Fire Hydrant of Freedom

No worries from me in making your case, and this article does a better job of that than you did the last time around   

Jeepers, you mean the articles posted by people with expertise in the area did a better job of explication than little ol’ me that said from the outset he had no expertise? Standby as I fumble about for my shocked face….

But hey, isn’t the point of posting pieces here to assemble a body of information that can be referred to when the usual suspects make their usual noise, or am I missing something?

Looks like the same sunspot cluster that ejected the coronal mass providing the spectacular Northern Lights display a couple weeks back is coming around again. Note the fun that is poked at the “CO2 is really scary” crowd re how dismissive they are of the sun’s role in climate:

https://joannenova.com.au/2024/05/auroras-anyone-the-big-sunspot-cluster-returns-and-its-grumpy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=auroras-anyone-the-big-sunspot-cluster-returns-and-its-grumpy

I’m going to have to do some mulling on this one—a couple of his examples such as sanctuary cities and abortion grate—though I do like the idea of using federalism to make sure liberty remains a tenet of American government and thank we should embrace any tool that allows us to thumb our noses at the federal government:

American Federalism Can Push Back against Executive Overreach
Cato Recent Op-eds / by Ilya Somin / May 29, 2024 at 3:12 PM
Ilya Somin

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, “sanctuary” jurisdictions have become a focus of political and legal controversy. Sanctuary policies are adopted by state and local governments that refuse to aid federal officials in enforcing certain federal laws. They can be thought of as attempts to build a type of legal wall around a state or municipality.

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For example, in Trump’s first term, immigration sanctuaries forbade local law enforcement organizations from helping to enforce some federal immigration laws. Those policies have been imitated by conservative states passing gun‐​sanctuary laws. In the future, especially if Trump returns to power, we may well see controversy over other types of sanctuaries, such as state and local governments seeking to protect abortion rights.

Sanctuary policies have their flaws and limitations. But they have strong constitutional grounding and are a useful check on federal power, especially on overreaching presidents of both parties. So it is worth exploring how sanctuary policies work and their constitutional foundations.

What Sanctuary Policies Are
Sanctuary policies are laws and regulations adopted by state and local governments that deny assistance to federal officials seeking to enforce particular federal laws. Currently, the most widespread sanctuary policies are left‐​liberal immigration sanctuaries. Over the last 20 years, numerous liberal “sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary states” have adopted policies barring their law enforcement agencies from assisting in the deportation of many categories of undocumented immigrants—usually those not convicted of serious crimes. Depending on how we count, there are either 11 or 12 immigration “sanctuary states,” and dozens of local governments with similar policies.

In recent years, left‐​wing immigration sanctuaries have been imitated by conservative gun sanctuaries, beginning with Montana. Gun sanctuary laws—or “Second Amendment Protection Acts,” as advocates like to call them—deny cooperation with enforcement of a variety of federal gun control laws. Three states—Idaho, Missouri, and Wyoming—have full‐​blown gun sanctuary laws, thereby earning a “gold” rating from Gun Owners of America (a pro‐​gun rights advocacy group). Seven other red states have more limited legislation.

Sanctuary laws are often analogized to “nullification”—the idea that states can render federal laws null and void within their territory. Nullification, of course, has a terrible reputation because of its association with southern states’ defense of slavery and (later) segregation. But there is an important distinction between sanctuary laws and nullification.

Nullificationists argue that the federal laws in question are completely void, and that states have the right to actively impede their enforcement on their territory. By contrast, sanctuary jurisdictions do not necessarily claim the laws in question are void. They merely deny them the assistance of state and local governments, particularly law enforcement agencies. For example, they refuse to help enforce the relevant laws themselves, or to provide information to federal law enforcement agencies engaged in enforcement efforts. But the feds remain free to try to enforce these laws using only their own resources and personnel.

In this respect, sanctuary jurisdictions are not actually complete sanctuaries. Undocumented immigrants protected by immigration sanctuaries may still be caught and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agencies. Gun owners protected by gun sanctuaries may, similarly, be apprehended by federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Federal prosecutors remain free to charge violators of these laws in federal court.

Nonetheless, sanctuary jurisdictions’ denial of state and local assistance to federal law enforcement makes a difference. In the U.S. federal system, some 90% of law enforcement personnel are state and local government employees; only about 10% work for the federal government. Because of this imbalance, federal law enforcement agencies are heavily dependent on state and local cooperation to effectuate enforcement of most federal laws. When states and localities deny such assistance, it becomes extremely difficult for federal law enforcement to catch more than a small fraction of violators. This is particularly true of laws—including both immigration and gun laws—where the number of violators is very large. For example, there are some 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. For these reasons, sanctuary policies significantly reduce the enforcement of federal laws they target, even if they cannot eliminate such enforcement entirely.

Abortion: A Potential New Sanctuary Frontier
While immigration and gun laws have been the main focus of sanctuary policies over the last decade or so, that could change. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), overturning Roe v. Wade, several liberal states have enacted “abortion shield” laws that protect medical providers and others who perform abortions for women from states with laws banning or severely restricting abortions. They also protect providers of abortion pills and related services.

While these laws primarily bar state cooperation with law enforcement by other states (in this case, states with abortion bans), they could also be used or expanded to bar cooperation with federal law enforcement as well.

Many Republicans advocate a national abortion ban, possibly one focused on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. While Donald Trump (probably fearing adverse electoral consequences) has thrown some cold water on the notion, it could easily be resuscitated if he wins the presidency and the GOP also has control of both houses of Congress. Other conservatives involved in planning a potential new Trump administration want to use the archaic 1873 Comstock Act as a tool to ban shipment of all abortion‐​related equipment and medications, thus potentially leveraging that law into a nation‐​wide abortion ban. Whether courts would accept such a gambit is uncertain.

If either new federal legislation or the Comstock Act are used to impose nationwide abortion restrictions, we are likely to see abortion sanctuaries comparable to immigration and gun sanctuaries. Many blue states would almost certainly refuse to assist with enforcement of such laws. Adverse federal action on marijuana legalization or other issues could also potentially trigger state resistance through sanctuary policies.

The Constitutional Basis for Sanctuary Laws
Constitutional protection for sanctuary jurisdictions rests on a series of Supreme Court decisions holding that the 10th Amendment—which states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States … or to the people”—bans federal “commandeering” of state governments. The leading decisions to that effect are New York v. United States (1992), and Printz v. United States (1997). They hold, among other things, that state and local governments cannot be compelled to help enforce federal law. The anti‐​commandeering doctrine was further extended in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), which held that the federal government cannot issue orders to state legislatures and thereby force states to enact legislation or to refrain from repealing state laws.

Critics often claim that the Supreme Court’s anti‐​commandeering jurisprudence has no basis in the text and original meaning of the Constitution. But, as legal scholar Michael Rappaport showed in an important 1999 article, the anti‐​commandeering decisions have a basis in the Founding‐​era understanding of the word “state,” which implied a sovereign authority that the federal government could not undercut by seizing control over the state’s government apparatus.

Printz and New York were decided by mostly conservative Supreme Court justices over vociferous dissents by the Court’s liberals. The law at issue in Printz required local officials to enforce a new federal background check gun law opposed by conservatives. Murphy was a 7–2 decision authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, with two liberal justices in dissent.

Ironically, these conservative decisions have been most extensively used by liberal immigration sanctuaries to successfully fend off Trump administration efforts to force them to aid the deportation of undocumented migrants. In the Trump era, liberal states and migrant‐​rights activists learned to love—or at least make use of—conservative federalism precedents they had previously opposed.

During Trump’s term in office, his administration reviled sanctuary cities and sought to bring them to heel as much as possible. The anti‐​commandeering rule precluded efforts at direct coercion. It led courts to largely reject a Trump lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s “sanctuary state” law.

The extension of the doctrine in Murphy prevented the administration from making effective use of 8 USC Section 1373, a federal law barring state and local governments from instructing their employees to refuse to share information on undocumented immigrants with federal law enforcement agencies. Multiple lower court decisions ruled that Murphy either required the invalidation of Section 1373 or compelled judges to interpret it very narrowly, rendering the law essentially ineffective. While Murphy struck down a federal law restricting states’ abilities to legalize sports gambling, its biggest practical impact was to give legal support to the idea of liberal immigration sanctuaries.

The Trump administration also tried to pressure sanctuary cities by threatening to cut off federal grants. A 2017 executive order tried to withhold nearly all federal funds to states and localities that refused to obey Section 1373. Later, the Department of Justice attempted to deny certain law enforcement grants to jurisdictions that refused to meet several immigration‐​enforcement‐​related conditions.

Both policies were struck down by federal courts because they violated Supreme Court precedent limiting the use of the spending power to coerce state and local governments. The Court had previously held that grant conditions must be clearly spelled out in the relevant statute; they must be related to the purpose of the grant and could not be so sweeping as to be “coercive.” Thus, for example, the federal government couldn’t withdraw all education funding to get states to enforce its immigration laws—that would be both non‐​related and coercive. The Trump policies were held to violate the requirement of clarity; indeed, they effectively sought to usurp Congress’s power over federal spending by imposing new conditions created by the executive branch. Courts also ruled that the executive order violated the anti‐​coercion rule because it covered such a vast range of grants. Some court decisions further concluded that Trump’s conditions violated the “relatedness” requirement.

Like the anti‐​commandeering rule, precedents limiting the use of the federal spending power had been pioneered by conservative justices and opposed by many liberals (though not as uniformly). But the sanctuary cases shifted their ideological valence.

After Trump’s 2020 defeat, Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland put an end to most of Trump’s anti‐​immigration‐​sanctuary policies. But the new administration was hostile to conservative gun sanctuaries. While it did not launch an extensive campaign against them on the scale of Trump’s effort to coerce immigration sanctuaries, the Biden DOJ did file a dubious lawsuit challenging the Missouri gun sanctuary law. In March 2023, a federal district court issued a badly flawed decision, ruling against the Missouri law. The judge recognized that the federal government cannot force Missouri to aid in the enforcement of federal gun laws but wrongly argued that the state law went beyond merely withholding assistance. In reality, the Missouri law does no such thing; hopefully, the ruling will be reversed on appeal.

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The Constitution fully allows expanding the sanctuary concept to protect individual rights.

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While sanctuary policies enable states to deny assistance to federal efforts to enforce laws against private parties, it is important to recognize that they do not empower states to violate federal laws themselves. States cannot use such policies to prevent the federal government from, for example, suing them for violating citizens’ constitutional rights. Nor can they use sanctuary laws to eliminate constitutional rights directly.

Legal and political conflict over sanctuary laws is likely to continue in the future. Should Trump prevail in the 2024 election, a second Trump administration plans to engage in a massive deportations of undocumented immigrants and would almost certainly make a renewed effort to coerce immigration sanctuaries. Hopefully, these will run afoul of the same constraints that undermined first term efforts.

If Trump is backed by GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republicans could also try to enact new laws trying to use the spending power to pressure sanctuaries—for example, by tying a wide range of federal grants to immigration enforcement. Depending on how such laws are structured, they might run afoul of constitutional constraints.

As already discussed, a GOP administration might also clash with blue states over abortion. If a Republican president tries to use the Comstock Act to impose nationwide abortion restrictions, or new restrictions are enacted by Congress, blue states are likely to use “shield” laws to deny cooperation. The same applies if Congress were to enact a federal law restricting interstate travel to get an abortion.

Should President Biden be reelected, the Department of Justice case against the Missouri gun sanctuary law is likely to continue. The administration might also target other gun sanctuaries. More generally, both red and blue states might, in the future, try to use sanctuary laws against federal regulations on various issues. Immigration, guns, and abortion are far from the only situations where states might want to refuse to help enforce federal laws they object to.

Sanctuaries as a Check on Authoritarianism
Politicians’ and activists’ positions on sanctuary laws often reek of “fair weather federalism.” Their stances depend on whose ox is being gored. Supporters of immigration sanctuaries oppose gun sanctuaries, and vice versa, even though the constitutional issues in the two types of cases are very similar.

But there are good reasons to support state and local rights to adopt sanctuary policies that go beyond one’s specific policy preferences. If the federal government has broad power to force states to do its bidding, that power could easily be abused—especially in an era where there is severe ideological polarization, and many on both sides of the political spectrum are eager to coerce their adversaries.

The danger is heightened by the ways in which such power is likely to be concentrated in the hands of the executive. If the president can use vaguely worded laws to attach new conditions to federal grants, as Trump tried to do, he could easily use that to consolidate power and impose his own preferences on unwilling states and localities.

The case for sanctuary policies is even stronger if you fear that Trump—or some other potential future president—has authoritarian tendencies. Sanctuary jurisdictions can make such authoritarian aspirations harder to realize by giving refuge to the would‐​be dictator’s opponents.

Even when there is no authoritarian threat looming, sanctuary policies play a valuable role in preserving diversity in our federal system. In a highly diverse nation like the U.S., federally imposed uniformity would deny millions of people the opportunity to live under policies they prefer.

Sanctuary policies also help empower people to “vote with their feet” for the policies they prefer. People who dislike their home state’s policies on immigration, guns, or some other issue, have the opportunity to relocate to a more congenial jurisdiction. Where authority devolves to local governments, foot‐​voting opportunities are even greater, as it is often cheaper and easier to move between local governments than between states.

Foot voters generally make better‐​informed decisions than ballot‐​box voters do. In addition, the former can exercise greater freedom of choice than the latter, because their decisions are far more likely to decisively determine what laws they live under. In most elections, a ballot‐​box voter has only an infinitesimally small chance of decisively affecting the outcome (about 1 in 60 million in a presidential election, for example). Foot voters have much greater leverage.

Worth the Trade‐​Off
Sanctuary policies do have the downside that they could potentially be used to weaken enforcement of valuable federal laws. But this danger is readily outweighed by the benefits of checking federal power, preserving diversity, and empowering people to vote with their feet.

Some might argue that sanctuary policies are objectionable because they impede effective enforcement of many federal laws. That violates the seeming principle that every duly enacted law must be fully enforced. But we already have far more laws—and law-breakers—than any enforcement apparatus can hope to deal with. The majority of adult Americans have violated federal criminal law at some point in their lives, to say nothing of state law and civil law.

In such circumstances, government officials inevitably exercise extensive discretion over which laws to enforce and to what degree. It makes sense to allow some of that discretion to be used to deny state assistance for the enforcement of federal laws that the state and its people disapprove of. That puts a check on federal power, promotes diversity, and empowers more people to vote with their feet.

Ideally, we should reduce law‐​enforcement discretion by cutting back on the number of laws. But unless and until that happens, sanctuary policies are a good way to use some of the discretion that unavoidably exists.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/american-federalism-can-push-back-against-executive-overreach

Trump’s donations page has crashed. I donated today; if you disagree with today’s verdict I suggest you do so too:

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/05/30/lawfare-backfire-trumps-donation-page-crashes-n4929491

It’ll be interesting to see what the total is. I suspect Dems won’t be pleased….

Doesn’t include 30K encounters with Chinese citizens:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/border-patrol-has-encountered-over-52000-special-interest-aliens-since-october/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=border-patrol-has-encountered-over-52000-special-interest-aliens-since-october

I dunno where to post this as I can’t find a “women’s lib” thread. Suffice to say Dem’s attacking Alito for not controlling his wife’s flag waving habits is a wee bit ironic:

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/democrats-demand-justice-alito-control-his-wife/

An apt post with numerous links tracking many of the hyperbolic media claims made re Covid that turned out to be false. Nothing resembling accountability has occurred in the wake of these falsehood, and indeed these false news pieces arguably succeeded in their goal of propping up alarmist edicts, with hurricane Katrina being used as an example where false claims bore electoral fruit and indeed served as a roadmap used as future false, alarmist news stories were floated.

Perhaps we need to draft a comprehensive piece tracking all these false efforts that can be added as an asterisk to future deconstructions of the next instance of Big Like employment, making it clear Goebbels’ antecedents are in shameless play:
 
https://instapundit.com/649889/

Clearly I’m a masochist as I record episodes of PBS’s Frontline to then watch at my leisure, mostly so I have a handle on what the “Progressive” regime wants me to think. Yesterday I watched a recorded episode purporting to unravel the Israel/Hamas war. A prominent, concluding element involved the Abraham Accords that Trump engineered, with the message we were supposed to walk away with being those Accords utterly subverted the Palestinian (with that term being a construct used for propaganda purposes) cause to the point all Accord players could ignore them, thus inspiring Oct. 7, an operation meant to put Palestinian concerns back on the map.

Seemed too trite and convenient a thesis to take seriously. Lo and behold I am perusing my feeds today and this “striptease” piece shows up. I suspect this is precisely what is happening: feigning surprise that some think the Abraham Accords are responsible for Oct. 7, pretending to mull this perspective, and then using the supposed deliberations as a springboard to alter the US policy course, with the MSM playing along with this piece of kabuki theater. Certainly indicates what they think of our critical faculties: 

The Big Story

In a 2016 article for Tablet, “Obama’s Syria Policy Striptease,” Tony Badran laid out the “striptease” messaging genre adopted by the Obama echo chamber to retail White House Syria policy to a skeptical American public. In the policy “striptease,” Tony wrote:

Hand-picked experts offer fresh policy advice to the president. The authors demonstrate their independence by criticizing the supposed current policy and propose a new course of action. Within weeks, the new course of action is acknowledged as policy, thus flattering the importance of the experts. Only, what the experts suggested was already the policy—and what they were “criticizing”—was the fan that the messaging campaign had manufactured to obscure, for a time, what the White House was actually doing in Syria.

The striptease came to mind this morning when we read, in Jewish Insider, that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had made an appearance last week on the Twitch stream of the self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninist” Hasan Piker. On the stream, AOC said she agreed “10,000%” with Piker’s assertion that Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and the Abraham Accords were to blame for the Oct. 7 attacks. This story, far from demonstrating that AOC is dangerously close to supposedly “radical” Marxist elements of the left—Piker once declared that “America deserved 9/11” and has hosted a Houthi militant on his stream—instead illustrates the way that the Obama-Biden echo chamber has evolved over the past eight years. Namely, rather than operating purely through such D.C. swamp creatures as Jeffrey Goldberg, it has incorporated allegedly independent “communists” and “radicals” like Piker into the heart of the party’s messaging apparatus.

We’ve written before about the split between the Biden White House’s fake public policy in the Middle East and its real, secret policy. The fake policy is both a deep commitment to Washington’s traditional partners in the Middle East, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and a desire to continue the positive steps toward “regional integration” taken by the Trump administration during the Abraham Accords—albeit without the Trump administration’s allegedly destructive indifference to the Palestinian question. The real policy is that the administration wants to destroy the Abraham Accords, which it correctly perceives as a repudiation of the Obama-Biden policy of realignment toward Iran. Rather than doing this openly—the Abraham Accords were, after all, widely acknowledged as a resounding diplomatic success—the administration is attempting to do it stealthily, by weaving Abraham Accords-sounding language, such as Israeli-Saudi “normalization,” into its own policy framework, which inverts the Trump framework by putting the Palestinian issue front and center.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, we have seen a chorus of seemingly independent voices on the left assert a “critique” of the Biden administration’s fake policy that is in fact a justification for the actual policy, which nonetheless goes unacknowledged. On Oct. 9, for instance, The Intercept declared that Hamas’ attack represented a “total failure of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy”—which, it asserted, was centered on an “expansion of the Abraham Accords” and an expectation that “the Palestinians would simply resign themselves to a slow death.” On Oct. 20, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—helmed by leading Iran propagandist Trita Parsi and funded by George Soros and Iranian-born Francis Najafi—again pinned the violence on the Biden administration’s decision to “continue Trump’s normalization efforts” between the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states. In December, Sarah Leah Whitson of Democracy for the Arab World Now, the pro-Qatari, Muslim Brotherhood think tank cozy with the Biden State Department, penned an op-ed in Time Magazine excoriating the Biden White House for supporting and expanding the Abraham Accords, which allegedly “emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights.”

In reality, of course, the Biden policy these critics are describing is entirely mythical; the administration was so hostile to the Abraham Accords that it forbade its officials from uttering the phrase, with sometimes comic results. At the same time, the policy they present as a supposedly radical alternative is a fair description of the administration’s real policy. That policy is to emphasize, time and again, that agreements between the Israelis and Sunni Arab states—now downgraded from “peace deals” to “normalization agreements”—are “not a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace,” as then State Department spokesman Ned Price put it in 2021. The latest culmination of this policy is the White House’s attempt to use Saudi-Israeli normalization as leverage to force Israel to preserve Hamas in Gaza and commit to recognizing a Palestinian state.

This inside-outside game, in which the administration leaves the articulation of its real policy to “outside” “critics” of its fake policy, explains why the White House—and the Democratic Party more generally—often appears to be irrationally caving to pressure from its “left flank,” which, critics rightly point out, represents an insignificant share of the American electorate. We’re not saying that Piker is receiving instructions from the White House—although, given the revelations that the administration was pushing its talking points to the New York Times Pitchbot X account and an Arab amateur porn star, we wouldn’t be shocked if he was. What we’re saying is that the administration cannot articulate its own position, and so it leaves the task to outside “critics,” which is what gives the public the misleading impression that the left-wing tail is wagging the White House dog.

An apt post with numerous links tracking many of the hyperbolic media claims made re Covid that turned out to be false. Nothing resembling accountability has occurred in the wake of these falsehood, and indeed these false news pieces arguably succeeded in their goal of propping up alarmist edicts, with hurricane Katrina being used as an example where false claims bore electoral fruit and indeed served as a roadmap used as future false, alarmist news stories were floated.

Perhaps we need to draft a comprehensive piece tracking all these false efforts that can be added as an asterisk to future deconstructions of the next instance of Big Like employment, making it clear Goebbels’ antecedents are in shameless play:
 
https://instapundit.com/649889/

I don’t disagree with this plan, and would add to the list, like telling all Executive Office agencies that they can no longer enforce any regulation that wasn’t specifically authorized by Congress and signed by the president:

Trump Wins. What Next? (Part 2)
Kurt Schlichter

May 30, 2024

When Donald Trump beats Grandpa Badfinger in November, he better hit the ground ready to fight. In my Monday column, we discussed how the Democrats will completely freak out and attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of government – an act that’s going to be absolutely fine and necessary to maintain Our Democracy even though last week it was the worst thing ever. This second columns talks about what must happen right after Trump is re-inaugurated, God-willing, and what he must do immediately upon taking office. Momentum and inertia are vital. Trump must take his objectives quickly. He must put points on the board immediately on Day One.

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Speed is not just of the essence – it is everything. Look at what happened with Israel in Gaza. It should have destroyed Hamas immediately. No waiting. No screwing around. Get in there and get it done. Nothing wins like winning. There’s no victory like victory. You’ve got to get in there and make it happen fast. When you hesitate, it gives the enemy the time to rebuild, re-orient, and counterattack. The IDF should’ve been hanging scumbags from what few lampposts that remain standing in Gaza within the first month, well before all the little keffiyeh-clad scumbags started occupying campus quads and President Gumby started showing his spinelessness.

Audacity, audacity, audacity.

The same is true with Trump taking power again. Take power and use power ruthlessly and without hesitation or lose – those are the choices. He’s got to get wins quickly and needs to pile wins upon wins so fast that the regime media and the institutions can’t decide what to react to. You’ve got to overwhelm the left, and you can only do that with proper planning. You have to plan the transition out so that on Day One, right after he takes his hand off the Bible and goes back to the White House, Trump starts signing things. Orders. Pardons. Regulations. They need to be waiting for him to sign. You take the initiative and you get inside the enemy’s decision cycle. You hit them with so many things so fast that they can’t pick out what to focus on. Overwhelm them with conservatism.

Not only does this tactic neutralize the ability of the regime media to create fake media firestorms, but it also has a morale effect by cheering up us voters when we see our priorities finally put into action. And, of course, it achieves substantive results. In other words, we not only want to do things that are going to help us, but we also want to be seen as doing things that are to help us so that our voters know they are winning and the damn communists know they are losing.

Day One is when we end the two-track justice system. Just recently, some Palesimpian scumbag knocked over a cop in Washington, DC. He’s getting probation. The guys who allegedly did that on January 6 are getting ten years. That can’t be tolerated. The left can’t be allowed to win. It’s not a matter of whether pushing cops is a good or bad thing. It’s a matter of allowing the Democrats to create and perpetuate a dual-track justice system. Allowing conservative-linked people to rot in jail while leftist–linked people run free perpetuates the unfairness. The lawfare by the left must end.

The President has the power to pardon. He should use it. Day One, Trump must pardon every single J6 defendant. Every one of them for everything. No exceptions, no hesitation. Pardon every single one of them, and not just J6 defendants. How about those abortion protesters held in jail for years? How about Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro – prosecuted for contempt of Congress while Democrats get away uncharged (we’ll fix that too). How about that guy who is sitting in prison because he made a mean meme about Hillary Clinton? Pardon him. Pardon everybody who’s been treated unfairly by the Democrats. Then Trump needs to pardon everybody associated with his prior administration. And he needs to pardon himself.

Will the Democrats freak out? Well, yes, though if Trump does it right, they’ll be a lot more things to be freaking out about on Day One. But who cares if they freak out? Caring is the only thing that stops us from using our legitimate power. They’ll say that we don’t care about the rule of law. Who cares what they say? Ensuring that the law has been applied equally – which these pardons would do because Democrats don’t get prosecuted – supports the rule of law. But this isn’t about clichés. This isn’t about pleasing the Democrat elite. They’re never going to be happy. It’s foolish to try. It's about neutralizing the Democrat’s misuse of power. You cannot let them win.

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Here’s a radical notion for Republicans. Make Republican voters happy. Trump should aggressively use his power to support the interests of the Republican voters who elected him. Serving those who elected him should be his number one priority. The Democrats understand how power works. They violate the law on immigration and on student loan debt transfers to support their constituents. We need to support ours – legally – and we need to do it without apology and without hesitation.

Trump needs to shut down the border on the first day. Summarily reject all asylum applicants. Just turn their butts around. No more flying illegals anywhere except home. We need to keep doing that even if some Hawaiian judge orders us not to enforce the law and kick these bums out. Fight that obstructionism. As Biden’s student loan scam shows, you find a technical argument to ignore it, ignore it, and get the benefits before the lower court can say, “No, we really mean it” – or the SCOTUS says, “Go for it.” He also needs to cut off the cash to the parasitical NGOs that have gotten billions of dollars to facilitate this invasion of Third World peasants. No more money to any of them. Nothing. Starve them.

And as for student loan forgiveness, Trump simply needs to order that the purported forgiveness is unforgiven and that the USA is going to start collecting those monies. Let the deadbeat gender studies majors sue to enforce an executive action that the Supreme Court has already said is unlawful. After all, Trump must enforce the laws, and the laws say that these debts have to be paid back. Biden’s unlawful waiver of these obligations is legally ineffective. Enjoy the cry of a million gender studies graduates screaming in anger!

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We need to start recruiting foot soldiers for the administration. Trump is going to need a lot of conservative bodies to fill the jobs in the myriad federal agencies. Right now, they’re packed with Democrat activists. We need to change that, and we need to not apologize for it. He must fire scores of senior staff at various agencies. Ones he can’t fire need to be transferred to their new place of duty in Ticklebooty Springs, Wyoming.

He needs to fix the military. He needs to fire the joint chiefs. He also needs to fire the heads of all the military academies and war colleges. He must order DEI is completely out of our armed forces. He needs to make clear that our military’s purpose is to destroy our enemies and nothing else. Not screwing around about the climate hoax. Not diversity. Killing our enemies. He’s commander-in-chief, dammit, and he should command. Not ask. Command.

There should be a towering pile of executive orders waiting for him on the Resolute Desk when he gets back from the inauguration, executive orders that will make the Democrats scream. For example, the only reason that federal government employees can unionize is because of an executive order. He should revoke that on Day One and ban government employee unions. Sure, they’ll scream and yell. They’ll sue. Maybe they’ll go on strike, which would be great because when these flunkies disappear and nothing changes, we’ll see that they weren’t necessary to begin with. Obviously, you want to put a hiring freeze in place. Obviously, you want to ban DEI throughout the government.

Federal law enforcement needs new rules to stop the persecution of political opponents, which inevitably means Democrats persecuting Republicans. His first action should be an order that there is no investigation, evidence gathering, prosecution or any other activities directed at any member of the administration without the personal approval and signature of the Attorney General. Yes, Trump should interfere with the operations of the Department of Justice. It’s a corrupt organization full of Democrat activists who have demonstrated that they are unworthy of our trust. He shouldn’t give it to them. He’s the chief executive elected by and accountable to the voters. The unelected Attorney General, and therefore every single other unelected employee of the Department of Justice, works for the President. He should delegate to his Attorney General, and to no one else, the ability to approve an investigation of any kind of the administration or any other political official. No more Russiagates. No more Flynn frames. The Department of Justice has shown that it cannot be trusted not to abuse its power, so it will lose its power. The elite won’t like it – they want a fourth branch of unaccountable government bureaucrats, but that’s not a thing, and we can’t let it continue to be a thing.

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It’s vital that this all happens on Day One because of what will appear on Day Two’s front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. What will the headline be? He will have done dozens and dozens of things. Do they go with the pardons? Do they go with DEI? Do they go with his other executive orders? We want them pulling out their purple hair, trying to figure out what they will focus on as the biggest outrage in the face of dozens of outrages. They will scream and yell. They will cry. Maybe they will riot – of course, the insurrectionists will feel the full wrath of a Trump Justice Department. The Democrats and Congress will go nuts. Who knows, they may obstruct the Senate from conducting business – we will probably have a majority, but a minority can do that. That’s fine. Let them. We need to remember that it’s the Democrats who mostly benefit from government largesse. Let the Democrats shut down the government. Throw us in that briar patch.

Most of all, Trump must stand firm – something that will not be a problem. He’s tough, and he’s mad. Any other Republican would’ve wilted under the attacks on Kavanaugh, but Trump didn’t. You know, they say that Trump is going to use his second term to get revenge because he’s so vindictive. Good. That’s a strength. We want him vindictive. We want him to seek righteous retribution – since when were Republicans against punishing wrongdoers? We want Trump utterly focused on breaking the stranglehold on, if you pardon the expression, Our Democracy that these leftist jerks have had for the last decade.

He must exercise his constitutional power without apology or hesitation. He must move fast and ruthlessly. The way to do that is to plan the transition in detail. It needs to be comprehensively plotted so that he’s ready to act immediately, Day One. His last administration was largely improvised because, at some level, people didn’t really believe that he was going to win, and they didn’t really prepare for it. Well, there’s no excuse now. There are thousands of Republicans who have had administration experience thanks to Trump, people who can come aboard for Trump 2.0, and this time, they can utterly lay waste to the Swamp.

It will be glorious!

Universities receive public funds, ostensibly for research, that are then retasked for other purposes:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/how_elite_universities_use_your_money.html

VDH demonstrates that classical studies indeed have value and provide a powerful lens through which the decisions of the day can be evaluated and measured.

Is it any surprise American colleges are deemphasizing those studies?

Thanks BBG. This resonates with me. They say, politics of meaning. I've been saying, they're stealing our language. Good to see someone on it.

We are such sheep as a people to keep following these people with their nonsense terminology. Good examples in the article. Others: Affordable housing is anything but.  Affordable Care also means subsidies. 'Smart planning', really? Pro-choice means kill someone, but make kids go to the same bad schools?

Gay means happy and rainbow is a real thing, not a symbol.

A flag flying upside down means his wife was in distress, nothing to do with being a traitor.

Election stolen is an opinion, and you can have a different one, but it isn't something "falsely claimed unless you personally tracked every vote  and every tabulation.

And on it goes. Why are they always calling the shots?

Every time I hear the term “inflation reduction act” I want to box the ears of the fool emitting it….

And those screen will be AI searchable. Some days I’m really freaking glad I’m an Apple products user:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2024/05/27/oh-gawd-windoze-11-to-record-all-your-screens-are-belong-to-us/

2nd post. LawDog is a well regarded former LEO, publisher, and to my mind something of a renaissance man. To his list of abject doomstruck prophecy failures I’d add “peak oil,” “silent spring,” and of course everything associated with the Church of Anthropomorphic Climate Apocalypse:

BECAUSE WE’RE HERE, LAD
26 MAY 2024 LAWDOG 11 COMMENTS
In the classic 1964 film ‘Zulu’, there is a quietly moving scene where a junior soldier, realizing what is coming for them, plaintively asks, “Why is it us? Why us?”

Colour-Sergeant Bourne, ever-stoic, simply replies: “Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”

Rita is fond of quoting one of my own aphorisms back at me:
“Things never turn out as good as the optimists hope, nor as bad as the pessimists say.”

These two quotes are oft on my mind these days.

I tire of the doomsayers; of the “black-pilled” “prophets” who have been wrong at every historical and political turn in my lifetime, yet whom do not allow their past total abject failures at soothsaying deter them from once more forecasting of  Doom! And Gloom!

“Worst economy EVAH!” Well, it’s not good, but does no-one else remember stagflation in the 1970s?

“Worst political climate EVAH!” Not happy about it, but the America of the 1860s would like to have a word.

“World turmoil!” Yeah, that’s what the world does. Anyone else remember those decades where we were all going to die in atomic hellfire, with the few survivors being chased through a nuclear winter by mutant cockroaches the size of Volkswagen Beetles?

“Waaa-aaar!” I was raised in Africa. I have yet to see a decade, hell, a year, in which the Red Horseman isn’t plying his trade on at least one continent somewhere. I was a soldier during the era of Ronald Reagan, whose brash braggadocio and jingoistic rhetoric were “sure to start World War 3”; and I understood — and accepted — that my fate was to be a speed-bump, to die slowing down Soviet tank columns long enough to allow the Abrams crews to wake up.

Yet … here we are.

Remember the folks who wrote giant walls of text about how aeroplanes were going to fall out of the sky, cities would go dark, and the Internet crash, leaving all of us at the mercy of warlords ruling a post-Y2K apocalypse? Does anyone actually remember Y2K these days?

Remember That Guy who talked your ear off about how Carter, err — Clinton, err — Obama was going to declare martial law so he could stay in office after his mandated terms were up? (Insert Reagan, Bush, Bush, Trump for the other side of politics.) And — so far — wrong every time.

And probably the same guy who has a quick-draw dissertation on how — via some United Nations shenanigans and a convenient spouse or family member — the same aim would be achieved. And how many decades has that one come up wrong?

Sigh.

Are things great?

Oh, I didn’t say that. Politicians are lying, self-serving bags of o-rings, morally bankrupt; and greedy beyond any fevered dream of Mammon could have hoped for.

But … is anyone actually surprised by this?

The media are hypocrites, who dissemble with pious expressions or noble brow, all the while shrouded in cloaks of sanctimony and mendacity; safe and happy in the knowledge that they will never be held to any sort of account for their lies, perfidies, and libels.

No, you don’t hate journalists enough. You think you do, but you don’t.

Again, though:  Is anyone actually surprised that the Legacy Media has returned to their roots with William Randolph Hearst and Yellow Journalism? Were they ever actually that noble, or are we looking back through rose-coloured lenses at a carefully-curated image?

I realize that the afore-mentioned media has a vested financial and political interest in keeping the very worst of news up under your hat with you; that their profit margins require that they keep smacking us in the face in a 24-hour cycle of doom, gloom, and despair …

… But we don’t have to listen. We don’t have to watch.

I understand that social media has a vested financial and political interest in bringing the absolute worst that we as a species do on the regular as a barrage into our phones, and computers, and homes …

… But we don’t have to access social media.

Are things right now as good as the optimists claim? Hell, no. Are things as bad as the pessimists are dooming about? Also, hell, no.

Is it comfortable, nay, reassuring to be alive during this time? No. God, no.

But we’re here. Nobody else. Just us. And we can weather Teh Stupid that pretty much is the Sum Total of Human Existence (just writ large on Social Media and a 24-hour news cycle) with calm, confidence in our neighbors, and honest preparedness …

… Or we can run around with our hair on fire, listening to every kook who hasn’t been correct since Christ was a corporal, spewing panic, and just generally making things worse (as well as looking like a complete oik, historically)*.

I know which path I’m going to take. I invite you to take the same one.

LawDog

*Having seen how fast the average person panicked during the Recent Covid Unpleasantness™, I have my doubts, but I’m trying to  not to be a doomer here. Give me a break.

https://thelawdogfiles.com/2024/05/because-were-here-lad.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=because-were-here-lad

Gawd, the thought of this trafficker in serial falsehoods impacting the lives of hundreds of millions or more addressing future MDs is galling in the extreme:

Anthony Fauci Tells Columbia Medical Students to Lie Just Like Him
They would do better to follow the rule of “first do no harm.”
May 28, 2024
By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY
NIAID / Flickr
Also published in The American Spectator Fri. May 24, 2024
Speeches by Joe Biden and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gained widespread media coverage. On the other hand, the speech given last week by Dr. Anthony Fauci at Columbia University failed to get the attention it deserved.

Fauci spoke of “egregious distortions of reality” and told the students: “Sadly, elements of our society are driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies, and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough that after a while, they stand largely unchallenged, ominously leading to an insidious acceptance of what I call ‘the normalization of untruth.’ ... And we as much or more than anyone else need to push back on these distortions of truth and reality.” Critics were quick to push back.

“Everything he just accused all of us of is the stuff that he and his cadre of lunatics have been doing,” said Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report. Fauci, longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), maintained that he had not funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to perform dangerous gain-of-function research. On May 16, the day after Fauci’s speech, Lawrence Tabak, former acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified that NIAID did indeed fund gain-of-function research at the WIV through the EcoHealth Alliance.

Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor and author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-up, accused Fauci of lying to Congress about that funding. That didn’t come up in Fauci’s speech, and neither did the 6-foot social distancing rule, which Fauci now acknowledges “just sort of appeared,” without any scientific basis. Also missing was Fauci’s claim to represent science, and the former NIAID boss left out details that would have been of particular interest to his audience, the students of Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Born in 1940, Anthony Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1962. In 1966, Fauci earned a medical degree from Cornell University, but he didn’t practice medicine for long. The government was then drafting physicians to treat wounded American soldiers in Vietnam, but the Cornell MD opted for a different path.

In 1968, Dr. Fauci took a cushy “yellow beret” job with the NIH and decided to stay. In 1984, the NIH made Fauci head of NIAID, and, for some medical scientists, that was a problem. Fauci had obtained no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. Kary Mullis, who had a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and won a Nobel Prize for “his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method,” considered Fauci unqualified for the NIAID job.

“This man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it,” Mullis said. “He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” But he was—and with serious consequences for AIDS patients.

Fauci’s preferred cure was AZT, also known as azidothymidine and Zidovudine. The highly toxic drug failed to prevent or cure AIDS, but Fauci inflicted the drug on foster children in New York City, with disastrous results. He also branded critics “AIDS deniers,” a tactic he would repeat during the pandemic.

Instead of debating critics such as the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration—most if not all of whom are more qualified than himself—Fauci branded them conspiracy theorists, fringe epidemiologists, and so forth. As with AZT, the COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, but Fauci recommended them even for children, the least vulnerable group.

This is what happens when a medical doctor opts for a career as a government bureaucrat and remains in power for decades with no accountability. The Columbia students would do better to ignore Fauci, become practicing physicians and surgeons, and follow the rule of “first do no harm.” More doctors and fewer government bureaucrats should be the rule moving forward.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14940

The $25/hr chickens come home to roost in CA. WSJ editorial:

California’s $25-an-Hour Minimum-Wage Boomerang
Gov. Newsom now says the law he signed last October would add to the state’s fiscal woes. He ignored warnings at the time.

Progressives in Sacramento rarely think twice before burdening businesses. But lo and behold, they are having second thoughts about California’s new $25-an-hour minimum wage for healthcare workers. Why? Because its burdensome budget costs are threatening liberal programs.

California’s Democratic Legislature is scrambling this week to delay the state’s higher healthcare minimum wage, which is scheduled to take effect on June 1. It’s not uncommon for politicians to reverse themselves, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom is walking back a law that he signed only last October. What’s changed?

The state’s budget deficit has ballooned to $45 billion. Mr. Newsom projects that the new healthcare minimum wage would cost the state $4 billion more a year owing to higher Medicaid costs and compensation for workers at state-owned facilities. Legislative analyses warned about these costs, but Mr. Newsom signed the law anyway.

Thus the minimum wage for healthcare workers is set to rise to between $18 and $23 an hour this Saturday, depending on the type and size of healthcare provider. California’s current minimum wage for all workers is $16 an hour. Nearly all workers at healthcare facilities including janitors will have to be paid at least $25 an hour by 2028.

Democrats shrugged when healthcare providers warned that the wage mandate could force cuts to patient services. Who cares if Californians wait longer before being seen at the ER? But now Democrats worry that the state’s higher health costs could force bigger government spending cuts. Oh no. Californians may have to wait even longer for their bullet train to nowhere.

Mr. Newsom is proposing to tie health worker minimum-wage increases to the state’s general fund revenue and to exempt state facilities. But once capital-gains revenue picks up again, California’s private healthcare providers will be stuck paying for the wage mandate, which they will ultimately pass on to patients. Far better to repeal the $25 wage minimum en toto.

As usual, Democrats don’t want to eat their own lousy cooking. Gov. Newsom this spring also signed legislation to carve out fast-food restaurants on government property from California’s new $20-an-hour fast-food minimum wage, which kicked in last month. Democrats don’t want the mandate interfering with government concession licenses.

California’s wage minimums are another illustration of how progressive mandates boomerang. Average weekly earnings for leisure and hospitality employees in California have declined by 2.6% over the last year owing to a steep drop in hours worked. By contrast, those average weekly earnings rose 3% nationwide, 3.2% in Florida and 5.2% in Texas.
````````
Average hourly earnings for California leisure and hospitality workers have also increased more slowly—2.1% compared to 3.8% nationwide—no doubt partly because the state’s softer labor market has reduced competition for workers.

When government raises wages above what the market commands, employers will increase prices and reduce labor. California, QED.

https://apple.news/A5Ap8FcbLSa6ci4OIWLpiGQ

2nd post. Ye gods, they aren’t shy about revealing their tin ear, eh what?

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/democrats-are-not-happy-with-tlaib-attacking-biden-over-israel/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=democrats-are-not-happy-with-tlaib-attacking-biden-over-israel

So … the Gaza pier has fallen apart, US troops have been injured, one critically, little aid was delivered and what was appears to have fallen into Hamas hands. FTA:

This old operational planner has one bit of advice to Congress in their role of having oversight of the Executive Branch; subpoena the Decision Brief for the Gaza pier operation.

This was on the lowest of low scale of military operations, Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response. There is little to nothing classified about any of this rump of a capability. Call in member of the Joint Staff who were involved in this planning – and I would prefer if you could find a few terminal O5/6 to testify as well. You might actually enjoy some candor.

The Commander’s Intent, the Higher Direction and Guidance, the Planning Assumptions, the Constraints and Restraints, the Critical Vulnerability analysis, etc. It is all there. If not, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense should tell the American people to their face.

This is a larger issue than anything happening in that impossible corner of the globe. Over the weekend, we saw yet more indications of an empire in decline deteriorating from bad to pathetic.

From the time the first load came off the pier, the aid barely made it past 300 meters until it disappeared into Hamasistan.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/bidens-gaza-pier-to-nowhere-a-disaster-and-national-embarrassment-breaks-apart/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bidens-gaza-pier-to-nowhere-a-disaster-and-national-embarrassment-breaks-apart

Though I tend to disdain climbers as more ego based then engaging in any sort of practical pursuit, getting up a 5.10 blind would take a serious set of stones. Several lead falls? No thanks….

Blind Climber Completes Historic Trad Ascent on Devils Tower
GearJunkie.com - Outdoor Gear Reviews / by Seiji Ishii / May 28, 2024 at 4:01 PM
(Photo/Montane)

“El Matador” is a 5.10d classic endurance stemming route on Devils Tower. Many trad climbers find it challenging, but imagine if you headed up without using your eyes. British climber Jesse Dufton did just that last week, recording the first blind trad lead on the iconic formation.

Dufton led all the hard pitches, placing his own gear, and he took several leader falls on his way to the summit. Placing the optimal piece of gear, correctly sized and secure, is hard enough with vision. Astonishingly, Dufton does this “in the dark.”

Jesse Dufton Climbing History

Dufton has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disease that has rendered him completely blind. Dufton was born with only 20% central vision, no peripheral vision, and several blind spots. The genetic condition progressively broke down his retinas’ cells, and by age 20, Dufton could no longer read. By 30, his vision was limited to only light perception with a 1-2% field of view.

Dufton has been a climber his whole life and has progressed despite losing sight. He trains for World Cup events and leads on gear. And throughout, he has had a great partner.

His wife and sight guide, Molly, supports him on climbs, verbally relaying information and “lending her eyes,” as Dufton calls it. She aids in route finding, foot and hand placements, and gear choices. But Dufton is leading, and Molly cannot always see him. Once Jesse Dufton crosses this threshold, he climbs blind without assistance.

Blind climber Jesse Dufton and sight guide and wife Molly.
Jesse Dufton and wife and sight guide, Molly; (photo/Montane)
Dufton gained notoriety in the climbing world partially through a multi-award-winning documentary titled Climbing Blind, which covered his attempt to become the first blind person to make a “non-sight” lead of Old Man of Hoy, an iconic sea stack in Scotland.

The same filmmaker who created Climbing Blind, Alastair Lee, documented Dufton’s ascent on Devils Tower.

‘El Matador’ on Devils Tower

Blind climber Jesse Dufton on "El Matador" 10d on Devils Tower
Blind climber Jesse Dufton leading up ‘El Matador’ 5.10d on Devils Tower, Wyo.; (photo/Montane)
“El Matador” is five pitches and 250 feet tall and was first aid climbed by the iconic Fred Becky and partner Eric Bjornstad in 1967. Free climbing it as Dufton did requires formidable endurance and pain tolerance, and loose blocks and rocks up high demand attention to ensure safety. Most climbers do the first two pitches and bail to avoid this danger.

Dufton would have none of this, and he completed the entire route in partnership with his wife. “El Matador is, without question, the hardest trad route I’ve attempted to date. Nothing I’ve done so far is quite like it; the stem box is unrelenting. I don’t know how long I was in there, but it felt like an eternity.”

Local guide Zach Lentsch of Wyoming Mountain Guides added, “Single-handedly the most impressive feat in climbing I’ve witnessed.”

Filmmaker Lee said it was “some of the most frightening and compelling footage I have ever captured. I cannot imagine how hard that must have been without the use of your eyes; leader falls on your own gear are scary at the best of times. What an absolute lesson in guts and tenacity that was.”

Dufton, Molly, and filmmaker Lee on the summit of Devils Tower
Molly, Dufton, and Lee on the summit of Devils Tower; (photo/Montane)
Finally, itinerant climber and frequent GearJunkie and ExplorersWeb contributor Sam Anderson commented, “Climbing El Matador is a full sensory demand. It’s longer and more technical than it looks, and there are decisions I don’t know how a non-sighted person could make. What’s hardest to wrap my brain around about Jesse’s ascent is how he would have decided when to transfer from stemming to jamming — if you get starfished below the top out ledge, you’re hosed!”

Find out more about Jesse Dufton at his website, and make sure to catch the documentary about this incredible achievement during the upcoming Brit Rock Film Tour.

https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/blind-climber-first-trad-ascent-devils-tower

Congressional hearing where various ATF unconstitutional decisions are outlined, one leading to the death of an otherwise law abiding citizen during a pre-dawn raid, a citizens that likely would have turned himself in for his alleged crime if given a chance to do so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgS2OGLuILE

Pay no attention to the spooks behind the search engine. I’ve certainly had several of the search engine experiences described below:

The Propaganda Superhighway
Search engines and the taming of the Digital West

JUPPLANDIA
MAY 26, 2024

I remember a very long time ago, when the Internet was young and I was too, the expression ‘information superhighway’. It was a term expressed at the same time that people thought of the new digital realms being created as a sort of Wild West free from State control and regulation. Both ideas linked technology with freedom. The idea of the information superhighway was that the emerging Internet was one part of an exciting technological advance that also included telecommunications. All of it was getting faster and better. All of it made us more connected with each other. Like a road network, these things provided easier access to places and ideas. Like a highway, they traversed the miles that separated us, drawing us together in a community of minds. Like a physical road, the whole thing suggested freedom of travel, individual agency, the chance to ‘boldly go’ wherever we pleased.

The Internet was what we would make it. The future was ours.

Jupplandia is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Apparently though ‘information superhighway’ was a phrase invented by Al Gore in a 1978 meeting with computer industry magnates, and much beloved by the Clinton administration. In some ways the optimistic slant on communications technology harked back even further, recalling Harold Wilson’s 1963 speech about the ‘white heat of technology’. Boundless promises of technological advance have always excited governments, many of whom like to fantasise about a political legacy secured via sudden innovative advances. If purveyors of new technology are sometimes snakeoil salesman selling fake remedies, governments are often the balding consumptive hypochondriac who constitutes the perfect customer. And behind the idealistic visions, there were always political operatives.

Today, such messianic technological optimism recurs in Boris Johnson style grand projects, or in telecommunications again via the promises made for each increasing generation of broadband supply. Building a 5G as opposed to a 4G network, and presumably after that a 6G version, is proof, today, of taking technology and its impact on the economy seriously. The whole Net Zero agenda is another example, combining anxiety and political promises at one and the same time. There’s an element of anxiety too, as governments agonise over whether their communications, satellite network and Internet provision is being ‘left behind’ by other nations.

Today, even a pandemic is a political opportunity. Fear and hope, alleged crisis and alleged technological solution, are constant bedfellows. The WEF alternates between stoking fear and promising a tech utopia, as do advocates of things like 15 minute cities.

Both extreme hopes regarding technology, and extreme fears regarding being left behind, have long been expertly exploited by the corporate interests we call Big Tech. Silicon Valley and similar tech hubs are both the propagators and recipients of hopes and fears that are couched as broad and humanitarian ones, but are just as often commercial and political ones. The dream of new technology is sold as the dream of human progress, as the next leap in an uplifting saga of progress from the ape to the space race, a narrative which merely by us being human applies to us all. We gain some of the reflected glory. Everything from Da Vinci to Neil Armstrong is part of our story, and supposedly it encompasses too the rise of the mobile phone or the death of the fax machine.

Underneath this idealistic vision of progress, though, the true motivators are political in nature, encompassing monopolies of industry and technologies of control. Underneath, we find out with just a little investigation how closely involved political players and corporate actors have always been, quite often to their immediate advantage rather than in service to the general public or to ideal visions of future utopia. We find, for example, that Google was essentially a creation of the military-industrial complex. The still most famous search engine there is, the thing which decides where the information superhighway actually takes us, was designed from the start to let the CIA and other agencies monitor our thoughts and habits.

Search engines were built not just to provide a useful service in this new sphere of technology. They were built to track what we were saying to each other in this digital environment, to log what we were asking for and talking about, and to guide us towards the answers and conclusions that government preferred. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a plain fact confirmed by any more than cursory examination of the history of modern tech giants and of specific companies in the Big Tech ecosystem. If you care to look, DARPA funding and technology is easily found. When you do look, you can see in some cases these were never independent commercial enterprises that then allowed themselves, for example, to be used as outsourced censorship advocates or propaganda suppliers. They were built by aspects of the State in the first place.

All of which has been made a lot plainer to the rest of us by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and by the subsequent revelations in the reporting of Matt Taibbi and others showing how embedded within the structure of these organisations agents of the State were. Today, we know that the FBI had a permanent presence in Twitter. We know how the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed across social media platforms as well as within legacy print media. Ironically, even the AI generated content supplied by (still controlled) search engines now has to admit these links. Thanks to alternative media reporting, some of the proof of a fascistic alliance between the State and corporations is now undeniable.

Here, for example, is what that AI generated search on Twitter will reveal:

James Baker: Former FBI General Counsel, Twitter’s Head of Policy and Trust & Safety (2020-2022). Baker was fired by Twitter CEO Elon Musk in November 2022 after his role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Matthew Williams: Former FBI Intelligence Analyst, Twitter’s Senior Director of Product Trust (2020-2022). Williams spent over 15 years at the FBI, including serving as Chief of Staff to top executives.

Dawn Burton: Former FBI Special Agent, Twitter’s Director of Corporate Resilience (2020-2022). Burton worked at the FBI for 21 years, including as a senior supervisory agent.

Kevin Michelena: Former FBI Special Agent, Twitter’s Director of Security and Risk (2020-2022). Michelena spent over 20 years at the FBI, including as a senior supervisory agent.

CIA Figures at Twitter:

Jeff Carlton: Former CIA Operative, Twitter’s Head of Strategic Response Team (2020-2022). Carlton worked for both the CIA and FBI before joining Twitter.

Stacia Cardille: Former CIA Attorney, Twitter’s Senior Legal Executive (2020-2022). Cardille was involved in the CIA’s “Info Ops” program and worked with the FBI on social media surveillance and censorship efforts.

These individuals, along with others, have played key roles in shaping Twitter’s content moderation and censorship policies, raising concerns about the potential for government influence and bias in the platform’s decision-making processes.”

What’s remarkable here is not only how search engines today will admit these past links, but how at the same time they still work to move people away from the most obvious conclusions. The idea we are supposed to reach today is that State and alphabet agency interference in Big Tech and social media platforms (especially through the silencing of politically awkward or dissident messages and accounts) is a past scandal, rather than a still active or relevant one. But really it is only Musk’s independent decision to challenge woke attitudes and some forms of corruption (a limited challenge, but a vital one) which has allowed any of this truth to be acknowledged.

State responses to that process, and the continued existence of State and corporate aligned censorship and propaganda on everything else, show us that all of this information-censorship complex is still active. Musk now faces numerous legal troubles from the State, almost all of which are as baseless as similar prosecutions of Donald Trump. The message remains that going off-message is extremely dangerous, even if you happen to be a billionaire.

In other words, all the censorship and propaganda has not gone away. In fact, it’s getting worse. It’s been joined by an escalating attempt to criminalise all opposition through new legislation, and the distortion of existing legislation to pursue offenders against allowed orthodoxy.

All of the above is the context that occurred to me on reading a fascinating article on the popular Substack The Honest Broker. In Let’s Just Admit It: The Algorithms Are Broken, Ted Gioia discusses the algorithms deployed by search engines. The gist of the article is that the algorithms used by platforms like Spotify, Rumble, Google and others are now completely useless. Gioia talks about looking at a Jazz book and then receiving recommendations for books on spy fiction or, at best, AI generated jazz books of very low quality. The Honest Broker is blunt on the efficacy of search engines that have been corrupted by sponsored links and by suppliers purchasing priority appearance in lists of recommendations:

“The Google algorithm deliberately makes it difficult to find reliable information. That’s because there’s more money made from promoting garbage, and forcing users to scroll through oceans of crap.”

All of this is of course true, but what’s really astonishing about the article is its strict avoidance of a political dimension of discussion. In the course of a quite lengthy description of the way search engines now direct people towards junk content, including multiple examples of this process and a fairly honest assessment of the financial incentives underpinning it, the one thing Goiai doesn’t refer to is the way the information superhighway and its search engine navigators only direct people towards results that fit a political narrative.

Selling us crap after all comes in more than one form. Yes, it can come by means of directing us towards products we don’t want, or products unrelated to what we do want. Yes, this can apply in a purely commercial sense as we receive endless advertising for inferior items, or as we get ads for a bicycle when we are looking for a toy pony. In those cases the algorithms may just be crap, or they may be manipulated by already existing payments from others. But there’s a kind of innocence still to this purely mercenary distortion of search results. It’s not there to serve a bigger or more malign agenda. It’s an annoyance where a service isn’t as good as it should be.

Far more worrying, surely, is the way that search engines refuse to supply access to political commentary that the masters of search engines do not want us to see. The fact is that search engines in the digital age have become vital tools of research used by everyone. If we want to read a product review, we go to a search engine. If we want to access statistical information on a political topic, we go to a search engine. Theoretically, we can still go to a library or consult our own bookshelves, but that’s of rather limited use in a rolling news cycle. Politics in particular depends on access to accurate information, and politics in particular is always going to be subject to distortion and lies. It’s the home field of propaganda, and the heavily contested ground of competing, self-declared Truths.

I can’t be the only one who has noticed how the navigation system of the information superhighway leads us only to acceptable destinations. Not truthful ones. Not accurate ones. Not representative ones. Allowed ones. Search engines are the satnavs of the information superhighway, of the entire telecommunications network. And they are being used to guide us towards only those pre determined conclusions we are supposed to have.

Nor is this a process that some old fashioned version of market competition allows us to escape. Disgusted with the political bias of the algorithms of Google, I have moved time and again to fresh search engines. Each time I have found that alternatives, search engines like DuckDuckGo or Brave, are just as bad. Quite often any alternative that emerges is quickly subsumed within the existing Big Tech monopolies. If it was ever independent, any hint of success sees it being purchased by the near feudal lords of the tech monopolies. In each case, I have had instances where articles I have previously read cannot be found again, even with highly accurate search enquiry terms related to them. Things which you know exist are then banned or shadow banned, or are lowered so far down returned results that you will never see them.

And at the same time the search engines will spew out forty or fifty articles or sources saying the exact opposite of the thing you were looking for. This is not accidental, nor is it proof that these ‘opposite results’ are in fact more real, more accurate, and more truthful than the thing you were looking for. All it proves is that you are being politically directed, steered at all times towards a conclusion of their choice, even as you search for evidence in support of your choice.

The truly astonishing thing in Let’s Just Admit It: The Algorithms Are Broken is the total lack of consideration of this political dimension to the corruption of search engines and algorithms. It’s bizarre to see this kind of blindness from an ‘honest broker’. Search engines and the selectivity provided by politically biased algorithms are now just as much a vital problem as the journalist activism of the controlled mainstream media and the constant pumping out of propaganda funded by vested interests is a problem. Not letting you see the truth is as powerful a tool of control as pointing your eyes towards lies is. Contemporary propaganda works by both instruction and omission, and talking about minor irritations of search engines directing you towards crap you don’t want to buy commercially may be just another way of avoiding discussing the way these search engines direct you towards crap you don’t want to buy politically.

Perhaps that’s why I’m still allowed to read The Honest Broker in the first place. Critics of modern tech who avoid the political issues are, after all, pretty safe. They are themselves safe from silencing, and they are considered safe enough for us to consume their content. In reality though, people have known since at least Orwell’s time how much tyranny depends on the things not said as well the things that are said. I don’t mean to be unfair to a Substacker who is saying something true, but I wish the bigger truths were on offer too.

One of those is that AI direction of human thought towards selected conclusions will be a terrifying phenomenon. It will be worse than biased search engines hiding the truth from us. It might be a stage by which the capacity for truth is lost as a human quality altogether. The machines will determine what we think, entirely, both the political machine and the artificial intelligence. This is a lot more important than getting a spy book recommended to you instead of a Jazz book.

https://jupplandia.substack.com/p/the-propaganda-superhighway?r=2k0c5&triedRedirect=true

Sounds like Cannon is methodically setting the stage to catch the DOJ in their own lies:

Meltdown in Florida
An extended temper tantrum by one of Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecutors this week represented the DOJ's frustration at failing to cover-up the dirty details of the imploding documents case.

JULIE KELLY
MAY 25, 2024

“I'm going to ask that you just calm down. I understand this is sensitive and it's difficult, but these questions are briefed and they're before the Court.”

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So said Judge Aileen Cannon to David Harbach, one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lead prosecutors in the government’s espionage and obstruction case against former president Donald Trump, during a hearing on Wednesday. While temperatures spiked outside the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida throughout the day, so too did the climate inside Cannon’s courtroom.

The May 22 proceeding, as I explained here, represented the first of a series of hearings that will turn the tables on Smith; Cannon is in effect putting the Department of Justice on trial to account for its corrupt, dirty, and sloppy prosecution into Trump and two co-defendants.

Cannon’s admonishment came after what can only be described as a prolonged meltdown by Harbach after he ranted for several minutes in response to a defense motion seeking to dismiss the case against Waltine Nauta, Trump’s longtime personal valet also charged in the indictment, based on selective and vindictive prosecution.

At times pounding the podium and clapping his hands in anger to emphasize a point, Harbach, usually the cooler head of the prosecution side, escalated the war of words between Cannon and the special counsel’s team. A longtime DOJ apparatchik having served as former FBI Director James Comey’s special counsel and alongside Smith in the DOJ public integrity unit during the Obama administration, Harbach is used to getting his way before federal judges.

Not this time. Cannon is a slow-moving freight train, systematically and almost to the point of torment exposing every government fault line in the imploding case.

Just this month alone, Cannon has forced Smith to admit key evidence seized during the 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago has been bungled and possibly misplaced, contrary to his team’s representations to her.

She continues to authorize the unsealing of motions and exhibits including records the DOJ never thought would see the light of day.

In fact, Harbach’s outburst came less than 24 hours after Trump’s lawyers filed a motion related to the Mar-a-Lago raid, a document Cannon ordered unsealed; the motion, as I reported on Twitter/X Tuesday afternoon as well as here, revealed the stunning news that FBI agents had authority to use deadly force during the nine-hour raid.

The disclosure instantly prompted fury on the Right, leading to a damage-control statement by the FBI several hours later. Attorney General Merrick Garland also addressed the controversy the following day, calling Trump’s claims about a potential assassination, “false and extremely dangerous.” Garland also claimed, without evidence, that the consensual search of Joe Biden’s home for classified documents involved the same authorization for use of force.

Late Friday night, Smith filed a motion asking Cannon to prohibit Trump from making public statements “that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”

Will the Public Learn More about a Controversial 2022 Meeting?

But Harbach’s bad behavior in court specifically related to accusations of prosecutorial abuse. Nauta’s attorney, Stanley Woodward, has accused the DOJ of retaliating against Nauta for refusing to flip on Trump and become a cooperating witness. (Nauta faces several charges including conspiring to obstruct the investigation and making false statements.)

Woodward further alleged that Jay Bratt, the other lead DOJ prosecutor, made threats against Woodward during an August 2022 meeting to discuss Nauta’s potential cooperation. Woodward said Bratt noted his pending judicial nomination before the D.C. Superior Court and said something to the effect of “I wouldn’t want you to do anything to mess that up.”

Bratt’s conduct during the meeting is the subject of both a congressional investigation and an Office of Professional Responsibility probe at the DOJ. (The OPR inquiry is on hold pending resolution of the classified documents case.) Woodward wants all records and communications about the meeting given to the defense—something Cannon appears inclined to do.

Which sent Harbach over the edge.

Calling Woodward’s account of the meeting a “fantasy,” Harbach blasted Woodward’s “garbage” argument for dismissing the case. “This is no way to run a railroad,” Harbach, perhaps ignorant to the irony of using that particular word, told Cannon for her allowing Woodward to discuss at length his allegations about the meeting.

When Cannon inquired as to the existence of records including Zoom videos that might support or refute Woodward’s account of the meeting, Harbach scolded her. “I have already told Your Honor that no recording exists. I have told you that some time ago,” Harbach replied.

Cannon reminded an increasingly agitated Harbach that she maintains oversight into how the investigation was conducted. “I still have inherent authority to oversee this proceeding and ensure that professionalism is maintained, and I think there is a basis to ask those questions, which is why I'm asking them,” she shot back.

If Cannon orders the DOJ to produce all communications before and after the meeting, the ruling could represent another blow to the special counsel’s cratering credibility. Congress already wants answers about the spoliation of evidence; more congressional demands related to the authorization for lethal force and other dubious aspects of the FBI raid could be around the corner.

Cue more meltdowns.

https://www.declassified.live/p/meltdown-in-florida?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/statin-drugs-laid-the-groundwork-for-covid-19-post-5639933?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2024-05-26&src_cmp=gv-2024-05-26&utm_medium=email&est=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYvAqcwcVzc7PzLYPrHFRB710wA0AIj31kx5JTWZu9FddhEg4S8RP

Ye gods! I’ve hear from folks on both sides of the statin debate—my GP thinks they are a game changer—but this piece links a lot of disparate pieces together.

Trump has a Republican problem
The public wants a winner. FJB and Republican senators are losers
MAY 24, 2024

Philip Bump of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported, “Why Biden is underperforming Democratic Senate candidates.”

Of course he got the story bass-ackwards. He wouldn’t be at the Bezos Post if he got the story right. Biden isn’t underperforming. Republican senators and congressmen are.

Inflation is at 40-year highs. Millions of drug mules, child sex traffickers, murderers, spies and terrorists have infiltrated the country. We’ve had to take shots that we were told were vaccines but aren’t. We’ve lost wars in Afghanistan and Niger — yes, Niger kicked us out and took over a brand-new military base we built. We’ve backed terrorists who raped and killed Israelis. We’ve thrown billions to that loser Zelensky.

Republicans have a rock star presidential candidate who is peeling black and Hispanic votes from Democrats. They should be enjoying wide leads in Senate races.

Nope.

In state after state, Trump is up and the Republican Senate candidate is down.

In Arizona, it is Trump +6, the Republican Senate candidate -13.

In Nevada, it is Trump +13, a tie in the Senate race.

In Pennsylvania, it is Trump +3, the Republican Senate candidate -3.

In Wisconsin, it is Trump +1, the Republican Senate candidate -7.

The problem for Trump is that the down ballot may bring him down because most Republicans are seen as incompetent among independents and untrustworthy among conservatives.

Most Republicans in DC are unworthy of our trust. We sent them to repeal Obamacare. 14 years later, it is still standing.

We sent them to build the wall. They didn’t.

We sent them to support Trump and some of them voted to impeach him.

Bump stumbled across a salient point in his column about that Arizona Senate race between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake:

Biden and Gallego get about the same level of support across the state. Biden is at 47 percent and Gallego is at 49%. The difference is on the Republican side, where Trump gets 52% to Lake’s 36%.

Trump cannot carry Lake because, well, she has become a McCain Republican who backed banning abortion until it hurt her in the polls.

And yes, abortion is hurting Republicans because the fear of a national ban on abortion (which we’ve never had) is real. Dobbs turned the issue back over to states like it was in 1973, but Republicans failed to realize that after 50 years of calling abortion a right, people started believing that. The easiest way to deal with abortion is to support letting states decide, which Trump is saying..

Thus, abortion is not hurting Donald Trump, whose trio of justices made Dobbs reality. The main difference between him and most Republican candidates is that he actually accomplished something in politics. The economy was better under him and not only did we have peace, we had an absence of fear.

By that I mean, we were not headed to World War III. Muslim nations signed the Abraham Accords with Israel. Putin was not bothering his neighbors as he was under Obama. Trump met with Kim Jong Un.

Bump’s fear about Trump carrying the party was encouraging. Bump wrote:

As Election Day gets closer, they’re more likely to catch up to Trump’s levels of support than Trump is to descend to theirs.

In other words, while it’s still fair to say that the CBS poll offers good news and bad news for Democrats, the bad news seems a lot more stable than the good news. There and in the other swing states, it seems more likely that the good news for Democrats will flip than it does that the bad news will.

Trump helped save a Republican Senate majority in 2018’s midterm election. The party actually had a net gain of two seats. I hope for his sake he not only carries Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but that he carries the Republican losers in their Senate races to victory because I still hold out the hope that conservatives can wrest control of the Republican caucus in the Capitol from the RINOs.

The New York Times though believes Democrat Senate candidates can save FJB.

NYT, reporting on its polling in 6 states, said, “The results in the presidential race would have been surprising a year ago, but it’s hard to call them surprising anymore. Donald J. Trump leads in five of the six states among likely voters, with Mr. Biden squeaking out a lead among likely voters in Michigan. Mr. Trump’s strength is largely thanks to gains among young, black and Hispanic voters.

“What’s more surprising is the U.S. Senate results. This is the first time we’ve asked about Senate races this year, and the Democratic candidates led in all four of the states we tested: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.

“Not only do Democrats lead, but they also seem to do so in an entirely customary way, with ordinary levels of support from young and nonwhite voters, even as Mr. Biden struggles at the top of the ticket.”

The reality is, Biden is as big a drag on Democrats as Carter was in 1980. Not only did Reagan win in a landslide, Republicans gained 12 Senate seats.

Samantha-Jo Roth of the Washington Examiner reported, “Democratic Senate candidates in critical swing states are running well ahead of President Joe Biden and lead their Republican rivals, but Pennsylvania Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick believes he’s got a plan to ensure the commonwealth turns red for both himself and former President Donald Trump.”

McCormick said, “Bob Casey has been the status quo; he’s voted with Biden 98% of the time. I’ve made huge progress on people getting to know me and that is being reflected in the polls.”

Republicans need to do that and they also need to show support for Trump. Otherwise it is 1972 all over again when Nixon took 49 states and Republicans had a net loss of two Senate seats. That was the year Biden first got elected by ousting a Republican incumbent senator.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/trump-has-a-republican-problem?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true