Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. NGOs
2. Firings
3. Hearings
4. Deepseek
5. Drones
6. Gaza
7. Menthol
8. Consultant
1. NGOs. One thing to be remindful about as the Trump deconstruction train rolls though the Executive Branch is that anything funding related will have to be followed by congressional action. This is likely to spread down to the manpower and regulatory world also. I expect the Trump administration and congressional leadership are aware of this and preparing. It may explain why Trump at this time favors a single massive funding bill rather than the regular order 13 appropriations bills last done under the Gingrich House in 1996. You can hide a lot of awfulness in a few thousand pages of legislation, something the Uniparty has done for decades. This time around, that weapon will be turned on the Uniparty which has used it so effectively against us for decades. Take it as a Trust but Verify moment.
- That being said, the first and largest change the Trump administration did last week was halt all federal funds flowing to NGOs participating in pumping up the number of illegals crossing the border. The halt is a 90-day freeze pending review. This essentially defunds all NGOs participating in this over the years. Note that NGO funding is a self-licking ice cream cone, for the money is not only used to place the illegals, but it also funds the legal structure that disappers them, instructs them how to evade apprehension and deportation, and provides legal help to fight deportation. That legal structure is now dead in the water.
- How much money are we talking about? Massive amounts of federal dollars. In many instances, the federal dollars are the similar amounts to funding raised by the charities. A Mar 2024 congressional report attributed to Forbes reported that Catholic Charities received $1.4 billion since 2021 while only receiving $1 billion in private donations. The Catholic Church has allowed themselves to be co-opted by the feds and are now just defending their bottom line.
- The Catholic Church is not the only church-affiliated participant, as this money has gone to Jewish Family Services, Border Servant Corps, Church World Services, Lutheran Immigration and Refuge Service. These aren’t the only ones, but you get the idea. In addition, DHHS and DHS have also targeted cities and counties with immigration grants, giving every single one of these a financial incentive to keep the flow intact and as large as humanly possible. No wonder we have so many sanctuary cities. They all want their funding stream intact and growing.
- The level of corruption is staggering. Harris – Biden managed to figure out how to corrupt both the religious NGOs and state and local governments in support of the massive flow of illegals into the US. This was not a mistake. It was a feature.
2. Firings. The other bit of good news has been massive firings at the FBI and Do(In)J. All the Jan 6 prosecutors and investigators have been put on leave pending termination. All the prosecutors and investigators associated with the Jack Smith lawfare against Trump are in the same status. Everyone involved with any lawfare against Trump or his associates are now looking for new jobs. Initially, I was somewhat skeptical of these firings, but we are somewhat in Nurenburg land, where every one of these FBI Special Agents, investigators and Do(In)J lawyers and their support staff knew they were following unlawful orders. And following illegal orders has not been an excuse since it was rejected in the Nurenburg Trials starting in 1945. Julie Kelly, who spent years in courtrooms listening to the Jan 6 show trials has spoken at length about how prosecutors and investigators really enjoyed their work, and were happy, almost gleeful with the outcome. They really enjoyed hammering the defendants, especially making it clear that there was nothing they could do about it. That is sufficient background information to adopt either the Roman solution used on Carthage (level it and sow salt on the ground afterwards), or the Aliens solution (I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure). These democrats chose the form of their destructor. Congratulations on getting what you so desperately asked for. The final piece of ironic good news comes from confirmation hearings for both Kash Patel and Pam Bondi. Both nominees promised they wouldn’t fire these people. Today, thanks to foot-dragging by democrat senators, they aren’t going to have to do so. So sad. Too bad. Sucks to be you. And to the public servants fired: You chose. Poorly.
3. Hearings. As of Friday, eight Trump cabinet nominees have been confirmed. Hearings are in progress for at least another 23. The three most controversial nominees are RFK, Jr, DHHS, FBI Director Kash Patel, and DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Hearings on all three have been contentious. As of this writing, it appears that Gabbard may be in the most difficulty, which would be a shame. I would suggest that the DHHS and FBI nominations are most important. Democrats have been nastiest to RFK and Gabbard, prompting the observation that life as an apostate from any religion, in this case liberalism and the democrat party is difficult. None of the three nominees backed down during questioning. All returned fire as it was received. Most interesting hearing was RFK, as democrats spent most of their time loudly pontificating, asking a question in the last 30 seconds and instantly jumping in when RFK tried to respond. Most entertaining was Bernie Sanders (D, VT) who put up a photo of a pair of onesies, one-piece clothes for infants with anti-vax messages. He demanded RFK disavow the message. RFK responded with a consistent message that he supports vaccines. Most people missed the actual question / demand from Sanders. That was to use once again the power of the US government to censor political speech. RFK didn’t respond to that message. In a similar vein, Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) who is fully onboard with forced vaccinations, pushed RFK Jr claiming that he scared people. Nothing like using forced vax as an entry level stunt, there Sheldon. I would suspect that Tulsi is in the biggest trouble, not unlike trouble that Pete Hegseth was in. And for the same reason, she is a skeptical outsider. At best, I expect she will end up being confirmed as VP Vance casts the tiebreaking vote. Over the weekend, Lindsey Graham (R, SC) who has been a bit prickly during the confirmation process announced he will support all three nominees. No Republican senator has announced opposition to any of the three, so I may be pleasantly surprised.
4. DeepSeek. The CCP announced its release of its entry into the AI marketplace. As usual, their claims left much to be desired. They claimed that it was developed by a small team without much money, the AI uses just a few Nvidia chips, and is much faster than the leading-edge AI’s in the rest of the world. This splash of surprising AI news rocked the stock market with Nvidia losing nearly half a trillion dollars in valuation a week ago. Their stock prices rebounded over the course of the week, though the first couple days were rough. Their claim was based on what they described as superior engineering, using speed reading techniques for input, and cutting the number of figures right of the decimal point in their calculations from 20+ down to only 8. On the face of it, this will speed things up nicely. As with all things CCP, it turns out their claims were all lies. Rather than costing $30 million with a team of 200, later stories had development cost over $1 billion with a team of thousands. Worse, it appears they simply copied a version of ChatGPT. Finally, they were using a lot of Nvidia chips, rather than a few. This last claim prompted an investigation into how they managed to get their hot little hands on a chip that they aren’t supposed to have commercial access to. Overall, I do like the episode, as it does several things. First, and most importantly, it once again demonstrates that the CCP are liars. Early. Often. Continuously. Second, it points out the importance of engineering in construction of AI’s. Somewhere along the line, there will be an AI that doesn’t need the huge datacenter backing it. It is a disruptive technological approach that is inevitable as the tech is moving very quickly. Final observation is that like most things out of the CCP, all data gathered by DeepSeek goes directly back to China and resides in their servers, servers the CCP has full access to. And censorship is hardwired into it, as it cannot and will not answer uncomfortable questions about past and present actions of the CCP, Tiananmen Square, for instance.
5. Drones. It took a single formal WH press conference to get an actual answer to the NJ drone question. WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that “… the drones flying over New Jersey, in large numbers, were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons.” She added that some of the other drones were hobbyists, recreational and private individuals but did not elaborate further on the research being conducted. This tracks with a few guesses on my part. First, is that DoD was working on something. Second, that changes in the hours of public operation allowing night flights encouraged the general public to fly more. Finally, when the unexplained drones became a Big Story, a LOT of people wanted to join the fun. And they did. Note that the FAA requires licenses for drone flights, so FAA approval is a correct statement. Blaming the entire thing on the FAA is a bit disingenuous, as while they license, the FAA wasn’t the impetus for the additional flights.
6. Gaza. President Trump suggested a solution to the Gaza problem: move all the residents out of Gaza, and split them up between Egypt and Jordan. As usual, the concept was widely panned. As usual, Trump persisted not that this sort of movement becomes a possibility. Once it became a possibility, then other players became possible. Iran for instance, as their terror-mongering and brainwashing manufactured a people absolutely incapable of living next door to Israel. Other Hamas-friendly nations like Turkey and Qatar are also possible participants. The problem with all of this is expected abuse of those migrants, as they become instant cannon fodder for use by any anti-Israel fool in the Middle East. Turkey and Iran, this means you. Trump is to be commended for simply shaking the box of an intractable problem. Perhaps we can see it from a different perspective after things settle down. But it is a tough problem. What do you do with a couple million people who have been brainwashed into hating Israelis, Jews and Christians, and would rather die than stop hating.
7. Menthol. In his two-week rollback of all things Harris – Biden, President Trump stopped the FDA war on menthol cigarettes. The FDA announced a plan to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars in 2022. This was at the behest of so-called consumer advocacy groups who claimed they were highly addictive and drew young people to smoking. Of course, this is the very same group of idiots who also spearheaded the FDA was on vaping, for precisely the same reasons. Their problem is that vaping is the solution rather than the problem, and their war on alternatives to smoking shoved more people, particularly young people, toward cigarettes. Additionally, cigar smoking is not nearly as tied to various health issues as cigarettes are, as you generally do not fully inhale the smoke, though it is tied to increases in mouth and throat cancers. The attack on menthol cigarettes was viewed as having a racial component, as they are particularly popular among blacks. It would also have created a black market in menthol cigarettes, which would have given the thugs of the BATFE another vector via which to harass Americans.
8. Consultant. LA Mayor Karen Bass announced she was going to hire a consultant to rebuild the Pacific Palisades. If successful, expect the same technique to be used to rebuild other parts of LA burned down by the recent fires. The only reason to hire a consultant is to ensure sufficient amounts of rebuilding money makes its way into her pockets and those of her cronies. It is the only reason to hire consultants at the state and local level.
More later –
- AG