Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Nominations
2. Election
3. Bees
4. Foreign
5. FEMA
6. Bannon
1. Nominations. As the first several rounds of Trump cabinet nominations rolled out last week, other than the standard leftist explody-heads, it becomes apparent that Trump is loaded for bear this time around and understands that he and his new administration were elected to be disruptive. He also understands that he only has a finite amount of time to make those changes, so he has to hit the ground running. We Americans are unique in the world in that we aren’t a bit bashful about tearing things down in order to build something better in its place. Even the Cloward – Piven Marxists believe in this, hoping to rebuild in their Marxist image. Their problem is that they never want to take whatever target they have to destruction, scorched earth, making the rubble bounce, opting to stay short of their stated goals so as to retain power. Trump, a builder, isn’t a bit bashful about demolition before he rebuilds. And that is what is in store for the Deep State.
- For SECDEF, we have FNC weekend host Pete Hegseth, a twice decorated vet with a couple decades of service. Hegseth did not enter the military industrial complex money chase following service. He wasn’t sufficiently political, retiring as an Army Major, and therefore not particularly useful to the complex. His primary job will be to root out DEI which has been installed in DoD since the O’Bama years. I expect an unstated job will be to break up the Old Boy’s network of retiring General Officers and the complex. There are going to be a lot of the command structure accepting early retirement, starting with the current Chairman of the JCS, CQ Brown. Rooting these guys out will be difficult as they are well embedded, have elevated like-minded officers, and a finite percentage of them will refuse to go quietly. Expect charges of racism to fly early and often. As proof of the internal concern about Hegseth, he was target of the first rape accusation of the nomination cycle for a tryst seven years ago on a Cali hotel.
- Secretary of State nominee is Senator Marco Rubio. After a contentious primary between Rubio and Trump in the 2016 election cycle, they have mended their fences and work well together. Rubio is known as a China hawk. He will be replaced in the US Senate by a nomination by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. His replacement provides an interesting political dance, as it may very well be connected to the Attorney General nomination Matt Gartz. So far, no attacks on Rubio,
- Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to replace Merrick Garland as Attorney General. Gaetz is being nominated to do two things. First, like all nominees, to root out DEI. An equal task will be to end lawfare and prosecute every single lawyer and investigator that supported political persecution of enemies of the Harris – Biden regime. All those people broke the law. All need to be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Gaetz has been a real pain in the backside while in the House, most notably starting the process which removed Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. He is strongly disliked on both sides of the aisle by members of both parties. One view of his nomination is that they were happy to remove him from the House. His nomination has so far received the most pushback. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who actively looks for ways to disagree with Trump pronounced Gaetz ad not a serious nomination. As to how serious Lisa takes her role here, she was one of 20 Republicans who voted for Merrick Garland and has been completely silent about his anti-Trump / anti-Republican lawfare. As I noted a week or two ago, Lisa is going to have a hard time keeping her mouth shut. Gaetz was targeted by the Garland (In)Justice Department for sex trafficking investigation. Charges were never brought.
- The Gaetz nomination is where things get fun. In each new presidential term, the Senate will take their pound of flesh, rejecting a few high-profile nominees. It happens to every president. Looks like Gaetz and Hegseth are first to be targeted. Once nominated, Gaetz immediately resigned the House, allowing DeSantis to appoint his replacement. What happens to Gaetz is more interesting. Should he be rejected, what happens next? Trump can always appoint him as a recess appointment which will leave him in office for a year or two. Should he be rejected, DeSantis can appoint him to replace Rubio, forcing his new BFFs in the senate to put up with him for the next two years, which would serve them right. I tend to thing Trump will end up going the recess appointment route, with DeSantis appointing current House member Byron Donalds, just reelected to his third term as the Rubio replacement. Donalds is whip smart and charismatic. Should be able to win a statewide election to the US Senate.
- RFK Jr was nominated to replace HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. His job will be to break up the internal (infernal?) do-loop between HHS, the food and drug companies. The entire health apparat has been captured by these companies, leading to chronic health maladies running rampant in the US over the last several decades. RFK Jr has been a vocal critic of the regulatory capture for a long time and aims to shut it down. Expect a loud and near continuous appeal to authority of so-called medical professionals, every single one of which made the same sorts of appeals to authority for their fraudulent COVID edicts. Gonna be difficult to successfully appeal to your own authority when you no longer have any.
2. Election. The election aftermath continues to grind slowly on. Some of it is good news. Some not so much. And some simply in your face election fraud.
- For instance, PA is doing a recount of the Senate race between incumbent Bob Casey and challenger Dave McCormick. Several county election boards are actively counting illegal ballots without proper signatures or addresses in clear violation of PA Supreme Court opinions ordering them not be counted. The hope appears to be to so muck up the recount that there is no clear winner, allowing PA Governor Shapiro to appoint Casey for the next two years. Of course, the Senate majority can simply refuse to seat Casey should this happen. We will see if they up to it.
- Second is the not so mysterious appearance of 109,000 absentee ballots arriving 0331 L split 83% for incumbent Tammy Baldwin ended up reelecting her. Challenger Eric Hovde is rightfully questioning the results. All the Usual Suspects are saying nothing to see here, move along, move along.
- Final story takes place in Colorado which shifted left while the rest of the nation was shifting right. One writer blames it on malfeasance by CO Secretary of State Griswold, who among other things allowed the password list for state voting machines to hang out in the wild for 4 months after it had been “mistakenly” posted online. No word about those passwords being changed afterwards. Other in-state writers blame a low turnout, failure of Trump to capture Latinos in higher numbers in most of the state, and a higher Harris turnout / vote than Biden got in 2020. How that dumpster fire of a campaign managed that trick is one of the stories out of the election.
3. Bees. One of the movements for new energy generation has been the complete embrace of nuclear energy by Big Tech, with multiple agreements between vendors and Big Tech customers for new reactors to power their AI datacenters. AI needs a LOT of electricity, more than currently exists in the US today. Microsoft is in the midst of bringing Three Mile Island back online to power their AI datacenter. Note that all the Big Tech companies are pursuing nuclear rather than renewables. Facebook / Meta is also involved and were on track to complete a deal with an existing reactor operator to provide electricity for a new AI datacenter. This deal fell through when endangered species of bee was found on land planned for the project. So far, Zuckerberg has not released the location of the proposed datacenter.
4. Foreign. The Trump effect on foreign relations started the day his victory was announced, as there was a report that the Houthis who have been conducting a successful war on shipping in the Red Sea announced they suddenly wanted peace. There was no credible follow-up on this initial report, though there was at least one confirmation and one refutation. We will consider this to be a work in progress. The Houthis have conducted a decent low tech (or high tech depending on your viewpoint) drone war against the wokeists of the US Navy and the intel community in the area for a few years. When you are concentrating on the wrong stuff (DEI), it is difficult to have sufficient brane cells remaining to use on the important stuff (actual warfighting). We are seeing a change in modern warfare, as both the Red Sea and Ukraine are quickly becoming modern drone wars, something we appear neither to recognize nor know how to fight as yet. In a related story, the head of an Iraqi militia involved in active hostilities with US troops now wants a less hostile relationship with the US once Trump takes office. Perhaps he remembers what happened to ISIS. The next story took place within days of the election results was Qatar publicly telling the Hamas leadership, all billionaires, hiding out in their hotels that they were no longer welcome and to leave the country. Final story is Ukraine. Trump has already spoken with both Putin and Zelensky. I expect the war to be over shortly after he takes office if not sooner. It remains to be seen what will happen to the money laundering operation democrats have going on in Ukraine following the cessation of hostilities.
5. FEMA. It turns out that the FEMA politically driven hurricane response wasn’t a one-time good deal after all. As with everything Harris – Biden, it is all politics, all the time. The supervisor accused of ordering response teams to bypass homes and businesses with Trump signs threw the rest of her agency under the bus last week claiming that agency leadership knew FEMA was bypassing homes and businesses with Trump signs. Everyone knew it. Everyone did it. Management agreed and supported it. In full crawfish mode, she also claimed to be non-partisan, meaning she knows who was elected a couple weeks ago. At the same time, Governor DeSantis announced a state investigation of FEMA politicized hurricane response, which should be fun.
6. Bannon. Lawfare against Trump ally Steve Bannon has not ended. It has merely moved from the federal to state level, as NY Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg revived a fraud case against him in state court. The case involves a charity called WeBuildTheWall, which took donations in support of wall construction during his first term. There was an abortive federal prosecution for which Trump pardoned Bannon in 2021. James and Bragg revived the case in state court while Bannon was in prison. The indictment accuses Bannon of facilitating payments to its president as a secret salary. Prosecution claims Bannon profited by the charity paying his credit card. Bannon’s lawyer claims he was reimbursed for expenses. Sounds a lot like typical NY (In)Justice. I wonder how well James and Bragg will do fending off criminal RICO charges in federal court, which is something we may end up finding out with the right Attorney General.
More later –
- AG