Interesting Items 05/15

Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information.  Enjoy –

In this issue –

1.  Trump
2.  Energy
3.  Pilots
4.  Discrimination
5.  Subway
6.  Lawfare

1.  Trump.  Former president Donald Trump had himself quite a week, with the biggest stories being his civil conviction in a NY federal district court and his CNN town hall.  He keeps this up and he will get himself reelected or force the democrat election machine to work much harder than it did in 2022 and 2020 to elect democrats.  Sadly, that is much more likely than unlikely.

  • CNN hosted a town hall interview in NH Thursday night.  The hostess was young, and prebriefed to make life as difficult for Trump as humanly possible.  Didn’t work, as Trump had firm control of the interview, treating her not unlike a father would treat a wayward teenaged girl during an argument.  CNN blocked 90 minutes for the broadcast and cancelled it after 75, likely because the host ran out of questions.  Afterwards, they took an infinite amount of flak from fellow media talking heads for even giving Trump a platform to say anything.  Why did they give him the platform?  Ratings, pure ratings.  The broadcast was nicely timed to begin at 8 PM EDT, Tucker Carlson’s old timeslot on FNC.  The broadcast had over 3 million viewers, the highest ratings for any CNN show since Trump was removed from office years ago.  The very first question about the 2020 election.  Trump responded about as expected and was immediately criticized for obsessing about the stolen election.  He responded that was her first question.  They then went on to talk about other things afterwards. The crowd was full of Trump supporters, meaning the hostess was completely outnumbered, yet another indication that this was a ratings grab by CNN.  The agreement between the Trump campaign and CNN should be interesting reading. 
  • During the broadcast, Trump was asked about the Russia – Ukraine war.  He said that if elected, that war would be over in one day, something he has been saying publicly for at least a month.  This was the first time a wider audience heard that claim and it resonated, though was completely buried by the democrat enablers of the formerly mainstream media.  Scott Adams picked up on it in his daily webcast Friday morning.  This means that Trump can run once again as an anti-war president.  It also means that both Russia and Ukraine know the war is over.  All they will be doing until election day is jockey for negotiating position. 
  • The bad news for Trump was his conviction for sexual harassment aimed at E Jean Carroll in a civil suit tried in a federal court in NY.  The jury found that Carroll lied about the rape, refusing to convict Trump of it, yet upheld the sexual harassment charges.  Trump refused to appear in court and will appeal the conviction.  The lawsuit was brought after NY changed state law on sexual harassment, removing the statute of limitations.  The Carroll legal team was involved in making that change, and filed their charges shortly after NY Governor Hochul signed it into law.  Hochul’s legal fees were paid by a Trump-hating billionaire. 

2.  Energy.  Several energy related stories last week starting with the latest round of attacks on our way of life and devices.

  • The Harris – Xiden war on energy continued last week with announcement of new “efficiency” rules for dishwashers, taking the current 3.5 gallon/wash cycle upper limit down to 3.3 gallons/wash, something that will require yet another redesign of the appliance.  Note that so-called efficiency standards for appliances, and there have been a lot of them over the years (washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners, vehicles, etc) have always forced redesigns.  For appliances, the end result has been longer cycles and worse performance.  But the regulatory wheel has spun smartly out of control over the last couple years, busily spewing new requirements for this, that and some other, based on little more than do it because we say so.  So far, this year, they have targeted natural gas appliances, air conditioners, and dishwashers.  They also targeted internal combustion vehicles.  This has to stop.  The future described in Frank Herbert’s Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab) was supposed to be a cautionary tale rather than an instruction manual. 
  • Whale and dolphin deaths off east coast beaches continued last week.  All of these appear to be connected to seismic exploration for offshore wind farms, currently fast tracked by Harris – Xiden.  Interestingly, the same greens who sued the US Navy to stop sonar tests also oppose seismic testing for wind.  So far, there are no witnesses to the deaths, but a proposed permit would allow Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LP, a NJ based company to kill 42 whales, 2,678 dolphins and 1,472 seals.  13 of the whales are allowed to be endangered.  Three are North Atlantic Right Whales, a species federal regulators are using as an excuse to wreck Maine lobster and ground fishing industries.  There are other permits.  On the one hand, the feds are telling us that there is no evidence that offshore wind is killing whales, dolphins and seals, while on the other, they are issuing permits to allow it.  
  • Final story are the threatened new powerplant emissions regulations, written to shut down coal and natural gas fired generation.  These new regulations will require carbon capture technology, which does not exist on a wide scale as yet as a way to comply.  The new rule is a direct slap in the face to the SCOTUS that previously considered the O’Bama era Clean Power Plan, which used mercury emissions as their vehicle for shutting down electrical generation.  That plan was tossed by a 5-4 SCOTUS majority directing the entire argument back to congress, which has not spoken on this yet.  I wonder if lawsuits against various appliance, vehicle, and other emissions standards can be fought in a similar manner.  The regulators are running wild, and they really need to be reined in. 

3.  Pilots.  It is very easy to believe everything is going to Hell in a handbasket.  Happily, from time to time, we come across proof that the kids are indeed going to be all right.  Last week’s story comes out of the USAF, which was forced to abandon a plan to racially balance pilot training classes.  These classes are usually filled on a first come, first served basis of those qualified.  DoD wokesters came up with the bright idea of promoting diversity in pilot training classes, choosing student applicants at the percentage they exist in the general population.  For example, each class would have over 50% women.  They did the same numerical sort for other minorities.  The first attempt was to cluster women and minorities into one class, called America’s Class, to find out if enforced diversity would increase graduation rates of women and minorities.  In my experience, when you hire or promote anything other than competence in aviation, the only thing you increase is the accident rate, shredded aluminum paperweights, and dead people.  This foolishness raised red flags among instructors, one of whom, a Captain, flight instructor at Laughlin AB, TX, complained to his local equal opportunity office in Aug 2020 via a Memo for Record that likely stop cocked his career.  Other instructors also complained up the chain of command that the newly designed class structure was based on race and sex, both of which are discrimination based on the USAF’s official definition of illegal discrimination: “any unlawful action that denies equal opportunity to persons or groups based on their race, color, sex (including sexual harassment), national origin, religion, or sexual orientation.”  While I do expect the command structure to quickly remove everyone who complained from active duty, they will have to be a bit more creative the next time they pull this particular racist and sexist stunt.

4.  Discrimination.  Suzanne Downing in Must Read Alaska May 6 ran a piece on the latest round of SCOTUS appeals by Jack Phillips, Colorado’s Masterpiece Cakeshop, who has been under legal assault by Colorado’s LGBTQWTF community and their enablers in the state’s diversity bureaucracy since 2012 when the first complaint was filed.  He’s won in front of the SCOTUS once and is well on his way to winning a second time.  As expected, the comments blew up nicely, with both sides making their usual arguments.  I was struck by the number of lefties that attempted to make a case that discrimination is Bad, particularly discrimination by Christians.  My question to them if discrimination is so bad, why does the political left do so much of it?  Their entire raison d’etre is based on discrimination to the point where it is nearly impossible to find people or groups they DON’T discriminate against.  Who do they discriminate against these days?  White men, men, conservatives, firearms owners and operators, Trump supporters, any protest on the political right, anyone who questions authority, Christians, straights, heterosexuals.  The list is long, and all supported by both government action at all levels along with their media cheerleaders.  If discrimination is so bad, why do they do so much of it?

5.  Subway.  The latest attempt to manufacture the Second Coming of George Floyd is playing out in NYC with the arrest and prosecution of a young former Marine who grabbed a crazy homeless man on a subway car who had been terrorizing passengers.  Two other passengers helped subdue the man.  He was alive when police took him off the train, though he died at the hospital, likely from heart arrhythmia or drugs, sadly not unlike Floyd.  Rather than celebrate the attempt of the men to protect the passengers from a crazy man, Manhattan DA’s office indicted him for involuntary homicide without benefit of taking the complaint in front of a grand jury.  It is this point that is interesting, as grand jury members also ride the subways, which Bragg and others like him have been turning into places where the lawless run wild.  And when people defend themselves, the Soros-backed DA’s treat them like the perp in the encounter.  Neat game by the left in this regard.  Defund the police, which allow the criminals to run wild.  Disarm the general public, which puts them at greater risk.  Keep refusing to charge or prosecute criminals of all stripes.  Finally, come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who dares defend themselves.  For his part, the perp has been arrested at least 44 times, one of those was for sucker punching a 65+ year old woman rider, breaking her eye socket.  He is being portrayed in the media as a Michael Jackson wannbee, who gave entertaining dances for the pleasure and entertainment of the riders.  As of this writing, the Marine’s legal defense fund is over $1.5 million and growing.  Bragg was thoroughly embarrassed the last time he pulled this sort of stunt, when he charged a Bodega clerk with murder for defending himself from the ex-con boyfriend of a woman attempting to shoplift from the store.  Bragg quickly dropped the charges.

6.  Lawfare.  As the political left moves from operating in a functioning constitutional republic to a kritarchy (kritocracy), rule by judges, via lawfare, we are seeing a bit of pushback by those who don’t believe this is the best lifestyle choice for governance.  We have gotten to the point where both elections and redistricting are no longer decided by either the electorate or the legislatures.  Rather, lawfare before elections to rewrite election law on the fly makes each election a unique activity, mostly disconnected from previous ones.  This is particularly evident in blue states and cities where the judges get to do what they want to do.  But the political world is a nonlinear system, and actions don’t necessarily trigger opposite or equal reactions.  For example, the ongoing attempt to delegitimize SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas by holding him to different standards of conduct than other SCOTUS Justices past and present (Sotomayor, for instance), is starting to be viewed by blacks as simply another racial attack on him and his character.  Likewise, the multiple attacks on Trump by various state and local prosecutors, civil lawsuits, and the Special Prosecutor, are starting to be viewed as what they are, simply legal attacks for political reasons rather than in response some sort of actual lawbreaking.  When states participate in these charades by changing state law to allow lawsuits well after the statute of limitations run out, it does more than any lawyer on the political right can do to delegitimize the prosecution.  When we see the Biden Crime Family skate after decades of bribery and influence peddling without the media lifting a finger to report it, it diminishes everything the political left is trying to do to Trump in various courtrooms and in the media.  Keep it up girls, you might not end up what you think you are after. 

More later –

  • AG

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