Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Iran
2 Trans
3. Starship
4. Pharma
5. Self-deport
6. MN Shooting
7. No Kings
8. Capital
1. Iran. The US struck the three primary underground nuclear sites in Iran Saturday night. The strikes were aimed at decapitating Iran’s program aimed at manufacturing nuclear weapons. This is where it gets a bit interesting, as Iran was playing the same game that Saddam did 25 years ago, bumping right up against the line of threatening to manufacture WMD, actually using WMD on its population (chemical weapons), and laughing all the way to the bank afterwards while not actually manufacturing the weapons (nukes and bio) while pretending to do so. While I personally believe Saddam was gaming the system, doing his level best to create dual use systems, I acknowledge the possibility that he was simply running his mouth. Either way, if you are a known Bad Actor and choose to run your mouth about turning your enemies into smoking holes in the ground, eventually someone will believe you and act upon that belief. Iran’s problem is that when you loudly and proudly threaten Death to America for 47 solid years since the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, you open the door for a president in office that will take your BS seriously. When he comes to act on your stated goal, it sucks to be you. Initial reports had 14 GBU-57 MOPs delivered at 13.6 metric tons apiece. Initial assumption was that a single bomb to a single B-2 based on its weight and carrying capacity of the B-2. This was in error, as the B-2 can carry two of the weapons comfortably with a reduced fuel load. This means multiple refuelings to keep the jet airborne on a long trip. The pairing of weapons allowed the entire strike to be flown with 7 jets. This allowed another 8 jets to fly west from Whiteman across the Pacific as a head fake. Still, there are only 17 operable B-2s left in service, and this operation used at least 14 of them. The lack of airframes is one of the reasons we are building B-21s. There were also at least 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles dedicated to the other two sites. Appears that the administration both gave Iran a heads up of the impending attack and used deception to confuse defenders about the date and timing of the attack. Some observers point to satellite photos of a line of trucks lined up in front of one of the entrances to Fordow a day or two before the strike as evidence of the early warning. 12 MOPs reportedly hit Fordow, most of them double taps, hitting six separate holes. One of the holes reportedly was an air vent for the facility which should have shown up nicely in IR in the cold desert night. Air vents and blast doors don’t move around a lot. Once you have them located, they tend to stay where they are making hitting them relatively straightforward. The other two sites, Isfahan and Natanz were hit with the remaining two MOPs and at least 30 Tomahawks. The tactical deception was Trump’s warning late last week that he would make a decision whether or not to strike Iran sometime in the next two weeks. He also sent B-2s out of Whiteman both east and west, with the ones going west being the deception. The strike was authorized under the 2001 law authorizing the Global War on Terror following the 9-11 attack. There will be a lot more about this in the days to come. So far, so good.
2. Trans. In the legal world, SCOTUS in a 6-3 opinion upheld a Tennessee law banning sex change therapy for minors. The opinion was a devastating takedown of the trans agenda, one that opens the door for lawsuits against the medical mutilation craze and the expert class. The COVID mongers are also at risk. Here’s what happened:
- The opinion pointedly recognized the controversy surrounding sexual affirmation surgery and treatment. Rather than putting up with what they were hearing from the medical experts, SCOTUS left the actual decision in the hands of the elected representatives of the people via the democratic process. They did not rule on wisdom, fairness or logic of the law. Rather, they determined it did not violate the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment. Whether trans was a sexual identity was intentionally ignored by deciding trans was equally applicable to both sexes. All three liberal Justices determined the law was unconstitutional.
- In doing this, Justice Thomas took on and demolished the Expert Class in a separate opinion. He destroyed the attempt by the plaintiffs including the former Biden regime to “accord outsized credit to claims about medical consensus and expertise.” The plaintiffs demanded that the court defer to the so-called “expert consensus” in all things trans, and in turn, all other things where the experts line up against the general public. Thomas, in one of his more brilliant opinions noted that experts have no license to countermand the wisdom, fairness or logic of legislative choices. He went on to note that there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children, and that the states themselves must decide if or how young children can provide informed consent to life altering treatments. He ended by noting that there are particularly good reasons to question the expert class here, as recent revelations suggest leading voices in the area relied on questionable evidence and allowed ideology to influence their medical guidance. Consensus of experts does not override the constitution or the will of the American people as expressed through their elected representatives. Essentially, Thomas destroyed the expert class.
- With such an opinion in hand, what is to be done? I predict that most, if not all of the red states will pass similar legislation, prohibiting transition / gender affirming treatment for minors. I also predict that this opinion will open the door for the white blood cells of the body politic, the legal system, to target the medical, public health, and educrat led transitioning apparat, as children who had their bodies mutilated via surgery or hormone treatment to seek compensation for their loss. Yes, this will also include the Karens who dragged them to the medical establishment greedy to lock in decades of future treatment.
- Similarly, I expect the destruction of the expert class to finally wash up upon the shores of Big COVID, all those experts who demanded lockdowns, jabs, boosters, and other things that destroyed businesses, lives and are still damaging people worldwide. This won’t happen quickly, but it WILL happen.
3. Starship. Ship 36 blew up Wednesday night in preparation for Integrated Flight Test 10 this week. The explosion took place while loading fuel for a full engine test. No engines were lit. Ship 36 already did a successful single engine test. Appears that a nitrogen tank high in the nose cone failed, rupturing the side of the ship, releasing methane, which ignited. The subsequent explosion toasted the test stand and fuel tanks supporting the test stand. Unknown at this time how bad this will delay the test schedule. Also unknown is how badly the test stand was damaged and what sort of delay this will impose. There are two more Block 2 Starships waiting for flight before Block 3 ships start flying late this year. Some observers are wondering if Block 2 is simply a lemon, a poor or unlucky design and that should be bypassed. We will see. I would think that next year’s Mars launch window is certainly at risk. In a second space story, at least two lunar orbiters found the iSpace lander’s crash site on the moon last week. The smallish crater demonstrates that speculation this was a hard landing rather than a crash like I reported last week was in error. You don’t make a crater unless you are travelling really fast. And if you make a crater, nothing survives but shrapnel.
4. Pharma. RFK Jr is proposing a ban on pharmaceutical ads on network radio and television. The ban would impact some $5 billion in ad buys (2024) mostly aimed at network news. The ads have been running since the 1990s. Before we devolve into the tedious free speech argument, please remind me that ads for cigarettes, alcohol, and other adult vices (pleasures) have been banned or controlled on radio and TV in some way for decades. These controls come and go with the change in administration and congressional interest. The largest impact of shutting down pharma ads would be funding nightly news on network TV.
5. Self-deport. Other than the raid on Iran and the SCOTUS opinion on gender reassignment therapy for minors, perhaps the best news of the week was announcement that at least a million illegals have self-deported since Trump was sworn in. The Usual Suspects at the WSJ and Washington Post are painting this as a Bad Thing, tightening the job market, with fewer people willing to take jobs. They ignore completely the rise in wages among those on the low end of the job market. They also ignore the decrease in pressure for local communities to support the illegals with welfare and related spending. Those numbers are hotly disputed, as working people typically aren’t on the dole. Either way, the more illegals out of the country, the smaller the problem becomes. There are a couple looming economic problems. The first is the cost of mechanization. If people aren’t working, whatever they are doing will have to be mechanized, something that should have happened a long time ago. Second is finally wrestling with the notion that there are some jobs people simply won’t do. This is an old shibboleth used by the pro-immigration crowd to justify mass immigration of untrained, unskilled, poorly paid people who don’t speak english, an argument that feeds directly back into the automation solution. Bottom line, if we have the functional equivalent of wage slaves, we don’t need automation. And automation is very likely the solution to the whole argument, coming sooner than anyone thinks with the rollout of the Tesla robot.
6. MN Shooting. One of the weirdest stories last week was the shooting of a pair of MN democrat legislators and their spouses by another democrat. Two died and two survived. The legislator who didn’t make it’s last vote was with Republicans in the House. The perp even shot a family dog which was later put down. The perp sounds like one of those functionally insane democrats we periodically hear about. This one’s particular malady was trying look important while actually being not particularly important. He was apprehended crawling around in a field near a village not far from his home. He was a former political appointee by Governor and former VP Nominee Tim Walz. The perp left a bizarre letter describing current and future targets. He was taken alive.
7. No Kings. I mentioned the orchestrated No Kings protests last week. The Pearl Project researched the protests and its backers, finding that it was organized by at least 198 nonprofits. Collectively, these democrat front organizations reported $2.1 billion in annual revenues in 2024. The organizations include three official entities of the DNC, 16 democrat political action committees (PACs), 18 labor unions, with Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers being the lead, 76 501(c)(4) political nonprofits, 47 501(c)(3) nonprofits legally restricted from partisan advocacy, and 38 additional democrat aligned groups. In addition to these 198, there are another 267 groups organizing protests against President Trump. Their revenues are $1.3 billion. Total of the professional protest organizers on the left is 465 groups with combined revenues of $3.4 billion. These protests are orchestrated, top-down, professional events with professional training, leadership, and equipment. If successful, expect the No Kings construct to be the next vehicle orchestrating anti-Trump protests and waging political violence against the rest of America.
8. Capitol. A group of protesters breached a police barrier and staged a protest in front of the US Capitol Friday. About 60 of them were arrested. I don’t expect them to end up in the DC Gulag or in front of the democrat hanging judges on the DC Circuit for this particular episode of do it yourself insurrection. Some protests are more equal than others.
More later –
- AG