Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Northam
- Bloomberg
- Impeachment
- Disaster
- Abort
- Revenge
- UMaine
- Inferno
- Northam. Well, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and his democrats didn’t end up with another Charlotte, though they gave it a good country try. Last Monday’s civil rights march on MLK Day in Richmond by gun owners was festive and comfortable for both attendees and law enforcement. It was also a brisk cold, day, which likely kept the Antifa vermin under their warm rocks, though at least one agent provocateur tried to start trouble. He was quickly outed and turned over to the cops. OTOH, Antifa never shows up at locations where people can (and will) shoot back, preferring disarmed victims for their thuggery. In attendance in large numbers were black, Latino and LGBTQWTF members, much to the disgust of the media which did its level best to claim it was a rally of white supremacists. Who knew that there were so many white supremacists of color? One large caliber black guy claimed to be Gov. Northam in blackface. Northam’s fenced off area where no firearms were allowed was mostly empty of people, though it did have a thick cordon of police. Alex Jones ‘unexpectedly’ showed up in a tank with a megaphone. The legal machinations by the democrat legislature continued however, as did the secession movement. Latest feint by democrats is legislation putting all indoor ranges in the state out of business, making them illegal. There is also some talk about roadblocks designed to stop motorists, search their vehicles and seize their firearms.
- Bloomberg. Little Mike Bloomberg is in the center of all this, having provided a significant amount of funding to elect democrats in Virginia’s last statewide election. The rumor is that he will spend upwards of $2 billion nationwide this election season, money he most certainly has. He has reportedly spent over $200 million so far in ads and should at least one prominently featured during this weekend’s Super Bowl. Should Bloomberg not get the democrat nomination for President, where does that money go? I expect it to be spent down-ballot with the goal on flipping the senate as just as many legislative seats as humanly possible to democrats. What we are seeing in Virginia is the future Bloomberg has in store for us, the use of the heavy hand of democrat legislative majorities passing all manner of ludicrous unconstitutional legislation, daring us to do something about it. And it will be the time lag in all this that will be the critical thing. Expect the legislation to pass and be signed into law. Expect the democrat governors to use law enforcement to enforce everything until the courts tell them to stop. Not only is Bloomie a committed anti-gunner, he is also a committed green, promising to ban the internal combustion engine by 2035. Quite the little game here. And make no mistake, $2 billion can elect an awful lot of democrats, especially when we have Stupid Party Republicans at the state level who roll belly up to them like they did in Virginia.
- Impeachment. Impeachment rocked along last week with an excruciating 24-hour presentation by the House Managers. They took every single minute allotted to them, repeating themselves at least four times. Their presentation was a stirring recap of every single thing that they had wanted to impeach President Trump for doing, most of which that they didn’t actually include in either of the Articles of Impeachment. By the end of their presentation, they had managed to insult every single senator in attendance, including the moderates Romney, Collins, Murkowski and Alexander. Best guess is this is intended to turn over the senate in November to democrat control. They will make the case that all Republicans voted in lockstep to defend Trump and are as a result complicit in his crimes. A version of this was used by Jerry Nadler (D, NY) which was what irritated Collins and Murkowski; Mittens not so much. Notable in their presentation was both mind reading and predictions for future malfeasance. It is important to note we have not seen the President’s defense presented yet outside of a couple hours Saturday morning. Looks like the arguments against impeachment will include the following:
- It was entirely appropriate for the President to ask Ukraine to investigate corruption
- The President has a broad interest in stopping corruption (Treat with Ukraine)
- Democrats are trying to impeach for having the wrong state of mind (a Scott Adams argument)
- The WH withheld aid to other countries in the same way without controversy
- House impeachment hearings took place before they were authorized
- The Articles of Impeachment include a list of things the House doesn’t particularly like rather than specific charge
- Subpoenas to administration are invalid because the issuing committees did not allow opposing counsel
- President’s due process rights apply during the impeachment hearings. They were not afforded.
- Chairman Schiff is an interested fact witness who lied about contact with the whistleblower.
The other thing we are starting to see from democrats is the last minute drip, drip, drip of additional transcripts (for some reason that do not include anything about Eric Ciarmella), text messages, and the occasional witness, just like they did to Justice Kavanaugh. All of these were sold with the most lurid headlines of their importance possible. Lev Parnas became the most recent manifestation of Julie Swetnick.
- Disaster. When elect democrats for decades, you end up with the toxic waste dump of corruption and incompetence. We are seeing yet another example of this out of Puerto Rico, which has been discovering pallets of emergency supplies never delivered to their citizens following Hurricane Maria. With the recent round of earthquakes, they are once again available. Last week, the Governor confirmed supplies flown into Puerto Rico after the hurricane had been sitting since 2017. She also announced an investigation into the director of their Office of Emergency Management. With this announcement, HUD released an additional $8.2 billion in disaster aid. The hold was placed on the money over concerns of mismanagement by island officials. There has been a real war between Trump and democrats in control of Puerto Rico over these supplies, with the local democrats blasting away at Trump for refusing to provide the aid and Trump responding that they are too corrupt to spend the money appropriately. Turns out Trump (as usual) was right.
- Abort. SpaceX ran a successful inflight abort test with their Crew Dragon capsule last week. The test was required as proof that they could successfully abort a launch and save the capsule before NASA would certify it for manned spaceflight. This test is also necessary for manned commercial missions. The test also required destruction of the booster after it separated from the Dragon. Progress.
- Revenge. It has been a year since the Covington kids were verbally assaulted by the Black Israelites, a Native American activist Nathan Phillips who immediately afterwards went in front of every single camera he could find, and finally, the Twitter and media mob which went after the high schoolers, calling them every single name in the book, up to and including racist and white supremacist. It was Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate aimed directly at a group of teens who were doing nothing other than supporting the pro-life position while wearing MAGA hats which is likely why the media targeted them. The event took place at last year’s March for Life. Targeting kids for destruction is normally not a positive lifestyle choice, especially when they hire competent lawyers. And these lawyers filed several hundred million dollars’ worth of lawsuits against the media for their malfeasance and absolute lying about the kids. CNN was the first to settle with Nick Sandman in what many believe to be an 8-digit settlement. There are still several hundred million of libel lawsuits in process, and there are reporters still deleting the occasional Tweet slandering the kids. The wheels of justice continue to grind, and, in this case, they continue to grind quite fine.
- UMaine. The University of Maine is the latest example of a university using its economic clout to disrupt events held by college Republicans. This event was an invited speech by Michelle Malkin on campus. The university managed to cancel her on-campus venue (not unexpectedly). Not being content to freeze her out on campus, they apparently used threats of lawsuits aimed at businesses in the local area to make sure she didn’t have a venue over there either. At least three reschedule locations were cancelled in the runup to the scheduled speech. The University apparently told the UMaine College Republicans weren’t an officially recognized on-campus group, having been suspended on baseless charges of ‘Nazism’. At least 4 venues cancelled preliminary agreements to host the lecture. I expect this one is going to cost UMaine a little money. Should be lots of fun to watch.
- Inferno. Finger pointing following the brushfires in Oz continued last week as the country tried to reconstruct not only what happened and why but how not to do it again. Official Oz response has been to study what happened and publish an official report. The original response was to blame the entire mess on climate change, something that nicely ignores the 183 arrested on suspicion of arson. The second response has been to thoughtfully nod their heads and say, “Now’s not the time to play the blame game.” The problem with the additional study and report approach is that at least three state governments have refused to follow advice in past reports. Not only that, they have ignored fire and forestry experts who have been warning of an impending disaster for years because fuel loads were too high. Roger Underwood in Quadrant wrote last month as story entitled An Inferno of Incompetence and Obfuscation which eviscerated the official explanations for the fires. For example, climate change is flawed because it ignores fuel load and provides no practical solution to the current problem. The climatistas would simply have you throw up your hands and watch everything you love burned to the ground. The incompetence part comes from premiers and ministers at all levels of government responsible for land management, brushfire policy, national parks and forests. State governments in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales completely failed to both protect the lives and property of their citizens and the overall health of the environment. Land management in Oz is the responsibility of the state. And these states and local governments have been ignoring warnings of brushfires for decades, just like California, Canada, Greece and Portugal, anywhere in the world with hot, dry summers, periodic drought and flammable vegetation.
More later –
– AG