Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Iran
2. ICE
3. Chavez
4. Islam
5. Ballots
6. Project 2029
7. Outages
8. Bridge
1. Iran. As the war with Iran wandered past its fourth week, the spike of oil and natural gas prices due hit the world, particularly in all of Asia other than China, which reportedly has a stockpile mitigating their problem. Some on Our Side, who really ought to know better, like former CIA operative Mike Baker, who is on Fox and occasionally on Gutfeld, was on Clay and Buck last week, warning of electoral disaster in November if this continues. For his part, Trump has been doing his level best to get whoever is left in charge in Iran to start thinking past the sale, past their surrender to whatever comes next, the deal. The IRGC coup mouthpieces have responded predictably with expected demands and promises of doom, gloom and blood. Whatever happens, I expect most of the heavy fighting to be over by the time Trump meets with President Xi in China May 14.
- Perhaps the least surprising news of the last couple weeks was an Iranian attempt to hit Diego Garcia with a pair of missiles. Iran has for years sworn up and down to all things Holy that they would never, ever build a missile with a range over 2,000 km. Well, Diego is 4,000 km away. One missile didn’t make it. The other was shot down. The Iranians lied. Surprise. Surprise. Surprise (/sarc), which Islam allows (requires?) them to do to infidel. OTOH, they have no problem lying to one another whenever it suits them, something always supported by the Koran..
- One of the infuriating errors in reporting about the attempted strike on Diego was media-wide reporting of the importance of the increased missile range being able to hit Europe. Iran has the ability to reach out and touch any point on the globe. Why? They have the ability to orbit satellites and have done so at least 30 times. Unknown how many of those were in polar orbits or retrograde, though the retrograde orbit is highly unlikely. The problem is long-term exposure to space and precise targeting of reentry. A ballistic missile spends less than 20 minutes in space, and targeting is a much simpler problem than hitting a precision reentry target from orbit..
- Iran reportedly hit an airbase in Saudi late last week, damaging or destroying an AWACS and perhaps a KC-135. Our current air war requires the big support airframes, AWACS, tankers, electronic intel. Most of these jets operate well outside enemy airspace and are usually not at risk, but at this point we have lost at least one tanker, and another 3 large airframes damaged to some extent. I have been waiting for someone to start actively targeting these jets. The Chinese are already armed to do this, with a line of long-range stealthy interceptors.
- There have been a few stories about Russia providing targeting data to Iran. I would posit that while useful, Iran at the top level, really doesn’t need it. They know where the regional bases are located. They know for the most part what is deployed there, especially the large aircraft from commercially available high resolution satellite coverage. Drop enough missiles / drones on an airfield, and returning jets need to go elsewhere to refuel, rearm and turn to the next sortie.
- Trump keeps threatening ground forces to seize enriched uranium and Kharg Island. Don’t know how much of this is pro-forma, threats, promises or public negotiating. Either way, it serves to make everyone on all sides nervous. The Iranian leadership has been planning to reprise what the Afghans did to the Soviets and the US, keeping the war going until the both sides lost political will to fight and quit. I expect Trump knows that, which is why he and the Israelis are targeting cell leadership at the regional level. At this point, nobody knows what is next.
2. ICE. President Trump called senate democrats bluff over the month-long DHS shutdown for Coast Guard and TSA by putting ICE officers into the security lines at airports. TSA has been without paychecks for a month. Their average salary is in the $40 – 50,000 range, so these guys do not have the ability to withstand an extended period without paychecks. A bunch opted to stay home. A bunch simply quit. The lines at all airports increased with wait times pushing 4 hours in places. Trump put ICE into the airports and the lines immediately shrunk, some to minutes. This is the best PR play for ICE in decades, blowing all democrat agitprop about their evil completely out of the water. A week later, he signed an EO that will pay TSA agents, daring the democrat lawfare apparatus to take him to court, something they have not yet done. In a final, related story, Delta Airlines early last week announced a change in their perks for traveling congress critters, who previously got to bypass security, fly first class, among other things. That ended. They are now herded in with all the rest of cattle. Good for Delta. We hope the rest of the airports follow suit.
3. Chavez. The most recent example of othering by the left started about 10 days ago aimed at Caesar Chavez. He was a Latino union organizer and founder of the National Farm Workers Association which became the United Farm Workers in 1967. He was for decades the darling of the political left due to his politics and his union leadership. UFW specialized in migrant farm workers. Chavez died in 1993, after which his name was spread nearly as far and wide as that of Martin Luther King, showing up on monuments, streets, public schools. He was accused of sexual abuse 10 days ago, a good 30 years after his passing and the Two Minutes Hate censorship brigade cranked into full operation with the campus leading the way. Note that sexual abuse allegations are nearly universal for famous or rich men, particularly the politically powerful ones. In this case, the abuse allegations became the trigger that allowed the left to remove a former icon whose views on illegal immigration are no longer sympatico with the prevailing leftist zeitgeist.
4. Islam. Ran across a powerful reframe of the appeal of radical Islam particularly to young men last week. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. See what the readership thinks. Radical Islam of the Wahabi variety is among the most dangerous lifestyle choices for humanity, particularly for those of us who get to live next to or with its adherents. The question has always been” Why would any group of people want to leave the 21st Century and return to the 7th? The answer? Sex. You have young, single, late teen to early 20-something young men who can’t get laid. Flip society to an Islamist one, where women are essentially slaves with no power at all to resist you, and you are in heaven. Better yet, get killed while spreading the Islamist cause, and you get to go to Heaven, where you can spend the rest of your days with your 72 virgins. To these guys, Islam is all about getting laid, something not far from the thoughts of any young man at that age.
5. Ballots. Ballots in three states have been seized so far by law enforcement investigating election fraud in the 2020 election. First up was Fulton County, GA where the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents relating to the conduct of the election there. Second was FBI seizure off audit records related to an Arizona Senate audit of the election in Maricopa County. As I understand it, the ballots were destroyed after two years leaving records of the audit as the only ones available. Last week, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots as part of an investigation into voter fraud. Bianco is also a Republican candidate for governor, triggering charges of election grandstanding. Bianco’s stated goal is to compare the numbers on the ballots with the numbers reported to the state. State / County prosecutors in all three locales are actively fighting to shut down all investigations. Perhaps they know more that we do about what is yet to be found by investigators. Unknown how all these investigations will impact senate passage of the SAVE America Act, though I do not think they will be a negative, not that it matters to senate leadership on both sides of the aisle.
6. Project 2029. IL Governor JB Pritzker was the latest entry in the who can make the most outrageous threat against Republicans sweepstakes, joining Susan Rice in promising to actively prosecute Trump officials and those who support them should democrats take power in 2029, something he referred to as Project 2029. (Anyone else remember when Project 2025 was a Bad Thing?) The billionaire then prattled on about wanting to restore the rule of law, which apparently means anything democrats don’t like is criminal; holding people accountable who have broken the law, though he didn’t mention Hilly, Crossfire Hurricane or Russia Gate, and a combination of criminal and civil prosecutions used against Trump and his inner circle 2020 – 2025. The boy needs to be careful pushing this particular noodle, as I don’t think Republicans are going to take Round 2 nearly as peacefully as they did Round 1. If we’re lucky, he’s just running his mouth. But I tend to believe people when they say they are coming after me. If the rules, whatever they are, no longer apply in the political wars, I can play there. Don’t want to, but I can. You guys need to be very careful calling for this sort of stuff again. Don’t you think we’ve learned anything over the last decade? While you guys seem incapable of that as you wallow in your mass insanity, most of the rest are not so inclined.
7. Outages. Joe Caldara writing in Complete Colorado last week described electric utilities preparing the general public for intentional blackouts, not unlike what we are now seeing in California. Their excuse for the shutdowns are defense against wildfires caused by downed power lines. Downed power lines were blamed for the 2023 Maui and 2025 Cali Eaton wildfires, though the larger cause was decades long government incompetence that all but guaranteed the fires would be just as destructive as humanly (or inhumanly) possible. Colorado gets high winds from time to time, especially up and down the Front Range. Those winds are not constant, but show up at certain times of the year, slapping the occasional airliner out of the sky at Denver and Colorado Springs. The winds are now a Big Surprise, previously unplanned for. Caldara then goes on to frame the problem as an exercise in incremental behavior modification by the democrat led Colorado government. In this case, they have a statewide goal to be all renewable by 2050. That timeline may not be quick enough, as there is a move in the legislature to shorten it by a decade. Wind and solar are notoriously intermittent, especially in a part of the world that gets cold and snowy. Everyone knows blackouts are coming. They are intentional. And the democrats are modifying expectations so that they won’t get tarred and feathered during an outage. I suspect a lot of home generators will be sold, not the best solution, but a operable one, while pricey, not as pricey as leaving yourself to the tender mercies of Colorado democrats for your safety.
8. Bridge. I am old enough to remember when a pair of bridges in Alaska funded by sadly departed Senator Ted Stevens in 2008 were both ridiculed by state and local media as bridges to nowhere. The new bridge to nowhere is located in Southern California, crossing 8 lanes of US 101 at Liberty Canyon in Agoura Hills. This one is a wildlife bridge intended to allow cougars, coyotes and butterflies to access the other side without having to navigate 8 lanes of traffic. As usual, costs skyrocketed, well past $114 million with neither approach constructed, though the top is nicely laid out with greenery already planted. While this would normally be the predictable Newsom incompetence story, there is another component, the introduction of coyotes and cougars, apex predators into a subdivision on the other side of the highway. I can’t imagine that the newly visiting wildlife will play well with residents or their pets, something apparently not considered when this was proposed. Pity, though I’ve heard that cougar and coyote pelts do make nice shoeshine rags.
More later –
- AG