Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Gerrymandering
2. Lockdown
3. Stats
4. IFT 10
5. 4Chan
6. Spam
7. Little Sisters
8. Islands
1. Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the political tactic of manipulating boundaries of political districts for political advantage. Whether or not this is unfair political advantage is entirely dependent on who is on the winning and who is on the losing side of the argument. It has been around for a long time, first used in a 1812 redistricting of MA state senate. The governor at the time was one Elbridge Gerry, a former VP under Monroe and one of the signers of the Declaration of independence. He lost his next election. His political party, the Democratic Republicans retained control of the legislature. Given that we are now firmly in the midst of the next round of redistricting, a few comments are in order.
- First and most importantly, just because districts have been redrawn to favor one party or the other (Republicans in TX and MO, democrats in CA), the newly defined seats do not automatically get filled by candidates of the party redrawing the map, though for most, that would be a reasonable bet. Otherwise, why expend all the time, energy, money and resources on the new maps? You still have to find acceptable candidates, run a decent campaign, turn out your supporters, and make your case for election. Most do. A lot fail, some spectacularly.
- The new maps also have to run the normal judicial gauntlet in the individual states and then in the federal courts. In the blue states, the state judiciary is a fully owned subsidiary of the democrat party, which is why the Cali Supreme Court is letting Newscum get away with his unconstitutional redistricting effort. Alaska, now a purple state, has the same problem with a liberal supreme court opining on redrawing legislative districts.
- Once finished with the state courts (or in parallel), the argument is dumped in the laps of the federal judiciary. As we have seen with all things Trump, there are enough Clinton, O’Bama and Biden judges on the bench ready, willing and able to make it up as they go to green light any new democrat map while simultaneously destroying any new Republican map on sight.
- There have been majority – minority districts around for over half a century. These are the results of racial Gerrymandering, based on the notion that if the majority of voters (residents) in any district are of one race, then the boundaries of that district need to be drawn so that a candidate of that race is preferentially elected. That issue is on its way to SCOTUS which may very well throw it out as an unconstitutional racial preference.
- The other thing going on is a shift in the voting public with the (hoped for) possible collapse of the democrat party at the national level. This collapse has not yet shown up at the state and local levels, though there are signs as men continue to move hard right in their political preferences. As that movement continues, the newly redrawn districts may end up giving unexpected results especially among black men, Latinos, Asians, and younger white men. Still, you have to turn out your people on election day.
- The final piece of this puzzle is that Trump is starting a move toward making mail-in ballots for federal elections illegal, something he can do. While states are empowered to make rules for elections, the feds can set rules for federal elections. The way around this is to ensure state and local elections are held on different days than federal elections are. Of course, there are costs associated with operating two parallel election systems.
2. Lockdown. “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is an observation that has been around for at least 60 years. It also applies to tools you enjoy using. One of the new favorite tools of the political left is the lockdown that was used worldwide with impunity, without pushback, and without punishment of those who ordered it during COVID. Earlier this month, Canadian provinces started locking down public lands (the Kings’ Forests), prohibiting their use by the general public upon pain of arrest along with massive fines. The excuse was forest fires in Canada this summer. This has been a pretty bad fire season in Canada, mostly due to awful forest management by the Trudeau regime, a level of green fueled incompetence that would make the Newscum / Bass forest management in SoCal actually look competent. First up was Nova Scotia, which on Aug 5 declared a ban on hiking, camping, fishing, and the use of vehicles in forests due to an elevated wildfire risk. Private landowners can use their own property but guests are not allowed to use wooded areas on the land. Violators will face a $25,000 fine. The ban is to remain in place through Oct 15. Camping in campgrounds is allowed. Trail use is not. Nova Scotia has seen 139 wildfires this year, with 8,000 acres burned, a relatively small area. Residents are fighting this in court. Other provinces are starting to follow suit. The idea was floating around as far back as last Dec when a writer associated with Queen’s University, Canada penned a piece entitled “The climate lockdown conspiracy: You can’t fact-check possibility.” The piece poo-poohed the notion that the Smart Guys in the climate wars were planning on used climate-based lockdowns. Eight months later, here they are. Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. Public pushback on this needs to be harsh, blunt, painful and not a little bit scary. Otherwise, the abuse will continue and expand. If all you have is a hammer ….
3. Stats. One of the arguments between DC Mayor Bowser and the Trump administration takeover of law enforcement in DC was her claim that crime was down, with the lowest crime rates in 30 years. Hilarity ensued. Turns out that DC has been diddling crime statistics, likely for a long time. A whistleblower from the DC Police Department was fired for making the claim. The DC government settled a 2020 lawsuit based on the firing. The DC police routinely reclassified crimes, with districts competing with one another to get the largest reduction in crime statistics. This led the way to promotions and raises. Both the Bondi DoJ and Congress are investigating this. It is entirely possible that crime statistics from all blue cities and states, and likely all cities are garbage and ought to be treated as such. Any incentive to reward people for reporting improvements will get precisely this sort of behavior. I single out the democrats for doing this because they are the most corrupt. Republicans who do this will always be outed and replaced by democrats who do it, longer, better, harder and less publicly visible.
4. IFT 10. I was all set to enjoy the fourth Starship test flight yesterday afternoon. Sadly, it was scrubbed 0+40 before launch due to a ground issue. Rescheduled for this afternoon around 1530 ADT. 2025 has been a rough year for development, as they lost 4 Starship upper stages so far. Three blew up, two in space and one on a test stand. The fourth had a massive methane leak into the payload section during flight that led to an uncontrolled reentry. They also lost a Superheavy Booster due to aerodynamic bending during the most recent landing test. The test was to see how hard they could fly it before they broke it. This time around, they will attempt a less aggressive flight of the booster, landing offshore in the water. Starship will attempt to eject Starlink satellite shapes during its coast to reentry. Reentry will test several types of tile improvements. The test will conclude with a soft landing in the Indian Ocean W of Oz. Note that this entire program is being funded entirely by Starlink users. Video will be available either on the SpaceX website or any number of live streaming feeds. One associated story was announcement by a Mexican environmental group of a protest planned to put a number of boats into the exclusion zone just offshore the launch pad and booster landing site. Sunday’s coverage of the scrubbed launch did not mention anything unusual offshore.
5. 4chan. The censorship urge is strong in Europe. The UK took on 4chan under its Online Safety Act, with demands that the online bulletin board provide information demonstrating it is complying with its obligations under the UK Online Safety Act. 4chan refused, stating it was complying with US law. British media watchdog, Ofcom, hit 4chan with a £20,000/day fine, which 4chan is refusing to pay. Expect governments to get involved with this at the Secretarial level. If the Brits can strongarm 4chan, they can strongarm everyone else. While this law applies to all social media companies, 4chan is the first one to publicly fight it. Once they successfully refuse to pay fines or cooperate, so will everyone else. Online censorship is also the continued sticking point between the EU and the US over a tariff deal. While a deal on tariffs was announced a week or two ago, censorship demands by the EU aimed at US companies continue. I expect Trump will simply allow the tariffs on the EU to operate until they back off their censorship demands.
6. Spam. The sneaky little skunks at Goolag are diddling the political wars again. To be fair, they probably never stopped. Their most recent little trick is to flag Republican fundraising e-mails as either dangerous or suspicious and sending them to the Gmail spam folder. The flagging seems to be tied to embedded links, which means the programming is a conscious action on their part. Repeated Republican complaints in court on this have been dismissed by both federal courts and the FEC. Note that Act Blue fundraising communications are whitelisted and get to the inbox. Musk in March accused Goolag of interfering to help democrats thousands of times every election season. Happily, Act Blue is about to go the way of the Dodo, which may also happen to Goolag as the AI world is moving quickly.
7. Little Sisters. Yet another federal district judge who is willfully ignoring SCOTUS ruling is one Wendy Beetlestone, a 2014 O’Bama nominee to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She sided with NJ and PA in their decades long effort to force the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns who care for the elderly poor to provide abortion or contraceptives in their healthcare plan or pay tens of millions of dollars in fines for refusing to do so. Her opinion last week ignored a 2020 SCOTUS opinion striking down an O’Bama era HHS rule based on O’BamaCare mandates requiring this coverage. That opinion was the second time SCOTUS ruled against HHS on this. The 2020 case started in 2017. Beetlestone filed a nationwide injunction that ducked constitutional issues, ignored previous SCOTUS opinions. She waited 5 years and did not allow a hearing on the injunction. Nicely done, Madam, nicely done (/sarc).
8. Islands. One of the concerning things over the last decade or two has been growing Chinese influence in Micronesia. The Chinese will show up with diplomats, handfuls of money, some military, and draw up various agreements with the local governments. Economics involve resource development for the locals in return for airstrip or port access for China. Like they have done for years with their Belt and Road initiative, the CCP targets out of the way governments and nations the US has mostly ignored over the years. Earlier this month, the US and Cook Islands announced cooperation on seafloor mining, something the CCP has been dangling in front of them for a while. In Feb, China and the Cook Islands announced a joint memorandum to form a Joint Committee of Marine Cooperation in Seabed Minerals Affairs. The agreement was signed as part of a larger strategic partnership on infrastructure, environment and educational partnerships, all of which sounds like a way to get the right amount of money into the right local hands and pockets. An April 2025 Trump EO set the stage for the US to start partnering with other nations to develop seabed mineral resources within their national jurisdictions. While not a solution to what the CCP has been up to for a long while, at least we are in the game. The Cook Islands are associated with New Zealand, and its citizens are New Zealand citizens. While they operate with some degree of autonomy over international relations, they are supposed to consult with New Zealand on important matters on foreign policy and security. New Zealand is concerned that the deal with China was not sufficiently discussed and froze over $10 million in funding as a result. This intergovernmental tension works in China’s favor. The US cannot ignore this incursion into this part of the Pacific.
More later –
- AG