Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Antifa
2. Smith
3. Ambler
4. Letitia
5. Jay Jones
6. ICE
7. Cell Phone
8. Bond
1. Antifa. The first of many battles over Antifa spun up nicely last week with at least one leadership rat scurrying out of country as fast as his little feet could carry him. Other responses adopted the quaint little notion / gaslighting technique that Antifa simply doesn’t exist. One of these was MN Atty General Keith Ellison, who infamously held up a copy of the Antifa handbook for the camera while a MN congress critter in a 2018 AP photo, grinning from ear to ear. He was elevated to MN Attorney General in the 2018 election, where he has been a friend to leftist rioters while in office. Next move from Trump is to designate Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization, which would turn loose all the federal assets who gleefully hunted down Republicans, Trump supporters, Catholics and pro-life protesters for four solid years under President Autopen. Funny story about the tenured Rutgers prof, Mark Bray, author of the Antifa Handbook (as an aside: if Antifa doesn’t exist, why do they need a handbook?), fled the country last week with his family to Spain. His departure was not uneventful, as his initial reservations were cancelled when he arrived at the airport. He reportedly left the next day. Once the administration designates Antifa as a foreign terrorist organization, his backers and their international money trail will be uncovered, traced and disrupted as he enters FAFO-land.
2. Smith. Appears that Merrick Garland’s Special Prosecutor Jack Smith was a busy little boy while doing his best Lavrentiy Beria impression (show me the man and I will show you the crime). Smith conducted phone surveillance on at least eight sitting US Senators, and a PA congress critter, all Republicans. These included Senators Lindsey Graham (SC), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Josh Hawley (MO), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Bill Haggerty (TN), Dan Sullivan (AK), Tommy Tuberville (AL), and Republican congress critter Mike Kelly (PA). FBI Director Kash Patel released a document to the public and congress last Monday. The document revealed that Smith and his Arctic Frost team subpoenaed telephone providers for phone records of the targeted congress critters in 2023. Patel’s team claims to have recently discovered the document. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was something hidden in plain sight, squirrelled away in a burn bag in an empty room, out of sight, out of mind, without the knowledge of the incoming administration. Needless to say, those targeted are livid. I would also suspect that silent democrats are also worried, if for no other reason than the same techniques could be used on them should they be insufficiently supportive of legislatively ensuring this can never happen again. Remember that Arctic Frost was an anti-Republican piece of lawfare begin in April 2022 within the FBI later incorporated into Jack Smith’s prosecution against President Trump in Nov 2022. It targeted a wide array of Republican organizations, collecting private communications and cell phone data on nearly 100 people. The probe also implicated FBI Agent Thibault and a number of other FBI agents involved. Patel is reportedly firing those FBI agents involved. Nothing quite concentrates the attention of congress critters like knowing they are in the cross hairs of an unaccountable law enforcement / prosecution operation. It wouldn’t surprise me if the legislative response to this is similar to what congress did to the CIA after Watergate with the Church Committee half a century ago. Of course, that was aided and abetted by a fully supportive media apparat which won’t exist this time around. Final observation is Alaska’s Dan Sullivan being swept up in it. While a reliable Republican, Sullivan has not been leading the anti-lawfare pushback nor much of a national player. He is up for reelection next year and was not expected to be in any serious difficulty. Being targeted by Jack Smith may very well make him bulletproof.
3. Ambler. President Trump signed an order overturning a Biden decision to cancel a 340 km long mining road into NW Alaska. The Ambler Road is state and privately funded, intended to open up a mining district on the southern Brooks Range W of Fairbanks. The Ambler mining district is yet another potential source for rare earth metals in Alaska. The road has been panned by the Usual Suspects (democrats and greens) for all the Usual Reasons (harmful to caribou, native subsistence hunting, and the wilderness in that part of the state). Opposition from the right comes from the typical NIMBY / BANANAs who argue that it will start out as a private road, a public giveaway to the mining companies. Their problem is that no piece of transportation infrastructure up here that starts out private never stays that way for long, especially if the State of Alaska has any part in funding it. Trump’s action approved an appeal of a Biden decision to deny a right of way permit to build the road Jun 2024, reversing the Biden decision. In a related action, the senate passed a resolution overturning a land management plan for interior Alaska that would have further limited development in order to save the wildlife from the evils of mankind (/sarc). The plan, like all land use plans from the green flying monkeys infesting President Autopen’s regime, was intended to further obstruct, delay, deny, and otherwise shut down natural resource extraction in Alaska and the greater US. The house had previously passed the resolution which sent this along to the senate for approval. This one passed the senate by the normal 50-49 vote and is on its way to the President’s desk for signature.
4. Letitia. NY Attorney General Letitia James was indicted by a federal grand jury on two felony counts of mortgage fraud last week. One was for bank fraud; the other was for making false statements to a financial institution for a home purchase in Norfolk, VA. The indictment took place following resignation of two democrat-friendly federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginal, both of whom claimed not to find any probable cause to charge James. Given that the jury pool will come from the blue counties next to Washington DC, it would not surprise me if a jury ignored all evidence presented and refused to convict. Still, in this, the process is the punishment. James is not a stranger to mortgage fraud, participating in a pattern of mortgage fraud since at least 1983 when she purchased her first home with her father claiming they were married. The Norfolk house was purchased as a primary residence and immediately turned into a rental. Rules for mortgages for primary homes allow small down payments. Those for commercial properties require substantially larger down payments. She also owns a small apartment building and has been diddling the number of units in it to dodge tax payments for years. The Governor of NY has the ability to remove her from office. The state Assembly has a part in that process. Given the lockstep democrat control over both and their party uber alles mindset, I do not expect either to demand her removal, something that will further tarnish the already soiled reputation of the nominal judicial system in NY.
5. Jay Jones. VA Attorney General candidate Jay Jones has quite the mouth on him, as heated 2022 series of SMS text messages between him and a fellow Republican legislator went public a week or so ago. Jones was cruising to what appeared to be a rather easy victory in next month’s general election. He is young, black, and telegenic. The text messages indicated his desire to put bullets in the head of the Republican legislator who was his target. In other words, if you disagree with me, you must die. He cranked up the rhetoric another notch or three noting that offing the legislator’s two kids would be a good way to inflict enough pain to change her position on political issue(s). Imagine that. According to this democrat, if you don’t agree with me, I get to kill your kids. Republicans were all over this, and it became the wedge issue in the campaign for multiple positions, the willingness of what at the first glance would seem to be an apparently sensible democrat to go full nutso and crank up the violent rhetoric to 11. Everytown for Gun Safety donated $200,000 to his campaign in Aug, confirming the popular view of the group as a simple manifestation of guns for me but not for thee worldview. The outrage machine also grabbed the democrat gubernatorial candidate who was similarly cruising to an easy victory, as she was unwilling to criticize Jones. Both races are now statistical ties, with voters finally taking a look at both candidates and their opponents. This episode is a reminder of the cultural rot eating away what is left of the democrat party. When your first reaction to disagreement is death threats, you literally have left yourself no other choice in a political discussion and demonstrated yourself as mentally deficient and morally bankrupt as every other thing that traffics in violence.
6. ICE. The democrat anti-ICE insurrection ramped up a notch or two last week with several actions, mostly in Portland and Chicago.
- In Portland, ICE raids are being actively opposed by Antifa rioters and supported by the local government which has been excusing their riots since the Summer of Love in 2020. Portland figured a cute response would be to cite ICE for multiple counts of land use violations after they held detainees longer than the 12-hour limit specified in its conditional use permit. They also cited violations for boarding up windows. The notice requires ICE to resolve the issues within 30 days. Expect fines and permit revocation as their next step.
- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was in his Marxist element with at least two orchestrated gang attacks on ICE agents last week. In the first, a vehicle was surrounded by at least 10 other vehicles with people in those vehicles opening fire on ICE. For their part, the Police Chief ordered his people not to respond to calls for help from the location, effectively hanging the feds out to dry. The dispatch message to cops on the street is fairly awful to listen to. IL Governor Pritzker is fully onboard with this.
- The problem in Portland is that the local government ceded control of the streets to Antifa. The problem in Chicago is that the local and state government ceded control to the gangs. Both of these work as long as the leadership keeps on being reelected, much to the detriment of civilian lives and livelihoods.
7. Cell Phone. Preparation for the Trump UN speech a couple weeks ago discovered a massive sim farm capable of taking down some to all cellular service in NYC. This particular farm was filled with servers and more than 100,000 stacked cellular sim chips. The farm acts a lot like a DDS attack on a web site, hammer the network with more traffic than it can handle, and you shut it down because it cannot generate sufficient bandwidth to respond. We see a similar effect after a natural disaster when the sheer number of worried people all trying to call at the same time shuts down cellular access. Turns out that several of these farms have been found and disrupted. The size and sophistication is such that a nation-state is thought to be behind them, likely China / CCP. Sim farms were originally developed to support low-cost international calling. As we are no longer allowed to have nice things, they have become the cornerstone of organized fraud targeting mass audiences such as phishing texts e-mails, scam calls, and spoofing caller ID. The NY building was withing 35 miles of the UN and was at least three times as big (and more capable) as originally thought.
8. Bond. Now that Amazon owns the James Bond franchise, it is preparing to air the 27 Bond movies that started with Dr No in 1962. One of the things they have done is start reissuing the movie posters online, which ended up being somewhat startling. Amazon airbrushed the firearms from Bond’s hands in the modified posters, leading to an instant accusation that the wokesters at Amazon are still in charge. Bond is completely connected with firearms. Even the series logo is a bullet’s eye view down a barrel. Most of us are sick and tired of movie revisions to sit well with current delicate sensibilities. The removal of firearms from the feds chasing ET in its reissue is one example. Is there any other explanation? Perhaps. We are now in an electronic world where decisions about what to elevate or not elevate are made by algorithms programmed into the search engines rather than actual human action. Those algorithms are not firearm-friendly and intentionally downgrade anything identified as a firearm. It may be that the revisionist history is not revisionist at all. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of how rankings are done. And who would know how those sorts of algorithms work these days better than Amazon?
More later –
- AG