Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Iran
2. Mitch
3. Merchan
4. EVs
5. Mayorkas
1. Iran. The Mullahs took their lives in their own hands orchestrating a missile / drone strike on Israel midweek. At least 350 rounds were launched. As I understand the fog of war, none of the rounds penetrated Israeli airspace. There was a single report of 7 hypersonic weapons hitting an F-35 base in Israel. I have seen no confirmation of this. If true, this would represent a new problem, highlighting the inability to deal with hypersonic weapons (though all ballistic missiles are hypersonic). The incoming weapons were shot down by US, Jordanian, IAF and allied air power. The attack may have been pro-forma, with Dementia Hitler warned beforehand. That warning was passed along to the IDF. The regime then warned Israel against retaliating, a warning they ignored launching a smallish series of retaliatory strikes a few days later. This attack represents a change in Iranian behavior, as they generally prefer attacking Israel through their proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. I am not a fan of sending a message via military action, a really nasty lesson out of our conduct of the Vietnam war. Though this might have been the right message to send, as Israel managed to penetrate Iranian airspace and take out a few SAM radars on an Iranian air base without opposition. The message sent was that we can penetrate your airspace anytime we want, go anywhere we want, and you can’t do anything about it. A couple days after the initial strike, Bloomberg (a CIA asset) reported that the IAF attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus decapitated the Iranian Republican Guards headquarters overseeing Hezbollah activities in the region. Iran claimed the building was among the safest in Damascus and the IDF would never dare to attack it. Mullahs, decapitation is in your future. Sooner will be better than later.
2. Mitch. One of the problems with a geriatric Republican US Senator is that a democrat can replace that senator with a democrat should the Republican leave office outside the normal election cycle. Such is the case in Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear, reelected last year, threatened not to follow state law requiring him to appoint a member of the same party should Mitch McConnell step down before his term in office is over in 2027. Beshear is a popular democrat in a red state, but ultimately a democrat, nonetheless. The Kentucky legislature removed the governor’s ability to have any role in replacing a US senator last week. They easily overrode his veto of the legislation which now becomes law. The legislation calls for a special election should a vacancy occur. It must have been a good session, as they also overrode his veto of legislation promoting nuclear energy in Kentucky. Beshear claims to be an all of the above kind of energy guy, though all of the above only seems to include the usual renewable grifts of solar and wind. As I said earlier, he is still a democrat and that is what they do.
3. Merchan. The Alvin Bragg / Cohen / Stormy Daniels / Trump hush money kangaroo trial seated its jury last week, with the trial to take place starting Monday. It is important to review all the players starting with the presiding judge, Juan Merchan.
- Merchan is hailed as a no-nonsense judge, which is only true in that he appears to be the designated state judge for all things Trump. Normal judge selection is done randomly. Not with Merchan, who presided over the Trump organization tax fraud trial, sentencing Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to five months at Rikers Island in 2023 for his part in the action. That trial claimed that Weisselberg did not pay taxes on some $200,000 in off the books compensation. Weisselberg, 75, took a plea, agreed to pay $2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties (all on $200 k) and waive any right to appeal. Merchan was also the judge on Steve Bannon’s 2023 fundraising fraud trial. With the third anti-Trump lawfare trial, appears that Merchan is the designated hanging judge for NY State for all things Trump.
- Merchan is not without his conflict of interest in this trial, as his daughter, whom he issued a gag order against Trump to shield her and her political activity, is president of an outfit calling itself Authentic Campaigns. This is a Chicago-based political consulting firm whose democrat clients have raised over $100 million using the trial in their campaign literature. One of these clients is Cali US Senate candidate Adam Schiff, one of the designated liars on the Jan 6 Committee. Another is the Senate Majority PAC. Under law, this sort of close political coordination by family members of presiding judges is grounds for recusal. Not so for no-nonsense Marchan, who will likely get his conviction which should be reversed upon repeal, though long after the election.
- Final story out of the Merchan trial is his requirement that Trump be on site, in the courtroom during the entirety of the trial, something intended to keep him off the campaign trail (election interference, anyone?). Merchan’s problem is that with Trump, the campaign trail is anywhere, even in his former hometown of NYC. Following a day in court, Trump visited a bodega in Harlem, the same location where a clerk shot a guy trying to knife him in 2022. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, the same guy prosecuting Trump in this trial, charged the clerk with murder, charges that were eventually dropped after significant public outrage. Trump was greeted like a conquering hero, much to the distress of media. He had a great time, as did the people at the event. Note to Bragg, Merchan, the Dementia Hitler WH staff, and all the other O’bamaoids who are orchestrating anti-Trump lawfare, the enemy always gets a vote. And a master showman with an eye toward the common man and woman will get headlines in the most unexpected places. You have thrown him into the briar patch. Absent expected additional intel community f**kery during the campaign, keep this up and you guys will elect Trump again.
4. EVs. Worldwide rejection of EV mandates by governments continues apace. Most recent example is a Tesla announcement that they are laying off 10% of their workforce. Add to that CCP dumping of cheap EVs into the US market from their new factory in Mexico, and you have a marketplace that is undergoing a significant shakeout. PowerLine ran a piece entitled The EV Bubble Bursts this morning detailing the carnage. It is well worth the time to read.
- Here in the US, the main problem with EVs are that they are a top-down government cramdown, where an unwilling public is rejecting what the government (and this began long before Dementia Hitler) is forcing them to do. Once again, we get to see what happens when governments, for whatever reason, foolishly muck around in the marketplace. The PowerLine piece notes that interest in EVs have been around since at least 1901, so this isn’t a new idea. Back then, interest in EVs was driven by public interest in electricity as the Next Big Thing (Edison and Tesla). Tech was not sufficient to bring EVs to the larger marketplace. They were mostly killed off by Henry Ford’s perfection of the internal combustion engine in mass production. Yet with all this carnage, I wonder if the stars are aligning to introduce EVs into the marketplace on a commercial basis.
- What are the two biggest problems with EVs today? From my perspective, they are range (all things battery) and metals. Current range and battery issues tend to preferentially confine EVs into urban areas, especially those with a significant penetration of recharging stations. None of those exist yet, even in Cali, where EV penetration is the largest. The massive investment in metals necessary to build EVs today put the CCP with their near monopoly in rare earth metals in charge. Nobody is going to be beholden to the CCP for their EVs. This puts greens in much the same position they are with energy, where they are having to embrace GenIV nukes as the cleanest form of energy. If greens want EVs, they must embrace massive mining here in the US. If they swung from anti to pro-nuke, I suspect they can do the same thing with mining.
- Technology is also advancing, though most certainly not due to anything the feds are trying. Federal energy dollars are mostly (completely?) a simple form of graft, giving your supporters free $$$ so they can hand that $$$ back in the form of campaign donations. The union model moved over nicely to the green world. But we are seeing some interesting tech advances. BMW announced a hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle, a 60+ year old tech that should have been competitive in the EV world. Tesla continues to work on battery design, redesign with a particular eye on quick recharging and safety.
- The other tech of interest is self-driving vehicle. Self-driving tech is not something confined to EVs, though it is being pioneered by the largest and best EV company in the world, Tesla. Self-driving tech is showing up in bits and pieces in new ICE vehicles, mostly as some variation of lane control. This will grow in capability and complexity over time. There is at least one prediction that self-driving vehicles will be widespread and accepted within 5 years. At that time, the entire DUI apparat / tickets as law enforcement house of cards will collapse.
- I can see a world where the use of self-driving EVs start replacing vehicle ownership in urban areas. They don’t need much range. Don’t need to carry a whole lot. And they need to be responsive. Think of the current cab / limo / Uber / Lyft world starting to transition to self-driving EVs in the urban areas. Do this over the course of a decade or two as an economically justified replacement for conventional ICE vehicles in these areas and we might have the first step. These services will not initially replace existing delivery or over-the-road trucking. But they will do the most important part, figuring out how to inject and use this new tech in an actual competitive marketplace. We might find that hybrids are the best direction for the foreseeable future. We might not. Either way, we allow the marketplace to operate as it should be doing without the next green administration mucking around in their businesses, though sadly, there will be any number of state and local virtue signaling greens passing rules, regulations and laws to force the issue (Cali and NY, you know who you are).
5. Mayorkas. Chuckie Schumer’s senate majority voted last week to ignore House impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The vote on both counts was 51-48, with Alaska’s senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski voting present. The worthless woman previously voted present on the Kavanaugh nomination in 2018. Schumer’s excuse for the vote was that the articles were unconstitutional because the charges against Mayorkas did not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Apparently standing idly by, refusing to enforce existing US law and allowing an invasion of 7-10 million non-citizens is not a high crime. Who knew? The vote was intentional as senate democrats desperately do not want a public presentation of anything associated with disaster created by their support for opening the southern border over the last 3 years. This vote was to protect and defend Joe Biden rather than Mayorkas. Indeed, this vote may serve to harm Biden, as he could have blamed Mayorkas for the border problem during the campaign. Now he can’t. As with other new precedents by democrats in the senate over the last few decades, this one won’t age well. Now that unconstitutional can be defined as whatever the majority party wants it to be, I expect a Republican majority to foul off any and all democrat impeachment votes in the House of Republican cabinet members and presidents for the foreseeable future. You guys really aren’t going to enjoy playing under your new rules.
More later
- AG