Uganda

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Proterra just filed for bankruptcy.

They’re an Electric Vehicle company much-touted (and subsidized) but Team Pudding Brain.

Energy Secretary Granholm cashed out $1.6 million in Proterra stock just before it went belly up.

Now, you can be stupid and say this was all just a coincidence…or you can see the obvious: a grift company set up to drain money from the Treasury tipped off the Energy Secretary – who must have been in on the scam – so she can get her pile of money, ultimately courtesy of the taxpayers.

They’re not even really hiding that they are corrupt. They keep the details secret, but the fact that they are corrupt is obvious and they are laughing at us. With the revelation that foreign oligarchs and gangsters have funneled $20 million into various Biden Family shell companies, the MSM position (so far) is that there is no proof that any of this money was directly given to Joe Biden. They know that’s a stupid thing to say. They don’t care. They know nothing will happen; they are even confident that if a GOPer wins the White House nothing will happen – likely because too many senior GOPers are hip deep in the overall Ruling Class corruption. Like this:

Senator Tim Scott – who is not a bad guy – had his campaign books looked into and it seems that huge amounts of money are being spent on brand new companies. We’re talking millions of dollars going from Scott’s campaign chest (which is huge) into these companies for…well, not for a whole heck of a lot. And make no mistake about it, what Scott is doing here is legal. But it is almost certainly what Matt and I found in Caucus of Corruption back in 2006: politicians essentially paying themselves out of campaign donations. You know: hire your wife as a consultant for half a million dollars. With this being relatively clean – legal and not actually hidden – can you imagine what we’d find if we really dug into the bowels of government? As of a minute ago, in FY 2023 (which started October 1st, 2022) Uncle Sam has spent $4,805,159,571,246.00 – $455 million more than they had spent by this time last year! Who the heck is keeping track of all that?

Suppose you had just a billion dollars and someone was stealing ten thousand dollars a day from you…you have a billion. It’ll be ages before you really notice it. And that is just you with your own billion dollars. Now imagine nearly five trillion dollars being shoveled out and millions of people coming and going…how hard would it be to steal a million dollars every day? That would only be 365 million by the end of the year. That is 0.007% of the money. that is like someone slightly shaving some metal of a penny. How would you notice? What I’m saying: rely on it, huge amounts of money are being stolen. probably at least a trillion every year of late. Often legally: but only as long as the people don’t find out about it and so demand reforms. Protecting that pile of stolen money is crucial to those stealing it: there is literally nothing they won’t do to keep you from finding out about it and stopping it.

Like, for instance, indicting Trump for saying things…which ultimately stems from Trump wanting to look into a big part of the corruption, what was going on in Ukraine.

RDS booted a Soros-backed, Commie State Attorney. And this is sure to warm Amazona’s heart – not just on a Commie getting the boot, by why she got it: DeSantis determined she was violating her oath of office by allowing violent felons to skate. This is wonderful stuff; and definitely the way to go. We can no longer tolerate people getting into official positions to undermine what those positions are for.

As we pretty much already knew, the FBI was targeting Catholics as domestic terrorists. Like the Traditional Latin Mass? Dude: the FBI wants to know all about it. Hey, I get it – the Trad Catholics can be a bit tiresome (I actually lean a bit left theologically; that whole Divine Mercy thing has sunk deep into me), but they aren’t terrorists. Unlike, you know, Antifa/BLM who are…and are also crooks and con artists, into the bargain. The sort of people the FBI might want to look into before they tackle the lady on her way to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And I would like to remind one and all that while we Catholics are pretty easy going…we can become Cristeros at need.

The World Bank is cutting off funding to Uganda because of a recently passed law restricting homosexuality. Now, to be sure, I don’t think Uganda should have passed this law. I don’t think the government should be in the business of policing the personal relationships of the citizens. But here’s the thing: I’m not Ugandan. Not my country. The people of Uganda are perfectly capable of exercising their own judgement about what is best for themselves and while I can offer my opinion on it, I in no way have the right to try to force a people to live as I think best. The purpose of The World Bank is to provide funding to poor nations so they can rise out of poverty. Uganda has a Per Capita Income of about a grand a year. That’s pretty poor, if you ask me. They could probably use some economic development…but what they don’t need is rich, white foreigners telling them how to live. The old Imperialism sought to bring Christian truth and material advancement…the new Imperialism seeks to make the world like San Francisco.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan88 Comments

Senator Kennedy asked a Biden judicial nominee a pretty basic legal question (the sort you’d expect to be learned in pre-law) and the nominee had no idea what Kennedy was asking about. A lot of people are all, “what in heck are they teaching?” about it…but all with the assumption that law schools are still, well, law schools.

Now, to be fair, I have been set a little bit straight by a Twitter friend who stoutly asserts that in the law schools there are professors who vigorously teach law even if they, themselves, are far Left nutjobs. I trust the guy who told me this so I have to assume a blanket assertion I made on Twitter wasn’t true – that being that they don’t teach law, at all, in law school. So, I take my correction: they still do teach some law. That said, as we can see from this Biden nominee, they don’t teach much law…and I still vigorously assert that there is a negative selection in people brought into the government to ensure against any possibility of a real lawyer being appointed to a senior law enforcement or judicial position.

There are two factors as work here. The first is the need for “diversity”. The race hustlers are insisting that we have vast numbers of non-male, non-white lawyers. Whether or not there is a sufficiently large pool of such is irrelevant and I’m certain that its racist to even ask. They are going to get their diversity, folks: that is baked in. And not just diversity in admission, but diversity in result. No law school out there is going to have their graduating class be less than, say, 20 percent black…and if this means they have to graduate people who aren’t capable, they’ll do it. And, yes, I’m quite confident that when it comes to grading bar exams, the people doing so are also going to make certain that the “right” percentage of each diversity quota makes it (anyways, I understand from a lawyer friend that the bar has never been a straight up pass or fail: there has always been a little fudging in deciding just what constitutes passing and failing: easy, then, to rig the system to get the result you want). So, what we’ve got is a built in system which will ensure that a certain percentage of people will have no business at all being lawyers, but lawyers they shall be.

And that brings us to the second factor: the need for certainty. This is something which stems from Leninist legal practice – and it would amaze even many Conservatives to find out how much of Progressive legal and social policy is based on Leninism. It really has taken over the Left in the United States. Took decades to get it done, but it has been accomplished. In this instance, Leninist legal principle is that there is no “both sides” in the law – the law is to advance the cause or it isn’t law. In Lenin’s parlance it would be to advance the cause of the Working Class…but our modern Leninists don’t really like workers (Lenin didn’t either, of course) and so the cause now is the Victim…the racial, sexual, gender, what have you victim of the Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Imperialist, Genocidal AmeriKKKa. The law is to advance the cause of the Victim or it isn’t law. Whatever happens, the designated victim must prevail in court – and as the victim is always pre-determined by the DNC Narrative of the moment, the Progressive lawyers and judges know how to rule. This is why law isn’t really taught, or at least isn’t taught to those being groomed for senior judicial positions: the Left needs certainty. The absolute assurance that when their legal cases are brought forth, everyone involved will follow the Party Line on who is the Victim. Can’t get that out of anyone who really knows the law or has an ounce of self respect: you can only get certainty out of mindless, Party hacks. And, so, that is what we get…and so Biden’s nominee who doesn’t know a basic aspect of law. But he’ll be confirmed and for decades he’ll be ruling however the Progressives tell him to.

As of this moment, nobody has a clue about Trump’s indictment. Which shows, if nothing else has, how flimsy it all is. As I said a long while ago: if Trump had really broken any law, they could have got him on it long ago. Say whatever you want about the man, but he keeps his legal affairs in order. And as I also observed, this makes sense: working the New York real estate market is a minefield of legal hazard and anyone who is successful at it gets first rate legal advice on just what can and can’t be done within the law. Trump’s been at this for decades…I’ll bet he’s one of the few rich people in the world who can stand up to legal scrutiny.

Uganda voted to ban homosexuality. The Left is still trying to figure out what to do about a bunch of black people who are victims of colonialism not going along with white Progressives. Of course the Left wants to hammer them over this – and the Left is also chock full of neo-imperialists trying to impose Western morals on Africa – but this was a democratic vote in the Ugandan parliament…they’re going to have a rough time with this one.

I’m just going to laugh about it, myself.

Mexico’s President condemns Biden and the USA on human rights grounds – including pointing out how wrong it is for the Democrats to seek the indictment of their political opponent. He’s right. And we look absurd. It is a moment of national humiliation that I’m not only lectured to by the President of Mexico, but I can’t punch back because I have no grounds.

DeSantis after a very good run has now backtracked on Ukraine and is taking a more neo-con line. To me, this is an unforced error for RDS – the base is pacifist and, also, this is the Democrat’s war and they are going to lose it. All GOPers should stay the heck away so that when this blows up, it blows up only in Democrat faces. The last thing we need is for the GOP to take ownership of this war…especially as the moment we do, the Democrats will go back to being anti-war, accusing us of war crimes and they’ll suddenly discover that their darling Zelensky is a corrupt thug. I hope that RDS backtracks on his backtrack.