Jordan Peterson talks to Chloe Cole
I know this is a very long video. But it’s really quite extraordinary. The subject is transitioning and detransitioning from the viewpoint of someone who went through the process as a minor. It’s well worth listening to some or all of it. I tend to listen to videos when I’m doing something else, like housework, and I usually double the speed setting so it takes half as long to hear the whole thing.
Here it is:
The IRS funding vote
There have been are a lot of things happening in the House recently – so many that I missed this on Monday, the day it occurred. Of course, it won’t be passed by the Senate, and even if it were passed Biden would veto it:
The House voted to repeal billions of dollars of Internal Revenue Service funding that Democrats approved last year, an issue that is likely to crop up repeatedly this year.
In the first vote on legislation with Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the helm, the chamber passed a bill on Monday night that would rescind most of the $80 billion President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act approved to bolster the agency’s faltering audit program. The legislation passed 221-210 on a party-line vote.
So what? Well, it’s another promise kept, for starters. Most of the rest of the article is little more than propaganda and spin of the mean old nasty Republicans pounce variety. But this is why the passage of this bill might matter, at least a little:
The new majority is going to bring “accountability on spending in every federal agency,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said on Tuesday. “If there’s waste fraud and abuse in any federal agency it’s got to be rooted out…and it started with the IRS bill last night.”
As part of a deal to win over members of his caucus to secure his new position, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has agreed to only bring up fiscal 2024 spending bills that could cut non-defense agency funding by more than 20%. Scalise confirmed Republicans will also use the upcoming need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling as leverage to bring about spending cuts.
“We have to sit down and say, ‘Why are we hitting the limit?’” the majority leader said. “Before we hit that limit, shouldn’t we have an honest conversation about how to start living within our means?” He added Republicans would push to “put mechanisms in place” to “control the spending problem.”
Republicans left the door open to providing some resources for IRS to boost customer service…
So far, things seem to be proceeding as well as could be hoped, considering the thinness of the GOP majority. It’s instructive to remember that even had the Republicans won the Senate as well, without a veto-proof GOP majority Biden would have successfully vetoed just about every bill they might have passed.
Now Biden gets his very own special counsel
I guess the second classified documents announcement – that some were found in Biden’s garage near his Corvette – was a bridge too far, even for Garland, and he felt he had to give at least the appearance of parity with his reaction to Trump:
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate President Biden’s handling of classified documents dating back to the Obama administration on Thursday.
Garland tapped Robert Hur, a former United States Attorney, to handle the investigation. The Justice Department escalated to a special counsel investigation from a mere review on Thursday after a second stash of classified documents was found inside the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home. The first documents were found inside the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank.
No FBI raids, of course.
I predict all of this will go away regarding any consequences for Biden. It does at least somewhat take the winds out of the “prosecute Trump for the MAL documents” sails, though. My guess is that their case against Trump regarding the documents at MAL already wasn’t bearing much fruit, although never underestimate the ability of a determined prosecutor to charge and convict a ham sandwich. In the case of Garland and Biden, however, there is the opposite goal – to exonerate him. Hur has a pretty low profile, and so far I haven’t been able to detect what his attitude is towards Biden.
Biden doesn’t even have the possible defense available to Trump, which is that as president he had declassified the papers in question. Biden was VP at the time he took them, not president. Of course, Biden could claim that Obama declassified them, but I doubt Obama wants to be involved. Then again, Biden seems to be claiming “surprise” that the papers were even there and ignorance about what they say (that article also contains the usual MSM spin in an attempt to exonerate him).
And then there’s this:
American Digest update
Gerard Vanderleun, author of the blog American Digest and long-time commenter here, is still in the hospital having health problems. You can find more information in this post there, as well as information on contributing funds to help if you so desire.
Open thread 1/12/23
Biden’s classified papers
Interesting, and perhaps even true?
The classified memos from the Obama administration, disclosed on Monday, were actually found last November inside the offices Biden used at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank setup by the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
Long before the documents were found, the Penn-Biden Center was the focus of a watchdog complaint because its parent university had received large sums of money — estimated to be at least $54 million — in the time period around when Biden joined the group. This raised the specter of Chinese donors having helped fund the nearly $1 million in personal pay Biden received from the think tank.
The center, which was announced in 2017 and opened one year later, was set up the same year that Biden’s son Hunter was creating a joint venture with Chinese officials in a company called CEFC to pursue natural gas deals within the United States which would have benefitted the communist nation…
The Biden family drew scrutiny from Congressional investigators for receiving a no-interest, forgivable loan from the Chinese partners, according to emails found on a Hunter Biden laptop, which was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2019.
The next question is always: will anything come of this? I can’t answer that one, but this is another interesting thing the House did recently:
This controversy comes at an inconvenient time for Democrats, as the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to establish a subcommittee to investigate U.S.-China strategic competition. The final tally was 365-65.
That many Democrats voted for it, too? That certainly caught my eye. What gives? Here’s what the article says:
New Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was credited with spearheading the effort to massage the wording of the proposal so it would be broad enough to garner broad bipartisan support.
I suppose it’s possible this is all happening because the Democrats have decided to dispense with Joe. But I really don’t think so. The first reason is that they still have no one significantly better with whom to replace him (and Harris). The second reason is that they could have gotten rid of him in some other way – for health problems, for example – without bringing up all this potentially scandalous stuff that might reflect poorly on the Democratic Party and also hurt the effort to get Trump for his own supposed storage infractions involving classified material.
NOTE: Apparently the Penn-Biden center documents also contained classified material on Ukraine and Iran.
The GOP House majority gets with the program
Did you miss this? It’s another victory:
The House of Representatives passed a new rules package Monday that overhauls the way it functions by putting up more barriers to congressional spending and creating a more deliberate process for passing legislation, which were key demands of the more conservative members of the Republican Party.
The rules passed with an 220-213 vote that saw just one Republican, Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, vote against it. Passage of the blueprint for how the GOP will run the House is the first sign of success for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after the fight of his life last week for the speaker’s gavel.
I had read predictions of a big fight on this. But if any more fighting occurred after McCarthy’s election as Speaker, it seems to have been settled by the time the vote on the rules was taken.
Some of the new rules: no more proxy voting, and a return to a “Cut-As-You-Go.” You can find a good in-depth discussion of some of the rules here.
It’s been many many years since we’ve had even the apparent dedication of the Republican leadership to reforms of which most people on the right would actually approve. Whatever the reason this is happening now – and I think some of it was forced by the rebels and some of it would have happened anyway because of reaction to the heavy handedness of Pelosi in stifling the GOP representatives – it is certainly refreshing. And despite the House’s relative lack of power without also holding the Senate and the presidency, it’s still a satisfying thing to see what they’re doing right now. “Refreshing” and “satisfying” describe emotional reactions rather than actual policy achievements, but they’re pleasant alternatives to rage and frustration.
NOTE: Gonzalez’s objection was that the rules changes are “anti-immigration.” My assumption is that he was allowed to defect because the rules package could be passed even without him.
What caused the flight stoppage?
I’m looking for all you pilots and retired pilots to weigh in on this.
But here’s the official story:
Flights across the United States resumed Wednesday morning, several hours after the Federal Aviation Administration suffered a computer outage that forced it to halt all departures nationwide while it scrambled to resolve the issue.
The FAA said the crippling delays that affected thousands of flights appear to have been caused by a problem in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which sends pilots vital information they need to fly.
Investigators have seen no evidence of a cyberattack, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Don’t they have some sort of backup system? Or was that affected too? Or did they need to find out whether it was a cyberattack before they lifted the ban? Better to err on the side of caution, though.
The following is almost humorous, except that it’s not:
President Joe Biden ordered an investigation after he was briefed on the situation by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Do either of them have a clue what they’re talking about here? What in Buttigieg’s background qualifies him for this job?
On the other hand – as someone pointed out in a comment I saw the other day – Buttigieg has the distinction of giving the transportation secretary job such an unusually high profile that it’s one of the rare times that so many people actually know who the Secretary of Transportation is.
Another observation:
Meanwhile, the top Republican on that committee, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, said the “FAA’s inability to keep an important safety system up and running is completely unacceptable and just the latest example of dysfunction within the Department of Transportation.”
Open thread 1/11/23
Things I never knew:
McCarthy keeps another promise…
…and tells Schiff, Omar, and Swalwell to say “buy-bye” to their powerful committee positions.
Pelosi set the rules, as McCarthy reminded them:
McCarthy said, “‘It’s not like it’s anything new. Remember, this is what Nancy Pelosi – this is the type of Congress she wanted to have.
“Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance.”
McCarthy also said, “Schiff has lied too many times to the American public. He should not be on Intel.”
Long before the recent showdown, McCarthy had indicated this would be done. However, the fight over the Speakership certainly didn’t hurt in that regard.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
NOTE: Much more here from Ace, in particular about Schiff’s demands to Twitter to censor journalists critical of him.
Oh, you don’t say!: Biden had classified documents in his office
I think we’re on safe ground in expecting no charges to come from this:
Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden’s vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney’s inquiry.
The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar with the matter told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.
Neither did Trump’s, but that didn’t stop the MSM from publishing rumors and innuendos that the did contain nuclear secrets.
More:
Garland assigned U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to find out how the material marked classified ended up at the Penn Biden Center. The review is considered a preliminary step, and the attorney general will determine whether further investigation is necessary, including potentially appointing a special counsel.
I predict we’ll hear very little more about this from them, except some sort of exoneration.
Here’s what McCarthy said:
GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the recovery of documents with classified markings from Mr. Biden’s time as vice president “very concerning.” He added, “He’s had these classified [documents], and what has he said about the other president with classified documents?” Asked if this instance is different because attorneys found them and “immediately” handed the material over, McCarthy replied, “Oh, really? They just now found them after all those years.”
McCarthy has been strong when speaking on a highly related topic, long before his recent showdown with the Freedom Caucus. Back in August of 2022 McCarthy was in the news objecting mightily to the MAL raid on Trump:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday the House would investigate the Department of Justice if Republicans took the majority.
Why it matters: McCarthy’s pledge was the crescendo to widespread Republican condemnations of the DOJ after the FBI raided former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
It comes as Republicans are preparing a litany of probes into everything from Hunter Biden to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
What they’re saying: “I’ve seen enough,” McCarthy said in a statement, asserting the DOJ “has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
McCarthy said if Republicans retook the House, “we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”
“Attorney General [Merrick] Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he concluded, signaling plans to subpoena Garland.
The next few months should indicate whether any of this will happen, and then whether it will make any difference. For examle:
“The political usefulness of this for the Republicans, as people attack Donald Trump about his issues. I get it and they’re not the same. And yes, there will be conflation here. But the political usefulness of this cannot be underscored, cannot be overstated enough,” Jennings said with glee.
Jennings continued: “to give Republicans this talking point for the rest of their natural lives almost exonerates Trump in terms of debates and what comes up. I mean, if this ever comes up and somebody brings it up, you’re always gonna have this retort.”
“Everybody in politics is laughing their rear end off tonight that this happened to Joe Biden given how strident his commentary was in attacking Donald Trump about this in the first place. So, yeah, it’s a big deal politically,” Jennings added.
Maybe.