Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. 315k
2. Privateers
3. Wegovy
4. Battleship
5. Waymo
6. Banked
7. Chicago
1. 315k. Drip. Drip. Drip. Last week’s addition to the ever-growing case that the 2020 election was rigged comes from Fulton County, GA, Fani Willis country. Turns out that county election officials managed not to properly sign tabulator tapes from the voting machines following the 2020 election, a violation of state election law. The admission was made by country attorney in front of a meeting of the State Elections Board. Remember that this was the same election that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, playing either his best CYA or TDS mode has steadfastly defended as pure as the driven snow since Nov 2020. The county claims procedures have been updated, with significant changes made to ensure it does not happen again until next time. The tapes were from 130 voting machines (tell me again why a single voting machine is still operating in the US. I forgot the reason. I’ll wait). Raffensperger weighed in, downplaying the error, claiming the failure wouldn’t have changed results in the “heavily audited” election. He continued to prattle on claiming that “Georgia has the most secure elections in the country, and all the voters were verified with photo ID and lawfully cast their ballots.” Right. And there’s no fraud in MN by domestic Somali welfare pirates either. The county faces up to $5,000 fines for failing to sign each tape. These tapes aren’t the only remaining brown floaters in the Fulton County election punchbowl. There is the little matter of a locked room that may or may not be full of unaudited ballots that both the state and county have refused to and are actively fighting to open to auditors. What else are they hiding? Now, I don’t know that the failure to sign the tapes or the continued obstruction into auditing ballots in a locked room mean anything at all. The problem is that every time we have one of these little episodes, the outcome always seems to support the final outcome of a democrat win in GA, or move it more solidly in that direction. We saw the same thing when the Biden regime announced the results of the 2020 census. The final tally was rife with errors, yet every single one of those improved blue state populations and every one of those reduced totals in red states. If the system is not rigged, errors tend to even out over time. If it is rigged, they only move in one direction, generally toward electing democrats, which completely explains why they are disinterested in exploring what happened and why. The loss in GA didn’t hand the presidency to Biden. That took another couple states. The problem was the loss of two Republican US Senators in GA flipped the senate to democrat control, enabling the legislative dumpster fire of the first two years of the Biden regime.
2. Privateers. Given the pushback by the Usual Suspects against military assets splashing Venezuelan cartel boats full of cocaine on their way to deliver to distribution points in Mexico, the question arises if there is a better way to skin this particular cat? Turns out there is one. Better yet, it is even constitutional. Senator Mike Lee (R, UT) introduced legislation 10 days ago that would allow private entities to deal with cartels on a military-to-military basis. The Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act authorizes the president to commission American operators under letters of marque to seize cartel property and persons on land or sea outside the US. Similar legislation was introduced by a House Republican. My guess is that there will be no small number of former special operators or groups of special operators positioning themselves to take advantage of the opening. Their work will be done out of the public eye, away from the media, with no opposition video. There will be few survivors on either side should this take off. Wouldn’t be surprised if the letters also extend to allow these groups to start targeting the cartels in Mexico. Narco states like Venezuela and Mexico are about to find their cartel power bases in deep serious trouble. The largest problem for these newfound operators is going to be deconflicting their operations with those of USSOUTHCOM.
3. Wegovy. RFK Jr’s leadership in HHS is reorienting the entire healthcare apparat from an appendage of their corporate masters to a servant (however poorly) of the citizens. This is a huge job, equivalent to trying to steer an aircraft carrier with a tablespoon. The corporation-centric approach grew over decades and will take a while to tear down and reorient. But like everything these days, there are parts that can proceed very quickly and in chunks. One thing RFK Jr has been pointing out for years is the damage to public health is obesity, not only in the negative lifestyles of being overweight, but more importantly, the sheer human damage and national medical costs of dealing with chronic hypertension, heart disease, cancers, high cholesterol, and all the other “Western diseases.” Decrease overweight and obesity, and the diseases likewise decrease. While HHS is shutting down the free money bonanza enjoyed by childhood and other vaccinations, completely shutting down the deadly fraud committed by the medical and counseling world in the name of gender reassignment surgery and treatment (stick), they are opening the door for the drug companies and medical professionals to make a bit of money on obesity control for a huge percentage of Americans (carrot), something that will actually move the national health needle a bit closer to actual lifestyle improvement. Turns out an approach is to make the increasingly popular GLP-1 drugs used to treat Diabetes Type II and in recent years, obesity cheaper and more accessible to the public. Given the sheer number of people who diet on a regular or not so regular basis, the manufacturers stand to sell a LOT of this stuff. First up is Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of Wegovy, previously only available as an injection. They have the same drug available in pill form which should hit the market in January and be a lot more popular (nobody likes needles), available via prescription. Monthly cost was previously $499/mo. HHS negotiated new prices for both the pill and injection at around $150/mo, while making them both covered by Medicare / Medicaid. Similar prices have been negotiated with manufacturers of similar drugs. Those prices will act as ceilings on what pharmacies can charge for these drugs for a while, at least until the next elected democrat. Want to solve a medical problem? Figure out a treatment and then make that treatment available to the public at a decent price. What a concept. This isn’t a final solution. It is a solid first step that needs to be expanded upon.
4. Battleship. President Trump announced a new class of battleships to be built for the Navy. As usual, he named it after himself, the Trump Class, with an initial buy of two on its way to an initial fleet of 10 -12, perhaps as many as 20 – 25 ships. Unit cost will be $10 – 15 billion, though I expect that number to shrink significantly, about the current cost of an aircraft carrier. This marks a change in surface fleet strategy, as the last battleship was USS Missouri, started in 1944, finished in time for the Japanese to surrender on it in Aug 1945. It was decommissioned in 1992. The ship will be outfitted with the latest eye candy, including hypersonic weapons, drone swarms, rail guns and laser / directed energy weapons, all of which will require a powerful reactor or three on the boat. Size of these is important. The Iowa-class battleships were on the order of 57,000 tons displacement. A modern aircraft carrier is around 100,000 tons. Proposed displacement of these is 30,000 – 40,000 tons, slightly larger than modern cruisers. I’m sure the military types can (will and should) argue day and night about how good or bad this idea is. On the minus side (and I am going there rapidly in my old age), everything large these days ends up being a bomb magnet, a target for hundreds to thousands of lethal weapons attacking at the same time (think drone swarms). And if you are going to be spending all your time defending against an expected wave of death aimed at you, you’re not going to be doing a lot to project power with the new ship. OTOH, you have to be able to project power, bring enough weaponry anywhere on the globe, and stay there long enough to do whatever your mission tells you to do. Balancing these tradeoffs properly defines how effective these new weapons will be. The other problem the DoW has is a seriously broken procurement system, particularly for ships. If the Trump team can solve that problem and start turning out these beasts at the rate Roosevelt managed to turn out Iowa-class battleships during WWII, it will be worth every penny today and for decades in the future.
5. Waymo. File this one under growing pains. There was a power outage in downtown SF a week ago that stretched into the night. There is a fleet of Alphabet self-driving Waymo vehicles operating in town. Turns out they get confused when encountering an intersection without operating stop lights. During this outage, the confused vehicles simply stopped, quickly clogging intersections. All the Usual Suspects were predictably outraged, demanding immediate detailed answers and an explanation of proposed fix. Turns out that Alphabet’s solution was a software update which was quickly written and uploaded. The rules of intersections without operating stop lights are relatively straightforward and can be easily programmed.
- In a second autonomous vehicle story, Tesla owners have started being trapped inside the vehicle after accidents when the power is turned off. There are releases inside but are difficult to find during post-accident excitement. The flush exterior door handles are not available if the power is off. One solution has been for owners to purchase glass break tools for escape.
- Elon Musk is making the case that Tesla’s Fully Self Driving (FSD) mode will eventually save millions of lives by drastically reducing human error accidents. Tesla claims that FSD today currently has an accident rate about 86% under non-FSD vehicles. Critics are doing their critic job as loudly as possible, claiming it is nowhere as close as Musk claims it is. Betting against Musk in the tech world is a losing game. Note that if FSD can be solved for Tesla, it will not be long before Tesla can sell the same sort of tech as an aftermarket addition for non-Tesla vehicles.
- The final EV story comes out of NY, where the state-mandated fleet of electric school busses are having a hard time during the winter. One of the known problems with current EVs is that they have a hard time during the winter, losing over 40% of battery capacity depending on how cold it gets. An EV does not have any alternate source of heat other than the battery like conventional ICE diesels. NY mandated electric school busses in its 2022 budget, passed with all the standard promises of a Better Future for All, particularly The Children. School Districts are mandated to only purchase EVs starting 2027, with the entire fleet converting by 2035. Well, it turns out that EVs don’t do all that well when it is cold, and in order to conserve battery life, drivers are instructed to turn off heaters inside the vehicles. This does a two-fer, fogging up the inside of the bus making it nearly impossible to see out, and freezing the kiddos who are forced ride for an extended period of time with temps in the 20s.
6. Banked. One important thing to remember about the upcoming midterms, a mere 11 months away, is that Trump’s wins are now banked, and that the public will not elect Republicans for what they have done successfully since Jan 21. Rather, they will vote for Republicans for what they think they will do in the next couple years. This is one reason that midterms often flip party control, especially in times like today, where there are razor thin margins in both houses of congress and in various states. Note to the Good Guys: Tell the voters what you are going to do next.
7. Chicago. Last week’s example of be careful what you wish for comes from Illinois, where Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson won a SCOTUS opinion not allowing Trump to deploy Texas National Guard troops in Chicago to control crime. SCOTUS via a most incomprehensible opinion decided that Trump did not have the right to deploy National Guard. It did leave him the option to deploy active duty military, which is what Trump is in the process of doing. No problemo. Guard not allowed? Great, we’ll just send in the Marines.
More later –
- AG