Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Balloon
2. Principal
3. Pebble
4. Hamilton 68
5. Phillips
6. Whales
1. Balloon. Hot topic last week was the discovery of a CCP balloon some 60 – 65,000’ over Alaska, Canada and the continental US (CONUS). The balloon entered US airspace Jan 28 over the Aleutians. It entered Canadian airspace Jan 30 and spent a day before entering US airspace over MT Jan 31. Note that the jet stream is strong and fast this time of year. Weather over Alaska and Canada was fairly poor, so the first eyeball sighting was over MT, with a photo in a local paper. The story ramped up nicely for the following week as the balloon transited the CONUS with calls for an intercept and shootdown. It was shot down off Myrtle Beach Saturday. Recovery is currently underway.
- The story broke down predictably with all the Biden apologists apologizing for his incompetence and the right demanding an immediate shootdown. This lasted for the entire week. From the perspective of those of us on the right, it looked like a 3 – 4-way combination of typical democrat pusillanimity on the use of military force, the Biden crime family being careful with their benefactors in the CCP, the incompetent woke leadership at DoD these days, or good old-fashioned Alzheimer’s from an 81-year-old trying to do a job he is no longer capable of doing. Pick one or all. As usual, your mileage may vary.
- Here in Alaska, the first question is where was NORAD in all of this? NORAD still has a continental air defense mission. It includes the Canadians. And it had four whole days to respond. We have fighters on alert up here, fully armed, that regularly intercept Russian jets visiting. We hear about it all the time in local media. Local media and the military were completely silent on this, telling me that they were told to stand down. Why were told to stand down? Alternately, why did they not respond?
- Let’s assume that DoD and the intel community intentionally decided to allow the balloon to transit the continent. Why would they do such a thing? Here are four possible reasons.
- 1. To take a close look at how the CCP control the flight and mission of the balloon, get data into and out of it, likely satellite relay. Essentially gather ELINT.
- 2. Not embarrass the CCP before Blinken’s trip which was ultimately cancelled.
- 3. See is we can hack it and enter the CCP C3I system.
- 4. Give the CCP something interesting to see and report home about.
- Three of those four were all things we would have done during the Cold War with the Soviets. Against our good friends (/sarc) the CCP, not so much.
- The fact that the CCP actually acknowledged that it was their balloon tells me that it was their balloon. The anonymous leaks out of DoD claiming a couple balloon made transit of TX and FL during the Trump years tells me that this is military incompetence by the wokesters now in charge. There is now a balloon somewhere over Latin America. There is a third perhaps staging for another incursion.
- Finally, while this might have been a mistake or incompetence by the CCP, they did manage to turn it into a test of our C3I system and Command Authority. I wonder if we passed?
2. Principal. The current principal of Colony High School in the MatSu and 2022 Alaska Principal of the Year was arrested Jan 18, taken to MatSu Regional Medical Center for a 72-hour mandatory psych eval. While there, she was strapped down and injected with psychotropic drugs without her consent and without a court order to do so. She has since laywered up and the lawyers are doing all the subsequent talking. All in all, a pretty ugly affair. Yet it gets a lot uglier when you look at the timeline. Mid-month, she had a religious conversion, an old-fashioned evangelic conversion. While she did not get to the level of snake handling (not a lot of snakes in Alaska), she did get into speaking in tongues and posted it all on FaceBook. Her two adult children did not take this well. They tried to visit and advise her on the error of her newfound ways. She refused to allow them into the house saying they were not invited. The son called the State Troopers and demanded a wellness check, which was done politely. The trooper found her to be in good health and of sound mind. pronounced her normal and then left. Not good enough for the daughter who faked a court order for her mother to be taken for a psych eval. It was the fake court order the troopers used as the excuse to arrest her and take her to the hospital. As the story came out in Must Read Alaska ran three pieces on it. As the story hit local media, the bureaucracy sprang into action. First up was the Alaska Courts which immediately denied they had issued any such order. This hung the State Troopers out to dry, who mostly kept quiet. I predict someone, or perhaps several someones to write a large caliber check(s) in the not-so-distant future. If this can happen to one of the local Good Guys, it can happen to any of us.
3. Pebble. The Biden regime put its latest wooden stake in the heart of the Pebble Mine here in Alaska. Vehicle for the disapproval was a preemptive determination under the Clean Water Act that building the mine would have an unacceptable negative impact on salmon runs in the Bristol Bay region. A preemptive action under the Clean Water Act has never been done before. If this stands, expect the technique to be used to shut down resource development (planned and present) nationwide. The action comes at the same time the Biden regime and renewable energy fans are demanding renewable energy and electric vehicles nationwide. Pebble, as one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, would have ended up being an incredible rare earth mine. Essentially, the Biden regime is telling us to go renewables and electric, but not allowing the US to mine anything necessary stateside. Our Good Friends in the CCP will be happy to sell us the necessary rare earths. I’m serial (/sarc). Politics of this here in Alaska is interesting, as Pebble has been at the heart of a contentious debate for over 30 years. Opposition is typical green claptrap, though sadly the entire congressional delegation managed to get itself into total opposition. Former US Senator Ted Stevens circa 2008 stated we don’t need another gold mine in Alaska. Current US Senator Lisa Murkowski has been pushing renewables for all she is worth, panders nicely to the Bristol Bay regional Native Corporation, opposing Pebble. Murkowski pushes green energy every chance she gets. Our other US Senator Dan Sullivan was publicly embarrassed by a recording made of a Northern Dynasty executive running his mouth about his lack of action. Instead of publicly shooting the idiot, Sullivan shot the mine, also coming out in opposition to it. Our newly elected democrat congress critter Mary Peltola is a democrat, and also opposes Pebble, though she is giving signs that she is for sale, so I guess there is a chance after all. The problem with all of this is there have been multiple mining plans offered. The first one Ted Stevens and his good friend Bob Gillam took exception with was over 30 years ago. The mining plan the Army Corps of Engineers approved two years ago was the most recent. The mining plan the EPA turned down twice in the last 6 years was created for a mythical mine that would have never gotten permitted. Note that at today’s prices, there are over $1 trillion of metals known to be in the ground at Pebble, about 85% of the value of all oil and natural gas pumped out of Prudhoe Bay since the 1970s. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy ripped the EPA and promised to fight this all the way to the SCOTUS for a final determination. Note that this is a mine on state land in an actual mining district. Mining in a mining district. Who knew?
4. Hamilton 68. The latest round of Twitter files released by Matt Taibbi described a propaganda operation called Hamilton 68 run by an ex-FBI agent aimed at media. The operation set up a dashboard based on 644 Twitter accounts the outfit claimed to be Russian disinformation sources or bots. Twitter looked into the accounts in 2017 and found the claim they were Russian to be complete garbage. Instead, the ex-FBI guy was passing off conservative, anti-establishment tweets – legitimate political speech – as Russian disinformation. The dashboard simply classified political speech by people they disagreed with as Russian disinformation. And the media ate it up. The project was supported by a group of powerful former government officials with long histories in and around the intel agencies. The ex-FBI guy, Clint Watts, was an NBC News and MSNBC contributor. Everyone played in this. Academia promoted the research uncritically. Twitter knowing it was all fraudulent, decided internally not to publicly call it out. Twitter efforts to quietly nudge reporters away from the wild stories pushed on the dashboard were wildly unsuccessful. If you want an illustration of the institutional rot running American politics and institutions, you need go no farther than this, with ex-spooks creating a secret list, hiding their results, passing the research off as legitimate, and get their work product used by every major media outlet. The media enabled it all as Watts was telling them what they wanted to hear. Hamilton 68 used its own disinformation to spread more disinformation.
5. Phillips. The Colorado culture war against Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop continued a couple weeks ago with the Colorado Court of Appeals denying Phillips claim of religious exemption. Phillips won his first trip to the SCOTUS Jun 2017 after refusing to build and decorate a same sex wedding cake. He offered to sell an off the shelf cake. Not good enough to the gays who took him to court and the various CO agencies who were the vehicle for his harassment. On the very afternoon he won his first SCOTUS case a trans lawyer calling herself Autumn Scardina requested a gender transition cake. Phillips turned down the request on religious grounds. Scardina filed a complaint with the CO Civil Rights Commission. Case was dropped, with Phillips winning again. Scardina was back at it Jun 2019 demanding another gender transition cake. This time Scardina is bringing the suit herself rather than via the State of CO. Phillips lost round one Jun 2021 with a $500 fine for violation of the CO Anti-Discrimination Act. The judge rejected the legal defense of freedom of religion. The appeal denied a couple weeks ago was to this opinion and fine. In CO, freedom of speech does not apply to everyone, as religious Americans are forced to express messages that violate their core beliefs. This has been going on for over a decade. Perhaps the SCOTUS will hand down an actual opinion of compelled speech this time around. We remain ever hopeful.
6. Whales. Remember when “nuke the gay whales” was a tongue in cheek bumper sticker vying for the most offensive one possible long ago? Well, whales are back in the news off the Atlantic coast, where dead whales are starting to show up on the shorelines of New England and Middle Atlantic states. The seven dead humpback whales are showing up, most recently off Atlantic City, which makes three in this particular location in recent weeks. What is going on? The area dead whales are showing up is being developed for offshore wind farms. There is growing green opposition to the offshore farms, especially since we are starting to see that the farms and whales don’t seem to play well together. Heavy sonar use to place the windmills may be the culprit. Green groups off the Pacific NW have long opposed Navy sonar use based on sonar and whales not playing well together. Of course, the discussion wanders off the rails quickly, blaming manmade global warming via CO2 emissions for the deaths. This is happening while the Biden regime and congress fast track offshore wind development. Note that if there were any drilling being done off Atlantic City, it would be instantly halted. The issue demonstrates a growing split among the greens, with the offshore wind advocates doing precisely what they accuse the oil and natural gas companies of doing, ignoring their environmental footprint. Once again, the greens end up turning into the very thing they claim to hate the most. Sadly, appears the humpbacks are about to join the birds as animal sacrifices to our shiny new renewable future. Welcome to the party.
More later –
– AG