Tendentious Tarantella Or Revolutionary Rodomontade?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

1. McAfee’s “Suicide.”

     You’re probably already familiar with this story. John McAfee famously said that he would not kill himself – that if he were to die in custody, it would not be by his own hand. And now we have the report of his “apparent suicide.” But that didn’t make me think of Jeffrey Epstein. It made me think of Michael Milken.

     For those unfamiliar with the Milken affair, the feds were out for his blood from the moment he and Drexel Burnham Lambert began the “junk bond revolution” that enriched them. He was pressured into pleading guilty to six felonies he did not commit. The feds simply threatened to go after his brother and grandmother, who would be effectively defenseless against them. Two powerful accounts of this atrocity are available: Daniel Fischel’s Payback and Jesse Kornbluth’s Highly Confident.

     A similar kind of pressure could be used to induce an otherwise happy and vital man to kill himself. Moreover, the FBI and DOJ are now so far outside the law that I would have no problem believing they had done so to John McAfee. His existence has offended them for some time. When the forensic experts declare his death “unquestionably a suicide,” and present conclusive evidence to that effect, keep that possibility in mind.

2. Meanwhile, In Our Nation’s Capital…

     Washington D.C. is among the most violent urban areas in the world. It has several times led the list of U.S. cities for murders per capita, and is never far from the top. So what have the good citizens of that city done about their violence problem? They’ve put a convicted, incarcerated murderer into public office:

     As the homicide rate hits a record high in Washington D.C. the city elects a convicted murderer to public office in a unique election featuring all inmate candidates. The freshly elected public official, Joel Caston, has been in prison 26 years and is currently incarcerated at the District of Columbia Jail. In 1996 Caston was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder for ambushing and killing a man in the city’s Anacostia neighborhood. Court records obtained by Judicial Watch indicate that a 2016 appeal was denied. In the document, Caston’s attorneys name the victim, which is not common practice today. Court records also reveal a “speed loader”—a device used to rapidly load ammunition into a firearm—was found by police under Caston’s mattress after the shooting. It contained six rounds of .44 caliber ammunition as well as additional rounds of ammo.

     Now Caston is a commissioner on D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC), which advises the D.C. Council and other local government entities involving matters ranging from liquor license applications to public safety. Commissioners serve two-year terms and are elected in even-numbered years. The ANC was established to bring “government closer to the people, and to bring the people closer to government,” according to its website. Caston was chosen by voters to represent Ward 7, one of D.C.’s most crime-infested areas.

     Truly, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s one of the reasons I write fiction: it provides me an alternate environment in which people make sense.

3. Flip-Flopping Championship, Varsity Edition.

     Say, remember when requiring a photo ID to vote was denounced by the whole of the Democrat Party as racist? The times, they are a-changin’:

     In 2018, Georgia’s wannabe governor, Stacey Abrams, said voter ID laws are intended to “scare people out of voting.” Now, she audaciously says, “No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.”

     For years, then-Pastor Raphael Warnock, now a senator from Georgia, claimed ID laws were a form of “voter suppression” so “unnecessary and unjustifiable” that they amount to “dismember[ing]” Martin Luther King Jr.

     Now he lies, “I have never been opposed to voter ID. And in fact, I don’t know anybody who is.”

     On goes the roster of Democrats and leftist groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union who opposed voter-ID laws as “part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights.” The most recent Democratic summary sheet for the John Lewis Act repeatedly names voter ID laws as a chief example of the supposedly nefarious practices it aims to combat.

     Now that they see what Manchin sees — the public supports voter ID despite the Left’s decades of scaremongering against it — they are finally willing to jettison the claims they knew were meretricious all along.

     Of course they expect us to believe them – but just wait until a state enacts a statute that requires not merely a photo ID but collateral proof of citizenship: a birth certificate or naturalization certificate. That, they will never abide. Without the votes of millions of illegal immigrants, the Democrats would become a minor party in one election – and they know it.

4. CRT In Schools.

     I’m old enough to remember Cathode Ray Tubes; are you? Ah, the eighteen thousand Hertz squeal from the refresh circuit! Many of my colleagues lost their high-frequency hearing to that electronic shriek. But I’m afraid this is not about that:

     A school board meeting for Loudoun county schools in Virginia came to a grinding halt yesterday after some boisterous activity that “violated decorum“, according to chair, Chair Brenda L. Sheridan.

     What, exactly was so boisterous about this school board meeting? What, exactly, “violated decorum” at the Loudoun County School Board meeting? What was all of the Loundness up in Loudoun? Comments against Proposed Policy 8040 on the rights of transgender and gender-expansive students. One person was arrested and there was at least one person injured and another individual was issued a trespassing charge, authorities say.

     News accounts with regard to the meeting seem vague. Someone was arrested. Someone was injured. Someone was issued a trespassing charge. In fact, reports like this one, will lead a reader to believe that the meeting was shut down because of those attendees opposed to Proposed Policy 8040. The accounts from Twitchy tell a different story, stating that former Virginia state senator Dick Black (R) had his mic cut off in the midst of his comments opposing Critical Race Theory in schools. Parents responded loudly to this by belting out The National Anthem.

     But the news said what followed suit was “loudness and opposition”, an abrupt end to public comment (about 200 individuals were slated to speak) and the sheriff calling the board meeting an “unlawful assembly”.

     School boards are usually full of would-be dictators who can’t abide being questioned or criticized. It seems to go with the position. Indeed, where I live, one of the most prominent opponents of school board policy was co-opted by being elected to the school board…after which he was more fiercely defensive about the board’s plans and policies than anyone else on it. There’s a moral in there, somewhere.

     Still, the above is a new low for any school board. The board ought to have realized that it faced overwhelming opposition and beat a hasty retreat. What it did indicates a religious commitment to the Critical Race Theory agenda. Why? What makes that bundle of slanders against America and American whites so attractive to them? Money, perhaps?

     It will be a while before there’s reliable information to be had on this subject. Watch for similar dust-ups in other school districts, particularly in supposedly “blue” states.

5. “We Have To Destroy The Country In Order To Save It.”

     This story should be the talk of the nation – and perhaps it soon will be:

     Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered remarks on gun control with Attorney General Merrick Garland.

     Joe Biden and the Democrats are coming for the guns and they aren’t even hiding it anymore.

     Biden on Wednesday attacked the 2nd Amendment and said it was never designed to give Americans weapons to protect against a tyrannical government.

     “If you think you need to have weapons to take on the government? You need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is, it’s always been the ability to limit, to rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who could own them,” Biden said.

     That’s an open challenge. I think it’s aimed at those who hope the tide of election audits now forming could be used to force the Usurpers out of their usurped positions. We can be sure that the Usurpers will resist. The question has always been what measures they would employ in their efforts.

     With the brain-dead Biden in the Oval Office, there’s no guarantee that the next use of a nuclear weapon won’t be against American citizens on American soil. It wouldn’t bother his handlers and minders. They’re without any detectable shred of conscience.

     That’s all for today, I think. The yard work looms, and I must away. But do have a nice day.