Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Ukraine
2. Spending
3. Birx
4. Hogg
5. Vance
6. Wisconsin
7. Mexico
8. Labor
9. Trolling
1. Ukraine. This week’s demonstration that when you lay down with dogs, you end up with fleas comes from the opening of negotiations over ending the war in Ukraine. Last week had the initial meetings between Russian and US negotiators in Saudi Arabia. President Zelensky was not invited much to his dismay. This war is going to end, likely this spring. A few random thoughts for your consideration.
- Ukraine has long been described as one of the most corrupt nations on the planet. As such, it has been turned into a massive money laundering operation for well-connected democrats, not unlike USAID. I do tend to believe Ukraine claims that at least $100 billion of the total $320 billion spent by Ukraine on the war cannot be accounted for. I would suspect the real number is somewhere between low to way low and likely something DOGE can track, at least for the $177 billion from the US.
- I also believe Mexico’s claims that the cartels are using US weapons these days, though don’t believe they came directly from the US. There have been a few stories about Ukraine officials selling the weapons rather than using them on the battlefield.
- As far as actual prosecution of the war, I think we are seeing a change in warfare, one that SECDEF Hegseth will embrace fully. We are moving away from a low number of hugely expensive, highly capable weapons systems (21 B-2s, 11 US aircraft carriers, 183 F-22s) to thousands of deadly, smart, capable, drone swarms. US war gaming for at least three decades verified this approach. Now, Ukraine is demonstrating it on the battlefield.
- Trump blasted Zelensky last week when Zelensky apparently reneged on a deal to allow US access to rare earth deposits in Ukraine. Zelensky does not appear to know how to make deals and has not yet learned that you jerk Trump around at your peril.
- As a result of all this, the US and Russia are now in the early phases of negotiation. It is heartening to see Saudi Arabia stepping up as a regional power. I think this will be good for the Middle East. Like all negotiations, this will be loud, as most of Trump’s negotiations are. And he has a worthy adversary in Putin. I think there will be a deal. Keep a close watch on the swamp carping about giving away the store to Putin.
2. Spending. Now that congress is finally getting off the dime with budget legislation making its way though both houses, a revisit of how we got ourselves into the current mess is in order. The first and most basic requirement is to roll back yearly spending. This was increased by trillions of dollars when congress baked the COVID giveaways of 2020 and 2021 into the baseline, increasing yearly spending ad infinitum. Even WWII spending was rolled back. COVID? Not yet, and if the swamp gets its way, not ever. Second thing is to ensure congress doesn’t use DOGE budget cuts as free money available for spending on other (or new) rice bowls. The suggested $5,000 check to individual taxpayers was last week’s trial balloon. While nice, this ought not to happen. The budgets must go down and the cuts recommended by DOGE must be locked into future budgets as the new baseline is set. Balancing the budget will be a two-step process, both of them simultaneous. Cuts in spending coupled with cuts in federal manpower are one side of the solution as it works the spending side of the problem. At the same time, the Trump tax cuts must be extended, and new suggested tax cuts (no tax on tips or Social Security) must be passed and locked into stone, at least for a while. This works the growth part of the equation. We have no hope of even approaching balance unless we grow the economy. Somewhere along the line, we are going to have to stop deficit spending or at least slow it down to the point where we are only printing money to trigger a 2.5 – 3% yearly inflation rate, otherwise, we are sunk. I am of the opinion that the national debt is rapidly becoming a meaningless number. The yearly deficit is all important.
3. Birx. Here’s a fun question: Did Dr Deborah Birx get a Biden pardon? My best guess is no. Given her singular inability to keep her mouth shut, perhaps she should have. Birx has been proudly reprising what she did to undermine President Trump 45 during the COVID response by the White House. Most of what she claims is detailed in her book, apparently not reviewed by her legal team. Too bad for her. Among the first revelations from the book was that her 15-day lockdowns to flatten the curve weren’t really intended to last only 15 days. Rather, they ended up stretching three solid months as she and her team of government paid liars with medical degrees came up with excuse after excuse to extend them. Red states were first to roll back the lockdowns. Some blue states managed to stretch them out for years. Her technique for extending lockdowns was as soon as one was approved; her team would start searching for data that would justify the next increment. And they always found what they claimed to be that data. This ended right at the point when the George Floyd government funded BLM / AntiFa riots started summer 2020. Her latest missive was confirmation that the vax was never intended for the young and very young. Worse, the vax did not operate like other childhood vaccines in that it needed regular boosters and yearly renewals and was never designed to prevent infection or transmittal to other people, things her team, Harris – Biden and the media lied about for years. Shoot, they are still lying about it in their current ad buy encouraging everyone take the latest vax. Normal vax means you don’t have to get another shot any time soon, if ever. Birx in her book is quite proud of herself and her success in snookering both Trump and the American People, something that went a long way toward destroying trust in the public health apparat for decades if not longer, demonstrating the road to a very hot place is still paved with good intentions. She must be very proud.
4. Hogg. When you install a grifter in your leadership, that grifter is gonna grift. Last week’s lesson in this comes out of the Democrat National Committee which installed anti-gun activist David Hogg as one of their Vice Chairmen a week or two ago. Hogg rose to prominence in 2018 as one of the survivors of the mass shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, FL. He led multiple high-profile anti-gun protests, marches and boycotts including one of the Ingraham Angle. He was embraced by the left and put on the magic carpet ride to wealth and influence. Turns out he is a grifter as barely two weeks following his election as party Vice Chair, he is using his position to leverage donations to his personal Political Action Committee, March for Our Lives and Leaders We Deserve. Hogg currently draws around $100,000 annually from those enterprises. Hogg refused interviews from the NYP. You gotta hand it to the democrats, though. They manage to find a leader they deserve, a 24-year-old just as corrupt at they are.
5. Vance. VP JD Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference 10 days ago. Much of the speech concerned censorship by European governments of political speech. The speech was both powerful and poorly received. Vance gave a vigorous defense of free speech to the very people who are busily criminalizing it in Europe. He noted that the US since the end of WWII fought against this sort of action by the Soviet Union and its allies only to find that the victors in Western Europe now are prosecuting free speech. He called out Scottland, Great Britian, Germany and even the US in this regard, saying we all have to clean up our respective acts. He noted that there are 84,000 American troops in Europe today and asked if the American taxpayer was going to support defending Germany, a nation that now jails its own citizens for mean tweets. He noted that while we have important alliances in Europe, the strength of those alliances is going to depend on whether or not we take our societies in the right direction.
6. Wisconsin. The first big election following the Trump victory in November looks like it is going to take place in Wisconsin, for a seat on the state Supreme Court. The last election in 2023 was a blowout win by the left that flipped a 4-3 Republican majority liberal. That liberal majority rewrote state election laws and generally allowed the democrat governor to run wild. They are expected to approve democrat Gerrymandering of US House seats to flip least two of them democrat, which would come close to flipping control of the House. This campaign is between former WI Attorney General (Republican) and a female county judge. All the lib groups are pouring money into the state. Interestingly enough, so is Elon Musk on the Republican side. This race is expected to end up being more expensive than the 2023 race that shattered records for a judicial race at $56 million. It will be the last chance Republicans in WI have to flip the WI Supreme Court majority until 2028 and may be able to put two congressional seats in play in 2026. Every election is important. So is this one.
7. Mexico. Things are heating up nicely with Mexico, as El Presidente is positioning to protect and defend the cartels from the US. Mexico is pushing lawsuits in federal courts aimed at firearms manufacturers for damage done by American-made firearms used by the cartels in Mexico. So far, leftist federal judges have chosen not to dismiss the lawsuits so as to inflict maximum damage on the firearms manufacturers in clear violation of federal law. Knowing this, Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum is promising to up the ante and expand the lawsuits should the US designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups, something the US already has done. This sets up an interesting dilemma for Scheinbaum, El Presidente of a failed state, using the power of the failed state to protect and defend the cartels exploiting that failure from the Trump administration. There was some speculation that the Deep State had been working with the cartels in recent years and that the Trump administration would back off of them once taking office. Appears that isn’t happening, as Scheinbaum is publicly defending them and US drones are actively flying along the Mexican coastline in the Baja. If Mexico wasn’t’ a failed state, they would be able to defend against the cartels. If Mexico and the cartels are one, then they are a failed state and will shortly go the way of ISIS. Either way works for me.
8. Labor. Not all the Trump cabinet nominees are going to have smooth sailing. One of the worst of these may be former Oregon congress critter Lori Chavez – DeRemer. DeRemer was and may still be a strong supporter of unions having co-sponsored the odious PRO Act in 2024, legislation that would have changed the rules for union organizing campaigns and penalizing companies that pushed back. The PRO Act was one of Biden priorities. It passed the House in 2021 but never made it through the Senate. It is unclear how much power that Chavez – DeRemer would wield at labor, but putting a pro-union cabinet secretary in office is always a concern, especially in a department that can and will reach down and muck around in small businesses all in the name of unions. As of this writing, Senator Rand Paul is in opposition to the nomination, thought that won’t be enough to kill it. Don’t know how this one is going to play out. It is a concerning nomination and if confirmed, a concerning cabinet secretary.
9. Trolling. President Trump continues to exercise his massive trolling muscles a couple ways last week. First by posting a newspaper cover with his mug shot outside the Oval Office. The second came with him attending the start of the Daytona 500 race, taking The Beast, his presidential vehicle around the track a time or two much to the delight of everyone present leading the cars before they commenced racing. The race was marred by rain, which did not allow it to proceed on time and Trump left early.
More later –
- AG