Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Trump
2. Reframe
3. Roberts
4. E-mail
5. Indy
6. Reforms
7. Grifting
8. Culling
1. Trump. As we enter our sixth week of the second Trump presidency, things continue to move quickly. The border is now locked down, and all it took was an administration that wanted to do so. Negotiations to end the Russia – Ukraine war are underway. And the DOGE process is far enough along that the DOGE leadership is starting to talk about the Deep State killing them as Musk did in his conversation with Joe Rogan last week. Link to that follows immediately, warning though as it is a whopping 3+ hours long. On to Trump….
- The Trump foreign policy is transactional unlike the foreign policy this nation has seen since the end of WWII. Democrats use transactional as an insult. Trump uses it as a way of life as he is all about the deal. His view is that if nations are trading with one another and making money, it will be difficult to go to war against one another. The more trade, the more money being made on both sides, the less chance of warfare. This is anathema to the current Deep State as warfare is great for making insiders of the Deep State rich, though not so much for the kids fighting it. The more chaos, the more snouts get to feed from the trough. NGOs are key to making this happen as demonstrated so well by the Clinton Foundation and its participation in the response to the Haitian earthquake where billions for new housing were skimmed while just a few new buildings were built. Even his attempt at a deal in Ukraine is based on this, as the US as a trade partner for rare earths gives the US an economic stake in their future. And the same thing can be done with Russia to give the US leverage over them. The swamp hates this approach as it cuts off their personal gravy train making profits available to anyone who participates in the marketplace. They will fight it with every fiber of their being.
- Trump got into an argument in the WH with Maine’s governor over her support of men in women’s sports. They ended with a “see you in court” exchange. If this democrat thinks men in women’s sports if the hill she is going to die on, an issue that polls roughly 20 – 80% against, I think she and the rest of her party in Maine are going to be surprised.
- Final Trump observation comes out of Friday’s meeting with Ukrainian president Zelensky in the Oval office. While the meeting blew up toward the end after nearly an hour, my guess is that Zelensky will wander around Europe for a while asking for help. He will get glad-handed, celebrated, and a lot of promises will be made with absolutely no follow-up. Eventually, he will be back to sign the rare earths deal, the first step toward peace, something he has backed away from at least twice over the course of last week. Before the meeting, he had a meeting with a number of senate democrats, who pumped his ego and other bodily orifices advising him to renege on his agreement with Trump. There were at least two Republican senators in attendance, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley. More on this next week.
2. Reframe. In the persuasion world, reframing is done to offer different perspectives in order to allow you to better understand what is going on, why, then allowing you to deal with it. As the two political parties have split, Scott Adams offers a reframe of democrats and Republicans. The two parties have been described since at least the Reagan years as the mommy party and the daddy party. That framing then was tied into what sort of behavior you were supposed to be engaged in. Mom would pat you on your head regardless while dad was often the disciplinarian. Over the decades that has morphed a bit. Today’s reframe on the parties is done in terms of movies which tends to describe why men today are gravitating toward Republicans while women are moving democrat. The Republican movie brings unity, the potential for greatness, humor, energy, optimism, action and risk taking. It focuses on real things like the deficit, childhood and stopping wars. This sounds like every action movie men want to watch as men are typically driven to action and real things. In contrast, democrats are focused on things that don’t exist. Their movie focuses on weakness, sadness, unhappiness, maudlin feelings. It is not action oriented and is melodramatic, character based. Women read most fiction for entertainment and are consumers of sadness and tragedy. They like fiction, especially if it is sad. Whether you buy this or not, whether it is ultimately too sexist or too simplistic to agree with, at least consider that Trump is giving us the perfect male movie, optimism, humor and action while democrats give us character-based fiction, sadness and melodrama. Male themes win every time, which is why he is currently winning.
3. Roberts. Interesting piece out Hot Air, Friday: Has the Chief Justice Finally Seen Enough? While there is a lot to be irritated with about Chief Justice John Roberts, one of the things he is very strong about is defense of the judiciary as an institution. As such, there is increasing speculation when and where will he step in and stop the transparent lawfare and judge shopping for compliant Clinton, O’Bama and Biden federal judges to issue restraining orders with nationwide impact. Perhaps we have seen the first pushback from Roberts himself. 10 PM Weds, Roberts granted the Trump administration a hold on a lower court order requiring it to immediately pay $2 billion in foreign assistance funds for the State Department and USAID. The presiding judge, a Biden appointee in office for less than a month required the administration to pay the contractors for work before Feb 13. The DC appeals court slow-rolled the appeal before finding that the lower court could not be appealed. Roberts disagreed, issuing a stay on the lower court order pending review. This is considered to be the first shot across the bow of the lawfare machine and the out-of-control lower court judges. Should be fun to see who else gets thumped and if the appellate judges are smart enough to understand the message they just received.
4. E-mail. For pure comedy gold, we have DOGE treating federal employees like the private sector treats employees. DOGE issued an e-mail two Friday’s ago giving all federal employees the weekend and the following Monday to respond with a quick list of their 5 accomplishments over the previous week. Failure to respond would be grounds for termination. Most of us who have worked in places other than the federal government get to respond to these sorts of requests on a regular basis. This applies to jobs at other levels of government and especially to the private sector. Do this right, and it is an opportunity to demonstrate your worth to leadership. Do it wrong, and you self-identify as a future layoff candidate. Musk publicly claimed it was simply a health check to see if whomever was listed at the e-mail addy was alive and checking their e-mail, though there was far more than that. By the end of last week, over a million had reportedly responded. The media orchestrated caterwauling from federal employees was wonderous to behold and we were treated to an entire week’s worth of complaining about the inhumanity of it all. I could not think of a better demonstration of the toxicity of a closed union shop. Several agencies ordered their people not to respond. DoD took most of the week to tell its civilians to respond. Uniformed people to the best of my knowledge did not. Responding is moderately difficult for those in the classified world, though only if you are looking for an excuse not to respond. By week’s end, polling was not going well for the civil service. These guys need to be careful as they will give Trump an excuse and political cover via positive polling to rescind the JFK Executive Order (EO) allowing civil service to organize, something that could not happen to a nicer group of people.
5. Indy. President Trump issued a pair of EO’s mid-Feb asserting Executive control over the so-called independent federal agencies. These include but are not limited to the SEC, FCC, EPA, CPSC, EEOC, FEC, NRC, and the Federal Reserve. The EO’s put their budgets under OMB and requires them to coordinate with the WH over any policy decisions, precisely what the other federal agencies are required to do. A search about the new policy pulls a long list of international law firms opining about the death of the independent federal agency and the expected political impact on their operations. Of course, all these have long been politicized via the Long March of the left through the institutions, becoming tools of the left. Once again, Trump grabs a weapon created by the left and turns it against them Expect this to be forced into the courts. Expect some wins, perhaps ending with a big one. Expect this to end up as legislation to lock it into place at least until the next democrat congress is installed.
6. Reforms. The other bit of good news last week is the Trump administration challenging the group of Watergate-era reforms that significantly limited the power of the president. The Watergate-era congress installed by a massive democrat win in the 1974 congressional elections embarked on a successful campaign to limit presidential power. While those reforms were intended to return power to congress, it instead empowered and built a huge, unaccountable federal bureaucracy. Trump aims to reverse that. The previously discussed revocation of independent agencies is part of this effort. The reforms failed because congress continued to make irresponsible and excessive delegation of its legislative powers to agencies while at the same time handicapping the president’s power to control the Executive Branch. Note that the ability to rescind spending is part of this. Recission was one of the Nixon actions that infuriated democrats leading to his impeachment effort. A Watergate-era budget included provisions prohibiting a president from rescinding spending. That legislation required every single penny appropriated to be spent. It has never been challenged in federal court. Expect it to be challenged under this president. Rolling back Watergate? Long past time. Long past time. Note that like the independent agencies, most of this will require congressional action to lock into place.
7. Grifting. For democrats, grifting is not just an accusation, it is a business model. Last week’s example was the discovery of a $2 billion set aside for a climate group linked to Stacy Abrams, Power Forward Communities. The group is a shell, with a reported $100 in total revenue. It was founded in 2023 as part of an outfit calling itself Rewiring America, which Abrams quickly announcing her involvement with. The group was supposed to prioritize housing, equity, and resilience, all in the name of expanding access to clean energy, essentially grifting off financing energy efficiency upgrades. The $2 billion came in the form of an EPA grant.
8. Culling. The Next Big Thing is response to the avian flu, a fast-spreading virus that can kill most chickens in a few days. The media is doing its level best to create the next pandemic and chicken / egg shortages due to culling (destruction) of chicken flocks in response to the virus. Happily, there has been some pushback on blanket destruction of the animals. And that pushback seems to be growing a bit, which is a Good Thing. It is very easy for the media to create a panic, something they’ve been doing their level best to do over incessant egg shortage stories over the last few months. Regardless of what happens, we can respond quickly to a chicken and egg shortage, as they mature quickly.
More later –
- AG