Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Senate
2. Thomas
3. Mechanic
4. Housing
5. Wind
6. Hormuz
7. Beach
1. Senate. The race for US Senate heated up nicely last week with no small amount of turbulence in candidates in multiple states.
- Here in Alaska, the democrat Mary Peltoa campaign does not appear to be getting the expected polling bump placing her Decoy Dan, the Senator Dan Sullivan doppelganger on the August primary ballot. Her response last week was to go after Sullivan for insider trading, which moved her smartly into glass houses land. Now that she has aimed low, Peltola opened the door to some really ugly stuff in her background. One of the easiest is her residence. She claims to be a Bethel chick, which allows her to participate in the federal subsistence fishery based on residence. Yet her primary residence is here in Anchorage, which doesn’t qualify her for subsistence. Her campaign is now focused on making claims of insider trading by Dan Sullivan, something never alleged over his 12 years in office. Yet Peltola voted for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in 2023, a woman who so abused insider trading that legislation to ban it is named after her. Finally, her sadly departed husband, one Buzzy Peltola, who removed himself from the gene pool via a Darwin Award competitive act (trying to take off from a Bush site with too much moose carcass in the plane), left her with 176 long guns. Buzzy worked as an officer for US Fish & Wildlife for years and reportedly acquired guns in exchange for refusing to write tickets for hunting violations. It is illegal to do this. It is illegal to know about it and not report it. I think Mary has some ‘splainin to do.
- Second and most widely reported Senate event was democrats forcing DSA candidate Graham Platner to drop out of the race for US Senate from Maine. They used their new technique of waiting until all votes for the candidate were in and shut down the entire candidate support structure – access to mailing lists, funding, and campaign support – promised Platner who was forced to drop out. Note that the Platner candidate was an entirely fraudulent construct, a creation by a pair of democrat campaign operatives interviewed in the following video:
The up-talking guy makes my skin crawl. Platner’s sin? He was a blackout drunk, who did stuff while drunk he didn’t remember, which apparently made him the perfect democrat, as he was what democrats believe white men are – Nazi rapists who are blackout drunks, a caricature. Regardless, democrats in Maine are going to reprise the trick they did with Biden and Harris, kick the primary winner off the ticket and replace him (or her) with someone who never got a single vote of democrats in any state. Good luck with that.
- Third, we have the missing Mitch McConnell, who last cast a vote June 11. He disappeared for nearly a month, ginning up the rumor mill to a fever pitch. Things were spinning merrily along to the point when KY Governor Andy Beshear (D) publicly asked about his status so as to replace him with a democrat. Either way, McConnell is not running for reelection and will be replaced by a different senator in January. McConnell did come up for air over the weekend, claiming that he had fallen, passed out for a bit and was hospitalized where he got pneumonia. Coupled with Lindsey Graham’s passing, the senate majority is down to 51-47 until McConnell shows up for work again.
- Final senate story comes from South Carolina where incumbent Lindsey Graham passed away over the weekend. He was up for reelection and won his primary in June. As the vacancy was more than 100 days before the election, The governor will appoint a temporary replacement. A special primary will be held Aug 11 to select his replacement for the Nov general election. I expect democrats will be slavering to take advantage of the newfound opportunity.
2. Thomas. SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas is reportedly looking forward to a potential case on rent control. SCOTUS last denied similar cases in 2024. Thomas disagreed, calling it “… an important pressing question.” It took Thomas 34 years to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, successfully putting a wooden stake in its black little heart via Trump v Slaughter this year. His next target may be rent control, an assault on property rights of landlords in over 300 municipalities, mainly in blue states of California, NY, NJ, MD, ME, OR, MN and DC. Recent use of rent control by DSA Mayor Mamdani in NYC is a vehicle that will strip ownership of property from the property owners by not allowing them sufficient income to bring those properties up to code or even make them rentable. Depending on whose bogus numbers you believe, there are 20 – 57,000 zombie apartments, empty units left vacant because the owners cannot afford repairs or upgrades to code. Putting the owners in this position constitutes an unconstitutional taking of property. Should such a case finally reach SCOTUS while the current majority is intact, the possibility exists that it will deliver a tactical nuke into the ability of democrats to control the blue cities.
3. Mechanic. President Trump pardoned nine diesel mechanics convicted of violating emissions standards under the Clean Air Act. One mechanic was a local in Wasilla. His business was target of a heavily armed Biden era federal raid. 30 agents showed up June 2022. Many of them were out of state from CA, WA and OR. The owner was accused of assisting trucking businesses by modifying diesel emission control systems so that the machinery could actually run during the winter. One such event took place on the desolate Dalton Highway between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay in the winter, not a healthy place to have a sick engine. EPA one size fits all regulations do not account for temperature variations, and as such the clean air mandated adjustments all but shut down heavy diesel engines when it gets cold. On the Slope, the smaller diesels are simply run 24/7 though the winter with the fuel tanks topped off on a regular basis. The EPA fine was $32,000. The owner was also convicted of a federal felony. The pardons became an issue in our white-hot campaign for US Senate with incumbent Dan Sullivan taking a victory lap. Sullivan has offered legislation to allow different emission control approaches in northern states.
4. Housing. Congress with overwhelming majorities passed the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) Act of 2025 earlier this year. President Trump refused to sign it in an attempt to pressure congress to pass the election reform SAVE Act. He allowed the legislation to go into effect without his signature. The blurb in support of the legislation claims it cuts federal regulations, shortens environmental reviews, makes it easier to build new homes and limits large institutional investors’ purchase of single-family homes. Opposition on the political right believes it is a massive expansion of Section 8 housing, and the provisions will be used to shoehorn multiple family units in single home neighborhoods. While it wouldn’t surprise me to see the political left use their new tools as a vehicle to further blow-up neighborhoods, I would also think we know what they are up to and what is coming.
5. Wind. One of the myths about renewables is that they are among the cleanest, most environmentally friendly electrical generation techniques possible. The two most favored renewables these days are wind and solar. Both require significant land area for their installations. It turns out wind and solar farms don’t last as long as other forms of generation, 20 years or less rather than 30+ years for natural gas, coal, big hydro, and nuclear. When those farms are retired, the solar arrays high in rare earths, wind turbine blades and support, massive structures of composites need to go somewhere. Solar arrays are starting to age out. Wind has been aging for a while and the massive composite structures are difficult to store, and nearly impossible today to destroy and recycle. One such dump is near Sweetwater, TX, servicing the West Texas wind farms. Like all dumps, it quickly became an eyesore despised by the locals. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently secured a Temporary Injunction against Global Fiberglass Solutions, stopping them from accepting shipments of retired wind turbine blades. The injunction forces the company to clean up two facilities near Sweetwater where thousands of blades and supports have been illegally stockpiled. The stockpile contains over 3,000 blades and parts in an unlicensed and illegal dump site. This is the first pushback against Big Wind. There will be more.
6. Hormuz. The denouement of the war with Iran continued last week with dead ender IRGC cells launching a few drones and missiles at traffic transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM responded with a couple nights of airstrikes aimed at the target list they have been building since the cease fire began. That target list likely includes known storage facilities for weapons, launch sites, fast boat ports for mine layers, and location of IRGC C3I elements obtained from local or Israeli intel. After the strikes, the public facing Iranian government which clearly doesn’t have control of the fragmented IRGC, frets and claims to want negotiations to continue or start anew. A day or two later, IRGC takes another few pot shots starting the cycle again. Is this progress? Probably, as they are not getting rearmed in any meaningful way. Their launch sites are immediately spotted, and we get a better idea where the IRGC command elements are located, who they know, and what they are doing. We have done this loop at least three times over the last week, entering LeMay land where if we kill enough of them, they will eventually quit fighting, not because they are defeated, but because those who choose to make war have become one with the sand. Think of it as a real-world example of the Black Knight scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Rather than setting the stage for the return of the 12th Imam, the Twelvers will only have set the stage for their own destruction. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.
7. Beach. The descent of California into a feudal society continued a week or two ago after a Newsom backed state commission approved transfer of 136 acres of beach in Mendicino County, S of Westport to Kai Poma, a nonprofit representing the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Round Valley Indian Tribes and Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians. The state acquired the land in the 1960s to support expansion of Highway 1. In recent years, the property was used for camping and other beach activities. Visitors did not take very good care of it. We will see if the nonprofit can keep it open for the general public without turning it into a money-making operation that will gouge non-native visitors. Color me skeptical.
More later –
- AG