Random News and Notes 8 May

Today is Victory in Europe Day. It is celebrated every 8 May by the Western powers as it it the day the Unconditional Surrender of the Thousand Year Reich to the Allies went into effect. As I told you in yesterday’s RNN, the surrender documents were signed on the 7th by Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, but the ceasefire did not go into effect until the 8th.

The fighting between the western allies and the Germans stopped almost immediately. The Soviets on the other hand faced some substantial resistance from the Germans. It seems the treatment of German POWs by the Soviets had been noticed and the rumor of it spread. German troops did their utmost to surrender to the Brits and Americans rather than the Russians.

Drug addicted cross dresser Hermann Goering was captured by US 7th Army forces on this day in 1945 as well. Goering, an aristocratic WWI fighter ace, threw his lot in with Hitler very early in the Nazi rise to power. He was present and wounded at the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.He was tried at Nuremberg and charged with various crimes against humanity. Despite a vigorous attempt at self acquittal, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but before he could be executed, he died by suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had hidden from his guards.

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, armed members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) surrender to federal authorities, ended their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee – site of the infamous massacre of 300 Lakota Indians by the U.S. 7th Cavalry – on this date in 1973. On February 27, 1973, some 200 AIM-led Indians seized control of Wounded Knee, taking 11 allies of Oglala Sioux Tribal President Dick Wilson hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation.

The next day, AIM members traded gunfire with the federal marshals surrounding the settlement and fired on automobiles and low-flying planes that dared come within rifle range. Russell Means began negotiations for the release of the hostages, demanding that the U.S. Senate launch an investigation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Pine Ridge, and all Sioux reservations in South Dakota and that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hold hearings on the scores of Indian treaties broken by the U.S. government.

The Wounded Knee occupation lasted for a total of 71 days, during which time two Lakota men were shot to death by federal agents. One federal agent was paralyzed after being shot. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested, but on September 16, 1973, the charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government’s unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.

We start our news coverage with big news out of the Commonwealth of Virginia where the Dems have been trying by hook or by crook to redistrict the state. The State Supreme court just said un-uh. The Dems spent more than $80 million and untold amounts of political capital to try to get the referendum passed. However, the SCVA vacated the whole thing on the grounds that the process was unconstitutional.

The 4-3 decision with D. Arthur Kelsey writing holds that the process used by the General Assembly to place the amendment on the ballot violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution. This made the amendment (and the April 21, 2026, referendum results) invalid from the start (“void ab initio”). The existing congressional maps (roughly 6D-5R) remain in place for the decade.

A couple of New Jersey boys are recovering after being attacked by a rabid beaver. No, I am not being cute or using some dirty euphemism, they were attacked by a rabid Castor canadensis. Beaver attacks are quite rare, rabid beaver attacks even more, so I looked into the story. The boys were fishing at Lake Henry in Mahwah’s Continental Soldiers Park. They were apparently messing with a beaver house on the lake shore. You can see it on the upper left of the video.

Beaver aren’t the most friendly of critters when you get too close to their dens and they are considerably larger than you might think. I wouldn’t mess with one on purpose. Anyway, one of the boys was bitten on the leg and was transported to the hop, treated and released. Everyone else exposed has been treated for rabies.

Take a lesson from that kiddos, don’t mess with the beaver. . .

I haven’t really been following this one, but the outcome interests me a bit as do a couple of ancillary facts. The third annual DFW Epic Eid event, organized by Dr. Aminah Knight for Eid al-Adha on June 1 at Grand Prairie’s Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark, faced backlash for promotional materials calling it ‘MUSLIMS ONLY EVENT’ and closed to the public. Texas Governor Jim Abbott stepped in and threatened to pull some $530k in state funding for the municipal facility if the event was not cancelled. City officials canceled Thursday after reviewing the promotional materials.

I want to be crystal clear here, had this been a private facility, I would have backed the organizers to the hilt regardless of the religion. However, it is a public, municipally owned water park, and religious discrimination – any discrimination – cannot be allowed.

Here is where it starts to interest me. The organizer, Aminah Knight, runs a “learing” center in the DFW area.

Look, your editor knows about building a website. He has done several, including this one and Jo’s old place. While it is moderately difficult, the spelling, proofreading and editing is not the hard part. The fact that we are seeing the same mistake across multiple installations makes me think there is some sort of relation between them. Like the same org backing all of them.

Unleashing Prosperity, a conservative think tank, analyzed IRS migration data and found Trump-won states gained a net $2.2 trillion in adjusted gross income, while Harris-won states lost $1.96 trillion—a shift economists call the largest wealth transfer in U.S. history. Florida topped gains at $1.3 trillion, followed by Texas, while New York and California led losses at $660 billion and $503 billion.

That exodus is only going to accelerate. Progressive tax policies, like the proposed pied-a-terre tax in NYC and the wealth taxes being proposed in multiple other states is going to drive out the tax base.