Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Censorship
2. Hubble
3. FIB
4. Persuasion
5. Bezos
6. BRCC
7. Churches
1. Censorship. The second big story of the week was Harris – Xiden calls for Big Tech, particularly FakeBook to actively seek out and censor what the WH is calling misinformation on the Wuhan Flu. Psaki went on to accuse this misinformation of actually killing people which is their excuse for orchestrating censorship. Of course, it is the WH itself that gets to define what they believe is misinformation. Essentially, the WH is telling FB what they believe are problematic posts that FB is then expected to remove. When you have the government telling a corporation what to do and what not to do, you have the very definition of fascism, private ownership with government control. The media cheerleading echo chamber that is the WH Press Corps closed ranks nearly instantaneously when Peter Doocy from FNC called out Psaki during the Friday press opportunity for spying on what was printed in FB posts. The cheerleading media strongly supports the WH spying on what Americans are posting, flagging those posts, and asking (demanding?) FB actively censor those users. The team searching and flagging posts apparently is hosted within the Surgeon General’s office in the WH. There was a follow-on story about the WH trying to partner with SMS carriers to flag alleged misinformation in text messages. No verification as of this writing as to whether or not this is wishful thinking by the WH or simply fake news. Here’s where it gets fun, as the Trump class action lawsuit against Twitter and other Big Tech platforms for booting him off the platforms is still out there. As long as Big Tech makes at least some pretense of equal access for all users, they are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. When they start actively working hand in hand with or at the behest of the WH to censor user content, they by definition become state actors, a defacto arm of the government, which is the case that Trump is making. Mark Levin posted a week ago that Psaki is now the best witness for the Trump lawsuit, essentially making his case. How this case progresses depends entirely on which judge gets the initial case. However it goes, expect it to end up in front of the SCOTUS before it is all over with.
2. Hubble. The 30-year old Hubble Space Telescope has been down most of the last six weeks with a serious computer issue. The payload computer malfunctioned. It was initially thought to be a faulty memory module. Switching to a backup memory did not repair the issue. Those of us who have dealt with hardware failures in the computer world know these are among the most frustrating problems to solve. Add to that an onboard computer some 400 km above the earth, and you have a serious issue. The telescope was put into a safe mode while troubleshooting continued. Both primary and backup computers experienced the same problem, which pointed to another module as the culprit. This particular unit was replaced in the final servicing mission in 2009 following a 2008 failure. The computers onboard were designed in the 1980s. NASA timeline at the link is pretty good.
3. FIB. Well, it sure looks like that the former FBI (today, FIB) has transformed itself into a deep state Stasi, a pseudo-law enforcement agency with a current self-selected mission of defending and protecting the Deep State from all enemies, foreign and domestic, especially domestic. That looming doofus, former FIB Director James Comey was merely the latest in a long list of corruptocrats leading and working in the agency. Today, the rot extends from the Director all the way down to the rank-and-file agent. Two examples last week are as follows. When you consider them, also consider how many confidential informants working on the federal dime likely helped orchestrate what went down on Jan 6. This is a non-zero number, likely a large one.
- First up is the botched investigation of rape and sexual assaults perpetrated by former US Gymnast coach Larry Nassar. FBI agents facilitated Nassar’s crimes by failing to take action following numerous witness statements and complaints against him. Worse, the FBI never reported the sexual assaults to local law enforcement. The agents lied during the investigation of their conduct, and the DoJ under Bill Barr, who is looking worse and worse as the months pass, refused to prosecute the lying FBI agents. Apparently lying to the FBI is something illegal only if it is done by someone outside the Anointed Few. George Carlin’s observation that “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” comes to mind.
All this came out of an IG report released last week. The internal corruption in their Indianapolis office is breathtaking as is the CYA operation by their superiors in both the Washington office and the DoJ.
- The second story, which is more germane to the Jan 6 protest comes from analysis of the bizarre Whitmer kidnap plot last summer. It turns out that there were at least a dozen FBI snitches involved in the planning and orchestration of the plot, meaning that they essentially thought it up and led it. ln this case, FBI employees outnumbered perps by 2:1. Framing and entrapment of idiots is relatively easy to do, all of which points out both the laziness and ineptitude of the current rank and file FBI agent. Appears the current game is to use FBI informants to create a plot, any plot, orchestrate that plot, and then ride in at the last minute with a big public media splash congratulating the agents for saving the nation from the evil that would be done by more Angry White Men from flyover country. Great media without having to do any actual investigation or actual law enforcement work, not unlike what the ATF was doing at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco in 1993.
4. Persuasion. I spend a lot of time listening to Scott Adams, mostly learning what little I know about persuasion. If you can get thru his masking fetish, it is worth your while. He is both a student of and practitioner of persuasion and can identify it and tell you how it works, including where it comes from. Today, there are three great persuasion phrases in use. All of them appear to have been professionally created by someone on the political left. The three are Black Lives Matter, AntiFa, and the Big Lie. The first two are outstanding persuasion simply based on the names themselves. If you oppose, BLM, you by definition don’t think black lives matter. If you oppose AntiFa, you are by definition pro-fascist. In these cases, the names themselves are powerful persuasion, created by someone for the groups. The final term is the Big Lie, ostensibly used in opposition to the election law changes and claims of irregularities in 2020. Its genesis comes out of what Joseph Goebbels used to do and is an attempt to say if you believe there were problems in the 2020 election, you are by definition a Nazi. This is powerful, weapons grade, professional persuasion. But there is a problem for the left, as we have a player on our side, one Donald J Trump, who is also a skilled persuader, someone who has the ability to take that loaded gun of persuasion and turn it right around and use it against the political left. He’s done it before, with the phrase fake news, originally used against right wing media. Trump took that weapon and turned it completely against the political left and their media lackeys. He is starting to do it against the Big Lie phrase with the observation that the real Big Lie is the notion that the 2020 election was fair, which may be enough to flip the left’s persuasion completely. The left knows this. CNN is scared about it. They know it is coming, and they can’t do a thing about it.
5. Bezos. Jeff Bezos was the last billionaire to successfully dabble in manned spaceflight with a successful suborbital flight with his New Shepard booster and capsule. The flight included Bezos and three others, including the oldest and youngest to ever fly into space. Trajectory was straight up and straight down, though the capsule did separate and was recovered by parachute. The booster soft-landed at the launch site. As I wrote last week, this is indeed a BIG deal, as the more people we get off this planet, for whatever time they are off, the more people we WILL get off the planet in the future, a very healthy thing for species survival. The FAA celebrated the flight by changing the definition of Astronaut, previously anyone who traveled above 100 km above the surface, so that Bezos and his crew could not get Astronaut Wings.
But not everyone is excited about this. Sadly, the problem wraps around both sides of the political spectrum, with criticism by both the political left and right, though there is more from the left than anywhere else. Much like crabs in a bucket, there are an appreciable percentage of our countrymen who do not believe anyone should do anything in space until all the other problems here on earth are solved. This was the basic anti-Apollo argument in the 1960s, so this has been around for a while. Crabs in a bucket refer to the tendency of crabs in a 5-gallon bucket to grab the legs of crabs that are climbing the side of the bucket to escape and pull them back into the bucket. This is the political left. An Oregon congress critter (democrat, obviously) even proposed a per person tax on anyone who flies into space on non-scientific purposes. This fool might get it done, as he is on the Ways and Means Committee in the House. This is a start. There will be more, as long as we can keep the crabs on the political left from dragging us down.
6. BRCC. The Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC) learned themselves a relatively painful lesson about trusting the NYT last week. Initial tweets out of Andy Ngo had the BRCC CEO trash talking some of its customer base. The tweet was based on a NYT Magazine article that described corporate angst with a BRCC hat showing up inside the US Capital during the Jan 6 festivities. As the company is thinking about taking itself public, this sort of corporate concern is not unexpected nor a surprise. Of course, the angst was written in such a way as to make it look like the CEO was being as dismissive of its customer base as humanly possible. BRCC is a pro-gun, pro-Trump, pro-conservative, and most importantly pro-military company. They have been growing like gangbusters since it was formed in Utah in 2014 by three vets. They do a yearly Halloween shoot that is hilarious. Following the NYT Magazine article and Ngo tweet, and associated conservative angst, it turns out that the only sin BRCC committed was one of trusting the NYT, who never liked them in the first place. The Stephen Kruiser Morning Briefing covered it nicely on Wednesday. Lesson for all of us in this is that the political left, especially the media, despises us, wants us not to exist, and will do everything in their power to destroy us. Businesses are prime targets. When they knife you, don’t pull it out and hand it back to them. Return fire, preferably with a larger caliber weapon and more ammunition.
7. Churches. The latest terror campaign in Canada has been directed against churches, with at least 45 attacked, vandalized and burned to the ground so far this year. The campaign seems to be payback for church-related abuse of Canadian Native (First Nations) children in church schools decades ago. The burnings began after discovery of a residential school burial site in Kamloops, BC. It was followed by discoveries of more unmarked graves in Saskatchewan and elsewhere. Canadian media refuses to call this a terror campaign and Prime Minister Trudeau has also refused to address it. The burnings are being blamed on Canadian leftists using the First Nations tragedies as an excuse to burn churches, especially those on native lands, not unlike how BLM and AntiFa used the Floyd death as their excuse to burn blue state inner cities and business districts over the last year. A Coptic Christian church in BC was burned on July 19. This was the second attack on the church. It was built in 1960.
More later –
- AG