Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Al Baghdadi
- Impeachment
- Lisa
- Empty
- ML&P
- Chrome
- Katie
- Al Baghdadi. Best news of the week came out of northern Syria when a special forces operation took out ISIS leader Al Baghdadi. This likely prompted the hastily called vote on the impeachment inquiry rule a few days later, so as to not allow Trump to control the discussion for more than a few minutes. Trump announced the results of the operation Sunday morning and really went after Al Baghdadi, telling the media that he “died like a dog”, “whimpering, and crying, and screaming all the way.” The team entered the cave where he was hiding, apparently with a combat service dog that had a video / audio feed. He was cornered and blew a suicide vest killing himself and three of his children. Another team took out his second in command a day or two later. Media reaction was classic, and Trump himself was in his best troll mode, passing along a photoshopped photo of the dog getting a Medal of Honor, which instantly sent the media into hysterical fact checking frenzy. Better yet, the Washington Post ran a story about the operation that referred to Al Baghdadi as an “austere religious leader.” The reaction to this was hilarious, as conservatives, led by Donald Trump Jr. Tweet “Jeffrey Dahmer, connoisseur of exotic and locally sourced meats, dies at 34.” The string following it mentioned similarly friendly headlines for all possible dead dictators, murderers and movie villains. Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber from Die Hard even made the list. Nothing like a little bit of ridicule aimed at the media to start the week with. The thing about this is that this mission wasn’t supposed to happen, and if it did, it was supposed to turn out just like Jimmy Carter’s Desert one disaster. Yet it was done, successfully done. And none of the Deep State moles still working for John Brennan, James Clapper, Joe Biden or Susan Rice in the intel community said a single word about it. Perhaps they know who all those people are by now, which is yet another happy thought. Trump was even able to use Nancy Pelosi’s walk out of her last WH meeting against her, reminding everyone that he was planning to notify democrats of the mission at the meeting before it took place (he didn’t), but Nancy walked out. Final piece of this is that the strategic planning for this may have been more extensive than anyone realizes. Limbaugh is of the opinion that the announced Syrian withdrawal was done in concert with this mission to set the stage and get Al Baghdadi to drop his guard a bit among all the US media, never Trump and think tank caterwauling. I’ve not seen anything yet that supports this point of view, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if true. All in all, a very good week in the Middle East.
- Impeachment. Sadly, the reaction to all of this was a vote last Thursday to approve a rule codifying the impeachment inquiry. The rule passed 232-196, with all but two democrats voting for it. Former Republican, now independent Justin Amash (I, MI) voted for it. The rule formalizes the secret proceedings and does not allow Republicans to call or interrogate witnesses without the approval of democrats. What appears to be in the works is the following: House Intel and several other committees are going to prepare several reports based on their secret hearings. Once complete, these reports will be forwarded to House Judiciary for action on impeachment, which will end up being public, though the outcome is already known. Transcripts of their interviews / depositions may or may not be included. If included, they will be appended to the end of each report and heavily redacted. I would expect the reports to be as floridly hair-raising and read much like Schiff’s fraudulent opening statement on the Ukraine telephone call transcript. Last week we also found out that the actual whistleblower was a 33-year old Biden, Clapper, Brennan, Rice associated CIA analyst who got fired from the WH in 2017 for leaking to the media. He was told what he knew by an Army LtCol working in the WH who is an expert on Ukraine. Democrats and the media paraded this guy around DC for a couple days in dress uniform showing him on his way to and from various House committees. He was on the call and was “concerned” that the President was changing US foreign policy. Anyone else see the fundamental error in this? Who sets US foreign policy? The President? Or some self-appointed Army LtCol detailed to the WH? In the military, you have the choice to either follow orders or resign your commission. This guy did neither. Instead, he chose to burrow in and undermine, leading to the observation that the Deep State would rather hunt Trump and his people than ISIS. Not an inaccurate observation. The impeachment hearing rule presents a serious threat to Trump, as democrats in the House will use the resolution as a vehicle to obtain Trump’s tax returns and spend the entirety of the next four years sorting through them in their continuing effort to drive him from office. The only way this ends is if we do the same thing to democrats in the ballot box that we did to them in 1972, 1984 and 1994.
- Lisa. Alaska’s senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski, tapping into her poorly hidden Orange Man Bad worldview was one of three Republican senators who refused to sign on to a resolution condemning the secret impeachment inquiry in the House. The resolution also calls for a formal vote to begin an impeachment in the House. Murkowski joins celebrated Twitter user Pierre Delectro (Mitt Romney) and Susan Collins refusing to support the resolution. She likely got some serious pushback from locals here in Alaska and followed her intransigence with some suitably mealy-mouthed words about the right of the House to set their own rules. No mention of her reaction to House rules that violate due process clauses of the 5th and 14th Amendments. Something about Donald Trump rubs Lisa Murkowski wrong, and she takes every opportunity to rub his nose in it, something which will hurt this state. This is not Trump’s problem. Rather, it is Lisa’s. And she should know better than to put her state at risk. This started with the Billy Bush tape during the 2016 campaign which gave her the excuse not to support him for president, went to the Kavanaugh hearings which gave her the excuse to not vote to confirm, and last week with the Graham – McConnell resolution. During the Kavanaugh hearings, Lisa demonstrated that she could be rolled by the left, particularly the feminist left. As such, they will never, ever leave her alone. And if you read the material at the second link above, you will see those same in-state leftists are ginning up the machine to pressure her to vote to remove Trump from office, not that she needs all that much help.
- Empty. For pure comedy gold, it is difficult to beat the negative persuasion of a campaign photo of AOC squad member Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) and Bernie Sanders (I, VT) standing in front of empty shelves at the Brightmoor Food Pantry in Detroit. Nothing like reminding everyone what socialism really means than remind them of empty shelves and lines. Democrats. Bringing Venezuela to America since 1913 (Woodrow Wilson).
- ML&P. The Railbelt area of Southcentral Alaska is blessed (cursed?) with eight small electric utilities. Here in Anchorage, various parts of the city are served by three of them – Municipal Light and Power (ML&P), Chugach Electric (largest) and Matanuska Electric (MEA). Chugach and ML&P have been in negotiations for a few years on a sales agreement to purchase ML&P. As ML&P is owned by the democrat-controlled Municipality of Anchorage, the purchase agreement announced last week has some “interesting” provisions. Total sales price is just under a billion dollars. Out of that purchase price, Chugach will agree to fund a $15 million drug treatment center and another $36 million in transfer payments to ML&P customers over the next three years to ensure their electric rates do not increase. Those of who are Chugach rate payers, not so much concern. At the top level, this consolidation is probably a good thing, and long past due. But it boggles the mind to see how democrats running the Muni are able to turn a simple purchase of a Muni utility into a cash cow for current political needs (the treatment center aimed at the homeless population growing by leaps and bounds), and a 3-year long payoff to ML&P customers, all to the tune of 5% of the sale price. One of the things we are seeing in California while it burns in the dark, is that state politicians have for years mandated all manner of environmental foolishness on PG&E, taking money out of their pockets that would have allowed them to modernize their transmission and distribution. They have also inflicted so many environmental rules and regulations on loggers, that they no longer clear brush from the forests. The utility is not allowed to remove brush beneath and near their power lines either. As a result, the state burns in the dark, turning it into little more than third world nation. Who do the Cali politicians blame? The utility, Republicans who have been out of power for decades, and President Trump. We here in Anchorage are starting down that same path.
- Chrome. Yet another reminder to never ever use any Goolag product comes last week with stories out of Bloomberg that Goolag is bringing technology created to allow the ChiComs to spy on their people to your desktop. Goolag employees are accusing it of developing what they call an internal surveillance tool they believe will be used to monitor worker’ attempts to organize against the company and discuss labor rights. They discovered a team creating a new tool – plugin – for the custom Goolag Chrome browser installed on corporate computers and used to search internal systems. The tool would automatically report calendar events with over 10 rooms or 100 participants. Not unexpectedly, Goolag’s parent company Alphabet call the claims categorically false, claiming it is a pop-up reminder to be careful before auto-adding a meeting to the calendars of large numbers of people, a spam control plugin. There is a growing conflict between Goolag leadership and employees, with some employees threatening to unionize. Sounds like Goolag is using technology to fend that off. I would expect this plugin, once perfected, to be added to Chrome browsers (if it isn’t there already) as yet another vehicle to slurp up customer data for their servers and to help them achieve their political goals of electing democrats.
- Katie. One of the ongoing comedy series in PJ Lifestyle are posts entitled “Florida Man…” which chronicles them after doing something outrageous or awful. While most of these don’t quite rise to the level of Darwin Award finalists, they are usually entertaining and painful. Perhaps it is time to add California Girl to the list of Florida Man contestants. Most recent entry is Katie Hill (D, CA), a congress critter elected in the SoCal Republican wipeout in 2018. Katie Hill also has a zipper problem, and has a hard time controlling her libido. Her marriage included at least a third, female member and an affair with a fourth man. Not a real problem until she jettisoned her girlfriend who also happened to be one of her congressional staffers. Then the nude photos started leaking out and she was forced to resign. Like all good liberals, none of this was her fault, as she was doing quite well in her bisexual lifestyle and open marriage choice until her abusive husband started leaking photos to make her look bad during divorce proceedings. At least, that’s what the media is reporting. No word about a powerful woman using her position as an elected member of congress to start a sexual relationship with a staffer, a person in power who used that power for sexual satisfaction. And all of this is due to the right-wing media posting revenge porn in support of the husband. Perhaps there is a reason that marriages were historically between one man and one woman. Perhaps it is because anything (everything?) else is complex and doesn’t work out all that well and that mankind figured it out for thousands of years right up until the point where we forgot. Last little tidbit is that Katie Hill, like all good little, dutiful leftists went after Justice Kavanaugh hammer and tong during the assault on him and his integrity, accusing him of all manner of sexual harassment. I guess she would know.
More later –
– AG