Archive for the 'Politics' Category

From Wes Rhinier.

I got to hear him read it for the first time last Saturday.

It appears that Trump has finally let Barr go.  Too bad he ever hired him in the first place.  I said back when Barr was hired that he was deep state and couldn’t be trusted except to do everything in his power to undermine the administration.

Barr will (rightly) always be remembered for his role in Ruby Ridge and the AWB.

Barr was in charge of the Justice Department during Ruby Ridge, and he knew what was going on.

Barr stated, under oath, that his chief gun priority would be the Ruby Ridge-like gun confiscation orders (sugar-coated as “red flag laws”).

You may remember that Barr’s federal agents descended on Randy Weaver’s Idaho compound in August, 1992, and (1) shot weaver in the back; (2) shot Weaver’s wife Vicki to death, while she was holding her infant son; (3) shot Weaver’s 14 year-old son to death; and (4) shot Weaver’s dog.

Courts subsequently largely exonerated Weaver, while excoriating the FBI and the Department of Justice. And, although then-Attorney General William Barr claimed to know nothing about the Ruby Ridge fiasco, a 1995 Washington Post article reported that there were 20 high-level DOJ calls about Weaver in the 24 hours preceding the murder of his wife — and two of them directly involved Barr.

After that, Barr spent huge amounts of pro bono time trying to get exoneration for the FBI sniper who shot Vicki Weaver to death. He pushed for immunity from prosecution, organized letters on his behalf, and framed arguments before the trial and appeals courts.

But long before Ruby Ridge, Barr’s hatred for the Second Amendment was clear.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, Barr pushed the gun control “grand bargain” which, two years later under Clinton, was to become the biggest blow to the Second Amendment since the passage of the 1968 Gun Control Act.

Said Barr: “On the assault weapon front, the proposal before us is the DeConcini amendment. And I think … I would support both the Brady Bill waiting period and the DeConcini [semi-auto ban] amendment, provided that they were parts of a broader and more comprehensive crime bill that included … very tough provisions on the use of firearms in crimes and illegal purchase and trading in firearms…”

In addition to endorsing the Brady Bill and the semi-auto ban, Barr went on to support the magazine ban by saying: “I would prefer a limitation on the clip [sic] size.”

[ … ]

Sadly, Barr, under oath, committed that his chief gun objective would be the most insidious aspect of the Bloomberg agenda: gun confiscation orders.

Said Barr: “I also think we need to push along the ERPO’s [Gun Confiscation Orders], so we have red flag laws to supplement the use of the background check…This is the single most important think I think we can do in the gun control area to stop these massacres from happening in the first place.”

If anyone doesn’t know what Bloomberg’s gun confiscation orders involve, police or an angry “ex” can go to a “secret court” [ex parte proceeding] to obtain an order to strip a gun owner of his Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

There is more.

In the early 1990s, federal agencies targeted Randy Weaver, an outspoken white separatist living on a mountaintop in northern Idaho.  After Weaver was entrapped by an undercover Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, U.S. marshals trespassed on Weaver’s land and killed his 14-year-old son, Sammy. The following day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed his wife as she was standing in the cabin doorway holding her 10-month-old baby. Horiuchi had previously shot Randy Weaver in the back after he stepped out of the cabin.  The suspects were never given a warning or a chance to surrender and had taken no action against FBI agents.

FBI officials recognized that Mrs. Weaver had been killed but, during the subsequent siege, assured the media that they were “proceeding with extreme care, mindful that Weaver’s wife, Vicki, and three remaining children were also in the cabin,” Reuters reported. An internal FBI report completed shortly after the confrontation justified the killing of Mrs. Weaver by asserting that she had put herself in harm’s way, the New York Times reported in 1993. Yet Bo Gritz, the former Vietnam War hero who helped the feds negotiate Randy Weaver’s surrender after the death of his wife, declared that the government’s profile of the Weaver family recommended killing Weaver’s wife: “I believe Vicki was shot purposely by the sniper as a priority target…. The profile said, if you get a chance, take Vicki Weaver out.” As Mrs. Weaver’s corpse remained in the besieged cabin, “The FBI used microphones to taunt the family. ‘Good morning, Mrs. Weaver. We had pancakes for breakfast. What did you have?’ asked the agents in at least one exchange,” the Washington Times reported.

The names of William Barr and Lon Horiuchi should always be spoken together.  But even that’s not all.  George Webb notes his time studying these things, and if you’ll advance to the 12:45 mark of this video, you hear that Barr recommended that Clinton run for president, and managed to cover up the Clinton drug dealing from Arkansas, as well as Enron and many other scandals.  He was (and is) a cover-up artist.

Trump has little to no discernment, and surrounded himself with awful people for the complete four years of his administration.  This is why he will no longer be president.  I repeat myself, but a mechanic working at the FN Herstal plant in Columbia, S.C., could have done a better job at fighting the deep state – but certainly not at ensuring its survival, like William Barr did.

Ms. Susan Del Percio (Lincoln Project) wrote a commentary at NBC News that is worth reading if for no other reason to see how the other side thinks.

So what the heck has gotten into the Texas GOP? In the span of one week, the attorney general filed a seditious lawsuit with the Supreme Court and state GOP leaders are announcing they think it’s time Texas secedes from the nation.

Power — trying desperately to attain it or to hold on to it — often motivates morally and politically bizarre behavior. So does the fear of potentially going to jail. It seems even partisan PR stunts are bigger in the Lone Star State.

Last month, reports indicated that the FBI is investigating allegations that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton broke the law by using his office to serve the interests of a political donor. This would be a federal crime — a crime that President Donald Trump could pre-emptively pardon Paxton for, even though the attorney general hasn’t officially been charged with anything.

Let’s stop for a moment.  Ms. Del Percio, like many others, thinks that this is all about Trump, and I’ve heard that account about the desire for a pardon.

To most people who want honest and fair election, Trump is an irrelevant feature of this debacle.  As for the author of the lawsuit, it wouldn’t matter if it was Donald Duck.  But let’s continue.

Against the backdrop of these problems, Paxton filed a lawsuit last week asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in the four key battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If these results were to be reversed, it would also reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s clear presidential win.

Clear, she says.  Let’s ignore what we all know to be true, the mountain of evidence that shows that the election was stolen, a fraud, a sham, and a hoax.  Let’s ignore the ongoing corruption in Michigan, Georgia, and elsewhere.  Let’s ignore the forensic report on the Dominion voting system results.  Biden won, and it’s clear, because the legacy media says so.

And Paxton isn’t the only Texan willing to sink to new political lows. Recently, Republican state Rep. Kyle Biedermann announced that he will introduce legislation to allow Texas to secede from the nation. His reason? “The federal government is out of control and does not represent the values of Texans.”

There is no chance that Texas will secede from the United States. Just as with Paxton’s Supreme Court ploy, the law is not on Texas’ side. Secession is simply not legal, and Biedermann should know that.

There is “no chance,” says she.  Well, I’d respond that there would be an old fashioned fight, to be sure.  The balance of Texas would have to throw-down with Dallas-Forth Worth, Austin and Houston.  But I would never say there is “no chance.”

Furthermore, the fact that someone says that it’s not legal is irrelevant, given that it will happen if a state (or compact of states) is willing to back it up with force.

Apparently wanting to hop on the secession bandwagon is Texas GOP Chairman Allen West, who suggested that “law-abiding states” should “form a Union” after the Supreme Court rejected the Texas election lawsuit.

Secession might have been an option a quarter of a century ago, but I’m less than sanguine about its possibility today.  The influx of Northerners to the South (bringing the same politics that fouled their Northern nests to the South with them) and the influx of Californians to Texas has made a peaceable solution (divorce) much less likely than a more bloody one.  Geographic boundaries are no longer conducive to such an outcome and wouldn’t support it.

But you get the main picture here.  Joe Biden won, it’s clear, everyone who wants to pursue legal avenues of appeal are engaging in sedition, and whether you want it or not, you’re going to get it good and hard when we’re in power, which is why you can’t leave home.  All your assets belong to us.

Folks, this is how the other side thinks.  This is why America is careening headlong into civil war.  She probably lives in Manhattan, and yet she isn’t worried about the ailing New York water supply system, in need to a complete rebuild, and nearing total collapse.  She isn’t worried about the fact that all of her food comes from the flyover country she so despises, and is transported into New York on vulnerable highways.

She isn’t worried about the fact that her political solutions destroy the GOP and forever leave the communists in charge (or maybe that’s her intent).  I would be investigating those sorts of vulnerabilities, as well as the vulnerability of the electrical power grid, right after I found a U-Haul and got out of Manhattan.

She wants to spend her time telling you that you are seditious, that she is smarter than you, and that you should just shut up and listen to her.  And oh, by the way, you don’t get out of this prison – that’s simply not legal.

Again, this commentary is good for understanding the gulf between you and the controllers.  You don’t think alike, you don’t see things the same way, there is no overlap or intersection of sets of what’s important to you and her, and you literally live in two different worlds.

News from St. Louis.

ST. LOUIS — A judge on Thursday cited improper fundraising emails by Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s campaign in disqualifying Gardner and her office from a gun case against Mark McCloskey, who with his wife pointed firearms at protesters outside their Central West End home in June.

Circuit Judge Thomas Clark II’s order said two fundraising emails that Gardner’s reelection campaign sent in response to political attacks before and after she charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felony gun crimes in July raised the appearance that she “initiated a criminal prosecution for political purposes.”

Perhaps you’ve seen that the state of Texas is all in on the election corruption fight, and is being joined by other states before the supreme court as a “dispute between the states.”

Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.

…

This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.

Powerline analyzes this as a “hail Mary” pass.

“The Texas motion and supporting brief are well-drafted and make a plausible case–importantly, one that, if accepted, does not require extensive fact-finding into alleged voter fraud. Reduced to its essentials, the motion alleges 1) that under the Constitution’s Electors Clause, state legislatures have plenary authority over appointment of each state’s electors; 2) that in each of the defendant states, non-legislative actors (e.g., the Secretary of State) unconstitutionally changed the rules governing this year’s election without legislative approval or ratification; 3) that these changes favored some voters over others, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause; and 4) in each state, the number of ballots that were counted pursuant to unconstitutional changes in election procedures exceeds the margin of Joe Biden’s alleged victory.”

But readers at Instapundit, and apparently Glenn Reynolds, get what this is really about.

“I wonder if the left, and the court realize this is a hail mary to prevent a civil war, not to keep trump in office. 30% of democrats and 80+% of republicans think the election was stolen. That is a loss of legitimacy of the nation’s governments from the state level through the federal.”

They are children playing with nitroglycerin, so no, they won’t realize that. At least, not in time, I’m afraid.

The controllers think this is going to go down easily.  I think they may be surprised, and I still don’t think they really understand what they’ve done.

PJM.

Joe Biden will nominate Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the department notorious for railroading religious freedom via the Obamacare contraception mandate. Becerra has attacked religious freedom and free speech with zeal at the beck and call of radical Left activists in Planned Parenthood and other groups.

[ … ]

Becerra also vigorously defended a California law that mandated pregnancy resource centers (PRCs), most of which are pro-life, must advertise abortion on placards. In National Institute for Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra (2018), the Supreme Court struck down the law, defending the pregnancy centers’ free speech.

Becerra has received perfect scores from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America for his tenure representing downtown Los Angeles in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2017. Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) nominated him for the attorney general role in 2016 when Harris won her election to the U.S. Senate. Planned Parenthood affiliates of California proudly endorsed Becerra for the 2018 primary.

Becerra also sued the Trump HHS after the agency struck down an Obama administration rule redefining “sex” in federal discrimination law. The Obama rule twisted the meaning of the term in order to force health care providers to encourage experimental transgender “treatments” like cross-sex hormones and surgery. The Trump administration restored the biological meaning of “sex,” but Becerra sued to force transgender ideology on the federal government.

Great.  A pro-transgender (on our tax dollars), pro-abortion lackey.  There is also this observation by David Codrea.

And guess what he’ll claim is a “public health issue.”

“Ghost guns are untraceable weapons that have been used in mass shootings throughout the country and right here in California — from Santa Monica in 2013, to Tehama County in 2017, and at Saugus High School just last year,” said Attorney General Becerra. “We can’t afford to wait for another tragedy to happen before we take action. It’s time for ATF to prioritize the safety of our communities by calling these products what they are: firearms, and regulating them accordingly.”

Can’t actually make things any more, folks.  You know, things like pipes, mechanisms, boxes, and so forth.

The perspective of one Brit.  I don’t know how many understand this.

But how wrong they are. How dangerously wrong they are. The anger of Trump’s supporters is white hot, it is incendiary, it is real and it is entirely, eminently justifiable, and it is not the anger of the loser, it is the anger of the wronged and is about so much more than Trump, this is about the democratic future of the United States of America. When a country reaches the point of such legal corruption and such moral degeneracy that democracy can be overturned in full view of a complicit and unquestioning media and liberal establishment there is very little guarantee that democracy will ever recover. This is why the anger is at boiling point, and even now, the left cannot understand what they have done.

He understands the danger the corruption has caused for America better than the people who caused it, or aided it, or who simply looked the other way.

Via WRSA, this information from NC Renegade.  Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s statue has been removed.

Shameful.  I will note that his pastor was Robert Lewis Dabney, whose “Systematic Theology” still sits on my bookshelf.

I will also note that the U.S. is renaming military installations, and Fort A.P. Hill is on the list.

Honestly, I have to say that it is beyond me why any patriot would seek to enter the U.S. military today.

Glenn Reynolds links a Tweet by Richard Fernandez.

There will be an incentive to revive the center when even the activists have had a bellyful. As I've frequently argued because the situation is 50-50 total victory by either side is unlikely.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 4, 2020

The founders and Lincoln kicked a lot of cans down the road. The trick is to know which cans are unkickable.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 5, 2020

The normally insightful Fernandez widely misses the mark, I think.  Let’s start with a thought experiment.  List the things for you which are non-negotiable, cans that cannot be “kicked down the road.”  Perhaps it may look something like this.

Fair and honest elections, versus stolen, fraudulent elections.

Not one more gun law, not one more infringement.

The continuing survival of the middle class in America.

Sacrosanct individual retirement accounts, no theft from them by the government.

The free exercise of religion.

No more taxes for subsidies or redistribution of wealth.

This is a short list, and a reasonable one.  It could have been much longer, but this serves as a good starting point, although you can build your own list.

On every account, the other side has either broken contract and covenant, or they intend to and have said so.

There is ample evidence of election fraud, and if you believe that the country elected Joe Biden as president, you’re as dumb as a bag of rocks.  Biden’s own campaign web site explained that they intend to force registration of semi-automatic firearms as NFA items in a national gun registry.

HUD regulations and a host of other preferential treatment for one sector of the public has essentially forced middle class neighborhoods to incorporate low income housing into the middle of their communities.  Big spending FedGov would like to nationalize retirement accounts, as they are the last big pot of untouched money that can forestall the reckoning with hundreds of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities.

If you thought that the exercise of religion was free in America, you haven’t stopped to ponder what the shutdowns did to the churches.  Under orders from governors, worship services everywhere were shut down, or otherwise churches faces fines for having public worship.  Most establishment types and every leftist in America wouldn’t know anything about this personally, as they are unchurched.

We could go on, but you get the picture, and you develop your own list and compare and contrast with views by the opposition.  The problem is that core beliefs, cans that cannot be kicked down the road, and non-negotiable points, are all that we have left.  And for conservatives and libertarians in America, the left has made it clear that our core beliefs are all they care about.

Another way of saying it is that the left has made it clear that they intend to go after our core beliefs, and that no amount of compromise on less than core beliefs will make up for our failure to relinquish our core beliefs.

This battle was begun more than a century ago, and successive generations of children were educated in a system designed by Horace Mann, where the state owned the children.  The long march through the institutions is over, and the children of hippies easily became collectivists, controllers and totalitarians.

When you believe in nothing, the state becomes your god and you become responsible for building utopia on earth.  This all falls into the arms of the real rulers and globalists, those who want to fleece what’s left of the wealth of Americans and enslave the people to the globalist vision.

The politicians on the right, sure enough, want Trump to concede.  They want a return to the good old days of printing more money, going on junkets, and eating with each other in the congressional lunch room.  The Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, a republican, is disgusted by Trump.

I worry that … fanning the flames around misinformation puts us in a negative position with regards to the 5 January runoff. The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process. They’re only hurting it.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Duncan: “At a certain point, does this disgust you?”

“Oh, absolutely it disgusts me,” Duncan said.

GOP establishment creature Michael Barone says that “Trump and many Republicans have been misbehaving for four weeks in trying to delegitimize Joe Biden’s 43,809-vote victory.”  The sorry National Review can’t go a day without another jab not only at Trump, but conservatives as well.  And Mitch McConnell wants to find a way to “work with president-elect Biden.”

A return to the good old days.  Except that’s not going to happen.  Any establishment GOP politician who believes he or she will get the support of voters in the next election (even assuming that there will ever be another free and fair election) is mistaken to the point of being completely delusional.

Trump didn’t cause this problem.  Trump was the last, best chance for change.  Unfortunately, Trump and his administration were unprepared for the deepness of the deep state.  His work to ensure honest elections would have had been started in 2016 to have any chance of success.

It’s too late now.  That doesn’t mean that this is over or anywhere near finished.  The Marxist revolution in America is not fait accompli.  It just enters a new, more dangerous phase.  When there are two sides, and each side has made it clear that they intend either to crush the other side’s core principles, or otherwise prevent that other side from crushing those core principles, and that elections are no longer an option because of fraud, there are few alternatives left.

The left assumes that it’s over.  The establishment GOP assumes that they can return to junkets and the congressional lunchroom in peace.  Neither group really gets it.  Neither group understands flyover America, traditional people who want to be left alone.  The biggest problem is that a peaceable split or divorce is no longer possible given that there is no clean geographic way to do this any more.  That horse left the barn a long time ago.

For all of the frivolities that this invites, the left and the establishment GOP should remember one very important thing.  You wanted this.  This is on you.

Several reports for today.  Readers can add to the daily catalog of absurdities.

Video Footage From Georgia Shows Suitcases Filled with Ballots Pulled From Under Table AFTER Supervisor Told GOP Poll Workers to Leave Tabulation Center

Trump Legal Team: We Have ‘So Much Evidence’ of Fraud in Nevada ‘We Had to Rent a Separate Car’

Mathematician Says Biden May have Received 130 Percent of the Democrat Vote in Maricopa County, AZ

David Codrea’s daily take.

This is all I have the stomach for.  Readers can add as they wish.