Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Fraud
2. Palisades
3. Autonomous
4. Farms
5. Retirements
6. Censorship
7. Clean Room
8. Higher Ed
9. Nigeria
1. Fraud. Things are moving so fast in the MN Somali / democrat fraud front that we are in the fog of war phase of the operation. The Trump administration is responding to allegations with thousands of agents / investigators / forensic accountants. It may end up being that MN is a test case for much larger, riper blue state targets, Cali, for instance. As of this writing, the total dollar amount of fraud committed by Somali pirates is north of the $8 billion mentioned last week. President Trump estimated it at over $19 billion last weekend, which may be low. The scandal is roiling politics in MN, with Tampon Tim Walz being the first political casualty, forced out of his reelection race to hopefully save the democrat down ballot power structure in MN (there is also an open US senate seat in 2026). Polls must have been pretty bad as Amy Klobuchar met with Walz over the weekend and delivered the party’s ultimatum. I don’t think Walz will be the last resignation. Over the course of the week, additional Somali fraud was discovered in a number of other states including OH and WA. The WA Attorney General opined that the state would be prosecuting any enterprising blogger who posted less than glowing video about Somali pirates because racism. Deputy Attorney General Harmeet Dillon responded with a promise to use the full force of the DoJ Civil Rights division against any WA state government effort aimed at muckraking bloggers. 23-year-old blogger Nick Shirley put on his James O’Keefe hat and showed up at several Somali-owned day care centers looking for kiddos. He didn’t find any, though he did get a lot of doors slammed in his face. To be fair, if someone shows up at my front door with cameras, they will get the same response. Or worse. Still, I am not grifting billions off the taxpayer either.
This prompted immediate name calling by Governor Walz among other threats. It also signals the start of a time of competitive fraud finding, where various bloggers will actively compete while hunting down this sort of democrat funded (and supported) fraud. Decades ago, this was called An Army of Davids.
2. Palisades. A variety of stories about LA’s response to the Palisades fire paint an awful story about bureaucratic incompetence and the sheer damage an over lawyered society can wreak on the general public. The short form of the story is that the Palisades fire progressed in two stages. The first was a smallish brush fire that was contained, though not completely put out. Rather than rolling bulldozers thought he burned area to make sure the fire did not break out a second time, managers listened to greens elsewhere in the government and chose not to do so. Reason? There were endangered plants in the area that would be harmed. So, firefighters waited a couple days, ignoring reports of smoking ground. By the time the fire broke out into open flame a second time, conditions were such there was no way to put it out. Both the LAFD bureaucracy and the Bass administration actively suppressed these reports, just like they actively suppressed actual efforts to deal with a dangerous fire season.
3. Autonomous. We are quickly approaching a time when our future vehicles are going to have some sort of autonomous driving ability. This has been coming for a while, starting with vehicle proximity sensors, then expanding to the ability to stay in one lane. Early applications are on the highways, as in-town applications are more complex and require more complex software and sensor suites. Levels range from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (full automation). The move has taken off quickly with the penetration of EVs into the marketplace. Musk has been particularly bullish with three approaches. First is a vision-only approach. Cameras are better than LiDAR. Second is that full self-driving is achievable by continued refinement of existing tech, particularly software, rather than new fundamental breakthroughs. Waymo’s problems during the SF power outage was basically a software issue. Finally, Tesla is planning a fast robotaxi network, upgrading all vehicles with full self-driving (FSD). While our next vehicles are probably not full self-driving capable, the ones after that will most certainly be.
4. Farms. There was a time before California democrats installed themselves as a one-party state that there were things other than perfectly awful ideas coming out of the state. The most recent of these took place with the Cali Agricultural Land Equity Task Force (note the magic word Equity in its title) publishing a series of policy recommendations to “equitably increase agricultural land access,” in August. Short form: whites need not apply. The draft prompted no small amount of outrage. The Secretary of Agriculture responded mid-Dec with a letter demanding Cali abandon any effort to redistribute agricultural land based on race, ethnicity and national origin. Note that of this writing, the proposal is still in draft. A couple comments are in order. First and most importantly, you don’t solve racism by practicing more racism. If it is bad in one direction, it is by definition bad in all directions. Second, racial redistribution of agricultural lands has been front and center with the black takeover of former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Former landowners were (and are today in South Africa) actively hunted, killed, and their property seized. Agricultural output in both nations has gone close to zero in Zimbabwe and are moving in that direction quickly in South Africa. Cali is using an old, familiar playbook. Create a racial emergency (not enough farmland in minority hands) and propose racist solutions to get even with whitey, typically white farmers who have been running successful family businesses for decades or longer, all while completely ignoring the damage this will do to everything in Cali. For if you can create a problem that requires a race-based solution, as long as you have more than one race, you will always need the same solution to other artificial inequities.
5. Retirements. As of Dec 23, 53 members of congress are not seeking reelection in 2026. This includes 9 senators and 44 congress critters. Senators are equally split between parties. The ninth is running for governor (Tommy Tuberville, R, AL). The house split is a bit more complex, though the split between parties is similarly even between parties. 18 House incumbents, 11 democrats and 7 Republicans are retiring from public office. 14 House incumbents are running for the US senate, evenly split between parties. 11 House incumbents are running for governor, 1 democrat and 10 Republicans. One Republican is running for state Attorney General (Chip Roy, R, TX). At this point in 2024, there were 33 retirements. Open seats represent an opportunity for the other party. For Republicans, they present the opportunity to expand a slender majority, especially in the House. For democrats, they present the opportunity to flip control of a House of congress. Those running for governor have a similar opportunity. It is historically easier to flip and open seat than it is to defeat an incumbent, especially in an off-year election. This an opportunity for MAGA. I am sure the left considers it an opportunity also, and so the battle is joined.
6. Censorship. The Censorship Industrial Complex constructed by O’Bama, the Deep State during Trump 45 and nurtured into a flowering weed during President Autopen (Biden) is not dead. It has escaped to the European Union, government funded NGOs and academia. EU / NGO Mandarins are busily coordinating with groups in universities. The EU is using their best weapon, fines, aimed mainly at social media companies, to force those US-based corporations to adopt and practice government-friendly censorship that will only tell the general public what the governments want them to know. The first of these is the €140 million fine aimed at X / Twitter last year that is still pending. An earlier skirmish was Brazilian Supreme Court pressure on X / Twitter that spilled over to Starlink operations in Brazil. Musk backed down, though not without some notice. For its part, the Trump administration has not come down hard on either Brazil or the EU yet, though a number of high-level employees of governments and NGOs are losing their US travel visas, much to the displeasure of the Usual Suspects on the political left. And yes, the lawfare judges are fully involved in lawsuits defending the censors. I predict that Trump will eventually have to use the tariff weapon powerfully against the EU and other English-speaking nations. Censorship is such an enticing tool, forcing it back is a lot like trying to sweep water with a broom. Some or a lot of it always spills around the edge and flows back.
7. Chicago. NASA clean rooms are among the cleanest spaces on Earth, designed to minimize the ability of life on earth to contaminate (and in turn, colonize) other bodies in the solar system. Turns out they are not all that clean. And it also turns out that life is a lot more resilient than anyone expected. Live Science Plus ran a story last week about NASA identifying at least 26 new species of bacteria discovered at Kennedy Space Center clean rooms in Florida. These are where NASA cleans Mars landers using a variety of techniques. Note that these were not known species. These were brand new and pretty tough beasties. Several of the species carry genes that may help them handle exposure to conditions of spaceflight including vacuum, radiation, cold, heat and high levels of UV radiation. If they can survive the journey, the chances of surviving on the surface of wherever they are being sent to is also high. Solution? Built a cleaner clean room and start another round of testing. Michael Crichton continues to be right, noting that life finds a way in Jurassic Park (1993).
8. Higher Ed. The Trump administration declared all-out war against the government-funded indoctrination operation known as Higher Education. While the problem is not solved yet, he has delivered a nicely aimed 2×4 between their collective eyes. It took nearly a century to get to our current state of affairs. It will take a while to solve it completely. At least the arrow is pointing in the right direction at long last. To date, they have:
- Cracked down on campus antisemitism and restored Jewish students’ safety
- Restored Title IX protection to women’s sports
- Rolled back DEI programs (the university system is fighting this rollback with everything in their power)
- Forced transparency and accountability in college admissions (this one empowers the lawyers)
- Exposed and ended resources and scholarships for illegal alien students (this one is ongoing and includes in state tuition for illegals)
Complete solution? Hardly. Worse, the colleges and universities are fighting to retain this foolishness like the proverbial well-hooked red salmon. The goal is to delay, delay, delay until the next democrat administration allows them to lock this stuff in forever. The problem with that approach is that they will alienate the very people who they claim to be in business to help, the students. Other than manufacturing thousands of compliant new democrats, who else will want to have anything to do with them, a number I expect is shrinking on a daily basis today.
9. Nigeria. ISIS in Nigeria (Boko Haram) has run a war against Christians since its founding in 2002. Over the years, it has become increasingly bloody, as all wars with Islamists do until they are stopped. As of May 2013, the conflict displaced 2.3 million, with over a quarter million fleeing the country. Schools are preferentially targeted both for murders and for kidnappings of children. The war is taking place in the northern half of Nigeria. The Nigerian government has consistently denied there is any problem, which enables ISIS, that is until President Trump dispatched a Christmas present to them with a raid. Unknown at this time how effective the raid was, though it appears that the Nigerian government is finally onboard, praising the strike and asking for more assistance, which Trump will gladly supply. Remember that Trump targeted ISIS / ISIL for destruction early in his first term and destroyed them within a couple weeks. We know how to do this. We apparently have decent to excellent intel on the ground which will help future strikes be more effective. Pretty easy to go after a bunch of kids in an unarmed school. Not so easy to fend off a US strike team or slither back into the jungle where an appreciable percentage of the locals don’t want you near them or their kiddos. I predict this will end poorly for ISIS, which couldn’t happen to a nicer group of vermin.
More later –
- AG