Monthly Archives: February 2023

Why Elections Matter

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In North Carolina, judges are elected. In the last election in North Carolina, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority. The consequences of that election are already becoming apparent.

The Epoch Times reported the following on Saturday:

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday handed a victory to the state’s Republican legislators by siding with a petition that asked the high court to rehear cases involving election maps and voter identification laws.

In a vote along partisan lines, the state’s Supreme Court voted 5–2 to rehear the two cases in March—ones that North Carolina’s Republican legislature had previously lost.

Two Republicans running for seats on the North Carolina Supreme Court in the November midterm election beat their Democrat opponents, flipping the composition of the court red for the first time since 2016.

The partisan switch of the court revived Republican hopes to revisit the cases.

In one of the cases, Holmes v. Moore, the state Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 16, 2022, to strike down a law requiring photo voter identification. The justification for that decision was supposed discrimination against minorities.

Justice Trey Allen wrote in an order Friday that the criteria for adjudicating the request by GOP legislative leaders for the case to be reheard have been met.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michael Morgan questioned whether the decision to rehear the case would call into question the court’s impartiality.

Does Justice Morgan believe the court was being impartial when it threw out the legal redistricting by the mostly Republican legislature and a Constitutional Amendment voted for by the majority of North Carolina voters?

The article concludes:

A separate filing by Republican lawmakers argued that the correct legal standard was not applied in a decision that the state Supreme Court upheld on voter ID.

“Holmes was wrongly decided based on a predetermined outcome. We now have a chance to right this wrong and deliver on voter ID, which the voters of this state overwhelmingly support,” said Sam Hayes, general counsel for the House speaker, according to Spectrum News 1.

For more than a decade, North Carolina Republicans have been seeking to pass a law that would require voters to present photo identification. The state legislature passed voter ID laws in 2013, but they were struck down by a federal court. A similar law adopted in 2018 was struck down by the state Supreme Court in December.

The citizens voted. Their voices need to be heard.

 

Some Washington Humor

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Humor is hard to find these days in Washington. Don Surber, a former journalist who writes at his own blog and at Substack (https://donsurber.substack.com/) seems to have a knack for finding it. On January 29, I posted an article about his post about Republican Senator John Kennedy’s wit and wisdom. Well, his latest article compares many of the leading figures in Washington politics to Warner Brothers cartoon characters.

The post quotes an article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Don Surber writess:

I really enjoyed writing last Saturday’s column, “The Wit and Wisdom of John Kennedy, R-La.” Readers did too. One hipped me to the Times-Picayune’s “Who said it: Sen. John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?” quiz.

Alas, the quiz disappeared down the Internet memory hole, but Boing Boing saved four who-said-it questions:

    1. “She has a billy goat brain and a mockingbird mouth.”
    2. “He’s tough as a boiled owl.”
    3. “He’s a hard dog to keep on the porch. He’s not a porch dog; he’s a running dog. He likes to do things his way.”
    4. “I’m not just talking to hear my head roar.”

Kennedy said the first three about (in order) Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and President Trump. The last one was all Foghorn. Yep, the senator is the rooster.

That got me to thinking. Who are some of the other Looney Tunes cartoon characters in that Loony Bin we call Washington?

Adam Schiff’s doppelganger is Marvin the Martian, the weirdo who wanted to blow up Earth to get a better view of Venus. Schiff is the weirdo who wants to blow up Trump to give Red China a better hold on America.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. At this point, the best thing to do with Washington is laugh at it.

 

 

Lying With Statistics (Calling Them ‘Adjustments’)

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On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about the economic numbers the Biden administration is currently bragging about. President Biden has tamed inflation and created massive growth in the economy–or so he says. I wonder how Americans who are paying double for gasoline and more than double to heat their homes feel about being told how great the economy is. I expect to hear how well we are doing in the State of the Union address, but I truly wonder if Americans will actually believe what they are told.

The American Thinker reports:

Bloomberg, which exists to serve active traders on Wall Street, is throwing shade on the January jobs report that “surprised” a lot of people with its positive numbers. Before addressing the technical factors used to produce the rosy numbers, consider the buried lede hundreds of words into the piece: Stripped of all the technical jargon is this stark reality:

On an unadjusted basis, payrolls actually fell by 2.5 million last month.

The article continues:

Molly Smith writes:

Employers added 517,000 jobs in January — nearly double the prior month’s advance and above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The unemployment rate also unexpectedly retreated to 3.4%, the lowest since 1969, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Those are the numbers that grabbed headlines and enabled Team Biden to claim credit for what they want to bamboozle the public into thinking we have a great economy.  But it turns out that there were changes in the way the data were gathered and reported that made things look rosier:

…“If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it is too good to be true — the gain is mostly due to seasonal factors and revisions to past data. Still, it can’t be denied that the labor market remains tight. The Fed won’t place too much weight on this headline jobs number when formulating policy.”
— Anna Wong and Eliza Winger, economists

Hang on to your hats. I truly believe that 2023 may be a difficult year economically for all Americans. I believe we will get through it, but I believe there will be serious economic challenges for both individuals and for the nation.

Why Is It Still Up There?

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How long do you think an American spy balloon would last over the mainland of China? China has had one sitting over the middle of America for a couple of days now.

On Friday, PJ Media reported:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given the Biden administration’s response to President Xi Jinping and China for their brazenly illegal act of sending a balloon over U.S. territory to spy on the United States.

How do we know it’s a spy balloon? We don’t have to know. We can, should, and must assume that’s what it’s doing.

Blinken, along with his advisors Wynken and Nod, has come up with a brilliant riposte to this Chinese transgression. The United States will deny China the pleasure and honor of hosting the U.S. secretary of state this week as planned.

It’s the well-practiced “comfy chair” response to China. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to impress President Xi. In fact, Xi couldn’t care less if Blinken comes to Beijing or not. He must be watching the diplomatic byplay with amusement.

Blinken and one of his deputies spoke with the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday night, and on Friday morning, he told China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, that the balloon’s course was a violation of sovereignty and “unacceptable,” according to a State Department official.

Oh, dear! Did ya hear that Xi-man? It’s “unacceptable” to fly your aircraft over U.S. territory.

The New York Times reported:

Beijing had sought to defuse tensions with Washington on Friday over the balloon, expressing its regret over the incident, and saying the balloon was for civilian research and had “deviated far from its planned course.”

The explanation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry came after Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had detected a balloon, “most certainly launched by the People’s Republic of China,” over Montana, which is home to about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

The article at PJ Media notes:

The experts at The Drive’s The War Zone disagree that there’s no added benefit to floating a balloon above U.S. military installations: “The idea that a terrestrial aerial platform in close proximity and floating for long periods above major military installations and other sensitive locales is not significantly more of a threat than what can be collected by satellites in orbit is a debatable claim.”

Don’t shoot it down–find a way to make a small hole in the balloon so that it floats gently to the ground, and then reverse engineer whatever electronics it is carrying.

 

Undermining America’s National Security Behind The Scenes

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The Iran Nuclear Deal is not a good idea for America or for the world. The deal as it was proposed under President Obama did not attempt to put an end to Iran’s nuclear program–it just fixed things so that Iran would develop an atomic bomb (and delivery system) after President Obama left office. The deal died under President Trump and has not been successfully revived under President Biden, but we may not been done with it yet.

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

A coalition of progressive activists bankrolled by George Soros, Charles Koch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are mounting a secret lobbying campaign to revive the Iran nuclear deal by tying it to the Iranian human rights movement, according to internal correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Activists from groups including J Street, NIAC Action, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are coming together behind a plan to lobby lawmakers to use human rights bills as cover to revive negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran. That’s according to a January email sent from a J Street lobbyist to other activists and obtained by the Free Beacon.

“I’m writing to suggest that this group convene virtually next week to brainstorm and hopefully find consensus on the elements of legislation to support the Iranian people that we could propose to diplomacy-oriented lawmakers,” J Street’s Dylan Williams wrote. “Given the usual need to be discrete [sic], the charged nature of the topic, and the outrageous threats against several members of this group, please do keep this initiative close-hold,” he added.

The activist groups “plan to pursue a dual-track legislative agenda, where they would find a way through legislation to give pro-deal Democrats cover by supporting Iranian women and Iranian human rights, without in any way challenging the revival of a nuclear deal, while at the same time building a coalition of members of the House and Senate willing to write a very public letter to the president urging him to keep the door to diplomacy over on the nuclear file,” a source familiar with the discussions told the Free Beacon.

It is a safe bet that any deal brokered or encouraged by this group of people would result in Iran becoming a nuclear power. What does that look like? I am not sure how much time Iran would waste before getting rid of the ‘little satan’, Israel. At that point, blackmailing Europe would be child’s play. Eventually America would be nuked, but I suspect Europe would suffer first. Remember, the religious fanatics currently in charge of Iran believe that chaos will hasten the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah who will bring Sharia Law to the whole world and reestablish the caliphate. Iran going nuclear would be a nightmare for the entire world.

Through The Looking Glass

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Through the looking glass is the only way I can describe this recent turn of events.

On Wednesday, The Conservative Review reported the following:

Attorneys for Hunter Biden asked the Department of Justice to investigate several allies of former President Donald Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, for allegedly disseminating personal data from his laptop.

The letters sent to the Justice Department’s National Security Division were obtained by ABC News.

One called for a probe into “individuals for whom there is considerable reason to believe violated various federal laws in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data.”

Another letter to the Delaware attorney’s general office accused those who spread data from the laptop of violating “various Delaware laws.”

NBC cited a person familiar with Hunter Biden’s strategy who said he wants to fight back against those attacking him in the media.

“This marks a new approach by Hunter Biden and his team,” the source says, according to ABC News. “He is not going to sit quietly by as questionable characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations peddling in lies try to defame him.”

It would be a good idea to point out that the computer was abandoned at the computer repair shop. At that point it becomes the property of the owner of the shop–much like your clothes at the cleaners if you do not pick them up in the designated amount of time. After the laptop was abandoned, Hunter Biden had not right to it–it was no longer his.

The article concludes:

Critics allege that tech companies tried to keep the laptop story from the public in an attempt to protect then-candidate Joe Biden and help him defeat Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Hunter Biden’s business dealings have been under federal investigation since 2018.

Some of those companies claim that their efforts were only meant to enforce terms of service rules against propagating stolen data. In August, Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan on his podcast that they shut down the story because they had been warned by the FBI about Russian disinformation meant to derail the election.

The interesting part of this is that the lawyers are now admitting that the laptop in question belongs to Hunter Biden. Considering what is alleged to be on the laptop, that is a risky admission.

 

Using Disney To Confuse Our Children

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When Disney began, he produced wholesome movies the family could enjoy. The princesses were a bit much, but eventually young girls figured out that being a princess was overrated and went on with their lives. Well, Disney is now engaged in promoting things that are simply not healthy for children or adults.

On Wednesday, Breitbart reported the following:

One of the stars of Disney’s upcoming Marvel series Ironheart has expressed hope that the show will appeal to transgender children and teens by giving them validation and something to emulate.

Zoe Terakes — who identifies as “non-binary”  and “trans masculine,”and uses “they/them” pronouns — spoke to Collider about the series that is expected to debut on Disney+ later this year.

“I think as trans people, growing up I didn’t get to see myself anywhere, so I didn’t really know that I existed. And especially not in a superhero show or movie,” Terakes said. “And so I think I just feel deeply grateful and moved that little trans kids and trans teens have something to look at and to know they exist and to know that they can have superpowers, and that that’s where we belong.”

The article notes:

The Walt Disney Co. has experienced intense criticism for promoting transgenderism and gender non-conformity in its entertainment aimed at kids.

Under then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, the company dedicated itself to radical LGBTQ activism and promised to continue fighting Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, saying the company will work to get the legislation repealed.

Gender dysphoria is a mental illness–it is not something to be celebrated or encouraged–it is something to be treated by a qualified professional. As some of the children who have been pushed into transgender medical treatments are coming out of adolescence, they are telling horror stories about the impact of the medical treatments they received and are sharing their regrets about undergoing the treatments. Transgender is not a behavior we need to encourage, it is a behavior we need find the root of and deal with that root.

Rejecting Change That Would Have A Negative Impact

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On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about a positive change that came out of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting.

The article reports:

While most corporate media coverage of last week’s Republican National Committee (RNC) meeting was devoted to the contested leadership race between Ronna McDaniel and Harmeet Dhillon, the organization’s conference yielded a significant win for election integrity.

During the meeting, RNC members unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) in U.S. elections. In an RCV system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. Such a process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

The process is confusing to the voters and can allow a person who really does not have the support of the majority of the voters to win an election.

The article concludes:

Should they adopt ranked-choice voting, state lawmakers would be subjecting their citizens to a process that disenfranchises both candidates and voters alike. Moreover, the chaotic system would further undermine voters’ already-waning confidence in America’s elections.

State legislatures across the country would be wise to follow the RNC’s lead in rejecting the use of RCV. With its multiple rounds of counting and confusing methodology, the RCV system will almost assuredly end in disaster. (Just ask Alameda County, California).

“Every state should strive to increase voter confidence through procedures that tighten election protections, not turn them into a demolition derby. Everyone should oppose rigged choice voting,” Taylor said.

Ranked-choice voting would further undermine confidence in our elections and would likely put people in office that the majority of the voters did not support. It is a really bad idea that needs to go away.

Common Sense Requests

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Technically America won’t run out of money until June. That leaves a little bit of time to negotiate the debt ceiling. The Republican Study Committee has a few suggestions as to what is needed in order for Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling. As much as I hate to see the debt ceiling raised again, I like their suggestions.

The Washington Examiner posted an article listing their demands:

Here is the list:

The seven demands are quoted below:

    1. Reverse recent increases in overall discretionary spending and institute statutory limitations on annual discretionary spending levels.
    2. Enact a package of inflation-busting reforms to increase domestic energy capacity and reduce associated regulatory and permitting barriers.
    3. Fight inflation and the onset of a Democrat-induced recession by ending the national COVID-19 emergency, increasing workforce participation, advancing targeted, paid-for, pro-growth tax policies, and countering overregulation with common-sense guardrails like the REINS Act.
    4. Ensure an increase in the debt ceiling is accompanied by commensurate spending reductions, including through recissions of the Democrats’ recent excessive spending.
    5. Eliminate wasteful spending on duplicative programs, examine ways to fight waste, fraud and abuse, and transition non-entitlement mandatory programs to the discretionary side of the budget.
    6. Establish a long-term fiscal control focused on reducing spending to restrain the growth of our federal debt as a percentage of the nation’s economy.
    7. Codify procedures to ensure the federal government honors certain critical obligations, such as federal debt payments, national security and veterans, Social Security, and Medicare.

We need to get back to fiscal sanity. This would be one way to do it.

Integrity Isn’t Racist!

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On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Princeton University’s Honor Code.

The article reports:

A Princeton University student argued in a Sunday night opinion article that the school’s Honor Code unfairly impacts racial minorities, citing parallels to the U.S. criminal justice system.

The Ivy League school’s Undergraduate Honor Code lays out standards for student conduct that all undergraduate students must abide by and prohibits students from plagiarizing or cheating, according to its website. Emilly Santos, author of the op-ed and Princeton University student, likened the code to the United States criminal justice system to propose that it “disadvantages” minority students.

If all students are required to adhere to the standards of the Honor Code, how is it racist?

The article continues:

“Princeton’s Honor Code, tasked with holding students accountable and honest in academic settings, mirrors the criminal justice system in its rules and effects,” Santos wrote. “It is harmful to the entirety of the Princeton community: the fear it instills in students fosters an environment of academic hostility. But it is often most damaging for first-generation low-income (FLI) students — students who also often belong to racial minorities.”

Honor Code violations include “tampering with a graded exam,” “claiming another’s work to be one’s own” and obtaining a exam materials prior to the examination date, the website reads.

Students who violate the Honor Code may be reprimanded, suspended, placed on probation or expelled, according to the university’s website. Students who are suspended for a semester are not eligible for university financial aid for the repeated semester, according to the university, however Santos argues this harms FLI students who rely on financial aid and would be plunged further in debt.

If you are that easily intimidated by ‘academic hostility’, maybe you should go to a less expensive school where you are under less pressure to achieve. We used to teach children that cheating was wrong. I would hope that we will continue to do that.

Saying The Border Is Open Is Racist!

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On Wednesday, Townhall reported the following:

House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee mainly had only one response to Republicans highlighting the disaster the U.S.-Mexico border has become under President Joe Biden’s leadership: Saying the southern border is open is racist.

Pay no attention to the thousands of people walking into America illegally.

The article continues:

After Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) outlined the record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants encountered, those who were able to avoid apprehension, and the amount of drugs seized, meaning much more was able to get into the U.S., Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said the first hearing about the crisis is a distraction and will only expose how racist Republicans are.

Nadler added the GOP’s focus on the border “almost makes me miss the usual obsession with conspiracy theories and the FBI.”

…El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego (D), who was the Democrat’s witnessed, testified the border was not open in his county, despite recently having a massive influx of illegal immigrants in September and December.

“There is no invasion of migrants in our community. Nor are there hordes of undocumented immigrants committing crimes against citizens or causing havoc in our community,” he added.

My advice to the Democrats is simple–if you are going to lie, at least make it believable!

The Jury Gets It Right

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On Monday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the federal court jury that found Mark Houck not guilty. As you may remember, Mark Houck was arrested in an early morning raid on his house by an armed swat team in front of his children. What was his crime? He was charged with violating the The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act). Mr. Houck leads a pro-life group that provides sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics in Philadelphia. The incident in question involves one of the abortion clinic escorts harassing Mark Houck’s son. When the case was originally brought to court, the court threw it out. Then the federal government decided to get involved.

The article at Hot Air reports:

By the way, this isn’t over yet. Eleven others face prosecution for FACE Act charges for allegedly blocking access to abortion clinics, as Greg points out in a subsequent tweet. The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan covered this in October:

…Amid accusations that it is targeting pro-lifers to silence and intimidate, the Justice Department has charged 11 more pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2021.

The 11 activists were charged with FACE Act violations stemming from their 2021 “blockade” of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. This blockade was peaceful, pro-life activist AJ Hurley told The Daily Signal on Wednesday evening.

Several of the activists were arrested on the day of the blockade, after reportedly successfully preventing abortions from taking place at the clinic for most of the day, but police reportedly released these activists later in the day after they posted bail for misdemeanor charges, the pro-life news outlet Live Action reported.

The article also notes:

Meanwhile, the FBI has done little to pursue actual acts of vandalism and political violence that targeted pro-life clinics. Two people got indicted last week in Florida. but most other victims have barely heard from the FBI — and the 30-agent raid model somehow didn’t get deployed in these cases, either.

It seems that the process is the punishment at the Department of Justice. It’s yet another good reason that Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have established a new select committee on the weaponization of federal law enforcement. Mark Houck will no doubt provide chapter and verse on that subject, starting with the astonishing raid over an argument.

 

Why I Don’t Want To Give The Government Any More Money

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On Monday, The Federalist reported the following:

While millions of jobless Americans struggled to make ends meet during devastating government-mandated lockdowns, thousands of federal employees double-dipped from taxpayer-funded pandemic unemployment funds while mostly working from home.

Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak, and the Secret Service defrauded taxpayers out of millions more dollars under the guise of Covid unemployment fund and wage assistance programs.

…Thanks to rushed and lax standards, whereby “claimants only needed to self-certify they met eligibility requirements when they filed for [pandemic unemployment assistance] benefits,” more than $8.8 million in taxpayer funds were funneled to 638 DHS employees unlawfully. FEMA’s state workforce agencies also paid out $1.2 million in “lost wages assistance” to 935 DHS workers who were “fully employed.” At least 366 of those ineligible DHS officials were actually paid overtime during the period they were approved, receiving up to hundreds of dollars per week on top of normal unemployment benefits.

I have no way of knowing whether this was corruption or simply bad record keeping, but either way it is totally unacceptable. Unless the government can show us that it is capable of managing the money it collects in taxes, we should not increase the amount of money (or the debt ceiling) that we are giving it.

The article concludes:

Already, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an oversight committee within the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, determined that “tens of thousands” of federal employees applied for and received Small Business Administration loans even though their status as government-employed disqualified them from taking the handout.

Ernst (Republican Sen. Joni Ernst), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, noted in her letter that the PRAC’s investigation into loans is ongoing and could yield even more deception and taxpayer money wasted by government workers.

Federal employees weren’t the only ones who wrongfully raked in millions of pandemic dollars. Hundreds of state and local government staff in Georgia, Indiana, and Louisiana also defrauded taxpayers.

This is not acceptable.

The End Of The Covid Health Emergency?

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about President Biden’s plans to end the three-year COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11. House Republicans would like to see the emergency end as soon as February 1.

The article reports:

The newly constituted GOP-controlled House Rules Committee cleared four pandemic-related bills during four hours of hearings on Jan. 30, sending the proposals directly to House floor where they will be debated without committee review.

In a theme that would recur in deliberations on all four bills, Democrats—outnumbered 9-4 on the panel—argued that abruptly pulling the plug on a raft of COVID-19 emergency measure would cause massive disruptions across a range of health services, from telehealth to Medicaid to programs provided by the Veterans Administration.

“This decision is very, very disappointing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member who chaired the committee for four years until this month, claiming that Republicans were hustling the bills to the House floor “for a soundbite” instead of allowing them to be vetted in committee review.

“To rush this to the floor, do a press release, and that’s it,” McGovern said, is irresponsible, noting there are plenty of other issues the new GOP leadership could rocket-docket. “Everybody needs to take a deep breath. I regret very much not taking that (committee) process.”

But Republicans insisted there is no need for the emergency measures to continue since even Biden himself admitted in September that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said “it is long past time” for the administration to end an emergency “that no longer exists.”

It is time that America returned to normal. There is no need for vaccine mandates (in fact, the vaccine may have done considerable harm to some of the people who received it), and the current versions of the Covid virus seem more like the common cold. It’s time to get back to being America.