Tag Archives: politics

Gone is Gone

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In the court case that has Disney suing Florida over the State’s cancelation of some Disney-created development deals, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis had moved to force the then-presiding US District (Northern District of Florida) Judge Mark Walker to recuse himself.

Walker had seemingly demonstrated his bias when he remarked in a couple of unrelated cases that the Disney-Florida situation was an example of “state retaliation.”

Walker in the end did recuse himself, but not over his apparent bias. Instead, he raised a separate ethics matter: a close relative owns 30 shares ($2,700 worth at the time) of Walt Disney Company.

The size or dollar amount of the third-degree relative’s financial interest is irrelevant. Even though I believe it is highly unlikely that these proceedings will have a substantial effect on The Walt Disney Company, I choose to err on the side of caution which, here, is also the side of judicial integrity—and disqualify myself.

Whether the reason claimed by Walker for his recusal is rationalization (the appearance of a conflict of interest is small compared to the apparent bias claim) or serious, he’s off the case. And that’s to the net good for the case and for both parties.

Yet Another Excuse by a Progressive-Democrat

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Virginia’s Progressive-Democratic Senator Tim Kaine wrote a brief letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s Friday Letters. He had proposed an amendment to the debt ceiling bill that would remove completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and in his letter, he actually claimed this as his rationalization:

I support reforms to the permitting process for energy projects. But cherry-picking one project….

And yet Kaine has proposed zero serious permitting reforms in his tenure in the Senate. Instead, he’s happy to carp from the safety of the sidelines regarding MVP, rather than—since he was proposing an amendment anyway—offering an amendment that would have generalized the MVP “exception.”

Go figure.

“I’m saying when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”

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That’s what President Richard Nixon (R) told David Frost in an interview, those years ago, when Frost asked him about Watergate.

Now, after Progressive-Democratic Party Presidents, guys like Barack Obama and current President Joe Biden, laundered that philosophy through their own agendas, we get to the Progressive-Democrat-run January 6 Committee.

The Democrat-led House Select Committee to Investigate January 6 doctored a key piece of its evidence, adding audio to silent US Capitol Police security footage used to create a dramatic video montage for the opening of its primetime hearings last summer, according to a Just the News review of the original raw footage and interviews.
In at least two instances identified by Just the News, the panel’s sizzle reel that aired live and on C-SPAN last June failed to identify that it had overdubbed audio from another, unidentified source onto the silent footage. Multiple current and former Capitol Police officials as well as key lawmakers and congressional aides confirmed that the closed-circuit cameras that captured the video do not record sound and that it was added afterwards.

And this:

A former spokesman for the January 6 committee told Just the News that the panel was supposed to clearly mark any video that was dubbed with another audio source, and it did so on some occasions in the sizzle reel.

That, though, emphasizes the misbehavior. But marking some videos as dubbed, but not others, the Committee made it seem as though those others were not dubbed, but had audio in the original. It’s hard to believe that Party’s staff were careless or mistaken in this. They knew what they were doing, and they demonstrated the skills necessary to do it.

The depth of the misbehavior:

One video clip from the genuine security footage shows an aerial view of the US Capitol Building without sound as the riot unfolded on January 6. Yet during the hearing the same clip aired with audio of crowd noises.
Another clip shows rioters entering the building through the Senate wing door. Viewers can hear glass breaking and a lot of shouting as the clip played during the hearing, but the Capitol Police and others have confirmed that the genuine and original version of this security footage had no audio.

In any other venue, such misbehavior would be evidence tampering, a very serious felony. However, when members of the Progressive-Democratic Party do it, that means it’s not illegal.

Remember that in 18 months, or so.

NBC News Writers Took the Day Off?

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NBC News celebrated the end of last month with 700 words “analyzing” a Twitter account that parodies New York Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Twitter account.

…@AOCPress, which is marked as a parody account but looks close to identical to the congresswoman’s real account when users scroll through their feeds. Parody accounts are required to mark themselves as impersonators on their profiles, but that marking gets cut off when viewing the @AOCPress account’s tweets in the feeds of the mobile application.
The account is fooling some of the people who read its tweets—bringing to life some of the fears about Musk’s paid verification system that stripped legacy verified users of their blue check marks. In the replies, there is a mix of responses from people taking the tweets at face value and attributing them to the real Ocasio-Cortez, while others point out that it’s a parody account.

Important, heady stuff. Right up there with another major news outlet’s cover story headline: Monster mom Casey: YES, I LIED ABOUT CAYLEE’S MURDER! That’s from National Enquirer.

Maybe there needs to be an NBC Newsroom (Parody) account.

Oh, wait—that might not take off: NBC News is so good at being its own parody.

“Defense or Democracy?”

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That’s the question the Biden administration is worrying about in Chad.

The Biden administration is in a bind over whether to provide military aid to Chad, one of Africa’s most reliable bulwarks against the spread of Islamist militants and an opponent of Russia’s growing influence in the Sahel region.
Chad’s longtime president, Idriss Déby, was killed in battle two years ago and quickly replaced by his son, violating the line of succession laid out in the Central African country’s constitution. Now, the US government is struggling with the question of whether the ruling junta is too brutal and undemocratic to merit US assistance, or whether the country’s value as a military ally trumps those concerns.

There’s another interpretation of the situation, though, that seems more cogent to this ignorant Texan. That is that the question presents a false dichotomy. No, the reality is that without defense, there can be no democracy.

Without defense, the autocracy that currently reigns over Chad can become entrenched, or the nation can be overrun by the terrorists, whether Islamists like Boko Haram and Daesh-West Africa, or by elements of the Wagner Group. All of these are operating in the country.

With defense, though, Chad has a strong chance of both crushing the terrorists and making the current autocracy an aberration and returning Chad to democratic governance.