Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
1. Stolen
2. TSA
3. DeSantis
4. Starship
5. Keystone
6. Mayor
7. Homicide
1. Stolen. Two stories last week indicating the 2020 presidential election was stolen hit last week.
- The first was a 2+00 Mike Lindell video that walked through the IT analysis of the election. They claim to have all the logs and have done the analysis. Their conclusion is that foreign interference primarily from China flipped what would have been an 80-81 million Trump to 64 million Biden vote to the currently reported 81 million Biden, 74 million Trump. He ends the video asking the SCOTUS to do something about the theft, something I believe is wrong. This will take place in the state and federal lower courts systems, and as long as the IT experts (black, grey and white hatted hackers) have the logs from the machines, they will build a slam-dunk case proving hacking in state after state after state. When there are too many states with court rulings to ignore, the SCOTUS will get themselves involved, and not a nanosecond earlier. This video is why Lindell is being banned from the world by Big Tech.
- The second was a smarmy piece in Time entitled The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. This celebrated the election fraud done by democrats, justifying every step. Only they didn’t call it fraud, they called it “fortifying” the election. They are so proud of themselves they can’t help but run their mouths, so I expect to see a lot more of this as the weeks and months pass. This will put the participants at risk as the information and names they provide in these pieces will be used in state court over the years to come.
Now do I think it is one or the other? I happen to think it is both, but Trump’s landslide was so big that even the democrat fraud would have been unable to flip the states necessary to defeat him. The ChiCom computer hacking was absolutely necessary to move the 16 – 17 million votes to defeat him. We’re going to hear a lot more about this as the weeks and months pass.
2. TSA. Looks like the Xiden Regime is going to use the TSA to enforce their masking mandate on all travelers. The TSA web site has a press release dated Jan 31 stating that it will have a civil fine structure ranging from $250 – $1,500 repeat offenders. These are civil fines applied to all travelers at TSA airport screening checkpoints and throughout the commercial and public transportation systems. The fines will be in place through May 11. The announced enforcement brings up several questions suggested by a Valued Correspondent. For instance: How can a federal agency impose civil fines that have not been approved by Congress? How can a federal agency require the use of a medical device for every traveler without having a medical license? Normally, practicing medicine without a license is a federal felony. Maybe they think nobody is going to question their perfidy. I think they’re going to be wrong.
3. DeSantis. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican majority in the state legislature are crafting legislation aimed at penalizing Big Tech for taking actions against Florida citizens for their political views. The legislation will protect privacy rights and penalize shadowbanning, algorithm manipulation, and anti-conservative bias. The proposal includes a $100k/day fine for any Big Tech company that decides to deplatform a candidate running for office in Florida during any future election cycle. It will also include transparency requirements. The legislation is not only aimed at political machinations of Big Tech. It also includes penalties for widespread Big Tech for censorship seen during the COVID-19 festivities. DeSantis has been pretty good for Florida. Expect him and his legislature to lead the way for states to go after Big Tech hammer and tong over the next few years.
4. Starship. Yet another test flight of Starship, this one with prototype SN9. While the flight was once again successful, the launch, flight to 12 km altitude, sequential shutdown of rocket engines, pushover to fly for a bit on the fins, relight of engines while returning to vertical, the landing was not successful, resulting in a fireball. The last time they tried this with SL8, there was insufficient pressure in the fuel tank to power the engines to the necessary thrust level. No analysis available as yet, but it looked like the engines lit a bit late and the vehicle was going too fast when it hit the pad. When it was launched, there was another prototype on the neighboring pad, the SN10. There was a bit of reporting that greens managed to get the FAA, which permits these tests, to cancel the test on Feb 1. Local greens oppose the tests at Boca Chica in Texas because they claim that it will threaten beach wildlife. Apparently, they forgot (or don’t care) about Wallops Island, Cape Canaveral, Vandenburg, Barking Sands, and Kodiak, all US government and commercial launch sites right on the water. They weren’t all that successful, as the test was done the following day. It appears that the flight of SN8 took place despite a last-minute cancellation by the FAA in December and the FAA was reminding SpaceX who was really in charge. This is real progress and SpaceX should be congratulated on it. Looks like landing will take a little while to figure out like it did for the Falcon 9 first stage.
5. Keystone. The Daily Signal ran a piece last week describing another possible legal challenge to Xiden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. As of this writing, the expected lawsuits at the state and local levels aimed at the cancellation have not started to hit federal court. I expect a lot of them. Note that most of the material for the pipeline was already purchased and only had to be assembled, buried and tested to put the project online. The new vehicle chains off a Chief Justice John Roberts authored opinion last year that found that President Trump could not use an Executive Order (EO) to overturn an illegal action that O’Bama put into place via EO, the DACA program. Roberts and the liberals on the court in a 5-4 majority found that O’Bama’s DACA created an expectation among people of the country. And to scrap DACA, Trump would have had to go through the formal administrative procedure. This particular legal theory is called a “reliance interest” in the policy by Roberts himself. With this in mind, both the states and the companies involved have a reliance interest, essentially creating rights, in this case the right to build the pipeline, that could not be removed without going through a formal procedure to undo. The majority also noted that some DACA recipients enrolled in degree programs, purchased homes, opened businesses. This crossed the line from an emotional appeal to a legal argument because those persons took those actions in reliance on government policy. Likewise, the Xiden EO cancelling the pipeline did not consider reliance interests of the contractors, their employees, or the Canadian government when cancelling the pipeline. It did not provide a stated purpose for the EO. While you could say the EO was intended to reduce CO2 emissions, you produce far more CO2 transporting the oil via truck or train. It will be wonderful to see this case get to the SCOTUS using the identical logic that Roberts and the liberals on the Court used to block Trump from cancelling DACA. It will be nice to see the Keystone XL interests using Alinsky’s Rule 4 “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” against both Xiden and the SCOTUS liberals + Roberts.
6. Mayor. We are in the early stages of the race for Anchorage Mayor. The mail-in election culminates in early April. As of this writing, there are 14 candidates. The four primary candidates are three conservatives of various flavors, and the designated lefty. There is a fifth center left candidate that was Municipal Manager under the former mayor who does not yet have a lot of traction. The political situation here in Anchorage (ANC) has been great success by the public employee unions installing a 2-term mayor and a veto-proof leftist majority on the Assembly. Their actions over the last year on the Wuhan Flu, masking, homelessness, and even simple conduct of meetings over the time has triggered significant pushback by an enraged citizenry. There is at least one recall that will be on the ballot, with another 4-5 in the early stages of the process. The Municipal Clerk who works for the Assembly and the Municipal Attorney who works for the Mayor have been slow rolling the recall petitions with everything they are worth. Early handicapping of the race has the conservative candidates doing what they always do, splitting the vote and allowing the liberal (who is also an Assembly member) to slither thru to a win. Final point is that the election will be by mail-in ballots, a change the public employee unions made to cement their majority in stone. So far, initial fundraising has one of the conservatives and the liberal tied with around $200k apiece. Most of the conservative dollars are from locals. Most of the liberal money is from out of state (as usual). The other problem is that we really don’t have a good handle on what the ANC electorate is these days, as Biden actually picked up votes over Trump in the 2020 election when compared to 2016. The reason for this is likely the $80 million dumped into the state, mostly by democrats last year, to elect a democrat US Senator, Congress critter, pass a couple statewide ballot initiatives, and a few turnkey legislative campaigns. Most of the money was spent rattling the bushes for absentee ballots by democrat and undeclared voters. These split roughly 60-40% democrat in November. So far, I’ve noticed a couple things that may or may not be of interest.
- ANC voters may be in the process of rejecting ideological flags. Among the leading candidates, one conservative has taken up the hard right flag, another conservative has picked up the hard moderate flag, and the liberal has the liberal flag. But the conservative who seems to be polling reasonably well is running as a simple businessman who wants to put the city back together again. This is essentially the way that Trump ran, who was among the least ideological president in my lifetime.
- Two of the conservatives were on one of the local talk shows Monday morning holding an impromptu debate. It was pretty ugly, but useful. The hard right guy was demanding Muni Emergency Orders be ignored. The businessman replied that you simply can’t ignore that sort of stuff because its legal. Both of them were mistaken, though happily neither had the persuasion skills to bring the listening audience along with them. The hard right guy was unable to articulate why the Wuhan Flu EOs should be ignored or how to roll them back. The businessman looked at the problem like a businessman would, that businesses need to follow the law. Either could have pointed out that the current governing chaos here in ANC is based entirely in the loss of consent of the governed, with the Assembly and Mayor increasingly using a “Shut Up, he explained” response to any questions or criticism of their actions. You can’t get from here to there unless you bring the general public along with you. Neither did. We will see who figures it out first.
7. Homicide. The Volokh Conspiracy, a center left legal blog ran a piece last week entitled Explaining the Great 2020 Homicide Spike. Last year, homicide rates nationwide were 30% higher than they were in 2019. This represents around 1,270 additional murders in 34 cities. The previous largest single-year increase in the US was nearly 13% in 1968, another year with widespread protests, looting, and burning of cities. The conclusion of the writer is that the increase is entirely due to a decline in proactive policing. Huge increases were observed in many of the largest cities. NY was up 43%; Chicago up 55%, LA up 37%, Phoenix up 46%, Milwaukee up 85%, and Seattle up 63%. The three largest cities, NY, LA and Chicago accounted for 40% of the 1,270 additional people murdered in 2020. Clearly there are very real costs in human life when local democrat politicians go after local law enforcement.
More later –
- AG