Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Carroll
2. New Glenn
3. Oregon
4. Autopsy
5. Payback
6. Ticks
7. Cornyn
8. Shipping
1. Carroll. Straight out of FAFO land, we had an announcement last week that DoJ was investigating E Jean Carroll for committing perjury during her sexual assault / defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump.
- Either way, there will be another investigation into anti-Trump lawfare. And it couldn’t begin soon enough.
- the notion that you must “believe survivors” in all cases of sexual assault and domestic violence. This is the feminist assault on the presumption of innocence in criminal cases and has taken hold in courts at all levels, which is why Trump was convicted in a civil trial, the other being the trial in NYC. Why? Because the plaintiffs dragged in a couple of other failed accusers to make their case that Trump was a serial offender. It assumes that women never lie, something proved false on the public stage during the Thomas and Kavanaugh hearings a generation apart. Do women lie? You bet your bippy! Do men lie? Absolutely. So what? Believing either requires believing both, and quickly tossing out the conflicting claims as so much BS.
2. New Glenn. Big Badda Boom. Blue Origin detonated a booster and second stage on the pad at Cape Canaveral during a live fire test Thursday night. Looks like one or both tanks on the first stage unzipped. There was what appeared to be a COPV (composite overwrapped pressure vessel) flying through the air as the fireball rose. Nobody was injured, though the vehicle was a total loss. There is likely significant damage to the pad at LC-36. There are conflicting reports of damage to a processing building near the pad which had at least one of Blue Origin’s reusable first stage boosters inside. As the week went on, it appears that reports of damage to the building and whatever is inside it was premature and wrong. Happily, there was no damage to the payload stored elsewhere, 48 broadband satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper satellite internet network. Elon Musk tweeted a couple times following the failure, the second one:
Video of the failure follows:
When you pop a fully loaded rocket on the pad, it shuts down operations for a long time. Sadly, Blue Origin doesn’t have a lot of available time, as their license requires 1,618 Kuiper satellites in orbit by July 30. It currently has 330 flying today. Even including the SpaceX Falcon 9, there is simply not enough lift capacity to launch an additional 1,300 satellites over the next two months. There is speculation about how long the launch complex will be down for repairs. A similar Falcon 9 failure Sept 2016 destroyed the vehicle as the second stage blew, destroying the satellite and damaging the pad to the extent where it was 15 months before it was used again. In contrast, Ship 36 exploded on the Massey’s test site pad while being prepped for a live fire test Jun 2025. It took SpaceX 3-4 months to restore Massey’s to operation. All companies have the ability to learn from one another after failures. The most important lesson is that it is possible to get back to flight operations quickly. I do worry about Blue Origin, as their launch cadence is slow and they may not be capable of moving quickly in response to this failure. Whatever happens, we wish them the best.
3. Oregon. Oregon Initiative Petition 28 (IP28), the PEACE Act (People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions) submitted 120,000 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State office in an attempt to get the petition on the ballot. They need 117,173 signatures to make it to the ballot. Backers have until July 2 to get the petition certified. The Secretary of State office is currently certifying the signatures. Note that here in AK, to ensure a ballot initiative makes it onto the ballot, we need to submit anywhere from 25 – 33% more signatures than necessary, so these guys might end up being short. How many additional signatures depends entirely on whether or not the government is supportive of the initiative. The more supportive, the more signatures they like. The less supportive, the more signatures are rejected, which then defines the number of additional signatures required to get on a ballot. The initiative is an animal rights wet dream, crafted to remove activities from criminal animal abuse charges. These activities include hunting, trapping, fishing, farming, ranching, research and tribal rights to do the same on tribal lands. For example, sport and commercial fishing will become criminal activities. Raising animals for food, dairy, eggs and dairy will be classified as animal abuse. All licensed hunting will become animal abuse. And animal abuse in Oregon is a felony charge. There are about a million Oregonians who participate in hunting, fishing, trapping or work in agriculture. There are probably enough people in Portland and Salem to pass this monstrosity. There are enough other Oregonians to make life real uncomfortable for those who vote to pass it. Should be a fun summer.
4. Autopsy. The DNC released its long-hidden autopsy of the 2024 election. The release was roundly panned by all sides of the political spectrum. Its conclusion? Democrats weren’t hard enough on Donald Trump, this despite four solid years of lawfare, three assassination attempts, lockstep social media (other than X) censorship against him, and half a billion in fines and other judgment against him and the Trump Organization. No mention that the party simply discarded a sitting president who had actually won primaries with actual votes being cast and replaced him with a woman who did not receive a single vote during the primaries. Not a single vote. This seems to be the new technique for unelectable democrat candidates, as they are ramping up to do the same thing to Graham Platner, their candidate for US Senate in Maine. No mention of Oct 7, the increase in antisemitism, and the pro-Palestinian takeover of the party. The document reads a lot like a discussion with yourself in your own, hermetically sealed echo chamber. I hope they take everything in this document to heart and diligently attempt to put these lessons into effect.
5. Payback. “Revenge is a dish best served cold” is a phrase from no small number of martial movies, perhaps most famously Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn, 1982. Revenge for Israel following the Hamas attack Oct 7, 2023, has been to systematically hunt down and kill every single Hamas participant and cheerleader who participated in the attack and gleefully posted videos taken during the festivities. The current list includes all Gazans identified as crossing the border Oct 7 and their leaders. They did this by analyzing video, running it through facial recognition software, along with contents of intercepted phone call from the participants. Israel added participants if there are at least two pieces of evidence placing them at the scene of any atrocities committed that day. This campaign continues despite any ceasefire with Gaza. It began immediately after the attacks. Since then, hundreds have been rendered room temperature. One participant simply drove a tractor through the border fence expediting the assault. This reprised Israel’s response to the terrorist attack during the 1972 Munich Olympics, which continued for years following the attack.
6. Ticks. Nothing like a little biological warfare to start the week with. This lovely little story has genetically modified ticks spreading something called Alpha-gal Syndrome, an allergy caused by the bite of the Lone Star tick. Alpha-gal introduced a sugar molecule into the bloodstream. The immune system develops antibodies to the molecule. End result is an allergic reaction to a person consuming red meat. The condition appears to be rapidly expanding, though there is not enough data to support this being anything other than a hysterical reaction to the latest conspiracy theory. The anti-meat left happily embraced the threat and are gleefully encouraging all to believe this is real. Rumors of altered ticks as bio-weapons are as old as the early 1950s, with ticks engineered to deliver Lyme Disease, a belief currently popular among the IRGC in Iran. The Gates – meat allergy is simply the latest variant.
7. Cornyn. One of the best analyses of the John Cornyn defeat was an observation that he would have won the primary had he simply busted his backside passing the SAVE America Act. That he didn’t, tells us everything we need to know about his go along to get along brand of conservatism than anything else.
8. Shipping. Seven Chinese executives and four of the world’s largest shipping container manufacturing companies were indicted for conspiring to restrict the output of and fix the price of nearly all the world’s standard unrefrigerated shipping container over four years Nove 20219 – Jan 2024, the COVID zombie apocalypse. The companies roughly doubled the price of standard shipping containers 2019 – 2021, roughly doubling the prices of standard shipping containers and manufacturer profits during COVID and the following global supply chain crisis. Among other things, the conspirators limited shifts and hours of production lines for new dry containers, installed surveillance cameras on all production lines to endure nobody cheated, did not build any new container manufacturing, and established a fund to penalize any cheating on the agreement. The restraint of trade agreement will be fully prosecuted.
More later –
- AG