Random thoughts #51

Random Thoughts #51

Back to Asheville!

The portion of I-40 in North Carolina that was closed due to Hurricane Helene is back open albeit only one lane in each direction. Motorists have been advised that the speed limit will be 35 mph and expect delays that may be hours instead of minutes. The reopening highlights the incompetence of Biden’s transportation secretary Pothole Pete Buttigieg who was clearly a DEI hire and who may have been the worse transportation secretary in history. Before, it was announced that the road would not reopen until September 2025. What happened? We got a change of administration. New Transportation secretary Sean Duffy made it a priority. He got a special use permit to allow extraction of construction materials from the Pigeon River rather than having to transport them 50+ miles reducing the timeline and the costs provided by the Biden Administration by two-thirds. Once the estimate was that it would take three years to get the interstate back to operating four lanes. Want to bet that now it will be quicker?

Pothole Pete, who has no accomplishments, is gearing up to run for the senate from Michigan. Odds of winning? Who knows but if Adam Schiff can win a senate seat in California then most anything is possible. 

The Weird Oscars

I just read about the Oscars. I didn’t even know it was on and even if I did, I wouldn’t have watched, would you? More importantly have you even heard of the winners? Best picture went to something called Anora which virtually no one has seen. It is supposed to be a foul mouth, sexually explicit comedy about a prostitute who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Yep. Sounds like a winner to me. The prostitute won best actress.

Speaking of which, once the odds on favorite to sweep the Oscars was Emilia Perez with 13 nominations. The academy was poised to bestow best actress upon a male actor until it was revealed that he (she) had racist and xenophobic tweets. Gasp! The nerve! The movie ended up with only 2 awards.

Perez is described as a musical crime comedy about a Mexican cartel leader who transitions into a woman and is reformed. Sounds really entertaining.  Is this like taking the aggressiveness out of a dog by neutering it? Regardless, this is weird or am I missing something?

Has the Academy lost its flipping mind?

Why anyone cares what the movie industry thinks about itself and pats itself on the back is beyond me.

The public thought the best movies of 2024 were Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine and Wicked. Of course I would not award anything to anything named wolverine. Of the top ten highest grossing movies only Wicked and Dune: Part two were nominees. What no Beetlejuice? No Godzilla x Kong? No Kung Fu Panda 4? 

Trump’s non-negotiating tariffs

Turns ‘out that the tariffs were not a negotiation tool with Mexico and Canada to stop the flow of fentanyl after all. First Trump said that the tariffs would be delayed if they beefed up their borders. He lied. They did but the tariffs were imposed anyway. What Trump wants is to force the automobile companies to move all their operations back into the US. He said was “What they have to do is build their car plants in the United States, in which case you have no tariffs.” So Trump is saying that if US companies move their production into the US then there will be no tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Well Honda just announced that it is moving its production of Civic hybrids from Mexico to Indiana. Threats work.

If Trump wants to clamp down on fentanyl then why did he raise China’s tariffs by only 10% while raising Mexico’s and Canada’s by 25 percent? So fentanyl is just a ruse. Earth to Trump: RAISE CHINA’S TARIFFS TO 1000 PERCENT!
That will get their attention.

Speaking of China, Taiwan Semiconductor, one of only two trillion dollar companies outside of the US, has announced it is investing $100 billion in new plants in the US. I wonder what is the quid pro quo? More arms for Taiwan?

Trump versus the Federal workforce

Why shouldn’t Trump go after federal workers? They are part of the resistance. Ninety percent of them voted for Harris and 50 percent said that they would resist Trump’s initiatives. Federal bureaucrats know that administrations are short-lived and will hunker down and wait them out. Some agencies are notorious in slow walking policies that they do not favor. I should know having spent time a good deal of my career as a Washington bureaucrat.

One downside is that Trump terminated all probationary workers (including my cousin who had moved from Atlanta to Knoxville to take a position at Oak Ridge).

Trump’s pivot away from Ukraine

When did Kiev become Kyiv?

Trump is halting all military aid to Ukraine. I think this is called coercive diplomacy. Again, would he refuse to sell the arms to Ukraine if they wanted to buy them? Currently, Ukraine provides 40 percent of the materiel for its own defense, 30 percent from Europe and 30 percent from the US. But the 30 percent from the US is the most sophisticated, the most lethal and provides their air defense. Trump wants Ukraine’s minerals and Putin has offered to sell him minerals from the provinces Russia has seized that contain 40 percent of the country’s mineral wealth. Is there a deal with the devil coming?

Who can Ukraine turn to in order to bolster its air defenses? Russia is relentless with its drone attacks and loves to hit civilian targets. The day after Trump halted military aid, the Russians launched a drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s natural gas extraction facilities. Coincidence?

BTW, I have no doubt that Zelenskyy is probably skimming off some of the aid form the US and the EU. Ukraine’s officials are famous for corruption. But what government isn’t? There are millions in aid unaccounted for. Sounds like the Pentagon.

Democrats continue to hate women

The Senate failed to pass Coach Tommy Turberville’s bill to ban males from competing in women’s sports 51-45. I simply don’t understand the senate rules that 60 votes would be needed to pass such a bill. Every democrat voted against the bill, including John Fetterman. Again explain to me why the democrats continue to be on the wrong side of this issue. But I doubt if they will ever pay a price for this at the polls. Reelection rates in the House are usually 96% or higher. In the Senate the reelection rate was unusually low at 88 percent in 2024 but was 100 percent in 2022. Incumbency is powerful. Trump carried Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona yet democrats won their Senate seats. Only Arizona had an open seat and the republicans again for some reason ran the toxic Kari Lake who might have been the only candidate that could lose to Reuben Gallego. 

Lastly, I heard one of the most uninformed discussions ever on Trump’s tariffs on The Five on Fox. Only Harold Ford, Jr knew what he was talking about. Dana Perino made sense because her political instincts were right on. But Judge Jeanine and Jesse Watters who will defend Trump to the death had no clue what they were talking about. Your bias is showing Fox.