Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Campaign
2. NIL
3. Mary
4. Eklutna
5. Arlington
6. Starliner
1. Campaign. Interesting campaign week just passed. The most important events were release of the taped Kamala – Walz interview, and battlespace prep by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the gang, trotting out the threadbare Russian collusion / Russian disinformation campaign. One would tend to think that Do(In)J was of the opinion that Kamala is going to lose in November.
- The much-touted joint interview between Dana Bash and the joint Walz – Kamala team took place last week. The recorded and heavily edited interview crammed at least 41 minutes of original content into just over 18 broadcast minutes. Video staging was awful, with Walz on the left foreground, towering over Kamala. She was in the middle, looking all of 4’9” tall. Bash sat on the right. One CNN commentator described Walz as Kamala’s emotional support animal, something he seems qualified to do without lying about it. In one poorly executed cut, Kamala was looking down reading an answer from a paper on the table. The paper was not visible, though it was obvious she was reading something. Given the only actual debate between Kamala and Trump Tuesday, it is important to remember expectations. Underestimate this woman, and Trump will be toast. Allow the left to set expectations unreasonably low like they did for the first Biden – Trump debate in 2020, and Trump is toast. Remember Kamala’s Achilles heel in all public settings: she simply cannot explain anything. She is awful at it. Continue to put her in positions where she must explain, and Trump will do well.
- Note that the interview was the single Kamala – Walz press event since Biden dropped out of the race. Over that time, Trump and Vance have done over 35 interviews, town halls, and other live events.
- Merrick Garland’s Do(In)J dusted off their October Surprise last week, with an announcement that Russians were attempting to influence yet another presidential election, once again in support of Donald Trump. The indictments aimed at two Russia based employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, charging them with conspiring to commit money laundering and violate the Foreign Agents Registration (FARA) Act. Garland accused RT of using direct misinformation and propaganda, a $10 million budget, designed to shape public opinion in Western audiences. Do(In)J is about to seize over 30 related domains. Garland specifically named three right wing bloggers, Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson as dupes, forcing them to deny involvement, which in turn then supported Do(In)J’s allegations. Cute. Note that the specific information the three bloggers are accused of promulgating are relatively benign, right-wing opinions. Now that they have identified the bloggers, they will use the subsequent investigation to shut them down for the next two months, a political two-fer. Kind of makes you wonder who Do(In)J is looking at, as Putin last week endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Once again, the process (investigation) is the punishment. Garland and his henchmen are setting the stage for their actions following a Trump win in November.
- LinkedIn founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman was on the All-In Podcast a week ago. He bankrolls the American Future Republic, which appears to be a get Trump operation. Hoffman also bankrolled E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Trump, which ended up with a $93 million civil judgment against him in a NY courtroom. Hoffman is also bankrolling Smartmatic lawsuits against Fox News and Newsmax with the apparent goal of shutting down reporting on questions about voting machines. Hoffman’s plan appears to be to bleed Trump dry while simultaneously attempting to torpedo Trump’s ability to win in November by bankrolling the biggest lawfare cases against Trump and his supporters, essentially abuse of the legal system. Hoffman claims to be using his billions to protect democracy from Trump et al. One of the hosts asked Hoffman if his Clear Choice PAC was being used to kill democracy by manipulating ballots in swing states to protect Harris and hurt other left-leaning candidates. The question was: Is this principled or naked partisan hackery? RFK Jr showed up to discuss further and Hoffman suddenly had other commitments to attend to.
2. NIL. This didn’t take long at all. Montana student athletes have been offered thousands of dollars in Name, Image and Likeness payments if they endorse embattled incumbent democrat John Tester in his reelection bid for the US Senate. Tester is the typical western state democrat, playing the good ol’ boy card early and often while running for reelection, and voting party line democrat for Chucky Schumer while in DC. One particularly ironic vote last year was against legislation that would prohibit men from competing in women’s college sports. The irony is the women in Montana being offered NIL money to support him. Montana Together, a pro-Tester political organization has been reaching out to state universities offering NIL deals for student athletes. Tester is in a spot of trouble this time around and has been particularly slippery this election cycle, refusing to endorse Kamala, calling on Biden to drop out of the race, and cranking up his own Republicans for Tester group. Will it work? Unknown. Of course, he denies all knowledge of the NIL offers.
3. Mary. We here in Alaska foolishly passed a massive rewrite of state election law in 2020 that among other things brought Ranked Choice Voting to the state. Predictably, it successfully made it easier to elect democrats, replacing deceased long-term congress critter Don Young with one Mary Peltola. Peltola is a skinny Alaska Native grandmother with a sweet, sweet smile and running for reelection. Her opponent is Nick Begich, a member of the political Begich clan. Nick comes from the conservative branch and is so far running a decent campaign. Peltola has been a lockstep democrat, voting for anything and everything Hakeem Jefferies tells her to vote for. Other than working for her father on a commercial fishing boat, Peltola has no experience in anything outside government. She is running taking credit for everything positive that happened in Alaska during the last two years while completely ignoring the Biden – Harris destruction of the resource development industry in Alaska via cancelling leases, locking up oil, natural gas and mining lands from all efforts to drill or dig. She is well funded with very slick ads carpet bombing the airways up here. Also on the ballot is a ballot initiative to repeal RCV. Like the Peltola – Begich campaign, it also has a massive advantage in available money for the campaign, $4 million vs $60,000. Winning these two races will be difficult but win them we must.
4. Eklutna. In the Bizarro World that doubles for local politics here in Anchorage, we have the union supported, veto-proof majority on the Anchorage Assembly conspiring with the 72-member Eklutna tribe to remove a dam on the outflow of Eklutna Lake some 30 miles N of ANC. The lake feeds water into a power station some 3 miles N that generates just over 6% of all electricity in the Rail Belt (Southcentral Alaska). The lake also provides over 90% of all water for the Anchorage Bowl. The dam has been in place for nearly a century. It is currently owned by the two local electrical utilities, Chugach and Matanuska Electric. Both are co-ops. Somewhere along the line, the feds required the owners to complete a restoration study for fish in the Eklutna River. This study was done with a recommendation that nothing change in current management of the resource. It turns out that there were no salmon that made it all the way upstream into the lake to spawn. Lake levels are highly variable over the course of the year. Some years ago, in a fit of togetherness, the Assembly decided it wanted government to government relations with the Eklutna Tribe. The Assembly is currently in negotiations with the tribe on what to do with the dam. Most of us expect a recommendation to remove it, leaving the lights in the Railbelt out and Anchorage without a major source of drinking water. Vehicle for this is pandering to the anti-dam greens. What is really going on? There are Eklutna tribal members who want the dam removed so it can be rebuilt on tribal or tribal corporation land, turning the new dam into a cash cow for the tribe. There are those of us who believe the Assembly palms are well-greased with promises of free money, which is driving the secret negotiations (or conspiracy). The problem is that the reauthorization decision rests in the hands of Governor Dunleavy who has two more years left in office. The Assembly is furiously trying to delay that decision until the next gubernatorial election where they think they can install a democrat and get a better result.
5. Arlington. President Trump was invited by 13 Gold Star families to attend a ceremony at Arlington on Aug 26. These were families of the military members killed by Taliban during Biden – Harris panicked evacuation of Afghanistan. Having done this sort of thing a few time s before, Trump requested approval for a camera to record the event. That approval was given as a matter of course. During the ceremony, an Arlington employee (employed by the Army) decided cameras were not approved and attempted to physically intervene to remove it. That intervention was unsuccessful. The employee went public afterwards with claims of a physical altercation in an attempt to stir up as much political crap as humanly possible. The Army whom she worked for chimed in in full support which in turn triggered media invective aimed at Trump’s so-called callous behavior. The Harris presidential campaign foolishly got themselves involved in an attempt to score some cheap political points. Note that if nobody had said anything, the entire mess would have quickly disappeared. Trump responded by releasing videos of the Gold Star families who invited him to the ceremony. Every single one of them supported Trump, seething with their contempt for Harris – Biden that got their kids needlessly killed. Harris claimed after the evacuation to be the last one in the room when the decision to pull out was made. Nobody from Biden – Harris contacted the families after the deaths were announced. As it turns out, cameras at Arlington are relatively common, with video of O’Bama and McCain both available. What the politicized Army employee, her politicized superiors, the media and the Harris – Walz campaign tried to turn into an anti-Trump gotcha is today seen as yet another smarmy little political trick that ultimately blew up in their collective faces.
6. Starliner. Boeing’s Starliner returned from ISS Friday, with a successful recovery at White Sands in NM. The capsule returned empty as NASA determined it was not sufficiently safe for the crew to return with the capsule. As it turned out, the automated return was not completely clean, as there was another thruster failure on the crew portion of the capsule. The question now becomes: What’s next for Boeing? They are in something of a tight spot, with a failed manned demo flight. NASA is going to want Boeing to pay for a second demo. Boeing will want NASA to pay for it. Given the awful (and well deserved) public relations position for Boeing right now, what do they do next? One path would be to fix everything broken and dribble out status updates showing their good work as they run the problems down. Once fixed, they can then roll everything back a flight and offer to start using Starliner as an unmanned, fully automated cargo ship. Get a few successful flights under their belt and give a manned demo another try. The sticking point will continue to be who pays for it. If Starliner is a good piece of hardware, this path should work. If it and the Boeing management team are truly garbage, we will find that out too.
More later –
- AG