An American Success Story – 2021 edition

 

Clarice Feldman’s weekly (Sunday) column at American Thinker is always worth reading.  This past weekend, she highlighted a true American success story 2021-style – all the more inspiring because it took place in California.  Who would have thought?  Here’s the beginning of her post titled “The Battle of Burbank” at Tinhorn Flats:

It’s believed the Battle of Lexington and Concord was the fight that set off the American Revolution. While a battle at Burbank, California has received less notice, to me it is inspiring -- a community’s refusal to bow to petty, irrational, and illegal bullying.

The story is fully recounted by Robert Morton, and I urge you to read it in its entirety, but here’s my synopsis. 

Tinhorn Flats is a family-operated bar and restaurant in Burbank. Burbank has had a death rate from the Wuhan virus  of 2.8 percent of which 80 percent were of those over 65 who had, on average three co-morbidities.

Despite this, and disregarding the substantial sums restaurant and bar owners had shelled out to keep outdoor patrons safe, on December 6 the city council ordered all restaurants closed. Tinhorn refused and continued to serve patrons outdoors. Six days later their health permit was revoked. Tinhorn continued its outdoor service, ignoring the city’s revocation of its permit. In response, the L.A. County Department of Health cited the restaurant 13 times for operating without a permit. Tinhorn stayed open.  The L.A. County Attorney filed a cease and desist order. Tinhorn stayed open.

After a few more legal forays the Burbank City Council filed suit against the restaurant and obtained a temporary restraining order. Tinhorn stayed open.

The city cut power to the restaurant and patrons and fans donated generators and equipment so the restaurant could continue operations.

The city council padlocked the front doors. Tinhorn removed the doors and stayed open.

When the padlocked doors were somehow reinstalled, the restaurant posted on Facebook a picture showing a side door open. Tinhorn stayed open.

Another L.A. County judge required the county to prove that the ban on outdoor dining was necessary. The county failed to do so, but inexplicably the judge refused to lift the ban.

Morton notes:

These petty tyrants don't seem to realize that they have awakened a sleeping tiger. People from all over the city are patronizing the restaurant. Support is pouring in from all over the country.

Nor do they realize that nothing will stop me or anyone else from patronizing this business.  We are the ocean of freedom and we will flow around any obstacles in our way.  The Burbank City Council will look like the idiots they are in trying to shut down this place.[snip]

Like a desperado who is riddled with bullets but just won't stop, Tinhorn Flats remains open. The latest chapter in this saga finds the Burbank Fire Department showing up at Tinhorn Flats on Wednesday night to remove a padlock... one that city officials had placed there earlier that morning.

Why? Because as soon as officials left, Lucas Lepejian cut off a lock on a side entrance and reopened the Old West-themed restaurant and bar, reports FOX 11.

After cutting off the padlock, Lepejian let customers in and continued serving them food and drink although the front door remains padlocked, creating what Burbank officials call a "life-safety hazard."

Standing up to bullies is the only way to defeat them. 

The rest of Ms. Feldman’s column (on other subjects) is here.

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Media tries to drag Biden over the finish line

We were in a Sportsbar over the weekend, and the TV screen dialed to CNN had a headline on the crawl to the effect that Joe Biden is declared President.  Huh?  Since when does the media declare the winner of a Presidential election?  Later on Saturday evening, Greg Gutfield opened his show by making jokes about what a Biden presidency would do.  So he was framing the question in terms of a probable Biden Presidency – as in a done deal.  Nuts.  To frame the questions that way is to give up on Trump’s re-election, to fall victim to the media propaganda to take the air out of our tires, so to speak.  We changed channels. 

On Sunday, many bloggers and commentators enumerated the procedural steps involved in a contested election.  We all know that the respective Secretaries of State have first to certify the vote counts.  Some of those SOSs may be reluctant to certify tallies they know to be fraudulent.  So that’s one potential check on the process.

Clarice Feldman at American Thinker has more and is, as usual, one of the best:  

Apparently, they are under the impression that [the media] decide election results. They don’t. On December 14, electors chosen by state legislators cast their votes. No one else but the state legislators have that right. (Article II, Sec. 1,§2 of the Constitution). Certainly not the press, nor state boards of elections, secretaries of state, governors, or courts.

If they have reason to believe the elections in their states were unlawfully conducted and the results fraudulent, they can act to override them. (You can see a detailed history of this section of the Constitution in this fine article by Daniel Horowitz.) The Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania  legislatures are majority Republican. At first glance these states -- particularly the precincts in Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia -- are the most suspect.

Is there ample evidence of fraud sufficient to have altered the will of the legal voters in these states? It sure looks that way.

. . .

If the [Pennsylvania Supreme Court] Court had applied the Constitution, then we wouldn’t have this mess, for it’s clear under Article 1 Sec. 4, cl 1--that the Pennsylvania court had no constitutional power to change the “times, methods, and procedures of elections.” 

That provision specifically applies to the election of senators and representatives, both of whom were on the ballots in question.  And what if there is no clear winner by Inauguration Day?  We’ve been reading a lot about how Mm Pelosi would become President, as the Speaker of the House is third in the line of succession,  But Ms. Feldman again explains:

What if There’s no Winner Declared by Inauguration Day?

I’ve seen lots of assertions that in such a case Nancy Pelosi will be the interim president. Nope. Should that eventuality occur, the House votes for an interim president and the Senate for an interim vice president. (The House votes are by state -- one vote each -- and the Republicans hold a majority of 26 states. Our founders were geniuses. Never forget that.)

As Ms. Feldman closes:  “Never give up the good fight. Never hamstring your will to fight on with pessimism.”

Her article is here.

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Encouraging updates on COVID-19

From William Noel at American Thinker (“The Wuhan Virus is Turning Into a Wimp”):

As we learn more about the COVID-19 Wuhan virus each day, it is becoming increasingly obvious that it isn’t the great threat to our health and survival we were initially led to believe. . . .

This isn’t to say the Wuhan virus cannot kill, because it is the nature of viruses to attack where they find weakness, multiply to overwhelm bodily defenses and ultimately kill the host. While that is happening in some cases, evidence is growing that it isn’t nearly as deadly as we were made to fear. Along with much lower death rates, there is growing anecdotal evidence that the people who tested positive and then died were victims of multiple conditions and it wasn’t the COVID-19 virus but a synergy of the multiple attackers that killed them.

Daniel Horowitz at the Conservative Review has more reasons for optimism:

If some of the pneumonia cases and deaths earlier this year were from coronavirus, that would mean that the death rate is much lower than predicted. Even the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was the ultimate petri dish of recycled air circulating an infection, with an elderly population, experienced a 1.25% fatality rate. New York, which seems to be, by far, the worst hot spot now, has a mortality rate hovering between 0.75% and 0.80%, and it is going down as they test more cases. That compares to 1.2% nationwide, which helps show that wherever we test and identify the virus, the numbers go way up, but the mortality goes down.

And Clarice Feldman at American Thinker (after quoting Mr. Horowitz) concludes:

There seems little sound basis for a countrywide lockdown as better data becomes available. Yes, special protection must still be in place for the elderly and immune suppressed, and we must continue to practice good hygiene, and yes, all available personnel and supplies must go to those areas hardest hit, . . . I firmly believe we need to get back to more normal commercial activity in most of the country as soon as possible, and no later than Easter, or the consequences to the nation’s health and well-being will be worse than that of the virus.

So, the Wuhan virus is highly contagious but not as lethal as the scaremongers have proposed.  And treatments including the hard-to-pronounce drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are proving effective. All good news.

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Update on Richard Cordray and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Dilbert (Scott Adams) cartoon via powerlineblog.com

Clarice Feldman closes her Sunday column at American Thinker with this summary:

Probably the most important development this week is the effective end of the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), a power grab by Democrats led by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, which gives a single director who can only be fired for cause by the president (a structure designed to operate outside Congressional or executive control) power to regulate mortgages, credit cards, and retirement and pension investments -- in sum, all consumer financial transactions. Warren originally wanted to run this outfit, but when it was clear she’d never get Congressional approval, Richard Cordray became the one-man credit czar. Last October the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that placing so much power in a single commissioner not answerable to the president was unconstitutional.

The Obama Administration sought en banc review by the entire Circuit Court Panel.  In March, the new administration reversed the government’s position. The entire panel heard the case in May. While the decision in that case is still pending, Cordray this week resigned, and the president appointed in his place OMB chief Mike Mulvaney as interim head. Mulvaney strongly opposed the creation of this bureau. The President thus has now put in place someone who can be counted on to undo the Democrats’ machinations to control all our financial transactions by the fiat of a single man. By their own hands, they created a situation they are powerless to undo -- just as by tarring Judge Moore with suspect accusations they open themselves to the same treatment. 

Richard Cordray has not yet confirmed his candidacy for Governor of Ohio, but the Cincinnati, Dayton, and Cleveland media expect him to announce soon.

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Must Read of the Day

image credit: FreedomWorks 

This little blog tries to find news, activities, action alerts, and ideas of interest to Cleveland Tea Party people. Over the weekend, Clarice Feldman at the American Thinker linked to a piece in The Federalist that analyzes the unchecked propaganda machines in the media and in our government. It’s long, so I’ve extracted the sub-headings to give an idea of the ground Stella Morabito covers. It explains, for example, why the "Antifa" groups are the opposite of what they claim to be. Forget the length, it’s still a Must Read.

The title: America’s Post-Charlottesville Nervous Breakdown Was Deliberately Induced: Americans are being emotionally manipulated to take up cause with those whose ultimate purpose is the repeal of the First Amendment and erasure of national memory.

·         Why Are We Being Assaulted With Fringe Concerns?

·         Element 1: Loading the Language

·         Element 2: Using Distorted Language to Rub Resentments Raw

·         Alinskyite Cultivation of Hatred

·         Element 3: Mass Manipulation Via Mass-Media Propaganda

·         Media Collusion with Rioting

·         The End Result: Division and Loneliness

Conclusion: because of the gaslighting tactics of power elites, we are actually in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

It’s doesn’t make for fun reading, but it may help explain the daily “news” broadcasts - including all the violent images that seem to be running in endless loops - or some of the world-views of friends and relatives. Full article here. 

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Trump and the Bottom Line

photo credit: CNN

 

It's Sunday, and as always, Clarice Feldman at American Thinker has a thoughtful perspective  ("A Consequential President in the Time of Pygmies") on President Trump’s first six month in office. Here are a few excerpts:

Once when my son was about 6 or 7 I took him to the circus with some of his friends. The acrobats, clowns, and lion tamer in the center ring enthralled the other kids. Not him. He turned to me and said, “How do you think they make money producing a circus? I think it’s the concessions.” It struck me then that among the people in the world, there are some -- too few, actually -- who are not distracted by spectacles, but, instead, keep their eyes on the bottom line.

That’s how I see the President. His stated goals have always been to make us safe, get the economy booming, enable a job-creation economy, and make life better and safer for all Americans.

As the news is filled with tittle-tattle about the phony baloney Russian collusion story and moronic punditry, the president keeps plowing on with his agenda. American Digest lists 220 things the President has achieved while in office, despite the vitriolic attacks on him and what appears to be a silent coup by the press, bureaucrats, and entrenched officeholders.    

This week, despite Democratic stalling, 78 of his nominees for office were confirmed. So the list should now run to 221 things the President has done to Make America Great Again.

With West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice having ditched the Democratic Party for the Republican, the Republicans now control 26 state governments. Put another way, 48% of Americans now live in a state where Republicans have complete control. 17% in states with total Dem control. “

The stock market is booming although the NYT twists itself into a pretzel to deny the President’s role in this. . . 

. . .

As for the Russian nonsense, Edward Jay Epstein, a longtime credible sleuth, explains why the Russians had no particular interest in having Hillary win, but a great deal of interest in degrading our belief in the legitimacy of our elections:

. . .

In the meantime, pay attention to the bottom line. Trump is not losing. The media and the Democratic party they work for are.

She has quite a bit more to say (e.g., on Comey and Mueller, etc.); the whole article is here.

Meantime, I am wondering about the 17-day “vacation” that President Trump is taking at one of his golf clubs in New Jersey, while his staff camps out at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Apparently these temporary logistics are planned so that the White House heating and cooling systems can be upgraded and other repairs can be made. Hmmm. I hope a trusted team of experts takes out entire walls in the White House, hauls them over to some secure warehouse, and under surveillance, finds the bugs.  

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The Russians Are Coming and Fake News

“Whatcha doin’ up on the wall there, Muriel?”

Doro Merande in The Russians Are Coming at Great Big Canvas

Just got back from out-of-town, so blogging has been light. But I did some of my usual web-surfing en route, and one of my regular Sunday stops is at the American Thinker.  ICYMI, Clarice Feldman’s “Clarice’s Pieces” was a good way to sift through some of the Fake News in the MSM. including the seemingly endless obsession with The Russians Are Coming. She references Mr. Belmont Club (Richard Fernandez at PJ Media), Scott McKay at American Spectator, and PowerLine, among others, so if you’re short on time, check out her Sunday articles for quick links to good analyses of phony baloney reports:

the non-stop media promotion of some nefarious scheme between Russia and Trump does not pass even the most cursory forensic examination, proving once again in the age of fake news, you cannot remain a passive consumer of news. You have to bring to each story the good sense and diligence with which you handle your most important personal affairs. . .

Nothing so illustrates why the media has deservedly lost all credibility than its unending, overdone effort to fit any action on the part of the President or those around him into a narrative of Russia somehow colluding with him to defeat Hillary. This week’s take was the short meeting his son held with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower last summer. . . 

You’ll just have to work harder in the face of such ignorance and bias to find out what you need to know.  

Clarice makes it a little bit easier.

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Black Lives Matter protests

Clarice Feldman is always a good Sunday read (Clarice's Pieces at American Thinker). Yesterday's column on the race riots in Charlotte, George Soros, and Black Lives Matter included the above chart via Zero Hedge:

What is most disturbing is that behind the pent up rage and thuggish violence, dressed up in the socially-acceptable package of "black lives matter" is the reality that white violence is the last thing blacks should be "protesting."

Powerful graphic. (If you have difficulty embiggening the chart, the category to which the arrow points is "Blacks killed by whites.")

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