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FEBRUARY 12,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

END OF A TRADITION – FROM THE HARTFORD COURANT:   Colt Holding Co. has been purchased by a Czech firearms company, ending a 175-year run as an American company and helping to establish a “small arms powerhouse,” the two companies announced Friday.  It also marks a new chapter for Colt, a one-time financially troubled company that, with its new Czech owner, is now expected to generate $500 million in revenue.  Z?eská zbrojovka Group, or CZG, said it signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Colt Holding Co. LLC, the parent company of Colt’s Manufacturing Co. and its Canadian subsidiary, Colt Canada Corp., for $220 million in cash and more than 1 million shares of the Czech company.  The agreement also calls for potentially issuing up to 1.1 million shares of newly issued CZG stock if defined profit thresholds are achieved between 2021 and 2023.  Lubomír Kova?ík, president and chairman of CZG, said the deal is a “strategic step for both companies.”  “The acquisition of Colt, an iconic brand and a benchmark for the military, law enforcement and commercial markets globally, fits perfectly in our strategy to become the leader in the firearms manufacturing industry and a key partner for the armed forces,” he said. “We are proud to include Colt, which has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. Army for over 175 years,” It's sad to see an iconic American name pass to foreign ownership.  But it won't bother anyone in the Washington establishment. 

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN EDUCATION – FROM BREITBART:   Whistleblower documents revealed a Philadelphia elementary school, ranked as one of the worst-performing schools in Pennsylvania, forced fifth graders to act out a “Black Power” rally in honor of radical Marxist Angela Davis and to celebrate “black communism.”  According to Critical Race Theory investigator Christopher Rufo, who obtained the documents and spoke to a source within the William D. Kelley School, a fifth-grade teacher designed a social studies curriculum “to celebrate the political radical Angela Davis, praising the ‘black communist’ for her fight against ‘injustice and inequality.’” ... An author and filmmaker, Rufo reported in a Twitter thread that, after asking students to “describe Davis’s early life” and her vision of social change, the teacher led them to the school auditorium to “simulate” a “Black Power” rally to “free Angela Davis” from prison.  The students marched, holding signs that read, “Black Power,” “Jail Trump,” “Free Angela,” and “Black Power Matters,” and shouted, “Free Angela!”  We have to ask what impact this will have on black children.  What will this kind of "education" affect their future?  Doesn't take much to figure it out.

February 12, 2021       Permalink

THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL WINDS DOWN – OVERNIGHT:   It's almost over.  The Washington farce, the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump, is nearing its end.  The former president's representatives did rather well in the closing hours of the formal statements.  From Powerline: 

The defense of Donald Trump at his impeachment trial got off to a rocky start earlier this week.

There’s no denying that.

Today, however, the defense team came back strong in its closing argument. Trump’s lawyers used only about two and half hours of their allotted 16 to respond to the House managers’ case. That was enough to demolish it and to show the dishonesty of the managers’ presentation...

...As I’ve said before, I think there is a decent, although ultimately unpersuasive, case for impeachment. But the House was in too big a rush to have made that case. The Article of Impeachment is an embarrassment, so it’s not surprising that the managers relied on emotion and distortion, rather than reason, in presenting it.

I doubt that more than five Republican Senators — the hard core anti-Trumpers — will vote to convict the former president. A sixth Republican, Sen. Cassidy, voted with the five on the question of whether a former president can be tried. Cassidy said that this vote, defensible on the merits, resulted from the weakness of the defense team’s argument on a close constitutional question.

Today, the defense team’s arguments were strong, so that any inclination Cassidy might have had to vote to convict has probably vanished.

The defense team took plenty of heat for arguing the constitutional question so poorly, and rightly so. But it should be commended for the substance and brevity of today’s effort.

COMMENT:  Agreed.  The Democrats act as if we have a student government, not a real government.  Or, they're getting practice for running a co-op board in a retirement community. 

It'll be over soon, but the Dems will find a way to punish Donald Trump.  It's good for CNN's ratings.

February 12, 2021       Permalink

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ANDREW CUOMO ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE – AT 10:58 P.M. ET:    Look, this is really getting serious.  I've seen falls from grace before, but Cuomo's is a jump out of the grace plane without a parachute.  Not many months ago this New York windbag won an Emmy for sounding good during a pandemic.  Now he's being accused of the kind of cover-up that would have had Richard Nixon at the end of a hanging rope.   From Fox: 

New York, NY – EXCLUSIVE: New York Assemblyman Michael Montesano said he plans to ask the state legislature to consider impeaching Gov. Andrew Cuomo after a bombshell admission by his top aide that their office allegedly covered up data on COVID-19 nursing home deaths to shake off a Justice Department probe on the matter.

"We've been calling for subpoenas and a hearing for quite a while," Montesano, a Republican member of the state’s Oversight and Investigations Committee, told Fox News. "This news of the last several days is extremely troubling to me and I'm going to be asking today for his resignation and I'm also going to be asking the legislature to look into, to explore filing articles of impeachment against the governor if he doesn't resign."

Calls for a criminal probe against Cuomo and his staff mounted after Melissa DeRosa, the secretary to the governor, told top New York Democrats on Thursday that Cuomo's administration feared the data about COVID-19 deaths could "be used against us" by the Justice Department in the midst of its federal probe initiated against four states regarding nursing home deaths, including New York, and thus the administration withheld the actual death count.

"This is now criminal," Montesano, a Republican who represents District-15, said. "The governor wants to talk about how our attacks on him are political. They're not political, we've had an inkling all the while that they were covering stuff up, and now she admitted that she covered stuff up because she knew the Department of Justice has an active investigation going on of the nursing home problems which a lot of us in the legislature, especially in the minority, requested that they do.

"She's obstructing an investigation. This is what makes it even more troubling," he added.

"If I had to make an educated guess, I believe she realizes DOJ is doing an investigation, things may be getting close, and she wants to divest herself of whatever wrongdoing she may have done if she's covered something up and if she's trying to get out in front of it," Montesano said of De Rosa's shocking admission, which she tried to walk back in a statement released Friday.

COMMENT:  The bottom line here is that Cuomo will still be protected by many journalists.  Also, to get some relief for New Yorkers, the United States Department of Justice will probably have to intervene. even though it is now run by the Democratic Party. 

Cuomo was the golden boy during much of the early period of the Covid 19 assault.  "America's governor," some in the bought press called him.  Now he's becoming the goat.   Nobody's governor.

February 12, 2021       Permalink

FEBRUARY 11,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

COMPLETELY CRAZY – FROM STARTRIBUNE.COM:   U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is rising on the House Foreign Affairs Committee as she steps into the role of vice chairwoman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over Africa and global human rights issues.  Omar's office said her new position was being announced Thursday in Washington. The panel's full name is the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations.  "Upholding basic human rights around the world is a core priority for me and the Fifth District of Minnesota," Omar, a Democrat, said in a prepared statement. "As someone who represents a large African diaspora community and is the first African-born immigrant to serve in Congress, I am particularly excited to play a leadership role in overseeing our international aid and foreign policy on the continent."  The Twin Cities boasts the largest Somali community in the U.S. Omar was born in Somalia but her family left amid civil war when she was a child.  It almost feels as if this nation is committing suicide.  This woman despises the United States, has spouted anti-Semitism, and is one of the most unintelligent members of Congress, and yet gets promoted.

YOU CANNOT BELIEVE THIS – FROM DAILY MAIL:   A gay white father of a mixed-race child has been denied a spot on the San Francisco Board of Education's volunteer parent committee because his race doesn't bring enough diversity to the group.   The issue of whether to allow Seth Brenzel to volunteer for the 15-person parent advisory council was debated for almost two hours on Tuesday night during a board meeting.   The parent advisory council, who had unanimously supported Brenzel to join their all-female committee, had submitted his name to be approved by the school board.   His candidacy, however, faced opposition from some board members and members of the public who argued that there wasn't enough diversity on the council - even though there are five seats currently empty.  It's San Francisco, not a real place, at least not in these United States. 

February 11, 2021       Permalink

INCITEMENT OR NOT? – OVERNIGHT:  The Democrats have finished delivering their impeachment case against former President Trump.  It centers on the charge of incitement.  Did they make their case?   Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy analyzes.  From Fox: 

In an incitement case, the issue is what the accused says, not how the mob hears it. Indeed, that is always the First Amendment analysis. If what a person says is constitutionally protected expression, we protect the speech and we don’t give the heckler – or the rioter – a veto.

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., one of the House impeachment managers, noted on Wednesday afternoon that, 15 minutes into his Jan. 6 Ellipse speech, then-President Trump asserted that he knew the crowd was about to march peacefully on the Capitol.

She grudgingly conceded that this was "one of his defenses" to the incitement charge. In point of fact, it would be a complete defense to an incitement charge if a prosecutor brought one in a real court, which would be inexplicable on the evidence the House managers are presenting.

Obviously aware of this inconvenient problem, Congresswoman Dean instantly pivoted from what Trump said to the belligerent threats being simultaneously chanted by some elements of the crowd (a crowd that numbered in the tens of thousands).

In a real criminal case, a defendant may not be convicted unless the prosecutor proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had bad intent.

In Trump’s case, that would be intent to cause a violent attack on the Capitol. If what Trump said did not constitute incitement in the criminal law sense – i.e., clearly intentional and unambiguous solicitations to violence that was imminent and probable – then the failure to establish criminal intent cannot be repaired by showing that other people had criminal intent.

If you argue that Trump engaged in utterly irresponsible rhetoric, I’m right there with you. If you contend that it is an impeachable dereliction of duty for a president to intentionally mislead the public about the election and, especially, to aggressively pressure public officials – the vice president and the Congress – to take unconstitutional actions (viz., to reject the state-certified election results that established now-President Biden as the winner of the election), I would agree with that, too. And I myself have posited that the most impeachable conduct by the president was his dereliction of duty as commander-in-chief in failing to act while the Capitol was under siege.

The problem is that the House did not file such articles of impeachment. They accuse Trump of inciting insurrectionist violence at the Capitol.

COMMENT:  Read the rest.  It's a fascinating analysis that by no means excuses some of Trump's vociferous behavior, but makes clear that the Dems failed to make their point on the incitement charge.

February 11, 2021       Permalink

WHA..?  IS HE WOKE?  IS HE TRULY WOKE? – AT 7:43 P.M. ET:  The president of the United States has spoken with the president of China.  Apparently, our president has now figured out that the Chinese gentleman is not our BFF.  From Fox: 

President Biden warned that China will "eat our lunch" on Thursday after speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time Wednesday night since becoming president – a sentiment that seemed to contradict some of his statements on the campaign trail.

"Last night I was on the phone with for two straight hours with Xi Jinping," Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. "It was a good conversation, I know him well, we spent a lot of time together over the years I was vice president, but if we don't get moving, they're going to eat our lunch. They have major, major new initiatives on rail, they already have rail that goes 325 miles per hour with ease. They are working very hard to do what I think we're gonna have to do."

"The auto industry is already there. So is labor. They're working very hard to try to move in a position where they end up being the source of a new way in which to power automobiles, which they're going to invest a lot of money. They're investing billions of dollars in dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation and the environment ... so we just have to step up," Biden continued.
Biden's comments on Thursday seemed in direct opposition to his position in 2019.

"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!" Biden said at a rally in 2019.
He was critical of former President Donald Trump's tariff battle with China.

"The president has done nothing but increase the tariffs, the debt and the trade deficit. The way we have to proceed is we have to have our allies with us. It’s not just us. We have to keep the world together," Biden said in 2019.

In a statement Wednesday night, the White House said Biden "shared his greetings and well wishes with the Chinese people on the occasion of Lunar New Year."

COMMENT:  So is Biden woke?  Sounds like he's partly woke, no more.   No mention of jobs lost in the U.S., no mention of the collusion between American corporations and the Chinese government, no mention of the most important factor, the buildup of the Chinese military. 

But at least we got some crumbs out of this president, a new belief that China will eat our lunch.  The problem is that Biden has no clue as to how to limit China's appetite.  And some very powerful people in this country have no desire to do so.

February 11, 2021       Permalink