Friday, December 31, 2021

New Years Eve Election Coverage

Are Biden’s Approval Numbers Even Worse Than Reported?, AJ Kaufman at PJ Media suspects so. Julia Azari at NYT (cited at Haut Hair) worries Are Democrats bad at politics? If so, they haven't done that bad. From her mouth to God's ears, at Da Mail, Hillary Clinton suggests The Squad and progressive Democrats could SINK the party in 2022 midterms because voters want a Congress that can 'get things done'. Atop Da Hill, The party of 'Karens': The new Democratic Party alienates nonwhite voters, And Anxious is anxious as Exclusive poll: America's fears rise for 2022.

At Fox, Kamala Harris struggles through question on inflation during CBS interview. Coherence is not her strong suit. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” - Milton Friedman. 'Bonchie' at Red State thinks Kamala Harris Illustrates Exactly Why the White House Has Such a Problem With Her

I’d tell you to watch the clip to hear what Harris has to say, but why bother? She never really says much of anything in these settings and this was no exception. Clearly, the vice president wasn’t prepared to even talk about the most important domestic issue of the day when queried on it. Instead, Harris tripped over some badly delivered talking points about the supply chain and then mentioned the “Build Back Better” bill, a massive boondoggle that would only increase short-term inflation. Is any of that word salad supposed to make normal Americans feel confident that their government knows what it’s doing?

NYPo reports  Kamala Harris asking Wall Street CEOs, business leaders for advice, and they'll tell her exactly what they think she wants to here. They're here for longer than she is. At NewsWeek, Froma Harpop says As Presidential Nominee, Kamala Harris Is Not the One

Fox, AOC in Miami Beach for 'taste of freedom' as New York sees record number of COVID cases, "GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' office was among those responding on social media to NY Democrat's pre-holiday visit."  "Welcome to Florida, AOC!" the tweet said. "We hope you’re enjoying a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State thanks to @RonDeSantisFL’s leadership." NR (cited at Haut Hair), AOC spotted in Miami amid NYC's huge COVID case surge. Twitchy, REALLY says it all –> #AOCLovesDeSantis trends as the Socialist Democrat STAR is caught living it up in mandate-free Florida while her constituents suffer.

MTG utters tweets what most of us are thinking,

For your information, we Republicans don’t want your blue votes ruining our red home states! We don’t want high taxes, high crime, high amounts of perverse school curriculums, loss of freedoms, & AUTHORITARIAN big government in our red states! That’s what you Dems vote for!
In A (statistical) journal of the plague year, Michael Barone at WaEx looks at the exvasion of California et al. 

At WaEx, Emily Brooks elaborates, ‘National Divorce scenario’: Marjorie Taylor Greene floats tax and voting penalties for those fleeing blue states, which prompts Rep Jamaal Bowman to wonder "Why does Marjorie Taylor Greene still have her seat?" (KT at Haut Hair).



NPR features As the Jan. 6 attack anniversary nears, one Capitol officer fears a violent repeat. Is he the one who beat an unarmed woman to death? "He's in therapy for his mental health, and as the one year anniversary of the riot approaches, he says what's on his mind is "anxiety"." Frankly, he sounds unfit. Tristan Justice at Da Fed, sees As 2021 Closes Decked In Democrat Disasters, Pelosi Clings To Jan. 6. Her mind doesn't have capacity for much else. She's desperately hoping this will keep her in power. Mike Miller at Red State thinks he know why Why Pelosi Just Can't Quit Jan. 6. Because most of the other issues aren't working well for Democrats. CNSNews wonders As Dems Prepare to Commemorate January 6, Do Americans Share Their Enthusiasm? Hey, we'll always take a day of paid vacation! You commemorate what you want, and we'll commemorate what we want. The Guardian warns ‘Patriots’ are undermining American democracy. I don't take advice on liberty from Brits.  And Da Beast whines Jan. 6 Was Just the Start of Radicalizing Trump’s Republican Party. Sorry, I didn't read it, it's paywalled.

Eva Warner of Beaverton, Oregon, who police said was also known as Joshua Warner, was charged in September 2020 with felony civil disorder.
. . .
Portland Police said Warner directed a high-powered laser into the eyes of law enforcement officers trying to disperse the crowd. Warner resisted arrest, prompting officers to use force, the DOJ said. A laser pointer was found on Warner.
That's something we never saw on Jan. 6. It would have required premeditation. 

The redoubtable Julie Kelly takes on the FBI over the Whitmer kidnapping plat at Am Great, The FBI’s Criminal Lead Informant in Whitmer ‘Kidnapping’ Caper
In June 2020, as the country attempted to recover from deadly and destructive riots after the death of George Floyd, a man from Wisconsin hosted a national conference of self-styled “militia” members in a suburban Columbus, Ohio hotel. Stephen Robeson, founder of the Wisconsin chapter of the Three Percenters, an alleged militia group on the FBI’s naughty list, pestered his contacts across the country to participate in the gathering.

People who attended the conference, including two men later charged with federal crimes related to a plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in 2020, observed that the hotel was crawling with federal agents.

One of the feds at the conference was none other than Stephen Robeson himself.

Without Robeson’s deep involvement as an FBI informant, the Whitmer kidnapping caper never would have made national headlines a few weeks before Election Day; in fact, the whole pre-election drama wouldn’t have materialized at all. A longtime FBI asset, Robeson was one of at least 12 confidential human sources embedded in the failed plot, which concluded when several men were arrested attempting to buy explosives from an undercover FBI agent in October 2020.

Defense attorneys are building a convincing case that the FBI entrapped their clients, who stand accused of perpetrating an act of domestic terror; a motion to dismiss the federal kidnapping count was filed on Christmas Day. “[The] evidence here demonstrates egregious overreaching by the government’s agents, and by the informants those agents handled,” five defense attorneys wrote to a Michigan judge on December 25. FBI agents and informants, according to the filing, “concocted, hatched, and pushed this ‘kidnapping plan’ from the beginning, doing so against defendants who explicitly repudiated the plan.”

Stephen Robeson played as instrumental a role as any other FBI informant or agent. In addition to organizing the June militia conference, Robeson arranged a military-style training exercise in Wisconsin in July; another gathering in Ohio a week later; a meeting in Delaware in late summer; and a night time surveillance mission outside Whitmer’s vacation home in September. “He also urged people to plan violent actions against elected officials and to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials,” anonymous attendees told BuzzFeed News reporters in July. “Some of those contacts say he called them nearly every day.”

But Robeson had another secret he withheld from the group of would-be kidnappers whom he coaxed into an FBI trap; Robeson is a convicted felon several times over with “a rap sheet stretching back to the early 1980s that includes fraud, assault, and sex with a minor,” BuzzFeed News confirmed.

And Robeson didn’t suspend his criminal ways while working on behalf of the federal government. At the same time Robeson was producing all the optics later used as evidence against the Whitmer “kidnappers,” he committed at least two other crimes.

At this point, the FBI is a criminal conspiracy, and if Judge Andy is right, the CIA is worse,  The Deep State and Its Tentacles

Over the Christmas holiday, CIA officials leaked to friendly reporters at CNN their determination to overhaul their network of spies, cease paramilitary actions — which presumably include torture — and return to the "quiet statecraft" of spying on "adversaries" like China and Russia. Then the CIA learned that it has failed to recruit enough Mandarin- and Russian-speaking agents to do so. Criminal and inept.

We also learned shortly before the Christmas holiday from testimony at Guantanamo Bay that nine FBI agents were formally transferred to the CIA so that they'd be free to engage in torture themselves without damaging the reputation of the FBI. CIA agents apparently don't care about their employer's reputation the way their bosses do.

During the Christmas holiday, former FBI agents revealed that they and others had secretly gone undercover and pretended to be part of the mobs that engaged in the riots in 2020 in Portland, Oregon. There, 200 folks were arrested in a six-month period and charged with various crimes, which ranged from unlawful assembly to obstruction of justice to using violence to destroy government property.

When FBI agents go undercover, their task is to blend in with the folks they are secretly monitoring. That often means committing the same crimes as these folks. Thus, 100 of the 200 cases were dropped because the FBI agents who were sent to join the mob and who pretended to be part of it failed adequately to chronicle what they saw.

Or so their now-retired former colleagues say. We will, of course, never know the true reasons why these cases were dropped. Nor will we know which of these crimes where actually provoked or committed by FBI agents.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and linkfest.

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