Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Ronna
2. Classified
3. Tesla
4. Asteroids
5. Arden
6. Tax
7. TikTok
8. Solar
1. Ronna. Incumbent RNC Chairman Ronna McDaniel was reelected Friday as Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) for her third term. The vote was 111 for her, 51 for Harmeet Dillon, 4 for Mike Lindell, and 1 for Lee Zeldin. McDaniel ran her campaign appealing to the 168 RNC voters rather than the people who put those voters into office. It was a secret ballot, and so far, nobody is talking. McDaniel claims success in increasing turnout in the 2022 election cycle, even though we lost a senate seat. From here, she has presided over three awful election cycles, 2018, 2020 and 2022. Now she gets to do the same thing in 2024. From a military perspective, this is a mistake. Where Republicans need a US Grant to fight the ongoing war, the RNC just reelected its McClellan, a general who lost the last three battles. My worst criticism of McDaniel and the RNC she is leading is its stupefying and complete lack of response to the election fraud machine democrats and their fellow travelers have constructed and are operating. If your response is to cover eyes, ears, and mouth while singing “la, la, la, la, la”, we’re not going to win many elections in the future.
2. Classified. Last week’s big news on the classified document front was the discovery of classified at former VP Pence’s residence. This precipitated the normal finger pointing endemic during the ongoing festivities. It was particularly rich, though as the two public figures who went in front of cameras decrying Trump’s lack of proper attention or concern to classified possession both end up with classified in their possession. I like that a lot. It tells me two things. First, everyone does it. And second, there is far too much classified floating around. Classification is normally applied to protect sources and methods, at least in the military and intel world. Today, classification is used more to protect the Deep State from embarrassment. From here, more embarrassment is better than less. One final note on the classified documents. Anyone else note that everyone involved, Trump, Biden and Pence are using lawyers to find and figure out how to deal with classified in their possession? This allows them to hide behind attorney – client privilege, keeping the information from reaching the public. It quit working for Trump when Attorney General Garland sent in the FBI and later appointed a special prosecutor, which allows him to shield all information from the newly minted Republican majority in the House. Remember, special councils starting with the Mueller investigation led by Andrew Weismann, exist only to make sure the public doesn’t know anything, essentially becoming instruments of the ongoing, government led coverup.
3. Tesla. You can be impressed with Elon Musk for a lot of reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is his visceral understanding of the importance of logistics. In space, he is using construction of a worldwide satellite internet network, Starlink, as a vehicle to learn how to launch, recover, and turn his launch fleet on a regular basis, something he needs to know how to do to go to Mars. That population is currently around 3,300 satellites, on its way to a constellation of 20,000 or so. He needs his launch fleet of Falcon 9s to populate that constellation. He will need a similarly operational fleet of Starships to first launch the larger satellites that will comprise most of the constellation. These fleets and the experience gained operating them will, at least in Musk’s opinion, pave the way to the moon, asteroids and Mars. In a similar fashion, Musk is creating the infrastructure to support his growing fleet of Tesla vehicles. Road and Track wrote about it last week in a piece entitled Elon Musk’s Biggest Coup Ain’t Rockets. There are several current problems with electric vehicles (EVs). First among these is the lack of places to recharge them and the mind-numbing time it takes to recharge. Rather than ignore the problem, Musk’s solution is construction of a supercharger network. Supercharger is a way to quickly charge a Tesla battery. Tesla is currently selling 1.3 million EVs yearly, increasing production capacity with construction of new factories, most recently one in Texas. The core technology of the supercharger basically stacks onboard vehicle chargers. Prototypes were tested in 2011. So far, there are over 35,000 Tesla superchargers deployed worldwide. Here in the US, most of them are in Cali, with over 300 operational, another 100 under construction. Other EV manufacturers wrestle with compatibility across multiple vehicle types, often poorly. Tesla’s Superchargers only work on Teslas. Musk’s plan is to build 20 million EV cars and trucks within 10 years. With Starlink, it did not appear that his original goal was to dominate worldwide internet. Like Starlink, his original goal with EVs may not have been to dominate global EV infrastructure or batteries, but it may be an outstanding collateral outcome.
4. Asteroids. Asteroids and comets are smaller solar system bodies. Some of them cross the orbit of the earth. Usually, the passage is benign. Occasionally, it is a collision between the two bodies. We have identified most of the larger crossing asteroids. The smaller ones, not so much. Perhaps half that population are expended comets. Pristine comets are a larger problem, as they enter the inner solar system from all angles rather than being confined to the plane of the ecliptic. They can be quite large, over 100 kilometers in diameter. We generally have some sort of extended warning with an asteroid, not so much with a comet. The current problem is with the smaller bodies, tens of meters to a few hundred meters in diameter. The larger they are, the larger the impact, leading to a growing interest in asteroid defense, changing their orbits slightly to fend off an impact. The DART experiment a couple months ago intentionally impacted a smallish asteroid to see if we could change its orbit. That part of the experiment was successful. In order to move a body with an impact, you need to know not only what it is composed of, but its structure. You can move a block with a bullet. You can’t do much shooting at a pile of gravel or sand. We are finding that rubble pile asteroids are not only far more common than we thought but destroying them may be all but impossible. The Japanese Hayabusa mission sampled the Itokawa rubble pile asteroid in 2010 and returned that sample to earth. It turns out the asteroid was surprisingly old at 4.2 billion years. Once rubble pile asteroids form, generally following a collision, they tend to persist, or at least this one did. The planetary defense people may end up recommending more extreme measures to deal with these than currently thought. Think of nuclear weapons in space.
5. Arden. One of the nastier authoritarian responses to COVID took place in New Zealand, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. She served as PM since 2017 and was facing reelection. She stepped down before October’s Parliamentary elections. She blamed her resignation on burnout, wanting to finally marry her fiancé. She ignored falling polls for Labor and her unpopularity. Arden is a committed socialist who used her time in office much like Justin Trudeau has done in Canada to was on her citizens. She started out with firearms ban in 2019 using a shooting at a Christchurch mosque as an excuse. When COVID hit, Arden imposed sweeping lockdowns, often with little public notice. Police were arresting citizens for “smuggling” KFC. She created a Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) system, banning all people from entering the country who were not in the system (which included a vax mandate). The system operated much like a lottery. Citizens eventually responded with nationwide protests which eventually ebbed as the lockdown regime melted away. Arden also did her level best to sidle up to the CCP, hanging neighboring Oz out to dry in its dispute with the CCP. She was replaced by the Kiwi minister who led her COVID response.
6. Tax. Cali democrats are their level best to bring Hotel California to reality, this time with a wealth tax on billionaires including those who have left the state. The tax is a standard democrat soak the rich bait and switch, applying to those with a worldwide net worth of $1.5 billion for the first two years. After two years, it will extend to those worth $50 million. Note that they are taxing worldwide assets rather than assets held in Cali. Today, Cali relies on the top 1% of taxpayers for roughly half of its income tax revenue. Under existing exit tax, businesses and individuals who leave Cali must pay a one-time tax to leave based on the value of business or individual assets. Those who have earned over $30 million will pay for years after leaving. Current exit tax is 0.4% on an individual’s new worth over $30 million in a tax year. This includes out of state assets other than real estate. So much for taxation without representation. Having inflicted the wealth tax on those who leave, Cali is going for the gold, taxing based on worldwide net worth.
7. TikTok. I predict that TikTok and fentanyl will become important issues next year, and the first party that can latch onto a solution will be in the driver’s seat, that is until the democrat election fraud machine kicks in to steal elections in 4-5 swing states (AZ, NV, WI, MI, PA). Both weapons come straight out of the CCP. Both are aimed straight at the west. And sadly, both are working. I have previously pointed out that fentanyl is a chemical munition that today kills upwards of 100,000 Americans / year. We have allowed ourselves to foolishly treat it as a drug problem with all the failed techniques used in the 40-year long War on Drugs. I suggest that we need to treat it as a chemical munition, and actively seek out and physically destroy those who manufacture it. This includes the Mexican cartels and the manufacturer who lives in mainland China. Treat the cartels with the same loving attention we gave ISIS. Given them an ultimatum followed by utter destruction. Treat the manufacturer identically, then send the CCP a bill for our time and expense in doing it. The CCP knows who he is, where he is, what he is doing, and is in full and complete support, as it fits in perfectly with their war by other means technique. I predict this will happen under the next president, if not sooner. TikTok is also a CCP superweapon, one we are having a problem coming to grips with. We are seeing some halting attempts at the state level to ban it. The Trump attempt to ban it was swatted away by a federal court. In order to figure out what TikTok does, think in terms of incapacitation. You can incapacitate by pleasure or pain. TikTok triggers dopamine spikes, making it the first pleasure weapon of mass destruction. It is also the most successful app in history, emerging out of China in 2017. The design of the app makes it unusually irresistible. TikTok videos are generally much shorter than YouTube videos, meaning the algorithm acquires training dada from the user at a much faster rate. The system is unsurpassed in figuring you out. And once it has figured you out, it then shows you what it needs to show you to addict you. Once the algorithm has your attention, it doubles down to feed your obsession, showing you hypnotic content over and over again. There is evidence such content can cause mass psychogenic illness, as healthy young girls who watch videos of Tourette’s sufferers develop Tourette’s type tics. A more common way is for TikTok to promote irrational behavior via “challenges.” That the feds have taken no strong position against something so intentionally destructive ought to be worrying to all of us. It also tells us who is in thrall of and beholden to their CCP masters.
8. Solar. What is the green nude eel if you can’t use it as a vehicle to pay off your supporters and punish your opposition? Latest example of this comes courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon which ran a story about Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s plan to expedite plans to build solar farms across tens of thousands of acres of untouched public lands in 11 western states. A 2017 Trump effort to open public lands for drilling was roundly blasted by all the Usual Suspects on the left and their mouthpieces in the media with breathless pieces about threatening millions of acres of grouse habitat (among other things). When the O’Bamaoids infesting Harris – Xiden want to expand an O’Bama era agreement on solar farms in six states, somehow nobody is concerned or even interested. BLM wants to relax the agreement’s restrictions and expand solar developments into additional states. Even the greens are upset with this, though so far quiet. There is a 105 km2 project in NV that has locals already up in arms. Coverage of this is yet another reminder of the media (and green) dichotomy of media coverage over public land use. When anyone wants to log, mine, drill, build pipelines or otherwise use public lands, all Hell generally breaks loose. When the use is for the publicly sainted rent seeking operation known as renewable energy (solar and wind) all is wonderful, even if the proposed use is much less environmentally friendly.
More later –
– AG