Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Maine
2. Buick
3. Balloon
4. FHA
5. Rudy
6. Pax
7. Punter
8. Groundwater
1. Maine. Last week’s entrant into the ban Trump from the ballot sweepstakes is Maine’s Secretary of State, one Shenna Bellows, head of Maine’s ACLU for 8 years. Bellows has been in the middle of rewriting election law in the state for over a decade participating in a same day registration drive and helping pass their ranked choice voting law. Her first attempt at higher office (or any elected office) was in 2014 when she was defeated by Susan Collins around 2:1. Undeterred, she was elected to the State senate 2016 – 2020 and then ran for and won the Secretary of State office. She was a Maine elector for Biden in 2020. Her excuse for banning Trump from the Main presidential ballot was cloaked in all the usual leftist garbage, essentially accusing him of doing something he has never been charged or convicted of doing. She reportedly got her analysis via YouTube videos. Her decision was unilateral, though cloaked in all the expected pieties for self-congratulatory leftists demanding to be celebrated for being Good People use. Reaction to her lawless act was roundly criticized by both sides of the political divide in Maine. There was even a report of her being swatted, though in these days of political drama, it would not surprise me if she or one of her close confidants called the SWAT in, just to give them some political cachet. Remember that swatting is at its heart, an attempted murder, hoping the police will open fire on the target. Republicans and conservatives get swatted all the time. Democrats don’t. That plus the fact that this story is a little too perfect tells me that the swatting was either a setup or an inside job with the participation and cooperation of friendly law enforcement. Corruption, thy name is democrat. One of the things about the 14th Amendment that all these electoral rocket scientists are missing is Section 5, which states: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Writing this section, the Radical Republicans in charge of congress following the Civil War specifically removed the ability of states to put Confederates back on the ballots. With the action of the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State, democrats are once again returning to their political roots as confederates, a mere 160 years after the Civil War ended. Congratulations.
2. Buick. Over the last 12 months, over 1,000 Buick dealers have taken buyouts from GM rather than spend $300 – 400,000 per dealership to prepare to sell and service EVs. They were given the ultimatum by GM in 2022 to either spend the money or give up their franchise. This is nearly half the Buick dealerships nationwide. The buyout option remains open, so more dealerships may follow. GM is pursuing a 100% EV by 2030 strategy and wants all its dealers to be fully onboard with EVs as they transition. While GM and Buick paint this transition as a Good Thing (how can they do anything else?), I wonder how profitable losing half your dealerships is going to make your company as EV sales nationwide continue to languish.
3. Balloon. A pair of legacy stories on the Chinese balloon last week. The first around Christmas had the Biden regime attempting to hide the presence of the balloon from the public as long as possible. The second a few days ago noted that the balloon used a US-based internet provider. How are those stories related? The first piece sounds like standard bureaucratic backside covering, disappearing inconvenient or embarrassing facts. The second is more interesting, as one of the after-action tidbits was that the balloon used US electronics. Most of the analysis has disappeared into the black world, but a Chinese spy balloon using US electronics over the US, routing its data back to the CCP via a US based internet provider may explain why the Biden regime wanted to keep it quiet for as long as they could. One of the things I suspected about the delay in shooting it down was not damage to whatever it landed upon, but to get enough time to crack its encryption, transmission, and most importantly figure out who and what it was calling home to report to and see if we could crack them too. The longer the use the balloon, the more we know. There was at least one report that the US went to the FISA Court with a request to force the internet provider to cooperate. No report on whether they did or not, though I suspect it doesn’t matter, as someone likely slurped the entire uplink / downlink from the time the balloon entered US airspace over the Aleutians until the day it was shot down. The shootdown took place after the cost of letting it operate exceeded the cost of shooting it down. If true, this makes me smile a bit, as it is a small glimmer of competence from the wokesters infesting DoD and the intel community. The only thing they could have done better is auction pieces of the balloon off to collectors following postflight analysis to cover their costs.
4. FHA. 21 states are suing the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) over new rules that go into effect Jan 8 that requires transportation departments in the states with National Highway System mileage to create targets for CO2 emission reductions and send those results to the feds for their action. The state’s complaint is that nothing passed by congress gives the FHA the power to require states to reduce CO2 emissions. The rule mandates the states establish downward targets. It does not yet dictate what those targets need to be nor how quickly they move toward zero. The question continues to be: If CO2 emission reduction is so important and so well supported, why does the regime need to do it unilaterally?
5. Rudy. Democrat lawfare chewed up and spat out another Republican a week or two ago as Rudy Giuliani filed for bankruptcy after being ordered to pay $148 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers. The defamation took place aimed at two women from Georgia. Their lawyers managed to get the case in front of a hostile court in Washington DC. The presiding judge, Bery Howell found Guiliani guilty in August. The penalty phase took place in front of a DC jury, who piled it on thick. As with most lawfare trials connected with the aftermath of the 2020 election, Giuliani was not allowed to present his own defense by the hostile judge. You move the case to DC in order to destroy the target, not to get justice.
6. Pax. WSJ picked up a National Post piece last week describing how passengers are still losing it on airplanes. The inflight hostility came to a head during COVID when cabin crews harshly enforced masking rules, bouncing passengers that weren’t readily complying with the federally mandated lunacy. Here in ANC during that time, Alaska Airlines cabin crew members were happily issuing no-fly red cards on passengers nowhere near the aircraft, in terminals eating. It made for a really ugly situation as far too many cabin crew members enjoyed their newfound powers using them early, often and sadistically. There were 554 unruly passenger reports here in the US in 2017. During COVID and the masking cramdown, they spiked at 6,000 in 2021. Following the repeal of the masking mandate in 2022, the numbers quickly fell to 2,455, down nicely but not back to what they were before the zombie apocalypse. Sounds like both the passengers on the receiving end of the festivities and the cabin crews dishing out the unpleasantness have long memories. Add to that the fact that the flying public has to participate in the ongoing TSA security theater while none of the hordes crossing the southern border seem to, and for some unfathomable reason the still wary flying public continues to be less than pleasant while flying. The final piece of the puzzle are the ubiquitous no-fly lists which are easy to get added to and nearly impossible to get off. Why? Because it is all a secret, as passengers are getting treated like terrorists. Under continuing economic pressure, airlines have responded by nickel and diming passengers with fees for all inflight snacks, movies, headphones, etc, further exacerbating the grumpiness. AT&T captured this nicely with a current commercial for their cellular service. Hint to the airlines, their employees and cheerleaders: if you want your passengers to treat you like crap, keep treating them like crap. We have heard the message and are responding accordingly.
7. Punter. What recourse does a NFL player have when a fraudulent me-too case derails what should have been a promising career right at the beginning? Such is the case with former SDSU punter Matt Araiza, who announced a civil lawsuit against a lawyer who represented an accuser. The punter was drafted by Buffalo. A Jane Doe filed a complaint of him being part of a gang rape. The accusation and her lawsuit appeared to be a money grab at the time. Buffalo dropped him like a hot rock before he played a game. Note that he was not even at the party where the rape supposedly happened. There is no DNA, or evidence of his presence from 10 search warrants, and 35 witness interviews. Even the San Diego District Attorney’s office told the accuser and her lawyer there was no evidence back up her claims. Over the summer the punter filed a defamation lawsuit against the woman and her attorney. She made an agreement to remove him from the rape lawsuit if he dropped her from the defamation lawsuit. He will pursue her lawyer in the defamation lawsuit to recover the contract money he would have earned this year with the Bills.
8. Groundwater. One of the techniques used by this regime is the use of environmental rules to undermine meat and dairy industries all in the name of climate change. Sounds like this year’s first iteration of that is for the media to trump up what they are calling water crisis. First up is the NYT running a story about a groundwater crisis caused by American love of poultry and dairy products. The stated concern is that a shift in American diets to eat more chicken and dairy has managed to drain underground water supplies. The new concern is a nicely manufactured panic started as the WEF turns its attention from CO2 to a newly manufactured vector they are calling water crisis. Of course, the NYT is pushing all the right buttons, scaremongering for all they are worth, using terms like “unprecedented, scientific evidence, misusing, triple crisis, and everything else they can throw on the wall hoping for something to stick. The piece goes on to quote someone who believes that capitalism simply isn’t working and must be replaced by more state action. Expect the new crisis (we can’t get what we want from an increasingly skeptical public) to the recommended solution (more government) with help by their wiling water carriers (see what I did there?) in the media as this ramps up over the upcoming months. Happily, it is getting more difficult to stampede the public into taking this sort of action. Sadly, that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
More later –
- AG