Rights

I have often stated that our concept of Rights is a cultural one. I think this can be best explained with a parallel.

The laws of science, are not laws in a very real sense. They cannot dictate what happens in the real world, they are interpretations of what man sees in the world.

By the same token then, when Thomas Jefferson wrote about the new American culture and its belief that all men are created equal, Etc., he was reflecting the culture’s observation based belief of what is.

It is at this point that a certain amount of pragmatism enters my argument, with the observation that cultures that recognize those basic rights have a tendency to do better in the world than those that do not.

I will expand on this as time allows

Telling us what we already knew, the Washington Examiner reports:

The critics were not just ignored, they were also maligned by a vicious cabal of politicians, news media personalities, and education professionals, most notably American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. The critics were called monsters and “grandma killers.” They were accused of not “trusting” the science.

“Children are resilient,” the pro-closure camp smugly asserted. (No, it’s not that children are resilient. It’s that they don’t yet have the words to describe the ways in which you are harming them.)

Now, a little more than two years after the pandemic first came to America, new data confirm the mass school closures, which, by the way, Democratic politicians and teachers’ unions enforced with a religious fever even long after the restrictions were shown to be little more than superstitious hocus-pokery, caused serious harm to young students. “American students’ test scores plunge to levels unseen for decades,” the Washington Post reported on Sept. 1. “Test scores in elementary school math and reading plummeted to levels unseen for decades,” the report reads , citing the first “nationally representative report comparing student achievement from just before the pandemic to performance two years later.”

Remember, these are the same people who killed off your jobs, completely trashed your 401ks, have failed in more instances than I can relate here to uphold the law, while spending millions of dollars over the last 5 years on a political vendetta.

It’s always struck me as a supreme irony that Union types and government workers get the day off on Labor Day. Yet another day when you can guarantee that no labor would we be performed by those.

The rest of us, meanwhile….

Pathetic.

Calling half of America “a threat to democracy” last night was a measure of just how desperate the Democrats are going into the midterms and beyond…. The political equivalent of a hail Mary pass.

I’m quite sure Biden’s diatribe sounded a lot better in the original German. I’m quite sure it’s just a coincidence that Hitler’s Reichstag speech was also delivered on September 1st.

.

This is a speech of somebody whose party is going to be driven out of power in a few short months, and knows it.

Biden:

For those brave right-wing Americans… if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something little more than a gun.

First of all it’s not the country that would be fought; The government is not the country.

Secondly, to my memory most successful revolutions worldwide in the history of man were waged by people who the existing government thought were terrorists, untrained, under equipped and didn’t have a chance in hell of winning.

This would, of course, include the American revolution.

From of all places, Newsweek‘

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

These shrill noises are the sound of progressive politicians being squeezed. They proclaim their cities are “sanctuaries” but—surprise, surprise—they don’t actually want more illegal immigrants. Not that they can voice that reservation, of course, given their activist political base. Neither can they support serious efforts to manage the underlying problem by closing the border, or even trying to. Doing so would mean a humiliating return to Donald Trump’s tough policies: building the wall, requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as their applications are processed, and encouraging Mexico’s armed forces to deploy along the border to prevent illegal crossings. Biden overturned all those policies, to cheers from his party’s left-wing base. That was when they thought it would be costless.

Yeah, there is nothing like a little skin in the game to bring one back to reality. In the end, this is going to be one of the measurements of peak woke, as far left as politicians find their long-time positions and policies indefensible.

Of course I should point out that the only wall that’s being built as a result of Democrat policies is the wall around Joe Biden’s home.

That factor alone should tell you where his priorities lie. The irony here is that it’s DHS that’s building the wall around Biden’s house.

Protecting himself on the taxpayer dime? That’s our boy.

Protecting the American people by raising the wall on the border? Not so much.

At this point, it’s a matter of time before this bubble bursts.

Bill Barr Says:

“Number one is that I think a lot of the attacks on the FBI are over the top because a decision like this is not made by the FBI,” former Attorney General William Barr told the Bari Weiss podcast on August 25.

“In fact, I don’t think the FBI would push a decision that it’s best to go in and search and obtain those documents after being jerked around for a year and a half. The decision would be made at the Department of Justice, by subordinates of the AG, and ultimately signed off on by the AG. The FBI would be told to go and execute it. I think the idea that the FBI is the problem here is misplaced.”

..

Perhaps bill would be interested in explaining to us the firing of FBI agent Timothy Thibault, who signed off on the raid.

Is Thibault merely a scapegoat here? It’s the only way I can see Barr’s statements being totally true. Even in that event, there are still some seriously gaping holes in the argument.

Recent FOIA requests show several phone calls between the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the cell phone of Ray Epps, prior to January 6th.

We already know through court documents that the FBI had informants and agents planted throughout the crowd on January 6th.

Now, why would Nancy Pelosi be talking with Ray Epps, the guy who was urging protesters to break into the capitol building?

You know why.

I think we also know at this point, why the January 6th committee refuses to allow any actual investigation, preferring instead the propaganda from the never Trumpers, like Liz Cheney for example.

Of course, the left wing media is scrambling to deny the story. However their disclaimers are stretched beyond all credulity, looking rather remarkably like The wizard of Oz telling Dorothy not to pay any attention to that man behind the curtain over there.

It’s clear that this entire thing surrounding the FBI raid on Trump’s home is falling apart and at the agencies involved are salvaging what they can.

From Legal Insurrection:

Timothy Thibault, who supposedly has left the agency, has been mentioned quite a bit in letters from Sen. Grassley to FBI Director Wray.

The Washington Times reported
that Timothy Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge, was forced
out of his position after reports of political bias concerning Hunter
Biden’s laptop.

Kerry Picket and Jeff Murdock wrote:

The Washington Times learned that Timothy Thibault, an
assistant special agent in charge, was forced to leave his post
according to two former FBI officials familiar with the situation.

Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau’s elevator last Friday escorted by two or three “headquarters-looking types,” according to eyewitness accounts provided to one of the former officials.

It is unclear if Mr. Thibault, a 25-year FBI veteran who was on leave for at least a month following revelations about political statements he made while leading the public corruption unit, left on his own accord or was forced out.

The FBI declined to comment. Attempts to contact Mr. Thibault were unsuccessful.

FBI whistleblowers claimed the DOJ and FBI tried to discredit any negative information about Hunter before the 2020 election.

As the article suggests, it’s unclear whether he left of his own accord or was forced out. That seems to me a very large indicator.

This is huge, and as a result you’ll not see much about it in the supposed mainstream media.  This story will get the same treatment as the botched Mar-a-Lago raid itself, Joe Rogan’s revealing interview with Zuckerberg, FBI whistleblowers with incriminating testimony, the lot of it.

With this stuff coming so close to the other revelations, it’s clear we’re still not getting the full story on this, and that something is being protected at all cost.

I posted a snippet from Victor Davis Hansen yesterday. I’m glad to see I’m not alone in the observation.

Roger Simon:

Even better might be the “foreign policy expert.” Who paying attention cannot recall decades of misguided nonsense emanating from Middle East experts after the Oslo Accords that never amounted to anything, or even exacerbated the violence?

Then along came the galumphing Donald Trump, expert in Fifth Avenue real estate, I suppose, who employed some common sense—you might say street smarts—allying the Gulf States with Israel against their common threat, Iran. And, voila—a huge step forward to peace.

The pandemic, needless to say, has thrown us all into the arms of warring medical and scientific experts. It has been quite a battle—much of it, I am pleased to say, engaged in with more clarity and usefulness than elsewhere on these digital pages.

One of the few positive things that has emerged from the COVID-19 awfulness is that our suspiciousness of experts has grown considerably, as it should. The intelligent person now knows to look past the label (institutes led, doctorates earned) on the supposed expert—who had a fancier vitae than Dr. Anthony Fauci?—to the true character, knowledge, and intentions of the human being beneath that label.

… And find them wanting.

As Glenn points out…

The coming storm: America is not ready for a future pandemic.

And the problem isn’t that “funding for core public health functions
remains ‘grossly insufficient.’” It’s that the relevant agencies are
full of idiots, liars, and crooks.

Honestly, the decentralized health system of the day handled the 1918 flu better than the federal apparat of today handled Covid, which was objectively a much less serious thing, despite colossal budgets by comparison.

Even the CDC has begun to understand that. The Epoch Times:

Victor Davis Hanson:

All these depressing examples have one common denominator: Elite experts and degreed professionals massaged and warped their knowledge to serve ideological masters, rather than the truth.

In the process, they caused untold damage to their country and fellow citizens. They disgraced their profession. They tarnished the scientific community. And sold their souls to ideologues.

Is it any wonder why the Western public has lost confidence in their degreed and credentialed elites?

Read the whole thing

Following such people has always been suicidal. Increasingly, we see average Americans recognizing this, and acting accordingly, which in turn leads us to the remarkable rejection of the elites. The election of and continued support for non- establishment types like Donald Trump is certainly part of that rejection.

What we are witness to, today, is those same elites using every power at their disposal to maintain their grip on power over us… Power they apparently feel is their right. Such power lust is behind the actions of those elite against the choices of the people.

Those forces are nigh on intractable, with the US Federal government which at the moment is at the disposal of that group of elites, being the largest employer in my the entire world.

We fought against the elite in another century, to gain our freedoms as a nation, a culture, a people. What form the continued rejection of these self-appointed elite will take now, I shudder to think.

Bump and update

Mark Zuckerberg finally admitted on what we’ve known all along:The FBI colluded with big tech to squash the Hunter Biden story.https://youtu.be/3OGodujfD04And look, if we know what happened with Facebook, is there any reason whatsoever to believe that it didn’t happen with the other platforms as well?And then there’s the supposed mainstream news media sitting on the story…Matt Vespa over at Town Hall:

“How is this not a huge story,” asked Matt Taibbi, the former contributing editor to Rolling Stone. He then faced a deluge of unhinged liberals who just didn’t seem to get that a) the laptop was declared authentic eons ago, and b) the FBI policing speech in the middle of an election is antithetical to American values. The FBI is our leading domestic intelligence agency. As Taibbi noted, their meddling in news distribution should have sent chills down the spines of everyone, especially the American Civil Liberties Union.

Where the hell are they in all of this?

Where, indeed?

One of the reasons why liberals don’t care about this is that their hatred of Trump is so great they’re willing to shred the Constitution to achieve that goal.

True, but let’s not forget the idea that they’re willing to do that, anyway.

Another reason could be that they don’t care because the FBI’s interference helped Democrats, and they’re supportive of the government policing speech they don’t like wholesale. The Left’s growing intolerance of freedom of speech and differing opinions has moved at warp speed since the 2016 election. Tired of having their views shredded in under 30 seconds, liberals now claim that opposing views and voicing them is akin to violence.

So as I’ve suggested already what we have here is the specter of the Federal Bureau of Investigation acting as the enforcement arm of the Democrat party.

In other words, they’ve become the Stazi, or the Gestapo depending on which way you want to lean.I hope that this won’t be the last we hear of this story but given the history of the thing… You know, the thing…

There’s a lot to go over here so this is going to take a little bit.

First, go back and read part 1.

Now, let’s listen to the comments of the great one, Mark Levin, recorded prior to the DOJ affidavit being released piecemeal.

Now, the affidavit itself has been released in heavily redacted form. (Some are calling it The zebra files).

None of what remains visible is anything new, and the former FBI agents that I’m hearing are raising questions about the broadness of it. Even a lot of Democrats are raising issues about it.

They’re using words like unconscionable, unprecedented, and clearly unconstitutional. Their words, not mine. All of which deepens my suspicion that this is not a matter of national security but rather a matter of FBI and DOJ security.

Here it is, folks… The raid was itself a desperate move. Obviously they felt they needed evidence. Which in turn means they didn’t have a case. Just as obvious however, is the idea that they didn’t find any evidence.

Think…. So desperate are they, that had they discovered anything in what they overambitiously removed from Trump’s residence, they would already have been laying charges within 24 to 48 hours from the raid. That didn’t happen. The obvious conclusion is, they’ve got nothing, even after rifling through Melena’s lingerie drawer.

However, them having nothing doesn’t mean it’s going to end anytime soon. There is a political advantage to them to be had here by the illusion of Trump’s guilt being continued.

All that said, Mark’s comments about Mitch McConnell are spot on. He and the wondering band of RINOs are a serious impediment to putting a stop to this nonsense. We desperately need to replace the man.. he is exactly the kind of RINO that I described in my column how about establishment Republicans some years ago, which if you haven’t seen it already I urge you to go and read. Pay particular attention to the final paragraph where I suggest that the GOP rank and file was about to drop the bomb on the GOP leadership, such as McConnell.

Certainly, the nomination and the election of Donald Trump over the establishments choice of Jeb Bush would qualify as that at least. A further indication would be the overwhelming success of candidates in primaries who had Trump support.

Then we come to, finally, the enforcement arm of the Democrat party otherwise known as the FBI.

There is been no small amount of commentary these last several weeks about the FBI and the corruption thereof. Most of the commentary seems to be aimed at remediating the problems, redeeming their credibility. There is a knee-jerk instinct, I suppose, that forces some to trust governmental institutions like the FBI. Frankly however, I have long since begun to believe that there is no redemption of their credibility.

Yes, no question,there are a number of people within the organization that are doing their jobs loyally, and well. They have attempted to serve the American people. Then again, harsh as this is, Hitler made the trains run on time.

Again, it’s possible that’s overly harsh but I believe the point is made. While I again Grant then there are a great many of the FBI who do their job loyally and well and if there were a choice I would not call for them to be summarily disposed of.

The fact remains however, that the trust of the American people has been broken whether by many or by a few is immaterial to the conversation. The reason for this is rather simple. Does anybody truly believe that the FBI will ever be fully trusted again?

And don’t tell me about weeding out the few bad apples and continuing on our merry way. That’s simply not going to happen.

Sorry, folks, they’ve been trying to eliminate corruption since the 30s, J Edgar Hoover’s time, and never been completely successful. Mind you this is not a particular fault of the FBI but of any organization so large and so powerful, particularly government run organizations. Power corrupts.

Ask yourself a serious question. Does anybody seriously consider that the FBI will ever be fully trusted again by the American people, particularly after what we’ve been witness to these last 6 years or so? And without that trust, what purpose does the organization serve?