Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Kerrville
2. Epstein
3. Le Pen
4. Mackey
5. Referral
6. Churches
7. Emirates
1. Kerrville. A weak tropical storm came onshore in western Mexico the first week of the month and ended up over the hill country in central Texas the Fourth of July weekend. These air masses are full of moisture and responsible for much of the rain in the southwest this time of year. This one was no exception, with initial forecasts of several inches of rain in growing to 7 – 10” by the weekend. In reality, some locales near Kerrville got as much as 20”. There were no steering currents, so the system moved very slowly, if at all, and rained out. All that water needs to go somewhere. As the hill country of Texas has some vertical development, the water tends to channelize down river and stream valleys, causing flash flooding. The flash flooding was exacerbated by a couple years of local drought conditions. Water does not tend to soak into dry, compacted soil, running off. The flash flooding was both impressive and deadly, with over 130 lost so far. The Guadalupe River rose 26’ in 45 minutes in one location. Recovery crews are sorting through the debris for remains of at least another 100 missing. The last flash flooding in this part of the state took place 1987, though it was not nearly as deadly, washing away a busload of campers, killing 10 of them. The following video was taken from the 420 / San Antonio Street Bridge at Center Point, just a bit downstream from Kerrville. It is a bit long at 30 minutes, but the rise of water is impressive. Also impressive is that as the water crests the bridge, Texas drivers continue to drive through the rising waters. None of them end up off the bridge in the video, demonstrating more luck or testosterone than brains. The river rises to occupy a previously dry floodplain on either side of main channel. This is what campers at Camp Mystic were dealing with in the dark at 5 AM. Camp Mystic was a bible camp for pre-teens inundated in the early morning. Video courtesy Battleswarm Blog, July 7.
- A disaster like this lifts up the corporate rocks and some really ugly stuff trots out on both sides of the political spectrum. The left beclowned itself with claims that there were no timely forecasts of flooding due to DOGE budget cuts to NOAA / NWS (National Weather Service). The fact of the matter is that NWS properly forecast both the rain and the flooding. The closer we got to the event, the worse the forecasts were. They put on extra people for the holiday weekend to handle the expected workload. Their problem was that the flash flood warnings were issued after midnight when everyone was asleep. The camp was in an area without cellular coverage and as a policy pulled all cell phones from the campers. A pediatrician in Houston ran her alligator mouth about the Trump-supporting campers and their families deserving what they got. She was previously famous as an arch COVID-ista, masking Uber Alles, and all the claptrap that went with that particular worldview.
- Some of us on the right clanged smartly over to cloud seeding and geoengineering. Before traveling down that bunny trail, I want to firmly push back against geoengineering, at best an exercise in wishful thinking by the climatistas. We barely are able to forecast weather from one day to another, much less a week or two into the future. There is no way with current technology to forecast human impact on climate years to decades in the future. What we can do very well is to build and design systems to live in whatever those new conditions are. And if we overbuild? Nobody gets hurt. If we engage in geoengineering and break something, a lot of people get hurt. Climatistas who have been experimenting with cloud seeding, injecting aerosols into the atmosphere and other foolishness ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for pollution.
- There was a small boomlet in claims of cloud seeding being responsible for the disaster. I know of no government level cloud seeding effort going on, especially in CONUS. The thing about tropical air masses, is they are absolutely stuffed with moisture, and that moisture will rain out regardless of what anyone does. The most recent example of this was flooding from Hurricane Harvey over the Houston area in Aug 2017. Harvey comes ashore and barely moves, dumping 40” of rain over four days in most places. Nederland got over 60”. No flash flooding there because the land is flat with little vertical development, But there was a lot of flooding and the water took a week or two to run off. Huge property damage from the storm and flooding.
2. Epstein. Looks like Epstein file is the first actual handhold on the Trump train that may result in actual damage to its progress. Calling it a distraction is minimizing the effort to divide a previously indivisible MAGA and damage Trump by going after what has been up to today a very successful and robust DoJ response to leftist lawfare. The trigger was DoJ changing its position that there was no additional information in the Epstein files, nor was there a client list, something that Alan Derschowitz disputes, as he claims to have seen it. The release of video from the jail holding Epstein the night he died is likewise suspect as its metadata apparently demonstrates the video was edited. Note that the Adobe tool used to manipulate the video has an option to modify or block changes in metadata. What do I think? I think that Epstein was an intel asset. I think he was running a honeypot operation for one or more intel agencies. And I think he very well may have been killed. This view supports Trump’s current refusal to join the discussion, which feels like a Commander in Chief sort of response. We elect people like Trump to do many things, among them make big decisions using all the information at his (or her) disposal. Appears to me that Trump knows things that the rest of us don’t and won’t ever know. This is nothing new, as it happens all the time in the military and intel worlds. What do we do with all this? Do we take our MAGA balls and go home, stop participating and throw control of everything back to the democrats like we did in 2018? Or did we learn that was an incredibly foolish response. Is Epstein important enough to hand everything back to the democrats? Eventually, I believe we will get the whole story, but it will take a while. We still don’t have the entire story of the JFK or RFK assassinations, and that was a full 60 years ago. With our help, Trump installed a pretty good team. They all seem to be onboard with whatever he decided about Epstein. Eventually we will find out why he made his decision to look the other way, wink, wink, and proceed to the next event. Until then, our job is to find, fix, and destroy all things democrat as they are the true enemy rather than Trump, Bondi, Patel and Bongino.
3. Le Pen. Lawfare against National Rally and it head Marine Le Pen continued last week with a French police raid on its headquarters in Paris. The raid was done in the best Deep State bully boy fashion, with around 20 officers in bulletproof vests. In France, the officers brought a pair of investigating judges with them. The excuse for the raid was campaign finance illegalities during the 2022 election cycle. In addition, they also raided headquarters of companies who supported National Rally and the homes of people leading those companies. Looks like the Macron government learned well the lesson of O’Bama – Biden lawfare aimed at Trump and are in the midst of ridding themselves of their little problem. Somehow, I think they have only managed to choose the form of their Destructor, much like democrat lawfare all but guaranteed Trump would win in 2024.
4. Mackey. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the criminal conviction of Douglass Mackey last week, returning the case to the trial court with instructions to immediately enter a judgment of acquittal in the case. Mackey was convicted in 2023 by a federal jury in Brooklyn for spreading falsehoods on social media in an effort to suppress democrat turnout for Hillary in the 2016 election. Mackey forwarded a meme urging democrat voters to vote by text or social media post rather than showing up at the polls on election day. This is similar to the old joke meme about avoiding the Election Day crowds by voting Wednesday. The humorless (the meme was a joke, after all) flying monkeys infesting the Southern District of NY federal prosecutor office waited until after Biden was sworn in Jan 2021 to bring the criminal indictment. Mackey was accused of conspiracy to suppress Hillary voters. Yet prosecutors were not able to identify anyone he conspired with. Worse, they were not able to identify anyone who voted on the wrong day or didn’t vote after seeing the meme. The always self-righteous ACLU was unsurprisingly quiet at this assault on free speech, which in their world only applies to those on the political left. The three-judge panel found that the mere fact that he posted a meme did not prove violation of the conspiracy law. The trial judge pontificated that Mackey was one of the leading members of a conspiracy that was “… nothing short of an assault on our democracy” channeling her desire to be appointed to the DC Circuit and preside over Jan 6 witch hunts. Mackey pointedly refused to ask for a pardon, insisting he had done nothing wrong. And he was right. An expensive win, but a win, nonetheless.
5. Referral. The FBI launched into an investigation of John Brennan and James Comey over the Trump – Russia collusion hoax. Both men lied to congress during hearings defending the hoax. Regardless of your view of the propriety of returning the favor and prosecuting those who attempted to use the justice system to destroy Trump and his supporters, there must be some sort of return fire, eventually payback. While I would love to see both men in orange jumpsuits in Club Fed, I will be equally happy if after spending a few million dollars apiece, the DoJ simply publishes a detailed report of everything they did, everyone who assisted, everyone who lied to congress, everyone who conspired with them to push this hoax, and what they did in detail, making it all available to the general public. For his part, Brennan is finally looking worried, and he should. Comey is not quite as smart, still making the rounds hawking his book. I look forward to a long, painful investigation.
6. Churches. In another seismic shift, the IRS created an exemption to a ban on political activity when it comes to nonprofits. The 1954 Johnson Amendment made it illegal for nonprofit tax-deductible entities to speak in any manner intended to influence an election. This has long applied to every single religious entity in the nation other than the black Christian churches. I would also add the Mosques to the list, but that has been a more recent change. The IRS change was in response to a pair of lawsuits from Christian churches and Christian broadcasters requesting a broader exemption that would allow all nonprofits, religious and secular to endorse candidates to their members. Note the important phrase “to their members.” This change is yet another Trump promise kept, as he promised to defend Christian voters from political persecution.
7. Emirates. Here’s an interesting idea, or at least another alternative approach to governance in the Middle East. With a lasting military victory finally possible in Gaza and the West Bank, what is next? Do we simply stand by and allow the Israelis to kill everything that moves down to the last man or woman? Granted, they are going to kill enough of them so that the results of the generations long brainwashing effort are no longer dangerous, but the question remains: what’s next? There are Palestinian Sheiks in the West Bank that have proposed establishment of Emirates, essentially small, autonomous nations ruled by an Emir as the governing entities. These already exist in the Persian Gulf with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Each Emirate would offer full recognition of the Israel and join the Abraham Accords as a peaceful break from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. Will it work? Who knows. Likely, there will be some with success, and some not. If nothing else, it is at least worth discussion.
More later –
- AG