Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Assassination
2. SPLC
3. Redistricting
4. Pope
5. Starship V3
6. Registration
7. Shirley
1. Assassination. The fourth assassination attempt (the third was the Feb 2026 attempted breach of Mar a Lago) against President Trump took place at the Washington Hilton Saturday night. Trump, VP Vance, most of the cabinet were in attendance, as were most of the Washington media. The perp was armed with a shotgun, pistol and several knives. He got off several pistol shots during his run past security toward the main staircase into the ballroom. One hit a Secret Service agent at the security checkpoint center of mass in his flack jacket. The perp was stopped, cuffed and detained. He should be arraigned in DC sometime today. What the democrat jury members do after his trial remains to be seen. While I am ever hopeful, I am prepared for the absolute worst outcome. The perp was a smart guy, a CalTech graduate, age 31, and a recent teacher of the year from Torrance, California. He was a denizen of BlueSky, and his manifesto reads precisely what you would expect it to read if you drank deeply from the current pool of leftist Kool Aid. Worse, BlueSky users are busily constructing a permission structure justifying his murderous intent, action, and justifying any future action aimed at other Republicans. They are giving their lunatics permission to hunt Republicans with deadly intent. Another interesting observation comes courtesy of John Fetterman (D, PA), blasting the lawfare currently obstructing construction of the WH ballroom. The reason the event was held at the Washington Hilton, site of the assassination attempt by John Hinkley against President Reagan 45 years ago, was because it was the only available venue large enough to hold the expected crowd. With the ballroom, you can secure it as part of the WH. A major hotel in DC? Not so much. Jeff Childers at Coffee and Covid had a couple excellent pieces on the attempt, the shooter, and most importantly, the permission structure erected by democrats and their enablers to make this event not only possible but expected and excused. As an aside, I would recommend subscribing to his daily columns. He is one of the more positive writers on Our Side and worth reading. Democrats need to be careful continuing down this road, for the reaction to a successful assassination will not be what they expect, as I don’t think Our Side to go gently into the Good Night of leftist political assassinations quietly.
2. SPLC. The most entertaining story last week was federal fraud indictments against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a self-described anti-racism NGO operating out of Birmingham, AL with fraud. It turns out that the SPLC, who sees racism under every rock and behind every tree on the political right, was not getting enough racism to keep the doors open, so they funded hate groups to gin up racial hate to keep the donations flowing in. The SPLC lists the following “hate groups”: at least 221 various subgroups of the KKK (who knew there were so many), at least 207 Neo-Nazi groups, nearly 150 white nationalist groups, nearly another 140 skinhead groups, and a vast array of what they call extreme antigovernment, militia, conspiracy, constitutional sheriff, antigovernment, neo-confederate, Christian identity, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, antisemitism, anti-Muslim, traditional Catholic, black separatist and nationalist, ant other groups. Basically, if you weren’t on the left, you were on their list. Their problem is these hundreds to thousands of so-called hate groups don’t constitute an actual problem, as nobody cares about them and most of them are simply names without any membership. And you need actual members to commit mayhem. If your business model is opposition to hate and there isn’t enough racial hatred, the only logical solution is to create some, which is what they did. The DoJ indictment says they funneled more than $3 million to individuals associated with the KKK, Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement among others 2014 – 2023. Inclusion of Unite the Right is important, because the individual receiving the money was the guy who organized the Charlottesville riot in Aug 2017. This was the riot that Biden used as his excuse for running for President. It was the example of extremism (hoax) that so appalled him that he had no other choice than to run for president so he could fix the problem. As with all things democrat, it was little more than astroturf, another externally funded piece of street theater designed to slander conservatives. Sadly, it worked pretty well as a SPLC investment, with a $1 million paid to the organizer lead to over $80 million in donations to the SPLC afterwards. The SPLC is currently sitting on over $800 million in its bank account. Discovery on this will be fascinating, as I expect that this was not the only riot the SPLC funded. This even opens the door to SPLC funding of the Jan 6 festivities.
3. Redistricting. The outrageous Gerrymandering map offered by democrats to citizens of VA was sadly approved by voters last week. The constitutional amendment was passed by about 3%, with the margin provided by mail-in ballots which broke in favor of the measure by 45%. Lawfare broke out immediately afterwards, with Republicans obtaining an injunction against certifying the results pending trial on unconstitutional shenanigans used to get the question on the ballot. The trial judge found that the amendment was not passed by constitutional procedures and the ballot language was unduly partisan and unclear. In parallel, The VA Supreme Court is taking up a challenge brought before it before the vote. I was in error on this, thinking that a partisan VA Supremes had caved to democrat pressure. It turns out that the VA judicial precedent on these sorts of questions is to allow the vote to take place. If the question fails, the topic becomes moot and they don’t have to act, which they like a lot. If it passes, they then have to take up the case and rule on it. There are four problems with this redistricting. Three are procedural, violating very clear language in the VA state constitution on timing of amendment passage by the legislate, all of which they violated and are now doing the Alfred E Neuman, Mad Magazine “What, Me Worry?” routine. The fourth is basic Gerrymandering: what does “compact” or “contiguous” mean when drawing district maps? One of the fun claims by Cuccinelli was that democrats are about to get ensnared by one of their election changes intended to maximize election fraud, passing legislation that requires an election to take 45 days. There is a minimum amount of time between the time an amendment is passed and when voting can begin. In both cases, democrats passing the redistricting map decided that the election begins and ends on election days despite people voting for the entire 45 days before that day. Early voting caused the legislature’s approval of the amendment to overlap with an ongoing election. Sucks to be them, as they got overly cute. Cuccinelli is a former VA Attorney General leading the fight against the new map. He sounds optimistic. His comments follow.
Redistricting is a big deal this election cycle, with many states redrawing maps just before midterm elections so as to flip or retain a closely divided House majority. SCOTUS is involved, with the democrat minority slow-rolling their dissents to a redistricting case from Louisiana that is expected to toss racial Gerrymandering, putting as many as 21 current House seats into play for the right. If they delay long enough, there is not enough time to redraw the maps before the eleciton. Should VA democrats be successful, they stand to go from a 6-5 democrat in VA to a possible 10-1 split, a pickup of 4 seats, enough to flip the House majority. At the same time, Governor DeSantis in FL just offered his new map, which would pick up as many as 4 seats in FL. If both new maps are approved, no change. If VA is held in the courts for months or tossed completely, democrats are down by 4 in a fight they chose. Should be a festive summer.
4. Pope. It turns out that the widely reported public feud between Trump and Pope Leo XIII was yet another media – democrat op rather than an actual feud. The media has been searching mightily for any rift between the two men, even to the point of creating friction on the fly. They portrayed the Pope’s standard call for peace between nations as an anti-Trump exercise in politics. They managed to trigger a typical Trump reaction which made them positively giddy, expecting their attempt to peel off a chunk of Trump voters (Catholics) via a media-created rift between the two men to be successful. The Pope made a trip to Africa a couple weeks ago including remarks in Cameroon decrying violence against Christians in that part of the world. Those remarks clarified his positions sufficiently that the media almost instantly dropped the Trump – Pope rift and went on to their next hoax attempt.
5. Starship V3. Starship Block 3 completed full engine test firings last week. Both stages did test fires of a few seconds for booster and a few tens of seconds for Starship. Version 3 is a complete redesign of what has previously flown, including the Block 3 engines that have not yet flown. The full stack will launch out of Pad 2, a fully redesigned launch complex in south Texas. Block 3 and its pad are no longer in the development phase. Block 3 is the first operational Starship system. It is what they intend to turn from flight to flight, eventually reusing a booster within an hour after it previously flew. The next flight is a week or two off. It will be a repeat of the last test flight, 11 in profile with no catch attempt for either Ship or Booster. When it is successful, the next round of test flights will come much quicker. With any luck at all, we will see operational Starlink and refueling missions by the end of the year, perhaps even a few of them out of the Cape in Florida. The future is coming quickly. Should be fun to watch.
6. Registration. We here in Alaska are not without our own election festivities outside the continuing fight to repeal Lisa Murkowski’s Ranked Choice Voting scheme. Legislation intended to clean up Alaska’s elections is sitting on Governor Dunleavy’s desk today. It does a lot of things, mostly designed to favor democrats in Bush Alaska. Perhaps the worst is construction of a perpetual do-loop of voter registration in Alaska. Perhaps a decade ago, Alaska decided to institute universal voter registration for those who register for the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). The problem is that there are a lot of Alaskans who are in the screw it, leave me alone mode, and don’t vote. The Division of Elections has a rolling cleanup of people who don’t vote. The process takes about 4 years to remove a voter who doesn’t vote. Currently, there are about 110,000 out of 574,000 registered voters in Alaska who don’t vote. Every year a certain percentage of them are removed from the rolls via the process. Unfortunately, when they apply for a PFD, they are automatically re-registered as voters once again. The cleanup legislation included tools to enhance the removal but completely ignored the reinstatement, a neat democrat trick. Democrats authored the legislation, assisted in no small part by a Republican House member in love with the lead democrat senator. Note to self: the Aesop parable of scorpion and the frog still applies. Scorpions (democrats) act and do what they are, regardless of whatever they may say. Always keep that in mind.
7. Shirley. It is always wonderful to have whatever you do for a living specifically called out in law and banned as illegal. Last week’s example is Cali Assembly Bill 2624, the Stop Nick Shirley Bill. The legislation extents privacy protections to immigration service providers “… building on laws that already safeguard certain health care workers, volunteers, and patients who face threats, harassment, or violence because of their affiliation with protected facilities.” In short, the legislation is aimed at completely shutting down all reporting of immigration fraud, something Nick Shirley has become particularly good at doing over the last year or so. Pretty cool, having your name ensconced in patently unconstitutional legislation. I do expect the legislation to be passed. I do not expect it to survive any legal challenge, though given the corrupt Cali courts, the process may very well be the punishment aimed at simply running Shirley out of money to pay his expected legal fees.
More later –
- AG