3/x Q1: “Where’s the short, fat guy?”
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 13, 2021
5/x Q3: “To Manager Swalwell: Tell us about Fang Fang.”
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 13, 2021
7/x Q5: “If we put him in a burlap sack & throw him in the river, and he does not float, must we convict?”
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 13, 2021
To a hall filled with young men on a cold Illinois night in January 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered his earliest recorded public remarks.
For the 50 years prior, the living rooms, parlors, and public offices of our country had been teeming with the brave Americans who’d fought, struggled, and suffered to create these United States. “Nearly every American,” Lincoln recalled, “had been a participator in some of its scenes.”
But now that generation was dying off. What no invading army could, time, he lamented, had itself accomplished: “They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all resistless hurricane had swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk… to combat, with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.”
Without their life experience, he realized, his was the first generation of Americans tasked with upholding their fathers’ noble experiment simply by the strength of their own virtues. This, he warned, would be very difficult.
As he looked around him, at both slave states and their northern neighbors, he saw and feared the evil of swelling mobs not merely for their unfortunate victims, but for our national tolerance of their violence and misrule — and the effect this shrugging of shoulders and murmuring of approval or disapproval would have on patriotic and unpatriotic men alike.
The incidents weren’t always seemingly connected by cause. A group of gamblers hanged; a mixed-race murderer burned alive; black men suspected of planning insurrection, and then white men suspected of sympathizing, and then simply out-of-state strangers caught in the middle of swelling hate. But beyond their brutality, the young lawyer feared these mobs were connected for the lawlessness they embodied — and the idle familiarity with which his fellow Americans seemed to accept these incidents.
While the 1830s mobs “hang gamblers, or burn murders,” he cautioned, tomorrow’s mobs would hang and burn the innocent — “and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.”
While after January 2021’s Capitol riot we’ve all seen the ruthless efficiency with which our government is capable of cracking down on lawlessness, we too saw the summer before, when months of attacks on federal officers, politicians, police, private homes, courthouses, and innocent bystanders met calculated indifference and shrugged excuses for “historic racial injustices.”
This too, was well familiar to Lincoln, who knew the mob will go further and spread deeper, warning, “by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.”
“On the other hand,” he predicted, “good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.”
Combined, he warned, these seemingly opposing feelings come to one terrible conclusion: “the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attachment of the People.”
To ensure that the fading “scenes of the revolution are [not] now or ever will be entirely forgotten,” Lincoln prescribed “in history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read.”
Yet today at The Washington Post, New York Times, and at the top of our government, the privileged and ignorant children of our country tell Americans our experiment is tainted, our Revolution was for evil, our Civil War was not enough. They demand reparations through re-education, racist quotas, kneeling subservience, and crude offerings of money. Neither the honored dead of the Revolution nor the lives of 300,000 Yankee boys lying stiff in Southern dust will appease them — they want more than the blood of our countrymen.
To “fortify against” the mob, Lincoln also prescribed an American “political religion” rested on law, order, morality, and reason, yet today’s revolutionaries reside at the very height of our government, inclined to rule toward the same terrible ends the newspapers, college professors and street activists demand. While we all agree the mob’s attack on the Capitol was intolerable, many claim that mobs of Black Lives Matter and Antifa members occupying and burning our cities are less wicked, justified by some imaginary historic cause.
Black separatism, the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center claimed Thursday, is no longer born of hate, but “out of valid anger against very real historical and systemic oppression.” Lincoln, however, knew “there is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
Just more than two decades after his remarks, Lincoln was president. His office was characterized by a stunning bravery, as well as the very principles he called for in 1838 — “general intelligence, sound morality and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and the laws.”
Treading carefully but boldly between Southern sympathizers and abolitionist radicals, the man who in 1838 lamented the passing of our Founding Fathers would as president write the end of their page in history, uniting once and for all the truths espoused in our Declaration of Independence with the laws laid out in our Constitution.
For a century, Lincoln’s story was derided and dismissed by Southern apologists seeking to strike his place in history for the fantasies they preferred. Today, his story is derided and dismissed by racists and radicals of different politics, working hard to undo the political religion he cemented, and to strike his place in history for their own preferred fantasies.
Today, on Abraham Lincoln’s 212th birthday, Americans must remember his life, his deeds, his sacrifice, and the lives, deeds, and sacrifices of all who came before and after him in the service of these United States. If we cannot quickly return to the vision they fought and died for, heed the warnings of 1838, and remember the lessons of our Revolution and Civil War, we are just as sure to lose our country as ever before.
The Biden Administration may precipitate the emergence of a woke state Catholicism.
When I was in high school and George W. Bush was president, the fear in progressive circles was that a Christian “fundamentalist” had hijacked the nation. Bush did what polite society never would, which was to speak of faith openly in public without irony or qualification. America, liberals feared, would be turned into a theocracy; a vocal conservative Christian minority would subvert the country’s separation of church and state, undermining its founding principles. Today, we are still told that the Christian right is an existential threat to American democracy, even as social liberalism continues its ascent to the commanding heights of media, academia, and corporate boardrooms.
The liberal fear of Bush, or a Vice President Mike Pence, was that religion could infiltrate politics, imposing Christianity on unbelievers. But under a President Joe Biden we must consider and frankly assess the obverse: the possibility that the political can infiltrate the lives of the faithful to subordinate faith to politics. If Bush and Pence were possible embodiments of a heretical Christian nationalism, as commentators such as Ross Douthat and TAC’s own Rod Dreher have argued, we must be equally alive to the possibility that President Biden could personify a militant woke Catholicism and, by extension, woke Christianity writ large. Ironically, the end result would be much the same: the imposition of dogma upon the unbelieving through the coercive powers of the state. Left-wing politicization of the Christian faith may easily wreak havoc on conservative Christians in the Biden years, just as fundamentalist Christianity is supposed to have done to nonbelievers of the Bush and Pence years.
The comparison may seem far-fetched at first. After all, having experienced the other end of the stick themselves, how could the progressive left—many of whose rank and file felt oppressed before civil rights gradually expanded to include feminism and LGBTQ activism—possibly wield the cudgel of the state? And yet commentators such as Poland’s Ryszard Legutko, who has lived under both communism and E.U.-style progressive liberalism, notice unsettling parallels between the oppressors of the Cold War and today’s freedom fighters. As the title of his book The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in a Free Society suggests, today’s politically correct liberals and yesterday’s communists share an uncanny parallel: Nothing can be left outside the totalizing—or totalitarian—purview of either. No institution can be left untouched by the levelling, so-called egalitarian, impulse of these ideologies. In practice this means that any organization, association, or institution—public or private—must ultimately conform to the professed values of the ruling system, communism then and there, and liberalism here and now. This includes pre-liberal institutions such as church hierarchies or the traditional family, which are intrinsically non-egalitarian—recalcitrant bodies that need to be disciplined and brought to heel when they undermine the illusion of universal assent to the political ideology in question. As Christopher Caldwell argued in his recent book, The Age of Entitlement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has become a de facto rival to the amendment liberties of the U.S. Constitution.
But moving from the abstract to the particular, what does it mean in practice when religious liberty and equal protection under the law clash? Some of these scenarios have yet to play out in this, our second Catholic presidency. But one such instance is far enough past us, and far enough away, in France, to allow an attempt at dispassionate analysis. This is the controversy surrounding the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed into law in 1790 at the height of the French Revolution. That law required—in addition to things such as the shuttering of supposedly “unproductive” monasteries and convents and the nationalization of church property—that bishops and priests be elected by the voting public and swear a loyalty oath to the new revolutionary government. In the words of the decree: “The new bishop may not apply to the pope for any form of confirmation, but shall write to him, as to the visible head of the universal Church, as a testimony to the unity of faith and communion maintained with him.”
According to historian Peter McPhee, this controversial legislation resulted in “unforeseen and unintended” resistance to the revolution and, ultimately, counter-revolution. “Patriot clergy,” who swore an oath to the state and thus acknowledge their source of religious authority in “the people” and not the papacy, were effectively in a state of first religious, and then actual, civil war with the “refractory” clergy, who refused to declare the oath and thus, in their view, break the divinely ordered apostolic succession that united them to the first apostles of Christ. McPhee sums up the conflict in a way that will not sound too unfamiliar to the modern Christian listener who watches for the latest decisions from the courts in the wake of Obergefell: “In the end, it proved impossible to reconcile a Revolution based on popular sovereignty, tolerance of all faiths and the certainty of earthly fulfillment through secular reason with a Church based on hierarchical appointment, divinely revealed dogma and a certainty of one true faith.” The words “impossible to reconcile” reverberate today in cases where alleged discrimination and claims of religious freedom converge. In a court battle of “secular reason” versus “divinely revealed dogma,” I know where I’d place my bets. Unless divinely revealed dogma leads to new revelations from God about previously unknown rights, dogma is invalid.
On January 20, Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement regarding President Biden’s inauguration. “It will be refreshing to engage with a President who clearly understands, in a deep and personal way, the importance of religious faith and institutions,” declared Gomez. But his praise was qualified:
At the same time, as pastors, the nation’s bishops are given the duty of proclaiming the Gospel in all its truth and power, in season and out of season, even when that teaching is inconvenient or when the Gospel’s truths run contrary to the directions of the wider society and culture. So, I must point out that our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.
Seemingly overnight the same cleric who had received accolades for denouncing President Trump’s immigration policies was now declared an ally of the Catholic right wing. News outlets were quick to uncover quotes from progressive Catholics who found Archbishop Gomez’s words objectionable and saw no real conflict between President Biden’s faith and his public policy positions mentioned above. In the language of liberalism, and a world aggressively reordered in all aspects to its logic, there is no such thing as Catholic, only progressive or conservative Catholics. One must fit into either political category—not both and not none of the above.
American establishment liberalism and liberal Catholic elites in clergy, politics, and entertainment would never be so clumsy and heavy-handed as to openly erect a parallel ecclesiastical structure as in the case of revolutionary France. But in a Biden presidency, alongside a similar phenomenon taking place in American Protestantism, a de facto schism between Catholic America’s woke “patriotic” and conservative “refractory” churches could very well appear. With a member in the White House, it will be smooth sailing for the former and rough seas for the latter. Some parishes and educational institutions will face lawsuits, and others won’t. Some will be audited, and others won’t. Some will have their tax-exempt status and federal funding questioned or revoked, and others won’t. The process will be made banal by legalistic proceduralism, to the point where it will be hard to notice when it starts and equally unnoticeable when its work is complete.
President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and progressive Christian politicians like them imagine they have succeeded at reconciling faith and politics, averting graver conflict. But everyone will know, if not openly acknowledge, that some churches are state-sponsored, and some aren’t. The irony will be that people who painfully recall their own experience of overwhelming pressure to conform to regnant orthodoxy mere decades ago will neither understand nor empathize with the new minority in this enlightened age.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/civil-rights-and-civil-priests/
The Cultural Civil War Begins
The people who control American pop culture hate Americans. That sounds stupid, and of course it is, but it’s certainly true.
Take, for example, country singer Morgan Wallen. And, while we’re at it, actress Gina Carano.
In Wallen’s case, the up-and-coming young star had just released a double album with some very interesting tracks marking him as more than just a “bro-country” singer with a reputation as a hard-drinking bad boy off stage. There is real depth to some of his lyrics, and the music is, at times, quite good.
But Wallen, who is known to have a problem with alcohol as many 20-somethings suddenly blessed with great fortune are prone to have, found his career and status in the music industry crashing down over something utterly ridiculous.
Wallen, out carousing with friends and deep into his cups, called one of them a “p***y a** n****r” while horsing around. The outburst was recorded by a stranger, who then sold the recording to the celebrity gossip site TMZ.
When the exchange went public, Wallen apologized. It wasn’t enough. He was castigated and defenestrated in the entertainment media, his record company “suspended” him, and he was made persona non grata within country music while opinion-makers began pontificating about whether Wallen’s outrageous racism isn’t representative of the “problematic” nature of country music as a whole.
Carano, meanwhile, is a former female MMA champion who is one of the few actresses actually capable of pulling off the new Hollywood trope — the female action hero who routinely beats the hell out of men. She plays, or has played, Cara Dune in the Star Wars-derivative Disney+ series The Mandalorian, and has earned strong reviews in that role.
But Gina Carano happens to be a conservative, and she lives up to her tough-girl image at that.
Mobs of cultural Marxists have attacked her, seeking to cancel her and ruin her career. This has gone on for more than a year. She has been unfazed and unapologetic in the face of their attempts to beat her down.
Carano refused to follow the cultural Left’s demands that she “identify her pronouns” on her social media profile, and supposedly that makes her “transphobic.” She expressed doubt, as perhaps most Americans have, that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Carano made fun of the wildly over-the-top COVID restrictions in California, a mainstream enough position that opposition to those restrictions has now fueled a recall election against that state’s governor, Gavin Newsom. She expressed doubt over the integrity of the 2020 election.
And she posted that “Expecting everyone you encounter to agree with every belief or view you hold is f—ing wild.”
The public has had enough of cancel culture and cultural Marxism, and it’s fighting back.
Ileaders that the Holocaust could happen again. And that political disagreement can create such conditions just like racial or ethnic animus has.
After all, what the Nazis did to the Jews, while certainly an unacceptable stain on the human escutcheon that must never be repeated, was neither unprecedented nor even the bloodiest example of genocide in recent world history. Awful governments stoking public hatred in pursuit of genocidal aims is actually a common theme in the last century or so. It’s what the Turks did to the Armenians, what the Soviets did to the kulaks and Ukrainians, what the Chinese Cultural Revolution signified, what happened in Rwanda and Cambodia. Political and economic hatred, the 20th century proved, can be just as deadly as the racial and ethnic variety.
But when Carano expressed that point she was fired from the cast of The Mandalorian, while her co-star Pedro Pascal, who also posted Nazi Holocaust memes, only from the Left, has not been.
The Wallen and Carano fiascoes are only the latest egregious examples of cancel culture in an America badly off-kilter. But the reaction to them has been noteworthy.
The public has had enough of cancel culture and cultural Marxism, and it’s fighting back.
Who’s far and away the hottest recording artist in country music this week? That would be Morgan Wallen. Pull up the iTunes country music charts and Wallen has eight of the top 20 songs at present.
This has alarmed the entertainment media, which has used it as proof that country music fans, seeing as though they tend to be white and rural and from flyover country, are a bunch of mouth-breathing racists. Wallen himself was trotted out to implore them not to defend him, in one of the more obnoxious public-relations hostage crises in recent memory. But of course when the rapper Lil Nas X got together with Billy Ray Cyrus to cut the crossover hit “Old Town Road” a couple of years ago, country fans couldn’t get enough of it.
The accusations of racism among Wallen’s fans are exactly why there was so much enthusiasm for buying up his music in the past week. For one thing, Wallen didn’t use a racial slur when he said what he said to his white drinking buddy; he essentially quoted about 22.4 percent of Quentin Tarantino’s movie dialogues. And everybody understood that.
Unwise? Of course. Worthy of a public apology? Naturally. Career-ending? Ridiculous. Evidence that Wallen harbors hatred for African-Americans? Nobody really believes that.
The fans bought up Wallen’s music because (1) there is a perception it’ll come off the market given the current idiocies, and (2) and this is the important bit, Americans are absolutely sick and tired of cancel culture. They’re tired of seeing people Otherized for stupid reasons and being told any sin against ever-changing leftist cultural pieties puts one’s livelihood at risk. It’s now a real threat not just to entertainers making millions; middle-class Americans are, as Daniel Greenfield correctly observed last week, being terrorized by our ruling elite on the basis of critical race theory and cancel culture. Publishing houses are firing Christian employees for having a Gab account, for Pete’s sake. At some point ordinary Americans would have had enough, and this is it.
And in the case of Carano, the public backlash against Lucasfilm and Disney, its parent company, is severe and growing. Calls to cancel Disney+ have appeared everywhere, and the attacks on the company have been widespread. It’s too soon to know whether the company’s pocketbook has been severely hit, but this can’t be good for Disney.
And Gina Carano is now a lot bigger name than she was before being fired, whether Hollywood will cast her again or not.
This has only begun. It’s beginning to crystallize into a movement. You can’t cancel and Otherize an entire broad swath of the population without those people fighting back.
There will be a lot more Morgan Wallens and Gina Caranos. And there will be a lot more public revolts against the so-called elites calling the shots on their cancellations. We saw it with GameStop, and we’ll see it again.
And that’s good. It’s no secret there’s a cultural civil war going on in America. It’s been a long time coming. Let’s have it out. And may the best side win.
The bodies of French and Russian soldiers who died during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow have been laid to rest at a ceremony in western Russia.
The remains were buried in freezing conditions at a monastery in the town of Vyazma.
All are thought to have been killed during the Battle of Vyazma, which happened at the start of Napoleon's retreat.
The three women are thought to have provided food and first aid for the troops, while the boys served as drummers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56052504
Twitter had some fun Wednesday night when NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tried — and miserably failed — to correct Sen. Ted Cruz on the source of the famous Shakespeare quote from Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The Texas senator had used it to describe the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump now underway in the Senate.
Mitchell, who studied English literature at the University of Pennsylvania, thought the quote came from William Faulkner. “@SenTedCruzsays #ImpeachmentTrial is like Shakespeare full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, that’s Faulkner,” Mitchell tweeted, apparently unaware that Faulkner borrowed the phrase from the Bard.
Mitchell’s literary ignorance unleashed a mini-tempest on Twitter, including Cruz chiming in with the full quote from Macbeth. To her credit, Mitchell apologized to Cruz — but not without humble-bragging that she “clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth.” Yes, clearly.
Amusing as this little spectacle of elite ignorance was, it calls to mind something sinister about the Trump impeachment trial, which is indeed “full of sound and fury,” but doesn’t signify nothing. It signifies that Democrats, by putting a former president on trial for something he did not do, are trying to destroy not only Trump but the entire Republican Party, and tar everyone who voted for Trump as a traitor. The former president is not really on trial here, the movement he represents is.
How do we know? Because not a shred of evidence has been or will be presented that connects Trump to the thing for which he is purportedly on trial: incitement of insurrection. The Democrats’ entire case is one of guilt by association. A ragged band of radical Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, therefore Trump himself is to blame.
To make this case, Democratic impeachment managers have had to rely on emotional appeals rather than facts. On Wednesday, they gave lengthy and dramatic presentations about the mass protest and subsequent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, showing previously unseen security footage of rioters breaching the Capitol building.
The footage was at times intense, as riot footage usually is, but the presentations that accompanied the footage did not reveal anything new because that was not their purpose. Their purpose was to elicit emotional responses from the Senate jurors and the media, which they predictably did.
During a dinner recess, Sen. Mitt Romney (who else?) told reporters he hadn’t realized just how much danger he was in until he saw footage of a Capitol Police officer leading him away from the mob. “It was obviously very troubling to see the great violence that our Capitol Police and others were subjected to,” Romney said. “It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes. That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional.”
Romney was of course playing the part Democrats have assigned him. The point of the footage, paired with over-dramatized narrations of events by impeachment managers, particularly Del. Stacey Plaskett who went through the events of Jan. 6 in detail, was to depict Trump as the true leader of the mob, commanding and directing them from his perch in the White House.
“Make no mistake, the violence was not just foreseeable to President Trump, the violence was what he deliberately encouraged,” Plaskett said. “He fanned the flame of violence, and it worked.”
Another impeachment manager, Rep. Joaquin Castro, went a step further, claiming that Trump “left everyone in this Capitol for dead” — seemingly taking a cue from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently accused Cruz of attempting to have her murdered.
On Thursday, impeachment managers delved more deeply into Trump’s role that day, but again failed to present any new information that would suggest Trump planned, supported, or even knew about the attack that a small group of his supporters pre-planned for Jan. 6.
Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette tried to make a case that the handful of rioters who attacked the Capitol (out of a much larger protest numbering in the tens of thousands at least) were doing so because they thought they were following Trump’s orders. Tellingly, House Democrats never called on any of these people to testify in the House impeachment hearing, so DeGette was reduced to quoting a few statements rioters posted on social media or made to the press.
But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if some of the rioters thought they were carrying out Trump’s orders. After all, it’s no more Trump’s fault that these people are idiots than it’s his fault they decided to attack the Capitol. Unless Democrats can produce some evidence that Trump gave the rioters instructions or direction, we’ll have to rely on what we know Trump said, which was to encourage the protesters to march to the Capitol grounds “peacefully.”
Lacking anything more than this, Democrats finally fell back on the sinister heart of their case against Trump: all Trump supporters, not just the rioters, are traitors simply for supporting him. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, argued that Trump had previously “inflamed and incited a mob,” citing a peaceful protest at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing on April 30 against strict COVID-19 lockdown orders imposed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
At that rally, several protesters carried firearms into the state capitol, as allowed under Michigan law, without incident. Apart from a single arrest — someone got really drunk and tried to rip a flag out of a protester’s hands — the protest was entirely peaceful and orderly.
Yet Raskin showed images of the Michigan rally next to images of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol in what amounted to a shabby attempt to impugn any and all conservatives who might have at some point protested at a capitol building or expressed opposition to an elected Democrat.
And that’s really the point of this exercise. Trump is out of office, a new administration has taken power, but Democrats won’t let go of their “insurrection” narrative, not because there’s any truth to it but because it’s politically useful. Some on the left are dumb enough to come out and say it, like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who on Thursday morning said Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is “responsible for the insurrection,” along with Cruz and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.
What do all these Republicans have in common? They all think there were problems with the 2020 election. If that’s the bar for being guilty of insurrection, then Trump’s guilt is shared not just by Hawley and Cruz and the others, it’s shared by millions of Americans across the country.
Understand what’s happening here. There’s almost no chance Trump will be convicted by the Senate, but this impeachment theater is not as pointless as it seems. The sound and fury of Democrats signifies clearly that if you support Trump, you’re a traitor.
A Friday report from Bloomberg News revealed China was able to spy on American computer systems for a decade by supplying compromised chips to Super Micro Computer Inc. (Supermicro), one of America’s leading motherboard providers.
According to the report, U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of this wide-reaching Chinese espionage program but did not warn either Supermicro or its customers, because they prioritized monitoring China’s surveillance techniques and developing countermeasures against them.
The lengthy Bloomberg report documented the known history of the Chinese espionage scheme, which took advantage of Supermicro’s reliance upon global supply chains to obtain chips for its motherboards at low prices.
“Supermicro is the perfect
illustration of how susceptible American companies are to potential
nefarious tampering of any products they choose to have manufactured in
China. It’s an example of the worst-case scenario if you don’t have
complete supervision over where your devices are manufactured,” former
FBI official Jay Tabb told Bloomberg.
“The Chinese government has been doing this for a long time, and companies need to be aware that China is doing this, and Silicon Valley in particular needs to quit pretending that this isn’t happening,” he added.
Most of Bloomberg’s other sources for the story were anonymous — over 50 sources in total, both government and private — and the reporters said they were able to back up many of the details they provided with corporate documentation.
Supermicro nevertheless dismissed the Bloomberg report as “a mishmash of disparate and inaccurate allegations” that “draws farfetched conclusions,” arguing government agencies would not continue to purchase Supermicro products if so many federal agencies were convinced China is manipulating the company’s motherboards to conduct espionage.
Bloomberg found quite a few government and private security experts who claimed the government investigated and monitored the presence of malicious chips on Supermicro boards for years. None of them seemed to think Supermicro itself was to blame for any of the malicious activity.
To put it simply, the espionage cases described in the Bloomberg report involve additional chips filled with spyware surreptitiously added to computer boards by Chinese suppliers. The malicious chips quietly transmit data from the compromised computers to servers in China.
Computers from several manufacturers have been compromised with these added chips but, according to Bloomberg’s sources, the Chinese cyber-espionage network was especially vigorous about sabotaging Supermicro boards. Some of the chip-based surveillance was superficial, mapping out network topographies and skimming superficial information instead of attempting to pilfer user data.
Early investigators who became aware of these tactics wondered if the spy chips could be setting networks up for more vigorous hacking expeditions later, or preparing them for sabotage in the event of a conflict between the U.S. and China. According to the report, U.S. intelligence officials decided to keep quiet about the discovery of the spy chips — which were extremely advanced and very difficult to detect — and continue monitoring them, to study their behavior and prepare defensive strategies.
Bloomberg has reported on chip-level spyware penetration in the past, but the new report indicates it was far more widespread than previously believed — the report chronicles dozens of incidents affecting thousands of computers, from 2008 to the present day.
A key point is that government agencies and private security agencies have responded in many different ways to the discovery of these Chinese spy chips, leading to highly variable policies and public statements. Some agency sources speak as if the penetration of Supermicro boards is an open secret within the cyberintelligence community; others insist there are no major security issues with Supermicro products and continue purchasing them for numerous purposes; still others buy computer systems with Supermicro components for some purposes, but restrict them from the most highly sensitive projects.
Some corporate customers say they have been warned about security flaws in certain Supermicro products, and from other companies that do business with Chinese suppliers, while others say they have never been made aware of any such issues. The list of public and private officials who refused to comment when contacted by Bloomberg reporters was as long as the list of sources who did provide information for the story.
If you see a barrel coming at you down some girders, what do you do? Well, I guess you have a lot of options. You could dodge to the side. You could pull out a machine gun and shoot it. You could call up the police and say, “Hey! A giant monkey is on the loose throwing barrels, and I am in mortal danger!” You have so many options that you might just freeze up and stand there as the barrel rolls over you and the giant monkey laughs and runs off with your girl.
Now let’s say that barrel is coming at you but you only have one option: jump. What are you going to do? You’re going to jump over that barrel and live.
And that’s why video games were much better when they only had one button. It was simple. You knew what to do. That button made you jump. Or in another game it made you shoot. What if you wanted to jump and shoot? Well, maybe you shouldn’t be so greedy. You don’t need to do everything in every game.
But today people don’t know that. They got their PS-Boxes with their controllers with eighty buttons on them. Holding that controller makes you feel like you’re at the controls of a space shuttle. What do you possibly need all those buttons for? You need a button to pull up your inventory? Inventory! If you want inventory, work at a warehouse (which I did, when I was eight). And you need another button to bring up a map? Is it really that important to know exactly where in the mushroom kingdom you are? You’re pathetic.
But me, I’m a simple man. I wear a hat. I destroy what I don’t understand. And I play good video games where you only have one button that does one thing. And while you’re just standing there sorting your potions, checking how far you are from the next dungeon, and picking which of your fifty weapons to use, I’m charging ahead, jumping over barrels, and I am going to kill that monkey.
But not by shooting him. That is not an option. I’m going to kill him somehow with jumping.
But today was the day the defense got to present their case to the Senate and to the public. And, as promised, they brought a helluva lot of receipts to the game.
Central to the Democrats’ case against Trump is that he “incited” the Capitol riots when he used words like “fight” and “fight like hell”, not just during his January 6th speech but over a period of two months after the election. They have used emotional videos of the Capitol building being stormed and manipulated videos of Trump speaking which leave out context – including where he talked of rally attendees marching “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol.
In their presentation today, Trump’s team argued that Democrats were not only hypocritical but were also setting a dangerous precedent in charging Trump with incitement simply because he used words like “fight” and “fight like hell.”
Those exact same words, lawyer David Schoen argued, have been used over and over by many Democrats, including some of the House impeachment managers and Senators in the chamber as well as Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, President Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris.
The 10 minute video the defense showed was absolutely brutal, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Schumer, Biden, and Harris took center stage in them. They also used a full two minutes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking about bringing “the fight” and not backing down:
“That’s ok,” Schoen stated at one point. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Fight “is a word people use,” he noted. “But please stop with the hypocrisy.”
Towards the end of the same compilation video, we saw Pelosi and Harris among other Democrats talking during various interviews last year about how the BLM/Antifa “uprisings” needed to continue, and their words were juxtaposed alongside clips of cities burning, businesses being looted and destroyed, federal courthouses being attacked, and retired police officer David Dorn’s brutal and senseless murder:
In a second video, Trump’s team argues that it’s rather curious that House impeachment managers were arguing it was “wrong” to call for questioning election result certifications considering how often Democrats had done it in prior elections where Republicans won the presidency, including when the House’s lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin objected to 10 of Florida’s electoral votes for Donald Trump in January 2017, just 3 days into his time in Congress:
There are legal arguments being made and political arguments being made during the trial by both sides. While the minds of the senators watching are likely to remain unchanged by any of it, it was imperative that the defense team show the American people the darker, much less “tolerant” side of Democrats that the mainstream media has desperately tried to keep hidden.
Why? Law professor Jonathan Turley broke it down earlier this week:
If this trial boils down to irresponsible political rhetoric, the public could find it difficult to distinguish between the accused, the “prosecutors” and the “jury.” That is the problem with a strategy that seems focused not on proving incitement of an insurrection but some ill-defined form of political negligence.
It’s kind of ironic in a delicious way that the Democrats’ own words are being used against them in an effort to expose the predictable sham nature of the impeachment proceedings they demanded. One almost gets a sense of déjà vu…
As we endure the political circus and charade of impeachment proceedings, does this reflect a great nation? The Book of Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman calling out in the streets offering counsel. Is anybody in D.C. listening? How did we get to this contemptible place?
In 2008, presidential candidate Obama promised to fundamentally transform America. Well, "mission accomplished." Perhaps I give the former president too much credit, as he didn't build that, but his philosophy and policies directed our culture onto a path such that now everything has become political. It's infected our education, science, businesses, and even health care system. Like attending a movie in 3-D, everyone uses a political lens in which to view the world. Sadly, it is to the destruction of us all. Politics is a zero-sum game of winners and losers — us versus them. If politics is our governing mindset and prevailing worldview, then we will never have unity. A divided house falls.
Previously, U.S. politics was subservient to America's two mottos: In God We Trust and E Pluribus Unum. We are a nation under God and out of the many, we are one people. This was the unifying thought and the pivot point from which the political pendulum swung. The approach to a solution was progressive, conservative, or some triangulated version of the two, but there was always an overriding unity of honoring God and a common love and attitude of self-sacrifice for country — the JFK mantra of ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.
The prevailing culture has now removed the unifying pillars of God and country, and the resultant instability and lack of wisdom have become readily apparent. Many have lamented for years the irrationality and adverse impact of political correctness. Well, wake up, because now it's the apex predator. Say something perceived to be politically incorrect, and you lose your job or fail to get hired. With politics as our raison d'être, Big Tech companies can ban you, politicians threaten to write laws to prosecute you, and even your friends or family members unfriend you. Even full compliance with their laws and ideology is insufficient because they'll investigate your past — what organizations did you support, what ideals did you endorse, what foolish joke did you tell when you were fifteen — sorry, we're pulling that college scholarship, canceling that book contract, or removing that recommendation for an award.
A more frivolous (yet sad) example of a politics-first value system is demonstrated by one person's quandary of how to dilute his gratefulness because a neighbor who graciously shoveled the snow from his driveway is a conservative. Another frets about her Super Bowl dilemma where one team's quarterback is...a Trump-supporter, while the other team supposedly brandishes a derogatory name.
Is this not foolishly void of wisdom? Does this reflect the values of our country and the culture we wish to have? Welcome to the idiocy of viewing life from a political lens.
At the beginning of this year, AT editor J.R. Dunn wrote an excellent article admonishing us to dust ourselves off and get back after the values and traditions of America that we cherish. This is no time to wallow in pity. America is in grave danger, and we should not underestimate the threat. Lady Liberty has stumbled, and without immediate selfless, wise, and focused effort by her people, she will fall.
Two initiatives are critical. The first addresses hearts and minds, and the second deals with processes and procedures. The composite goal is to elevate our perspective to a love of God, country, and fellow citizens and to confirm that our rules and regulations fully protect the voice of the people. If we don't do the latter to ensure freedom of speech and an accurate vote, then we have no Republic. If we don't do the former to raise our value system, then our Republic is not worth having.
The first initiative entails a focused effort to return to wisdom — to emphasize truth, justice, integrity, and charity and to stand up to the absurdity of cancel culture. The cancel culture battle will be a hard slog, but we must elevate the discourse and constantly speak the truth in love against all its injustice to reverse its course. The situation is dire. Make a stand.
The second initiative is more pragmatic and measurable. Our nation suffered an epic fail in our 2020 presidential election. As a fellow AT writer noted, election reform is the top agenda item for 2021. The problems exposed are systemic. Lax voting regulations were initiated (some unconstitutionally) in multiple states. Several secretaries of state lost control of ballot accountability, the state legislators failed to respond sufficiently or in a timely manner, the state governors did not address the seriousness of the matter, and the court system refused to hear the complaints presented by we the people. All three branches of governments at the state level failed miserably. Unfortunately, Congress did not provide a backstop for these errors and failed to act as well. We citizens elect our representatives and entrust them to safeguard and accurately count our vote. They all betrayed that responsibility.
There are a lot of facts and rumors of facts going around, but here are two truths:
1a. There is near 100% agreement that election fraud occurred in the 2020 election.
2a. There is disagreement whether this fraud actually flipped the results of the presidential election.
Here are the truths necessary for our nation to remain a viable Republic.
1b. There must be near 100% agreement that the 2020 election was accurately tabulated and reconciled.
2b. There must be near 100% confidence that sufficient safeguard procedures and processes are in place in all 50 states such that every future election will be extremely accurate, precisely counting only legal, legitimate votes.
The fact that 1a exists means that 2b must be implemented. The best, brightest, and most morally upright within our nation need to be deployed to develop an error and fraud-free election process in all 50 states — blockchain technology; watermarked and serialized ballots; voter ID validation; signature verification; voter machine integrity; and complete life-cycle ballot-tracking from the moment the ballot is issued or mailed until received, verified, counted, and then properly stored for audit purposes.
Additionally, a thorough, detailed, independent forensic audit of the election needs to be done in at least the seven contested states as these discoveries will assist in the development of a failsafe election process. This is critical to the stability of our Republic. This also will validate the election of our 46th* president and remove the asterisk (as roughly half the nation believes that it belongs there), or it may lead to one helluva constitutional crisis, but the most important issue will be resolved. We will know the truth.
If we sincerely profess the desire for unity and healing, then these are the logical next steps. We will be recognized by our fruits, our actions. If we fail in this endeavor, Lady Liberty falls, and she may never get back up.
