Random News and Notes 14 July

Anthony Fauci may be in trouble. A NY Times report out yesterday says that Biden Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was the one who approved the pardon for Fauci and many of the other last minute free passes issued by the Biden White House.

Mark Milley may find himself in the same position as Fauci, his pardon was ‘approved’ in the same batch. It should be noted that the only actually signed pardon from the waning weeks of the Biden admin was that of the First Crackhead.

Elmo got hacked. The beloved Sesame Street character’s Twitter started posting crypto garbage yesterday and it devolved from there. Elmo went full retard. And as everyone knows, you never go full retard.

The posts took a racist (and worse) turn after a bit. Warning nsfw language:

The account was locked after a short period of time, and the offending posts deleted. As of this writing, Elmo hisself has not checked in, the last visible post is from before the hack.

I don’t know who Joyce Vance is. I just know she’s a regular on MSNBC. I also know, based on the clip below, she’s functionally retarded. She claims that because you can’t see the faces of the arresting officials, you can fight back.

While the right to self defense is a cornerstone of the American legal system, you do not have a right to resist law enforcement in the execution of its lawful duties. (Note I said lawful here. There is case law from SCOTUS that says you can resist any illegal actions by the police.) And the ICE agents involved in the arrests all have identifying gear on.

If any illegal decides they’re gonna shoot it out with ICE it is going to end badly. And it won’t just be for the illegals that get zeroed out for shooting at federal agents, it will be bad for all illegals.

While were on the subject of ICE arrests lets take a look at the case of one Jonathan Caravello, a professor at Cal State Channel Islands. Caravello was at the raid on the pot farm in Camarillo on Thursday. KTLA reported that the California Faculty Association said he was kidnapped in a story out yesterday. US attorney Bill Essayli had a different take.

Leftists have been immune to the consequences of their actions at protests and demonstrations for far too long. It’s far past time for them to start feeling the full weight of prosecutions for their crap.

With all apologies to our resident Canuck, I present this story. It seems Canada is big mad at the US. The New Yorker said so, so it must be true. And I can see it to some extent, at least in parts of the Eastern provinces and in the ‘major’ cities. Seems the author of the piece – full disclosure I didn’t read the whole thing – got most of his data from a single news kiosk in YYZ er Toronto Pearson International airport.

As most of you know, I’m in Upstate NY, and within an hours drive of the Canadian Border at Alexandria Bay/Lansdowne. Anecdotally, I haven’t seen a big drop in Canadian plates here. And frankly the small drop likely has more to do with the weakness of the Canadian dollar vs the US dollar ($1 CAD = $.73 US there was a time, when it was closer to $.80 that most retailers in the north country took CAD at par.) than any ‘elbows up’ BS.

Regardless, Canada – the entire country – has a population (40 m) just about double that of my home state(20m). And the GDP? New York ($2.3t) has a larger economy than the entire country of Canada ($2.15t) by about a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year. So, yeah most of the US doesn’t care that a few Habs got their knickers in a twist.