Random Thoughts #84

Random Thoughts #84

Food, FEMA, Tesla, Mamdani. Ze/Zer

What’s your favorite food

What’s your favorite food? Two parts: your favorite food when you eat out and your favorite food you eat at home. I don’t eat out much because I prefer my own cooking to that of most restaurants. But the pollo poblano at Bocados (a neighborhood restaurant) may well be the best dish I have had served to me in my 40 years in Knoxville. At home I guess it is my homemade pizza with pesto (gift from the Gods), chicken, mushrooms and onions. What’s yours?

The politicization of FEMA

The Trump administration’s FEMA denied disaster relief aid to four democratic-led states. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts had requested aid to help recover from a major snowstorm. FEMA said no. Yet two days before, FEMA had approved aid to six republican-led states. The democrats say that the president is politicizing federal emergency management decisions. No fooling. Naturally, the White House denied the accusations, saying “There is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief” and that Trump “provides a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him.” Right. It’s all just a coincidence.

But it is payback. During the Biden administration, republicans claimed that FEMA was denying assistance in North Carolina and Florida to residents who had Trump signs in their yards. This was actually confirmed in an internal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which found that  FEMA employees had systematically refused to visit the homes of disaster survivors who displayed signs and flags they disagreed with, including those with campaign signs supporting President Trump. There was even a lawsuit brought by Florida’s attorney general (who is now in the Senate). The case was settled with both parties agreeing not to pursue claims against each other and without any punitive damages the state attorney general had sought. However, the Trump administration did fire several FEMA employees as a result of the agency’s investigation of the claims.

Tesla rebounds

What happened to all the backlash on Tesla from Elon Musk’s politics? There was his role in DOGE under the Trump Administration and his interference in several European countries’ affairs. Musk lost a million Tesla sales as a result. There were boycotts, vandalism, and anti-Musk bumper stickers on Teslas. He obviously didn’t care. Well, Tesla sales have rebounded. Sales are up 25 percent from the same period last year, and Tesla also reported a 40 percent increase in its energy business. Empirically, you can see the surge if you visit West Knoxville, where it looks like every third car is a Tesla. You also would never guess that the weird-looking Cybertruck was a bust — yesterday I saw four of them. I guess Tesla must be sending its slow-selling inventory to Knoxville It escapes me why anyone would want one of the things. Tesla has done away with its high-priced Models S and X, leaving the Model 3, Y, and the Cybertruck. You probably know that Musk’s naming of his models is a reflection of either humor or weirdness: Models S, 3, X, Y.

Musk is now pivoting to robotaxis and humanoid robots. Of course, there’s also SpaceX, Boring, Terafab, the semi-trucks, xAI, X, Neuralink, and PayPal, among others. Yes, he’s weird, but do you know of a genius who isn’t?

Mamdani’s politics of alienation

I don’t usually waste brain cells on New York’s Mamdani, but his politics of alienation are fascinating. He seems intent on ticking off most of New York — except for downwardly mobile, college-educated, whiny white elites. He is openly antisemitic in a city with over one million Jews. He has ticked off major ethnic groups like the Italian-Americans by excluding them from his immigrant neighborhood city map. I guess this is because the DSA folk hate Christopher Columbus. Hispanics are not particularly happy about the defeat of Adriano Espaillat, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, by a DSA kook endorsed by Mamdani, Darializa Avila Chevalier. He has also alienated the Irish with his police bashing and his refusal — likely out of ignorance — to answer a question on Irish unification. For Mamdani, an immigrant must be a minority and late coming to the city. Black voters are also upset by his proposed property tax, his listing himself as African-American on his college application to get into Columbia, and his not appointing any black deputy mayors. He is anti-rich, alienating wealthy second-home owners in the city with a new tax. More disturbing, he is doxxing them by publishing their names and addresses. Ken Griffin of Citadel called him out on it, saying that the mayor may encourage crazies to target the rich. Criticizing Griffin shows Mamdani’s stupidity. Griffin has given charities in the city millions and has threatened to pull his $6 billion development project from the city. I wonder how many will sell their residences rather than pay the tax, which could add as much as one million dollars to their property tax bill. This may shrink the city’s tax base even further, as the mayor seems intent on playing the politics of envy (and alienation). I also wonder how many of his voters will turn against him in the next election. By then, his policies will have shown whether they are effective or not. And I wager “not.” 

Ze/Zer?

Lastly, what happened to all those silly woke email signatures – (him, her, she, it, them, they, ze, zer)?