We’ll start this edition of Five Quick Things with some theme music, and a fervent hope that theme music might become a permanent feature of future installments.
But not a commitment — because who knows whether this will work out.
Anyway…
What’s an eminence front? Well, according to Pete Townshend, who coined the phrase when he wrote the song, it has to do with the pretentious nature of the cocaine dealers in early-1980s Miami.
But more generally, as the lyrics note, “it’s a put-on.”
And we are surrounded by those where our weaponized federal government is involved. To wit…
What gave me the idea for this installment’s theme was last week’s little spectacle of a “march on Washington” by something called the Patriot Front. Did you see this?
https://twitter.com/Mellecon/status/1657471072365604865
Are they feds? Well, Donald Trump Jr. certainly seems to think so…
“Those guys all looked like my secret service detail”
Donald Trump Jr. calls bullshit on the Patriot Front Rally on @Timcast pic.twitter.com/UqyjeQEWzf
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) May 18, 2023
And Joe Rogan certainly thinks so, too…
Joe Rogan rips the feds for staging a Patriot Front march#FBI #DOJ pic.twitter.com/6afpa1TBSL
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) May 15, 2023
Then there was this…
A fed gets recognized and called out at their staged Patriot Front march #FBI #DOJ pic.twitter.com/vk9JEAQesK
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) May 15, 2023
It’s a patriot front. It’s a patriot front. It’s a put-on.
Let’s be honest here. Don’t you think it’s just a little bit convenient that Joe Biden is giving a commencement speech at Howard University, which is of course in Washington, and these guys show up with a massive police escort to tromp around Washington only a couple of days earlier, lending a news hook to Biden trotting out his “white supremacists are the real terror threat” line?
They’ve got so much invested in this. It’s literally been the Democrat Party’s only calling card. And now you have these Eminence Patriot Front people.
Who record themselves doing stuff like this…
I am not sure who is uploading this Patriot Front outtakes, but bless you. Haven't laughed this hard in a long time pic.twitter.com/bF3wny0Gih
— AskAubry 🦝 (@ask_aubry) May 17, 2023
And this…
https://twitter.com/PhilipReichert/status/1658267493981405185
Which actually reminded me of this…
All of this is so laughable that it’s easy to forget how insidious it is.
And why would we assume the Patriot Front is a fedsurrection? Well, there’s the clear, yet perhaps indeterminate, role that federal law enforcement and/or the intelligence community played on Jan. 6.
With that and with the “plot” to kidnap Gov. Whitmer in Michigan, which was a fed entrapmentpalooza in its own right, how can anyone not smell them coming?
On Thursday, there was an FBI whistleblower named Garret O’Boyle who testified at the House’s committee hearings on weaponization of the federal government, and his words were pretty chilling…
Powerful Ending To @Weaponization Committee Hearing With FBI Whistleblowers
FBI Special Agent Garret O'Boyle: "The FBI will crush you. This Government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong. And we are all… pic.twitter.com/wivVJQ3cRw
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 18, 2023
One of the members participating in that hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson, pretty well summed up where we are, and then got a little more from O’Boyle…
People forget, forget they’re hiding…
Then there was the story of Elise Ketch, who is a rare bird indeed — she’s a “progessive” pro-life activist. Bet you didn’t know those even exist. But the FBI does, and in fact Elise Ketch is on their radar.
Somewhat. They don’t know where she lives. They just know where she grew up. So two FBI agents, who come off like a pair of Chi Omegas hired so recently they haven’t even received business cards, knocked on Ketch’s mother’s door asking about her — and the whole thing got captured on a Ring camera…
NEW: FBI agents Ashley Roberts and Kathleen Brown showed up at the childhood home of pro-life activist Elise Ketch. The agents asked to speak with Ketch, who is a member of @PAAUNOW.
Here's the Ring security camera footage, first obtained by @Dailysignal: pic.twitter.com/QoY2HL9ytA
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 17, 2023
It got even better…
Elise's mom called her, the footage shows.
"I have two FBI agents at the door."
"FBI agents?? Mom, don't tell them anything." pic.twitter.com/6MfPPbbveC
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 17, 2023
Besides the fact that this is some of the most unprofessional-looking law enforcement conduct imaginable — how do you not have a business card? — it’s pretty disgusting to think that the FBI is now going to harass the parents of anti-abortion protesters.
Elise Ketch got arrested for an anti-abortion protest in March. It is what it is. But what’s the purpose of bothering her mother?
This is not one of the worst abuses we’ve seen. But it’s noteworthy that the blonde woman in the video, Ashley Roberts, seems to visit the front doors of lots of people.
Amazing. FBI Special Agents Ashley Roberts and Brian Costella of @FBIWFO CT-4 continue to harass my friend/FBI whistleblower AND his wife at their home and on the phone. They are assigned to “domestic terrorism” and bothering a retired and 100% disabled vet who was suspended. pic.twitter.com/DLPg1YdCrS
— Kyle Seraphin (@KyleSeraphin) November 9, 2022
I wasn’t aware that you can’t take the picture of an FBI agent or his or her badge. That’s news, perhaps.
Mrs. Ketch didn’t do a terrible job with those agents, but going forward the rule seems to be three-fold:
I had an interaction with the FBI years ago because of a satirical post I wrote at the Hayride dealing with something stupid former Democrat Rep. Gary Ackerman, he of the signature effeminate boutonniere lapel decor and nonstop leftist drivel, wrote in a fundraising email. At the time, Ackerman’s Republican colleague Jeff Landry had begun what turned into an annual event, namely a real live alligator hunt based out of his fishing camp deep in the Louisiana bayous. Ackerman suggested that those who care about animals should donate to him instead and therefore could save the precious alligators.
The joke was that Landry ought to stage a hunt for obnoxious douchey politicians with boutonnieres on their lapels instead, and for that I got a visit from a pair of FBI agents who were a lot more apologetic than threatening. That interview was held on the porch and it was very short — the post was a joke, any reasonable reader would immediately identify it as such, and Gary Ackerman and his pinhead staffers could go and sit on a snake at their leisure — but the message was delivered.
And rejected.
Are there good FBI agents still? Of course there are. But that agency is in dire need of destruction. It’s the best example of an eminence front we have.
Speaking of put-ons, we should give a shout-out to the shaggy-haired prevaricator Sherrod Brown for his asinine warblings on MSNBC:
On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “All In,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) argued that House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — who is the only leader in Congress to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling — is the only leader in Congress who hasn’t ruled out a default, and “We pay our bills. McCarthy’s got to do that, got to move on this.” Brown also stated that he doesn’t “reject” using the 14th Amendment to bypass Congress on raising the debt limit.
Brown said, “Schumer and McConnell and the Democratic leader in the House all took default off the table. McCarthy won’t. He’s controlled by — look at it this way Chris, Speaker McCarthy went to New York, went to Wall Street, maybe three weeks ago. He got his marching orders, his corporate wish list, and that’s what he’s operating under. He has no control of his right-wing extremist caucus, and we’ve got to keep the pressure on. And you do that, in part — and we’ve all talked about this on the Democratic side — you do that, in part, by showing what these cuts will mean, what his budget cuts would mean, or what default would mean. The budget cuts [mean] cuts to pensions, cuts to veteran’s benefits, cuts to Meals on Wheels. And default would obviously be something even worse. As Biden said, we’re not a deadbeat nation. We pay our bills. McCarthy’s got to do that, got to move on this. And let’s figure out all the budget discussion.”
Everything about these people reflects a contempt for the American people so basic, so deep, and so fervent that you really can’t pretend it’s just politics.
Chuck Schumer hasn’t taken default off the table at all. None of the Democrats have. They’d have passed a debt limit bill in the Senate if they had. As the Breitbart piece noted, Kevin McCarthy is the guy who actually did his job and passed a debt limit increase. They just don’t like the one he passed because it cuts the federal budget and makes it less necessary in the future to borrow ever-increasing sums of money.
But the solution to that is taking the House bill, stripping out the cuts the Senate doesn’t like, passing the amended version, and taking the whole thing to a conference committee where some sort of compromise is hammered out.
That’s ninth-grade civics. Most Americans understand this. What’s more, more Americans are on McCarthy’s side than Brown, Schumer, and Biden’s. When your position is only shared by 27 percent of the folks, it’s not a hill to die on.
Unless you hate the other side so badly you’re happy to die on that hill so long as you can kill as many of them as possible on your way off this planet.
Is that Sherrod Brown’s position? Or is he just another liar who’ll say anything he’s told?
Have you heard about this?
BREAKING – Steven Spainhouer claimed he tried saving lives & performing cpr, even moving a deceased body off a live child
The Allen Police department said this is all not true#allen #allenoutlet #AllenPremiumOutlets #allentexas #breaking #news #breakingnews pic.twitter.com/AzloWJSacd
— Crime With Bobby (@crimewithbobby) May 14, 2023
Who would run to the cameras to brag about all the aid they rendered to victims of a mass shooting when they didn’t actually do it? How is that going to end well?
And then we find out this, and it begins to make sense…
It’s an eminence front — It’s a put on
It’s a put on
It’s a put on
It’s a put on
