Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Easter
2. Abortion / IVF
3. Hail
4. Embassy
5. FACE Act
6. Tesla
7. Sotomayor
1. Easter. Easter came and went last weekend, everywhere outside Washington DC and the Muslim world, where it was summarily ignored and trashed. Worst offenders were the O’Bamaoids in the WH, who chose instead to push the Transgender Day of Visibility, one of over 50 LGBTQWTF celebrations the Powers That Be demand we celebrate every year. Interestingly, the WH celebration was not universal, as the WH announced the celebration in English but was pointedly silent in Spanish, sending two markedly different messages to two different recipients. Nice demonstration of cowardice, guys. FWIW, the Transgender Day of Visibility has been on the docket since 2009, though in my memory never nationally celebrated like it was last week. Easter, OTOH, tends to move around, tied to the 29.5-day lunar calendar rather than the Gregorian Calendar. The date slops around within a four-week window, so by definition, the days of the two events will coincide from time to time. The problem is what the WH chose to emphasize. This year, that emphasis was pointedly on the Trans, with all references to Christianity pointedly, intentionally left out. The annual Easter egg roll on the WH lawn was beset by bad weather (a Sign, perhaps?) as the O’Bamaoids made a great show of intentionally ignoring the Holy Day associated with Easter. Much of the Right-Wing media made a big show of the WH gratuitous ugliness. Why emphasize something so sadly predictable? How can they do anything else? Note that the holy month of Ramadan also takes place in the same time frame. Note also that neither the Dementia Hitler WH nor their progenitors in the O’Bama WH dared to substitute the Trans Day for Ramadan, demonstrating quite nicely that they are as just as big cowards as they are pander bears.
2. Abortion / IVF. Looks like the signature issue for democrats in November will be abortion and its little brother in vitro fertilization (IVF). They are busily getting it on the ballot in all the swing states and even some of the not so swing states like Florida, where they hope to turn an expected electoral disaster into a loss close enough that they can steal. Few things put me into incoherent Hulk Smash mode faster than the frustration in how poorly Our Side is dealing with this issue. I’ve already tried a couple times to put poorly coherent thoughts together on it, both of which quickly devolved into the previously mentioned Hulk Smash mode, let’s see if attempt #3 does any better…
- Problem. Democrats have a problem turning out their voters this year to support Biden, so they have to come up with something to turn out their base of b@t$#ti crazy women to vote early, often, mindlessly and endlessly. To those women, abortion is emotional, visceral, and non-negotiable. There is no amount of logic, reasoned arguments or anything else that will dent their unreasoning, emotional passion in support of abortion. Since Dobbs, Jun 2022, the democrat solution has been to offer ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion in various state constitutions. All of those passed. In doing so, they also managed to turn out democrats in sufficient numbers to flip states and defeat various Republican candidates. Michigan is the most recent example, flipping from purple to hard blue in 2022. They aim to do the same thing in Florida this fall.
- Problem 2. The pro-life advocates on Our Side, and I count myself as one, treat the argument as one operating in the logical, issued oriented world. It’s not and hasn’t been for a very long time. Worse, advocates on our side (Charlie Kirk, this means you) who are pushing a complete ban on abortion are well on their way to destroying the nation. How so? When democrats use abortion ballot initiatives to turn out their base of clinically insane women, this allows them to win elections. And once democrats win elections, they execute all the awful legislative, regulatory and executive foolishness currently ripping the nation apart. Essentially, Kirk, et al are doing to the democrat base what the BATFE did to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians 31 years ago. At the time, in what was intended to be a simple photo op to support this year’s funding from congress, they showed up at the front door of a guy who was convinced that the government was going to attack him and seize his guns. They showed up with a camera crew in tow and attacked him with the goal of seizing his guns. Note to self: Never demonstrate to a delusional person that their delusions are reality.
- Logical solution. In a logical, policy-oriented world, the solution to abortion would limit it to sometime after the end of the first trimester, much like Europe. Couple that with a revision of the anti-father bigotry of the family courts (the Chappelle solution – if you can kill them, I can abandon them), easy, ironclad adoptions, payment to carry a kid to term, and a support structure for pregnant women, among other approaches, and you will have real solution rather than the current yammering and political pandering. The problem is that democrats only want to turn out their base and win elections. There is no other goal. They carefully crafted their ballot initiatives to allow death right up to the moment of birth. None of this matters to their AWFL (affluent white female liberal) voters, who only hear that their right to an abortion will disappear completely if they don’t turn out and vote for democrats.
- Political solution. If logic and reason don’t work, what do we use? Given that we are living in an abortion world where only persuasion matters but facts and logic don’t work, our best bet is to create cognitive dissonance among as many AWFLs and their fellow travelers as humanly possible. How do to that? Make this discussion just as ugly as humanly possible. Every time democrats trot out “a woman’s right to choose” in connection with medical decisions, remind them of the vax, social distancing, masking mandates of the COVID era. Review the taxpayer funded carnage of black babies committed in Kermit Gosnell’s abattoir complete with photos and video of baby body parts he stored for posterity. Do the same thing with Planned Parenthood’s chop shop for baby body parts operation. Change the subject. Do the same thing democrats have been doing on abortion, focus on the extreme results of their demands. Force democrats and AWFLs on the defensive. Force them to defend what they have been doing for decades. If it is a knife fight, bring a tactical nuke, complete with photos and video. Another way to look at this is from the perspective of the old mule trainer joke where the first action is to whack the mule across the head with a 2×4 in order to get its attention. While we probably can’t get the attention of the brainwashed, mentally ill AWFLs, we most certainly can get the attention of those who are close to them.
3. Hail. Over the years, wind advocates have learned that wind turbines don’t play all that well with ice, snow freezing rain and bitter cold. Solar advocates are learning similar lessons with solar panels. They don’t play all that well with dust, snow, rain, and hail. Latest example comes from Bend County, TX where a hailstorm produced golf ball diameter hail that shattered a solar farm 15 Mar. Fort Bend County is immediately west of Houston. The storm shattered hundreds of panels on a 4,000 acre (16 km2) solar farm. Many years ago, I had a roof destroyed by a hailstorm. Repairs took months because all the roofing companies in town were maxxed out. I can only imagine what large caliber hail would do to solar panels. In addition to loss of generation, there is concern that the damage will leak harmful chemicals, like cadmium telluride, into the local watershed. Cadmium telluride is a semiconductor used in the manufacture of solar panels. The manufacturer of the panels claimed they were silicon based and there was no cause for concern. Note that when solar panels are retired, they are treated like hazmat, not unlike computers and other electronic devices. Once again, the renewables world operates under different environmental rules managed by democrats who want them. Kill 90+ whales off the mid-Atlantic coast doing sonar surveys for offshore wind? No problem. Build offshore wind farms off the same Atlantic coast that indignantly banned offshore oil and natural gas exploration? No problemo. Kill an untold number of birds with spinning wind turbine blades? No problem. Incinerate birds with a solar thermal plant? No problemo. Introduce solar panels into an area that can leak toxic chemicals into the local watershed if damaged? No problemo. If it weren’t for dual, self-serving standards, greens and their clients would have no standards at all.
4. Embassy. Fun story of the week comes from Syria where an Israeli airstrike aimed at a building next door to the Iranian embassy killed a Quds Force General, the guy who replaced Soleimani as Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Like Soleimani, General Zahedi was coordinating between Iran and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority. With good intel, the IDF figured out where he would be and struck the location. Zahedi was not the only Iranian military leader present at the time of the strike. World condemnation came early and often, starting with the claim that Israel has no respect for international rules of war and embassies. This is a laughable claim given the Iranian sacking of the US embassy in Tehran Nov 1979. Iran is playing FAFO. They have been in the FA phase for a long time. Sounds like the FO phase is starting to unwind. Sucks to be them.
5. FACE Act. The anti-religious bigots infesting Merrick Garland’s Department of (In)Justice (DoInJ) have been using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to target religious protesters at abortion clinics. Cases are tried in front of the typical DC jury of democrats and get regular anti-Christian convictions. Jail time is in the range of 11 years. Most of those targeted have been elderly, with 11 years being essentially a life sentence. Latest convicted was an 89-year-old who spent time in a communist prison as a political prisoner. With that in mind, pro-Palestinian protesters invaded Easter service at St Patrick’s in NYC over the weekend disrupting the Mass. FBI whistleblowers point out that the protesters need to be prosecuted under the FACE Act, which has provisions to subject those who disrupt religious services with the same tender loving care that Merrick Garland and his merry little gang of democrats are treating Christians to. If Garland doesn’t, I can all but guarantee that the next Attorney General will.
6. Tesla. 1Q 2024 was a miserable quarter for Tesla, with deliveries down 8.5% from the previous year. Given that Tesla is widely considered to be the top of the line among EV manufacturers, the drop in sales is troubling. Worse, since Musk uses Tesla as a financial foundation for a number of his new initiatives, this means fewer resources for future initiatives. Remember that much of the money used to purchase Twitter/X came from Tesla stock. The question now is what does this drop in sales actually mean? Does it reflect growing softness in the EV market driven by widespread public rejection of EVs? Or does this mean that the anti-Musk jihad by the Intel community and its media lackeys (WSJ has been particularly anti-Musk over the last few months) is starting to be successful, driving Tesla’s natural customer base of virtue signaling lefties away from Tesla? Going to be tough to sell EVs if your customer base is cut in half.
7. Sotomayor. Among all the other balls the left is juggling these days, is the growing call for SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor to resign so Dementia Hitler can replace her before he leaves office. Sotomayor is 69, not particularly old as SCOTUS Justices go. Unfortunately, she also has diabetes, which will make you age faster than other maladies. The left is still outraged that Ruth Bader Ginsberg, with known health problems, refused to step down and was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett. They want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We are starting to see some calls from the media and Intel-connected media mouthpieces for her to step down. Senior democrats have not yet joined the festivities.
More later
- AG