Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Act Blue
2. Tariffs
3. Starliner
4. Autopen
5. Visas
6. Tesla
7. Mexico
8. Shipbuilding
1. Act Blue. For fellow Schadenfreude fans, last week’s implosion of democrat fundraising (and suspected money laundering) powerhouse Act Blue was front and center in the news. Act Blue is purportedly an outfit that aggregates small dollar donations into the greater democrat fundraising machine. It has been incredibly effective over multiple election cycles. That is, until James O’Keefe conducted a sting or two on them demonstrating the fundraising was little more than money laundering with exterior billions laundered through tens to hundreds of thousands of straw donors, mostly elderly, who had no idea they had been donating campaign money to democrats to the tune of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Conservatives have long suspected the money laundering angle but were never able to trigger any law enforcement interest, though House Republicans under James Comer started dropping criminal referrals. Those referrals started triggering resignations from Act Blue in recent weeks, with most of its legal team jumping ship like so many drowning rats. This is a really big deal, for if Act Blue goes belly up, democrats have nothing left to fund them other than their billionaires. If this goes where I think it’s going, democrats end up being little more than theater kids, performance artists, putting on a show for the assembled masses with little to no connection to actual Americans who like the show, believe their BS and vote for them.
2. Tariffs. Of all things economic, tariffs are among the things I understand the least, which is why I tend to avoid them. OTOH, under Trump, they’ve become a big and loud deal, not so much a money-making technique, rather a tool to force miscreants to the bargaining table. Trump tariffs threatened on our not so friendly trading partners like Canada and the European Union (EU) are used like economic 2 x 4 whacks between the eyes to get their attention. And it appears we have their attention at least for a little while. Case in point is Ontario, which has been running a series of muzzy ads begging Americans to trade with them. It turns out that the velvet ads obscure a barely concealed Marxist fist, with the Ontario Premier threatening to shut off Ontario electricity exported to several NE US states in retaliation for threatened Trump tariffs. As it turns out, Provinces are unable to unilaterally take this sort of action based on past court cases in Canada. But the central government has been quiet on the issue, allowing their provincial attack dogs to run their mouths in public. Think of it as a good cop, bad cop exercise and you will be close. Last week, the Ontario Premier backed down on a threat to impose a 25% tariff on electricity sold to the US following a meeting with the US Commerce Secretary. Negotiations will proceed. Ontario is not the only miscreant, as British Columbia is threatening to impose a similar tariff on over the road trucks between the US and Alaska in retaliation to Trump threatened tariffs. There is more to this story as Canada along with the EU does impose significant tariffs on imported American goods – beef, liquor and dairy – as a protectionist measure for their domestic industry. Trump knows this and is bound and determined to put international trade on an equal footing. I expect he will be successful, though the negotiation will be like all Trump negotiations, noisy, messy and ultimately successful.
3. Starliner. The saga of stranded Starliner astronauts Butch Whitmore and Suni Williams is nearing an end with the launch of a replacement crew to ISS Friday. This is one of the odder stories in manned spaceflight with a political twist. NASA made the decision not to return the Starliner crew with Starliner following months of mucking around with its known thruster problems. They eventually moved the Starliner crew into the normal ISS rotation when they launched a replacement crew with two open seats onboard the SpaceX Dragon last Sept. Media incorrectly (and intentionally) reported this as stranding them in space. They were never stranded, though if returned, it would mean ISS would be unmanned until a replacement crew was launched. The crew was interviewed a few weeks ago and agreed that they were left in space by Harris – Biden as a political ploy to make sure that Elon Musk who was supporting Trump’s election would not get credit for saving them. The truth of that is anybody’s’ guess, though not outside the realm of possibility for the O’Bamaoid vermin pulling Biden’s strings. The replacement crew will arrive at ISS this weekend. After a few days of handoff briefings, expect the old crew to return home. Sometimes business trips end up being a bit longer than they were initially intended to be.
4. Autopen. Another interesting question out of the demise of the Harris – Biden regime is the use of autopen to sign the vast majority of presidential actions over the last few years. Apparently, the only thing Biden signed by himself was the letter withdrawing from the presidential race last July. Given his mental deterioration, the question of his mental competence arises, especially given the 8,000+ pardons and commutations signed in the last couple months on his way back to Delaware. How many of these did he know he was signing? How many of them did he approve of? How many of them was he even aware of? Given that the presidential pardon authority is treated as iron clad, the question of a presidential signature by a mental incompetent is appropriate, though figuring it out will be an exercise in ugliness. Remember that Special Council Hur refused to bring corruption charges against Biden because of his lack of mental facilities, though Hur never went the next step to asking how someone who was insufficiently competent mentally to stand trial was still able to perform his other presidential duties. Will anything come of this? My guess is probably not, though the question needs to be asked in federal court forcing SOCTUS to weigh in. They will likely punt as nobody ever brought a 25th Amendment case against Biden, though even that is up for debate as he was forced to withdraw from his reelection campaign.
5. Visas. The pro-Hamas, anti-Semite protests continued last week at Columbia. This time, there was some federal pushback, with the Trump administration pulling the visa for the 31-year-old grad student leader, arresting him in preparation to sending his sorry carcass back to the Middle East. Turns out the boy is hooked up with a pregnant woman within days of giving birth. Que the heart-rending reportage. Pulling the visa opened an interesting debate over visas and free speech. Given that someone over here on a visa is in the US as the pleasure of the US government, one would assume that he (or she) is here at the pleasure of the US government and that the visa can be pulled at any time for any reason. His lawyer, a Jewish woman defending a man who would just as soon kill her as look at her, is arguing the visa can’t be pulled based on his First Amendment free speech rights. Interesting argument. How much free speech does the visiting leader of anti-Semitic student protests actually have? How much should he have? Exactly what is a 31-year-old grad student doing in the US anyway? What is he studying? Anti-Semitic protests? Or something else? My dime says he was and is a paid troublemaker and needs to be in jail, if not worse. Should be interesting to see how this all works out. In a related story, three cabinet departments of the Trump administration pulled $400 million in grants from Columbia for their failure to control anti-Semitic protests on campus. While Columbia retains an endowment somewhere around $15 billion, they aren’t hurting badly for money. Still, $400 million in one year is a sizeable chunk. Perhaps performance art isn’t all it was supposed to be.
6. Tesla. Speaking of performance art, we have the ongoing protests aimed at Tesla. This has ramped up over recent weeks as the orchestrated Two-Minutes-Hate against all things Musk was joined by democrat billionaires. Make no mistake, these protests are completely artificial, orchestrated, planned and paid for. We have Teslas being defaced, vehicles at dealerships torched, and democrats trading in their Teslas for less capable vehicles. Former astronaut and current US Senator from Arizona Mark Kelly traded his Tesla in for a Tahoe mumbling some claptrap about all the evil Musk and DOGE are doing to the federal workforce. He was instantly ripped for his gratuitous foolishness. Given the newly muscular Trump law enforcement apparat, it would seem to be a good time to look into RICO investigation into whomever is orchestrating this mayhem (terrorism?). Final observation is that all this has forced Tesla stock prices down a bit, which would seem to make it a good time to look into a Tesla stock purchase. Disclaimer: I am not a stock maven. I do not give advice. I do not own any Tesla that I know of. Tesla should be an interesting investment not for the EVs, but for the robots. They are positioned to become the functional equivalent of Asimov’s US Robots in the very near future.
7. Mexico. I meant to talk about this last week but ran out of space. Arguments in a $10 billion lawsuit by Mexico aimed at US firearms manufacturers was heard before SCOTUS a couple weeks ago. The lawsuit alleges that firearms manufactured in the US fuel cartel violence in Mexico. You would initially think that Mexico would lose by the 6-3 ideological split on SCOTUS. You would be wrong. The argument did not go well for Mexico, as even the liberal Justices skeptical of the claims. The only stupidity was Justice Sotomayor opining that US firearms manufacturers made easily removable serial numbers on their weapons, one of the more idiotic things she has said on the bench. Arguments quickly spun into precisely who has responsibility for misuse of their products by customers. We also have very clear guidance from congress prohibiting these sorts of lawsuits against manufacturers in the US, something even Justice Jackson – Brown mentioned during arguments. The Mexico lawsuit was orchestrated by the billionaire anti-gunners, who helped finance the lawsuit, further demonstrating that there is nothing real, nothing organic on the left. It is all performance art all the way down.
8. Shipbuilding. The US industrial base, particularly for war products has become a significant logistical concern in recent decades, especially for large, expensive weapons systems. We no longer manufacture these things in quantities of thousands to tens of thousands. Other nations like Russia and China can and do. One of the larger holes is the ability to build ships here in the US, an industry that has shifted mostly overseas. During his State of the Union speech a couple weeks ago, Trump announced creation of shipbuilding office within the WH with the goal of revitalizing American shipbuilding. Since the 1950s, US shipbuilding is down 85%. The number of shipyards capable of building the largest ships down 80%. If you don’t value something, you won’t invest in it. And we haven’t. On the surface, this would seem to be an important thing to pursue. But it will have to be balanced with a worldwide move toward small, autonomous or semi-autonomous systems (drones and robots). When anyone with a 3D printer can manufacture a drone, strap a hand grenade or derringer to it and individually target people in the ground, why do we need strike fighters, tanks, strategic bombers or carrier battle groups? Wargaming over the last few decades have driven home the threat of distributed weapons systems much to the displeasure of those wanting to retain the existing force structure. Somewhere along the line, the new capability to build large, capital class weapons systems will have to meet the burgeoning growth of small, deadly weapons systems and strike a capability balance. Large, capital ships like manned fighters may end up being a relic of the past if everything can kill them. Hang on, getting from here to there is going to be a bumpy ride.
More later –
- AG