Another Target Rich Environment

With the Gods as my witness I tried to find a unifying theme for this week’s discussions. I failed miserably, so this will be another of the “target rich environment” posts.

Welcome back, pull up a chair, Brats and Kraut for dinner tonight, with plenty of hot mustard. You know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess, and I thank those that have thrown a few bucks in the jar.

For lack of a better place to start, I’m going to revisit something from last week. Specifically the whole panic over data centers(D/C) and how they’re going to make America into a desert if we don’t stop them. Larry Good, a guest poster for the renowned Sarah Hoyt has done a two part series on why all this panic about water usage by D/C is so much bullshit. https://accordingtohoyt.com/2026/06/01/ai-data-center-contamination-by-larry-good/ and the second part: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2026/06/02/part-two-ai-datacenter-water-consumption-by-larry-good/ Larry does a fantastic job of walking people through the whole water consumption issue, and if you’re at all concerned about whether or not D/Cs are going to damage your local aquafer, I recommend that you go read these articles.

He went far further in depth than I would ever want to, to explain things at a simple enough level that even people who have no idea of how Boyles law, the refrigeration cycle, and the water evaporation cycle work can understand it. If, after reading his stuff you still think the D/Cs are going to dry up your area, you’re operating from faith, not understanding. You’ve got so much mentally invested in being either a luddite or a Chinese agent, that no amount of information will ever convert you.

The only two things I argue with him on is:

1) He basically ascribes the Anti D/C movement to Greenies and Low Information voters. I think it’s a PRC sponsored astroturf campaign. The amount of noise, appearing simultaneously, and with verbatim phraseology has all the tool marks of a Chicom Propaganda attack, and the real people that are going along with it are idiots, some “Useful Idiots” and some that are just your plain garden variety morons.

2) He thinks that D/C and AI are basically “a fad.” Something like the Dutch Tulip Bubble. (IYKYK) I think he’s as wrong as the people who said the Wright Brothers thing was just a fad and would never amount to much. A/I is a tool, it’s the modern day equivalent of the Personal Computer, and before that, household Electricity.

Remember, there were a vast number of experts that believed that Electricity, if it was useful at all, was only good for lightbulbs and industrial uses, the huge size requirements for motors, and the enormous cost of trying to get electricity into houses would preclude ever making household use practical. Billions of men and women are extremely grateful that the experts were wrong. Spend three minutes, right now, examining all of the ways that you use an electric appliance in a day, and imagine just for a second, how much time you would spend doing those things by hand. From washing clothes, to heating coffee on the fire, because you don’t have a coffee maker or an electric range.

P/Cs were thought to be a novelty as well. They’ve transformed how we communicate at a personal level, how we store and transfer information, down to things like doing your taxes and your bookkeeping. They made some industries almost irrelevant, (the USPS for example) while transforming others beyond the recognition of their former selves.

A/I is not intelligence, but it IS a tool and is as significant of an agent of change as the Smart Phone. Right now, it’s in it’s infancy, much like smart phones were twenty years ago. Today, 98% of Americans have one. That too was “just a fad.” A fad that completely destroyed the Personal Music industry, among many other changes.

While I’m on D/Cs Tennessee just passed a new law that should be a model for all the other states. Look, If I haven’t made it clear, I’m Pro Data Center.

And

I’m also Pro Libertarian. The model that many municipalities and states are currently running with is idiocy. Why should the tax payer, or the utility customers (basically the same people) pay to provide the generation capabilities and run the power grid to new D/Cs (or any other industry)? If a company wants to open a D/C they should pay for the power generation equipment needed to support it. This is only reasonable, and here in TN, as of June 1 that’s the law. If your D/C has a peak demand of >50 Megawatts during the first three years of operation, you foot the bill for the new power generation equipment and hooking it up to the grid.

It’s based on the already successful xAI operation that brought the world’s largest AI supercomputer, Colossus, to Memphis. They build their own power plant to drive it, (estimated to be enough to power 200,000-300,000 homes.) They bought a decommissioned generation plant in Mississippi, ran the copper, and are up and operational. If they can do it, so can anyone else. Hell the new breakthroughs in Micro Nuclear Power are perfect for this.

On to other subjects:

Also here in TN, down in Chattanooga, we have one Erika Lashondra Jones… Erika is an Employee of the Chattanooga Police Department, as a (You can’t make this stuff up guys) Crisis Intervention Team Expert. Yeah, she’s one of those folks that the “defund the Police” want to have thousands of, to replace the cops, with someone more sympathetic to the rights of the people…

Erika is currently sitting in a jail cell, awaiting trial because she threatened some dude in her apartment complex, claimed to have a gun, and said she would shoot him (she didn’t have a gun) and then tried to run him over with her car. Ms Jones has been placed on “Administrative leave” while awaiting her trial for aggravated assault.

Aren’t you glad we have folks like her to deal with “people in crisis”?

Speaking of lunacy, the federal employee unions, and other leftists like the press, are hugely up in arms (I know, when are they not?) because the OPM is discussing creating NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) for Federal Employees. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5901850-nondisclosure-agreements-federal-workers-trump-administration/

Now, even the unions will admit that NDAs are just a part of doing business in most industries, but, they say, “Most industries aren’t the government, if the government does it, it’s a violation of our first amendment rights!” They go on to say that, “besides, it’s already against the law to share classified information, so we don’t need this law.”

This is, to me, a whole lot like saying that “it’s already against the law for illegal aliens to vote, so we don’t need to check to see if a voter is a citizen.”

We KNOW that there are federal employees leaking information, often classified information, that pertains to future military operations. It’s been a standard part of the political playbook in D.C. for longer than I’ve been alive. If you don’t like something the government is going to do, leak it to the press, so that the government has to kill the operation to avoid getting people killed when the enemy knows you’re coming.

Yes, it’s against the law. When was the last guy actually put in prison for it? What percentage of the leakers actually even get charged? (hint, it’s less than five.) Then there’s the nonmilitary leaks that can still get people killed, like “Hey ICE is going to raid the Meat Packing Plants in Omaha on Tuesday!” See Law Enforcement activity isn’t covered by the criminal charges that leaking military information is, but it’s still something that needs protection.

What this does, is take all of that out of the hands of activist judges, and political byplay by the senator or congressman that asked you to make the leak in the first place.

It allows, through administrative action, the punishment of people who are acting as enemies of the current office holder (whoever he is) by removing them from their position.

In short, if employees share “non-public, confidential, or proprietary information” they can be fired, and barred from future employment with the government. In some cases they can also experience criminal charges. You can see and through links comment on this here: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10471.pdf This is a no brainer that needs to happen.

While we’re on No-brainers that need to happen, Homeland is, at President Trump’s request, developing a plan that would allow the rejection of some asylum applications without interviewing the applicants.

Yes, I hear you, you in the back, “But that’s a violation of their Fifth Amendment Rights.” Well, NO it’s not. Here’s why.

What we’re talking about is an administrative application. The aplicant is saying “please Uncle Sam, may I stay in your country indefinitely? My country hates me and wants me dead.”

Not a trail (yet) it’s administratively the equivalent of asking for a driver’s license from a state DMV.

And, just like the driver’s license, there are administrative requirements. For the license, you have to prove to the state’s satisfaction that you live in that state, among other things. This is all before the driving test, mind you. If you can’t prove you live in the state, your application goes no further, no test for you, go away, and come back when you can prove you live here. (unless you live in a state that’s trying to bump up their voter rolls by allowing illegals to vote, in which case you only have to prove you live in the state if you look like you were born in the US)

For Asylum there are also administrative requirements, including things like: “You can’t already have been living in the US for a year before applying.”

This would give the officers of Immigration the ability to do what the employees of the DMV can do: “You don’t meet the minimum requirements to proceed. Go away and quit wasting our time, until you do.”

Now, is this the final word? Well, NO. If the perspective asylum seeker wants to push it, they can appeal and have their day in court! But it removes the requirement to waste time spending hours interviewing Achmed, who has been living in this country illegally since 2012 but now has been caught by ICE and so is playing the “Asylum” card, to keep from being sent back to what ever hellhole he crawled out of.

Why do it? There are over a million asylum claims awaiting hearings right now. While they wait for their two hours with Officer Friendly, they get to stay here in this country, even if it’s painfully obvious that they are not entitled to asylum under the law. Then, when the interview and review is over, and Officer Friendly determines that “aw hell no, this guy doesn’t meet ANY of the requirements” Achmed appeals, which puts him back on the waiting list, and another five years of waiting for his turn in court, if he even shows up for the trial. Anything that can streamline that process is worth doing. Which of course, means the Democrats are against it, and the immigration and voter fraud complex is firmly against it.

Michael Smith wrote an absolutely brilliant piece over at

Relative vs Absolute

One of the things he talks about (and please, go read the whole thing, I’m just going to riff one little piece here) is the Kerfuffle over America 250, and the big shindigs (or lack there of) that aren’t happening. The political landscape is so toxic and adversarial that we can’t even celebrate the quarter-millennial of our nation, because it might make Trump look good, he observes. Based on his lack of commentary about it, I guess that he wasn’t around, or wasn’t old enough to remember the Bicentennial.

Well, I was! Allow me to mention just a little bit about what that looked like. The celebration started the year before, under the Ford Administration. (A Republican, who inherited office from the first president to resign from office, Richard Nixon.) Yes, Politics where partisan, in fact that’s where Hillary made her bones. They continued under the Carter administration, (a Democrat who was just as controversial.) We were just out of the Vietnam war, which was still fresh in everyone’s minds, Kent State was a living memory, the Weathermen was a living memory, the Black Panthers were still around.

It DIDN’T MATTER. No one cared who was in office, or how badly we were divided when the celebrating happened. There were Bicentennial things EVERYWHERE. There were special Bicentennial coins struck, there were special broadcasts called “the Bicentennial Minute” every day telling about things that happened on that day in history, there were movies, parades, concerts, specials on TV, you couldn’t go an hour awake without hearing something about the Bicentennial. As I write this, we are a month and two days from the big day. Outside of Angel Studios who is doing a movie on “Young George Washington” the entertainment and education industrial complex is strangely silent… That’s how poisonous this bullshit has gotten. The battle lines are being drawn, and the revolution will be televised. Not the one in 1776, but the one in 2027. With an atmosphere this toxic, it’s almost inevitable.

On the same vein, the Bad Cat did another beautiful piece,

the case for threatening democracy

Yeah, it’s long… So What?

Here’s the thing, Democrats keep singing the song, Democracy, democracy, democracy. (Mob Rule) We are not and have never been a democracy. Our founding fathers looked on democracy with fear and contempt. We are a REPUBLIC. A nation who governs in accordance with a written document, made intentionally hard to change, (a feature, not a bug) where we elect people to represent our interests and try to find common ground.

Or at least that’s the theory, and it’s how things used to work.

My one complaint with the cat’s piece is that while he makes the case, and makes it extremely well, for why pure democracy is a bad thing, and while he points out that the inevitable result of democracy is dictatorship, and how high trust society members are going to deal with being forced into a low trust society template, he doesn’t, in my not so humble opinion, discuss in enough detail what our system is SUPPOSED to look like. Now I’m sure that’s because he just assumes that anyone smart enough to read his stuff already knows, but I’m not sure that’s a good assumption.

We can pull back from the ledge. It will take a lot of people getting a lot less comfortable with shenanigans going on that benefits their side, and it would take a lot of perp walks by a lot of crooked politicians, judges, and other criminals.

The alternative doesn’t bear consideration.

This has already gone long, so I’m only going to give you the links to a couple of very significant posts by CDR Sal.

Someone Called a Code-Red on LaNeve

someone-called-a-code-red-on-laneve discusses the complete insanity of the attacks on heir apparent to the Chief of Staff for the US Army. People are upset because a general enforces the rules, insists that the troops not carry personal cell phones during their PT runs (we’ve given up several “secret” bases on foreign soil by having hackers look at where the Hundred and Worst and others are running around rectangles… Hey, why are all these snake eaters running a five mile rectangular course in the middle of Angola? You don’t reckon there’s a base there, do you?) and to not drink beer while running in formation…

Anyway the smear job is not only ridiculous, it lists virtues as vices.

Then there’s Sal in his wheelhouse:

Up-arm the Fleet II: Electric Boogaloo

Sal believes, and I concur, that: Unless we find ourselves in a civil war, or the PRC does, we’re going to end up tangling assholes with the PRC, within the next three years, five at the outside. If we aren’t ready, a whole lot of mothers’ sons and daughters are going to become shark shit. Sorry, but that’s the brutal reality of it. Men and women are going to die and be eaten by fish in job lots if we have to fight China at sea. Do I believe that in the end we’ll win?

YES

But, it’s going to be bloody as fuck. There’s ways to keep that from happening:

1) The Nevel Chamberlin approach. Cede the east pacific to China… Then cede Japan to China, then Australia, and so on, until maybe they allow us to keep Hawaii under their supervision, or maybe they stop at the west coast, with advisors to help us decide how to do things ‘the right way.’

2) Be so damn scary that the PRC military looks at Xi the Pooh and with one voice says “No comrade, please face wall, and kneel” when told to attack the US fleet.

3) There ain’t no three.

If we can keep the PRC from starting the war, or grabbing the east pacific without a war for five, eight years at the outside, we’ll have won. They’re having troubles of their own, and if you think we have demographic problems, you ain’t seen nothing. They have to conquer now, or their internal issues will cause a collapse that will rival the fall of the Soviet Union.

How long their window of opportunity stays open is a matter of conjecture, but the smart money says no more than ten years at the very outside. I don’t think it will take that long. It really comes down to: can they push us into a civil war, or bully us into standing aside while they relieve their economic and biological pressures through war, before they succumb to their own issues and have their own civil war?

Hell of a world we live in, huh?

QOTD “”In much of the private sector, employees handling sensitive business or customer information are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements, and the federal government should not be held to a lower standard,” OPM Director Scott Kupor.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman