Matt Taibbi has a post up at Racket News about his experience testifying before a congressional committee on Thursday.
Then the hearing began, and an episode of Black Adder: Congress broke out.
I’m sure the Democrats believed they had a cunning and subtle plan.
I do not think they mean what you want me to to think they mean.
Whenever I hear some politician talking about “our democracy,” I wonder if I’m included in the group he means when he says, “Our.”
Also, whenever I hear a politician talking about “democracy,” I’m reminded of how Benjamin Franklin described the form of government being created by the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
At the end of 2020, various friends from around the country asked me for advice about the where to stay in the DC area and the best routes in and out of town. They were all coming for rallies on 6 January. I gave my opinions on accommodations and other logistics—and I advised them to stay away from the Capitol Building and to let Congress do whatever it would do. Given that the Democrats were in control of both houses, it seemed to me that they had some sort of trap set for any demonstrations that strayed onto the turf under their exclusive control.
Thus far, nothing on the surveillance video aired by Fox has surprised me, and I presume the worst is yet to be revealed.
… the city held an election for mayor, and the current mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for another term. She came in third in a field of nine candidates. Because no one received at least 50 % of the votes, there will be a runoff election between the top two candidates.
Lightfoot is an incompetent leader who got into office because of an opponent’s corruption scandal. She picked fights she didn’t have to have and blamed others for the city’s problems.
During a press conference, she said, “Look, I’m 60 years old. I’m not going to change who I am.” It seems the voters in Chicago don’t want more of the same.
Jim Treacher is a pseudonym used by Sean Medlock. However, his full name is Robert Sean Medlock. Like many people, he goes by his middle name. He has a post up about middle names.
So now, every time I need to fill out paperwork somewhere, I have to explain that I go by my middle name. Doctors, dentists, car repairs, insurance, what have you. The routine is kind of annoying, but at this point I’m used to it.
I’m not deceiving anybody by using my middle name. It’s just my name, man. Lots of people go by their middle name.
I sympathize. My full name is William John Joseph Hoge, and I go by my first middle name John socially. Professionally, I use W. J. J. Hoge.
But that’s not what Jim/Sean and I are here to talk to you about. We’re here to comment on a non-event of the 2024 presidential campaign.
This week Nikki Haley announced she’s running for president. I don’t know if she has a shot, but the libs sure seem to think so. They’re already attacking her for … going by her middle name.
Yep. Some pundits are trying to make a big deal out of Nikki Haley going by her middle name. She has since she was a child. Her immigrant parents named her Nimarata Nikki Randhawa and called her “Nikki”—which means “little one” in Punjabi. When she married Michale Haley, she took his last name.
I don’t know that I’ll wind up supporting Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, but her name won’t be a reason for supporting another candidate.
UPDATE—My podcasting partner Stacy McCain’s full name is Robert Stacy McCain. I’ll bet we wind up talking about this during The Other Podcast tomorrow evening.
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
—Abba Eban
Now. James Baker, former FBI General Counsel and Twitter in-house lawyer, answering a question from Rep. Jim Jordan during a hearing—
To the best of my recollection, I did not talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day,
Then. Richard Nixon, before a grand jury—
I should point out that I can never recall suggesting Mr. McGovern, Senator McGovern’s files be checked.
Thank you to everyone who watched Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech so I didn’t have to.
I enjoyed a nice nap.
There is no civility, only politics.
—Sheev Palpatine
… then you pay for what you got. After Trump was elected, a video surfaced of a Google employee meeting in which the corporate leadership said they could not allow an election like that to happen again, and there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that Google participated with other tech companies in tipping the scales in Biden’s favor in 2020. They got what they paid for.
Of course, what they paid for is a dangerously incompetent administration. The poor economy is but one Joe Biden’s failures. Google may be big, but it’s not so big that it isn’t affected by a stagnant economy. They’re laying off 12,000 employees.
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
… is to ask the wrong question.
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that a bill introduced in the Connecticut legislature would allow women to skip the Candidate Physical Ability Test for firefighters and qualify with a test with “revised physical standards.” It seems that the Democrats who have authored the bill are looking for an answer to the question “How do we make fire departments more diverse?”
Perhaps Connecticut should consider the question “How do we make our fire departments more effective?”
According to a report published on the National Institutes of Health website, there is an association of cooking over an open flame and asthma, but the effect depends upon which fuel is used. The report’s abstract states:
Background: Indoor air pollution from a range of household cooking fuels has been implicated in the development and exacerbation of respiratory diseases. In both rich and poor countries, the effects of cooking fuels on asthma and allergies in childhood are unclear. We investigated the association between asthma and the use of a range of cooking fuels around the world.
Methods: For phase three of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), written questionnaires were self-completed at school by secondary school students aged 13-14 years, 244,734 (78%) of whom were then shown a video questionnaire on wheezing symptoms. Parents of children aged 6-7 years completed the written questionnaire at home. We investigated the association between types of cooking fuels and symptoms of asthma using logistic regression. Adjustments were made for sex, region of the world, language, gross national income, maternal education, parental smoking, and six other subject-specific covariates. The ISAAC study is now closed, but researchers can continue to use the instruments for further research.
Findings: Data were collected between 1999 and 2004. 512,707 primary and secondary school children from 108 centres in 47 countries were included in the analysis. The use of an open fire for cooking was associated with an increased risk of symptoms of asthma and reported asthma in both children aged 6-7 years (odds ratio [OR] for wheeze in the past year, 1·78, 95% CI 1·51-2·10) and those aged 13-14 years (OR 1·20, 95% CI 1·06-1·37). In the final multivariate analyses, ORs for wheeze in the past year and the use of solely an open fire for cooking were 2·17 (95% CI 1·64-2·87) for children aged 6-7 years and 1·35 (1·11-1·64) for children aged 13-14 years. Odds ratios for wheeze in the past year and the use of open fire in combination with other fuels for cooking were 1·51 (1·25-1·81 for children aged 6-7 years and 1·35 (1·15-1·58) for those aged 13-14 years. In both age groups, we detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.
Interpretation: The use of open fires for cooking is associated with an increased risk of symptoms of asthma and of asthma diagnosis in children. Because a large percentage of the world population uses open fires for cooking, this method of cooking might be an important modifiable risk factor if the association is proven to be causal.
Funding: BUPA Foundation, the Auckland Medical Research Foundation, the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation of New Zealand, the Child Health Research Foundation, the Hawke’s Bay Medical Research Foundation, the Waikato Medical Research Foundation, Glaxo Wellcome New Zealand, the NZ Lottery Board, Astra Zeneca New Zealand, Hong Kong Research Grant Council, Glaxo Wellcome International Medical Affairs.
Note the finding of no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.
The report was originally published in Lancet Respir Med in 2013.
Kevin McCarthy still hasn’t found enough votes to win the election as Speaker of the House. I thought the whole thing would be over by 6:09 pm ET this evening. That’s when the Moon was full.
What is it about Democrats and masks?
Joe Biden is in the US Virgin Islands for a year end vacation, so the omnibus funding bill is being flown from DC to St. Croix so he can sign it. Several tonnes of carbon will be emitted because of his vacation schedule.
I’ll worry about the carbon footprint of my VW diesel as soon as … oh, never mind.
Ian Millhiser has an article over at Vox suggesting that Justices Sotamayor and Kagan should retire while there is still time for Joe Biden to appoint youthful successors who can be confirmed by a Senate still under Democrat control.
If Sotomayor and Kagan do not retire within the next two years, in other words, they could doom the entire country to live under a 7–2 or even an 8–1 Court controlled by an increasingly radicalized Republican Party’s appointees.
He writes that as if it would be a bad thing for the country to have judges who follow the Constitution.
OK, I suppose that is a problem for Progressives who for most of the last century have used the courts to impose social policy that could not get enough votes in Congress or state legislature. Winning court cases based on emanations of penumbras was usually easier than convincing legislators and the public to amend the Constitution. A court that sticks to the written rules is just too much of a burden on their “democracy” to be tolerated by right thinking people.
In spite of his screw ups in the 2022 election cycle, we owe a debt of gratitude to Cocaine Mitch for his work getting good judges confirmed.
Everything proceeded as I had foreseen.
I wish I’d been wrong.
Rebellion has its roots in government’s indifference and incompetence.
—Mike Barnicle
So the government may shutdown if the Senate doesn’t pass the omnibus funding bill under consideration—and members of the House, including Speaker-presumptive McCarthy, have said that after control of the House flips next year they will quash any legislation originated by a Republican senator who votes to pass the bill.
Hmmm.
Given that I work as a government contractor, I suppose I should take a greater interest in the matter, but I was planning to take next week off anyway. Oh, and one of the reasons I’ve got over six weeks of paid time off accrued is because my previous experience with Congressional budgetary incompetence.
The next few weeks are going to be … um … complicated.
I first came in contact with Rebekah Jones when I covered the court hearings related to her attempt to secure a Maryland peace order against Christina Pushaw. Two, no make that three, things seemed obvious about Jones.
First, that she had no evidence for the claims she was making against Ms. Pushaw.
Second, that she was running some kind of grift.
Third, that she was detached from Reality.
It now appears the grift turned into or was the basis for her congressional campaign. She initially tried to get it stated in the 6th District here in Maryland, but she quickly found she would have been crushed in the Democrat primary by the incumbent David Trone. She moved back to Florida and wound up losing the election to Matt Gaetz. When that happened, I noted that she wouldn’t have to comment back from DC for her felony computer crime trial scheduled early next year.
I had considered spending a few days in Florida covering that trial, but the trip is no longer necessary. Jones has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in which “[d]efendant admits her guilt of the offense(s) charged.”
Somethings have proceeded more rapidly than I had foreseen.
Silence is argument carried out by other means.
—Che Guevara
I just got finished with my day job for the week when a friend let me know that Matt Taibbi has begun the next dump of Twitter files. I’m gonna go to the kitchen to make a sandwich and get another cup of coffee. When I get back, I’ll see if there’s something unexpected. Maybe I’ll even have a comment.
UPDATE—Well, there weren’t any surprises for me in tonight’s dump. The TL/DR seems to be that everything proceeded as I have foreseen.
When asked if the Biden campaign told Twitter that Hunter’s laptop files were “hacked,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say if anyone close to President Biden made such an assertion in order to justify suppression of the NY Post‘s report.
I can’t speak to decisions made by the campaign from here. It is a political campaign … I am covered by the Hatch Act …
Well, she is, but I’ll bet the Biden team also will be doing what it can to avoid self-incriminating statements.
Solutions are not the answer.
—Richard Nixon
She was obviously making it up as she went along …
… and clearly demonstrating that she’s a Constitution denier.
Or does she think that 38 states would vote to repeal the 26th Amendment? Or amend Article 1, Section 2, which sets the minimum age for a Member of the House of Representatives at 25?