Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

The Democrats who are now in control of the Federal Government are exploiting the Capitol Hill riot to a level even I had not expected, using this one incident of violence as an excuse to begin a clamp down on those of us they consider to be the enemy. Can you guess who they are?  This is even more despicable because there is a chance this sorry affair was perpetrated by leftists.

This is right out of the standard progressive playbook and is captured in this prophetic quote by Rahm Emanuel:

You never want a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

In response to the riot the Biden administration is proposing a rather extreme crackdown on those of us on the political right.  Of course they are cloaking their proposal in the usual progressive double speak.  Those of us who are fluent in their deceptive use of language would have no trouble deciphering the ominous message inside their proposal, which is documented in this White House Briefing Transcript.  I’ve included the full text relating to the proposal.  After each paragraph I will add my analysis and some sarcastic comments.

I also have some news to share on the President’s response to domestic violent extremism.  The January 6th assault on the Capitol and the tragic deaths and destruction that occurred underscored what we have long known: The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national security threat. 

Of course those of us who deal with reality, unlike those on the political left know the “violent extremists” they will crack down are those who believe in individual rights, honor the Constitution, and know the truth that presidential election was stolen from President Trump.   The Democrats will ignore those who committed the vast majority of the real violence the past decade or so, their own side of the political spectrum.

The Biden administration will confront this threat with the necessary resources and resolve.  We are committed to developing policies and strategies based on facts, on objective and rigorous analysis, and on a respect for constitutionally protected free speech and political activities. 

What are the chances of the Biden Administration actually respecting the constitutionally protected free speech of those on the political right?  Negligible at best considering the track record of the extreme leftists now controlling the Democrat Party

Our initial work on DVE will broadly fall into three areas.  The first is a tasking from President Biden sent to the ODNI today requesting a comprehensive threat assessment, coordinated with the FBI and DHS, on domestic violent extremism.  This assessment will draw on the analysis from across the government and, as appropriate, nongovernmental organizations. 

The Biden Administration will be relying on the oh so corrupt deep state which is still way too full of Obama cronies.

The key point here is that we want fact-based analysis upon which we can shape policy.  So this is really the first step in the process, and we’ll rely on our appropriate law enforcement and intelligence officials to provide that analysis. 

When has the political left ever relied on actual facts?  That quote about fact based analysis is laughable.

The second will be the building of an NSC capability to focus on countering domestic violent extremism.  As a part of this, the NSC will undertake a policy review effort to determine how the government can share information better about this threat, support efforts to prevent radicalization, disrupt violent extremist networks, and more. 

The Biden Administration will be building an infrastructure to clamp down tightly on those who are not politically in lock step with the radical political left.

There’s important work already underway across the interagency in countering DVE, and we need to understand better its current extent and where there may be gaps to address, so we can determine the best path forward. 

I interpret this paragraph to mean that the Biden Administration will crackdown and harass those of us who want to share information about and educate others about the US Constitution and our founding principles.  If I’m wrong about this please let me know.

The third will be coordinating relevant parts of the federal government to enhance and accelerate efforts to address DVE.  This considered, an NSC-convened process will focus on addressing evolving threats, radicalization, the role of social media, opportunities to improve information sharing, operational responses, and more. 

The federal government will now be working closely with the corporate tyrants who have been working overtime to silence conservatives and everyone else on the political right.  That is how I interpret this last paragraph.  Free speech and the Constitution mean nothing to the Biden Administration.  Their earlier protestation is laughable in the extreme.  When have leftists ever respected the freedom of speech of those who are not leftists?

One of the most attractive reasons to live in the Deep South is the winter. Seldom do we suffer the frigid, biting cold that the more northern states endure. In Louisiana, if we have three or four days below freezing, that is considered winter. Those subzero days need not be consecutive.

This week our weather forecasters have been alternately giddy and panic-stricken at the prospect of an incoming “polar vortex” that is expected to bring single-digit temperatures for most of next week. Even better, we also anticipate snow and ice, they tell us.

This means almost certain power outages.

As you can imagine, this has caused a flurry of activity as people rush to the grocery store for bread, milk, bottled water, and batteries. Not many of us in northern Louisiana have a generator; those are more common in southern Louisiana where hurricanes cause power outages for extended periods of time. My neighbor does have a portable generator which he cranks up the moment the power goes out, however.

Some of us old-timers remember when the Red River froze back in 1983 after a week of subfreezing temperatures. It hasn’t been that cold for that long since but people still talk about the river freezing as a benchmark of record-setting cold weather.

People in different parts of the country tend to scoff at our inability to deal with cold weather. I have a niece in Iowa who howls with laughter when we close the schools for less than an inch of snow or ice, but as I said, we aren’t accustomed to this phenomenon and we don’t know how to drive in it. We don’t have salt trucks or snowplows.

So, instead, we go to the grocery store and buy bread.

The weather forecasters have been telling everyone for several days to wrap pipes and cover plants. I have a friend who has directed her husband to cover each of their sixteen peach trees in an attempt to protect the fragile blooms and the peach crop.

Soon the three local television stations will dispatch their intrepid reporters out to stand along the interstate to report on live local road conditions. They will breathlessly interview local officials about running sand trucks along overpasses and news websites will post a running list of Weather-Related Closures long before anything actually closes. Every school kid in town will religiously monitor this list. So will their teachers.

What does it say about us that we react this way to extreme weather? Is it the change that draws us in? Do we feed off misery and suffering? Whether it is a hurricane or a polar vortex, the weather forecasters give us days and days of this advanced information and ever-changing, uncertain news. Sometimes the storm materializes and sometimes it doesn’t, but we are always prepared, I suppose.

At least we always have bread and milk.

Blogger with Durbin in Chicago in 2020

By John Ruberry

Last Monday the Justice Department asked 56 U.S. attorneys to resign. There were two exceptions, John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, will stay on as the special counsel for the investigation of the Russian collusion hoax, and David Weiss, the prosecutor for Delaware, who is pursuing the probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes, and presumably, more.

Among the others are John R. Lausch Jr., the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, which of course includes that cesspool of corruption, Chicago and suburban Cook County. Appointed in 2017, Lausch has been methodically hacking away at the blighted forest that is Illinois government ever since. Among those indicted under Lausch’s term are a Chicago alderman, two suburban mayors (one of them was also Cook County commissioner), and two members of the Illinois General Assembly. They have one thing in common–all are Democrats. Lausch has chipped away at the political machine of state Representative Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), who until last month had been state House speaker for all but two years since 1983. Lausch uncovered an alleged scam involving Commonwealth Edison, Illinois’ largest electric utility, that has led to the indictment of four senior executives at that company, as well as a longtime lobbyist with decades-long ties to Boss Madigan. 

Madigan is the midwife of the Illinois pension debacle and he is the man who destroyed Illinois. Sadly, those aren’t crimes.

Lausch seems to be closing the ring on Madigan, who remains as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party, a post he’s held since 1998. Madigan maintains his innocence and he has not been charged with any crimes. But he’s a tough one to investigate–Madigan doesn’t use email and he doesn’t own a cell phone. There’s a lot of smoke surrounding the 78-year-old legislator–but so far no fire has been discovered. 

It took a lot longer than it should have but Illinois’ insipid Republican Party, the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters, finally pursued tying other Democratic candidates to Madigan, which led to a pretty good, but not great, general election for conservatives last autumn. The best result was the resounding defeat of the so-called Fair Tax Amendent, which would have replaced Illinois’ flat rate income tax with one with graduated rates. As I’ve quipped a few times before, Illinoisans finally figured out that if the Democrats were given an unlimited budget they would exceed it. 

After the general election Illinois’ two Democratic US Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, called for Madigan’s resignation as party chairman. No, they didn’t suddenly realize that Madigan is toxic to Illinois; Durbin and Duckworth didn’t like the general election results here. 

The state House took care of the speakership problem, the Democrats ousted Madigan last month but replaced him with a longtime ally of the Boss. 

The day after the Justice Department announced those federal prosecutor resignations, in what the Chicago Tribune called “a lame news release,”  those two party-line hack senators called on Biden to keep Lausch on the job. I am very suspicious of their motives. Duckworth is up for reelection next year and if the federal investigation into Chicago area corruption stalls she might get the blunt of the blame for not convincing Biden to keep Lausch in place. 

Durbin is the new Senate Justice Committee chairman and prefers not to be accused of keeping corrupt Dems in power in his home state. Back to gerrymandering and Madigan: Aftet the 2010 census the state congressional map was redrawn to be much more favorable to Democrats. The 8th congressional district was transformed from a competitive one to a layout favoring Democrats. In 2012 Duckworth ousted the Republican incumbent, future never-Trumper Joe Walsh.

Remember, for many Democrats Madigan has been very good to them. His skills at gerrymandering have produced supermajorities in the General Assembly and have bolstered Democratic numbers among the Illinois US House delegation. There may have never been a Senator Duckworth had she not won that House race in 2012. Through government and compliant corporations like Commonwealth Edison, Madigan has been able to hand out contracts, favors, and jobs to those loyal to him–as well as their relatives.

Lausch needs to be kept on the job in Chicago. 

Biden’s nominee for Attorney General is Merrick Garland, a Chicago area native who was nominated by Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court seat that eventually went to Neil Gorsuch. But he hasn’t lived here in decades. Yet my guess is that Garland has kept his eyes on the fetid muck in Illinois. Perhaps he can put in a good word for Lausch to Biden or whoever is making the calls in the White House on federal prosecutors.

Sorry to be repetitive, but I have to keep mentioning this fact. Illinois has lost population every year since 2014. 

People have wised up. But not me. Not yet.

UPDATE February 23: Last night Michael Madigan resigned his post as chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. Last week Madigan gave up his House seat after 50 years in the General Assembly. Term limits anyone?

This afternoon, according to multiple media reports, Lausch will keep his job as US attorney until a replacement is found and presumably confirmed.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

For the past couple of days I’ve been struggling to come up with a topic for this week’s article.  I’m not experiencing writer’s block.  It’s just that there is just so much wrong with our country right now, so much wrong at so many levels.  There are too many topics to choose from so I guess I’ll write about each topic that’s troubling me so much right now.

I know with all my heart that treating every single individual as the truly unique person we are is far superior to the identity politics peddled by the political left.  If you divide us up into artificial groups based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or any characterization you automatically set one group against another.  Just look at how left has vilified white people.  It is just shocking to me.  I know this is nothing compared to how blacks were treated during slavery or segregation, both are also examples of liberals and their identity politics. Treating every individual the same with the same worth, no matter the color of their skin, leads to far less hate and division.

It is absolutely amazing to me how much liberal propaganda infects all levels of the news.  I noticed this decades ago, and it keeps getting worse.  Every single local news broadcast here in Massachusetts is nonstop liberal nonsense.  Hopefully it is different in red states, but I doubt it.  Even the weather is infected, they are constantly pushing global warming and climate change propaganda.  There are so few outlets that actually tell the truth left, especially after Fox News turned traitor.  I am so outraged after the firing of Lou Dobbs.

The crack down against conservatives on social media after the riot on Capitol Hill has reached levels that are on par with the most totalitarian nations.  Check out this article from the Federalist.

Censorship and blacklisting are serious unjust cultural acts that increasingly filter Americans into second-class citizens based on their political viewpoints. The censorship and blacklisting that we are seeing in America right now is viewpoint discrimination. Censorship and blacklisting need to be fully rejected by American society before they become accepted cultural norms that make even worse injustices likely and more possible.

It is truly horrific watching the Biden regime dismantle and destroy the American economy, which is documented in this American Thinker article.

the Biden Administration, the Democrats in Congress, and their fellow-travelers in the Ruling Class are determined to permanently stifle economic growth by their infatuation with hypothetical climate change thus undermining energy development as well as manufacturing.  They credulously claim that the theoretical green energy revolution will replace these jobs and wealth, but that will take decades if at all, and will be far too little and too late to prevent national insolvency. 

Their determination to raise business taxes as well as dramatically increase job- and business formation-killing regulations is anathema to promoting growth.  Their resolve to institute what is tantamount to economic central planning by the bureaucrats in Washington will cause enormous dislocation in financial resources, thus, throttling access to capital for expansion or new business formation.

There is so much more I could write about here in this article but I have to stop now because my blood is boiling too much.