Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Ambler
2. Probe
3. Secure Apps
4. CCP
5. Musk
6. Mitigation
7. Energy
1. Ambler. The Harris – Xiden War on Alaska continued a couple weeks ago with the suspension of the right of way decision on the Ambler Road, a paved road west out of Fairbanks into the mining district south of the Brooks Range. The decision was both hailed and panned depending on which side of the argument you are on. The Department of the Interior asked a federal court to send the right of way decision back to the agencies to address what they called deep legal flaws in the environmental impact analysis of impacts to subsistence and cultural resources. The agency wants to leave existing right of way permits in place while addressing the legal errors. Green opposition to the new road has settled on negative impact to local tribal culture and subsistence as their excuse to not build the road. And it is these excuses that made it to federal court. Typically, Alaska Natives in the Bush strongly oppose everything until they get their payoff. And all excuses are typically used in the argument. Depending on who you listen to up here, it was either a great decision or a tragic one. The greens celebrated the decision but warned that it still allowed existing permits to continue to ride and was not an outright cancellation. Those of us on the political right viewed it as the first step in cancelling the project, not unlike what Interior did to ANWR and NPR-A oil and natural gas leases under this president and secretary. The process for the Ambler Road started in 2010 and has been opposed since the beginning by local tribes and greens. Whether Interior completes the Environmental Impact Statements it claims are flawed is irrelevant, as they can now put off any action as long as they want pending election of the next Republican administration or veto-proof Republican majority in both houses of congress. Here’s where it gets a bit funky, as the Alaska congressional delegation blasted the decision, condemning it as an attack on mineral security. This is the same congressional delegation, two of whom are up for reelection in November (Murkowski and Young) that has paraded around, doing their best Snoopy Dance, celebrating passage of the Infrastructure Bill as a great thing for Alaska. Apparently actual roads are not viewed as infrastructure by the clowns in the Biden Department of the Interior or the greens they collaborate with. Worse, the entire delegation has been celebrating nomination and confirmation of Deb Haaland, former congress critter from NM as Interior Secretary. Haaland was strongly supported by Alaska Natives because she was both a native and a woman, yet another Biden affirmative action hire. The entire delegation is now having to defend that support, which is going to make this a most interesting election campaign year.
2. Probe. The NY investigation into Trump business fell apart a couple weeks ago with the resignation of two prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney office. This was the investigation started at the last minute by former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance into the Trump Organization and its business dealings as a vehicle to get him into criminal court, getting even at the state level for things congress and the Deep State were unable to touch him for. There is also an ongoing civil investigation. This was the prosecution team that managed to get Trump’s income tax records released for their use and subsequent leaking to the NY Times. One of the hoped-for outcomes from the investigation was to ensure Trump would not be able to run for anything ever again, stop cocking any future political plans. Vance was replaced by a new DA named Bragg, who expressed public doubt that there was enough information available to indict or even charge the Trump Organization with anything. One of the roadblocks they came up against was Trump’s refusal to use e-mail. The resignations followed a particularly harsh meeting between the prosecutors and the presiding judge on the investigation. The two prosecutors were only the most recent to resign, with another three quitting late last year citing large gaps in the evidence.
3. Secure Apps. Interesting observation from Scott Adams regarding secure applications: they aren’t. Worse, they lull you to sleep with promises of totally secure operations and data transfer. Note to self: There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. A. Secure. Civilian. Application. They are all capable of being hacked, including the military ones. Those with the ability to hack the applications have the ability to record and disseminate everything on them, not unlike what the Canadian government’s hired hacker did to donors to the trucker protest. And that guy was only a contractor, not a full-time government employee at a classified agency. Similarly, any subscriber to newly launched Truth Media will also be targeted by corruptocrats in Do(In)J, and any (or all) of the intel agencies supporting Harris – Xiden. You have been warned.
4. CCP. In yet another reminder that the Chinese under the CCP are singularly unable to create anything new or useful, we have a 3-week-old presentation by Chinese rocket scientists at the International Symposium on Outlook and Cooperation on Near-Earth Orbit Human Space Flight, Feb 17, of a 2-stage vehicle that looks suspiciously like Elon Musk’s Starship. One of the differences is that Starship is sized to put 100 tons into orbit, around the mass of the shuttle orbiter, while the CCP knockoff is aiming at 20 tons. Both are fully reusable, and both use methane – liquid oxygen in the first stage. One of the things the CCP doesn’t have their hot little hands on yet are the Raptor engines upon which the whole enterprise is based. Raptors are so complex they are even giving Musk’s SpaceX team some difficulty and will take some time to perfect. I do expect the CCP is doing its level best to steal as much information from SpaceX as possible.
5. Musk. It appears that Elon Musk is the new Donald Trump, at least to the corruptocrats infesting the regulatory agencies. Most recent example is a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into stock sales by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk claiming they violated insider trading rules. Remember that Musk’s stock sales were aimed at generating sufficient on hand cash to pay a humongous federal tax bill. The sale and tax bill also publicly embarrassed Elizabeth Warren (D, MA). And nobody but nobody is allowed to embarrass any sitting democrat. Appears that the excuse the SEC is using was a snide Musk tweet the day before the sale asking his Twitter followers if he should offload 10% of his holdings. The tweet was an editorial comment on congressional democrat plans to tax unrealized capital gains (the return of Hillary’s imputed income of the early 1990s). Tesla has been increasingly vocal with claims that the SEC is out to get it and its CEO (Musk). This dates back as far as a 2018 lawsuit which SEC regulators accused Musk of misleading investors with a tweet that said he would take the company private and had the resources to do so. The question for this investigation is whether Musk told his brother of his plans before the tweet in question. The SEC seems to be perpetually annoyed with Musk’s social media presence, especially when he shares something before running it by his lawyers. The same lawyers have been accusing the SEC of launching serial investigations into Tesla and leaking sensitive information that was supposed to be private to friendly media. If Musk playing fast and loose with social media? Probably. But the SEC is playing favorites and using the media to hammer their targets.
6. Mitigation. As we approach the finger-pointing stage of the COVID Wars, I expect to see more pieces like Brian McGlinchey posted in Stark Realities a few weeks ago. The piece entitled Public Health Erred on the Side of Catastrophe is a pretty good opening bid into the who did what to whom and how well did it work discussion analyzing the response to COVID. Essentially all the coercive government interventions are framed and in turn defended as “erring on the side of caution.” From a persuasion standpoint, this is brilliant framing, as it completely shut down public debate (with the aid of Big Tech and the media), diverting attention from unintended consequences, and protecting the public health establishment pushing the actions from accountability. In short “erring on the side of caution” ends up being a sort of mass hypnosis persuasion on the general public. The claims that there would be little harm in shutting down businesses for months at a time, knowingly forcing millions into unemployment, halting in-person attendance at schools and college, ordering mass masking, and denying people the ability to socialize, recreate and enjoy living ending up being wildly wrong. It also cultivated an atmosphere if intolerance to anyone who questioned the interventions and predicted any harm from them. Any dissenting view was called misinformation rather than differences in priorities, cost-benefit analysis, or simple disagreement. In doing this, the elites drove out scientific research that might have separated valuable interventions from less valuable or even harmful ones. Public health erred on the side of a mental health crisis, a juvenile suicide crisis, increased drug overdoses, increased auto fatalities, increased domestic violence, support of riots and looting, confining people where the virus could be best transmitted, obesity, against fresh air, vitamin D. Finally, the erred on the side of things that severely damaged child development. The damage to children due to masking will take years to figure out, but early signs are very, very bad. Public health has done terminal damage to its credibility. And we are about to do something about it.
7. Energy. Yesterday, I paid $4.20/gallon for gasoline at our local Costco. Price of gasoline up here has more than doubled in the last 14 months. The more I put into the vehicles, the madder I get. I expect I’m not the only one. As this continues, I am rapidly coming to a couple conclusions. The first is that the policies leading us down the primrose path to renewables and so-called clan energy will be rolled back. And that rollback will be sooner rather than later. The second is that the US will return to energy independence, also sooner rather than later. The Harris – Xiden approach of going hat in hand to Russia, Iran and Venezuela begging for them to sell us more fuel will not last all that long. There is an election in 8 months, one that has the potential to flip both houses of congress. Folks get sufficiently angry, and that flip gets large enough, we might be able to roll it back with or without the support or agreement of the WH. Note that it only took 14 months to more than double the price of gasoline, the largest component of the ongoing inflation. WH intransigence, refusal to even consider rolling back its war on energy will not last long. Energy independence was easy to break. It will also be easy to fix. Biden broke it with his Executive Orders and his cabinet nominees (Haaland, Buttigieg, and Granholm being three particularly bad actors). Undo all that and get the drills going again. They are starting due to the high prices, but still face stiff opposition from the Biden WH. The other thing the spike in energy costs is going to do is gut the environmental movement, especially as they are tied to Russian funding and have been since at least 2017 (very likely decades before). When it becomes apparent that greens are little more than shills for Putin and their actions are funding his war machine, it will be far more difficult for them to do the damage they have done so far. Here in Alaska, we have Lisa Murkowski and Don Young up for reelection. Both strongly supported Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a known Green New Deal supporter. Murkowski has been making excuses for Haaland’s perfidy. Her refusal to take positive action is going to cost her a US Senate seat.
More later –
- AG