Memorial Day Speech

At the ten minute mark, our son, SCPO Scott Jones, speaks at this Memorial Day Commemoration in Higganum/Haddam, Connecticut.

I'm rather proud of him for what he said, and that he was chosen to say it.

Earn This

Honor the fallen.
Carry on the battle for freedom.
Oppose tyranny.
Protect the weak.

“defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

They made the ultimate sacrifice so you might enjoy your freedoms.

Earn this.

Government Licensing and Regulatory Handicaps

My friend Joe had an AC problem.
He called an HVAC company.
They told him he needed a new furnace, that his was unsafe and they locked it out.
If he hadn't called them, he would at least have the same amount of heat he did the day before.
Then they quoted a new furnace/AC unit as if they had him over a barrel.
And I'll bet that he could not buy the simple heating system (less than 95% efficient) but instead was quoted the new fuel saving, global warming preventing unit the regulatory agencies approve.
The ones that never recover the cost increase of purchase and installation.

I'll be frank. I am not a licensed HVAC tech.

I have installed a number of furnaces and repaired a number of AC units.
I have been a maintenance tech and maintenance manager.

It's sad the way it works.
Say you have a cracked heat exchanger.
Your AC is probably good.
They always sell a new AC with the new furnace because they refuse to just replace the heat exchanger.

My heat exchanger went bad a couple years ago.
The way I knew was because a sensor that detects that condition kept shutting my furnace off.
It's called a flame roll-out sensor.
I plugged the gas orifice to that portion of the heat exchanger and had heat the rest of the winter.
I pulled the heat exchanger out in the summer.
The part was still under warranty, but no one would do the labor! They had no interest in the work!

I paid a guy under the table $100 to exchange my heat exchanger because you need a license to do so.

I pulled it out and I put it in. It wasn't particularly hard. Or dangerous.

"But your furnace is 20 years old!"

So's my truck, What's your point?

So the State of Michigan under the dictatorship of Governess Whitmer has yanked the license of a 77 year old barber who refused to stay closed under the Chinese-style lockdown.

Why is he licensed? Is it to guarantee his skill level?
Or to gather revenue and keep him in line? That was a rhetorical question.

When I interviewed Michigan State Rep Karen Whitsett, it turned out that a large number of her constituents had no appliances.

You hear often of families dying of carbon monoxide poisoning or even of burning to death because they rigged heating systems (including fire barrels) trying to get through the winter.
They can't afford a new furnace! So they make do as best they can until they die.

Why do you have to prove proficiency in cooling systems in Michigan to repair heating systems?
Why do you have to upgrade from a lower cost furnace to the next generation?
The new 95%+ efficiency furnaces are a nightmare to maintain and keep families from the heating systems they need. They are not simple to maintain.

Why do we let our government do this to us?

Obamagate IS A Fitting Term

"Gate" is often tagged onto a term to denote a scandal.
Pizzagate. Bridgegate. Obamagate.

These terms all echo (or rhyme) the original: Watergate.

What was Watergate?

The term has come to mean the scandal that drove Richard Nixon, an incredibly popular president, from office.

The scandal started with the suspicion by men in the intelligence community who worked for the president, that the DNC was "in cahoots" with the Russians.
They illegally broke into the DNC offices in the Watergate complex to gather evidence of this.
They did this without the knowledge of President Nixon.

But when Nixon became aware of their activities, he tried to cover up their criminal behavior.
And the question became, "What did Nixon know, and when did he know it?".

Jump to today.

A group of intelligence community members and aides to President Obama suspected (more likely, pretended to suspect) that the Republican candidate, and then incoming president, Donald Trump was "in cahoots" with the Russians.

They then pursued illegal means to first "plant evidence" that this was true. The Steele Dossier was chief among that "evidence".

Then the illegal FISA warrants, surveillance,  and prosecutions.

Where were the Woodwards, the Bernsteins during the scandal? The courageous media?

Cheering on the effort.

Now it appears the question is "What did Obama know, and when did he know it?"

Flynn Was NOT Unmasked. Never Masked At All.

Last post, I reported on Dan Bongino's claims that Flynn was not unmasked, because he was never masked in the first place.
The unmasking was a ploy to hide how the content was really come by.

Now Andy McCarthy digs into it in a very clear manner:

Unmasking? The Real Story Is When Flynn Was Not Masked in the First Place

Highlights (from the article):

The Chronology

Grenell’s list notes an unmasking request for Flynn on December 28, 2016 — weirdly, by the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. There are no unmasking requests on December 29, the date of the Kislyak call. Nor is there one during the week after that. In fact, the next listed unmasking occurred on January 5, 2017. That one is attributed to President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough. This highlights how central that day is to the anatomy of the Democrat-crafted “collusion” narrative. It was on the morning of January 5 when Obama, Vice President Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice discussed Flynn and the Trump–Russia investigation with FBI director James Comey and acting attorney general Sally Yates.

Yet we know that participants in that meeting already knew about Flynn’s identity as Kislyak’s interlocutor. The exhibits attached to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Flynn case relate that Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, knew about it no later than January 3, the day he briefed Mary McCord, who ran the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Plus, Yates recalled being surprised that Obama already knew about the Flynn–Kislyak call (and, in fact, is the one who told Yates about it). Clearly, the news had been percolating at the highest levels of the Obama administration for at least a couple of days, although it may not yet have made its way down to Joe Pientka, the FBI case agent on Trump–Russia, who on January 4 signed off on a memo closing the FBI’s Flynn counterintelligence investigation (“Crossfire Razor”).

To summarize, the list provided by Grenell indicates no unmasking of Flynn between December 28 (the day before the call) and January 5, even though news of Flynn’s identification was already circulating on January 3 (when McCabe briefed McCord about it).

(break)

The CIA and Non-FISA Intel Ops

Well, the possibility that first leaps to mind is: Maybe Flynn was a FISA surveillance target. That is, his interception was not incidental. Rather, the FBI was monitoring him under FISA because he was a suspected agent of a foreign power — the theory based on which the bureau opened their counterintelligence investigation of Flynn in August 2016. But that can’t be right. After an exhaustive investigation of the FBI’s abuse of FISA, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there is no evidence the FBI “requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of . . . Flynn.” (IG Report’s “Executive Summary,” p. vi.)

It is more likely, then, that the Flynn–Kislyak call was captured by intelligence operations that are not governed by FISA.

(end)

Flynn was either tapped by the CIA or a "friendly" foreign agency.
It's hard to say which would be worse of all three options.

Please read the article in full.



BTW, we had a great radio show yesterday:
Gaylene Deitering, Ed Bonderenka and Phil Stargell interview former federal judge Professor William Wagner of the Great Lakes Justice Center.
We discuss the ramifications of the lockdown.

Was Flynn Unmasked?

At about the 43 minute mark, this gets real interesting.

Dan Bongino is making a case that Flynn wasn't unmasked.

Provides testimony and dates.

Flynn was targeted. Not a byproduct.

Either our IC did it or a foreign agency that gave it to the Obama team, which is using unmasking to cover up.

Makes a good case.

That is REALLY against the law.

Look! A Blue Pill!

If I smile too hard or long, my jaw hurts.
My jaw hurts.