Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Assassin
2. Pagers
3. SpaceX
4. Jill
1. Assassin. The second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in 65 or so days was thwarted when a Secret Service officer opened fire on a rifle barrel pointing out of undergrowth on a Trump golf course in Florida a week ago. The perp escaped and was apprehended some 40 miles along an interstate. This guy is a real Strange Ranger, starting with Richard Speck class man boobs. Richard Speck is a serial killer in jail for life who was an early adopter of an alternative lifestyle and chemically induced transition.
- The perp, one Ryan Routh was on site at his chosen firing location for at least 12 hours before Trump was supposed to show up in the hole in front of him. This means he set up around 0130 in the dead of night. He left when Secret Service saw the rifle barrel through the greenery, hightailed it to his vehicle, and drove off. Someone got a snapshot of the license plate which was used to apprehend him 0+45 later, over 41 miles away on I-95. He was reportedly quite pleased with himself a day or so later in court during his arraignment. He did not send any rounds downrange. Note that these sorts of Trump golf events are normally done on an ad hoc basis, where he grabs an opening on his schedule. If the round of golf is ad hoc, how did the perp know where to be and when to get there?
- While the facts are fairly straight forward, his activities are much less so, raising many questions about who or what is backing him. He appears to be a political dilettante, with a particular recent interest in Ukraine. He made multiple trips from a home in Hawaii to that part of the world reportedly attempting to recruit pro-Ukraine fighters in the Islamist world. He has (or had) and extensive social media presence, most of which was scrubbed following the attempt. Who coordinates that sort of scrubbing, especially after the perp is in custody? Final observation here is that this is the second attempt on Trump involving Ukraine, the first being the original impeachment over the Perfect phone call. Why is Ukraine playing in our presidential races?
- My money is that the intel community is fully involved with this guy, not unlike what they were with Thomas Crooks. Indicators? Near instantaneous scrubbing of social media accounts. Resources for training for Crooks and resources to be a world traveler for Routh. Routh also bragged about having 100 counts (of something) filed against him. He was not only not in jail but was able to wander around with a weapon.
A user calling himself TheVigilantFox cross posted some questions from Jesse Waters midweek on X / Twitter that need to be addressed.
- How was Ryan Routh, “a man with no money for child support,” able to suddenly start living in a pricey house in Hawaii and afford flights to Taiwan, Turkey, Poland and Ukraine?
- Why has Routh “never served a day in jail” when he has “100 counts” to his name?
- Why was Rough’s fiancé okay with him flying to Ukraine for months at a time?
- How was he able to feed himself in Ukraine when he only had “$68 in [his] bank account?”
- And everywhere he goes, he gets press from local papers to the New York Times to Newsweek.”
Waters goes on to conclude that the whole thing stinks and suggests someone other than his “fiancé” was supporting him. You think?
2. Pagers. Best news of the week was Mossad hacking Hezbollah’s communication network. This hack involved inserting themselves into Hezbollah’s supply chain, replacing at least 4,000 pagers with specially modified pagers that included a bit of C-4 / Semtex in the battery pack. Israel sent a message and the pagers blew, injuring a couple thousand Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, one of them the Iranian Ambassador. There was a second round the following day when an unknown number of walkie talkies and other electronic devices also triggered and exploded. There was some reporting of a third round of explosions on Day 3 with solar installations being hardest hit. If the Israelis pulled this off, it is a remarkable intel op and provided Mossad with much more than a disrupted Hezbollah command and control (C2) structure. The wave of explosions across Lebanon allowed Israel the opportunity to map the network simply by watching newsfeeds, hospitals and ambulance services. See who was hurt and where they went, and you get a pretty good map of their command structure as it existed on the day they pulled the trigger.
- The reason pagers are popular is that they can’t be easily tracked with GPS data like the standard smart phone. The problem is that they are part of a network, and due to the age of the technology, that network is usually unsecured. Even secured networks can be penetrated. Unsecured networks are trivially easy to penetrate.
- Now that Hezbollah’s C2 has been disrupted, what do they do next to coordinate their ongoing war against Israel? Note that Hamas used couriers on motorbikes to coordinate the Oct 7 attack.
- One thing I was initially worried about was that Israel developed the ability to cause smart phone batteries to overheat and ignite by diddling firmware on the device itself, which would put all devices worldwide at risk. Based on the after-action reporting over the last week, I would say that technology doesn’t yet exist, though I wouldn’t be surprised if someone wasn’t working on it. Note that in the spook world, any and every energy storage device, from batteries to gas tanks and propane bottles can be turned into a bomb. The trick is getting the stored energy out of it in the quickest possible way when and where desired.
3. SpaceX. Two big stories out this week concerning SpaceX and Starlink fighting Harris – Biden’s regulatory flying monkeys.
- The first is an attempt by the FAA to fine SpaceX $633,000 for allegedly skirting regulations and the launch license in a pair of launches last year. The first violation took place was a Jun 18 Falcon 9 launch that put an Indonesian comsat in orbit. The first claim was that SpaceX used a new launch control room and removed a launch readiness poll some two hours before liftoff. The second was a Falcon Heavy launch that used a new propellent farm at KSC the FAA had not yet approved for operational use. Musk blew up at the fines, went public, and sent a letter to House and Senate Committees on Science, Technology and Transportation. The letter, in great specificity noted that in both cases, the FAA had previously approved launch licenses for the new facility and procedure and tried to rescind that license for subsequent launches, essentially making SpaceX start the entire licensing process over. FAA misconduct in the propellant farm case seems the worst, as use of the farm which is farther from publicly accessible areas was approved for an earlier manned Falcon 9 launch to ISS. The FAA approved use for that launch but dragged its feet for subsequent launches. SpaceX had prior approval in hand and was in the middle of the countdown for the launch when the FAA delivered a letter to SpaceX denying it permission to launch. Mission control called the FAA telling them it was unsafe to send these sorts of communications during launch operations on the fly. A tense conversation ensued during which the FAA did not direct SpaceX to stand down or pull its license. The launch proceeded safely after which the FAA came up with their silly little fine. Use of the new procedure and launch control room for the comsat launch was similar, as both the procedure and the room were approved for the previous launch.
- SpaceX complained bitterly for over a year about the FAA’s lack of ability and interest to keep up with the increasing pace of flight operations. They view their job as speed bumps rather than enablers and revel in their use of fines and cavalier issuance and removal of operational launch licenses. SpaceX is expected to respond with a lawsuit against the FAA in federal court.
- Elon Musk also made the point that Boeing’s Starliner, which had sufficient problems over the course of the summer that it did not return it crew to earth when it did, still retains its license. Why is this? Favoritism, perhaps?
- The last SpaceX attack comes courtesy of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which rescinded a $885 million grant awarded SpaceX in 2020 in 2022. The grant was to connect 640,000 homes in rural America. The grant was pulled by the newly installed democrat majority on the commission courtesy of Joe Biden with the excuse that “… this applicant had failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service.” Two years later, we have the Biden appointed FCC chair opining that SpaceX is a monopoly due to its ability to launch Starlink satellites and provide the service ahead of everyone else. Today, two thirds of all satellites in orbit are Starlink. The chair prattled on about how the economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies and innovation, calling for more companies to step up and compete. Anyone else note the logical disconnect here? Two years ago, Starlink hadn’t demonstrated to the satisfaction of this very same majority the ability to connect 640,000 rural homes in the US to broadband satellite internet. Two years later, they are now a monopoly requiring regulation. These are mutually exclusive terms. Either you can’t provide the requested service or you are doing it so well, you have destroyed everyone else in the marketplace. Which one is it? It can’t possibly be both.
4. Jill. As President Being There convened his first cabinet meeting in nearly a year, we got a good view of who is really in charge in the WH these days. Hint: It ain’t Scranton Joe. While Biden was there, demonstrated by the photos as the meeting kicked off, Jill actually ran it. POTUS invited FLOTUS to the meeting. Apparently, none of the cabinet members were surprised or upset by this occurrence, preferring the continuing phony baloney jobs rather than properly demonstrating who is actually in charge. This meeting also demonstrates the corruption of the Kamala campaign, as she should have been front and center, running the meeting, demonstrating her ability to actually step up and run things. Where was Kamala? Much the same place she was for the upcoming Alf Landon Dinner in NYC, hiding, running away. Monty Pythons Brave Sir Robin sketch describes her campaign nicely:
More later –
- AG