"Pardon Pledge Will Sink Trump's Campaign"
This week, Karl Rove, the political genius who guided former President George W. Bush to two election victories, predicted that Trump's pledge to review all the cases of the January 6 defendants and pardon those who deserve clemency"will sink his campaign. There isn't an innocent person in the whole bunch. They illegally trespassed on government property while official proceedings were underway."
Rove rejected claims that the mostly peaceful January 6 demonstrators should be treated the same way that those demonstrating against the death of George Floyd in 2020 while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers were, saying "none of the Floyd protesters terrified the members of Congress like the January 6 crowd did. The billions of dollars in property damage and the 19 deaths that occurred during the Floyd protests did not directly challenge the right of the national government's rule over the people. They were not insurrectionists."
One of the "thugs" that Rove feels needs to be taught to obey the law is 71-year-old grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz. This week she was convicted of entering the Capitol through wide-open doors at 2:43 pm on January 6, 2021 and exiting at 2:53 pm. The penalty for her misdemeanor infractions could amount to fines up to $200,000 and up to one year of imprisonment.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has refused to disclose the identity of suspected FBI agents present in the January 6 crowd. January 6 defendant William Pope asserts that "they are witnesses crucial to my defense." A redacted DOJ spokesman explained that "every advanced nation has secret police. We can't expect to keep up with our adversaries if we don't exploit this same capability. The enemies of democracy are the most serious problem this country has ever had to face. Suppressing this threat is a risky job. The identities of the brave men, women and non-binary individuals doing this job must remain private. There is already enough evidence to convict Mr. Pope without any testimony from these agents."
RFK Questions January 6 Narrative
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to issue a statement on the January 6 prosecutions saying "there is little evidence of a true insurrection. The protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and Trump himself urged them to protest peacefully."
"Like many reasonable Americans, I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives have motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment. This demonstrates a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies — the DoJ, the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, etc. — against political opponents."
"If I am elected President, I will appoint a special counsel — an individual respected by all sides — to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover. Without the impartial rule of law, there is no true democracy or moral governance."
Attorney General Merrick Garland declared Kennedy "unqualified to judge the actions we have taken against the insurrectionists. Our government deserves the respect and allegiance of every American. The people that stormed the Capital on January 6 obeyed neither of these sacred obligations. By stirring up the pot like he has, Mr. Kennedy has taken side with the enemies of our democracy and must expect to pay the consequences. I have ordered FBI Direct Wray to take whatever steps he needs to inflict appropriate consequences on him."
Biden Loses Re-Endorsement
During the 2020 presidential election campaign Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was persuaded to endorse Joe Biden. "I thought back then that I should use my influence to do something that would help unite the country. Part of being human is learning from your mistakes. So, I am not going to repeat that endorsement."
Johnson elaborated "am I happy with the state of America right now? Well, that answer's no. Do I believe we are going to get better? I believe in that. I'm an optimistic guy and I believe we can get better. In today's easy cancel culture world — and cancel culture, woke culture, this culture, that culture, division, etc. — that really bugs me. And in the spirit of that, you either succumb and be what you think other people want you to be or you go, 'No, that's not who I am, I'm going to be myself and be real.'"
Mitch Landrieu, co-chair of the Biden campaign, called Johnson's decision not to re-endorse Biden "unfortunate. The Rock's opting to get off the Biden victory team--where everyone is an optimistic guy, gal, or trans--seems contradictory. Being woke and striving to cancel the enemies of democracy, equity and inclusion is essential to achieving the kind of unity the President wants for America. At least the Rock promised to support whoever is elected 100%. That will come in handy in our continuing efforts to ensure unity in President Biden's second term."
Hospital Fights "Structural Racism"
The Mass General Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts discovered that its policy of reporting cases of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) to public authorities was disproportionately affecting Black individuals.
Sarah Wakeman, MD, senior medical director for SUD at Mass General Brigham Hospital, observed "we don't fully understand why SUD is more prevalent among Blacks. Regardless of whether the pathogen for this disease comes from the wild or some bioweapons lab, the racially disparate effects are concerning. Do non-Blacks have some sort of inborn immunity? Or are there environmental influences that could be responsible?"
"While we explicitly reject the idea that sufferers from SUD should be stigmatized, racists could use our reports as grounds for punitive actions against the beleaguered sufferers of this awful disease," Wakeman added. "Consequently, I have advised, and the Hospital Administrators have agreed, that we should cease reporting cases of SUD until more is known about how the contagion is acquired and spread among different races in the population."
US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra praised the hospital's decision, saying "sometimes an absence of definitive answers cries out for the suppression of information that could lead to the stigmatization of minorities that are more prone to suffering from certain ailments. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it beats alternatives that would require deviating from our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives."
California's $20 Minimum Wage Costing Jobs
Democrats' belief that raising the minimum wage for fast food employers would benefit them is being undermined by businesses closing down and/or laying off portions of their labor force. Loren Wright, owner of a Fosters Freeze franchise in Lemoore, said "my employees told me they'd rather have a job at the old wage than be laid off, but the new law doesn't give us that option. Gov. Newsom's restaurant does have that option."
Newsom hastened to point out that "I'm only one of the owners of the PlumpJack Cafe. The law exempted this kind of restaurant from the required minimum wage law because the workers' wages can be augmented by customer tips. The Cafe is Lake Tahoe's premier dining destination. We serve pan-roasted Norwegian salmon, prime New York strip steak, and fine wines. The fare is for connoisseurs of discriminating taste."
"An ancillary objective of the new law is decrease the consumption of low quality fast food," the Governor added. "Health experts roundly disapprove of the contribution to obesity made by purveyors of the low-priced, greasy and fat-loaded products sold in those kind of eating establishments. The more of them that go out of business, the healthier our population will become."
"As for the young people who lose their jobs as a result, I recommend they take out loans to go to college," Newsom advised. "They'll meet a higher class of people and have a good time while they're at it. When they graduate they can get government jobs and have their college debt canceled. Instead of grousing about being laid off, they should thank me and the Democrat majority in the legislature for helping spare them from a life of low-wage drudgery."
Jill Says Joe Will Win Reelection
In an interview on "CBS Mornings," First Lady Jill Biden dismissed polls showing her husband losing to Trump because "the polls do not account for the millions of ballots we already have in storage. This is the strategy that worked for us in 2020 and it will work again."
She also pointed out that "new voter registrations are significantly out-pacing population totals in many states. Federal law forbids states from requiring people to prove they are citizens before registering them to vote. All they are allowed to do is ask if they are. If the applicant says yes the state must register them."
CBS Mornings Co-host Tony Dokoupil asked "what about Aaron Strauss' warning that unregistered voters strongly favor Trump? How do you deal with that?"
"There's a box on the registration form for Party," Jill reminded him. "If the box for Republican is checked we simply discard that registration after the person goes away. The person will never receive a mail ballot nor will their name be on the books at the polling place. These enemies of democracy will be covertly disenfranchised before they can ever cast a ballot for a Republican."
The First Lady concluded by saying "the most important thing, though, is that as a very wise man once observed 'those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.' Democrats controlled the counting in critical cities and counties during the last two election cycles. Polls that predicted a 'red wave' were thwarted by the diligent efforts of partisans of democracy. This cycle will prove just as frustrating to the Republicans as the previous two."
In related news, in anticipation of a possible freak occurrence resulting in a Trump win, the Biden Administration has implemented changes in federal personnel rules that will make it harder for employees to be fired or laid off. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Kiran Ahuja explained "the revised rules are about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs without undue interference from a subsequent change in the Party that controls the executive branch."
Citizens Find Lots of Election "Irregularities"
In New York, Marly Hornik teamed up with election and cybersecurity expert Harry Haury to form the New York Citizens Audit to investigate their state's 2022 voter roll data. They found 1,467,399 illegal duplicate registrations with 449,856 votes cast, 16,623 votes cast by voters with a blank address, and 35,312 more votes counted than voters who voted.
"It was clear to me that the premise that our elections are honest and accurate is not substantiated," Hornik said. "So we founded a nationwide group, United Sovereign Americans (USA), to share our expertise with over 25 state groups to help them investigate their own databases."
"In Illinois, we found that more than 300,000 votes from the 2020 election were missing or improperly deleted, that Illinois's population decreased by 150,000, but the voter roll increased by 650,000, and that over 2.5 million people had votes cast prior to their registration dates," she said. "We interviewed a sample of 1300 voters and found that 11% had votes cast in their name for elections in which they did not participate."
"In Ohio we found that 158,209 voters resided in an apartment or in a mobile home lot but had no unit number as required on their voter registration application. This means mail-in ballots would be undeliverable. We found that 4,143 were older than the oldest person in the US at the time or were too young to legally register, that 6,348 had a date of birth that was different in 2022 than it was in 2020, that 539,400 voters supposedly registered on dates when Ohio boards of elections and state offices were closed, and that 34,233 had 2 to 5 registration records with multiple state identification numbers, making it possible for them to vote more than once."
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) asserted that "discrepancies, duplication, mismatches, and miscounts do not prove that those elections were fraudulent. There is no way of knowing whether the number of illegitimate votes were sufficient to overcome the results of legitimate votes. So, there is no legal remedy that can be applied."
Hornik disagreed. "The remedy is for a bi-partisan team to correct the voter rolls to remove the discrepancies, duplication, mismatches, and for all the counting to be done while observers from the contending Parties are present. With a significant portion of the population doubting the accuracy and fairness of our elections it is essential that we implement the kind of transparency that makes cheating a more difficult and hazardous undertaking. 'What, me worry' attitudes like those of Gov. Hochul do nothing to instill confidence."
Yellen Wants Level Playing Field
Noting that Tesla has discontinued its efforts to produce a low cost electric vehicle (EV) because it can't get its costs down as low as its Chinese competitors, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged that "we look into leveling the playing field. Right now China has the advantage of lower labor costs. The captive Uyghurs are virtually slaves working for food and lodging. We currently have no counterpart. But we could pull ahead if we could turn a sufficient number of our domestic enemies of democracy into prison laborers and use them to help lower the cost of producing EVs in the United States."
"The math would be on our side," Yellen calculated. "Their are only eleven million Uyghur slave laborers. Based on the number of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, we have 70 million potential prison laborers at our disposal. The success of the prosecutions of the January 6 criminals shows how we could snare millions more. Thousands of election deniers illegally trod on government property on January 6, 2021. For each one of these there are thousands more who also claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. We have them on videos of Trump rallies cheering his continuing accusations. They are accessories aiding and abetting his repeated effort to topple President Biden's government by making false allegations."
"Since the victim of these crimes is the federal government all the perps should be tried in Washington DC where juries untainted by treasonous ideas will routinely convict them," Yellen suggested. "They could be leased out to our domestic EV manufacturers who would only have to feed and house them for as long as it takes to get production costs below those of our Chinese competition. The President's dream of an all-electric transportation system would become economically viable. Greenhouse gases would be eliminated, the global climate would be stabilized, and dangerous enemies would be incarcerated. It's a win-win-win option."
Next Pandemic 100 Times Worse than COVID
Presidential Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said "the President has been briefed by scientific experts who warn that the H5N1 strain of bird flu could have a 50% fatality rate. That means it would kill half the people who catch the disease, which they tell us will be almost everyone. Since the fatality rate for COVID turned out to be only one half of a percent, the bird flu would kill 100 times as many people as COVID did."
"The CDC is working on the measures that will be needed to limit the damage," Jean-Pierre assured an incredulous press corps. "This will mean 600 foot social distancing, airtight masks, and the shutdown of every activity that entails human-to-human contact of any kind. This means all in-person education, shopping, employment, recreation, entertainment, and health care will need to be forbidden."
"It almost goes without saying that whatever new vaccines are invented will need to be mandated for everyone," the Press Secretary advised. "There can be no exemptions for any reason--no religious exemptions, no age limits, no medical contraindications, no 'my body, my choice' objections. If culling is deemed necessary everyone will be required to submit to being humanely killed and buried in mass graves or incinerated, which is deemed best by the CDC."
"Considering the importance of absolute and immediate obedience to all government directives, any voiced dissent will be treated as a capital offense with no right of appeal of a sentence of death," she warned. "The survival of our leaders must be ensured at all cost so that civilization can be reborn from the fittest of the human herd."
"The President has urged that everyone remain calm," she added. "He needs your trust and support now more than ever. If that trust and support is sufficient to reelect him, he promises to be as merciful as possible. Those who can show proof of a significant donation to his campaign and are willing to sign a pre-filled-in mail ballot will be given the utmost consideration when it comes to living space in the survivor bunkers. God bless you all and good night."
