Interesting Items 10/26
Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Slotkin
2. Musk
3. Alberta
4. SSAN
5. Jones
6. Audit
7. Somali
8. Nukes
1. Slotkin. Elissa Slotkin (D, MI) sat down to opine about the upcoming election at U of Chicago a Oct 13. She managed to threaten every single staffer or supporter for any elected Republican at every level of government. She called for “a deterrence message sent” so that youngsters finishing school would properly weigh the risks of joining an administration mired in potential legal problems (think democrat led lawfare) rather than seeing the act as consequence free. She clarified a few days later saying that her comments were directed strictly at holding individuals accountable for violating laws or misusing taxpayer funds rather than punishing policy differences, which was a lie (these ex-CIA harpies sure know how to run their mouths and make threats, don’t they?).
Slotkin, whose initial claim to fame was to help organize the Seditious Six group of democrat congress critters earlier this year warning military members not to follow illegal orders pending their prosecution (Lt William Calley-style, for doing so. The only one facing consequences for that cute little game is former Astronaut and Retired Navy Captain Mark Kelly who may end up being busted a pay grade or two for his participation. Slotkin, as former CIA faces no such consequences. Response to the threat was swift and loud with at least two ethics violations filed against her. Whether or not they go anywhere in the senate remains to be seen. The other form of response was an outbreak of doxxing aimed at Slotkin and her staff, something that pushed her into her Happy Place, ultimate victimhood because she is a woman. Look at what those evil right wingers are trying to do to me. I don’t think the threat will have a whole lot of actual impact, outside of encouraging MAGA, especially MAGA men to get into “go ahead, make my day” mode with her and her ilk. The threat was a clear call for lawfare aimed at anyone working in or in support of the Trump administration, a threat that will be quickly extended to anyone who opposes a democrat at any level. Democrats already spent nearly a decade waging lawfare against Trump and his people. What makes any of us think that this will stop? Slotkin’s problem is that donning the victimhood mantle won’t do her any good, for if policy differences are now defined as lawbreaking by whomever is at the top of the political food chain, they can also be defined as lawbreaking by those of us on the other side of the political fence. If the old rules no longer apply, why, pray tell, can she and her fellow travelers possibly believe that they still apply to her? Keep this up, sweetheart, and there will be a solution to your little problem by people who find your new terms acceptable. Remember that the political world is nonlinear, non-Newtonian where an action does not necessarily trigger an opposite and equal reaction. Reactions can and will take place at times and places least expected, in sizes and directions orders of magnitude larger or smaller than that of the original action. You really don’t want to play in that world, but if you are silly enough to give it a try, who am I to stop you?
2. Musk. Elon Musk had himself quite the week, with a demo of his new Tesla Roadster, a promise to donate a share of SpaceX stock to every single kid under age 18 in the US sometime next year, all 72+ million of them, ending with a rolling finger pointing exercise in whomever throttled Starshield (military Starlink) that the Ukrainians are using for targeting their drones against Russian infrastructure.
- First up is the new Tesla Roadster. This one flies. It was demonstrated in McGregor, just to the W of Waco in central Texas, where SpaceX builds and tests their Raptor engines for Starship. This one was a joint demonstration between Tesla and SpaceX using cold gas thrusters for attitude control and flying. Yes, the vehicle does fly, though fuel tankage is only large enough for 7-11 seconds of flight. The most important part of the demo was the precise vehicle control by the Tesla / SpaceX guidance control system. There are even fans aboard the roadster that allows it to go up a ramp, hang upside down for a bit before release, after which it flipped, and landed under control. It also broke the zero – 60 mph acceleration record doing the trip in 0.81 seconds. The vehicle was unmanned for the demo, meaning it was completely autonomous. While a tech demo, Tesla is offering it in two versions for sale. It will cost a cool quarter of a million dollars to reserve yours, I expect they will sell a few of them. Fabulous and completely unexpected demo.
- This is not the first marriage of SpaceX and Tesla, as Musk launched his first Tesla Roadster into space on top of the first flight of the Falcon Heavy Feb 2018. The roadster is in an orbit that will cycle between Mars and Earth for a very long time. Riding inside the convertible roadster was a dummy in a SpaceX spacesuit.
- His second announcement was plans to gift the under-18 crowd of Americans with a single share of SpaceX stock. Do the math, and Musk is about to donate $10 billion of his own wealth. In contrast, Anthropic, being good little leftists is making a similar promise, though theirs will put some Anthropic money into a bucket what will be administered by Anthropic to the normal panoply of leftist NGOs. This means that most of the Anthropic charity will go to the well-connected democrat insiders and very little to it to whomever they claim they want to assist, a public benefit model vs direct giving model. It is a real time demonstration of the two models – leftist grease our palms with public funds vs direct benefit to whomever we want to help.
- This next story is a little murkier, this one involves the use of Starlink / Starshield by Ukraine do conduct offensive drone strikes in Russia. Throttling began Oct 14 followed by screams of pain from all the Usual Suspects. Finger pointing between Musk, the WH, Ukraine, State and DoD was glorious to behold. The throttling ended following a round of WH negotiations late last week, after Starlink made changes to their systems that would not allow that sort of use. The use of Starlink for offensive drone operations is a direct violation of its terms of service.
- Final Musk story is the start of the expected getting even operation by a newly ensconced democrat majority in either (or both) Houses of Congress should the midterms go poorly in a couple weeks. Musk due to his work at DOGE and his political support of Republicans this election cycle is increasingly in the democrat get even crosshairs. Democrats spent a lot of time shaking their tiny fists, yelling with their tiny voices, and making their tiny threats. Make no mistake, if in power, they will do everything humanly possible to bring Musk to heel. But in the world of combat, the Enemy Always Gets a Vote. And Musk is not without his resources, something none of the participants should ever forget.
3. Alberta. A week ago, Alberta rejected starting the process toward a binding referendum, on a separation from Canada. The rejection vote was around 3:1. There were a number of other questions on the ballot, most of which concerned immigration which Albertans are demanding be reformed. Promises were made all over the place. We will see if any of them will be kept by Carney and band of Merry Men and Women.
4. SSAN. While DOGE may be over, its impact continues. Last week Social Security announced completion of correction of nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers, adding missing death and citizenship data as part of the Trump administration effort to stop benefit fraud. This is the most comprehensive cleanup of the Social Security database, touching some 330 million of the 390 million existing records. They added 17 million dates of death to records that previously lacked them, flagged 12 million over 120 years old as deceased, updated 25 million records with missing citizenship information. Another 8,5 million records with inaccurate citizenship status are still being corrected. The election fraud crowd on the political left has fought this cleanup tooth and nail, so parts of it went pretty slowly. Good job, guys.
5. Jones. The Jones Act is a protectionist 1920 law passed that requires any cargo shipped between US ports be carried on US flagged, built, crewed ships that are largely owned by Americans, It is one of the things that helps make living here in Alaska very expensive. President Trump, in an effort to work the refinery shortage that cropped up over the last year, issued a waiver intended to bypass the Act, lower fuel costs and work the energy supply problem. The 60-day waiver expired and has been renewed for 90 days twice. The waiver seems to have worked, not unexpectedly, as commerce has exploded, especially to places like Puerto Rico and Cali. It is ironic that suspension of the Jones Act paused a protectionist law when his tariff policy is focused on erecting barriers to trade. Still, yet another reminder that freer markets work better than less free ones.
6. Audit. One of the little games played by O’Bama was 2014 passage of a requirement for the Pentagon to pass an annual audit with the results reported to congress by Mar 2019. To date, the Pentagon always failed the audit. This may be changing, as the Pentagon under SECWAR Hegseth and President Trump promises to pass a full audit by 2028. If true, this is a completely unexpected and welcome change / result. Good luck to all involved. There’s a lot going on in the background. And keeping track of your resources is vital for an organization that traffics in logistics like the Pentagon. If you don’t know what you have, how can you possibly get that material and people from where they are to where they need to be in time to fight?
7. Somali. One of the basic lessons learned during the festivities in MN, OH and elsewhere is that when you choose, for whatever reason, to import nearly 100,000 people from a nation that traffics in piracy, you probably ought not to be surprised that they end up being pirates.
- Somali immigrants, who started showing up in large numbers after the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 have been at the heart of fraud operations stealing public money in MN and OH via variety of fraudulent businesses, including the (in)famous Learing Center. MN LtGov Peggy Flannigan, who is attempting to move on up the political food chain into the US Senate apparently trusts them completely, promising them in 2023 to help continue funding for “culturally relevant treatments and care” and to support multifamily housing. Given discovery of the massive fraud over the last few years, Flannigan made no attempt to modify her position. She is running against Michelle Tafoya for the seat. And unlike previous slam dunk democrat statewide wins, this one is a lot closer than any democrat would like.
- The second story is the reappearance of Ilhan Omar, who disappeared for a week or so following the federal raid on her home. She went public with a plea for money to pay for her legal expenses, say bad things about the Trump administration, and whine a bit. PowerLine, headquartered in MN has been on top of the Omar story for years. They continue to do the same good work today. While they are not MAGA, they are what passes for conservative in MN, and as such, worth reading.
8. Nukes. Amazon is contracting with X-energy and American Electric Power (AEP) to explore deploying 12 of X-energy’s small modular reactor designs in Indiana. The project will add some 960 MW to the regional power grid to serve Amazon’s data centers. Amazon is the funding source and would be the first customer to purchase power from the plant once it goes live. This is the second project under the collaboration that aims to add 5 GW of new nuclear capacity to the US grid by 2039. The targeted reactor is a 80 MW gas-cooled reactor that uses helium as a coolant. It is a pebble bed reactor. The linked piece is heavy on the clean energy, no emissions claptrap.
More later –
- AG