Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Campaign
2. Musk
3. Space
4. Durov
1. Campaign. The best campaign framing this week came courtesy of Scott Adams who described the Trump campaign as a pirate ship where all are welcome as long as they want to pursue a common goal. It is a fun framing, as old-time pirates are today popular, especially with young men (Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies). As usual, you can’t drill too far into the analogy before getting into spaces difficult to survive in. OTOH, it is one of the best framings I know of that explains the billionaires flocking to Trump, all led by Musk, the RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard endorsements, and the stunning move of men toward his candidacy, men of all races, religions, and class. Why men? Men see this nation in trouble and are positioning themselves to do something about it, the ages old protective response. And the ladies, those that are neither mentally ill nor brainwashed are starting to follow.
- One question asked about Kamala and Biden before her is why has whatever cabal it today running the democrat party putting up some of the dumbest presidential candidates in our lifetimes? Best guess would be that they are easy to control and will do what they are told to do, allowing the cabal to operate in the shadows, never coming out to see the light of day. For the cabal, control is everything. They have it today and want to keep it. Note that this is a recent change, as both Clinton and O’Bama were considered to be pretty smart in their day. Given the O’bama control of the Kamala campaign, one wonders why he now would put up with a mental deficient candidate. Clearing the decks for 2028, perhaps?
- One final dirty trick (hoax) out of the DNC convention was the orchestrated hoax that Beyonce was going to show up toward the end Thursday night either while Kamala was speaking or on stage afterwards. This had the effect of keeping viewership up, eyes on the speech, and excitement in the convention hall. As it turned out, Beyonce never showed, nor did she publicly complain about the rumor afterwards, meaning she either was in on the scam or supporting it after the fact. The rumor did work pretty well.
- Looks like Trump dodged yet another Deep State / Intel community trap. This one was his decision to not take National Security briefings during the latter stages of the campaign. Should he win, I would be surprised if he started taking them again, relying on his own people to brief him this time around. Why was it a trap? Taking the briefings allowed the intel community to selectively leak things from the briefings and blame Trump for the leaks. Cute trick, that.
- Biggest news last week was RFK Jr dropping out of the presidential race and throwing his support to Trump. His support is expected to bring a couple percent increase to Trump’s growing pirate ship. RFK Jr’s announcement was one of the better democrat speeches in a long time, eviscerating the current state of the democrat party and the lawfare conducted against him over the last few years.
- This endorsement prompted a minor outbreak of our conservative ideology purity wars, where Kennedy’s positions on the environment and the standard litany of his leftist positions are worrisome. Right now, today, I believe there is enough to do in dismantling the censorship state, cleaning out corruption in federal law enforcement and Do(In)J, getting a handle on the Deep State / Intel community, stopping the wars, and getting back to energy independence to keep everyone busy for a while. At the same time, allow the administrative state to get whittled back significantly per the SCOTUS Loper v Raimondo opinion, and the lawfare experts on the political left will have their hands full.
- Given RFK Jr’s interest is in food, drugs and medicine, putting him in charge of the FDA / CDC would go a long way toward destroying the incredibly corrupt and dangerous regulatory capture structure so carefully and lovingly constructed by Fauci and his fellow grifters over the last few decades.
- Billionaire Nicole Shanahan, former wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, RFK Jr’s VP pick started making the rounds of right-wing media, claiming to have come to the conclusion that everything she was told about the political right by her close personal friends and supporters on the left was a lie.
- RFK Jr’s decision to drop out of the race also changed the lawfare cottage industry used by democrats to manipulate the ballots via lawsuit. Prior to the decision to drop out, democrats spent all their time in an attempt to remove RFK Jr from the ballot, especially in swing states. This effort continues today, though aimed at Cornell West and Jill Stein among others. RFK Jr, asked for his name to be removed from the ballot in all the swing states. Democrats refused, keeping him to remain on the ballot in MI and WI against his wishes. What a filthy, dirty action by democrats, though roundly celebrated by their media organs. RFK Jr is not removing his name from any ballots in blue states, probably figuring it will take away from Kamala support.
- While I could spend pages on Kamala’s flip flopping, adopting Trump position after position, it remains to be seen if anyone actually believes her.
- So, I will end with Kamala’s embrace of joy during the week of the convention. This was a way to deal with her creepy laugh and inappropriate (drunken?) cackling. Note that Walz also has this problem. The media’s over the top embrace of this attempted reframing echoes a 1933 Nazi Labor Front organization named Strength Through Joy (KdF). This was set up in Nov 1933 as a tool to promote the advantages of Nazism to the German people and internationally. It was supposed to bridge the class divide in Germany by making middle class leisure activities available to the masses. Most of the programs were suspended at the outbreak of WWII.
2. Musk. The war between the Brazilian dictatorship and Elon Musk accelerated last week with Brazilian Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordering Brazil’s telecom agency to block access to X/Twitter nationwide. He also levied a fine of $8,900/day for use of a VPN to access the site. Note that average Brazilian income is around $1,700/month. This order marks the latest round of Morales attempt to force Musk / X/Twitter to censor accounts he doesn’t like. Morales expanded the festivities to Starlink, freezing its bank accounts and its ability to get paid by subscribers. In response, Musk will provide Starlink service for free for the foreseeable future. Note that Starlink is a completely separate company from X/Twitter with different shareholders. They are not accused of breaking any Brazilian laws and were given no warning. Musk’s response over the weekend was to stand up a X/Twitter page posting all the times Moraes has broken Brazilian law. This high-handed action has gone completely without any response from the Dementia Hitler State Department. Mike Benz believes the State Department is using NGOs and NGO funding they provide to leverage the Brazilian dictatorship into censoring X/Twitter, killing free speech in the nation. Moraes was empowered by the Brazilian Supreme Court to respond to the controversy following Lula’s controversial victory over former President Bolsonaro in 2022. His response has been all censorship, all the time. The State Department is in the middle of this, enabling all the bad behavior. Note that Musk is refusing all demands on the grounds that they violate both Brazilian law and its national constitution, a distinction without a difference in a dictatorship these days. He pulled all his X/Twitter / Starlink representatives from Brazil in fear of them being arrested, so he has no local representation. Note that Musk was feted as a national hero for donating Starlink terminals to Brazilian schools two years ago.
3. Space. A busy week in space last week with some good, some bad and some ugly.
- For the bad, Tuesday, a Falcon 9 booster suffered what appeared to be a hard landing, collapsed a leg, fell over and exploded on a drone ship following a 23rd successful launch. The FAA, always useless, imposed an immediate ban on all future flights that lasted just under 48 hours before it was lifted. Note that the FAA had neither the grounds nor the authority to ground future flights but did so anyway. While SpaceX did not issue any explanation for the incident, observers believe it was due to velocities at landing not all equal to zero. The two subsequent launches three days later were successful.
- Now that we are talking about FAA intransigence, I will note that we are a month past the time they should have approved the launch license for Starship test flight 5, which was ready to go the first week in August. I thought governments were supposed to be things that assist rather than speed bumps to be avoided.
- SpaceX has been waiting on launch and recovery weather for their next private manned mission, Polaris Dawn. This mission will put four astronauts into an elliptical orbit 190 – 1,400 km, the farthest any human has flown from earth since Apollo 17. On the second day of the mission, the orbit will be lowered to 750km where two of the astronauts will exit the Dragon for the first private, commercial EVA in history. Dragon, like Apollo, does not have an airlock so once the door is opened to space, the entire capsule will be depressurized. Communications will be provided by a Starlink laser interlink. The entire mission will take four days. The weeks’ worth of delays has been due to weather forecasts for reentry and splashdown.
- Sometime next spring, SpaceX will launch yet another manned commercial mission, the Fram2, named after a vessel Roald Amundsen captained to explore Antarctica 1910 – 1912. It was previously used to explore the Arctic 1893 – 1896. The mission is significant in that it will be the first time humans ever have flown in polar orbit. The highest previous inclination was Valentina Tereshkova’s Vostok 6 at 65° in 1963. Flight in polar orbit is not without risk, as it exits the protection of the Van Allen Belts near the poles, exposing astronauts to significantly more radiation than they would otherwise be exposed to. The flight is scheduled for 3-5 days and reportedly will launch out of Cape Canaveral, a surprise as polar launches generally take place from Vandenberg on the California coast. OTOH, we have yet to launch a manned mission out of Vandenberg.
4. Durov. I have been following the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, taken into custody by French law enforcement Aug 24 in connection with what the French announced as a cybercrime investigation. Durov was charged with all manner of ugliness, starting with facilitating kiddie porn and drug trafficking, charges that can be applied to any social media CEO. Why target Durov? It turns out that his app, Telegram is highly popular with Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, as they use it for all manner of military coordination and logistics. Open a door into Telegram and you open a door into the heart of Red Army communications. This arrest has little to do with anything Durov may or may not have done with his app and everything the west wants to do to penetrate communications into the Red Army. Early speculation was that western intel demanded he install a back door into his app for them and he refused, leading directly to the arrest. Turns out that was apparently a cover story. And if this can happen to Durov at the behest of the Deep State / intel community on this side of the Atlantic, it can happen to anyone. And Will. Expect more of this as the state censorship train continues running down the tracks.
More later –
- AG