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Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

GEC Bullet Ducked?

Last month, a mega-monstrous “continuing resolution” (CR) — allowing federal deficit spending over the set debt limit — was killed by public outcry, helped along by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others with megaphones or MAGAphones.

This CR was chucked to the great annoyance of champions of runaway spending and runaway violations of individual rights. They babbled about the autocratic interference of one “President Musk.” 

As if his complaints alone would have sufficed to kill it had nobody else in America cared.

The mega-monstrous CR was replaced by a mini-monstrous CR. The replacement sported many fewer pages, things like a pay raise for congressmen having been left out.

Also deleted? A part of the State Department devoted to censoring Americans.

Called the Global Engagement Center (GEC), it was designed to use indirect methods to censor Americans guilty of wrongthink. The plan was to give our tax dollars to creators of blacklists, like $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index. American advertisers then would feel compelled to avoid dealing with listed companies — to remain on the good side of the U.S. government

Thanks to “President Musk” and his “obedient slave” Donald Trump, the GEC died. State’s website now says so itself.

Or did it? Has the GEC simply been rebranded?

The new thing is a so-called Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub; it looks like State will still be funding this GEC clone. 

The GEC, after all, was also supposed to focus only on foreign agitprop.

When will government agencies stop trying these kinds of anti-democratic, anti-constitutional end runs? 

Never. Not voluntarily.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

Karel Čapek

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

Karel Čapek, The Absolute at Large (1921).
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Today

Winter War

On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.

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Accountability crime and punishment media and media people national politics & policies

Pardon Me

Another round of presidential pardons, anyone?

At Medium, former New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., urges President Joe Biden to “preemptively pardon Jack Smith, Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensberger, Fani Willis, Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, Judge Juan Merchan and every judge who has ever issued a ruling that made Donald J. Trump unhappy.”

He says that “President Biden should also pardon himself,” along with “the heads of Operation Warp Speed and the chief executives of Pfizer and Moderna,” and “can’t even imagine how many political journalists . . . also need protecting.”

Is there anyone left?

“While we’re at it,” writes McNeil, “I’d like a pardon too.”

The award-winning journalist had a colorful history at The Times. In 2020, the paper reprimanded him for comments attacking Trump and the head of the Centers for Disease Control over their COVID response, declaring “that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions.”* 

And we can’t forget the primary focus of McNeil’s essay, titled: “Now Biden Should Pardon Tony Fauci.” Declaring “Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong,” the reporter decries that “a motivated prosecutor can go after you for anything . . . can break you financially with legal fees just proving your innocence.”

Yes, we know . . . having watched it unfold against Mr. Trump.

McNeil clearly fears that Trump will become a dictator, throwing out the Constitution and the rule of law. Judging from Trump’s first term, I am not so worried. But does even McNeil really believe these pardons could survive his imagined MAGA maelstrom? 

For nearly 40 years, Anthony Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with primary responsibility for the treatment of contagious illnesses, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. A presidential pardon would be an official admission of his guilt. 

In your own vernacular, Mr. Biden: Don’t! 

Fauci deserves his day in court. And so do we. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


* Then, in early 2021, McNeil resigned from the newspaper “under pressure” after complaints surfaced about him using the n-word on a student trip to Peru, for which he served as a guide.

Note: Back in 2022, Elon Musk did post on X: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

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Thought

Friedrich Nietzsche

No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And why? Simply because the state is always afraid of them. They tell the truth. . . . Consequently, the man who submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must also submit to being looked upon by the state as one who has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its fastnesses. So long as he holds his place, he must acknowledge something still higher than the truth — and that is the state. . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer als Erzieher,” as translated by H. L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Third Edition, 1913), Chapter XII, Education.
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Today

Maria Montessori

On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy.

In 1912 on this date New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States.

On this date in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.

On January 6, 2021, lame duck President Donald John Trump gave a speech in Washington, D.C., aiming to rouse his supporters to pressure the U.S. Senate not to certify some states’ Electoral College votes in Election 2020, to address “election fraud.” Before his speech ended, and under questionable circumstances, some of his supporters (along with some possible false flag agents) broke into the Capitol to set off one of the great political controversies of our time.

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Update

Make America Healthy

Brett Weinstein fears that the “MAHA” movement (“Make America Healthy Again”) is undergoing a rift, a “fissure.” The case against the covidian regime, and especially against the mRNA “vaccine,” is now being apparently undermined by the case against the poisonous food industry . . . you know, the industry regulated (and subsidized) by the USDA and the FDA.

He suspects that while there is no good reason for any antagonism, certain personalities and strategies of emphasis have set the anti-Agra activists against the anti-Big Pharma activists.

Weinstein’s solution is one he thinks all elements of the MAGA/MAFA movement should be able to get behind, including libertarians. The point is not to go on a ban binge, but, instead, apply current rules along with the principles of the Nuremberg trials, especially that of “informed consent.”

Which means there must be no pressure to force people to eat or take anything.

He also argues that, “in light of complex systems,” all this stuff that MAHA folks oppose is experimental (additives; genetically modified foods; vaccines; gene therapies) thus the Nuremberg strictures against forced medication must apply.

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Thought

Friedrich W. Nietzsche

The state tells lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies — and whatever it has it has stolen. Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and bites easily.

Friedrich W. Nietzsche, as translated by Walter Kaufmann in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “The New Idol.”

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Today

Ford’s Five

On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company announced an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day’s labor.

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Update

Centenarian Carpenter

James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th president of the United States, died last weekend at a hundred years of age (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024). Though he served one term in office from 1977 to 1981, he is best known for his charitable work after leaving Washington. Though his post-presidential projects were wide-ranging, he is popularly remembered for building houses for the poor.

The memorials have of course been ubiquitous. Here is a handful of notices: