctic Ocean sea ice half a century from today. Since hunting stopped, polar bear numbers have rebounded nicely, with today’s population being as large and healthy as it has been in the last half century. Susan Crockford’s Polar Bear Science is a great place to keep up with polar bear news. The two recently designated seal populations are not in any way, shape or form threatened or endangered, numerically abundant and vibrant. Although there is a very real danger that an overabundance of polar bears will end up hunting them into oblivion over the next few decades. The Ninth Circus sided with the greens last week, rejecting challenges to O’Bama-era designations of the ringed seal as endangered, much to the glee of Big Green. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13022018/climate-change-arctic-ringed-seal-endangered-species-act-court-ruling-sea-ice-habitat-alaska
- Flynn. Looks like the presiding judge in the Michael Flynn case has the Mueller special investigation in his cross hairs. Last week, the Mueller team was ordered to turn over all exculpatory evidence to Flynn’s attorneys by Feb 22. Mueller’s lead attack dog, Andrew Weissmann has a long history of hiding evidence from defense attorneys. He was lead counsel of the FIB under Mueller, so Mueller knows very well what he does and how he does it. Looks like Flynn was strong-armed into a plea via being flat out run out of money and threats to do the same thing to his children. At the same time, he agreed to the single count of lying to federal investigators, the lead FIB investigator, Peter Stzrok and his boss at the time FIB Director James Comey both had stated that they didn’t think Flynn had lied to investigators. Comey told congress this. Did Mueller’s team withhold this from Flynn’s lawyer or did they just not care? Did Comey lie to congress (always a possibility)? There is no small speculation that the presiding judge is about to throw out the plea bargain. Perhaps he will order Flynn’s legal fees paid from Mueller’s budget in the process. While I’d love to see Weissmann jailed for diddling the process, I don’t think that id going to happen. http://www.independentsentinel.com/likely-motion-overturn-mike-flynns-guilty-plea-works/
- Rice. O’Bama’s designated liar and henchman, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice drafted an e-mail to herself documenting a 5 Jan. WH meeting between O’Bama, Sally Yates, James Comey, herself and VP Biden. The memo was sent 15 minutes before President Trump was sworn in, literally her last official act in office. It appears to be a Memo for Record (MFR) aimed to cover her sorry, lying backside and with it the backside of her boss, O’Bama. A letter from Senate Judiciary signed by Chairman Grassley and co-signed by subcommittee Chair Graham asks 12 questions about the meeting documented by the MFR. It appears that the assembled decided to withhold details of the FISA warrant obtained against Carter Page that allowed the intelligence community and FIB to surveil the Trump campaign and incoming administration from Trump himself so as to allow Plan B to continue unabated. Think of the enormity of this scheme. The five most important people in the O/Bama administration actively conspired to use the law enforcement and intelligence capabilities of the US government against the duly elected president, and intended to continue to do it after he was sworn in. http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/373738-rices-odd-memo-did-obama-withhold-intel-from-trump
More later –
– AG