Friday Miscellany - Autumn Edition
Catching up on the news of the week
Hello friends. With just a week left in October it appears that autumn is finally arriving in the Treasure Valley. It is going to reach 70° one last time today, and lows will be near freezing this weekend. The leaves are turning orange and red, pumpkins are decorating porches, and campaign signs are growing like weeds along the highways and byways.
On Thursday night I attended the Keep Idaho Red Roadshow hosted by the Idaho State Republican Party. They went on the road this week to visit all seven regions of the state; Region IV consists solely of Ada County. It was a great event - Chairwoman Dorothy Moon set the tone with a fiery speech about uniting around our Republican values. We heard from all the statewide candidates, including Governor Little, but the biggest ovation of the night came when Attorney General candidate Raúl Labrador was introduced. Labrador also stuck around late into the night when most of the other VIPs had left.
I was dismayed that Ada County GOP leadership decided not to attend the event. Being the only county in Region IV, it was really noticeable that the Chairman and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Vice Chairs were all absent. Perhaps they all had good reasons, but I am disappointed that they did not make this event a priority.
My first meeting as a trustee of the Eagle Library Board was on Wednesday, and it was thankfully a quiet business-oriented affair. I enjoyed meeting the other four trustees and look forward to working with them. We heard from the Friends of the Eagle Library about their book sale and other activities, got a report from the Library Director Steve Bumgarner, and heard a presentation from the City of Eagle about the process for working with city staff and the council regarding capital projects. It was humbling to start a five year term and already be thinking of projects that might not even begin until 2027 or later.
A couple weeks ago, after my appointment to the library board became fodder for vlogger Brian Holmes, I sat down for three different interviews. I’m waiting for two of them to be published, at which time I’ll link them here. However, you can listen to my talk with Dr. Daniel Bobinski on 94.1 The Voice right now. (Note: The website for 94.1 The Voice is down as I write this, but my interview is archived at the Wayback Machine. Click here to listen.) Hearing myself after the fact, I think I was a little bit nervous about being in a real life radio studio, but I am sure I’ll sound more comfortable next time.
As most people have heard, the CDC voted to add the experimental Covid shots to the childhood vaccine schedule. It is insane how quickly and easily our public health organizations have turned into the marketing departments for Pfizer and Moderna. Governor Youngkin of Virginia and Governor Stitt of Oklahoma, among others, have stepped up and said that their schools will not require the Covid shot for children. Will Governor Little join them?
(EDIT: Mere moments after I hit publish, Governor Little announced that his administration would not mandate the Covid vaccine for children. It remains to be seen how this will play out in the public school system, but kudos to him.)
Speaking of Governor Little, I am working on a draft looking at the gubernatorial race between him and Ammon Bundy. I will try to have it up tomorrow, and I am prepared to get pushback from both sides, as usual!
Three things happened in the last week that might not seem related, but they are. Alex Jones was ordered to pay nearly a billion dollars to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the family of George Floyd sued Kanye West for $250 million for claiming (correctly) that Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose, and a DC judge and jury sentenced former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to four months in jail and a $6,500 fine because he refused to testify before the January 6th committee.
The common thread here is the weaponization of the justice system against anyone who questions the American Pravda narrative. We have become a post-truth society, where truth is no longer determined by reality, but by a cabal of politicians, journalists, entertainment figures, and corporate boardrooms. The more that leftist delusions (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Jussie Smollett, Trump’s fine people statement, January 6th vs the entire BLM/antifa summer of love, gender as a spectrum, etc.) fall apart, the harder they will try to crack down on dissent. The more that reality diverges from their illusions, the harder they will fight against reality.
The good news here is that reality has a tendency to reassert itself. The Soviet Union fell because it could not sustain the contradictions with reality and human nature it tried to impose. The bad news is that things might get a lot worse before they get better. I picked up Richard Nixon’s final book at the library sale this month and he makes a profound observation in the introduction:
“As history demonstrates, evil ideas inevitably fail because they are fundamentally at odds with human nature, but until they fail, they can do enormous damage to humanity.”
Richard Nixon, Beyond Peace
We must fight the same battle for truth and liberty as every generation before us. Sometimes people are called to do extraordinary things, such as the revolutionary generation or the men who fought WWII. Now it is our fight, to protect our communities, our state, and our nation from the same godless, dishonest, totalitarianism that our fathers defeated. The fight for liberty never ends, but I am happy to be fighting it with you here in Idaho.
This is one of your best, most inspiring pieces yet, Brian. Thank you for your courage and perspective.
Thank you for bringing up the CDC’s egregious rubber stamping of COVID shots for children. Despite the voluminous negative feedback from citizens ahead of the “decision,“ the CDC barreled headlong into a potentially devastating addition to their burgeoning vaccine schedule. The CDC and federal government (and many state governments) do not care what we the people think or say. These agencies do what they want. They are completely captured, motivated by power, money, and perhaps other agendas.
(Those who want to learn about home schooling options, check out Dr. Robert Malone’s Substack: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/homeschooling-options-and-state-exemptions)
Several solutions come to mind:
1. Ignore health agency guidelines/regulations/mandates. DO NOT COMPLY.
2. Remove taxpayer funding from state and federal health agencies until they return to their original missions.
3. Forbid Pharma from funding anything but their own research within their own companies. No conflict of interest funding for medical schools, medical journals, traditional media, social media, doctor offices, hospitals, insurance companies, politicians, or government agencies and their personnel.
4. Enact legislation that forbids government officials (and their close relatives) from taking board seats or other high-level positions within the industries they regulate for at least 5 years.
5. Enact legislation that removes ALL drug and "vaccine" manufacturers' liability for injury and death.
6. Sue any manufacturer that obtained EUA for vaccines and other drugs through fraud, deceit, faked clinical trials, etc. Claw back all taxpayer funds sent to them and impose massive fines. The European Union has begun this process. Why haven’t we?
7. Educate parents, grandparents, doctors, and everyone else. We must know whether shots or other medical interventions are necessary, safe, and effective before administering them into anyone, especially kids. ALL source information must be made available and studied carefully, without media fact-checking and censorship. So many excellent sources were suppressed and ignored during COVID and before; turns out they were 100% correct about lockdowns, masks, social distancing, effective early treatments, and hastily developed, poorly tested shots and experimental drugs.