Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Signal
2. Mann
3. Zelensky
4. Judges
5. Weapons
6. Falcon 9
1. Signal. While we are still in the middle of Fog of War with the Signal Affair, I think we know enough to assume it was either a mistake or an op. Odds of either are a coin flip. As such, this is one of the more difficult things to put together in recent memory as so much of what we think we know is garbage, tossed into the churn to trigger conditioned responses. And if it is conditioned responses requested by democrats and the swamp, why not give them a few of them?
- The best news of the week is that at least some of the targeted Trump officials appear to be really bad liars. SECDEF Hegseth is the best example of this, looking about as uncomfortable as humanly possible responding to reporter’s questions on the tarmac after the news hit the rotating machinery. Doesn’t appear he enjoys lying a lot, which I tend to like.
- OTOH, we have our friends from the Intel community, which would be fully engaged should this be an op. They lie for a living, are well trained, and are quite good at it. For example, the CIA reportedly approved the Signal app for government phones as it is widely available and provides some level of encrypted communication between individuals. And who is the Chairman of the Signal Board of directors? Katherine Maher, who started her career as a US-backed agent of regime change. During the Arab Spring, Maher ran digital comm initiatives for an outfit calling itself the National Democrat Institute, yet another CIA-connected black ops outfit in the mold of USAID. She became the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation in 2016 and is now CEO of National Public Radio. At Wiki, she coordinated government sponsored censorship against enemies of the regime.
- We don’t actually know who added the Atlantic reporter to the chat, although the name Alex Wong has been floated. Wong is a staffer for National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, though his name has been connected to current CIA Director John Radcliffe.
- Some wilder speculation has Senator Tom Cotton involved in the festivities because he reportedly wants to be SECDEF. I don’t think we need to go there, as the intel community involvement at every level literally screams for attention. OTOH, I do not discount it out of hand, either. Yet.
- As to Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg. Goldberg is one of the known Bad Actors among reporters with The Atlantic morphing into an anti-Trump democrat attack dog rag over the years. The chat took place Mar 11 – 15. Goldberg and The Atlantic waited nearly two weeks to publish the report of the chat, conveniently timed to coincide with a hearing in front of the Senate Intel Committee. For some reason, democrats on the committee were fully briefed and loaded for bear with questions, something I am sure was yet another coincidence (/sarc). From here, both Goldberg and The Atlantic played this to inflict maximum political damage on the Trump administration, yet another reason to conclude this was (and still is) an op.
- Contrast that behavior with that of the typical reporter, who historically would leverage a mistake like this to be first in line for future consideration. Reporters who are interested in new stories would speak up sometime during the chat, announce who they are, and suggest they ought not be on the chat. In return for silence on the contents of the chat, they would request (or demand) to be first in line for notification of future stories. Perhaps reportage is so broken this doesn’t happen anymore. But you do no small amount of damage to your future ability to track down stories if you burn a source the first chance you get in order to score some smarmy political points, something both Goldberg and The Atlantic gleefully did.
- The last little participant in this passion play is American Oversight, yet another of Mark Elias’ multiple lawfare operations. They conveniently had an open records lawsuit prepared, ready to go, for just this situation. And they managed to get that lawsuit in front of one of the most partisan black robed political hacks currently sitting on the DC Circuit, one James Boasberg. Boasberg stepped right up and demanded that the government preserve the messages exchanged Mar 11 – 15. As of this writing, it is unclear if this is even possible. The participation of Elias, Boasberg and the lawfare crowd indicates that this is an op intended to recreate the glory days of Judge Sirica coordinating legal action against the Nixon WH with House Democrats during Watergate.
- There is at least one report that Alex Wong may have a connection to American Oversight or one of its connected NGOs. Other than a mention of the connection during a Scott Adams chat last week, I have found nothing to support that speculation, though I do continue to look. While it does pass the smell test, it doesn’t pass the fact test. Yet.
- One final thing about Signal. Apparently, it can be opened on multiple devices. All you need is the operid and password. How many people do you think knew Waltz’ / Radcliffe’s password? My guess is that number is greater than one (some currently unknown number of his staff), which would nicely explain how Goldberg was added to the list.
2. Mann. Climate scientist Michael Mann is a full professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His claim to fame was the climate “hockey stick’, the model that is able to turn any random dataset into evidence for a recent, massive increase in global temperatures. He is also thin-skinned, responds poorly to criticism, and is a “sue you” kind of guy, ready, willing and able to drag his targets through the Canadian and US judicial system for over a decade, bleeding them of money in a variety of defamation / slander lawsuits. The idea is that his legal fees are either covered by his University or deep pocketed supporters while the targets aren’t. Mann dragged the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), National Review, Rand Simberg and Mark Stein through the DC courts for 13 years in a series of lawsuits. Simberg wrote the original offending remark, though he was going after the University of Pennsylvania administration rather than Mann. Steyn picked up the comments and expanded a bit on them. CEI and National Review were dragged into the tar pit because of Simberg’s and Steyn’s connections to them as bloggers. They severed their cases from Simberg and Steyn who were the only targets that actually went to trial. After more than a decade, a jury found Steyn guilty of slander, awarding Mann a dollar with another million dollars in punitive damages. They bought Mann’s legal team argument that they needed to send a message to climate skeptics. And a message they did send, though happily one that was reversed. The judge changed that award to a total of $5,000. NRO requested Mann reimburse for their legal fees. The presiding judge found that Mann and his legal team conspired to lie about damages to the court and awarded National Review over half a million in legal fees. The award was for “bad faith trial misconduct”, where Mann and his legal team claimed damage due to loss of research grants that didn’t happen. CEI is likely going to jump back in with a similar demand. Mann, ever hopeful, will appeal the award. Neither Mann nor the justice system in DC covered themselves in glory here, with Mann abusing the legal system to go after critics and the DC Circuit allowing itself to be knowingly used in the affair determining that the federal SLAPP statute which protects journalists from nuisance lawsuits didn’t apply. Somebody is about to write a couple large caliber checks, and it doesn’t appear to be CEI, National Review, Simberg or Steyn, which is a positive though horribly delayed outcome to an affair that is not over yet.
3. Zelensky. As of today, it does not appear that Ukrainian president Zelensky doesn’t much want either a cease fire or a peace agreement, being content with grinding up his entire male population in the jaws of the Russian army. He has been dithering and waffling after agreeing (once again) to sign a rare earths minerals agreement with the US. And he is demanding that all land captured by Russia in this and the previous conflict be returned forthwith. If you don’t have the wherewithal to win militarily, you need to do something. Don’t know what he is thinking or even if he is thinking at all. Perhaps he is listening a little too closely to his new BFFs of the European Union (EU). I wouldn’t put it past Trump to simply pull the plug on this failed enterprise, a threat that Zelensky ought to take seriously. Will there be peace? Probably, though both sides need to want it. And today, it appears that neither does.
4. Judges. Much was made of Chuck Schumer’s brag a week or two ago of the 235 Biden judges shoved through the confirmation process who were installed as speed bumps to all things Trump, at least according to Chucky. The question arises: How is Trump doing with judicial nominations in his second term? Answer to this is not so hot, as it doesn’t seem to be a priority as yet. While it would be an easy shot to take against Trump, it would be a cheap one, as the priority today is getting his cabinet confirmed and joining the DOGE / downsizing / reorg battle. Judicial nominations will come a bit later once the first 100 days or so are in place. It turns out that the 235 number is all Biden judicial nominations. Sadly, not enough of them were defeated but that number compares favorably with 226 Trump 45 judicial nominations. Today, there are 45 total vacancies that Trump can start filling as soon as he is ready. His first administration was pretty good at selecting judges, relying on the Federalist Society and an interest in selecting textualist nominees, something we’ve seen is a bit problematic from time to time with odd opinions out of SCOTUS Justices Barrett and Gorsuch. This time around, his nominees are expected (feared by democrats) to be younger and more ideological, though given the performance of Biden judges during the ongoing lawfare against all things Trump since January, that complaint would be a bit hollow. The Trump framing is his new nominees will be “battle tested.” First nominees are expected in a few weeks and Senator Grassley is ready to roll on confirmation hearings.
5. Weapons. Now freed from the mind-numbing straitjacket of political correctness and DEI, Space Force is starting to publicly discuss some of its long-buried weapons needs. They will focus on counterforce capabilities, with the goal of space superiority and international law. Our most serious opponent is China, which is not all that concerned with the international law part of this other than how best to either ignore it or use it against us. They are actively testing on-orbit warfare capabilities and equipment. New weapons systems will include directed energy and kinetic weapons and radio frequency (RF) jamming. All of these will also have high utility in anti-drone / anti-robot operations on the surface. As a lot of Space Force is former USAF, they talk about space superiority a lot, something the Navy also does. To do this, they need ASAT and counter-ASAT capabilities. Weapons concepts include ground and space-based lasers, kinetic weapons and the use of cyberattacks on both ground stations and equipment in orbit. Amazing what you can get done when your first priority is no longer racial discrimination against white men or climate change. Priorities. Priorities.
6. Falcon 9. SpaceX set a new milestone last week with the shortest turn of a reusable rocket from one flight to the next. This time was nine days between flights, breaking the old record (also by a Falcon 9 first stage) of 13.5 days. The flight out of Vandenburg Space Force Base Friday, Mar 21 launched a National Reconnaissance Office payload of multiple satellited. This launch also marked the 450th Falcon 9 launch since it began flying. Note that the Falcon 9 reuses its first stage and is considered to be 75% reusable. Once Starship starts flying, the goal is to refurbish, inspect, refuel and launch the stack in hours between flights.
More later –
- AG