Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Disqualify
2. NGOs
3. Space
4. SSAN
5. Elections
1. Disqualify. We find in recent years that the judiciary in the Western World has become Soviet in their actions. Soviet defined here as the part of the government supposedly impartial and dedicated to upholding the Constitution, changing its focus to one entirely dedicated to allowing the government in question to continue at infinitum. As of last week, we have the following examples. There are more, but you get the idea:
- Donald Trump – US, 2020 – 2025. Four trials. Two at the federal and two in two separate states. 34 felony convictions in NYC. Fines over half a billion dollars levied. Did not keep him out of office.
- Marine Le Pen – France, 2025. Convicted of embezzlement of EU funds in a French court. Sentenced to 4 years in prison. Banned on running for political office for 5 years. National Rally was leading in the polls for next year’s Parliamentary Elections. Note that Macron, whose party was defeated last year refused to allow National Rally to participate in formation of the interim government.
- Matteo Salvini – Italy, 2024. Found not guilty in a court of kidnapping and dereliction charges after he blocked rescue of a boat full of foreign invaders in 2019. At the time, he was Interior Minister. He closed Italian ports to rescue boats working out of the ports to save Libyan escapees.
- Jair Bolsanaro – Brazil, 2025. Indicted for supposedly orchestrating a plot to keep himself in office following the disputed 2022 national election that removed him from office (sound familiar?). Indictment is an effort to remove Bolsonaro and 35 of his closest supporters from running for President again. This case echoes Fani Mills’ Fulton County election interference case against Trump. And the Brazilian courts are notoriously corrupt, as Elon Musk found out with their Chief Justice assault on X / Twitter and Starlink last year all in the name of censorship.
- Ekrem Imamoglu, Turkey – 2025. Arrested and charged with corruption by the Erdogan government. Imamoglu, Mayor of Istanbul, was expected to be selected as the Republican People’s Party presidential nominee for the 2028 national election. Erdogan, who famously described democracy as a streetcar, which you could hop off when you reached your destination, is in a spot of trouble as he becomes increasingly authoritarian. This one isn’t in the courts yet, though it did trigger massive demonstrations.
- Calin Gorgescu – Romania, 2024. This one is more extensive, as a Romanian court invalidated an entire national election won by populists on allegations of vote manipulation, campaign irregularities, and non-transparent funding. Gorgescu is not as virulently anti-Russia as the EU-friendly courts liked, so he is banned from participation in the rerun May 4. He is also under criminal investigation on six counts including being a member of a fascist organization and false information about campaign financing.
- Shor Party – Moldova, 2023. Moldova’s Constitutional Court dissolved an entire political party after its leader was sanctioned by the EU over links for Moscow. The party and its leadership called for regime change. Moldova’s current government is described as being pro-Western, which means it is EU-friendly.
- AfD Party – Germany 2024. Described as far-right, the party did quite well in the last round of parliamentary elections. As a result, the other parties are banding together to freeze them out of participation in forming the new government, not unlike the stunt Macron is pulling with National Rally. The game is to use the Federal Constitution Court to ban them from the next round of elections on the specious ground they are the Second Coming of the National Socialists.
There are others under similar legal assault. Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel is one example. The similarities here are stunning. All this really took off following the lawfare assault on Trump by prosecutors and the courts at all levels. All of these are aimed at populists who are routinely called fascists, Nazis, and collaborators with Russia. All of these completely bypass and disenfranchise the voters in order to prop up the regime currently in power. All of these are supported at some level with government sponsored censorship (US, Brazil, Germany). The elite need to be careful, for if the general public cannot solve their problem via elections and if the very well-articulated Will of the People is routinely stymied by black-robed politicians, they will express their displeasure via other means. Hopefully, this will not end up being at the end of the barrel of a gun, though a few black-robed politicians swinging from the end of a rope wouldn’t surprise me. This is an incredibly dangerous path for these clowns to tread. I don’t think they’ve thought it though other than an immediate means to retain power. But if you are successful retaining power this way, what next? Increasing authoritarianism? Methinks that would be counterproductive.
2. NGOs. WSJ reporter Asra Normani published her research into who and what is funding the #TeslaTakedown protests. Not unexpectedly, this entirely a democrat owned and operated astroturf operation with at least 24 known organizations funding and organizing the protests, leading the propaganda campaign against Tesla, Tesla drivers, employees, Donald Trump and anyone else who gets in their way. The organizations have combined annual revenues at least $124 million. Every single one of them are aligned with democrats. Most of them are 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) “nonpartisan” organizations that today enjoy tax-deductible status. A few of them have PACs. This is yet another example of the mulit-million dollar professional protest industry that manufacture outrage in top-down political theater, agitprop and criminal offenses. None of this is surprising. But today, we finally have a list of organizations involved, Trump, Bondi, Patel and Musk are all aware of this, so I do expect some significant pushback, perhaps in the form of a criminal RICO (crimes are committed, conspiracy in place, criminal acts coordinated and celebrated). Best place for all the links is the ZeroHedge piece on the research. Well done Madam. Well done.
3. Space. Another busy week in space, with most of the stories being positive ones.
- First was the flight of the commercial Fram2 mission, a privately chartered and crewed Dragon launched out of the Cape Monday, landing Friday. This flight ticked another first-time box, being the first manned spaceflight in a polar orbit. Flights in polar orbit are problematic for a couple reasons and have been avoided over the 60+ years of manned spaceflight. The first problem is energy. If you launch and fly east, you take advantage of the 1,670 kph earth rotation to get you to orbital velocity of 27,000 kph. Going east is a freebee that gives you 6% orbital velocity while sitting on the pad. The other problem is radiation. This has to do with the radiation shielding provided by the Van Allen Belts, which protect most of the planet from inbound charged solar particles and cosmic rays. The belts have holes in them over the poles, which is why you generally see aurora in the polar regions as incoming charged particles interact with the upper atmosphere. Flying over the poles expose you to radiation similar to flying above the belts. Prior to the flight, the highest inclination ever flown was 65° by three Vostoks starting with Gagarin in 1961. The mission’s name, Fram2 is based on a Norwegian Arctic exploration ship Fram that carried expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic 1893 – 1912. In Norse, the word means “forth” or “forward.” This led to some confusion from those of us who used to do vehicle maintenance here in the US half a century ago. Fram was a company that used to sell a line of filters, leading to the question why a billionaire would name his mission after an oil filter. It seemed to be an odd corporate sponsor.
- The second story comes out of Starbase in South Texas, where SpaceX rolled out Booster 14 to the pad and fired it up for an 8-second engine test. This booster previously flew on integrated test flight 7. 29 of 33 engines were previously flown. Looks like they have made the decision to attempt a reflight, continuing their move toward a rapidly reusable system. No word yet about their progress with the vibration problems that destroyed their last two Starship upper stages. I would expect test flight 9 within the next week or two if all goes well.
- Final space story comes out of Norway, where German Isar Aerospace attempted its first launch. This was notable as the first commercial rocket launch from continental Europe. Of course, there have been multiple military rocket launches in and from continental Europe over the last century. Isar Aerospace is the first commercial rocket company to get something off the ground since OTRAG in 1977 – 1983. They shut down under political pressure and joined the Ariane project in the early 1980s. The launch was the first from the Norwegian Andoya Spaceport, an absolutely spectacular setting. The rocket got to 500 m, lost directional (and perhaps roll) control. The abort system shut down engines and the vehicle blew upon impact in the ocean next to the launch site. These guys will be back.
4. SSAN. Musk and the DOGE team have been looking into Social Security, not unexpectedly finding massive fraud which they are cleaning up. One word about the claims on both sides: these are hotly disputed by the Usual Suspects on the political left and their media mouthpieces. There have been a few Musk claims during the DOGE process that ended up being untrue in fact, but directionally true as more data was found. The team is hampered by the various systems not talking to one another so databases cannot be compared. The IRS against the Social Security databases would be a good place to start, something he has already requested. The first of these is the discovery of 3.2 million Social Security accounts with recipients over age 120. These have all been marked as deceased. No word yet on the dollars fraudulently rolling out of the treasury through these accounts. This is how you cut Social Security without cutting benefits. Second tidbit is the discovery that fully 40% of all phone calls into Social Security are attempts at fraud. Final and most hotly disputed is discovery that 2.1 million illegals secured Social Security Numbers in 2024. Note that this is a single year number, no counting what was done 2021 – 2023. Putting illegals on Social Security was a conscious decision by the O’Bama-oids infesting the Harris – Biden WH, as it is a vehicle to make it easier to get these people on the voting rolls, which was the ultimate goal all along. I would suspect that most of these are on Supplemental Social Security based on some sort of claimed disability.
5. Elections. Elections were held in multiple states last week. The news is mostly good, with some bad mixed in. On the good side, Republicans in Florida retained a pair of House seats formerly filled by Trump appointees to his cabinet. Even though the left poured in a bunch of money, the seats were retained, expanding the Republican congressional majority a bit. Only drawback is some less than supportive commentary by Governor DeSantis aimed at the winner of one of the seats. Appears the guy didn’t distinguish himself or impress DeSantis. I would pay attention to that commentary. Who knows, the guy might end up being a keeper and distinguish himself over the next couple of years. If he doesn’t, there will be plenty of time to remove him. News wasn’t so good in Wisconsin, where the leftist won an open seat on the state supreme court. This retains the existing 4-3 liberal majority on the court through 2028. Billionaires faced off in this race with over $90 million spent on it. At this point, I would like to blast the lying scum on Our Side for their reportage on the race. It was always painted as nuclear winter if we lost, an out and out lie. It was a status quo result. Our Side was actually trying to steal a seat and flip the court majority. Did I ever mention that I really hate Our Side lying? Additionally, Republicans hold a one seat majority in the state senate, meaning any redistricting will require some level of skullduggery. A WI ballot initiative requiring ID presented for voting also passed by a substantial majority. This is a constitutional amendment that will remain until the liberals on the supreme court majority concoct a way to find it unconstitutional.
More later –
- AG