Blowing in the wind

Blowing in the wind

Adding to the growing lists of items that the president says endanger our national security, the president has added wind farms to stop their offshore construction. This has halted projects off the east coast and the democrats are whining. Interior secretary Doug Burgum tweeted “Due to national security concerns identified by the Department of War, Interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms!” “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED. POTUS is bringing common sense back to energy policy & putting security FIRST!” 

What are these risks? Burgum lists “the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers.” Interior said that unclassified reports “have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called ‘clutter,’” which “obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.” Also a Biden Energy Department report in 2024 noted that reducing false alarms from wind interference could cause threats to the homeland to fly, literally, under the radar. Sounds like a national security threat to me.

The president himself tweeted back in August “STUPID AND UGLY WINDMILLS ARE KILLING NEW JERSEY. Energy prices up 28% this year, and not enough electricity to take care of state. STOP THE WINDMILLS!”

Like the president I have expressed my displeasure and dismay at the wind farms saying that the left forgot about all of their claims about damage to the climate and to fish and birds when it came to the wind farms. They also forget about the problems of disposal of the wind turbines as well. They are also costly and inefficient. What’s not to love?

Of course the left is whining. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to “stand up against this unlawful action by the Trump Administration.” “It’s an attack on our jobs,” Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee said. “It’s an attack on our energy. It’s an attack on our families and their ability to pay the bills.” They argue that the projects are well underway (Virginia’s is 80 percent completed) and stopping the projects at this point puts people out of work and stops projects that would serve over 3 million homes. This sounds awfully similar to what people were saying when pipelines were shut down and vast amounts of land was ruled off limits to gas and oil projects. I guess now they know how us common folk felt when our utility bills are threatened to skyrocket by the shutting down of pipelines, stopping fracking, shuttering up coal mines and making off limits vast amounts of areas with gas and oil reserves. I guess the left likes brown outs, shortages and higher prices. And these folk are supposed to love the poor?

What’s in a name?

Trump got the Kennedy Center to put his name on the building. He said it was a surprise. Sure it was. He fired the old board and named himself chairman. Then the board approved unanimously the name change, Surprised? Hardly. Karoline Leavitt announced “I have just been informed that the highly respected Board of the Kennedy Center, some of the most successful people from all parts of the world, have just voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building.”  There will likely be a lawsuit (there is always a lawsuit) claiming that it takes an act of congress to change the name since federal statute (Title 20 of the U.S. Code, section 76i) designates the building “the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” 

We now have a Trump class warship. The president announced that the first ship in the Trump-class of battleships will be the USS Defiant. Construction would take 2½ years. The president has consistently called for a new naval fleet. There are new frigates coming on line. The navy has said “Recent operations from the Red Sea to the Caribbean make the requirement undeniable—our small surface combatant inventory is a third of what we need.” The president has consistently expressed the need to counter the Chinese fleet. Since a new aircraft carrier is also in the planning I bet that the reason he didn’t have his name put on the new battleship is that he wants to carrier to be the USS Donald J. Trump. While we will have the Trump-class ships, the carriers are the Gerald R. Ford class-carriers and are named after presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Ford, Clinton and George W. Bush. No USS Joseph R. Biden or USS Barack H. Obama yet.