Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Truckers
2. Abrams
3. Majority
4. Vegan
5. Starship
6. Whoopie
7. Repair
8. BLM / Caucus
1. Truckers. The truckers protest in Canada continued last week, spreading to most of the western world, much to the dismay of the various governments. News and a few thoughts offered for your consideration:
- One of the reasons that the English-speaking nations have felt so empowered to inflict ugliness on their citizens during COVID is because all of them except the US have effectively disarmed their population. The US is the only outlier to this, although we had (and continue to have) our own problems with overreaching governments at all levels. Message here? Never, ever give up your firearms.
- We are in the part of the COVID festivities where we are clawing back our rights. Governments are very good at taking things away. They are terrible at giving those freedoms back. It is the job of the citizenry to do that. That process is underway much to the distress of governments involved.
- Blue state governors appear to have coordinated a dropping of various COVID mandates. The only thing lingering seems to be continuing child abuse via masking requirements in public schools. When you think about it, masking in public schools is even more outrageous. What do the kiddos (who aren’t completely cowed into submission) do when they leave school? They drop their masks and spend time in close proximity with their friends.
- A reminder to never, ever resist arrest comes last week with some ugliness by Ottawa police against a 78-year-old who resisted arrest. They, like the Capitol Police and Metro Police in DC on Jan 6 are itching for a chance to bust some heads. Don’t give them their opportunity.
- Ottawa police who confiscated diesel from parked trucks were ordered by a local judge to give the diesel back. They did so, though not without contaminating it with water. The mix was around 50-50% water and diesel. The truckers anticipated this and had a testing capability already in place.
- Dagny Intel had a couple posts on the protest from a Canadian perspective. These were social media-rich, with multiple Tweets. It appears to her that the protests are well planned, and most importantly planned with the goal of spending weeks on site. This sort of planning and execution requires some knowledge of logistics. That knowledge and execution normally comes with former military, who she believes is a large part of the protest. Military involvement also helps explain the measured response of the protesters to all manner of Canadian law enforcement provocation intended to trigger a response.
- Citizen Free Press this morning ran a story about RCMP sabotaging heavy equipment at Coutts. They permanently disabled three excavators. The Mounties certainly aren’t covering themselves with glory on this one.
- GiveSendGo was hacked over the weekend and names of donors to the protest were dumped online. As of this writing, the site is back up, though frozen to halt any further donations.
2. Abrams. The Stacy Abrams for Governor campaign took a hit last week with an extended trip by the candidate to Glennwood Elementary School during Black History month. Both the campaign and the school itself posted happy photos of Abrams hanging out with rooms full of fully masked and compliant kiddos. The backlash was swift and loud. Initial reaction out of the Abrams campaign was that any criticism of her was racist. The initial photo was tweeted by the school principal and retweeted by the campaign. Both quickly deleted the posts, though too late to stop the story from making the rounds. After initially calling critics racist, the campaign attempted to claim that her critics were using Black History Month for a “false political attack”, which is hilarious coming from a woman who has claimed for four solid years that election fraud and voter suppression stole the governorship from her in 2018, when she lost by 50,000 votes. By week’s end, more photos surfaced of her happily bouncing around masked and compliant kiddos for most of the school day. Did I mention that she is obese, one of the most important comorbidities for COVID? My prediction is that we are going to see a lot of these photos between now and Election Day in November. Abrams by her arrogance and cluelessness may just have given up her chance to be governor.
3. Majority. One of the things that happens when you have a 50-50 governing majority in the US Senate, is that all of your members need to be on board continuously, completely, and most importantly show up every time they need to be there. Senator BR Lujan, D, NM suffered a stroke early February that removed him from the Senate, at least for a little while. This has halted Majority Leader Schumer’s attempt to pass the Harris – Xiden agenda, at least for a little while. Over the weekend, he announced he would be back on the job in time to vote for a replacement for retiring Justice Breyer. He is only 49, and medical treatment for stroke continues to improve, so I do expect him to return. Unlike the House, where Pelosi currently holds a 4-seat majority, a split senate is a little trickier, as senators must be present to vote. Pelosi has installed a proxy voting system to retain her power.
4. Vegan. Remember the quaint little notion called separation of church and state, wielded like a political broadsword against Christians over the last half century? Well, Christianity is not the only religion out there. One example would be the various “-isms.” Environmentalism is one such example. So too, is veganism. And newly installed NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a committed vegan, is bringing his religious beliefs into the public schools, forcing a vegan menu on NYC public schools on Fridays. Adams is a recent convert, having lost a significant amount of weight on a vegan diet (hint: ALL diets work to take weight off. Keeping it off is another thing entirely). But like all True Believers on the political left, he is not a bit bashful about using the power of the State to enforce his religious beliefs on others, in this case public school children.
5. Starship. Elon Musk last Thursday gave a 90-minute-long presentation on the current status of Starship and what he expected to happen this year. It was about half presentation and half taking questions. The evening speech was on an outdoor stage with the stacked Starship in the background. Quite impressive visual. He also made news. SpaceX will make its first attempt to launch Starship to orbit sometime this year. Launch date is dependent on how successful the Department of the Interior is with their wanton obstruction, attempting to force SpaceX and the FAA into a full-up EIS prior to first flight. In that event, SpaceX will take Starship to Florida for testing. Musk is fully cognizant of the important of flight rate to be successful. In its current configuration, Starship is a two stage, fully reusable vehicle. The first stage will land at the launch site, eventually being turned to another flight in a matter of hours. They plan on being able to stack and launch several of these a day with the same first stage booster. In order to get the flight rate up, they are toying with the idea of using the system for long distance cargo. Of course, getting the second stage back from a destination will be an interesting logistics problem.
6. Whoopi. I generally stay a long way away from when the cancel culture starts eating its own. But Whoopi Goldberg’s suspension from The View merits some discussion, if for no other reason than to flag her fundamental racism. The stupid thing she did was make the claim that the Holocaust was not racial in nature. After being called on it, she doubled down. For that, she was suspended for a couple weeks. The problem is not the sheer ignorance of what the Nazis were all about (Aryan Master Race, among other things), but rather her view of race. In her world, and in the world of a lot on the political left, if whites do something to other whites for whatever reason, she simply doesn’t care, as it isn’t and CAN’T have a racial component. And by definition, it simply doesn’t matter. This allows the left to play their little game of lumping various groups together at their convenience when they want to manufacture new victim groups out of thin air. In her view, racism only happens when whites do something awful to blacks. Never in reverse. Never with other races involved. And never with members of other races committing ugliness on other people. This demonstrates the fundamental sickness and cluelessness of the political left.
7. Repair. As vehicles become more rolling computer systems and the world of the backyard mechanic fades into history, auto manufacturers and dealers have started installing roadblocks in the path of those of us who would rather maintain our own vehicles. This back and forth is referred to as the right to repair, generally with legislatures and voters on one side and vehicle manufacturers and dealers on the other. Today, the problem is exacerbated by the chip shortage, the subsequent shortage of new vehicles on the lots, and the (hopefully) temporary move of the revenue stream from the showroom floor to the repair shop. This story comes out of Massachusetts, where Kia and Subaru dealers are disabling auto start and maintenance systems in response to passage of a ballot initiative requiring manufacturers and dealers to make onboard data available to owners and third-party repair shops. This means that tire pressure warnings, oil change reminders, service reminders, and auto start have been disabled. Intentionally. Some of these feed data through an owner’s app, which has also been disabled. The ballot initiative was passed overwhelmingly. Dealers and manufacturers have consistently lost in state court. Their response is simply to turn things off, going to war against their customers. This isn’t going to end will for the dealers and manufacturers.
8. BLM / Caucus. From the race hustler world, it appears that BLM is dissolving in front of our eyes, as the founders disappear along with the cash they’ve managed to raise over the last couple years. It appears that it was entirely a scam from the beginning, a new org created by democrats as they are about to have their backsides handed to them in an election. Second race hustler story comes out of the newly seated Virginia Legislature, where the Virginia black caucus voted not to seat a black Republican legislator as a member. Limbaugh used to parody the NAACP as the NAA(L)CP, with the “L” meaning liberal. Today in Virginia, if you are Republican, you aren’t black, just like Joe Biden said a few years ago. Consistency, thy name is democrat.
More later –
- AG