Elections

Midterms and Mayhem

by

Abstract: A “red wave” midterm election seems about to occur. Notwithstanding the apparent (relatively) recent precedent of the 1994 midterms, the eight weeks from Tuesday 8 November 2022 to Tuesday 3 January 2023 may become the most challenging period to date in the entire history of the American constitutional order, not excepting the “Secession Winter” following Tuesday 6 November 1860. A broadly similar situation would almost certainly exist if the relative positions of the major political parties in the US were reversed. Even with alarming possibilities in view, this post is intended to promote constructive apprehension, not mere fearfulness.

Like all good students at our eponymous institution, you get the theoretical elements first, then more practical aspects, and falsifiable predictions at the end.

Read more

What is the Purpose of a Senator

by

Dr. Oz is a bit weird, and I’m bothered by his apparent mixed loyalties.  Still, I’m pulling for him.   I assume a good heart surgeon learns, processes, acts.  And apparently he did very well.   Secondly, I only watched one of his shows but he listened closely to his guest (with a certain modesty, as in his response to Oprah).  I like patents – we need people who  analyze, define, and solve problems.  We are less sure of what he will be than we are of more conventional candidates.  Still, a life time of work done well make it less of a gamble.

Then there’s Fetterman – with remarkably few accomplishments, he would fight crime and increase energy with flailing, contradictory slogans.  His party praised his “performances”.  But senators reason, and it is the reasoning before the vote, the give and take with opponents, that defines a Senator’s value.   A Senator is, after all,  joining one of the great, if not the greatest, of deliberative bodies.  Some, we hear in their ads, still see that role.  But is that even a majority?  And how much do the parties differ?

His party wanted to own his vote.  Their job is to elect sufficient pawns to give a majority.  Then, they give up the power of their vote to the leaders who give up theirs to the swamp, leading to a populace more and more restless and less and less able to fight free of the octopus.  And so it matters little that Fetterman can not deliberate.  In his stabs at making an argument for his candidacy, he says he’ll be the 51st vote.  Of course.   Not as a representative of Pennsylvanians.  That vote and not that voice is what made him worth millions.   And so he is elected by the party, not the people.

We can’t possibly know what Oz will be like as senator; however, we all know what Fetterman will be.

And is his role as cipher all that different from Biden’s?  Or even the without-the-excuse of a stroke or senility, Kamala Harris?  How much applies to other members of Congress, some even more visibly impaired (Diane Feinstein, for instance).

Rapò Sitiyasyon Ayiti

by

Most problems were not problems long enough to be interesting.

— Larry Niven, PROTECTOR

Haiti has remained a problem long enough to be interesting.

Read more

The Raid on Mar-a-Lago.

by

The FBI raid on Trump’s residence is unprecedented in American history. The pretext for the raid and the refusal to allow Trump’s lawyers to witness what was done is also a gross deviation from normal behavior.

Conservative Treehouse a pretty good theory of the reasons.

The motives of the DOJ and FBI are clear when you have a full comprehension of the background. However, it’s the threats and betrayals against President Trump that most people have a hard time understanding. Why he was blocked is clear, but how Trump was blocked is where you realize the scale of the threat that exists within this corrupt system.

Trump has for years been promising to declassify documents showing how the “Russiagate” conspiracy developed, including the FBI role in it.

By the time we get to September of 2018 the basic outlines of the Trump-Russia targeting operation were clear. However, the Robert Mueller investigation was at its apex, and anyone in/around Donald Trump was under investigation for ancillary issues that had nothing to do with Russia.

It was into this fray of constant false narratives that President Trump first made statements that he would declassify documents related to his targeting. It was after Trump made those statements when the real motives of putting Robert Mueller as a special counsel became clear.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation, it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who delivered the message to President Trump in September of 2018, shortly before the midterm election, that any action by him to release documents, now under the purview of the Mueller special counsel, would be considered an act of “obstruction” by the DOJ/FBI people charged with investigating him.

What he might have done is to bring some of those documents with him when he left the White House. Of course, that is speculation since the warrant was never disclosed to the Trump lawyers.

In essence the DOJ and FBI, along with white house counsel and a collaborating senate and media, kept President Trump from declassifying and releasing documents by threatening him with impeachment and/or prosecution if he defied their authority. The threats created a useful Sword of Damocles, and blocked Trump from acting to make documents public.

In the months that followed President Trump frequently made public statements and tweets about the frustration of documents not being declassified and released despite his instructions to do so. Many Trump supporters also began expressing frustration.

The external debate and consternation surrounded how the Administrative State has seemingly boxed-in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump was the target of the investigation.

A widely held supporter perspective was that President Trump could expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.

I had a suspicion that Trump might have been in contact with the FBI whistleblowers mentioned by Senators Grassley and Johnson. That is also a reasonable theory.

Newsweek has a typical left wing excuse.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

This is ludicrous as the FBI with full cooperation by Trump, searched these boxes of records in June. They even required their own padlock to seal the room.

Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House.

I doubt a 10 year old child would believe this rot.

A threshold has been crossed. Many on the left seem to cheer this on as their obsessive hatred of Trump and his voters is unending. I just hope Trump has good personal security. I don’t trust the Secret Service any more than I trust the FBI.

When the Rule of Law Fails: A Reprise Post

by

So, reading the story of this numbskull (link found through Instapundit) bloviating on MSNBC about the fierce urgency of abolishing the police reminded me of a long post that I did some years ago about what happens in a lawless, politically corrupt, violence-plagued city when the otherwise upright and law-abiding citizens get fed to the teeth with lawlessness, corruption and violence, and decide to take matters into their own hands. Brittany Packnett Cunningham, apparently noted as an anti-police activist, likely would not like what happens when citizens are finally pushed an inch too far.

The resulting post of mine was originally in three parts, but reposted here in total, below the fold. The story of the Vigilance Committee of 1856 was one that I had originally researched as providing a turn of plot for my Gold Rush adventure, The Golden Road. The hero of that novel, young Fredi Steinmetz worked for a time in San Francisco with his friend Edwin, selling copies of James King’s Evening Daily Bulletin on the streets and delivering to subscribers late in 1855, but left for the diggings before the Vigilance Committee renewed itself. The situation in San Francisco, which finally boiled over, reminds me very much of current events; naked chicanery at the polls, political corruption, a high level of crony capitalism, and criminals terrorizing ordinary citizens and going unpunished.

Read more