Their energy crisis, Part II--It's anti-human
The out of control politicians must be stopped cold. The way to do that is for the States to call an Article-V convention.
“Germany is amazing. Look at what Germany is doing. They're showing we don't need nuclear. We don't need fossil fuels.”--bill mcKibben, the leader of the divestment movement, which became a lot of the ESG movement.
And now Germans are starting to suffer from the above.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/cold_winter_exposes_climate_frauds_germany_returns_to_coal.html
https://heartland.org/opinion/europes-crisis-blame-green-energy-policy/
The essential policy of the anti-fossil fuel movement is to be anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuclear and usually anti-hydro. It's really a movement that's not about improving human life through more energy. It's really a movement that's about eliminating all human impact, hating all human impact, it's an anti-energy movement.
What is the only form of energy the green movement has ever supported? Think about it for a second. Is it nuclear? Or is it hydro? The only form of energy they've ever supported is imaginary energy. They only support forms of energy that will supposedly work in the future that don't work now. They supported natural gas as a bridge fuel before it became prolific. They supported natural gas until it became effective, and then they opposed it. They supported nuclear until nuclear became effective, and then they opposed it. They even supported coal for a while to oppose nuclear.
Progress denotes incremental improvement upon the past. It does not denote perfection or utopia. Utopians compare the present with an imaginary future perfect, not with the past imperfect. It is nonetheless the past imperfect that is the proper, sound, logical lens through which living conditions today should be evaluated. The world will never be a perfect place. After all, the beings who inhabited are themselves imperfect.
The human brain tends to overestimate danger to what psychologists call the availability heuristic, the process of estimating the probability of an event based on the ease with which related instances, as the left-wing media constantly hypes, come to mind. The desire to solve problems, real or not, causes us to expand our definitions of them. When problems become rare, we tend to count more things as problems, when the world gets better, we tend to become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn't actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself. People find all kinds of things that currently look bad and can be extrapolated into disasters. This negativity bias is deeply ingrained in human brains. When coupled with liberal ideology--"an abstract theory unattuned to the empirical realities of human life." it becomes apocalyptic. Psychologists place the roots of apocalyptic thinking in the human search for Transcendence and meaning. Widespread death and destruction therefore can be a source of comfort to certain individuals, it provides meaning to their lives, something to look forward to, ironically, even if they do expect to die.
An inordinate desire to achieve the perfection the ideology of social justice demands can lead to hell on Earth, for it gives rise to ideological projects to eradicate what that demand for the perfect denotes as evil. Ideological projects that aim to eradicate what it proclaims as sources of evil in the world magnify evil in unimaginable ways. Ideological movements in particular take things to extreme limits by sacrificing freedom, creativity, and even life itself for some ultimate happiness that is not to be found in this life.
It is a lie to claim that human beings uniquely threaten the survival of the earth, as if human dominion tied to stewardship has no legitimate place in the natural order. It is a fatal flaw to submit to the undue pessimism and not-so-covert nihilism underlying eco-extremist forms of environmentalism. It's premises inevitably justify coercion and demands for a Draconian population control. This green totalitarianism is a specter haunting a society that has lost its sense of purpose.
As long as we're dominated by this left-wing ideology that really is hostile toward humanity on earth and views us as a cancer, we're going to have anti-energy policies everywhere that do fatally insane things. But, again, for this anti-energy movement, it's not insane. Because their goal is not to advance human flourishing on earth. It's to eliminate human impact on earth. So they don't mind poverty, suffering, even death, their policies embrace it. Recall they started with: green energy is going to make us richer. Now, it's: “No, it's not going to make us richer, but the climate.” And it's migrating into: "Let's all eat bugs.” The trajectory, what it will eventually migrate to is: “We all need to die.” Look at Germany, it’s embodying that slide.
Further reading:
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/independence-day-los-angeles-county-fireworks/2023/06/28/id/1125300/
https://freebeacon.com/politics/its-been-5-years-since-greta-thunberg-warned-climate-change-would-wipe-out-all-of-humanity-unless-we-stop-using-fossil-fuels-over-the-next-5-years/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-thunberg-doomsday-prediction-mocked
“Germany is amazing. Look at what Germany is doing. They're showing we don't need nuclear. We don't need fossil fuels.”--bill mcKibben, the leader of the divestment movement, which became a lot of the ESG movement.
And now Germans are starting to suffer from the above.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/cold_winter_exposes_climate_frauds_germany_returns_to_coal.html
https://heartland.org/opinion/europes-crisis-blame-green-energy-policy/
The essential policy of the anti-fossil fuel movement is to be anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuclear and usually anti-hydro. It's really a movement that's not about improving human life through more energy. It's really a movement that's about eliminating all human impact, hating all human impact, it's an anti-energy movement.
What is the only form of energy the green movement has ever supported? Think about it for a second. Is it nuclear? Or is it hydro? The only form of energy they've ever supported is imaginary energy. They only support forms of energy that will supposedly work in the future that don't work now. They supported natural gas as a bridge fuel before it became prolific. They supported natural gas until it became effective, and then they opposed it. They supported nuclear until nuclear became effective, and then they opposed it. They even supported coal for a while to oppose nuclear.
Progress denotes incremental improvement upon the past. It does not denote perfection or utopia. Utopians compare the present with an imaginary future perfect, not with the past imperfect. It is nonetheless the past imperfect that is the proper, sound, logical lens through which living conditions today should be evaluated. The world will never be a perfect place. After all, the beings who inhabited are themselves imperfect.
The human brain tends to overestimate danger to what psychologists call the availability heuristic, the process of estimating the probability of an event based on the ease with which related instances, as the left-wing media constantly hypes, come to mind. The desire to solve problems, real or not, causes us to expand our definitions of them. When problems become rare, we tend to count more things as problems, when the world gets better, we tend to become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn't actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself. People find all kinds of things that currently look bad and can be extrapolated into disasters. This negativity bias is deeply ingrained in human brains. When coupled with liberal ideology--"an abstract theory unattuned to the empirical realities of human life." it becomes apocalyptic. Psychologists place the roots of apocalyptic thinking in the human search for Transcendence and meaning. Widespread death and destruction therefore can be a source of comfort to certain individuals, it provides meaning to their lives, something to look forward to, ironically, even if they do expect to die.
An inordinate desire to achieve the perfection the ideology of social justice demands can lead to hell on Earth, for it gives rise to ideological projects to eradicate what that demand for the perfect denotes as evil. Ideological projects that aim to eradicate what it proclaims as sources of evil in the world magnify evil in unimaginable ways. Ideological movements in particular take things to extreme limits by sacrificing freedom, creativity, and even life itself for some ultimate happiness that is not to be found in this life.
It is a lie to claim that human beings uniquely threaten the survival of the earth, as if human dominion tied to stewardship has no legitimate place in the natural order. It is a fatal flaw to submit to the undue pessimism and not-so-covert nihilism underlying eco-extremist forms of environmentalism. It's premises inevitably justify coercion and demands for a Draconian population control. This green totalitarianism is a specter haunting a society that has lost its sense of purpose.
As long as we're dominated by this left-wing ideology that really is hostile toward humanity on earth and views us as a cancer, we're going to have anti-energy policies everywhere that do fatally insane things. But, again, for this anti-energy movement, it's not insane. Because their goal is not to advance human flourishing on earth. It's to eliminate human impact on earth. So they don't mind poverty, suffering, even death, their policies embrace it. Recall they started with: green energy is going to make us richer. Now, it's: “No, it's not going to make us richer, but the climate.” And it's migrating into: "Let's all eat bugs.” The trajectory, what it will eventually migrate to is: “We all need to die.” Look at Germany, it’s embodying that slide.
Further reading:
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/independence-day-los-angeles-county-fireworks/2023/06/28/id/1125300/
https://freebeacon.com/politics/its-been-5-years-since-greta-thunberg-warned-climate-change-would-wipe-out-all-of-humanity-unless-we-stop-using-fossil-fuels-over-the-next-5-years/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-thunberg-doomsday-prediction-mocked
The energy crisis they're giving you is contrived. Part 1
The only way to stop and block these and future destructive excesses, is to call for a States petitioned for Article-V amendment convention. Then carefully word proposed amendments to stop Congress from pushing a leftist or any agenda except what the people want them to pursue.
"No more internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035.” --Gov newsom, in California
“Don't charge your EVs. We don't have enough electricity.” --Gov. newsom, 5 days later.
The EPA currently has plans that, if implemented, could take off 20% of our current inadequate, reliable electric-producing capacity, mostly from coal. Coal is currently keeping our grid alive. We have a catastrophic threat to the reliable electric supply, and biden is forcing electric transportation on us with an increase 10times supply demand. The left-wing feels (not thinking) we can just increase the demand for something and decrease the supply and nothing will happen to the price or availability. The EV movement is a profoundly destructive movement because it's trying to force an inferior technology on a grid, while simultaneously gutting the capacity of the grid.
Any policy question is always going to be interdisciplinary. It's going to involve many issues. For example, in energy, it's not simply the climate effects of different forms of energy, there's also the benefits of different forms of energy. If you're intellectually honest, you have to consider that. And a climate scientist knows nothing about that, insofar as they're just a climate scientist. The other thing is that any policy question, or any what's called normative question, any action guiding question, always involves values.
Undeniably, the fossil fuel industry has made the world a much better place. And if it's allowed to function freely, will continue to do so, in a way that's fundamentally pro-human and pro-energy, because it is crucial to billions of people's lives and will remain so for a long time.
Before the 1859 birth of the oil industry, there were more than half a dozen forms of alternative energy, including very close things to ethanol. But there was still a lot of primitiveness. Why? Because while people could technically produce energy, they couldn't cost effectively produce energy, it matters so much if energy is cost-effective. The reason we're still using fossil fuels for 80% of our energy, and maybe the reason it's still growing, is because fossil fuels are still the most cost-effective choice for billions of people. In terms of providing energy that's affordable; reliable; versatile, which means powering every type of machine; and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places, fossil fuels are unique.
The climate crisis industry is not talking about these benefits at all. They're only talking about possible negative side effects, particularly climate effects. But A very basic principle of sound thinking is, carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects. Before we get into the facts, the most important thing is to agree how are we going to make decisions and in carefully weighing the benefits and the side effects. It's really, really important to establish to agree to think about the positives and negatives in a fair, even-handed and a precise way. Then, of course, is understanding the basic facts, in terms of what are the key facts and their side effects? The default is disingenuously just looking at the negatives and exaggerating them.
What we largely have today is an anti-freedom burden on fossil fuels. A lot of the subsidized technologies that are being added are not cost-effective. Solar and wind should only be used if they can help provide reliable electricity at a competitive price, and not to force on us, directly or indirectly, unreliable electricity, and then leave us to suffer for it.
People think of petroleum as dirty; it ruined the planet. But if you're intellectually honest you'd admit that you could take this black goop from the ground and turn it into a cup, a Sleep Number bed, a vacation, an artificial heart, make modern transportation work, heat or cool your home, office, school, hospital and even clean the planet then this is the greatest improvement of our environment in human history. We turned useless glop, and turned it into life. One of the essential facts is fossil fuels help us become safe from climate, they power all the machines that keep us safe from climate, so deaths from storms, and floods, extreme heat, et cetera, are down 98% over the last 100 years.
But the critics of fossil fuels have a number of very specific arguments that you consistently hear. The 1st is the side effect of burning fossil fuels, as it releases CO2. So, how much is the burning of fossil fuels leading to catastrophic climate impacts that we should worry about? We cannot capture enough CO2 as your leaders are policies are demanding, to be carbon-neutral with a robust hydrocarbon industry looking anywhere near what it looks like today. And the biggest emitters, China and India, are not doing this anyway. So, should we rapidly eliminate fossil fuels? What you need to think about is, what is the net good or bad when carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects? It's especially important because fossil fuels also have a neutralizing impact on climate danger. The simple answer is fossil fuels have not taken a safe climate and made it dangerous. They've taken a dangerous climate and made it safe, far more significant than any negatives they've had so far. So far, we've had one degree of warming, over a relatively long human-time-span, the climate death rate has declined, from disasters, by 98%. How could anyone really believe that it's going to get another degree or two warmer and then everyone's going to die from climate? That's is just an emotional narrative for achieving OTHER political goals. It doesn't make any sense scientifically. And if you look at all the so-called science, predicting that earth is going to become hell, it's all climate mastery denial. It denies our ability to adapt to things, to master things. It also pretends that, oh, if sea levels rise by a foot in 50 years, we're going to all be displaced. We're absolutely not going to do that. We have 100 million people who already live below sea level (the Netherlands for example). So, the really simple answer is fossil fuels have made our climate more livable. And they will continue to do so. It's not just they're not as bad as you think. It's that they're actually good.
Eco extremists feel (not thinking) it's easy to replace fossil fuels. And their argument is that with solar, wind, hydrogen, all these different things, are cheaper, cleaner, better in every dimension than fossil fuels. So, therefore, it's very obvious that we should transition to these things for all those benefits. If solar and wind are actually cheaper, why is China, and India, overwhelmingly using coal? Did they not read the Lazard study that stated it was? No, they know the Lazard study is trash. The reality is that people are acting like fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective, including people who would have every incentive not to. Even Japan continues to pursue fossil fuels and they don't have any of those resources.
Solar and wind are only providing electricity, which is just a 20% of the world's energy. Electricity is just one form of energy. The basic reason is the unreliability problem. As the Texas freeze showed, solar and wind can go near-zero at any given time. So, at the worst part of the Texas freeze, solar and wind were at less than 1% of their theoretical capacity just because the wind and sun were less than required, as often happens during a winter storm. And if something go can go near-zero at any given time, it needs basically 100% backup. This means that you either need to use batteries, which, 3 days of global storage for back up, at Elon Musk's best prices, is $600 trillion. So, this is more wealth than exists in the entire world. So, what you end up paying for both a reliable grid and an unreliable grid, which adds huge infrastructure duplication costs, why such is very expensive electricity. Or what you play reliability chicken, try to get away with as few reliable power plants as possible. And hope that the unreliables work all the time or when you want. So, you hope it doesn't get too hot, it doesn't get too cold, the sun shines enough, and the wind blows enough. Obviously, isn't going to happen. And so, you have some short-term cost savings, although costs still generally go up. But what is the cost you paid in terms of unreliability of the grid? It's something like $10,000 per household. So, when you play reliability chicken, you ultimately make people pay the catastrophic cost of unreliable electricity.
So, right now, solar and wind are not cost competitive replacements. They're cost adding failures. We need to require all power plants to supply reliable electricity, using whatever mix of inputs they want, a truly free market in energy, to actually compete to provide reliable electricity, not today's regime of forced energy policies absolutely gutting our grid and ruining many lives. The problem with forcing these policies on people is, one, you're forcing an inferior thing. If it weren't inferior, you wouldn't have to force it. That hurts the poor and the middle class the most. They can literally destroy the world as a livable place for billions of people, by following those policies.
Energy is not an opinion, it's a mathematical reality. What's causing the eco-extremist ideology to go so against facts? Predominantly all the ridiculous propaganda that defied reality, including in some ways, physics. The fossil fuel industry basically didn't counter it. They had a narrative of we don't want to be anti-solar-and-wind, what's called an equivocation in philosophy. You don't want to be anti-solar and wind, you don't want to be anti-freedom for solar and wind, you don't want to be in principle against solar and wind, which led to everyone living in a fantasy world, which is a disaster. You have to look at the full process. And the full cost of solar and wind is not just the sun, and the wind, and the transmission lines, and the panels, and the wind turbines. It's the whole reliable infrastructure needed to give it life support 100% of the time. It's not really cheaper. It's adding cost. It's not replacing cost.
The US government has subsidized the unreliables to the tune of trillions. Everyone should have to compete with no subsidies, providing reliable electricity with universal standards that are technology neutral. Taxpayers paying companies for this usually unreliable electricity, actually forcing people to use it, regardless of cost, including concealed cost of the limitless hidden costs of the Inflation Reduction Act. All to support a war on something that benefits many more, much more, than harms.
Further reading:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/before-talking-about-green-new-deal-tackle-our-big-green-debt
https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/23/americans-have-never-been-less-threatened-by-extreme-weather/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=americans-have-never-been-less-threatened-by-extreme-weather&utm_term=2023-06-23
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/green-energy-zealot-just-stop-oil-really-means-just-stop-life
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/the_contradictions_of_carbon_capture.html
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/06/28/study-heavy-electric-vehicles-cause-twice-the-road-damage-than-their-petrol-equivalents/
https://freebeacon.com/politics/its-been-5-years-since-greta-thunberg-warned-climate-change-would-wipe-out-all-of-humanity-unless-we-stop-using-fossil-fuels-over-the-next-5-years/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-thunberg-doomsday-prediction-mocked
https://www.judicialwatch.org/caribbean-climate-funding/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members
https://www.rfi.fr/en/business-and-tech/20230628-norway-angers-climate-activists-with-fossil-fuel-projects
https://electrek.co/2023/06/23/siemens-gamesa-big-wind-turbine-problems/
"No more internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035.” --Gov newsom, in California
“Don't charge your EVs. We don't have enough electricity.” --Gov. newsom, 5 days later.
The EPA currently has plans that, if implemented, could take off 20% of our current inadequate, reliable electric-producing capacity, mostly from coal. Coal is currently keeping our grid alive. We have a catastrophic threat to the reliable electric supply, and biden is forcing electric transportation on us with an increase 10times supply demand. The left-wing feels (not thinking) we can just increase the demand for something and decrease the supply and nothing will happen to the price or availability. The EV movement is a profoundly destructive movement because it's trying to force an inferior technology on a grid, while simultaneously gutting the capacity of the grid.
Any policy question is always going to be interdisciplinary. It's going to involve many issues. For example, in energy, it's not simply the climate effects of different forms of energy, there's also the benefits of different forms of energy. If you're intellectually honest, you have to consider that. And a climate scientist knows nothing about that, insofar as they're just a climate scientist. The other thing is that any policy question, or any what's called normative question, any action guiding question, always involves values.
Undeniably, the fossil fuel industry has made the world a much better place. And if it's allowed to function freely, will continue to do so, in a way that's fundamentally pro-human and pro-energy, because it is crucial to billions of people's lives and will remain so for a long time.
Before the 1859 birth of the oil industry, there were more than half a dozen forms of alternative energy, including very close things to ethanol. But there was still a lot of primitiveness. Why? Because while people could technically produce energy, they couldn't cost effectively produce energy, it matters so much if energy is cost-effective. The reason we're still using fossil fuels for 80% of our energy, and maybe the reason it's still growing, is because fossil fuels are still the most cost-effective choice for billions of people. In terms of providing energy that's affordable; reliable; versatile, which means powering every type of machine; and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places, fossil fuels are unique.
The climate crisis industry is not talking about these benefits at all. They're only talking about possible negative side effects, particularly climate effects. But A very basic principle of sound thinking is, carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects. Before we get into the facts, the most important thing is to agree how are we going to make decisions and in carefully weighing the benefits and the side effects. It's really, really important to establish to agree to think about the positives and negatives in a fair, even-handed and a precise way. Then, of course, is understanding the basic facts, in terms of what are the key facts and their side effects? The default is disingenuously just looking at the negatives and exaggerating them.
What we largely have today is an anti-freedom burden on fossil fuels. A lot of the subsidized technologies that are being added are not cost-effective. Solar and wind should only be used if they can help provide reliable electricity at a competitive price, and not to force on us, directly or indirectly, unreliable electricity, and then leave us to suffer for it.
People think of petroleum as dirty; it ruined the planet. But if you're intellectually honest you'd admit that you could take this black goop from the ground and turn it into a cup, a Sleep Number bed, a vacation, an artificial heart, make modern transportation work, heat or cool your home, office, school, hospital and even clean the planet then this is the greatest improvement of our environment in human history. We turned useless glop, and turned it into life. One of the essential facts is fossil fuels help us become safe from climate, they power all the machines that keep us safe from climate, so deaths from storms, and floods, extreme heat, et cetera, are down 98% over the last 100 years.
But the critics of fossil fuels have a number of very specific arguments that you consistently hear. The 1st is the side effect of burning fossil fuels, as it releases CO2. So, how much is the burning of fossil fuels leading to catastrophic climate impacts that we should worry about? We cannot capture enough CO2 as your leaders are policies are demanding, to be carbon-neutral with a robust hydrocarbon industry looking anywhere near what it looks like today. And the biggest emitters, China and India, are not doing this anyway. So, should we rapidly eliminate fossil fuels? What you need to think about is, what is the net good or bad when carefully weigh the benefits and the side effects? It's especially important because fossil fuels also have a neutralizing impact on climate danger. The simple answer is fossil fuels have not taken a safe climate and made it dangerous. They've taken a dangerous climate and made it safe, far more significant than any negatives they've had so far. So far, we've had one degree of warming, over a relatively long human-time-span, the climate death rate has declined, from disasters, by 98%. How could anyone really believe that it's going to get another degree or two warmer and then everyone's going to die from climate? That's is just an emotional narrative for achieving OTHER political goals. It doesn't make any sense scientifically. And if you look at all the so-called science, predicting that earth is going to become hell, it's all climate mastery denial. It denies our ability to adapt to things, to master things. It also pretends that, oh, if sea levels rise by a foot in 50 years, we're going to all be displaced. We're absolutely not going to do that. We have 100 million people who already live below sea level (the Netherlands for example). So, the really simple answer is fossil fuels have made our climate more livable. And they will continue to do so. It's not just they're not as bad as you think. It's that they're actually good.
Eco extremists feel (not thinking) it's easy to replace fossil fuels. And their argument is that with solar, wind, hydrogen, all these different things, are cheaper, cleaner, better in every dimension than fossil fuels. So, therefore, it's very obvious that we should transition to these things for all those benefits. If solar and wind are actually cheaper, why is China, and India, overwhelmingly using coal? Did they not read the Lazard study that stated it was? No, they know the Lazard study is trash. The reality is that people are acting like fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective, including people who would have every incentive not to. Even Japan continues to pursue fossil fuels and they don't have any of those resources.
Solar and wind are only providing electricity, which is just a 20% of the world's energy. Electricity is just one form of energy. The basic reason is the unreliability problem. As the Texas freeze showed, solar and wind can go near-zero at any given time. So, at the worst part of the Texas freeze, solar and wind were at less than 1% of their theoretical capacity just because the wind and sun were less than required, as often happens during a winter storm. And if something go can go near-zero at any given time, it needs basically 100% backup. This means that you either need to use batteries, which, 3 days of global storage for back up, at Elon Musk's best prices, is $600 trillion. So, this is more wealth than exists in the entire world. So, what you end up paying for both a reliable grid and an unreliable grid, which adds huge infrastructure duplication costs, why such is very expensive electricity. Or what you play reliability chicken, try to get away with as few reliable power plants as possible. And hope that the unreliables work all the time or when you want. So, you hope it doesn't get too hot, it doesn't get too cold, the sun shines enough, and the wind blows enough. Obviously, isn't going to happen. And so, you have some short-term cost savings, although costs still generally go up. But what is the cost you paid in terms of unreliability of the grid? It's something like $10,000 per household. So, when you play reliability chicken, you ultimately make people pay the catastrophic cost of unreliable electricity.
So, right now, solar and wind are not cost competitive replacements. They're cost adding failures. We need to require all power plants to supply reliable electricity, using whatever mix of inputs they want, a truly free market in energy, to actually compete to provide reliable electricity, not today's regime of forced energy policies absolutely gutting our grid and ruining many lives. The problem with forcing these policies on people is, one, you're forcing an inferior thing. If it weren't inferior, you wouldn't have to force it. That hurts the poor and the middle class the most. They can literally destroy the world as a livable place for billions of people, by following those policies.
Energy is not an opinion, it's a mathematical reality. What's causing the eco-extremist ideology to go so against facts? Predominantly all the ridiculous propaganda that defied reality, including in some ways, physics. The fossil fuel industry basically didn't counter it. They had a narrative of we don't want to be anti-solar-and-wind, what's called an equivocation in philosophy. You don't want to be anti-solar and wind, you don't want to be anti-freedom for solar and wind, you don't want to be in principle against solar and wind, which led to everyone living in a fantasy world, which is a disaster. You have to look at the full process. And the full cost of solar and wind is not just the sun, and the wind, and the transmission lines, and the panels, and the wind turbines. It's the whole reliable infrastructure needed to give it life support 100% of the time. It's not really cheaper. It's adding cost. It's not replacing cost.
The US government has subsidized the unreliables to the tune of trillions. Everyone should have to compete with no subsidies, providing reliable electricity with universal standards that are technology neutral. Taxpayers paying companies for this usually unreliable electricity, actually forcing people to use it, regardless of cost, including concealed cost of the limitless hidden costs of the Inflation Reduction Act. All to support a war on something that benefits many more, much more, than harms.
Further reading:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/before-talking-about-green-new-deal-tackle-our-big-green-debt
https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/23/americans-have-never-been-less-threatened-by-extreme-weather/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=americans-have-never-been-less-threatened-by-extreme-weather&utm_term=2023-06-23
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/green-energy-zealot-just-stop-oil-really-means-just-stop-life
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/the_contradictions_of_carbon_capture.html
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/06/28/study-heavy-electric-vehicles-cause-twice-the-road-damage-than-their-petrol-equivalents/
https://freebeacon.com/politics/its-been-5-years-since-greta-thunberg-warned-climate-change-would-wipe-out-all-of-humanity-unless-we-stop-using-fossil-fuels-over-the-next-5-years/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-thunberg-doomsday-prediction-mocked
https://www.judicialwatch.org/caribbean-climate-funding/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=corruption+chronicles&utm_term=members
https://www.rfi.fr/en/business-and-tech/20230628-norway-angers-climate-activists-with-fossil-fuel-projects
https://electrek.co/2023/06/23/siemens-gamesa-big-wind-turbine-problems/
Subject: neo-liberalism
The best and probably only way to turn this disaster around, is for the people to demand an Article-V States called for Amendment Proposal Convention to take back our stolen powers, and to put chains back on the Federal Overreaching Government. Ed.
“He who would destroy society must first destroy the public truth it conceives itself as embodying.”-- Wilmore Kendall
“Over the last two decades are liberal elites, themselves almost entirely white, have decided, for different reasons, that the white middle class in America has no role to play in the multicultural, globalized future they envision, a future that they believe they will run."-R. Reno
“Neoliberalism, aka progressivism, these utterly incompatible with the nature of the American constitutional order."-- Ronald J. Pestritto
“Liberalism is an imperial ideology.”--Yoram Hazony
Liberal ideology dreams of a world of perfect freedom and wonderful community tailor-made to release man from the responsibility to work on the self and prone to ignore the need for controlling the darker side of one's own humanity. liberal ideology denies that reality and believes humans are malleable and can be re-engineered to liberal ideological desires, and that natural rights are simply obstacles to this goal. it expunges objective universals from the reality of the world and replaces them with subjective assertion, which in a cruel parody it then declares is the sole universal. Liberal ideology contains a deep and tyrannical compulsion, of what David Hume characterized as an "imprudent vehemence" to remake society in the world in its own image, regarding its premises as self-evident and anyone who does not share them as defective at best and dangerous at worst.
The ideology known as neo-liberalism (sometimes called progressivism), is a governing ideology of a segregating, divisive, and decadent class that in its ascension has unhomed humanity and unhinged the world from its contents. It has, moreover exposed Western Civilization to its enemies who are clearly both foreign and domestic. It feels itself deeply righteous in administering the welfare state that insures none will escape the feudal bonds and that a servile class is permanently on hand to tend to the left-wing elites needs. Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, has come to be associated with war, inflation, and civil unrest.
The aim of the liberal political identity is to mask reality by denying the possibility of shared values and goals that can alleviate or remove the penalties of placement at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Neoliberalism suppresses the lives and hopes of ordinary people, and it is the means by which their agency and purpose can be contained and denied.
As such the cancel culture allows their children to remove any impediments to their own advancement, correcting new morals and codes to ensure that is ring fenced for them and only them. For in the end the culture that is canceled is anything that is not of them and for them.
neo-liberalism achieves the opposite of what it promises. Because it denies the importance of tradition, social cohesion, and the formation of shared values, it produces a fragmented and warring populace that requires the Leviathan to police it, moving towards absolutist policing power that ensures partisan rule by the empowered and the enriched special interest groups over a subjugated populace. The ultimate political legacy of neo-liberalism, by human fiction supplanting truth and is enthroned over it, is an isolated individual, bereft of family and friends, utterly powerless against an absolute State and a monopolized market.neo-liberalism is an ideology for Western Civilization suicide. This ideology dreams of a world of perfect freedom and wonderful community tailor-made to release man from the responsibility to work on the self and prone to ignore the need for controlling the darker side of one's own humanity. It's practices are weak in the institutional defense against barbarism and its ideas destructive to the will to resist barbarism. It's specific objectives are to overthrow, to destroy, what it calls the establishment. neo-liberalism, like socialism, is a reactionary philosophy—an ideological anachronism. It departs from scientific practice since it explicitly excludes from its analysis of group disparities anything to do with the interests and abilities of the individuals involved. Someone who understands that social reform is inevitably a long, difficult, complex, and, at best, imperfect affair cannot be a member of the left wing.
neo-liberalism is not a nice ideology about kindness and sharing and being welcoming. At base it is an extreme panegyric to human freedom and the denial of any other value or standard except that of unconstrained human will. It denies relationships, solidarity, shared purposes, and objective standards and indeed objective reality, prioritizing its own needs above all others. It ultimately endorses and celebrates power, so, why think such an ideology would somehow not produce tyranny, elected or otherwise?No society is truly relativistic, especially when it's strongly held values are merely passionate or willful as in the case of today's left wing. And politics is about universals. We know that the polemics of neo-liberalism's universalism only serves a narrow, empowered, and self-interested group. To hand over our civilization to neo-liberalism seems to be at best ill thought through, and at worst acquiescent to evil.
“There exists an objective moral order in the universe, accessible to human reason, which supplies a standard for political justice.”-- Harry V. Jaffa
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good…ideology is what gives evil doing its sought for justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination... The nazis did so by race; and the jacobins by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the 20th century was fated to experience evil doing on a scale calculated in the murder of tens of millions."--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/30/propublicas-smearing-of-conservative-justices-is-part-of-the-lefts-ploy-to-destroy-the-court/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=propublicas-smearing-of-conservative-justices-is-part-of-the-lefts-ploy-to-destroy-the-court&utm_term=2023-06-30https://nypost.com/2023/07/03/fury-at-supreme-court-ruling-for-rights-of-conscience-exposes-the-lefts-totalitarian-turn/
https://nypost.com/2023/07/02/for-press-supreme-court-is-in-crisis-because-it-agrees-with-most-americans/
Editors Note:
How Long are we going to sit back and watch corrupted officials destroy our country for personal gain?
“He who would destroy society must first destroy the public truth it conceives itself as embodying.”-- Wilmore Kendall
“Over the last two decades are liberal elites, themselves almost entirely white, have decided, for different reasons, that the white middle class in America has no role to play in the multicultural, globalized future they envision, a future that they believe they will run."-R. Reno
“Neoliberalism, aka progressivism, these utterly incompatible with the nature of the American constitutional order."-- Ronald J. Pestritto
“Liberalism is an imperial ideology.”--Yoram Hazony
Liberal ideology dreams of a world of perfect freedom and wonderful community tailor-made to release man from the responsibility to work on the self and prone to ignore the need for controlling the darker side of one's own humanity. liberal ideology denies that reality and believes humans are malleable and can be re-engineered to liberal ideological desires, and that natural rights are simply obstacles to this goal. it expunges objective universals from the reality of the world and replaces them with subjective assertion, which in a cruel parody it then declares is the sole universal. Liberal ideology contains a deep and tyrannical compulsion, of what David Hume characterized as an "imprudent vehemence" to remake society in the world in its own image, regarding its premises as self-evident and anyone who does not share them as defective at best and dangerous at worst.
The ideology known as neo-liberalism (sometimes called progressivism), is a governing ideology of a segregating, divisive, and decadent class that in its ascension has unhomed humanity and unhinged the world from its contents. It has, moreover exposed Western Civilization to its enemies who are clearly both foreign and domestic. It feels itself deeply righteous in administering the welfare state that insures none will escape the feudal bonds and that a servile class is permanently on hand to tend to the left-wing elites needs. Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, has come to be associated with war, inflation, and civil unrest.
The aim of the liberal political identity is to mask reality by denying the possibility of shared values and goals that can alleviate or remove the penalties of placement at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Neoliberalism suppresses the lives and hopes of ordinary people, and it is the means by which their agency and purpose can be contained and denied.
As such the cancel culture allows their children to remove any impediments to their own advancement, correcting new morals and codes to ensure that is ring fenced for them and only them. For in the end the culture that is canceled is anything that is not of them and for them.
neo-liberalism achieves the opposite of what it promises. Because it denies the importance of tradition, social cohesion, and the formation of shared values, it produces a fragmented and warring populace that requires the Leviathan to police it, moving towards absolutist policing power that ensures partisan rule by the empowered and the enriched special interest groups over a subjugated populace. The ultimate political legacy of neo-liberalism, by human fiction supplanting truth and is enthroned over it, is an isolated individual, bereft of family and friends, utterly powerless against an absolute State and a monopolized market.neo-liberalism is an ideology for Western Civilization suicide. This ideology dreams of a world of perfect freedom and wonderful community tailor-made to release man from the responsibility to work on the self and prone to ignore the need for controlling the darker side of one's own humanity. It's practices are weak in the institutional defense against barbarism and its ideas destructive to the will to resist barbarism. It's specific objectives are to overthrow, to destroy, what it calls the establishment. neo-liberalism, like socialism, is a reactionary philosophy—an ideological anachronism. It departs from scientific practice since it explicitly excludes from its analysis of group disparities anything to do with the interests and abilities of the individuals involved. Someone who understands that social reform is inevitably a long, difficult, complex, and, at best, imperfect affair cannot be a member of the left wing.
neo-liberalism is not a nice ideology about kindness and sharing and being welcoming. At base it is an extreme panegyric to human freedom and the denial of any other value or standard except that of unconstrained human will. It denies relationships, solidarity, shared purposes, and objective standards and indeed objective reality, prioritizing its own needs above all others. It ultimately endorses and celebrates power, so, why think such an ideology would somehow not produce tyranny, elected or otherwise?No society is truly relativistic, especially when it's strongly held values are merely passionate or willful as in the case of today's left wing. And politics is about universals. We know that the polemics of neo-liberalism's universalism only serves a narrow, empowered, and self-interested group. To hand over our civilization to neo-liberalism seems to be at best ill thought through, and at worst acquiescent to evil.
“There exists an objective moral order in the universe, accessible to human reason, which supplies a standard for political justice.”-- Harry V. Jaffa
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good…ideology is what gives evil doing its sought for justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination... The nazis did so by race; and the jacobins by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the 20th century was fated to experience evil doing on a scale calculated in the murder of tens of millions."--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/30/propublicas-smearing-of-conservative-justices-is-part-of-the-lefts-ploy-to-destroy-the-court/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=propublicas-smearing-of-conservative-justices-is-part-of-the-lefts-ploy-to-destroy-the-court&utm_term=2023-06-30https://nypost.com/2023/07/03/fury-at-supreme-court-ruling-for-rights-of-conscience-exposes-the-lefts-totalitarian-turn/
https://nypost.com/2023/07/02/for-press-supreme-court-is-in-crisis-because-it-agrees-with-most-americans/
Editors Note:
How Long are we going to sit back and watch corrupted officials destroy our country for personal gain?
Why we need an Article-V to Restore the Republic VIA Understanding The Goals Of The 4th
Source; Unknown:
To understand what we need to restore the Republic we must first understand exactly what the Republic is; First off, we need to understand the goals of the 4th.
"The reality of freedom must depend on the values which free individuals pursue.”--Fredrick A. Hayek
“To secure these rights [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government..." --Thomas Jefferson, from the Declaration of Independence
"A republic, if you can keep it."--Ben Franklin
If it be asked, 'What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic?' The answer would be an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws -- the first growing out of the last. ... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government."-- Alexander Hamilton
“If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions...what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature...If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."--James Madison
"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."-- John Adams
Our constitution, informed by over 2 thousand years of human history, with the premise that humans are fallen and prone to selfishness, and also that humans are endowed by their creator with natural rights, was designed to protect rights and liberties while seeking to limit power in a way that would prevent tyranny, with no wish for government to socially engineer the people. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution…Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution…If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which the instrument gives. It specifies & delineates…”(1). And those bounds were based on uniquely American legal foundations, designed on several premises. Premises that were in essence what Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan defines as relatively absolute absolutes. That the state and its institutions exist for the sake of the individual and that our leaders remain trustees of our individual liberty. That laws should be negative in nature, meaning they describe what we, as citizens and as government, cannot do rather than what we are allowed or must do. That laws should be general and unchanging. That they be known in advance, not ex post facto. That the law be applicable to all. That the goal is to preserve individual freedom and limit sovereign power. In laying down the fundamental reason behind our Constitution perhaps William Blackstone put it best years before when he said: "Law is not a transient order from a superior to or concerning a particular person or thing, but something permanent, uniform and universal.” And with what was later recognized by Supreme Court Justices Holmes and Hand, that: “The less law the better”.
Conservatives, following the learnings of Edmund Burke who elaborated long ago that a conservative philosophy attends to time, circumstances, convention, experience and practical wisdom in matters of reform, have always endeavored to conserve our successful constitutional based republic. Conversely, liberals, using a misnomer, have sought to "liberate" America from constitutional rule of law for decades, preferring instead to make all the rules themselves, employing a deceptive concept know by the term “living document”.
In addressing the question of whether our Constitution should be treated, in the neo-liberal view, as a “living document”, C. Wolfe has positioned the argument when he stated: "The burden of proof rests upon those who contend that the Constitution was understood by its ratifiers [and now by their philosophical descendants] differently from the way it was written by its authors...that what its words mean are not taken separately nor related to the whole document…that the fair implications that what the Constitution ratified was expectations but not principles. To understand these principles we turn first and primarily to the words of the document, read as a whole...we cannot know with certainty that anyone's opinion about the meaning of the document was meant to be given authority. To rely on extrinsic sources of the meaning of the document as the primary source would be to undercut the clarity and certainty that are an essential element of the rule of law. The language of the document will be our guide... interpretation which places primary emphasis on construction of words of the document itself, not the debates behind it... for solving an increasing number of problems arising over time.
Or, as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said: "The Constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes for which those powers were conferred. ... Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy...It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."
Jeffery Folks warned that: "To view change as an end in itself is to fall prey to a dangerous form of idolatry." Why then has there been an unfortunate shift of emphasis from reading of the document to examining extrinsic, even spurious sources for its intent?
First: Many people read the document less carefully and therefore jump too quickly to conclusion that the words of the document provide little, or at least insufficient guidance.
The words of language influences not only how we think but also how we discover and understand, in how we view, what we see and pay attention. It is how we navigate the complexities of human living. It can also operate as deception, delusion, manipulation, revelation and not just communication.
Words only make sense within the broader context of broader units of discourse, like whole narratives. Meaning however never transcends convention(2). There is nothing to keep our linguistic usage in check save the convention of the contextual, spatial and historical contingent. As soon as we stipulate convention, words assume meanings and we are no longer free to interpret as we choose. If we allow pragmatism to determine meaning, then we subject ourselves to meanings based on expedience, and not truth. Once expedience dictates meaning, meaning is capable of being anything, anytime. Therefore, the Deconstructionalist's claim, at its base, that texts are indeterminable and inevitably yield to multiple, irreducibly diverse interpretations, or that criteria does not exist for preferring one interpretation over another, is false.
It is a common age-old misconception that law is an assemblage of senselessly rigid rules from which departures from defined principles are continually necessary to save the whole clumsy edifice from collapsing. But texts are anchored to their meaning and not free to float about indiscriminately. No contract can be made to say anything unless the author and the reader share a common understanding of the words and the essential contextual factors, including the purpose of the contract itself. To subject the rule of law to current social, economic, educational and cultural conditions can only lead to making the term worthless and guarantee the repudiation of the rule of law. Without that absolute there is no law that will protect you absolutely, we are back in the jungle As P. Brest said: “That which is voted on and adopted is not a set of intentions but a set of words…the starting point for its principle is language.”
Second: There is a tendency to try and clear up uncertainty by recourse to intent; this may create a disposition or habit of looking for extrinsic evidence even where the words are unclear.
The danger in all interpretation is that it easily leads to a game played without rules. Convincing answers to contested questions are reducible to ones of fact. To apply “particularism” to the definition of the principles of the facts creates that aforementioned undisciplined and ad hoc game played without rules. In other words, facts matter. Without facts, evidence, proof and a sound analytical logic it is just rationalization, posing as law. Of course just getting the facts right can't decide a case; there has to be an analytic framework to fit the facts into As R.K. Winter stated: “The Interpretive view is not a vulgarized view of strict constructionism. Rather it is a complex set of concepts relating to whether constitutional questions should be adjudicated, how, when and what it will be. It embodies a methodology of constitutional interpretation, designed to insulate dispute settling from transitory whim or purely personal desires of the judge.” Methodology, as C.L. Black Jr. stated, includes inference from the structures and relationships created by the Constitution in all it parts or principle part(s). Interpretation must seek to extrapolate from all the data and definitional doctrine the core principles and meanings. Where constitutional language makes no objective policy, the courts have no business imposing one. To do so is fait accompli legislation. If policy or position is indeterminate then there isn’t even a vocabulary left in which to defend any decision. However, we must also guard against the liberal tendency of deconstruction relativism, which Richard A. Posner warns about, saying: “The fact that interpretation can be given animation such that it is indeterminate is just plain wrong. Although one can argue both sides of an issue, the arguments for one side can fall completely flat.”
Third: “… a tendency to believe that judges have the right and duty to interpret and exercise judicial review, which encourages subjective judicial opinions.”
Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall both early on established that it is the law that is supreme and not the judge. Personal values and political preference are apt to play an important role in courts that have broad discretion. And the power of that personality grows with the recession of the constitutional text as a limitation on judicial discretion. Starting perhaps with the Slaughter-House Cases the Supreme Court did just that, taking it upon themselves to amend rather than interpret the law.
One of the ways the courts have invented for concealing ideological personal preference is to use notions of public good, to bridge the gap between conventional legal understandings and the desire for a predetermined outcome. The underlying problem is that the social engineering efforts made are being done by mechanisms proven to be inherently poorly designed to accomplish their object.
Even the pragmatist cannot ignore the good that results from compliance with settled rules of law. If one is free to issue a decision that has no basis in law, merely because he thinks it is for the “good”, then the result is not pragmatic adjudication but lawlessness. As Richard A. Posner wrote: “The Constitution contains democratic principle, but is not a synonym for democracy. As Scalia points out, people who look to the courts for social reform do not take democracy seriously…. inviting judges to give constitutional status to powerful currents of public opinion are now understood to have been to a considerable degree deeply misinformed.” The lateral entry of pragmatic adjudication runs into conflict with the intellectual, political and moral diversity combined with individualistic character of our culture.
Sound legal pragmatism, concerned with making decisions with regard to the present and the future, realizes that past decisions, statutes, constitutional text and so forth can be repositories of both knowledge and wisdom that should not be ignored or obscured gratuitously. To make a decision that contradicts past positions can provide a destabilizing effect with significant bad consequences. Pragmatism’s greatest danger is therefore when it succumbs both to intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Legal reasoning is modestly defined as reasoning with reference to distinctive legal materials and doctrines.
In conclusion, legal reasoning can be modestly defined as reasoning with reference to distinctive legal materials such as statues, legal doctrine and other rule of law virtues. Judicial pragmatism has an interest in past decisions, statutes and so forth. It recognizes that they are repositories of knowledge and wisdom; that judges are not trained nor authorized to analyze and absorb the theories and data of social sciences. To ignore legal reasoning rules and standards presents a large probability of unintended negative consequences, including the substitution of the goal of a democratic society, that being the replacement of sound means applied to all with the desired goals of those in power. Law does not include ignoring good of compliance with the rules. If the application of law meant simply applying ever floating interpretations, then we would not have judicial adjudication, we’d have what the Federalist Papers defined as tyranny.
Our Constitution gives us a framework of government that is NOT meant to address every issue or answer every grievance, real or imagined. This is its strength, because it design is intended to deliver the best form of government, a limited one. If the Constitution’s meaning can be erased or reinterpreted, it ceases to be a constitution but instead becomes a concoction of arbitrary political expedients that serve the political agenda du’ jour of the few entrusted with government power.
"[C]onfidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy & not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power ... in questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."-- Thomas Jefferson
“I've been predicting for 20 years, that ultimately the theory of the living Constitution will destroy us. Once the people figure out what the game is, they will say, 'We will select our judges on the basis of who will modify the Constitution today to what we desire. The Constitution’s meaning doesn't change. To achieve change, all you need is a legislature and a ballot box. Things then can change just as fast as you like, while liberty, freedom and justice are not sacrificed to expediency."-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
(1) When the federal government claimed and exercised a right of enlarging its own powers by constructions, inferences, and indefinite deductions, Thomas Jefferson called that a direct infraction of the Constitution. He also denied that the General welfare Clause constituted a general grant to Congress of power to spend money on anything it wanted. He asserted that rather the Clause meant money could be spent by Congress in furtherance of the powers spelled out in Article I, Section 8 (which is primarily regarding aspects of the use of the military and foreign trade).
(2) “A nation’s oral culture is even more fundamental than its physical ecology.”---M. Novak
======================================================
“Under the conditions of neo-liberalism it is the social group rather than the individual which is increasing in importance.”---Frank Goodnow
Our Constitution and it's 27 amendments balance individual rights and popular sovereignty through the separation of powers and federalism. It not only protects human freedom but also creates the space for the deeper satisfactions of family, religion, community, and voluntary association...That protects the individual against all arbitrary coercion."--Matthew Continett
It was the neo-liberal progenitor woodrow wilson, building on a view promulgated during the French Revolution(1), who believed any checks and balances mechanism, or limits on government must be convenient and easily dispensable so as to be swept aside by the party in power. As both the major figures in the creation of our representative democracy, Adams and Jefferson disagreed, instead they knew certain political principles are eternal verities that even the ancients understood as well as us moderns. But for the likes of Wilson and his liberal offspring, the philosophical, theological, procedural or any otherwise fundamental is not to be of greater importance than the will of the political elite. Hence for Wilson and those following in his ideological footsteps, the American Constitution is a malleable instrument, in other words a “living constitution” subject to manipulation by political leaders du jour in order to attempt to engineer whatever the social goal they desire. Kinda like every other tyrant.
The wilsonian ideological(2) construct is based on the erroneous belief, or more accurately, wish that human beings and their societies are immanently perfectible, that then can be reengineered so that all can be one. The devil however, always resides in the details. The concept of a “living constitution” is maintained only by the fiction that it is rooted in the continuity of the original Constitution. But the living constitution proponents do not really believe in the values and principles that form the basis of our Constitution. Nor do these elites believe in limited government or the representative form of democracy. In fact, one of the subtle ironies in the legacy of “living constitutionalism” is the rise of judicial supremacy. Seven non-elected people in black robes become their new man-made god(3). As even the majority opinion of the Supreme Court said of itself recently: “to…speak before all others for [our] constitutional ideals.”(4)
It’s inevitably what you get when you treat the Constitution as a living document that can be redefined whenever expediency requires. A living Constitution evolves into removing more and more of the responsibility for making law away from elected Congressmen and instead placing it exceedingly into the hands of a few judges appointed, not elected, for life. The will and whim of those judges, as we are experiencing more and more, in effect create laws, that we all are forced to live under, regardless of what the Constitution does or does not say, and regardless of the wants and needs of the citizenry.
So, our checks and balances system(5), that worked so well it created in a mere decades the freest, most prosperous country in the world for hundreds of millions domestically, and supported the efforts of billions of others around the globe is intentional being rapidly destroyed. Instead of the original design of a powerful Congress and executive, both strong, moral and honorable but carefully checked along with what was described at the time as the “least dangerous branch” --the judiciary, we now have a weak to dysfunctional Congress and sometimes executive too, that a relatively unchecked bullying judiciary power can now easily reside in our government in inverse portion to the democratic process. That is not reform—that is a negative revolution. It is they who are outside the law.
“America now divides ever more sharply into 2 classes, the smaller which hold the commanding heights of government power, from which it disposes I ever greater detail of America’s energies from which it ordains ways of living as if it has the right to do so, and from which it asserts that that right is based on the majority’s class stupidity, racism, and violent tendencies. hence, they can justify that they may transcend our Constitution while pretending allegiance to it.”--Angelo M. Codevilla
“The basic principle of democracy is the sacredness of the individual as a creature endowed by God with inalienable rights. The basic principle of totalitarian systems is that the individual has no rights, except those sometimes granted him by the Party or the State. The latter is not what America has been or is, yet. ”--Fulton J. Sheen
“The real objective here is the further erosion of liberty and freedom. But even more, it's if the left can render the Constitution irrelevant. If they can get the American people to the point where the Constitution is just some piece of paper that doesn't amount to a hill of beans, that's what they would love. And to the effect that they can violate it, that they can avoid it, that they can pretend it doesn't exist -- that they can wantonly, in public, spit on it and get away with it -- that's the objective.”--Rush Limbaugh
1 The French Revolution was initiated deliberately by a group of intellectuals bent on undermining the principle of inalienable rights with which men are endowed by their Creator.
2 The term “ideology,” first used by the french philosopher Destutt de Tracy, has come to refer to a set of ideals and hopes, like human perfection or social equsilty, that philosophers mistakenly believe can be implemented in the world because it exists in their heads, allowing the seductive powers of imagination to block out concrete realities that expose the illusions. Ideology provides an attractive rhetorical advantage no matter how wrong reality proves it.
3 “The liberal democratic tradition is of opening the public square to the full and civil engagement of the conviction of all citizens, including their religiously-informed moral conviction.”---Richard John Neuhaus
4 A survey of the Supreme Court found that of the 7, only 3 of the Supreme Court Justices support jurisprudence based on natural law, as taught by the Catholic Church for millennia and which also guided Thomas Jefferson thoughts when he wrote the Declaration Of Independence.
5 “The first maximum of a free state is that the laws be made by one set of men, administered by another and challenges by yet another, in other words there could be no such thing as liberty if the judiciary power united either to the legislature or to the executive.”--William Paley. “A good move may not seem to pay off in the opening, or in the middle game but it will show its worth in the ending.”---Tom Wiswell
EDITORS NOTE;
Intertwined within the article are the principles our self rule Republic was based on. I know we must return to those principles or lose the Republic and what it stands for.
Start pushing your State Legislatures to open an Amendment Proposal Convention to retake the powers that Congress and the Bureaucracies have usurped from us since the end of the Civil War.
We Need;
Term Limits
Repeal of the 16th & 17th Amendments
Citizen oversight and agreement on ALL Weapons laws, regulations, requirements w/3/4 vote of eligible citizen voters to affirm.
Citizen oversight on Legislation and Supreme Court Rulings with a 7/8 vote of eligible citizen voters to overturn them.
Reestablish the check and balances boundaries between the three areas of government.
Reestablish the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, redefine the due process clause under the original meaning of the 14th, do away with the anchor baby and other expansionist rulings combined with a modern immigration policy that protects national interests and allows for screening of immigrants using the same standards for all.
Return the education system to state control.
Any more suggestions from anyone?
To understand what we need to restore the Republic we must first understand exactly what the Republic is; First off, we need to understand the goals of the 4th.
"The reality of freedom must depend on the values which free individuals pursue.”--Fredrick A. Hayek
“To secure these rights [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government..." --Thomas Jefferson, from the Declaration of Independence
"A republic, if you can keep it."--Ben Franklin
If it be asked, 'What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic?' The answer would be an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws -- the first growing out of the last. ... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government."-- Alexander Hamilton
“If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions...what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature...If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."--James Madison
"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."-- John Adams
Our constitution, informed by over 2 thousand years of human history, with the premise that humans are fallen and prone to selfishness, and also that humans are endowed by their creator with natural rights, was designed to protect rights and liberties while seeking to limit power in a way that would prevent tyranny, with no wish for government to socially engineer the people. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution…Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution…If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which the instrument gives. It specifies & delineates…”(1). And those bounds were based on uniquely American legal foundations, designed on several premises. Premises that were in essence what Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan defines as relatively absolute absolutes. That the state and its institutions exist for the sake of the individual and that our leaders remain trustees of our individual liberty. That laws should be negative in nature, meaning they describe what we, as citizens and as government, cannot do rather than what we are allowed or must do. That laws should be general and unchanging. That they be known in advance, not ex post facto. That the law be applicable to all. That the goal is to preserve individual freedom and limit sovereign power. In laying down the fundamental reason behind our Constitution perhaps William Blackstone put it best years before when he said: "Law is not a transient order from a superior to or concerning a particular person or thing, but something permanent, uniform and universal.” And with what was later recognized by Supreme Court Justices Holmes and Hand, that: “The less law the better”.
Conservatives, following the learnings of Edmund Burke who elaborated long ago that a conservative philosophy attends to time, circumstances, convention, experience and practical wisdom in matters of reform, have always endeavored to conserve our successful constitutional based republic. Conversely, liberals, using a misnomer, have sought to "liberate" America from constitutional rule of law for decades, preferring instead to make all the rules themselves, employing a deceptive concept know by the term “living document”.
In addressing the question of whether our Constitution should be treated, in the neo-liberal view, as a “living document”, C. Wolfe has positioned the argument when he stated: "The burden of proof rests upon those who contend that the Constitution was understood by its ratifiers [and now by their philosophical descendants] differently from the way it was written by its authors...that what its words mean are not taken separately nor related to the whole document…that the fair implications that what the Constitution ratified was expectations but not principles. To understand these principles we turn first and primarily to the words of the document, read as a whole...we cannot know with certainty that anyone's opinion about the meaning of the document was meant to be given authority. To rely on extrinsic sources of the meaning of the document as the primary source would be to undercut the clarity and certainty that are an essential element of the rule of law. The language of the document will be our guide... interpretation which places primary emphasis on construction of words of the document itself, not the debates behind it... for solving an increasing number of problems arising over time.
Or, as Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said: "The Constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes for which those powers were conferred. ... Temporary delusions, prejudices, excitements, and objects have irresistible influence in mere questions of policy...It should be, so far at least as human infirmity will allow, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, to-day, and forever."
Jeffery Folks warned that: "To view change as an end in itself is to fall prey to a dangerous form of idolatry." Why then has there been an unfortunate shift of emphasis from reading of the document to examining extrinsic, even spurious sources for its intent?
First: Many people read the document less carefully and therefore jump too quickly to conclusion that the words of the document provide little, or at least insufficient guidance.
The words of language influences not only how we think but also how we discover and understand, in how we view, what we see and pay attention. It is how we navigate the complexities of human living. It can also operate as deception, delusion, manipulation, revelation and not just communication.
Words only make sense within the broader context of broader units of discourse, like whole narratives. Meaning however never transcends convention(2). There is nothing to keep our linguistic usage in check save the convention of the contextual, spatial and historical contingent. As soon as we stipulate convention, words assume meanings and we are no longer free to interpret as we choose. If we allow pragmatism to determine meaning, then we subject ourselves to meanings based on expedience, and not truth. Once expedience dictates meaning, meaning is capable of being anything, anytime. Therefore, the Deconstructionalist's claim, at its base, that texts are indeterminable and inevitably yield to multiple, irreducibly diverse interpretations, or that criteria does not exist for preferring one interpretation over another, is false.
It is a common age-old misconception that law is an assemblage of senselessly rigid rules from which departures from defined principles are continually necessary to save the whole clumsy edifice from collapsing. But texts are anchored to their meaning and not free to float about indiscriminately. No contract can be made to say anything unless the author and the reader share a common understanding of the words and the essential contextual factors, including the purpose of the contract itself. To subject the rule of law to current social, economic, educational and cultural conditions can only lead to making the term worthless and guarantee the repudiation of the rule of law. Without that absolute there is no law that will protect you absolutely, we are back in the jungle As P. Brest said: “That which is voted on and adopted is not a set of intentions but a set of words…the starting point for its principle is language.”
Second: There is a tendency to try and clear up uncertainty by recourse to intent; this may create a disposition or habit of looking for extrinsic evidence even where the words are unclear.
The danger in all interpretation is that it easily leads to a game played without rules. Convincing answers to contested questions are reducible to ones of fact. To apply “particularism” to the definition of the principles of the facts creates that aforementioned undisciplined and ad hoc game played without rules. In other words, facts matter. Without facts, evidence, proof and a sound analytical logic it is just rationalization, posing as law. Of course just getting the facts right can't decide a case; there has to be an analytic framework to fit the facts into As R.K. Winter stated: “The Interpretive view is not a vulgarized view of strict constructionism. Rather it is a complex set of concepts relating to whether constitutional questions should be adjudicated, how, when and what it will be. It embodies a methodology of constitutional interpretation, designed to insulate dispute settling from transitory whim or purely personal desires of the judge.” Methodology, as C.L. Black Jr. stated, includes inference from the structures and relationships created by the Constitution in all it parts or principle part(s). Interpretation must seek to extrapolate from all the data and definitional doctrine the core principles and meanings. Where constitutional language makes no objective policy, the courts have no business imposing one. To do so is fait accompli legislation. If policy or position is indeterminate then there isn’t even a vocabulary left in which to defend any decision. However, we must also guard against the liberal tendency of deconstruction relativism, which Richard A. Posner warns about, saying: “The fact that interpretation can be given animation such that it is indeterminate is just plain wrong. Although one can argue both sides of an issue, the arguments for one side can fall completely flat.”
Third: “… a tendency to believe that judges have the right and duty to interpret and exercise judicial review, which encourages subjective judicial opinions.”
Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall both early on established that it is the law that is supreme and not the judge. Personal values and political preference are apt to play an important role in courts that have broad discretion. And the power of that personality grows with the recession of the constitutional text as a limitation on judicial discretion. Starting perhaps with the Slaughter-House Cases the Supreme Court did just that, taking it upon themselves to amend rather than interpret the law.
One of the ways the courts have invented for concealing ideological personal preference is to use notions of public good, to bridge the gap between conventional legal understandings and the desire for a predetermined outcome. The underlying problem is that the social engineering efforts made are being done by mechanisms proven to be inherently poorly designed to accomplish their object.
Even the pragmatist cannot ignore the good that results from compliance with settled rules of law. If one is free to issue a decision that has no basis in law, merely because he thinks it is for the “good”, then the result is not pragmatic adjudication but lawlessness. As Richard A. Posner wrote: “The Constitution contains democratic principle, but is not a synonym for democracy. As Scalia points out, people who look to the courts for social reform do not take democracy seriously…. inviting judges to give constitutional status to powerful currents of public opinion are now understood to have been to a considerable degree deeply misinformed.” The lateral entry of pragmatic adjudication runs into conflict with the intellectual, political and moral diversity combined with individualistic character of our culture.
Sound legal pragmatism, concerned with making decisions with regard to the present and the future, realizes that past decisions, statutes, constitutional text and so forth can be repositories of both knowledge and wisdom that should not be ignored or obscured gratuitously. To make a decision that contradicts past positions can provide a destabilizing effect with significant bad consequences. Pragmatism’s greatest danger is therefore when it succumbs both to intellectual laziness and dishonesty. Legal reasoning is modestly defined as reasoning with reference to distinctive legal materials and doctrines.
In conclusion, legal reasoning can be modestly defined as reasoning with reference to distinctive legal materials such as statues, legal doctrine and other rule of law virtues. Judicial pragmatism has an interest in past decisions, statutes and so forth. It recognizes that they are repositories of knowledge and wisdom; that judges are not trained nor authorized to analyze and absorb the theories and data of social sciences. To ignore legal reasoning rules and standards presents a large probability of unintended negative consequences, including the substitution of the goal of a democratic society, that being the replacement of sound means applied to all with the desired goals of those in power. Law does not include ignoring good of compliance with the rules. If the application of law meant simply applying ever floating interpretations, then we would not have judicial adjudication, we’d have what the Federalist Papers defined as tyranny.
Our Constitution gives us a framework of government that is NOT meant to address every issue or answer every grievance, real or imagined. This is its strength, because it design is intended to deliver the best form of government, a limited one. If the Constitution’s meaning can be erased or reinterpreted, it ceases to be a constitution but instead becomes a concoction of arbitrary political expedients that serve the political agenda du’ jour of the few entrusted with government power.
"[C]onfidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy & not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power ... in questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."-- Thomas Jefferson
“I've been predicting for 20 years, that ultimately the theory of the living Constitution will destroy us. Once the people figure out what the game is, they will say, 'We will select our judges on the basis of who will modify the Constitution today to what we desire. The Constitution’s meaning doesn't change. To achieve change, all you need is a legislature and a ballot box. Things then can change just as fast as you like, while liberty, freedom and justice are not sacrificed to expediency."-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
(1) When the federal government claimed and exercised a right of enlarging its own powers by constructions, inferences, and indefinite deductions, Thomas Jefferson called that a direct infraction of the Constitution. He also denied that the General welfare Clause constituted a general grant to Congress of power to spend money on anything it wanted. He asserted that rather the Clause meant money could be spent by Congress in furtherance of the powers spelled out in Article I, Section 8 (which is primarily regarding aspects of the use of the military and foreign trade).
(2) “A nation’s oral culture is even more fundamental than its physical ecology.”---M. Novak
======================================================
“Under the conditions of neo-liberalism it is the social group rather than the individual which is increasing in importance.”---Frank Goodnow
Our Constitution and it's 27 amendments balance individual rights and popular sovereignty through the separation of powers and federalism. It not only protects human freedom but also creates the space for the deeper satisfactions of family, religion, community, and voluntary association...That protects the individual against all arbitrary coercion."--Matthew Continett
It was the neo-liberal progenitor woodrow wilson, building on a view promulgated during the French Revolution(1), who believed any checks and balances mechanism, or limits on government must be convenient and easily dispensable so as to be swept aside by the party in power. As both the major figures in the creation of our representative democracy, Adams and Jefferson disagreed, instead they knew certain political principles are eternal verities that even the ancients understood as well as us moderns. But for the likes of Wilson and his liberal offspring, the philosophical, theological, procedural or any otherwise fundamental is not to be of greater importance than the will of the political elite. Hence for Wilson and those following in his ideological footsteps, the American Constitution is a malleable instrument, in other words a “living constitution” subject to manipulation by political leaders du jour in order to attempt to engineer whatever the social goal they desire. Kinda like every other tyrant.
The wilsonian ideological(2) construct is based on the erroneous belief, or more accurately, wish that human beings and their societies are immanently perfectible, that then can be reengineered so that all can be one. The devil however, always resides in the details. The concept of a “living constitution” is maintained only by the fiction that it is rooted in the continuity of the original Constitution. But the living constitution proponents do not really believe in the values and principles that form the basis of our Constitution. Nor do these elites believe in limited government or the representative form of democracy. In fact, one of the subtle ironies in the legacy of “living constitutionalism” is the rise of judicial supremacy. Seven non-elected people in black robes become their new man-made god(3). As even the majority opinion of the Supreme Court said of itself recently: “to…speak before all others for [our] constitutional ideals.”(4)
It’s inevitably what you get when you treat the Constitution as a living document that can be redefined whenever expediency requires. A living Constitution evolves into removing more and more of the responsibility for making law away from elected Congressmen and instead placing it exceedingly into the hands of a few judges appointed, not elected, for life. The will and whim of those judges, as we are experiencing more and more, in effect create laws, that we all are forced to live under, regardless of what the Constitution does or does not say, and regardless of the wants and needs of the citizenry.
So, our checks and balances system(5), that worked so well it created in a mere decades the freest, most prosperous country in the world for hundreds of millions domestically, and supported the efforts of billions of others around the globe is intentional being rapidly destroyed. Instead of the original design of a powerful Congress and executive, both strong, moral and honorable but carefully checked along with what was described at the time as the “least dangerous branch” --the judiciary, we now have a weak to dysfunctional Congress and sometimes executive too, that a relatively unchecked bullying judiciary power can now easily reside in our government in inverse portion to the democratic process. That is not reform—that is a negative revolution. It is they who are outside the law.
“America now divides ever more sharply into 2 classes, the smaller which hold the commanding heights of government power, from which it disposes I ever greater detail of America’s energies from which it ordains ways of living as if it has the right to do so, and from which it asserts that that right is based on the majority’s class stupidity, racism, and violent tendencies. hence, they can justify that they may transcend our Constitution while pretending allegiance to it.”--Angelo M. Codevilla
“The basic principle of democracy is the sacredness of the individual as a creature endowed by God with inalienable rights. The basic principle of totalitarian systems is that the individual has no rights, except those sometimes granted him by the Party or the State. The latter is not what America has been or is, yet. ”--Fulton J. Sheen
“The real objective here is the further erosion of liberty and freedom. But even more, it's if the left can render the Constitution irrelevant. If they can get the American people to the point where the Constitution is just some piece of paper that doesn't amount to a hill of beans, that's what they would love. And to the effect that they can violate it, that they can avoid it, that they can pretend it doesn't exist -- that they can wantonly, in public, spit on it and get away with it -- that's the objective.”--Rush Limbaugh
1 The French Revolution was initiated deliberately by a group of intellectuals bent on undermining the principle of inalienable rights with which men are endowed by their Creator.
2 The term “ideology,” first used by the french philosopher Destutt de Tracy, has come to refer to a set of ideals and hopes, like human perfection or social equsilty, that philosophers mistakenly believe can be implemented in the world because it exists in their heads, allowing the seductive powers of imagination to block out concrete realities that expose the illusions. Ideology provides an attractive rhetorical advantage no matter how wrong reality proves it.
3 “The liberal democratic tradition is of opening the public square to the full and civil engagement of the conviction of all citizens, including their religiously-informed moral conviction.”---Richard John Neuhaus
4 A survey of the Supreme Court found that of the 7, only 3 of the Supreme Court Justices support jurisprudence based on natural law, as taught by the Catholic Church for millennia and which also guided Thomas Jefferson thoughts when he wrote the Declaration Of Independence.
5 “The first maximum of a free state is that the laws be made by one set of men, administered by another and challenges by yet another, in other words there could be no such thing as liberty if the judiciary power united either to the legislature or to the executive.”--William Paley. “A good move may not seem to pay off in the opening, or in the middle game but it will show its worth in the ending.”---Tom Wiswell
EDITORS NOTE;
Intertwined within the article are the principles our self rule Republic was based on. I know we must return to those principles or lose the Republic and what it stands for.
Start pushing your State Legislatures to open an Amendment Proposal Convention to retake the powers that Congress and the Bureaucracies have usurped from us since the end of the Civil War.
We Need;
Term Limits
Repeal of the 16th & 17th Amendments
Citizen oversight and agreement on ALL Weapons laws, regulations, requirements w/3/4 vote of eligible citizen voters to affirm.
Citizen oversight on Legislation and Supreme Court Rulings with a 7/8 vote of eligible citizen voters to overturn them.
Reestablish the check and balances boundaries between the three areas of government.
Reestablish the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, redefine the due process clause under the original meaning of the 14th, do away with the anchor baby and other expansionist rulings combined with a modern immigration policy that protects national interests and allows for screening of immigrants using the same standards for all.
Return the education system to state control.
Any more suggestions from anyone?
If we don't initiate a States called for Article-V, the government will initiate one against us.
Source; https://capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/newsom-proposes-28th-amendment-to-constitution-marginalize-2nd-amendment-take-away-states-rights/
Newsom Proposes 28th Amendment to Constitution: Marginalize 2nd Amendment—Take Away States RightsJune 8, 2023 By Stephen Frank 2 CommentsCalifornia, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Seattle and other cities run by the Democrats have massive crime problems—with leaders that have defunded the cops, taken away their ability to protect the public. So The Hollywood Slicky has decided he wants a national crime wave, not just in Democrat controlled cities and States. To do so he wants a 29th Amendment to the Constitution. He couldn’t convince Dianne Feinstein to give up her gun, so why should you? Pelosi has armed guards at her home—as does Newsom.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!If he was serious about “gun control” he would have the guns of his security detail taken away from them, until then he is just another Progressive hypocrite (remember the French Laundry, his children going to school while he blocked YOUR children from receiving an education)
The fun part is that the message below was sent by text, not even email—but it does not say who paid for it—Newsom for President, Newsom for Governor, the State of California (the taxpayers)? Who paid for this?
Newsom Proposes 28th Amendment to Constitution: Marginalize 2nd Amendment—Take Away States Rights
Newsom Proposes 28th Amendment to Constitution: Marginalize 2nd Amendment—Take Away States RightsJune 8, 2023 By Stephen Frank 2 CommentsCalifornia, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Seattle and other cities run by the Democrats have massive crime problems—with leaders that have defunded the cops, taken away their ability to protect the public. So The Hollywood Slicky has decided he wants a national crime wave, not just in Democrat controlled cities and States. To do so he wants a 29th Amendment to the Constitution. He couldn’t convince Dianne Feinstein to give up her gun, so why should you? Pelosi has armed guards at her home—as does Newsom.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!If he was serious about “gun control” he would have the guns of his security detail taken away from them, until then he is just another Progressive hypocrite (remember the French Laundry, his children going to school while he blocked YOUR children from receiving an education)
The fun part is that the message below was sent by text, not even email—but it does not say who paid for it—Newsom for President, Newsom for Governor, the State of California (the taxpayers)? Who paid for this?
Newsom Proposes 28th Amendment to Constitution: Marginalize 2nd Amendment—Take Away States Rights
Gavin Newsom, 6/8/23
“Hey , Gavin Newsom here. Writing to let you know California will be
taking the first step to amend the United States Constitution on guns.
The 28th Amendment will: raise the minimum age to buy a firearm,
mandate universal background checks, institute a reasonable waiting
period for gun purchases, and ban civilian purchase of assault
weapons.
We need 33 more states to get it done.
That’s why I am asking for your help:
Will you sign my petition supporting a Constitutional amendment on gun
violence? It’s a small and simple act, but will send a powerful
message about the size and strength of this effort.
Add your name here: https://act.gavinnewsom.com/go/cons-amendment
Congress has not done enough. The courts prevent Congress and the
states from doing what has to be done.
Given that reality, it’s up to us — together — to act.
The 28th Amendment.
It’s time.
Add your name if you agree: https://act.gavinnewsom.com/go/cons-amendment
Thanks. – Gavin Newsom
Editors Note;
As you can see, the opposition is actually planning to go through with the Soros plan to modify our Constitution and take away our rights. The idea of a 'Convention of States" is too unwieldly and slow acting. We must strike first and demand our State Legislatures petition Congress for an Article-V Amendment Proposal Convention. The Convention to fix the many things that have stripped the power from the States and People. The Second Amendment being what first needs to be addressed before the conniving politicians repeal it, or modify it to the point it becomes useless. The Second item needs to be TERM LIMITS. The Third needs to be a Balanced Budget Amendment to force Congress to quit the spending spree they are on.
Here is a possible way to secure our rights and the Second Amendment;
“Hey , Gavin Newsom here. Writing to let you know California will be
taking the first step to amend the United States Constitution on guns.
The 28th Amendment will: raise the minimum age to buy a firearm,
mandate universal background checks, institute a reasonable waiting
period for gun purchases, and ban civilian purchase of assault
weapons.
We need 33 more states to get it done.
That’s why I am asking for your help:
Will you sign my petition supporting a Constitutional amendment on gun
violence? It’s a small and simple act, but will send a powerful
message about the size and strength of this effort.
Add your name here: https://act.gavinnewsom.com/go/cons-amendment
Congress has not done enough. The courts prevent Congress and the
states from doing what has to be done.
Given that reality, it’s up to us — together — to act.
The 28th Amendment.
It’s time.
Add your name if you agree: https://act.gavinnewsom.com/go/cons-amendment
Thanks. – Gavin Newsom
Editors Note;
As you can see, the opposition is actually planning to go through with the Soros plan to modify our Constitution and take away our rights. The idea of a 'Convention of States" is too unwieldly and slow acting. We must strike first and demand our State Legislatures petition Congress for an Article-V Amendment Proposal Convention. The Convention to fix the many things that have stripped the power from the States and People. The Second Amendment being what first needs to be addressed before the conniving politicians repeal it, or modify it to the point it becomes useless. The Second item needs to be TERM LIMITS. The Third needs to be a Balanced Budget Amendment to force Congress to quit the spending spree they are on.
Here is a possible way to secure our rights and the Second Amendment;
In addition to that clear and concise wording that prevents all government from creating new laws or regulations about guns and forbidding governments from enforcing existing laws and regulations, unless by a 3/4 affirmative vote of the public, those laws or regulations are permitted by the public.
How Alabama Secures Elections
Suggestion and workable solution to the Elections Fraud potential:
From Jim Coles, on how to eliminate as much fraud and problems in election system as possible;
Here's how we vote in Alabama...
A state-issued ID is required to;
a. Register & before a name goes the rolls the ID card number, personal biography of person & his/her address is verified.
b. Once verified, the person is sent a voter registration card with a pre-paid postal return to the registrar stub that must be signed & signature on file is compared to the one on the return stub.
c. Mail ins are allowed only for absentee voting & absentee ballots are allowed only in specific circumstances, and all must be post marked NLT 7 PM on election day & received not later than noon the day after election. Absentee ballots go directly from the post office to the county ballot counting center at the county seat. Military absentee ballots mailed special delivery both ways & require verified signatures & the vote by the military member must be witnessed by the unit voting officer who sends the ballots to the counting center in a sealed pouch provided by the AL Secretary of State.
d. Otherwise, all votes in AL are made on election day. At a polling station. In person.
e. Two forms of ID are required to vote. A state issued ID & the registration card, or the ID and any of 27 different documents with the correct name & address matching what's on the voter roll.
f. The voter declares his/her political party, signs for a party specific ballot ( both party ballots have party candidates, & amendment/issues are printed identically printed.
g. Each voter must mark & sign his/her ballot. By hand with a pen containing ink our optical character reader counting machines can read. These pens are controlled items & must be accounted for.
h. Ballots go into the OCR/counting machine. Which counts ballots on the master screen by number of ballots not party.
i. I am the voting control clerk at the main precinct in Elba. During voting hours I observe all voters & assist as necessary getting one vote at a time into the machine.
j. If a voter makes a mistake or marks improperly (over or under votes) & wants a re-do I take the voter & ballot to our precinct supervisor who issues a new ballot & puts the spoiled ballot into a special bag.
k. After the polls close I run seven results print outs & give them to the supervisor. Then the ballots are removed from the security boxing the machine. I count the ballots, separate them by party, & compare raw/gross ballots to the machine count; then compare party specific ballots to the machine count by party. Those counts must agree.
l. Then all seven poll workers review my counts vs what voters signed for. If all counts agree the ballots are sealed in a metal box with a keyed padlock, and all other election materials go into sealed bags & All the materials go into a single box that is also sealed.m. This post-closing process takes about 45 minutes. When the supervisor is satisfied a deputy sheriff escorts her (in our case a sweet old lady) & the materials to the counting center where she signs chain of custody documents & turns the materials over to the county voting coordinator. Ballots boxes are unlocked & one team counts physical ballots by raw count & party, & a other team runs the OCR/counting machine thumb drives info. Again, all numbers must match.
n. The county consolidated counting is a public event. County party chairpersons get to observe as close as two feet from the counting teams. The media get to also be up close on the counting. Usually, 150-300 members of the public watch, as well.
o. In our county total results are usually tallied in 90 minutes or so. Then the data is sent by closed INTRANET to the Secretary of State's Office. Then follows a series of verbal back & forth to verify various elements in the counts.
p. Finally, the Sheriff & two deputies deliver the official election documents to the Sec State himself NLT 10 am the day after the election.
q. The ballots, in their metal boxes are stored for four years in the safe room at the county seat courthouse.
Can't get much more secure than this!!
From Jim Coles, on how to eliminate as much fraud and problems in election system as possible;
Here's how we vote in Alabama...
A state-issued ID is required to;
a. Register & before a name goes the rolls the ID card number, personal biography of person & his/her address is verified.
b. Once verified, the person is sent a voter registration card with a pre-paid postal return to the registrar stub that must be signed & signature on file is compared to the one on the return stub.
c. Mail ins are allowed only for absentee voting & absentee ballots are allowed only in specific circumstances, and all must be post marked NLT 7 PM on election day & received not later than noon the day after election. Absentee ballots go directly from the post office to the county ballot counting center at the county seat. Military absentee ballots mailed special delivery both ways & require verified signatures & the vote by the military member must be witnessed by the unit voting officer who sends the ballots to the counting center in a sealed pouch provided by the AL Secretary of State.
d. Otherwise, all votes in AL are made on election day. At a polling station. In person.
e. Two forms of ID are required to vote. A state issued ID & the registration card, or the ID and any of 27 different documents with the correct name & address matching what's on the voter roll.
f. The voter declares his/her political party, signs for a party specific ballot ( both party ballots have party candidates, & amendment/issues are printed identically printed.
g. Each voter must mark & sign his/her ballot. By hand with a pen containing ink our optical character reader counting machines can read. These pens are controlled items & must be accounted for.
h. Ballots go into the OCR/counting machine. Which counts ballots on the master screen by number of ballots not party.
i. I am the voting control clerk at the main precinct in Elba. During voting hours I observe all voters & assist as necessary getting one vote at a time into the machine.
j. If a voter makes a mistake or marks improperly (over or under votes) & wants a re-do I take the voter & ballot to our precinct supervisor who issues a new ballot & puts the spoiled ballot into a special bag.
k. After the polls close I run seven results print outs & give them to the supervisor. Then the ballots are removed from the security boxing the machine. I count the ballots, separate them by party, & compare raw/gross ballots to the machine count; then compare party specific ballots to the machine count by party. Those counts must agree.
l. Then all seven poll workers review my counts vs what voters signed for. If all counts agree the ballots are sealed in a metal box with a keyed padlock, and all other election materials go into sealed bags & All the materials go into a single box that is also sealed.m. This post-closing process takes about 45 minutes. When the supervisor is satisfied a deputy sheriff escorts her (in our case a sweet old lady) & the materials to the counting center where she signs chain of custody documents & turns the materials over to the county voting coordinator. Ballots boxes are unlocked & one team counts physical ballots by raw count & party, & a other team runs the OCR/counting machine thumb drives info. Again, all numbers must match.
n. The county consolidated counting is a public event. County party chairpersons get to observe as close as two feet from the counting teams. The media get to also be up close on the counting. Usually, 150-300 members of the public watch, as well.
o. In our county total results are usually tallied in 90 minutes or so. Then the data is sent by closed INTRANET to the Secretary of State's Office. Then follows a series of verbal back & forth to verify various elements in the counts.
p. Finally, the Sheriff & two deputies deliver the official election documents to the Sec State himself NLT 10 am the day after the election.
q. The ballots, in their metal boxes are stored for four years in the safe room at the county seat courthouse.
Can't get much more secure than this!!
Speaker McCarthy's Rotten Deal
POLITICALLY DAMAGING AGENDAS LIKE THIS, IGNORING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE FOR POLITICAL POWER, IS THE VERY REASON WHY WE NEED TO FORCE OUR STATE LEGISLATURES TO CALL FOR AN ARTICLE-V AMENDMENT PROPOSAL CONVENTION!
WE CAN ONLY TAKE BACK THE POWER WHICH HAS SYSTEMATICALLY BEEN STRIPPED FROM US BY CONGRESSIONAL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF PRIOR AMENDMENTS, AND POLITICISED COURT INTERPRETATIONS OF THOSE AMENDMENTS, AND THOSE INTERPRETATIONS BEING CONTRARY TO WHAT THE AMENDMENTS ORIGINAL PURPOSES WERE CREATED FOR.
WE CAN ONLY TAKE BACK THE POWER WHICH HAS SYSTEMATICALLY BEEN STRIPPED FROM US BY CONGRESSIONAL POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF PRIOR AMENDMENTS, AND POLITICISED COURT INTERPRETATIONS OF THOSE AMENDMENTS, AND THOSE INTERPRETATIONS BEING CONTRARY TO WHAT THE AMENDMENTS ORIGINAL PURPOSES WERE CREATED FOR.
Speaker McCarthy’s Rotten Deal…
By David Stockman
David Stockman's Contra Corner
June 3, 2023
If there was ever any doubt, now we know: Speaker Kevin McCarthy has straw for brains and a Twizzlers stick for a backbone. He was within perhaps a few days of breaking the iron grip of America’s fiscal doomsday machine, yet inexplicably he turned tail and threw in the towel for a mess of fiscal pottage.
We are referring, of course, to the impending moment when the US Treasury would have been forced to forgo scheduled vendor or beneficiary distributions in order to preserve incoming cash for interest payments and other priorities. That act of spending deferrals and prioritization would have obliterated the debt “default” canard once and for all, paving the way for a nascent fiscal opposition to regain control of the nation’s wretched public finances.
And there should be no doubt that we were damn close to that crystalizing moment. After all, Grandma Yellen herself forewarned just last week on Meet The Press that absent a debt ceiling increase, the Treasury Department would have to prioritize payments and leave some bills unpaid:
“And my assumption is that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, there will be hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid,” Yellen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press…….“We have to pay interest and principle on outstanding debt. We also have obligations to seniors who count on Social Security, our military that expects pay, contractors who’ve provided services to the federal government, and some bills have to go unpaid….”
And, of course, that prioritization and deferral could have been easily done. Federal receipts are now running about $450 billion per month, meaning that after paying $61 billion of interest, $128 billion for Social Security, $26 billion for Veterans and $47 billion for military pay and O&M there would still be $188 billion left to cover at least 50% of everything else.
That is to say, no sweat with respect to servicing the public debt, and a lot of sweat among the constituencies that would have had payments delayed or reduced.
So, yes, the GOP has truly earned the Stupid Party sobriquet. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Instead of spending days negotiating over the minutia of budgetary scams, tricks and slights-of-hand, which is the entirety of the McCarthy deal, they should have been demanding from the Treasury a detailed list of scheduled payments by day for the first few weeks in June. And then, in return for continued negotiations on meaningful spending cuts and reforms, demanded assurance from the White House that enough of these due bills would be temporarily stuck in the drawer (deferred), if necessary, to ensure payment of scheduled interest, Social Security, military pay and Veterans pensions.
That is to say, McCarthy had Sleepy Joe over the proverbial barrel. But instead of applying the wood to his political backside good and hard, the Speaker chose to hold Biden’s coat and help him get back up, praising the latter’s supercilious retainers as he did so.
For crying out loud. Upwards of 96% of Uncle Sam’s cash balance had been dissipated over the past year, guaranteeing that expected June collections of well more than $500 billion would not be enough to cover 100% of the scheduled due bills. Accordingly, just a couple of days of missed payments on selective items would have turned the Washington fiscal equation upside down.
The bogeyman of “debt default” would have been completely annihilated. And the legions of interest groups, businesses and individuals who suckle on the Federal teat month-in-and-month-out would have screamed to high heaven for relief, which McCarthy would have been positioned to provide to them…..at a price!
By David Stockman
David Stockman's Contra Corner
June 3, 2023
If there was ever any doubt, now we know: Speaker Kevin McCarthy has straw for brains and a Twizzlers stick for a backbone. He was within perhaps a few days of breaking the iron grip of America’s fiscal doomsday machine, yet inexplicably he turned tail and threw in the towel for a mess of fiscal pottage.
We are referring, of course, to the impending moment when the US Treasury would have been forced to forgo scheduled vendor or beneficiary distributions in order to preserve incoming cash for interest payments and other priorities. That act of spending deferrals and prioritization would have obliterated the debt “default” canard once and for all, paving the way for a nascent fiscal opposition to regain control of the nation’s wretched public finances.
And there should be no doubt that we were damn close to that crystalizing moment. After all, Grandma Yellen herself forewarned just last week on Meet The Press that absent a debt ceiling increase, the Treasury Department would have to prioritize payments and leave some bills unpaid:
“And my assumption is that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, there will be hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid,” Yellen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press…….“We have to pay interest and principle on outstanding debt. We also have obligations to seniors who count on Social Security, our military that expects pay, contractors who’ve provided services to the federal government, and some bills have to go unpaid….”
And, of course, that prioritization and deferral could have been easily done. Federal receipts are now running about $450 billion per month, meaning that after paying $61 billion of interest, $128 billion for Social Security, $26 billion for Veterans and $47 billion for military pay and O&M there would still be $188 billion left to cover at least 50% of everything else.
That is to say, no sweat with respect to servicing the public debt, and a lot of sweat among the constituencies that would have had payments delayed or reduced.
So, yes, the GOP has truly earned the Stupid Party sobriquet. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Instead of spending days negotiating over the minutia of budgetary scams, tricks and slights-of-hand, which is the entirety of the McCarthy deal, they should have been demanding from the Treasury a detailed list of scheduled payments by day for the first few weeks in June. And then, in return for continued negotiations on meaningful spending cuts and reforms, demanded assurance from the White House that enough of these due bills would be temporarily stuck in the drawer (deferred), if necessary, to ensure payment of scheduled interest, Social Security, military pay and Veterans pensions.
That is to say, McCarthy had Sleepy Joe over the proverbial barrel. But instead of applying the wood to his political backside good and hard, the Speaker chose to hold Biden’s coat and help him get back up, praising the latter’s supercilious retainers as he did so.
For crying out loud. Upwards of 96% of Uncle Sam’s cash balance had been dissipated over the past year, guaranteeing that expected June collections of well more than $500 billion would not be enough to cover 100% of the scheduled due bills. Accordingly, just a couple of days of missed payments on selective items would have turned the Washington fiscal equation upside down.
The bogeyman of “debt default” would have been completely annihilated. And the legions of interest groups, businesses and individuals who suckle on the Federal teat month-in-and-month-out would have screamed to high heaven for relief, which McCarthy would have been positioned to provide to them…..at a price!
Needless to say, the “price” in question has nothing to do with the risible budgetary trivia that passes for the Speaker’s compromise deal. For instance, does the GOP think voters are actually stupid enough to buy the rescission of $28 billion of left-over Covid budget authority, which probably wouldn’t have been spent anyway, when these “saved” funds are to be recycled into FY 2024 appropriations but not counted against the ceiling?
That’s Swamp Creature math, and arrogance, too, like never before.
Even Goldman Sachs says that the budgetary impact of the deal amounts to a pure rounding error in the scheme of things:
The spending deal looks likely to reduce spending by 0.1-0.2% of GDP yoy in 2024 and 2025, compared with a baseline in which funding grows with inflation.
Here’s the point. CBO’s most recent projection shows new deficits of $20.3 trillion over the 10-year budget window—and that’s based on Rosy Scenario economics with no recession, inflation gone away and only gently rising interest rates. Throw-in even a modest dose of realism about the economics and back-out the huge tax increases and spending cuts built into the out-year baseline, which will never be permitted to actually materialize, and you have a de facto public debt of $55 trillion by the early 2030s or more than 200% of the current GDP.
What that amounts to is a long-term structural fiscal equation which is a guaranteed route to financial and political disaster. Thus, CBO’s end year numbers (FY 2033) show current policy receipts at 18.1% of GDP and spending at 25.3% of GDP.
Folks, you can’t borrow 7.3% of GDP every year from now until eternity and get away with it; and most especially not when American society is plunging into a 100 million strong baby boom retirement wave—accompanied by a shrinking work force and tax base owing to collapsing birth rates and Washington’s idiotic migrant worker internment camps at the southern border.Stated differently, fiscal governance in Washington is totally kaput. They never pass an annual budget resolution and enforcement plan, which was taken as a sacred duty back in the day; and there are never even annual appropriations bills for the mere 25% of the budget still subject to the Congressional “power of the purse”.Instead, what occurs is a perennial string of short-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs) followed by an 11th hour, 3000 page pork-ridden “Omnibus Appropriations” bill that no one has read and which gives log-rolling (i.e. more domestic for more defense) a new definition.
In short, the debt ceiling was the only fiscal control mechanism left. And even that has been neutered time after time in the last decade by the hideous, flat-out lie that if the Treasury on any given day is one dollar short of being able to cover all of its due bills it must default on each and every one of them including interest payments, thereby destroying the credit of the United States. Yada, yada.
Finally, that lie was being put to the test and would have been eviscerated sometime next week. Yet after a lifetime on the public teat, Kevin McCarthy like his two GOP predecessors surrendered to the Doomsday Machine because he works for the GOP wing of the Swamp, not the voters, current and future.
And he did so while expectorating the most risible of lies:
Republicans are changing the culture and trajectory of Washington—and we’re just getting started.
Not close. Not in the ballpark or even the catcher’s box behind home plate.
The deal does absolutely nothing to change the current “trajectory” toward fiscal disaster because it reduces nary a dime of built-in spending for defense, entitlements/mandatories, veterans and net interest, while those items account for 89% of the $80 trillion of built-in spending over the next decade.
Current 10-Year CBO Baseline for FY 2024-2033:
The schedule below computes to a 52% expansion in just seven years, with Biden getting his full request for FY 2024 under the McCarthy deal.
As it happens, the subsequent FY 2024-2033 spending total for national defense according to the CBO projection is now $10 trillion. The deal does not reduce that by one red cent, either.
In this context it might be noted that FY 2024 defense outlays rise by 11.5% versus the 3.3% gain in defense budget authority advertised for the deal. Of course, that’s because the budgetary tricksters on Capitol Hill never stop their con job.
In fact, the uniparty raised defense budget authority by a whopping $76 billion or 9.7% in FY 2023, which base was incorporated into the more modest gain for FY 2024. But, alas, the cash outlays (which lag) from the FY 2023 appropriations eruption will happen notwithstanding the deal’s budget authority cap for FY 2024.
Back on the farm, that was called closing the barn door after the horses already left.
OMB Record of National Defense Outlays, FY 2017 to FY 2023 and McCarthy Deal Amount for FY 2024:
Actually, as it turns out, CBO is counting. And it concludes that the new exemptions from the food stamps work requirement for veterans, homeless people and young people leaving foster care will cost more than the savings from raising the age cut off for everyone else.
That is to say, the GOP negotiators started with -$130 billion of CBO certified savings in the House based bill and ended up with a +$2 billion increase over 10-years!
And McCarthy says he’s bending the trajectory? Bending over, bar of soap at the ready, is more like it.
Alas, the liberals are no better. They are whining to high heaven about this sensible increase in the working age to 54 years, yet this change would only impact 700,000 able bodied adults, who constitute just 1.7% of current food stamp enrollments.
Indeed, here is a list of the major entitlement programs which are left unscathed by the McCarthy deal. They account for 98% of the CBO baseline for mandatories/entitlements over the FY 2024- 2033:
10-Year Baseline Spending That The McCarthy Deal Leaves Unscathed:
Moreover, the resulting hall pass for the remaining $48.29 trillion of built-in mandatory spending was not issued owing to the intransigence of the White House negotiators. Fully 97.3% of the CBO baseline amount for mandatory/entitlement spending was given a no cuts exemption by the GOP caucus, even before they brought their phony “Limit, Save, Grow Act” to the floor last month.
That’s right. The CBO baseline for what amounts to the heart of the Fiscal Doomsday Machine is projected to grow from $3.98 trillion in FY 2023 to $6.14 trillion in FY 2033. And yet the only savings the GOP chose to even table was $130 billion of work requirement savings from Medicaid, foods stamps and family assistance. And when you count the expanded work exemptions, fully 102% of those meager savings were left on the cutting room floor of the White House negotiations.
Then again, an even more complete capitulation occurred on the two items in the original House GOP bill that actually saved a meaningful amount of money. For instance, the GOP cancellation of Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan would have saved $320 billion according to CBO, which savings evaporated to $0.0 billion under the McCarthy deal.
Likewise, there could be no greater blow for free market efficiency and fiscal sanity than the House GOP’s original provision to cancel the ridiculously generous tax credits for overwhelmingly inefficient solar, windmill and electrification investments. These measures designed to save the planet from the phony Climate Crisis were originally guesstimated to cost $270 billion over 10-years when Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act was passed last year.
But in response to the House-passed debt ceiling plan in late April, Congress’ official tax scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), updated its estimates, pegging the costs at $570 billion from 2023 to 2033, or roughly double its original estimate. And that’s nothing compared to a new estimate from researchers at the Brookings Institution, which puts the revenue loss at more than $1 trillion over the coming decade.
So. Pray tell what did McCarthy’s pitiful negotiators do in response to the good news that the House-approved plan would shrink the deficit by up to $1 trillion over a decade?
Why, they effectively said, “just kidding!” We will keep bashing these senseless give-a-ways out on the political hustings, but all the green energy interest groups can keep sending their bribe money to the Dems because these huge tax subsidies will remain in place.
As we said, the Stupid Party is driving toward a cliff with its eyes-wide shut.
We truly cannot believe that a majority of the GOP House caucus is bone-headed enough to fall for the McCarthy deal. But if they do the GOP will have forfeited the last chance to stop the nation’s rush toward fiscal armageddon.
Indeed, if the plan is approved the debt ceiling will take its place along side of budget resolutions and annual appropriations bills in the dead letter office of fiscal governance. The only thing the “compromise” pretends to cut is domestic discretionary appropriations excluding veterans health care and when all the gimmicks are peeled away, the IRS, too.
The GOP claims they froze FY 2024 nondefense appropriations below the FY 2023 level, but the so-called freeze is actually loophole-ridden in the fine print and is not binding after FY 2025. And, not surprisingly, these unenforceable “targets” for the out-years (FY 2026-2033) account for 90% of the purported “savings”.
Holy moly. At least the 2011 debt ceiling deal had a 10-year enforcement mechanism based on automatic sequestration. As it happened they loop-holed their way around these caps with “emergency” spending and other exempt gimmicks, and even then the result was a blithering joke.
In return for the debt ceiling increase, appropriated defense and nondefense spending was to be limited to $8.45 trillion over the next 10-years. The actual level, as it turned out, was $10.60 trillion. That is to say, these fakers missed their targets by $2.15 trillion or 25% over the period!
As it also turned out, once the GOP got back into the White House and took partial control of Congress, nondefense discretionary spending literally went into orbit. Here is the path from Obama’s FY 2017 outgoing budget to FY 2023. That’s up by 53%, and now these cats have the gall to call it a freeze!
Non-defense Discretionary Outlays:
As we said, the “compromise deal” is a hideous joke, and Kevin McCarthy truly does have sawdust for brains and a Twizzlers stick for a backbone.
There is no other way to interpret the facts. In fact, just five months into his Speakership, McCarthy has already earned his place on the Wall of Shame right along side of Speaker John Boehner and Speaker Paul Ryan.
Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
The Best of David Stockman
Former Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA. He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing every morning.
That’s Swamp Creature math, and arrogance, too, like never before.
Even Goldman Sachs says that the budgetary impact of the deal amounts to a pure rounding error in the scheme of things:
The spending deal looks likely to reduce spending by 0.1-0.2% of GDP yoy in 2024 and 2025, compared with a baseline in which funding grows with inflation.
Here’s the point. CBO’s most recent projection shows new deficits of $20.3 trillion over the 10-year budget window—and that’s based on Rosy Scenario economics with no recession, inflation gone away and only gently rising interest rates. Throw-in even a modest dose of realism about the economics and back-out the huge tax increases and spending cuts built into the out-year baseline, which will never be permitted to actually materialize, and you have a de facto public debt of $55 trillion by the early 2030s or more than 200% of the current GDP.
What that amounts to is a long-term structural fiscal equation which is a guaranteed route to financial and political disaster. Thus, CBO’s end year numbers (FY 2033) show current policy receipts at 18.1% of GDP and spending at 25.3% of GDP.
Folks, you can’t borrow 7.3% of GDP every year from now until eternity and get away with it; and most especially not when American society is plunging into a 100 million strong baby boom retirement wave—accompanied by a shrinking work force and tax base owing to collapsing birth rates and Washington’s idiotic migrant worker internment camps at the southern border.Stated differently, fiscal governance in Washington is totally kaput. They never pass an annual budget resolution and enforcement plan, which was taken as a sacred duty back in the day; and there are never even annual appropriations bills for the mere 25% of the budget still subject to the Congressional “power of the purse”.Instead, what occurs is a perennial string of short-term Continuing Resolutions (CRs) followed by an 11th hour, 3000 page pork-ridden “Omnibus Appropriations” bill that no one has read and which gives log-rolling (i.e. more domestic for more defense) a new definition.
In short, the debt ceiling was the only fiscal control mechanism left. And even that has been neutered time after time in the last decade by the hideous, flat-out lie that if the Treasury on any given day is one dollar short of being able to cover all of its due bills it must default on each and every one of them including interest payments, thereby destroying the credit of the United States. Yada, yada.
Finally, that lie was being put to the test and would have been eviscerated sometime next week. Yet after a lifetime on the public teat, Kevin McCarthy like his two GOP predecessors surrendered to the Doomsday Machine because he works for the GOP wing of the Swamp, not the voters, current and future.
And he did so while expectorating the most risible of lies:
Republicans are changing the culture and trajectory of Washington—and we’re just getting started.
Not close. Not in the ballpark or even the catcher’s box behind home plate.
The deal does absolutely nothing to change the current “trajectory” toward fiscal disaster because it reduces nary a dime of built-in spending for defense, entitlements/mandatories, veterans and net interest, while those items account for 89% of the $80 trillion of built-in spending over the next decade.
Current 10-Year CBO Baseline for FY 2024-2033:
- Revenues: $60 trillion;
- Spending: $80 trillion;
- New Debt: $20 trillion;
- Mandatory Spending & Net Interest: $59 trillion;
- Discretionary Spending for Defense & Veterans: $12 trillion;
- Total Spending Exempted From Cuts in McCarthy Deal: $71 trillion;
- % of Baseline Spending Exempted From Cuts: 89%
The schedule below computes to a 52% expansion in just seven years, with Biden getting his full request for FY 2024 under the McCarthy deal.
As it happens, the subsequent FY 2024-2033 spending total for national defense according to the CBO projection is now $10 trillion. The deal does not reduce that by one red cent, either.
In this context it might be noted that FY 2024 defense outlays rise by 11.5% versus the 3.3% gain in defense budget authority advertised for the deal. Of course, that’s because the budgetary tricksters on Capitol Hill never stop their con job.
In fact, the uniparty raised defense budget authority by a whopping $76 billion or 9.7% in FY 2023, which base was incorporated into the more modest gain for FY 2024. But, alas, the cash outlays (which lag) from the FY 2023 appropriations eruption will happen notwithstanding the deal’s budget authority cap for FY 2024.
Back on the farm, that was called closing the barn door after the horses already left.
OMB Record of National Defense Outlays, FY 2017 to FY 2023 and McCarthy Deal Amount for FY 2024:
- FY 2017: $599 billion;
- FY 2018: $631 billion;
- FY 2019: $686 billion;
- FY 2020: $725 billion;
- FY 2021: $754 billion;
- FY 2022: $766 billion;
- FY 2023: $815 billion;
- FY 2024P: $909 billion.
Actually, as it turns out, CBO is counting. And it concludes that the new exemptions from the food stamps work requirement for veterans, homeless people and young people leaving foster care will cost more than the savings from raising the age cut off for everyone else.
That is to say, the GOP negotiators started with -$130 billion of CBO certified savings in the House based bill and ended up with a +$2 billion increase over 10-years!
And McCarthy says he’s bending the trajectory? Bending over, bar of soap at the ready, is more like it.
Alas, the liberals are no better. They are whining to high heaven about this sensible increase in the working age to 54 years, yet this change would only impact 700,000 able bodied adults, who constitute just 1.7% of current food stamp enrollments.
Indeed, here is a list of the major entitlement programs which are left unscathed by the McCarthy deal. They account for 98% of the CBO baseline for mandatories/entitlements over the FY 2024- 2033:
10-Year Baseline Spending That The McCarthy Deal Leaves Unscathed:
- Social Security: $18.8 trillion;
- Medicare: $14.8 trillion;
- Medicaid, Obamacare and Child Health: $8.0 trillion;
- Veterans Disability and Comp: $3.0 trillion;
- Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Credit: $0.9 trillion;
- Aid to Aged, Blind and Disabled: $0.7 trillion;
- Military retirement: $0.9 trillion;
- Total Mandatories Unscathed: $47.1 trillion;
- % of CBO Mandatories Baseline: 98%;
Moreover, the resulting hall pass for the remaining $48.29 trillion of built-in mandatory spending was not issued owing to the intransigence of the White House negotiators. Fully 97.3% of the CBO baseline amount for mandatory/entitlement spending was given a no cuts exemption by the GOP caucus, even before they brought their phony “Limit, Save, Grow Act” to the floor last month.
That’s right. The CBO baseline for what amounts to the heart of the Fiscal Doomsday Machine is projected to grow from $3.98 trillion in FY 2023 to $6.14 trillion in FY 2033. And yet the only savings the GOP chose to even table was $130 billion of work requirement savings from Medicaid, foods stamps and family assistance. And when you count the expanded work exemptions, fully 102% of those meager savings were left on the cutting room floor of the White House negotiations.
Then again, an even more complete capitulation occurred on the two items in the original House GOP bill that actually saved a meaningful amount of money. For instance, the GOP cancellation of Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan would have saved $320 billion according to CBO, which savings evaporated to $0.0 billion under the McCarthy deal.
Likewise, there could be no greater blow for free market efficiency and fiscal sanity than the House GOP’s original provision to cancel the ridiculously generous tax credits for overwhelmingly inefficient solar, windmill and electrification investments. These measures designed to save the planet from the phony Climate Crisis were originally guesstimated to cost $270 billion over 10-years when Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act was passed last year.
But in response to the House-passed debt ceiling plan in late April, Congress’ official tax scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), updated its estimates, pegging the costs at $570 billion from 2023 to 2033, or roughly double its original estimate. And that’s nothing compared to a new estimate from researchers at the Brookings Institution, which puts the revenue loss at more than $1 trillion over the coming decade.
So. Pray tell what did McCarthy’s pitiful negotiators do in response to the good news that the House-approved plan would shrink the deficit by up to $1 trillion over a decade?
Why, they effectively said, “just kidding!” We will keep bashing these senseless give-a-ways out on the political hustings, but all the green energy interest groups can keep sending their bribe money to the Dems because these huge tax subsidies will remain in place.
As we said, the Stupid Party is driving toward a cliff with its eyes-wide shut.
We truly cannot believe that a majority of the GOP House caucus is bone-headed enough to fall for the McCarthy deal. But if they do the GOP will have forfeited the last chance to stop the nation’s rush toward fiscal armageddon.
Indeed, if the plan is approved the debt ceiling will take its place along side of budget resolutions and annual appropriations bills in the dead letter office of fiscal governance. The only thing the “compromise” pretends to cut is domestic discretionary appropriations excluding veterans health care and when all the gimmicks are peeled away, the IRS, too.
The GOP claims they froze FY 2024 nondefense appropriations below the FY 2023 level, but the so-called freeze is actually loophole-ridden in the fine print and is not binding after FY 2025. And, not surprisingly, these unenforceable “targets” for the out-years (FY 2026-2033) account for 90% of the purported “savings”.
Holy moly. At least the 2011 debt ceiling deal had a 10-year enforcement mechanism based on automatic sequestration. As it happened they loop-holed their way around these caps with “emergency” spending and other exempt gimmicks, and even then the result was a blithering joke.
In return for the debt ceiling increase, appropriated defense and nondefense spending was to be limited to $8.45 trillion over the next 10-years. The actual level, as it turned out, was $10.60 trillion. That is to say, these fakers missed their targets by $2.15 trillion or 25% over the period!
As it also turned out, once the GOP got back into the White House and took partial control of Congress, nondefense discretionary spending literally went into orbit. Here is the path from Obama’s FY 2017 outgoing budget to FY 2023. That’s up by 53%, and now these cats have the gall to call it a freeze!
Non-defense Discretionary Outlays:
- FY 2017: $610 billion;
- FY 2018: $639 billion;
- FY 2019: $661 billion;
- FY 2020 $914 billion;
- FY 2021 $895 billion;
- FY 2022: $912 billion;
- FY 2023: $936 billion;
- 6-Year Increase: +53%
As we said, the “compromise deal” is a hideous joke, and Kevin McCarthy truly does have sawdust for brains and a Twizzlers stick for a backbone.
There is no other way to interpret the facts. In fact, just five months into his Speakership, McCarthy has already earned his place on the Wall of Shame right along side of Speaker John Boehner and Speaker Paul Ryan.
Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
The Best of David Stockman
Former Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA. He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing every morning.
Dum-Da-Dum-Dum… Dah
Sent by MeRobert
Dum-Da-Dum-Dum… DahBy James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler.com
May 20, 2023
“After all, this was a collective effort. In Washington, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the less culpable it becomes. They all did it, so no one did.” —Jonathan Turley
Historians of the future, boiling up a nice spring bouillabaisse of nettles, cattail tubers, and frogs over their campfires, will pore over John Durham’s mystifying RussiaGate report for clues as to what begat the smoldering wreck of the legal system that once girded all the rough-and-ready ways of the old America, turning us into a land of simpering zombies. There was, apparently, a strange, Satanic cult called the FBI that cast a spell over the land, giving license to wickedness and depravity that transformed a once-upright folk into liars, until nobody knew what was the right way to do anything anymore….
Of course, we do not live in the future, only on the thrilling edge of it, and it is still possible to see through the fog of mystification creeping over our lives. Though one Rachel Maddow yet raves on, and the FBI still sends SWAT teams hither and yon to cow the righteous, and an evil mummy resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, our country knows the score. It was hoaxed, played, bamboozled. A trip was laid on us. The law was turned against the people by the very officers of the courts: the lawyers. Shakespeare had the right idea — and forgive me for not spelling it out (but consult Henry VI, Part I, Scene II at your leisure).
Yes, John Durham’s report was a disappointment, but isn’t it obvious that he was already done-in by the bootless prosecutions last year of Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko in the gangrenous DC district federal court, which sent the message: Hey, why bother, pal? Any additional cases against the likes of James Comey, Peter Stzrok, Andrew McCabe, and the rest of the gang would have resulted in the greatest exhibition of memory-loss ever seen in the annals of jurisprudence. And, as to expecting the government to produce documents in evidence… well, who amongst us can hold his breath for, say, seventy-five years.
It is impossible for now to know the constraints placed on Mr. Durham by Attorney General Merrick Garland — though it appears that Mr. Garland is just the latest initiate into the years-long shuck-and-jive that amounts to a seditious conspiracy against the republic. That is, add Mr. Garland to the long list of officials who have a lot at risk and a lot to hide, so he’s used his vested powers to hamstring Mr. Durham. But the heart of the story is out, despite all that, and pretty baldly stated: Hillary Clinton started the whole RussiaGate gag to take the heat off her own turpitudes. The federal agency heads and their lieutenants avidly used Hillary’s concocted falsehoods to foment malicious prosecutions and drive the naively accommodating President Trump out of office, and stopped at nothing until they succeeded.
There it is. We will now have to muddle through and go forward, a savagely deformed polity. Still, it will be edifying to see Mr. Durham testify before The House Judiciary Committee next week, as Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has requested. Mr. Durham may even wish to use the opportunity to redeem his tarnished reputation. Some items for review: Why did Mr. Durham omit to investigate the deceitful Mueller team (especially its actual director, Andrew Weissmann), which was an obvious cover-up operation? Ditto: the role played by President Barack Obama in the scheme to interfere in the 2016 election? Ditto: the operation to hide and then discredit Hunter Biden’s crime-stuffed laptop during the 2020 presidential election? Ditto: what has been the CIA’s role in all of this? I believe Mr. Durham will provide many interesting answers to these queries. It may be the only forum that will ever avail him to speak honestly.
Presumably the House Judiciary Committee members are lawyers, and have a host of aide lawyers to fall back on for legal advice. Can someone please ask Mr. Durham why he did not bring a charge of conspiracy to commit sedition under the RICO act against the whole gang of RussiaGate players based on the “enterprise rationale” that the evidence suggests they were all vested in an effort to defenestrate a sitting president?
We will go forward from this whether we like it or not, of course, because the arrow of time flies only in that direction. What is the best way out of this wilderness of dishonor and disgrace? Take a lesson from the campaign, so far, of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The way Mr. Kennedy has been straight-talking — around the coordinated slanders and scurrilities of an ignoble news media — he makes the current leadership of the Democratic Party look like the most pathetic claque of rascally whack-jobs ever assembled under a gonfalon. Keep your eye on RFK, Jr. He’s moving downfield, even without blocking.
Side-note or post-script, for those interested in how the vaccination story is going: A close friend went into the CVS pharmacy looking for a “get well soon” card. There were none. A clerk on-hand right there in the aisle said, “we can’t keep them in stock.” No “sympathy” cards either. Draw your conclusions.
Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.
Editors Note;
In my opinion, the situation we have been subject to is now so far out of hand, the only legal and non-violent response to correct it is, for a States petitioned for Article-V Amendment Proposal Convention, and the convention geared to creating new, and possibly repealing existing Amendments like the 16th and 17th, to return the proper checks and balances to our governance. Not doing this could possibly lead to a civil insurrection with everyone the losers.
"US Supreme Court Allows Illinois Gun Control Law/Red Flag Law to Remain in Effect."
Considering their latest ruling; "US Supreme Court Allows Illinois Gun Control Law/Red Flag Law to Remain in Effect." https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-supreme-court-allows-illinois-gun-control-law-to-remain-in-effect_5272387.html?src_src=Morningbrief&src_cmp=mb-2023-05-18&est=zFqgRl5CgHgsMTAv6gTsCpEcUVKjeWgpIFeph7gkE9uYiF0n8hl8m%2Bl%2BqSGBMOWo815M3Q%3D%3D
That action by the Supreme Court, is specifically why I propose a States Petitioned For Article-V Amendment Proposal Convention. The Supreme Court and lesser courts by their rulings, consistently ignore the clear "shall not be infringed" portion of the 2nd Amendment. I propose an Amendment that blocks any modification of the 2nd Amendment, and clearly takes the power of modification or change away from the Governments and Courts, putting it directly in the hands of American Citizens. It has to be done by the people under the auspices of Article-V of the Constitution, because the Congress in my opinion, would never propose such an Amendment. A States Petitioned For Article-V also prevents Congress from changing or modifying Amendment Proposals.
Proposed Amendment; The Federal, State, and Local Governments, are hereby Expressly Prohibited from Enacting or Enforcing ANY: New or Existing Law or Regulation on; Firearms, Firearm Types, Firearm Accessories, Ammunitions, Ammunition Types, Magazines, Magazine Types, or Magazine Capacities. Unless they have specific approval to do so by a 3/4 vote of the American Citizens to Approve the Enactment or Change, or Enforce those Laws or Regulations already in existence. The Supreme Court and all Lesser Courts are also Expressly Prohibited from Ruling On, or Modifying this Clearly Stated Amendment.
That action by the Supreme Court, is specifically why I propose a States Petitioned For Article-V Amendment Proposal Convention. The Supreme Court and lesser courts by their rulings, consistently ignore the clear "shall not be infringed" portion of the 2nd Amendment. I propose an Amendment that blocks any modification of the 2nd Amendment, and clearly takes the power of modification or change away from the Governments and Courts, putting it directly in the hands of American Citizens. It has to be done by the people under the auspices of Article-V of the Constitution, because the Congress in my opinion, would never propose such an Amendment. A States Petitioned For Article-V also prevents Congress from changing or modifying Amendment Proposals.
Proposed Amendment; The Federal, State, and Local Governments, are hereby Expressly Prohibited from Enacting or Enforcing ANY: New or Existing Law or Regulation on; Firearms, Firearm Types, Firearm Accessories, Ammunitions, Ammunition Types, Magazines, Magazine Types, or Magazine Capacities. Unless they have specific approval to do so by a 3/4 vote of the American Citizens to Approve the Enactment or Change, or Enforce those Laws or Regulations already in existence. The Supreme Court and all Lesser Courts are also Expressly Prohibited from Ruling On, or Modifying this Clearly Stated Amendment.
A Quiet Walk To The Gulag
ALL THIS SHOULD SOUND VERY FAMILIAR!
Sent by; MeRobertM42
A Quiet Walk to the Gulag
Polite Society in the Face of Evil
RT: Restoring Truth
May 11, 2023I recently started reading The Gulag Archipelago, and I’m hooked. I’ve always found the history of Stalinist Russia to be both terrifying and captivating, and Solzhenitsyn’s meticulous accounting of it should sound the alarm for all of us in earshot of its echoes.
For anyone who’s paying attention, it’s easy to apply Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic observations to our own era of politicized agencies, surveillance, leftist institutional control, and demonization of various categories of Americans. We, too, have intelligence tasked with monitoring speech and enforcing illiberal rules. New and invented accusations are levied to keep people in line. Are you transphobic? Are you a “white Christian nationalist”? Many innocuous things are now expressions of white supremacy. Maybe you are are a threat to democracy.
The Bolshevik reign of terror found early success because victims didn’t create a loud scene when they were led away to arrest. Solzhenitsyn describes the way even he walked along with the SMERSH agents who arrested him, without arguing, and even at times providing helpful directions for the shortest route to the prison. He hoped in vain that they’d recognize their mistake and release him sooner if he was easygoing and cooperative.
In that quietly stalking terror, so many were arrested in privacy, or in small settings—after showing up for a meeting, or in the course of a trip—that no general outcry occurred; even as the underground system claimed more prisoners, and murders claimed more victims, the masses moved along with life in ignorance or complicit silence.
As the campaign intensified, though, people learned that he wrong opinions, associations, past memberships, or even acts of kindness were now liabilities. In the eyes of the wicked Bolsheviks, all those not completely absorbed by their dogma were suspect—church members, managers, property owners, small farmers and the like, and anyone who’d been in their circle of friendly rapport.
It is just as it was within Stalinist Russia; those on the right and on the left are in the global left’s crosshairs. The hard left even finds enemies within its own faithful, cannibalizing those who fail to bow low enough, get radical enough, or use the approved lexicon of leftism. Still there are stubbornly hopeful on both sides who go along with this position and that proposal, thinking it buys them a bit of grace down the road. It doesn’t; it makes them into a useful idiots until a better tool comes along.
Pretend for a moment that we in America have now realized Solzhenitsyn’s wise prophecies, and that you are now suspected of being an enemy of the state. You are a threat to the government’s ugly project of turning every city into a third-world encampment, because you like safety and sanitation. You are privileged because you think you should reap the harvest you sowed in your labor. Your Christian beliefs are a threat to the humanistic fantasies of an omnipotent state run by politicized organs of artificial intelligence.
The list of possible offenses are many: you’re a member of a conservative church; you’ve “liked” social media posts critical of transgenderism; you follow The Babylon Bee; you donate to a conservative think tank; you live in a red state; you have more than three kids; you didn’t receive a Covid “vaccination”; you have an American flag flying in your yard; or maybe you download a lot of country music. Aren’t all of these things pleasures of those on the right?
These who hamper progress must be charged with various crimes, such as racism, transphobia, religious hate or even insurrection; your employer must therefore fire you or face troubles, and you must go through a lengthy (and doomed) court process. If you will just cooperate, though—perhaps say the right things, donate to the right causes, or stay silent in the face of insanity--your life doesn’t have to be so hellish; at least, not just yet.
In fact, all of these things are true now. Already, our government eyes Christians, homeowners, taxpayers, farmers, tradesmen, gun owners, and a host of others as nuisances, barely tolerable aside from the funds they provide. We are blanketed with regulations and agencies that breach government’s proper boundaries, unaccountable to voters. We have a state media built of unholy alliances with tech companies and the press. We don’t have to imagine or conjure up images of an oppressive government; we already have one.
Even though we feel the growing shadow of oppression, there are still those who imagine it’s possible to stave off the American gulag for a little while; they are correct. If you refrain from getting too serious about your faith or your country, you will have an easier time in the darkness. Let the experts do their thing, and just mind your business; yes, some of their ideas are chaotic, weird, and downright dangerous, but remember that times are changing, and so must we, if we enjoy our comforts.
If you have children in schools, you may choose to stay silent when your school hosts a transgender assembly, or when teachers wear “pride” attire to school, or when your chapel—with a cross in it— hosts an Islamic worship lesson. If you instead decide to rock the boat, you will be isolated and informed that you’re the only one who has complained, and in truth, you might be among only a handful. Further, you will be reminded that Jesus was inclusive; the narrow path, the exclusive claims of Christ—those must not be mentioned or believed.
And for those of you living in one of the wealthy enclaves that enjoy the fruits of the capitalistic, free market system demonized by teachers, you will be comforted to know that nobody at the important cocktail parties and galas cares at all! You may cringe as you write your annual fund checks, but that’s okay, because it’s your golden opportunity to show you’re truly part of the campus family. Teachers will be teachers, you know—let them do their crusading on your dime. What really matters is how your name looks in the beautiful annual report, and which buildings in the compound bear the imprint of your name. People will remember that—at least until the school is finally repurposed for more equitable ends.
You can also ignore all the changes that have transformed your venerable, old church so completely that it is now a stained-glass cadaver. If you want your church to be relevant in the 21st century’s influencer culture, it must distance itself from the Bible and its inconvenient and offensive revelations. Now’s the time to be ecumenical. One must denounce Biblical Christians and their patriotic impulses, above all; they are the most irritating to the secular state’s aims, holding scripture higher than sacred pronouncements of even the United Nations! In fact, the worst of these holdouts have not rubber-stamped the left’s gender revolution, making them the most abhorrent of all.
Yes, all these things can be ignored for a while. You can mix it up with headmasters over drinks in Sea Island. You can get behind the football team, since the coaching staff may be an island of normalcy. You can make many polite professions amid the clever deceptions. You can continue to donate and host parties and equivocate when things get controversial. For a while, these things will make you tolerable, even likeable by those who hate the belief system that you have embraced for your entire life.
Things will seem quiet; nothing is heard but the sounds of clinking glasses, vague speeches of good will and inclusivity, and celebrations—philanthropic funds, sports victories, graduations, and the like. You are useful because your money funds the revolution. In this way, you can glide through these tumultuous times and enjoy the softer side of life. Those who break the pretended tranquility with their noisy moral hangups can be quieted through groveling promises of listening and learning, or by denouncing their hateful speech—this denunciation being for those brutes on the right.
For a while, you can enjoy life’s simpler pleasures and observe its absurdities from the sidelines. Elites will find it remarkable that some people sacrifice their good standing and popularity by publicly embracing their faith or defending the hateful truths of biology. One day, though, the polite silence of sophisticates will give way to piercing despair, despite their past good will, cash, and all the bronze plaques; and there are no cocktail parties or galas in the gulag.
“From a peck on the cheek to a back stabbing still assault?”
- On May 10, 2023, at 10:13 AM, Brandon Martin wrote:
FYI I’m not sure what to make of the result from the trial, but I think the reporting has been unfair.
The jury was polled by interrogatory whether Trump raped E. Jean Carrol as Carrol claimed and the jury agreed with Trump’s defense team and said “no.” That’s a win for Trump.
However, the jury also answered that Trump had “sexually abused” *or* “forcibly touched” Carrol after the judge gave the following jury instruction: “Anything from a gentle but unwanted peck on the cheek to stabbing somebody with a knife could be battery for purposes of a civil case like this one.”
I have no idea what the jury believed Trump did or didn’t do. But, the media is reporting the verdict in a way that allows people to imagine the very worst about Trump committing a terrible crime – sometimes without even clarifying that this wasn’t a criminal trial. The basis for the defamation could have been merely Trump’s denial that he knew the woman and had some kind of dust-up with her.
The trial court judge denied multiple requests for continuances made by Trump’s defense team, which usually isn’t a good grounds for appeal and I don’t think Trump wants to go through this trial again, anyway. But, you’ve got to laugh a bit at the poor defense attorneys reactions when “I’m sorry my client has a pre-paid vacation” will often get a trial date continuance, but “I’m sorry my client is extraordinarily busy with scheduled obligations and what will ultimately be a billion dollar campaign for the presidency of the United States” gets rejected multiple times.
But, mainly, the coverage is unfair because it fails to note that Trump’s campaign opponent, Joe Biden, has similarly been accused of sexual assault. Joe Biden’s accuser, Tara Reade, was not just a random person from a department store years ago like Carrol, but Biden’s own staff assistant. Carrol’s claim was made because the law was changed in New York by the legislature to get passed the statute of limitations, but if the law were the same in DC, Biden would likely be subject to civil litigation, as well.
B.
Climate update--Parts I, II & III
I:
Research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres confirms the rate of tropospheric warming is approximately half the rate projected by climate models since the advent of satellites monitoring temperatures began in 1979. Temperatures in the troposphere are important for an accurate understanding of global temperatures because they are unaffected by the urban heat island effect and other artificial changes to the Earth’s surface or biases introduced by the manner in which temperatures are recorded for the oceans. Climate models assume the anthropogenic warming signal should be strongest in the lower and mid-troposphere. If that is true, this should lessen fears that dramatic change is occurring.
Since the 1990s, the data sets from both weather satellites and weather balloons have demonstrated that surface stations and climate models alike project too much warming, with the model projections being even higher than the temperatures measured at the surface stations. The researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of Maryland, and George Mason University, essentially confirms the models are running way too hot.
After running satellite data through an empirical method that merges data from individual satellites and adjusts for satellite drift, the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) found the amount of warming per decade was even lower than previous satellite datasets found, thus lower still than climate model projections.
The data from STAR finds the mid-troposphere has warmed about 0.09 ℃ per decade, compared to existing satellites managed by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), which recorded a slightly higher 0.1 ℃ per decade of warming, and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellites, which display 0.14 ℃ of mid-tropospheric warming per decade.
In the authors’ words, the analysis has “strong implications for trends in climate model simulations and other observations.” Why? Because the rate of warming it records is only half of that projected by climate models over the same period, and models are used to proclaim a climate catastrophe will occur if we exceed 1.5 ℃ of average warming for the planet. It is likely the equilibrium climate sensitivity (EQS), the temperature increase one should expect from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 assumed in climate models, is double the actual EQS.
II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwJzhIOMQaA
In a Gallup poll only 45% think that global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime, and just 43% say they worry a great deal about "climate change," aka "global warming." Nevertheless, the Left is determined to make it a majority, no matter what facts suggest otherwise, and they are employing a monopoly hammer in the form of Google to squash any dissenting views.
But not letting, facts, logic or democracy get in the way of their ideology, Google said: "Today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change."
https://realclimatescience.com/
Google cites the often wrong significantly Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a reference for this action, along with unnamed “experts.”
People and ideas deemed unacceptable by the woke are being banned by minority of noisy, often ignorant or self-interested and sometimes violent protesters. Inconvenient questions about sensitive issues such as the extent of climate change, and the long-term threats posed by global warming are being silenced in the left-wing media, and their proponents are being condemned as denialists. Instead of relying on evidence, such as that contained in big data bases and long-term trends, we are asked to prioritize and generalize from individual people's lived experience. Instead of seeing logic and math as quintessentially objective, we are being asked to see the 2 at best as subjective and at worse racist. Instead of searching for the objective truth, we are asked to believe their truth, and their version only.
To be sure, politeness and consideration are welcome traits, but censorship in matters of civic importance can have far reaching consequences. Unless we forget, many facts commonly accepted today, such as heliocentricism and natural selection, started as intellectual heresies that offended, discomforted, and hurt the feelings of many people when they were first proposed. Moreover, censorship is particularly difficult for people on whom we disproportionately rely to advance technology, scientific progress and public policy. Are we really asking that humanity forego further discoveries simply because the intelligent skepticism fails the test wokeness and were censored.
The problem is more than just a conflict between political viewpoints. It has to do with competence in evaluating climate information. Independent "fact checkers" often have no more knowledge than a collection of news headlines. Don’t expect neo-liberal non-science-educated"‘fact checkers” to understand the nuances, or even the basics of the global warming debate.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fact-checkers-are-used-to-confuse-the-public-sharyl-attkisson_4221169.html?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=bn-cc
This is obviously because some activists “fact-checkers” don’t like the results a 43-year satellite dataset gives, the UAH satellite dataset, which remains one of the central global temperature datasets used by mainstream climate researchers in their work. Yet now with the Google witch-hunt in full force, it has been branded as somehow data non grata by liberals who probably don’t even know how the process works but are given blanket marching orders and the power to impose them.
It is a sad day for science and for truth in America when a left-wing elite monopoly that censors truth is allowed to decide what Americans see and don’t see and becomes a self-appointed arbiter of truth(1).
But for eco-extremists like Ross Mittiga, the allegedly dire nature of climate change justifies rethinking democratic norms and Western understandings of individual rights. Mittiga believes freedom is the problem when it comes to mitigating climate change, and that "authoritarianism"--his word, not mine—is justified and perhaps even necessary to ensure humanity doesn’t die from a climate catastrophe. Examples include nationalizing private property, limiting democracy and free speech, and forcibly suppressing the eating of meat—little things like that. Even democracy itself is too dangerous for Mittiga, who says governments could: "justifiably limit certain democratic institutions and processes to the extent these bear on the promulgation or implementation of environmental policy.” For example, anyone running for office could be subjected to a "climate litmus-test," and governments "may establish institutions capable of overturning previous democratic decisions against the implementation of carbon taxes or other necessary climate policies.”
The environmental extremist who believe in human made climate change insist that shouting down opponents, refusing to publish them, deleting data, and declaring the issue settled actually accomplish the very anti-science they claim justifies their tyrant like behavior. Given how consistently the green movement has been wrong, it’s fear of an honest debate with opposing views makes sense to them. It always does to tryants.
The importance of free speech and its legal boundaries, that has broken down, is essential for the common good in the search of truth. Consequently, there should be full freedom to conduct research and to publish results. The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. Science should always be just about the causes and processes involved in the phenomenon being studied. Verifiable truth is the only concern. Whether the result is good or bad is a matter for other fields.
If the scare stories Mittiga and others are constantly churning out aren’t enough to stampede the public into dramatic, costly action to fight climate change, these alarmists are perfectly willing to call forth a firm hand in an iron glove. Consider that as you peruse the latest version of the nearly 2,500-page "Build Back Better" bill or when biden talks about taking a "whole-of-government" approach to fighting climate change. They are coming for you!
1. The Heartland Institute is a great source for real, germane facts and sound logic about climate change. The Heartland has unpaid policy advisors – more than 500 other academics and independent policy experts who write for the institute from time to time and participate in peer review of their publications. They are trying to bring sound science and policy into a debate that is dominated by ignorance, scare tactics, and propaganda; they should be thanked and congratulated, not defamed and subject to silly “investigations" by liberal ideologues.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/the_profound_junk_science_of_climate.html
III:
Fallacy of Genetic Error: Confuses validity with the causes or origins of a thesis.
Halo effect: constructing a view of all the qualities of a person on 1, or a few attributes that is particularly significant to the judge.
Fallacy of Appealing to Prestige (Argumentum Ad Verecundiam): The appeal to respect or prestige instead of pertinent data, sound logic and reasoned conclusions.
Fallacy of Misplaced Authority: Using an expert’s opinion, merit or respect in matters beyond the scope or even mastery of his field of specialization or authority.
“All these talented gentlemen of the middling sort, who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die.”---Dostoyevsky
It was Plato who advised us that there is a huge difference between cleverness and intelligence. Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
Yet remarkable talent(1) in one particular domain provides no protection against stupidity(2) or immorality(3). “Rationality should be distinguished from intelligence…high intelligence does not make people immune to biases” as Keith Stanovich said. For as Theodore Maynard observed: “In no other country in the world can first-rate doctors, priests and lawyers be encountered who know nothing outside of their own profession. The depth, breadth and value of a culture, not having a cash value, is disesteemed.
Often, those titled an “institutional” expert is not necessarily a person who knows all that is needed to enable him to judge the value of the institution. The reasons why he has become interested in and approves of the particular institution often have little to do with any expert qualifications. In fact, it is almost a universal rule that all the recognized experts are people who are in favor of the principles underlying the policy. And once the apparatus is established, its future development will be shaped by those who have chosen to serve it. And this development which is governed by successive decisions of experts working within the same organization is liable to be carried beyond its intent and scope because it meets with fewer real checks then it would in a more competitive environment. It becomes a process in which nobody has the power to say stop and driven by the internal necessities of this process which has little to do with any comprehension of the whole by any one mind.
Nor is sound logic, science and/or conclusions determined by someone’s title. Instead, they consist of the clear linking of cause and effect and not just artifacts(4). They perform tests that demonstrate the hypothesis, creates premises that have predictable results, use credible statistics and have acceptance from peer review studies. To do otherwise is junk science, agenda or false conclusions.
Complex skills and habits are never quite reducible to a recipe that anyone can follow. Expertise takes time to develop because expertise is not a single skill but a rather large collection of mini-skills. “The accurate intuitions of experts are better explained by the effects of prolonged practice than by heuristics” as Daniel Kahneman has found.
Training attention can help improve not only intelligence but control of it also. Such mastery requires apprenticeship, which occurs by following example and tutelage and does not entail independence from authority. The more someone masters a discipline, the more he utilizes others’ work. Trusting the results of others is the condition of development and expansion in any human pursuit; otherwise we would always start at the beginning step of thousands of years of prior human cumulative discovery. Authority augments the capacity of individuals to attain their flourishing and inaugurates the very possibility of the common good, which individuals could not attain on their own.
1. “…there are few circumstances under which it is a good idea to substitute judgment for a good formula…For example, even in the region they knew best, experts, lead astray by how they think, were not significantly better than non-specialists in predicting long-term outcomes...”--Daniel Kahneman
2. Stupidity is often the child of pride and boundless self-assurance.
3. People who are cognitively busy are more likely to make selfish choices and make superficial judgments in social situations.
4. Artifacts can be observations that are produced by some aspect of the method of research and usually not causal processes.
Research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres confirms the rate of tropospheric warming is approximately half the rate projected by climate models since the advent of satellites monitoring temperatures began in 1979. Temperatures in the troposphere are important for an accurate understanding of global temperatures because they are unaffected by the urban heat island effect and other artificial changes to the Earth’s surface or biases introduced by the manner in which temperatures are recorded for the oceans. Climate models assume the anthropogenic warming signal should be strongest in the lower and mid-troposphere. If that is true, this should lessen fears that dramatic change is occurring.
Since the 1990s, the data sets from both weather satellites and weather balloons have demonstrated that surface stations and climate models alike project too much warming, with the model projections being even higher than the temperatures measured at the surface stations. The researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the University of Maryland, and George Mason University, essentially confirms the models are running way too hot.
After running satellite data through an empirical method that merges data from individual satellites and adjusts for satellite drift, the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) found the amount of warming per decade was even lower than previous satellite datasets found, thus lower still than climate model projections.
The data from STAR finds the mid-troposphere has warmed about 0.09 ℃ per decade, compared to existing satellites managed by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), which recorded a slightly higher 0.1 ℃ per decade of warming, and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellites, which display 0.14 ℃ of mid-tropospheric warming per decade.
In the authors’ words, the analysis has “strong implications for trends in climate model simulations and other observations.” Why? Because the rate of warming it records is only half of that projected by climate models over the same period, and models are used to proclaim a climate catastrophe will occur if we exceed 1.5 ℃ of average warming for the planet. It is likely the equilibrium climate sensitivity (EQS), the temperature increase one should expect from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 assumed in climate models, is double the actual EQS.
II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwJzhIOMQaA
In a Gallup poll only 45% think that global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime, and just 43% say they worry a great deal about "climate change," aka "global warming." Nevertheless, the Left is determined to make it a majority, no matter what facts suggest otherwise, and they are employing a monopoly hammer in the form of Google to squash any dissenting views.
But not letting, facts, logic or democracy get in the way of their ideology, Google said: "Today, we’re announcing a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change."
https://realclimatescience.com/
Google cites the often wrong significantly Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a reference for this action, along with unnamed “experts.”
People and ideas deemed unacceptable by the woke are being banned by minority of noisy, often ignorant or self-interested and sometimes violent protesters. Inconvenient questions about sensitive issues such as the extent of climate change, and the long-term threats posed by global warming are being silenced in the left-wing media, and their proponents are being condemned as denialists. Instead of relying on evidence, such as that contained in big data bases and long-term trends, we are asked to prioritize and generalize from individual people's lived experience. Instead of seeing logic and math as quintessentially objective, we are being asked to see the 2 at best as subjective and at worse racist. Instead of searching for the objective truth, we are asked to believe their truth, and their version only.
To be sure, politeness and consideration are welcome traits, but censorship in matters of civic importance can have far reaching consequences. Unless we forget, many facts commonly accepted today, such as heliocentricism and natural selection, started as intellectual heresies that offended, discomforted, and hurt the feelings of many people when they were first proposed. Moreover, censorship is particularly difficult for people on whom we disproportionately rely to advance technology, scientific progress and public policy. Are we really asking that humanity forego further discoveries simply because the intelligent skepticism fails the test wokeness and were censored.
The problem is more than just a conflict between political viewpoints. It has to do with competence in evaluating climate information. Independent "fact checkers" often have no more knowledge than a collection of news headlines. Don’t expect neo-liberal non-science-educated"‘fact checkers” to understand the nuances, or even the basics of the global warming debate.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fact-checkers-are-used-to-confuse-the-public-sharyl-attkisson_4221169.html?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=bn-cc
This is obviously because some activists “fact-checkers” don’t like the results a 43-year satellite dataset gives, the UAH satellite dataset, which remains one of the central global temperature datasets used by mainstream climate researchers in their work. Yet now with the Google witch-hunt in full force, it has been branded as somehow data non grata by liberals who probably don’t even know how the process works but are given blanket marching orders and the power to impose them.
It is a sad day for science and for truth in America when a left-wing elite monopoly that censors truth is allowed to decide what Americans see and don’t see and becomes a self-appointed arbiter of truth(1).
But for eco-extremists like Ross Mittiga, the allegedly dire nature of climate change justifies rethinking democratic norms and Western understandings of individual rights. Mittiga believes freedom is the problem when it comes to mitigating climate change, and that "authoritarianism"--his word, not mine—is justified and perhaps even necessary to ensure humanity doesn’t die from a climate catastrophe. Examples include nationalizing private property, limiting democracy and free speech, and forcibly suppressing the eating of meat—little things like that. Even democracy itself is too dangerous for Mittiga, who says governments could: "justifiably limit certain democratic institutions and processes to the extent these bear on the promulgation or implementation of environmental policy.” For example, anyone running for office could be subjected to a "climate litmus-test," and governments "may establish institutions capable of overturning previous democratic decisions against the implementation of carbon taxes or other necessary climate policies.”
The environmental extremist who believe in human made climate change insist that shouting down opponents, refusing to publish them, deleting data, and declaring the issue settled actually accomplish the very anti-science they claim justifies their tyrant like behavior. Given how consistently the green movement has been wrong, it’s fear of an honest debate with opposing views makes sense to them. It always does to tryants.
The importance of free speech and its legal boundaries, that has broken down, is essential for the common good in the search of truth. Consequently, there should be full freedom to conduct research and to publish results. The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. Science should always be just about the causes and processes involved in the phenomenon being studied. Verifiable truth is the only concern. Whether the result is good or bad is a matter for other fields.
If the scare stories Mittiga and others are constantly churning out aren’t enough to stampede the public into dramatic, costly action to fight climate change, these alarmists are perfectly willing to call forth a firm hand in an iron glove. Consider that as you peruse the latest version of the nearly 2,500-page "Build Back Better" bill or when biden talks about taking a "whole-of-government" approach to fighting climate change. They are coming for you!
1. The Heartland Institute is a great source for real, germane facts and sound logic about climate change. The Heartland has unpaid policy advisors – more than 500 other academics and independent policy experts who write for the institute from time to time and participate in peer review of their publications. They are trying to bring sound science and policy into a debate that is dominated by ignorance, scare tactics, and propaganda; they should be thanked and congratulated, not defamed and subject to silly “investigations" by liberal ideologues.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/the_profound_junk_science_of_climate.html
III:
Fallacy of Genetic Error: Confuses validity with the causes or origins of a thesis.
Halo effect: constructing a view of all the qualities of a person on 1, or a few attributes that is particularly significant to the judge.
Fallacy of Appealing to Prestige (Argumentum Ad Verecundiam): The appeal to respect or prestige instead of pertinent data, sound logic and reasoned conclusions.
Fallacy of Misplaced Authority: Using an expert’s opinion, merit or respect in matters beyond the scope or even mastery of his field of specialization or authority.
“All these talented gentlemen of the middling sort, who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die.”---Dostoyevsky
It was Plato who advised us that there is a huge difference between cleverness and intelligence. Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
Yet remarkable talent(1) in one particular domain provides no protection against stupidity(2) or immorality(3). “Rationality should be distinguished from intelligence…high intelligence does not make people immune to biases” as Keith Stanovich said. For as Theodore Maynard observed: “In no other country in the world can first-rate doctors, priests and lawyers be encountered who know nothing outside of their own profession. The depth, breadth and value of a culture, not having a cash value, is disesteemed.
Often, those titled an “institutional” expert is not necessarily a person who knows all that is needed to enable him to judge the value of the institution. The reasons why he has become interested in and approves of the particular institution often have little to do with any expert qualifications. In fact, it is almost a universal rule that all the recognized experts are people who are in favor of the principles underlying the policy. And once the apparatus is established, its future development will be shaped by those who have chosen to serve it. And this development which is governed by successive decisions of experts working within the same organization is liable to be carried beyond its intent and scope because it meets with fewer real checks then it would in a more competitive environment. It becomes a process in which nobody has the power to say stop and driven by the internal necessities of this process which has little to do with any comprehension of the whole by any one mind.
Nor is sound logic, science and/or conclusions determined by someone’s title. Instead, they consist of the clear linking of cause and effect and not just artifacts(4). They perform tests that demonstrate the hypothesis, creates premises that have predictable results, use credible statistics and have acceptance from peer review studies. To do otherwise is junk science, agenda or false conclusions.
Complex skills and habits are never quite reducible to a recipe that anyone can follow. Expertise takes time to develop because expertise is not a single skill but a rather large collection of mini-skills. “The accurate intuitions of experts are better explained by the effects of prolonged practice than by heuristics” as Daniel Kahneman has found.
Training attention can help improve not only intelligence but control of it also. Such mastery requires apprenticeship, which occurs by following example and tutelage and does not entail independence from authority. The more someone masters a discipline, the more he utilizes others’ work. Trusting the results of others is the condition of development and expansion in any human pursuit; otherwise we would always start at the beginning step of thousands of years of prior human cumulative discovery. Authority augments the capacity of individuals to attain their flourishing and inaugurates the very possibility of the common good, which individuals could not attain on their own.
1. “…there are few circumstances under which it is a good idea to substitute judgment for a good formula…For example, even in the region they knew best, experts, lead astray by how they think, were not significantly better than non-specialists in predicting long-term outcomes...”--Daniel Kahneman
2. Stupidity is often the child of pride and boundless self-assurance.
3. People who are cognitively busy are more likely to make selfish choices and make superficial judgments in social situations.
4. Artifacts can be observations that are produced by some aspect of the method of research and usually not causal processes.
Climate update--Parts VI. V, & VI
Part IV:
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has updated its State of the Planet report for 2022. The report, written by Ole Humlum, a former professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and emeritus professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo, indicates ongoing climate change is not causing a crisis.
The public is hammered daily with a barrage of stories across all media platforms claiming humans are causing catastrophic climate change and only wrenching economic change, requiring giving government more control over our lives, can prevent it. It is like the fabled Chinese water torture—the drip, drip, drip of climate alarm—and it has been going on for decades.
Despite this, recent opinion polls show the public is becoming less convinced humans are causing climate change. Nor has all the coverage seemed to have moved the needle with regard to where climate change ranks when compared to other political issues of concern, or how much people are willing to pay to fight climate change.
In general, depending upon the poll, a majority of people accept that climate change is happening. Climate change consistently ranks at or near the bottom of the issues of concern for the public. And most people are unwilling to pay to fight climate change.
A recent survey on climate attitudes conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (UC/AP), finds “a majority of Americans believe climate change is real and the pace is increasing, but fewer believe it is mostly or entirely caused by humans.
Among those who haven’t experienced an extreme weather event since the last UC/AP poll was taken, 64% think climate change is happening, and only 43% think it’s mostly caused by humans. Even among those who have experienced an extreme weather event, 54% think it is mostly caused by humans and 51% think climate change will affect them personally. The latter number suggests that a significant number of the people who’ve suffered harm from extreme weather events are smart enough to see through the left-wing media’s lies about climate change being responsible for every tornado, flood, and hurricane. Many of them apparently recognize instead that extreme weather is natural. By contrast, 32% of those who have not been impacted by extreme weather think climate change will affect their lives.
The left-wing regularly warns that human-caused climate change poses an “existential threat” to humanity and the planet. And news consumers face a daily barrage of stories linking one type of disaster or another on climate change. Yet the UC/AP poll indicates the daily propagandizing isn’t having its desired effect.
Among libs/dems who believe climate change is caused by humans fell from 72% in 2018 to 60% today. Among independents, 61% in 2018 to 42% today. Republicans held steady at 33%. Overall, 60% believed in human-caused climate change in 2018 to 49% today.
Where does climate change rank in comparison to other public policy issues the public cares about; and how much are people willing to pay to fight climate change? Recent Pew Research list of 21 top concerns or priorities, asking “should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year.” Unsurprisingly, “strengthening the economy” and “reducing health care costs” topped the list. “Dealing with climate change,” was near the bottom, at 17th. This represented a decline from 2022, when it ranked 14th out of 18 priorities (do the math). 51% “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed to paying a $2 monthly tax on residential electric bills to pay to fight climate change. 61% would reject a 10 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax, 71% opposed a $10 monthly tax on residential electric bills, and 74% oppose increasing the gas tax by 25 cents per gallon.
To be clear, these relatively modest cost increases are far below the multi-thousand-dollar annual household price increases the biden regime has already imposed on American households in its efforts to fight the political strategy of climate change.
Part V:
"5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first 'Climategate' leak, the release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public. The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what BObama has called 'the gold standard' of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." --James Delingpole
The belief that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO2 emissions was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was subverted. Climate change is the new buzzword to use in grant proposals to acquire funding. However, scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks. This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.
Here is an example of how it has worked. The theory that entirely natural sun cycles best explain warming patterns emerged years ago, but those Danish scientists who did that research "soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials." Physicists at the prestigious CERN laboratory tried to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked. The top scientific journal Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in global warming is the sun, not humans. But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."
As more and more scientific evidence is published that debunks global warming, the enforced consensus is ending. The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution -- whose previous president declared that "the debate on climate change is over" -- is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures. The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause. Most of the rebels were retired, as one of them explained: "One of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk from being labeled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into silence has unfortunately been effective."
In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring." Dr. Giaver said: "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this so-called warming period. In 2008, Prof. Giaever endorsed BObama's candidacy, but he has since joined 100 scientists who wrote an open letter to BObama, declaring: "We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated." Do a Google search: you will find this letter reported in Britain and even India, but not in America. 51,000 Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were polled by their professional organization. 68% of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled." Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil fuels." APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said: "There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."
Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was finally free to speak frankly on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain " skeptical." She says she remained silent for fear of personal attacks. Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict global climate trends. Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect to see.
We've had a perfect example of the enforced global warming consensus falling apart. Berkeley Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming. Predictably, the very liberal Washington Post lied, proclaimed that the BEST study had: "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud." But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly...Whatever it is that's going on here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO2...in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected skeptics' arguments were now taking them much more seriously. They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done a long time ago." Professor Muller, confronted with dissent, caved and admitted that indeed, both ocean and land measurements show that global warming stopped increasing for many years.
Media coverage on global warming has been criminally one-sided. The public doesn't know where the global warming theory came from in the first place. Answer: the U.N., not a scientific body. The threat of catastrophic warming was launched by the U.N. to promote international climate treaties that would transfer wealth from rich countries to developing countries. It was political from the beginning, with the conclusion assumed: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (U.N. IPCC) was funded to report on how man was changing climate. Its scientific reports have been repeatedly corrected for misrepresentation and outright fraud. This is important. Global warming theory did not come from a breakthrough in scientific research that enabled us to understand our climate. We still don't understand global climate any more than we understand the human brain or how to cure cancer. The science of global climate is in its infancy. Yet the U.N. IPCC reports drive American policy. The EPA broke federal law requiring independent analysis and used the U.N. IPCC reports in its "endangerment" finding that justifies extreme regulatory actions. “Global warming regulations cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the 'absurd result' that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime."
Former top scientists at the U.N. IPCC are protesting publicly against falsification of global warming data and misleading media reports. Dr. John Everett, for example, was the lead researcher on Fisheries, Polar Regions, Oceans and Coastal Zones at the IPCC and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior manager, and he received an award while at NOAA for "accomplishments in assessing the impacts of climate change on global oceans and fisheries." Here is what he has to say on global warming: "It is time for a reality check. Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios ... I would much rather have the present warm climate, and even further warming...No one knows whether the Earth is going to keep warming, or since reaching a peak in 1998, we are at the start of a cooling cycle that will last several decades or more."
If the theory is not based on solid science, we are free to develop our fossil fuel wealth responsibly and swiftly. Instead, federal policies are based on global warming fears. These are good jobs. An entry-level job on an oil rig pays $70,000 a year. A roughneck with a high school diploma earns $100,000 a year in Wyoming's Jonah Fields. When we treat oil and gas companies like pariahs, we threaten America's economic viability. For global warming alarmists who believe that man-made CO2 threatens life on earth, no cost is too high to fight it. They avert their eyes from the human suffering of people without jobs, with diminished life savings, limited future prospects, and looming national bankruptcy.
This is not all about idealism. There are crasser reasons of money and power for wanting to close the debate. Billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies are spent to fight global warming. The cover of fighting to save the planet gives the government unlimited powers to intrude into private business and our individual homes. The government can reach its long arm right into your shower and control how much hot water you are allowed to use. In the words of MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Lindzen: "[c]ontrolling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life." Warming advocates persistently argue that we cannot afford to pause for a reality check; we must not ignore the possibility that global warming theory might be true. Limiting fossil fuels and promoting green energy are presented as a benign, a "why not be on the safe side," commonsense approach. There is a lot of emotion and little common sense in this argument. If a diagnosis is based on a shaky and partly fraudulent theory, ignores much more convincing evidence, and has terrible negative side effects, you don't perform major surgery. We do not have to run around like Chicken Little on the off-chance that the sky may be falling.
There has been a high economic cost to limiting our oil and gas wealth, with much human anguish because of government-imposed economic contraction. Responsible government policy requires honest media coverage, unfettered scientific inquiry, and robust political debate. Our country cannot afford the costs of foolish energy policy based on politicized science and fear.
“What we call man’s power over nature turns out to be a power exercise by some men over other men with nature as its instrument.”--C. S. Lewis
Further reading:
A Primer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl4cQKKudjM&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2ZgFRodzsuinNvjp51UMkAHl5CL3Yux9cE0CGKRY5DNHxGBFA_zU3mYPY
Part VI:
Pseudoscience:
-Lacks independently testable theory capable of explaining and connecting claims.
-Lacks progress.
-Evaluates the quality of evidence not on its merits but on its consistency with a predetermined conclusion(1).
-Constructs its ideas to resist any possible counterevidence.
“Only when the currently low scientific literacy of the American population rises to the level of accurate and sympathetic understanding of science will the appeal of pseudoscience (and bad or even non-science) diminish sufficiently to disable the quackeries that today prey upon people.”--Barbara Forrest & Paul R. Gross
The environmental movement involves money and power. Big money funds it, and the goal is to assume power. It is a generally corrupt movement that frequently pervert science.
1. “The emphasis on reason, without which science is impossible, is closely linked to a prominent value without which science cannot progress: the challenge to authority.”--Edward Grant
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/physical_science_is_in_a_crisis.html
The Global Warming Policy Foundation has updated its State of the Planet report for 2022. The report, written by Ole Humlum, a former professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, and emeritus professor of Physical Geography at the University of Oslo, indicates ongoing climate change is not causing a crisis.
The public is hammered daily with a barrage of stories across all media platforms claiming humans are causing catastrophic climate change and only wrenching economic change, requiring giving government more control over our lives, can prevent it. It is like the fabled Chinese water torture—the drip, drip, drip of climate alarm—and it has been going on for decades.
Despite this, recent opinion polls show the public is becoming less convinced humans are causing climate change. Nor has all the coverage seemed to have moved the needle with regard to where climate change ranks when compared to other political issues of concern, or how much people are willing to pay to fight climate change.
In general, depending upon the poll, a majority of people accept that climate change is happening. Climate change consistently ranks at or near the bottom of the issues of concern for the public. And most people are unwilling to pay to fight climate change.
A recent survey on climate attitudes conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (UC/AP), finds “a majority of Americans believe climate change is real and the pace is increasing, but fewer believe it is mostly or entirely caused by humans.
Among those who haven’t experienced an extreme weather event since the last UC/AP poll was taken, 64% think climate change is happening, and only 43% think it’s mostly caused by humans. Even among those who have experienced an extreme weather event, 54% think it is mostly caused by humans and 51% think climate change will affect them personally. The latter number suggests that a significant number of the people who’ve suffered harm from extreme weather events are smart enough to see through the left-wing media’s lies about climate change being responsible for every tornado, flood, and hurricane. Many of them apparently recognize instead that extreme weather is natural. By contrast, 32% of those who have not been impacted by extreme weather think climate change will affect their lives.
The left-wing regularly warns that human-caused climate change poses an “existential threat” to humanity and the planet. And news consumers face a daily barrage of stories linking one type of disaster or another on climate change. Yet the UC/AP poll indicates the daily propagandizing isn’t having its desired effect.
Among libs/dems who believe climate change is caused by humans fell from 72% in 2018 to 60% today. Among independents, 61% in 2018 to 42% today. Republicans held steady at 33%. Overall, 60% believed in human-caused climate change in 2018 to 49% today.
Where does climate change rank in comparison to other public policy issues the public cares about; and how much are people willing to pay to fight climate change? Recent Pew Research list of 21 top concerns or priorities, asking “should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year.” Unsurprisingly, “strengthening the economy” and “reducing health care costs” topped the list. “Dealing with climate change,” was near the bottom, at 17th. This represented a decline from 2022, when it ranked 14th out of 18 priorities (do the math). 51% “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed to paying a $2 monthly tax on residential electric bills to pay to fight climate change. 61% would reject a 10 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax, 71% opposed a $10 monthly tax on residential electric bills, and 74% oppose increasing the gas tax by 25 cents per gallon.
To be clear, these relatively modest cost increases are far below the multi-thousand-dollar annual household price increases the biden regime has already imposed on American households in its efforts to fight the political strategy of climate change.
Part V:
"5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first 'Climategate' leak, the release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public. The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what BObama has called 'the gold standard' of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." --James Delingpole
The belief that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO2 emissions was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was subverted. Climate change is the new buzzword to use in grant proposals to acquire funding. However, scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks. This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.
Here is an example of how it has worked. The theory that entirely natural sun cycles best explain warming patterns emerged years ago, but those Danish scientists who did that research "soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite their impeccable scientific credentials." Physicists at the prestigious CERN laboratory tried to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked. The top scientific journal Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in global warming is the sun, not humans. But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."
As more and more scientific evidence is published that debunks global warming, the enforced consensus is ending. The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution -- whose previous president declared that "the debate on climate change is over" -- is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures. The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause. Most of the rebels were retired, as one of them explained: "One of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk from being labeled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into silence has unfortunately been effective."
In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring." Dr. Giaver said: "The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this so-called warming period. In 2008, Prof. Giaever endorsed BObama's candidacy, but he has since joined 100 scientists who wrote an open letter to BObama, declaring: "We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated." Do a Google search: you will find this letter reported in Britain and even India, but not in America. 51,000 Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were polled by their professional organization. 68% of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled." Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil fuels." APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said: "There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."
Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was finally free to speak frankly on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain " skeptical." She says she remained silent for fear of personal attacks. Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict global climate trends. Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect to see.
We've had a perfect example of the enforced global warming consensus falling apart. Berkeley Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming. Predictably, the very liberal Washington Post lied, proclaimed that the BEST study had: "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud." But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly...Whatever it is that's going on here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO2...in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected skeptics' arguments were now taking them much more seriously. They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done a long time ago." Professor Muller, confronted with dissent, caved and admitted that indeed, both ocean and land measurements show that global warming stopped increasing for many years.
Media coverage on global warming has been criminally one-sided. The public doesn't know where the global warming theory came from in the first place. Answer: the U.N., not a scientific body. The threat of catastrophic warming was launched by the U.N. to promote international climate treaties that would transfer wealth from rich countries to developing countries. It was political from the beginning, with the conclusion assumed: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (U.N. IPCC) was funded to report on how man was changing climate. Its scientific reports have been repeatedly corrected for misrepresentation and outright fraud. This is important. Global warming theory did not come from a breakthrough in scientific research that enabled us to understand our climate. We still don't understand global climate any more than we understand the human brain or how to cure cancer. The science of global climate is in its infancy. Yet the U.N. IPCC reports drive American policy. The EPA broke federal law requiring independent analysis and used the U.N. IPCC reports in its "endangerment" finding that justifies extreme regulatory actions. “Global warming regulations cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the 'absurd result' that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime."
Former top scientists at the U.N. IPCC are protesting publicly against falsification of global warming data and misleading media reports. Dr. John Everett, for example, was the lead researcher on Fisheries, Polar Regions, Oceans and Coastal Zones at the IPCC and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior manager, and he received an award while at NOAA for "accomplishments in assessing the impacts of climate change on global oceans and fisheries." Here is what he has to say on global warming: "It is time for a reality check. Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing. The oceans and coastal zones have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios ... I would much rather have the present warm climate, and even further warming...No one knows whether the Earth is going to keep warming, or since reaching a peak in 1998, we are at the start of a cooling cycle that will last several decades or more."
If the theory is not based on solid science, we are free to develop our fossil fuel wealth responsibly and swiftly. Instead, federal policies are based on global warming fears. These are good jobs. An entry-level job on an oil rig pays $70,000 a year. A roughneck with a high school diploma earns $100,000 a year in Wyoming's Jonah Fields. When we treat oil and gas companies like pariahs, we threaten America's economic viability. For global warming alarmists who believe that man-made CO2 threatens life on earth, no cost is too high to fight it. They avert their eyes from the human suffering of people without jobs, with diminished life savings, limited future prospects, and looming national bankruptcy.
This is not all about idealism. There are crasser reasons of money and power for wanting to close the debate. Billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies are spent to fight global warming. The cover of fighting to save the planet gives the government unlimited powers to intrude into private business and our individual homes. The government can reach its long arm right into your shower and control how much hot water you are allowed to use. In the words of MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Lindzen: "[c]ontrolling carbon is kind of a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life." Warming advocates persistently argue that we cannot afford to pause for a reality check; we must not ignore the possibility that global warming theory might be true. Limiting fossil fuels and promoting green energy are presented as a benign, a "why not be on the safe side," commonsense approach. There is a lot of emotion and little common sense in this argument. If a diagnosis is based on a shaky and partly fraudulent theory, ignores much more convincing evidence, and has terrible negative side effects, you don't perform major surgery. We do not have to run around like Chicken Little on the off-chance that the sky may be falling.
There has been a high economic cost to limiting our oil and gas wealth, with much human anguish because of government-imposed economic contraction. Responsible government policy requires honest media coverage, unfettered scientific inquiry, and robust political debate. Our country cannot afford the costs of foolish energy policy based on politicized science and fear.
“What we call man’s power over nature turns out to be a power exercise by some men over other men with nature as its instrument.”--C. S. Lewis
Further reading:
A Primer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl4cQKKudjM&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2ZgFRodzsuinNvjp51UMkAHl5CL3Yux9cE0CGKRY5DNHxGBFA_zU3mYPY
Part VI:
Pseudoscience:
-Lacks independently testable theory capable of explaining and connecting claims.
-Lacks progress.
-Evaluates the quality of evidence not on its merits but on its consistency with a predetermined conclusion(1).
-Constructs its ideas to resist any possible counterevidence.
“Only when the currently low scientific literacy of the American population rises to the level of accurate and sympathetic understanding of science will the appeal of pseudoscience (and bad or even non-science) diminish sufficiently to disable the quackeries that today prey upon people.”--Barbara Forrest & Paul R. Gross
The environmental movement involves money and power. Big money funds it, and the goal is to assume power. It is a generally corrupt movement that frequently pervert science.
1. “The emphasis on reason, without which science is impossible, is closely linked to a prominent value without which science cannot progress: the challenge to authority.”--Edward Grant
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/physical_science_is_in_a_crisis.html
Climate update- VII & VIII
PART VII:
“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, do something.”--John Lewis
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."-- Galileo Galilei
“The bigot is the man who cannot understand how the other man came to be wrong.”--G. K. Chesterton
“To be bigoted is having too little intelligence to be able to perceive that those who disagree can do so in good faith and complete honesty.”-- Sigrid Unset
Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis Used chlorinated lime in 1847 to disinfect. He was considered a quack. But his death rate in childbirth plummeted. Joseph Lister putting Louis Pasteur germ theory into practice in 1865 was considered bogus science by prominent medical scientists of the day. In the 19th century state of the art medical science cures included bloodletting, calomel, pokeweed, mustard plaster, and turpentine. The deniers were laughed at despite the cures being worse than the diseases.
Unorthodox views, by definition not espoused by and incompatible with contemporary consensual beliefs, not having a specific pedigree, have been given short shrift when suggested, are rarely taken seriously, not welcome in the mainstream scientific literature and rarely featured in the media. The work of Oswald Avery, that showed that DNA made up the gene, and not proteins, comes to mind. Consequently, the wider or public, including policymakers, remain largely unaware that there are credible voices dissenting from the alleged consensus.
One particular way the above is accomplished is by the way the consensus group-thinkers banter around the phrase peer review, without ever providing one that properly falsifies the hypothesis they are attempting to denigrate, as if that alone proves their point. They tend typically to embrace the Genetic Fallacy as a disingenuous rhetorical tool: never mind what one says, instead create why does one say it, slander who’s paying and then attempt to slay that strawman with ad hominems. They assume the mantle, as discussed above, that peer review is uncorrupt(1), a guarantee of truth, rather than a weak barrier against obvious mistakes and sometimes even a suppressor of dissent.
One need not to be an active researcher in one particular aspect of any matter to be able to reach an informed, evidence-based opinion by reading the primary literature and interacting in person with the researchers on pertinent topics.
It is arguable that science has been infected by 2 fashionable viruses: politics and narrative. The political side often invents the summary of the findings of science which disagrees with what the findings actually reported. Even the liberal media is part of the problem, with includes organizations such as Covering Climate Now, a consortium of media outlets, that actually suppresses any scientific findings that disagree with the climate crisis scare, while lying about being committed to the truth.
The lack of attention to dissent from any consensus view has become a contemporary problem with science because science is increasingly no longer the disinterested truth-seeking activity still envisioned by conventional wisdom: it has become co-opted and corrupted by outside political interests and internally by corresponding conflicts of interest and careerism. As William Jennings Bryant said: "It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest.” The climate crisis serves the interest of diverse players, including environmental activists, the lying-liberal media, liberal politicians, scientists, and scientific institutions.
And not only has there been an increased push for Big Tech platforms to censor climate content that deviates from the mainstream narrative but influential groups, banks, and executives are also pushing for increased tracking and surveillance of individual carbon usage as a proposed strategy for the authoritarian climate change agenda.
I don’t think the science says what you think it says. For example, the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past 50 years. Why haven’t you heard these facts before? Because very few people actually read the assessment summaries, let alone the reports and research papers themselves...It’s not only the public that is uninformed but most government officials and others involved in climate policy for the public and private sectors...Government and UN press releases and summaries do not accurately reflect reports themselves... in an effort to persuade rather than inform, information presented withholds either essential context or what doesn’t fit...In short, the science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect their actions will have on it...We need to improve the science itself, and this begins with open and honest discussion that goes beyond slogans and polemics, and is free of accusations of skulduggery. Scientists should be welcoming debate, challenges, and opportunities for clarification. Science starts with questions; it’s hard to encourage new research if we insist they’ve all been answered. There are still plenty of important, even crucial, questions about climate that are as yet unsettled. The truth is that real science is never entirely settled – that’s how we make progress; it’s what science is all about... societal decisions that balance costs and drawbacks against risks and benefits must be made fully informed of the uncertainties and certainties in our scientific understanding... we also need to have a frank conversation about the proper role of government in these efforts...The impact of human influences on the climate is too uncertain and very likely to small compared to the daunting amount of change required to actually achieve the goal of eliminating net global emissions...The world needs growing amount so reliable and affordable energy, and widespread renewables or vision are currently too expensive, unreliable, or both. I would wait until the science becomes more settled before embarking on huge government mandated programs”--Stephen E. Koonin
"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated...Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race...I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned...Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts...We have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know...It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.....If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part"-- Richard Feynman
1 For example, The American Association for the Advancement of Science put out a report regarding climate that stated: “...while these problems pose numerous risk to society in a planet, undoubtedly the biggest risk would be to do nothing.” The problem is that statement was never submitted for comment, let alone endorsement, by the organization’s 120,000 members.
Further reading:
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/climate-change-weekly-450-climate-censors-and-their-phony-fact-checks-paid-shills
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/nothing-do-man-astrophysicist-says-climate-cultists-are-gravy-train-make-money
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_us_must_face_an_existential_threat_but_its_not_climate_change.html
PART VIII:
“Facts are like a map: they can show how to get to a destination. They cannot choose the destination. They provide the means, not the ends. The facts of science cannot provide a set of values by which to live.”--John Staddon
Science is a search for verifiable truth. Because personal truth, lived experience, etc. Will not do. Standpoint epistemology isn’t compatible with science. “How do you know” is basic to science. And It is hard to imagine a search for truth without a faith that there is a truth to be found.
To arrive at truth science needs to discuss facts and reasons with others. Therefore open debate is essential to science. And Although science is a social activity, It requires the scientist to be able to separate passion from fact, As Charles Darwin reminded us.
But consensus is not itself a scientific value. Truth often leads to consensus, but the reverse is not true, Truth is not because scientists accept something therefore it is true. It is facts and the proper arguments involved in verifying them that are the legitimate persuaders. Consensus can sometimes be obtained by non-scientific means, often by clever rhetoric, group pressure, or financials incentives. In other words anti-science.
Science is harmed when an idea cannot be examined because of the pedigree, reputation or opinion of those who expose it. Science is gravely injured when the emotional power of an idea is allowed to affect reputations of those who study it, when fact is not detached from passion.
The modern world has ceased to recognize the need to justify their belief in scientific certainty. It should be noted that reliance on predictive accuracy to affirm the truth of theory can also easily be no more than the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, i.e. if P then Q; so Q therefore P. What is evidently problematic about such an argument is that there may be another or even a number of alternative antecedents responsible for the outcome Q.
As man-made global warmists and other dogmatists peddle their propaganda, the case for man-made global warming is collapsing like a weak roof in a Beltway blizzard. In fact, we might call it "man made-up climate change”.
The case for a human-induced global warming crisis requires the demonstration of several components. These include that:
(1) global temperatures are rising.
(2) global temperatures will likely continue to rise in the future.
(3) the rise in temperatures is or will be sufficiently rapid and substantial to cause enormous negative consequences that far outweigh the benefits of such warming.
(4) human emissions of greenhouse gases account for all such temperature rise or enough of the temperature rise to elevate the temperature rise to crisis levels.
The above does not seem to be present to support the man-made global warming myth, and certainly is not the “consensus” (as if science is determined by vote). For instance, a Goddard Institute temperature dataset of more than 600 U.S. stations that have been in continuous operation throughout the 20th century showed a virtually flat temperature trend. The Goddard Institute’s claim of consistently rising temperatures relies on data from temperature stations without long-term consistency. Phil Jones, the former director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and a central figure in the ClimateGate scandal, has admitted that for 18 years, there has been no warming. Furthermore, he says the warming trend that began in 1975 is not unlike two previous periods since 1850, and the Medieval Warm Period could have been a global phenomenon similar to the latter three.
Meanwhile, John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former lead author on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is also questioning his faith. "The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," he said. Christy's doubts, like those of other researchers, stem from problems with thousands of weather stations used to collect temperature data. Urbanization and changes in land use, equipment relocation and other factors have compromised the data. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming," he said, "but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."
These are truly stunning admissions, coming as they do from what believers like algore erroneously call “the consensus," and cast grave doubt on what we have long been told is "settled science." For their part, U.S. media outlets have NOT reported exhaustively on these developments. As Noel Sheppard notes, "Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News -- and a lone report by CNN -- America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story."
Similar revelations regarding data manipulation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have surfaced with little or no fanfare.
"One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe. Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent announcement pretty much opens the door to regulating, well, everything. According to the EPA, greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide -- the gas you exhale -- as well as methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. It is literally impossible to imagine a significant economic or human activity that does not involve the production of one of these gases.... Whether or not global warming is a crisis that warrants immediate, drastic action (I don't think it does), and whether or not such wholesale measures would be an economic calamity (they would be), the EPA's decision should be disturbing to people who believe in democratic, constitutional government...[T]he EPA has launched its power grab over all that burns, breathes, burps, flies, drives and passes gas." -- Jonah Goldberg
But the theory that humans are causing Global Warming has run Out of Evidence
The facts point to where there is no evidence of man-made global warming left.
There only 4 points that matter, to prove scientifically, that man-made global warming is occurring:
1). The Greenhouse Signature----It is missing!
Weather balloons have scanned the skies for years but can find no sign of the
telltale "hot-spot" warming pattern that greenhouse gases would leave. There's not even a hint. Something else caused the warming.
2). The strongest evidence was the ice cores---But the latest, more detailed, data is disproving the theory of the cause of global warming!
Instead of carbon pushing up temperatures, for the last half-a-million years temperatures have gone UP before carbon dioxide levels. On average 800 years before. This totally threw what we thought was cause-and-effect out the window. Something else caused the warming.
3). Temperatures are not rising---the man-made global warming theory says it must!
Satellites, circling the planet twice a day show that the world has not warmed has the global warming theory said it would. How many more years will it take before some recognize that? While temperatures were flat for years, CO had been rising. The computer models don't know what’s happening. Something else has changed the trend.
4). Carbon dioxide is already doing almost all the warming it can do---more will have little significant effect!
Adding twice the C02 doesn't make twice the difference. The first C02 molecules matter a lot, but extra ones have less and less effect. In fact, carbon levels were 1000% higher in the past but the world still slipped into an ice age. The Earth has tested the theory of a runaway greenhouse effect---and nothing happened!. Carbon today is a bit player. And man-made carbon entering the atmosphere is miniscule compared to the amount nature itself dumps into the atmosphere every year. Something else caused the warming.
What Is Evidence?
Science depends on observations, made by people at some time and place. Things you can see, hold, hear, and record.
The following would be evidence that carbon is a major cause of global warming:
-If temperatures followed C02 levels in the past. (They didn't)
-If the atmosphere showed the characteristic heating pattern of increased
greenhouse warming. (It doesn't)
The following is NOT evidence:
Arctic ice disappearing; Glaciers retreating; Coral reef bleaching; Mt. Kilimanjaro losing snow; Madagascan lemurs doing, well, anything; 4 polar bears caught in a storm; Pick-a-bird/tree/moth facing extinction; A change in cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons; Droughts; Dry rivers; Computer models* ; No "better" explanation; Some guy with a PhD being "sure"; an arbitrary 2,500 scientists mostly agree; A government committee writing a long report; Government spending on "Emissions Trading Plans" topping $100 million; an emotion-filled actress, actor or rock-star telling us it’s so; algore (a failed theologian, ex-politician) making a movie and doing a money-making book & speaking tour.
*Why are computer models NOT evidence?
They're sophisticated, put together by experts. But even if they could predict the climate correct! (they can't), even if they were based on solid proven theories (they aren't), they still wouldn't count as evidence. Models of complex systems are based on scores of assumptions and estimates piled on dozens of theories. None of the current models forecast that temperatures would stop rising basically since 2001. So there is at least one other factor that is more important than C02 and the models don't know what it is. Anything that heats the planet will melt ice, shift lemurs, and cause droughts. None of these things tell us WHY the planet got warmer.
-A belief is not scientific if there is no evidence, and no situation where it could be proven false. Theories must be falsifiable. Anything else is faith-based.
“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, do something.”--John Lewis
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."-- Galileo Galilei
“The bigot is the man who cannot understand how the other man came to be wrong.”--G. K. Chesterton
“To be bigoted is having too little intelligence to be able to perceive that those who disagree can do so in good faith and complete honesty.”-- Sigrid Unset
Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis Used chlorinated lime in 1847 to disinfect. He was considered a quack. But his death rate in childbirth plummeted. Joseph Lister putting Louis Pasteur germ theory into practice in 1865 was considered bogus science by prominent medical scientists of the day. In the 19th century state of the art medical science cures included bloodletting, calomel, pokeweed, mustard plaster, and turpentine. The deniers were laughed at despite the cures being worse than the diseases.
Unorthodox views, by definition not espoused by and incompatible with contemporary consensual beliefs, not having a specific pedigree, have been given short shrift when suggested, are rarely taken seriously, not welcome in the mainstream scientific literature and rarely featured in the media. The work of Oswald Avery, that showed that DNA made up the gene, and not proteins, comes to mind. Consequently, the wider or public, including policymakers, remain largely unaware that there are credible voices dissenting from the alleged consensus.
One particular way the above is accomplished is by the way the consensus group-thinkers banter around the phrase peer review, without ever providing one that properly falsifies the hypothesis they are attempting to denigrate, as if that alone proves their point. They tend typically to embrace the Genetic Fallacy as a disingenuous rhetorical tool: never mind what one says, instead create why does one say it, slander who’s paying and then attempt to slay that strawman with ad hominems. They assume the mantle, as discussed above, that peer review is uncorrupt(1), a guarantee of truth, rather than a weak barrier against obvious mistakes and sometimes even a suppressor of dissent.
One need not to be an active researcher in one particular aspect of any matter to be able to reach an informed, evidence-based opinion by reading the primary literature and interacting in person with the researchers on pertinent topics.
It is arguable that science has been infected by 2 fashionable viruses: politics and narrative. The political side often invents the summary of the findings of science which disagrees with what the findings actually reported. Even the liberal media is part of the problem, with includes organizations such as Covering Climate Now, a consortium of media outlets, that actually suppresses any scientific findings that disagree with the climate crisis scare, while lying about being committed to the truth.
The lack of attention to dissent from any consensus view has become a contemporary problem with science because science is increasingly no longer the disinterested truth-seeking activity still envisioned by conventional wisdom: it has become co-opted and corrupted by outside political interests and internally by corresponding conflicts of interest and careerism. As William Jennings Bryant said: "It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest.” The climate crisis serves the interest of diverse players, including environmental activists, the lying-liberal media, liberal politicians, scientists, and scientific institutions.
And not only has there been an increased push for Big Tech platforms to censor climate content that deviates from the mainstream narrative but influential groups, banks, and executives are also pushing for increased tracking and surveillance of individual carbon usage as a proposed strategy for the authoritarian climate change agenda.
I don’t think the science says what you think it says. For example, the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past 50 years. Why haven’t you heard these facts before? Because very few people actually read the assessment summaries, let alone the reports and research papers themselves...It’s not only the public that is uninformed but most government officials and others involved in climate policy for the public and private sectors...Government and UN press releases and summaries do not accurately reflect reports themselves... in an effort to persuade rather than inform, information presented withholds either essential context or what doesn’t fit...In short, the science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect their actions will have on it...We need to improve the science itself, and this begins with open and honest discussion that goes beyond slogans and polemics, and is free of accusations of skulduggery. Scientists should be welcoming debate, challenges, and opportunities for clarification. Science starts with questions; it’s hard to encourage new research if we insist they’ve all been answered. There are still plenty of important, even crucial, questions about climate that are as yet unsettled. The truth is that real science is never entirely settled – that’s how we make progress; it’s what science is all about... societal decisions that balance costs and drawbacks against risks and benefits must be made fully informed of the uncertainties and certainties in our scientific understanding... we also need to have a frank conversation about the proper role of government in these efforts...The impact of human influences on the climate is too uncertain and very likely to small compared to the daunting amount of change required to actually achieve the goal of eliminating net global emissions...The world needs growing amount so reliable and affordable energy, and widespread renewables or vision are currently too expensive, unreliable, or both. I would wait until the science becomes more settled before embarking on huge government mandated programs”--Stephen E. Koonin
"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated...Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race...I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned...Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts...We have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know...It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.....If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part"-- Richard Feynman
1 For example, The American Association for the Advancement of Science put out a report regarding climate that stated: “...while these problems pose numerous risk to society in a planet, undoubtedly the biggest risk would be to do nothing.” The problem is that statement was never submitted for comment, let alone endorsement, by the organization’s 120,000 members.
Further reading:
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/climate-change-weekly-450-climate-censors-and-their-phony-fact-checks-paid-shills
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/nothing-do-man-astrophysicist-says-climate-cultists-are-gravy-train-make-money
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_us_must_face_an_existential_threat_but_its_not_climate_change.html
PART VIII:
“Facts are like a map: they can show how to get to a destination. They cannot choose the destination. They provide the means, not the ends. The facts of science cannot provide a set of values by which to live.”--John Staddon
Science is a search for verifiable truth. Because personal truth, lived experience, etc. Will not do. Standpoint epistemology isn’t compatible with science. “How do you know” is basic to science. And It is hard to imagine a search for truth without a faith that there is a truth to be found.
To arrive at truth science needs to discuss facts and reasons with others. Therefore open debate is essential to science. And Although science is a social activity, It requires the scientist to be able to separate passion from fact, As Charles Darwin reminded us.
But consensus is not itself a scientific value. Truth often leads to consensus, but the reverse is not true, Truth is not because scientists accept something therefore it is true. It is facts and the proper arguments involved in verifying them that are the legitimate persuaders. Consensus can sometimes be obtained by non-scientific means, often by clever rhetoric, group pressure, or financials incentives. In other words anti-science.
Science is harmed when an idea cannot be examined because of the pedigree, reputation or opinion of those who expose it. Science is gravely injured when the emotional power of an idea is allowed to affect reputations of those who study it, when fact is not detached from passion.
The modern world has ceased to recognize the need to justify their belief in scientific certainty. It should be noted that reliance on predictive accuracy to affirm the truth of theory can also easily be no more than the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, i.e. if P then Q; so Q therefore P. What is evidently problematic about such an argument is that there may be another or even a number of alternative antecedents responsible for the outcome Q.
As man-made global warmists and other dogmatists peddle their propaganda, the case for man-made global warming is collapsing like a weak roof in a Beltway blizzard. In fact, we might call it "man made-up climate change”.
The case for a human-induced global warming crisis requires the demonstration of several components. These include that:
(1) global temperatures are rising.
(2) global temperatures will likely continue to rise in the future.
(3) the rise in temperatures is or will be sufficiently rapid and substantial to cause enormous negative consequences that far outweigh the benefits of such warming.
(4) human emissions of greenhouse gases account for all such temperature rise or enough of the temperature rise to elevate the temperature rise to crisis levels.
The above does not seem to be present to support the man-made global warming myth, and certainly is not the “consensus” (as if science is determined by vote). For instance, a Goddard Institute temperature dataset of more than 600 U.S. stations that have been in continuous operation throughout the 20th century showed a virtually flat temperature trend. The Goddard Institute’s claim of consistently rising temperatures relies on data from temperature stations without long-term consistency. Phil Jones, the former director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and a central figure in the ClimateGate scandal, has admitted that for 18 years, there has been no warming. Furthermore, he says the warming trend that began in 1975 is not unlike two previous periods since 1850, and the Medieval Warm Period could have been a global phenomenon similar to the latter three.
Meanwhile, John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former lead author on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is also questioning his faith. "The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," he said. Christy's doubts, like those of other researchers, stem from problems with thousands of weather stations used to collect temperature data. Urbanization and changes in land use, equipment relocation and other factors have compromised the data. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming," he said, "but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."
These are truly stunning admissions, coming as they do from what believers like algore erroneously call “the consensus," and cast grave doubt on what we have long been told is "settled science." For their part, U.S. media outlets have NOT reported exhaustively on these developments. As Noel Sheppard notes, "Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News -- and a lone report by CNN -- America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story."
Similar revelations regarding data manipulation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have surfaced with little or no fanfare.
"One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe. Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent announcement pretty much opens the door to regulating, well, everything. According to the EPA, greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide -- the gas you exhale -- as well as methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. It is literally impossible to imagine a significant economic or human activity that does not involve the production of one of these gases.... Whether or not global warming is a crisis that warrants immediate, drastic action (I don't think it does), and whether or not such wholesale measures would be an economic calamity (they would be), the EPA's decision should be disturbing to people who believe in democratic, constitutional government...[T]he EPA has launched its power grab over all that burns, breathes, burps, flies, drives and passes gas." -- Jonah Goldberg
But the theory that humans are causing Global Warming has run Out of Evidence
The facts point to where there is no evidence of man-made global warming left.
There only 4 points that matter, to prove scientifically, that man-made global warming is occurring:
1). The Greenhouse Signature----It is missing!
Weather balloons have scanned the skies for years but can find no sign of the
telltale "hot-spot" warming pattern that greenhouse gases would leave. There's not even a hint. Something else caused the warming.
2). The strongest evidence was the ice cores---But the latest, more detailed, data is disproving the theory of the cause of global warming!
Instead of carbon pushing up temperatures, for the last half-a-million years temperatures have gone UP before carbon dioxide levels. On average 800 years before. This totally threw what we thought was cause-and-effect out the window. Something else caused the warming.
3). Temperatures are not rising---the man-made global warming theory says it must!
Satellites, circling the planet twice a day show that the world has not warmed has the global warming theory said it would. How many more years will it take before some recognize that? While temperatures were flat for years, CO had been rising. The computer models don't know what’s happening. Something else has changed the trend.
4). Carbon dioxide is already doing almost all the warming it can do---more will have little significant effect!
Adding twice the C02 doesn't make twice the difference. The first C02 molecules matter a lot, but extra ones have less and less effect. In fact, carbon levels were 1000% higher in the past but the world still slipped into an ice age. The Earth has tested the theory of a runaway greenhouse effect---and nothing happened!. Carbon today is a bit player. And man-made carbon entering the atmosphere is miniscule compared to the amount nature itself dumps into the atmosphere every year. Something else caused the warming.
What Is Evidence?
Science depends on observations, made by people at some time and place. Things you can see, hold, hear, and record.
The following would be evidence that carbon is a major cause of global warming:
-If temperatures followed C02 levels in the past. (They didn't)
-If the atmosphere showed the characteristic heating pattern of increased
greenhouse warming. (It doesn't)
The following is NOT evidence:
Arctic ice disappearing; Glaciers retreating; Coral reef bleaching; Mt. Kilimanjaro losing snow; Madagascan lemurs doing, well, anything; 4 polar bears caught in a storm; Pick-a-bird/tree/moth facing extinction; A change in cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons; Droughts; Dry rivers; Computer models* ; No "better" explanation; Some guy with a PhD being "sure"; an arbitrary 2,500 scientists mostly agree; A government committee writing a long report; Government spending on "Emissions Trading Plans" topping $100 million; an emotion-filled actress, actor or rock-star telling us it’s so; algore (a failed theologian, ex-politician) making a movie and doing a money-making book & speaking tour.
*Why are computer models NOT evidence?
They're sophisticated, put together by experts. But even if they could predict the climate correct! (they can't), even if they were based on solid proven theories (they aren't), they still wouldn't count as evidence. Models of complex systems are based on scores of assumptions and estimates piled on dozens of theories. None of the current models forecast that temperatures would stop rising basically since 2001. So there is at least one other factor that is more important than C02 and the models don't know what it is. Anything that heats the planet will melt ice, shift lemurs, and cause droughts. None of these things tell us WHY the planet got warmer.
-A belief is not scientific if there is no evidence, and no situation where it could be proven false. Theories must be falsifiable. Anything else is faith-based.
- by Raymond Ibrahim
May 10, 2023 at 5:00 am - The top five "pressure points" Christian women experience are: 1) sexual violence; 2) forced marriage; 3) physical violence; 4) incarceration or house arrest by male family members; and 5) psychological violence.
- "Faith-based sexual violence is recorded as a risk for Christian women and girls in 86% [of the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted in general]. Sexual violence is consistently chosen time and time again to target Christian women and girls across the globe...." [Emphasis in original] — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
- Of the top 20 nations where gender most shapes the experience of persecution for female Christians, 18 are either Muslim-majority or have a significant Muslim population.
- Pakistan: " [I]t is becoming the norm to rape Christian children [some as young as three].... Many families never see their girls again, partly because the authorities rarely take meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice.... There are also reports of Christian boys being subject to sexual abuse. Experts indicate that instances of rape and murder of young boys are on the rise in Pakistan..." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
- Saudi Arabia: "[R]ape and sexual assault are commonplace across Saudi Arabia for the thousands of non-Saudi (especially Asian and African) housemaids across the country who are Christian (or non-Islamic), a position in which they are commonly abused and virtually treated as slaves." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
- "House-maids working in the UAE often face sexual harassment or slave-like treatment." — Open Doors, A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report.
- Among other sad conclusions, these disturbing trends make one thing clear: the notorious sexual abuses that the Islamic State ("ISIS") committed against Christians, Yazidis, and other non-Muslim minorities—which the world heard of, but was also reassured had "nothing to do with Islam" — are, in fact, part and parcel of Muslim societies, rich or poor, whether African, Arab, or Asian.
The global targeting of Christian women for rape and sexual violence, according to a new study, appears to be at an all-time high, especially in the Muslim world. (Image source: iStock)The global targeting of Christian women for rape and sexual violence, according to a new study, appears to be at an all-time high, especially in the Muslim world.
Open Doors, a human rights organization that tracks the global persecution of Christians, recently published reports examining the role of gender. One of these, "A Web of Forces: The 2023 Gender Report," ranks nations based on the category of "gender-specific religious persecution" and shows how a victim's gender shapes their respective persecution. According to the report:
"Globally, Christian women and girls often find themselves caught in a particularly complex web of compounding vulnerabilities. They are not only vulnerable as Christians ... but their additional gender-determined vulnerabilities overlap and interact to a greater extent than for Christian men and boys in the same contexts. These are environments where all females experience a disadvantaged status as women before the law or in society, bias against their lack of education or an elevated risk of poverty. These multiple vulnerabilities compound one another – like the multiplying forces of compound interest in a bank. Religious persecution exploits the existence of these many interlinking and compounding forces, aggravating the damage to individual women and girls, their families and their communities."
The top five "pressure points" that Christian women experience are: 1) sexual violence; 2) forced marriage; 3) physical violence; 4) incarceration or house arrest by male family members; and 5) psychological violence.
Although all five pressure points are often interconnected, the first — "sexual violence" against Christian women because of their faith — is by far the most common and widespread. The report emphasizes that:
"Faith-based sexual violence is recorded as a risk for Christian women and girls in 86% [of the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted in general]. Sexual violence is consistently chosen time and time again to target Christian women and girls across the globe.... The physical and psychol-emotional severity of sexual violence is considerable and well-understood, but the effectiveness of sexual violence is also due to the myriad of damaging consequences that can ensue. A web of complicit forces can worsen its impact and lead to loss of shelter, food, future opportunities and community." [Emphasis in the original]
Of the top 20 nations where gender most shapes the experience of persecution for female Christians, 18 are either Muslim-majority or have a significant Muslim population (the other two are India and Columbia). The 20 are ranked as follows: 1) Nigeria, 2) Cameroon, 3) Somalia, 4) Sudan, 5) Syria, 6) Ethiopia, 7) Niger, 8) India, 9) Pakistan, 10) Mali, 11) Iran, 12) Mozambique, 13) Eritrea, 14) Burkina Faso, 15) Central African Republic, 16) Afghanistan, 17) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 18) Colombia, 19) Egypt, 20) Tunisia.
A representative sampling of the African, Arab, and Asian nations follows in no particular order:
Nigeria:
"[Christian] Women and girls have been raped, forced into sexual slavery, kidnapped for ransom and killed.... Abduction is used regularly to depopulate Christian-dominated territory and impoverish Christian families. Most commonly, Christian girls are abducted and have been known to be trafficked by radical Islamic religious leaders for the purpose of forced marriage and forced conversion – even women who are already married.... Of late, Emirs have provided a special covering for abductors of minors, they collect the minors from the abductors and convert them to Islam then marry them off to willing Muslims, who often rape the minors to impregnate them. The emirs act like their parents, while their biological parents are denied access to them. When parents try to rescue their child, they commonly face resistance from the community, police and judiciary, who argue the marriage is legitimate under Islamic law and the girl has accepted Islam. In addition to being "married," girls abducted by militants have reportedly been used as suicide bombers, human shields or as leverage in negotiations with the government or their families.... Violence against women is also used as a weapon to harm Christian men. Men and boys have been forced to watch their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters be raped in front of them, or abducted, causing deep trauma and feelings of helplessness, as they feel they should have been able to protect them."
Syria:
"Christian women and girls regularly experience harassment and acts of discrimination in the public sphere, even being seduced deliberately in an attempt to convert them to Islam. For example, if a Muslim shop owner sees a woman in a hijab and another who is wearing a cross, she might well keep the Christian waiting and potentially even raise the price for her. Women have also reported being spat at in the street and discriminated against in the workplace. Christian women are most vulnerable to persecution in areas controlled by Islamist groups. For female converts (particularly those from a Muslim background), violence can come from their own families and communities."
Somalia:
"Young female converts to Christianity remain one of the most vulnerable populations. Commonly, a woman suspected of Christianity will be humiliated in public, kept under strict house arrest, raped, abducted, forcibly married to a radical sheikh or killed. For example, when a female convert to Christianity was this year discovered by her family, [she was] arrested in her room and tied on her bed with a chain for six months until another believer was able to come to the rescue. If already married, she will likely be divorced and have her children taken away to ensure that they are raised in an Islamic way."
Pakistan:
"Christian women and girls are at risk of sexual violence in the public sphere, including in the workplace and in schools. Many of them are maids, or cleaners, and are targeted for sexual exploitation. .... [I]t is becoming the norm to rape Christian children [some as young as three].... The psychological trauma and abuse continues even if a case is brought to bring back the girl.... [One Christian woman] committed suicide because of abuse and sexual harassment, departmental negligence and religious oppression.... Many families never see their girls again, partly because the authorities rarely take meaningful action to bring perpetrators to justice.... The legal system repeatedly fails these young women. Many between the ages of 8-18 are being abducted, raped and married to older men. Some of them over 50 years old.... There are also reports of Christian boys being subject to sexual abuse. Experts indicate that instances of rape and murder of young boys are on the rise in Pakistan..."
Yemen:
"[A female convert to Christianity] might be isolated in the home, physically and mentally abused, and possibly given in marriage to a devout Muslim, raped or even killed to 'restore the honor' of the tribe or family.... Christian women and girls also risk being sexually abused at the hands of militias due to the concept of 'anfal' [Arabic for "spoils"], which permits non-Muslims in some circumstances to be treated as slaves as part of the spoils of war (Quran, Surah Al-Anfal). According to local experts these groups are running prostitution rings in the country." [For more on the topic of slavery and concubinage in Islam see here, here, and here.]
Chad:
"Christian women in Chad face both violent and non-violent persecution for their faith. Christian women are also vulnerable to sexual violence at the hands of Islamic militants. ... Women and girls who have been raped and consequently impregnated typically suffer ongoing psychological distress and low self-esteem. Traumatized rape victims sometimes view their children as a perpetual reminder of the crime committed against them. Local sources report that the wider society around them, too, is unsympathetic to their plight, viewing them as tarnished."
Egypt:
"Christian women are targeted for marriage by grooming, rape and forced conversion by Islamist networks... Police response has been often complicit or apathetic and many women remain missing. The psychological toll is high, and many women live in fear..."
Democratic Republic of Congo:
"Christian women are vulnerable to abduction, rape, trafficking, and sexual slavery, especially by ADF [Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamic terror group]... Women and girls are raped, forced to marry ADF soldiers and others are trafficked. Sometimes these women and girls are killed. Many Christian women who are spared are reportedly kept as a kind of 'trophy.' ... These forced marriages are often early marriages, as sources report that elderly Muslim men often prefer young Christian girls."
Saudi Arabia:
"[R]ape and sexual assault are commonplace across Saudi Arabia for the thousands of non-Saudi (especially Asian and African) housemaids across the country who are Christian (or non-Islamic), a position in which they are commonly abused and virtually treated as slaves."
Tunisia:
"As conversion from Islam is forbidden, converts from Islam face the greatest breadth of persecution if their faith is discovered. ... They may be physically beaten, expelled from their home, put under house arrest, threatened with death and/or raped. If already married, she will likely be divorced, have her children taken away and have her financial support withdrawn. Some Christian women have been separated from their children for prolonged periods due to disputes related to their new Christian faith."
United Arab Emirates:
"A female convert to Christianity will face immense pressure from her family to force her to convert back to Islam. If she does not, an imam may be called in to convince her of her sin, or she could be placed under house arrest. Even if a Christian man were willing to marry her, women who come from a Muslim background are legally restricted from marrying a non-Muslim... [F]or Christian women who are married to a Muslim man, the law grants custody of children of non-Muslim women to the Muslim father in the event of a divorce.... House-maids working in the UAE often face sexual harassment or slave-like treatment."
Among other sad conclusions, these disturbing trends make one thing clear: the notorious sexual abuses that the Islamic State ("ISIS") committed against Christians, Yazidis, and other non-Muslim minorities—which the world heard of but was also reassured had "nothing to do with Islam" — are, in fact, part and parcel of Muslim societies, rich or poor, whether African, Arab, or Asian.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
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Related Topics: Persecution of Minorities
Recent Articles by Raymond Ibrahim
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Texas Governor Abbott Deploys New Border Force to Fight ‘Catastrophic Disaster’ as Title 42 Ends
By Guest Contributor
May 9, 2023 at 10:04am
By Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday he is deploying a tactical border force ahead of the public health authority Title 42 ending on Thursday.
The plans were unveiled on the tarmac of the Austin Bergstrom International Airport.
As he spoke, the new Texas National Guard Tactical Border Force Unit began loading up behind him into black helicopters and C-130 military planes.
RELATED: You Won’t Believe What the Border Looks Like Right Now – And It’s Going to Get Worse
“President [Joe] Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world saying that the United States border is wide open and it will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally,” Abbott said, which will “cause a catastrophic disaster in the United States.”
Citing Biden administration estimates that 13,000 foreign nationals are expected to cross the southern border illegally every day, he said that amounts to about 4.7 million people who “will be coming across the border illegally,” or more “than there are residents of the massive city of Chicago.”
In response, he said, “Texas is doing more than any other state in the United States of America to defend the southern border.”
Adjutant General of the Texas Military Department Major General Thomas Suelzer said the Texas National Guard has executed a multiphase response to Title 42 ending. Phase 1 began last month and is complete, he said, involving shifting troops to hot spots along the border. Last month, 200 additional troops were deployed to El Paso and they also erected 22,000 miles of concertina wire barriers to block illegal entry between ports of entry.
“Yesterday two quick reaction forces were deployed,” Suelzer said to opposite ends of the Texas-Mexico border. One is currently deployed in El Paso. Another is arriving in the Rio Grande Valley later Monday, he said.
RELATED: NYC Documenting Diseases from Foreign Nationals Bused from Texas Border
“What you are seeing behind you is phase 3,” he said. The tactical border unit is comprised of 450 personnel who are being deployed to El Paso and to the RGV. The same operation will occur again with over 200 personnel leaving for the RGV Tuesday, he said, completing phase 3 of the operation.
This is in addition to Texas having already deployed 10,000 National Guard troops and 1,200 Texas DPS troopers to the border.
Suelzer also said he “had the honor of eating dinner with these troops last night. I can tell you the morale is high among the troops and their dedication to the state of Texas is inspirational.”
Despite Texas troops effectively blocking illegal entry between ports of entry south of El Paso, the city declared a state of emergency after thousands arrived at ports of entry believing the border is open and were released into the community by Border Patrol agents. With no money and no means for transportation or plans, people from all over the world have taken over and set up tents on sidewalks downtown and in surrounding areas.
In the RGV in Brownsville, guardsmen last week shut down a major crossing between ports of entry, Abbott said. The same tactic will be deployed elsewhere where troops will use aircraft, boats, night vision equipment, and riot gear “to prepare for anything they may encounter as they are protecting and securing our border,” he said.
Their efforts are different than the 1,500 military personnel deployed by the Biden administration tasked with assisting Border Patrol agents with processing foreign nationals into the U.S.
“They’re doing paperwork,” Abbott said. “They’re not actually going to be on the border to secure the border. The goal of the president is not to stop the people from coming across the border illegally. Our job and what we’re focused on, is trying to stop the people coming across illegally.”
RELATED: Mexico, U.S. Announce Joint Action to Expand ‘Legal Pathways’ to U.S.
The governor said there wouldn’t be any “entanglement” between Texas troops and those the president deployed “because the president is not going to have his troops down there trying to secure the border.”
“Texas has the ability to secure the border,” Abbott said in response to a reporter inquiry. “If we were acting in isolation, we would have secured the border. We are doing everything possible to try and stop people from crossing the border. At the very same time the president of the United States is putting out the welcome mat. The cartels know it’s the federal government that controls the immigration process. The cartels are working in collaboration with President Biden and the federal government to facilitate that illegals cross the border.”
Referring to Texas, he said, “we are being overrun by our own federal government. Texas is being undermined by our own federal government and our efforts to secure our border. It’s only Joe Biden and his open border policies that’s hindered out ability to secure the border.”
Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
May 9, 2023 at 10:04am
By Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday he is deploying a tactical border force ahead of the public health authority Title 42 ending on Thursday.
The plans were unveiled on the tarmac of the Austin Bergstrom International Airport.
As he spoke, the new Texas National Guard Tactical Border Force Unit began loading up behind him into black helicopters and C-130 military planes.
RELATED: You Won’t Believe What the Border Looks Like Right Now – And It’s Going to Get Worse
“President [Joe] Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world saying that the United States border is wide open and it will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally,” Abbott said, which will “cause a catastrophic disaster in the United States.”
Citing Biden administration estimates that 13,000 foreign nationals are expected to cross the southern border illegally every day, he said that amounts to about 4.7 million people who “will be coming across the border illegally,” or more “than there are residents of the massive city of Chicago.”
In response, he said, “Texas is doing more than any other state in the United States of America to defend the southern border.”
Adjutant General of the Texas Military Department Major General Thomas Suelzer said the Texas National Guard has executed a multiphase response to Title 42 ending. Phase 1 began last month and is complete, he said, involving shifting troops to hot spots along the border. Last month, 200 additional troops were deployed to El Paso and they also erected 22,000 miles of concertina wire barriers to block illegal entry between ports of entry.
“Yesterday two quick reaction forces were deployed,” Suelzer said to opposite ends of the Texas-Mexico border. One is currently deployed in El Paso. Another is arriving in the Rio Grande Valley later Monday, he said.
RELATED: NYC Documenting Diseases from Foreign Nationals Bused from Texas Border
“What you are seeing behind you is phase 3,” he said. The tactical border unit is comprised of 450 personnel who are being deployed to El Paso and to the RGV. The same operation will occur again with over 200 personnel leaving for the RGV Tuesday, he said, completing phase 3 of the operation.
This is in addition to Texas having already deployed 10,000 National Guard troops and 1,200 Texas DPS troopers to the border.
Suelzer also said he “had the honor of eating dinner with these troops last night. I can tell you the morale is high among the troops and their dedication to the state of Texas is inspirational.”
Despite Texas troops effectively blocking illegal entry between ports of entry south of El Paso, the city declared a state of emergency after thousands arrived at ports of entry believing the border is open and were released into the community by Border Patrol agents. With no money and no means for transportation or plans, people from all over the world have taken over and set up tents on sidewalks downtown and in surrounding areas.
In the RGV in Brownsville, guardsmen last week shut down a major crossing between ports of entry, Abbott said. The same tactic will be deployed elsewhere where troops will use aircraft, boats, night vision equipment, and riot gear “to prepare for anything they may encounter as they are protecting and securing our border,” he said.
Their efforts are different than the 1,500 military personnel deployed by the Biden administration tasked with assisting Border Patrol agents with processing foreign nationals into the U.S.
“They’re doing paperwork,” Abbott said. “They’re not actually going to be on the border to secure the border. The goal of the president is not to stop the people from coming across the border illegally. Our job and what we’re focused on, is trying to stop the people coming across illegally.”
RELATED: Mexico, U.S. Announce Joint Action to Expand ‘Legal Pathways’ to U.S.
The governor said there wouldn’t be any “entanglement” between Texas troops and those the president deployed “because the president is not going to have his troops down there trying to secure the border.”
“Texas has the ability to secure the border,” Abbott said in response to a reporter inquiry. “If we were acting in isolation, we would have secured the border. We are doing everything possible to try and stop people from crossing the border. At the very same time the president of the United States is putting out the welcome mat. The cartels know it’s the federal government that controls the immigration process. The cartels are working in collaboration with President Biden and the federal government to facilitate that illegals cross the border.”
Referring to Texas, he said, “we are being overrun by our own federal government. Texas is being undermined by our own federal government and our efforts to secure our border. It’s only Joe Biden and his open border policies that’s hindered out ability to secure the border.”
Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
Spy Games
Spy Games: Why Private Companies Now Dominate Domestic Espionageby J.B. Shurk • May 5, 2023 at 5:00 am
- Almost all private companies have now entered the "spy business."
- In the old days, television and movie studios wanted to know what you watch; today, everybody wants to know what you watch, what you like, what you do, where you go, and with whom you go there. In turn, all this information is ultimately used to manipulate human behavior.
- US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments regularly purchase Americans' personal data from private companies, so that they may "spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens." No kind of personal information is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information on an individual's GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions, religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more. It is the type of total surveillance, Rep. Rodgers alleged, that "you would expect out of the Chinese Communist Party surveillance state, not in America." Yet it is all arguably legal or in an unregulated gray zone.
- "A report published last month by the Brennan Center for Justice found at least twelve overlapping DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online," demonstrating that the DHS had "veered from its original counterterrorism mission into tracking social and political movements and monitoring First Amendment-protected activity of American citizens." — Senator Rand Paul, April 18, 2023.
- In a particularly shocking example that seemed eerily reminiscent of atrocities committed by Hitler Youth chapters during the 1930s or young schoolchildren during China's Cultural Revolution, Paul noted, "In 2021, DHS even put out a video encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for disinformation if they challenge the U.S. government narratives on COVID-19."
- Right now... the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is busy capitalizing on recent Pentagon leaks to advance the RESTRICT Act, a piece of legislation that would give the Executive Branch even greater authority to track online communication and label information shared on the Internet as "dangerous." Known derisively as an "online Patriot Act," that power grab would come in handy for the government's domestic surveillance operations during an era when former FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS spooks are filling the ranks of social media companies and the FBI continues to flag more words as online evidence of potential "violent extremism."
- [D]ozens of members of Congress and their families recently sold off bank shares while they were actively meeting with regulators amid the volatile financial climate prompted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
- As part of the military's "signature reduction" program, the Pentagon even regularly hides forces carrying out clandestine assignments within private companies under false names. Due to the government's increased reliance on contractors, a small number of corporate firms now dominate the private intelligence industry.
- You put all these trends together and you get an expansive corporate-government partnership with vast surveillance powers conducting domestic espionage on American citizens — free from legal scrutiny and done in the name of "national security."
US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (pictured), chair of the House Committee on
Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments
regularly purchase Americans' personal data from private companies, so that they
may "spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens." No kind of personal infor-
mation is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information
on an individual's GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions,
religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." That rhetorical gem, credited to various scientists and political leaders, shows up on mouse pads and posters and wherever else suitable inspiration is found wanting. It is also a remarkably accurate mission statement for two professions: financial investors and spies. In both occupations, a person is rewarded for either (1) collecting and processing enough available information to predict future events or (2) creating a set of preconditions that will make future events all but certain.
Any financial analyst who foresaw the likelihood of a global pandemic before the outbreak of COVID-19 could have made a fortune investing in the right pharmaceutical companies. Likewise, regardless of Pfizer's motivations for doing so, its funding of numerous nonprofit organizations that actively pushed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates also benefited its bottom line. You could say that both market mavens and intelligence operatives invest heavily in creating a desired reality that will yield dividends. By successfully creating the future, prophets can turn profits.
It should be no surprise, then, that intelligence gathering and information warfare are just as prevalent in the corporate sphere as in the covert one. Nothing benefits investors more lucratively than the acquisition and use of market knowledge before anyone else, as can reportedly be seen from the investments of the family of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, as well as others in government (here, here and here).
In the worlds of financing and espionage, the game is the same: stay ahead of competitors. What this means in practice is netting as much information about adversaries and allies as possible. In order to decide whether to double-down on an investment or run for cover, an analyst is interested in the likelihood of a company's technological success, the risk of other investors swooping in and staking a claim, the potential for competing companies to introduce similar products, and the probability that regulatory authorities might act in ways that affect the company's future profitability. You have to keep an eye on your company, its competitors, your rivals, and any number of government agencies. The complexity of such an arrangement is why private intelligence services are regularly used to monitor all these variables, collect information, analyze risks, and propose solutions.
What might a "proposed solution" to an intelligence problem look like? It could mean tracking the private flight paths of other potential investors to determine whether they are making a play that could either weaken your relative ownership share or harm its ultimate profitability. It could mean paying close attention to arcane public testimony delivered at some congressional subcommittee hearing involving little-known regulatory bodies in hopes that future government interactions with your emerging market can be lobbied or surmised. Intelligence collection starts at this basic level and goes as deeply as private intelligence operators and their clients are willing to go.
If information collection and analysis help to predict future events, information warfare can then help to shape those future events. The line separating advertising and public relations campaigns from corporate-sanctioned propaganda is thin. Did the star of a new movie wear a particular brand of sneakers because it is his favorite footwear or because the company behind the sneakers has a sister company producing the film or because the footwear firm is paying for the shot. Did a large newspaper run front-page stories about a politician's affair because it is national news or because damaging that politician's credibility will make it more difficult for the committee he chairs to hold the newspaper's largest shareholder accountable for regulatory infractions in an unrelated industry? Do companies release "woke" commercials that hurt their bottom lines because professional public relations firms misread consumer opinion or because doing so shields corporate board members from potential discrimination lawsuits? Does the government incentivize Americans' purchase of electric vehicles because doing so will "save the planet" or because the industry players most likely to gain financially from environmental mandates have filled legislators' campaign coffers and family foundations to the hilt?
Make no mistake: corporations are heavily invested in shaping the perceptions, beliefs, and expectations of the public in ways that will bring financial reward. Information warfare beyond mere advertising is all around. That is the situation whether the product is a new line of stealth aircraft for the next war, a new pharmaceutical product that markets itself as essential for saving lives, or a new kind of sugar-free cookie made popular by online "influencers" who say dessert helped them lose weight.
If even the most harmless-sounding doll company has an incentive to gather and shape public information, consider the incentives of companies that generate revenue entirely from the collection and use of personal data. Advertisers seeking to influence consumer behavior are interested not only in a potential buyer's likes and dislikes but also in all the life patterns that might be exploited to reach that buyer's mind. When social media users tag everything they see, hear, and read with actual "likes" or "dislikes," that job becomes much easier. If a company's target demographic is middle-class moms, and social media traffic shows that middle-class moms are primarily concerned about the same issue, then corporate advertisers will mold commercials that reflect concern for that issue, as well. Location data can also be bought directly from cellular networks or messaging apps. A significant percentage of these moms train at karate dojos. Corporate advertisers now know the best way to influence future buying behavior is to advertise near or in partnership with martial arts schools. Unsuspecting martial arts mothers are flooded with targeted messaging when they would least expect it.
Companies that collect raw data specifically so that it might be analyzed and used to influence consumer behavior rake in big bucks as private spies. Almost all private companies have now entered the "spy business." What clothing fashions catch your eye? Are you more or less inclined to make a purchase near a food court? Do your purchases, when combined with those of millions of others, reveal that people who like convertible cars prefer a particular brand of camping equipment?
No matter how tiny, every piece of data can be significant. That is why data collection is not the exclusive purview of credit card, social media, and mobile phone companies but rather part of the regular business model of any company making a buck. In the old days, television and movie studios wanted to know what you watch; today, everybody wants to know what you watch, what you like, what you do, where you go, and with whom you go there. In turn, all this information is ultimately used to manipulate human behavior.
Corporate espionage is pervasive. It occurs between competing companies; it is conducted against unsuspecting consumers; it has spawned an enormously profitable market for the collection and sale of every crumb of personal data in which even the smallest businesses regularly engage. Just as in the world of covert spies, the tools of the trade are (1) information gathering and (2) information warfare.
Does it then seem reasonable that so much corporate espionage could exist without attracting the interests of government intelligence services?
US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments regularly purchase Americans' personal data from private companies, so that they may "spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens." No kind of personal information is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information on an individual's GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions, religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more. It is the type of total surveillance, Rodgers alleged, that "you would expect out of the Chinese Communist Party surveillance state, not in America." Yet it is all arguably legal or in an unregulated gray zone.
Given the government's interest in spying on its citizens without the need for either demonstrating probable cause or securing particularized warrants, it seems unlikely that anything will change soon. During an April 18 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Rand Paul accused DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of ignoring foreign threats and abusing the agency's powers to "expand social media censorship of Americans using third-party nonprofits as... a clearinghouse for information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda." Furthermore, Paul continued, "A report published last month by the Brennan Center for Justice found at least twelve overlapping DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online," demonstrating that DHS had, "veered from its original counterterrorism mission into tracking social and political movements and monitoring First Amendment-protected activity of American citizens."
In a particularly shocking example that seemed eerily reminiscent of atrocities committed by Hitler Youth chapters during the 1930s or young schoolchildren during China's Cultural Revolution, Paul noted:
"In 2021, DHS even put out a video encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for disinformation if they challenge the U.S. government narratives on COVID-19."
Paul is right to argue that these kinds of corporate-government partnerships used to surveil and influence American citizens "should terrify all of us," but would enough lawmakers ever actually agree to handcuff the government from seeking and utilizing the enormous tranche of personal information collected and sold by private companies and data brokers? Right now, after all, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is busy capitalizing on recent Pentagon leaks to advance the RESTRICT Act, a piece of legislation that would give the Executive Branch even greater authority to track online communication and label information shared on the Internet as "dangerous." Known derisively as an "online Patriot Act," that power grab would come in handy for the government's domestic surveillance operations during an era when former FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS spooks are filling the ranks of social media companies and the FBI continues to flag more words as online evidence of potential "violent extremism."
Rodgers and Paul aside, neither First Amendment considerations nor any respect for Americans' privacy and liberty appear to be of much concern for politicians or spy agencies. Not only are most lawmakers leery of interfering with intelligence collection practices when they can later be condemned for having endangered American security, but also they often find some kind of personal benefit for looking past constitutional concerns. After all, analysis shows that dozens of members of Congress and their families recently sold off bank shares while they were actively meeting with regulators amid the volatile financial climate prompted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. When information collection leads to power and profit, only the rare politician would dare get in the way.
Now consider just how instrumental private companies have become for intelligence collection and analysis. The U.S. government has granted top-secret security clearance to an astonishingly large number of employees and contractors — over 1.25 million as of today. Yet every private company monitoring, tracking, recording, and influencing consumers is in the spy business just the same. The business of data brokers is booming. Even more telling, private sector demand for former government spies is great. The private espionage field in which corporations and governments use operatives-for-hire under scant regulatory oversight is growing exponentially. As part of the military's "signature reduction" program, the Pentagon even regularly hides forces carrying out clandestine assignments within private companies under false names. Due to the government's increased reliance on contractors, a small number of corporate firms now dominate the private intelligence industry.
You put all these trends together and you get an expansive corporate-government partnership with vast surveillance powers conducting domestic espionage on American citizens — free from legal scrutiny and done in the name of "national security." Every company is an information asset. A growing industry dedicated to private data collection accrues vast wealth and untold secrets. At the top of this private espionage pyramid sit a small number of firms that directly feed intelligence agencies and lawmakers with the information they will use to interpret threats and make policy.
Never have the worlds of covert espionage and financial investment been so integrated. With a shared purpose of profiting from the collection of private information, both corporate spies and government spooks seek to predict the future by directly shaping it. The rest of us, however, are merely the things being shaped.
JB Shurk writes about politics and society.
Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments
regularly purchase Americans' personal data from private companies, so that they
may "spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens." No kind of personal infor-
mation is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information
on an individual's GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions,
religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." That rhetorical gem, credited to various scientists and political leaders, shows up on mouse pads and posters and wherever else suitable inspiration is found wanting. It is also a remarkably accurate mission statement for two professions: financial investors and spies. In both occupations, a person is rewarded for either (1) collecting and processing enough available information to predict future events or (2) creating a set of preconditions that will make future events all but certain.
Any financial analyst who foresaw the likelihood of a global pandemic before the outbreak of COVID-19 could have made a fortune investing in the right pharmaceutical companies. Likewise, regardless of Pfizer's motivations for doing so, its funding of numerous nonprofit organizations that actively pushed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates also benefited its bottom line. You could say that both market mavens and intelligence operatives invest heavily in creating a desired reality that will yield dividends. By successfully creating the future, prophets can turn profits.
It should be no surprise, then, that intelligence gathering and information warfare are just as prevalent in the corporate sphere as in the covert one. Nothing benefits investors more lucratively than the acquisition and use of market knowledge before anyone else, as can reportedly be seen from the investments of the family of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, as well as others in government (here, here and here).
In the worlds of financing and espionage, the game is the same: stay ahead of competitors. What this means in practice is netting as much information about adversaries and allies as possible. In order to decide whether to double-down on an investment or run for cover, an analyst is interested in the likelihood of a company's technological success, the risk of other investors swooping in and staking a claim, the potential for competing companies to introduce similar products, and the probability that regulatory authorities might act in ways that affect the company's future profitability. You have to keep an eye on your company, its competitors, your rivals, and any number of government agencies. The complexity of such an arrangement is why private intelligence services are regularly used to monitor all these variables, collect information, analyze risks, and propose solutions.
What might a "proposed solution" to an intelligence problem look like? It could mean tracking the private flight paths of other potential investors to determine whether they are making a play that could either weaken your relative ownership share or harm its ultimate profitability. It could mean paying close attention to arcane public testimony delivered at some congressional subcommittee hearing involving little-known regulatory bodies in hopes that future government interactions with your emerging market can be lobbied or surmised. Intelligence collection starts at this basic level and goes as deeply as private intelligence operators and their clients are willing to go.
If information collection and analysis help to predict future events, information warfare can then help to shape those future events. The line separating advertising and public relations campaigns from corporate-sanctioned propaganda is thin. Did the star of a new movie wear a particular brand of sneakers because it is his favorite footwear or because the company behind the sneakers has a sister company producing the film or because the footwear firm is paying for the shot. Did a large newspaper run front-page stories about a politician's affair because it is national news or because damaging that politician's credibility will make it more difficult for the committee he chairs to hold the newspaper's largest shareholder accountable for regulatory infractions in an unrelated industry? Do companies release "woke" commercials that hurt their bottom lines because professional public relations firms misread consumer opinion or because doing so shields corporate board members from potential discrimination lawsuits? Does the government incentivize Americans' purchase of electric vehicles because doing so will "save the planet" or because the industry players most likely to gain financially from environmental mandates have filled legislators' campaign coffers and family foundations to the hilt?
Make no mistake: corporations are heavily invested in shaping the perceptions, beliefs, and expectations of the public in ways that will bring financial reward. Information warfare beyond mere advertising is all around. That is the situation whether the product is a new line of stealth aircraft for the next war, a new pharmaceutical product that markets itself as essential for saving lives, or a new kind of sugar-free cookie made popular by online "influencers" who say dessert helped them lose weight.
If even the most harmless-sounding doll company has an incentive to gather and shape public information, consider the incentives of companies that generate revenue entirely from the collection and use of personal data. Advertisers seeking to influence consumer behavior are interested not only in a potential buyer's likes and dislikes but also in all the life patterns that might be exploited to reach that buyer's mind. When social media users tag everything they see, hear, and read with actual "likes" or "dislikes," that job becomes much easier. If a company's target demographic is middle-class moms, and social media traffic shows that middle-class moms are primarily concerned about the same issue, then corporate advertisers will mold commercials that reflect concern for that issue, as well. Location data can also be bought directly from cellular networks or messaging apps. A significant percentage of these moms train at karate dojos. Corporate advertisers now know the best way to influence future buying behavior is to advertise near or in partnership with martial arts schools. Unsuspecting martial arts mothers are flooded with targeted messaging when they would least expect it.
Companies that collect raw data specifically so that it might be analyzed and used to influence consumer behavior rake in big bucks as private spies. Almost all private companies have now entered the "spy business." What clothing fashions catch your eye? Are you more or less inclined to make a purchase near a food court? Do your purchases, when combined with those of millions of others, reveal that people who like convertible cars prefer a particular brand of camping equipment?
No matter how tiny, every piece of data can be significant. That is why data collection is not the exclusive purview of credit card, social media, and mobile phone companies but rather part of the regular business model of any company making a buck. In the old days, television and movie studios wanted to know what you watch; today, everybody wants to know what you watch, what you like, what you do, where you go, and with whom you go there. In turn, all this information is ultimately used to manipulate human behavior.
Corporate espionage is pervasive. It occurs between competing companies; it is conducted against unsuspecting consumers; it has spawned an enormously profitable market for the collection and sale of every crumb of personal data in which even the smallest businesses regularly engage. Just as in the world of covert spies, the tools of the trade are (1) information gathering and (2) information warfare.
Does it then seem reasonable that so much corporate espionage could exist without attracting the interests of government intelligence services?
US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, recently confirmed that state and federal governments regularly purchase Americans' personal data from private companies, so that they may "spy on and track the activities of U.S. citizens." No kind of personal information is off-limits. Government agents use data brokers to collect information on an individual's GPS location, mobile phone movements, medical prescriptions, religious affiliations, sexual practices, and much more. It is the type of total surveillance, Rodgers alleged, that "you would expect out of the Chinese Communist Party surveillance state, not in America." Yet it is all arguably legal or in an unregulated gray zone.
Given the government's interest in spying on its citizens without the need for either demonstrating probable cause or securing particularized warrants, it seems unlikely that anything will change soon. During an April 18 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Rand Paul accused DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of ignoring foreign threats and abusing the agency's powers to "expand social media censorship of Americans using third-party nonprofits as... a clearinghouse for information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda." Furthermore, Paul continued, "A report published last month by the Brennan Center for Justice found at least twelve overlapping DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online," demonstrating that DHS had, "veered from its original counterterrorism mission into tracking social and political movements and monitoring First Amendment-protected activity of American citizens."
In a particularly shocking example that seemed eerily reminiscent of atrocities committed by Hitler Youth chapters during the 1930s or young schoolchildren during China's Cultural Revolution, Paul noted:
"In 2021, DHS even put out a video encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for disinformation if they challenge the U.S. government narratives on COVID-19."
Paul is right to argue that these kinds of corporate-government partnerships used to surveil and influence American citizens "should terrify all of us," but would enough lawmakers ever actually agree to handcuff the government from seeking and utilizing the enormous tranche of personal information collected and sold by private companies and data brokers? Right now, after all, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is busy capitalizing on recent Pentagon leaks to advance the RESTRICT Act, a piece of legislation that would give the Executive Branch even greater authority to track online communication and label information shared on the Internet as "dangerous." Known derisively as an "online Patriot Act," that power grab would come in handy for the government's domestic surveillance operations during an era when former FBI, CIA, NSA, and DHS spooks are filling the ranks of social media companies and the FBI continues to flag more words as online evidence of potential "violent extremism."
Rodgers and Paul aside, neither First Amendment considerations nor any respect for Americans' privacy and liberty appear to be of much concern for politicians or spy agencies. Not only are most lawmakers leery of interfering with intelligence collection practices when they can later be condemned for having endangered American security, but also they often find some kind of personal benefit for looking past constitutional concerns. After all, analysis shows that dozens of members of Congress and their families recently sold off bank shares while they were actively meeting with regulators amid the volatile financial climate prompted by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. When information collection leads to power and profit, only the rare politician would dare get in the way.
Now consider just how instrumental private companies have become for intelligence collection and analysis. The U.S. government has granted top-secret security clearance to an astonishingly large number of employees and contractors — over 1.25 million as of today. Yet every private company monitoring, tracking, recording, and influencing consumers is in the spy business just the same. The business of data brokers is booming. Even more telling, private sector demand for former government spies is great. The private espionage field in which corporations and governments use operatives-for-hire under scant regulatory oversight is growing exponentially. As part of the military's "signature reduction" program, the Pentagon even regularly hides forces carrying out clandestine assignments within private companies under false names. Due to the government's increased reliance on contractors, a small number of corporate firms now dominate the private intelligence industry.
You put all these trends together and you get an expansive corporate-government partnership with vast surveillance powers conducting domestic espionage on American citizens — free from legal scrutiny and done in the name of "national security." Every company is an information asset. A growing industry dedicated to private data collection accrues vast wealth and untold secrets. At the top of this private espionage pyramid sit a small number of firms that directly feed intelligence agencies and lawmakers with the information they will use to interpret threats and make policy.
Never have the worlds of covert espionage and financial investment been so integrated. With a shared purpose of profiting from the collection of private information, both corporate spies and government spooks seek to predict the future by directly shaping it. The rest of us, however, are merely the things being shaped.
JB Shurk writes about politics and society.
The Young And The Foolish
Source; Sent from an online friend
“Spawned by leftist academe, [There is a perverse attraction of intellectuals to noxious political ideas using language and symbolically driven behavior that mimics religion. It is a fumbling effort in a dechristianizing society to find a replacement for Christianity] much of the political class as well as much BIG-business industries as the mainstream media, entertainment and internet companies, along with those who need the aspects derived from identity politics, now sanguinely find no need to provide evidence, proof or underlying principles for their ideas and positions, even as they attempt to impose them on others. They stand ready to impose their ideology and do not let facts, logic, reason or consequences get in their way…Ortega y Gasset warned that the rejection of objective standards signals a renunciation of the common life based on culture and a return of the common life of barbarism.”--- Candace DeRussy
A poll from the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics asked respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 how often they had experienced a certain emotion or problem over the past 2 weeks, and the results among liberals/democrats were rather shocking. How young liberals/democrats reported feeling "at least several days" over that period:
• 61% reported feeling "nervous, anxious, or on edge"
• 57% said they had "trouble relaxing"
• 55% said they felt "unsafe"
• 52% reported feeling "down, depressed, or hopeless"
• 49% said they felt "little interest or pleasure in doing things"
• 47% said they experienced "loneliness"
• 46% reported "feeling afraid as if something awful might happen"
• 27% said they had entertained "thoughts that they would be better off dead" or "thoughts of hurting themselves in some way"
That doesn't seem very healthy. And in case you were wondering: Yes, those numbers were significantly smaller among young Republicans. Despite feeling nervous and unsafe all the time, 40% young libs/dems said they support "defunding police departments" in their communities. 33% said police officers make them feel "less safe."
Other noteworthy findings include the following:
• 32% said they regularly use TikTok for "news and current events related content," compared with 21% of young Republicans
• 25% said they disagree with the statement "I would rather live in America than any other place," compared with 10% of young Republicans; 49% of libs/dems agree with the statement, compared with 71% of GOP respondents
• 11% said they are neither employed nor enrolled as students, compared with 6% of young Republicans
• 72% of young libs/dems identified as "heterosexual or straight," compared with 89% of young Republicans
• 22% of young libs/dems identified as gay (2%), lesbian (4%), bisexual (10%), or "other" (6%), compared with 7% of young Republicans
Bottom line: A significant chunk of the left-wing democratic base is comprised of most likely mentally unstable or even ill and get most of their news from unreliable and biased tiktok and other social media apps. Politics aside, a significant chunk of young Americans are also glued to their phones. That does not seem like a recipe for success. They are the real threat to our democracy!
The “fatal conceit” is what Fredrick Hayek termed the liberal’s self-view, and warned against. Intelligent and intellectually honest people tend to express their disagreements by opposing one theory against another, using facts, figures, and statistics—reality, in other words. Liberals, however, tend to hover above these cogent, complex, comprehensive, coherent debates. They are usually guided only by their own strong opinions, personal experiences, preferences and a deep seated emotional need to feel good about themselves. Liberalism likes to destroy. Ugliness is loved and exalted harmony is replaced by incomprehensibility. In other words, it is a form of elitist arrogance, intellectual ignorance and either acceptance or hate determined by emotional self-satisfaction.
The idea that liberals are smarter and run rings around other people intellectually is exposed as an abject fraud. The idea that they're open-minded, the idea that they're even aware of competing points of views, that has been exposed as fraud as well. The level of arrogance that they possess is such that for them there are no opposing ideas-- except when they are confronted with them.
They're a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world. They're in a prison that's created by their own conceit. They're in a prison that's the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality. Liberals do not expose themselves to any ideas or thinking other than their own. They assume, for example, that conservatism is racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, all of the cliches they attach to it. Not only is liberalism a gated community, there's a moat.
Daily confronted with reality, they regularly, purposely avoid it. They have instead constructed in their minds a socialist utopian idyllic dreamland, fantasyland that doesn't exist, can't exist, won't ever exist. And when they are confronted with a reality against their own constructs, it is the last thing they expect to happen, so they deny reality.
The closer liberals stand to ruin, the duller grows their realization. The more self-convinced liberals are that they have the correct view, the more they distort or ignore the evidence in order to suit their existing expectations. And resort to purely hateful ad hominem attacks, even violence! Modern liberalism does not let germane, cogent fact, sound logic or reasoned conclusions get in the way of its self-congratulatory/self-satisfying, emotion-based ideology. Even when that same ideology is the very source of, or feeds the dysfunction liberalism is railing against. This worldview seems only another manifestation of egotism, which develops when man has reached a point at which he will no longer admit the right to existence of things not of his own contriving. It will try and destroy anything and everything that gets in the way of its addiction to its ideology, including others, itself and /or its children.
There's no reason to ever feel inferior to these people. There's no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way. There’s no reason to let them lead, or to follow them either. We must discover the audacity to brave the liberal inquisition that hands out good conduct certificates to their adherents and stigmatizes all others from the heights of its false self-proclaimed authority.
“The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite.”--paraphrasing Eccl. 1:15
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/progressives_have_embraced_the_counterfeit.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/randi_weingarten_explains_it_all_for_you.html
https://spectator.org/bidens-secretary-of-education-prioritizes-politics-over-students/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/chelsea-clinton-book-lgbtq-children
Ihttps://patriotpost.us/opinion/96995-the-view-is-tv-trash-masquerading-as-intelligent-conversation-2023-05-02
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96944-bidens-campaign-kicks-off-with-gaslighting-2023-05-02
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/28/how-far-will-corporate-media-go-to-cover-for-and-re-elect-joe-biden/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-far-will-corporate-media-go-to-cover-for-and-re-elect-joe-biden&utm_term=2023-05-01
https://johnkassnews.com/from-the-archives-the-biden-way-becomes-the-chicago-way/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-the-archives-the-biden-way-becomes-the-chicago-way
https://nypost.com/2023/04/30/congress-unconstitutional-pay-scam-gets-members-34k-raises/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-ethics-reform-hearing-senate-democrats-john-roberts-clarence-thomas-ketanji-brown-jackson-sonia-sotomayor-d0304d65
https://justthenews.com/government/security/billionaire-investor-warns-us-china-brink-war
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/15000_a_week_and_more_coming.html
https://freebeacon.com/media/difficult-to-describe-with-words-cnn-reporter-stunned-by-number-of-illegal-immigrants-in-texas-city/
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/watch-dhs-secretary-mayorkas-gives-bizarre-definition-of-a-secure-border/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/karine-jean-pierre-roasted-claiming-illegal-immigration-90-people-think-stupid
https://nypost.com/2023/05/01/dem-mayors-stop-blaming-texas-for-migrant-woes-its-on-biden/
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/democrat-cities-have-highest-homicide-rates-report-finds/
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/non-law-enforcement-agencies-like-irs-and-epa-spend-billions-on-guns-and-ammo-watchdog-says/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/high-tax-blue-states-losing-residents-tax-revenue-red-states-reap-benefits-lead-in-job-and-population-growth
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_shriveling_of_blue_states_accelerates.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-layoffs-jumped-in-march-as-job-openings-fell-3805c6a1
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/chart-of-the-day-us-economy-slip-sliding-into-recession/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/the_new_robber_barons.html
“Spawned by leftist academe, [There is a perverse attraction of intellectuals to noxious political ideas using language and symbolically driven behavior that mimics religion. It is a fumbling effort in a dechristianizing society to find a replacement for Christianity] much of the political class as well as much BIG-business industries as the mainstream media, entertainment and internet companies, along with those who need the aspects derived from identity politics, now sanguinely find no need to provide evidence, proof or underlying principles for their ideas and positions, even as they attempt to impose them on others. They stand ready to impose their ideology and do not let facts, logic, reason or consequences get in their way…Ortega y Gasset warned that the rejection of objective standards signals a renunciation of the common life based on culture and a return of the common life of barbarism.”--- Candace DeRussy
A poll from the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics asked respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 how often they had experienced a certain emotion or problem over the past 2 weeks, and the results among liberals/democrats were rather shocking. How young liberals/democrats reported feeling "at least several days" over that period:
• 61% reported feeling "nervous, anxious, or on edge"
• 57% said they had "trouble relaxing"
• 55% said they felt "unsafe"
• 52% reported feeling "down, depressed, or hopeless"
• 49% said they felt "little interest or pleasure in doing things"
• 47% said they experienced "loneliness"
• 46% reported "feeling afraid as if something awful might happen"
• 27% said they had entertained "thoughts that they would be better off dead" or "thoughts of hurting themselves in some way"
That doesn't seem very healthy. And in case you were wondering: Yes, those numbers were significantly smaller among young Republicans. Despite feeling nervous and unsafe all the time, 40% young libs/dems said they support "defunding police departments" in their communities. 33% said police officers make them feel "less safe."
Other noteworthy findings include the following:
• 32% said they regularly use TikTok for "news and current events related content," compared with 21% of young Republicans
• 25% said they disagree with the statement "I would rather live in America than any other place," compared with 10% of young Republicans; 49% of libs/dems agree with the statement, compared with 71% of GOP respondents
• 11% said they are neither employed nor enrolled as students, compared with 6% of young Republicans
• 72% of young libs/dems identified as "heterosexual or straight," compared with 89% of young Republicans
• 22% of young libs/dems identified as gay (2%), lesbian (4%), bisexual (10%), or "other" (6%), compared with 7% of young Republicans
Bottom line: A significant chunk of the left-wing democratic base is comprised of most likely mentally unstable or even ill and get most of their news from unreliable and biased tiktok and other social media apps. Politics aside, a significant chunk of young Americans are also glued to their phones. That does not seem like a recipe for success. They are the real threat to our democracy!
The “fatal conceit” is what Fredrick Hayek termed the liberal’s self-view, and warned against. Intelligent and intellectually honest people tend to express their disagreements by opposing one theory against another, using facts, figures, and statistics—reality, in other words. Liberals, however, tend to hover above these cogent, complex, comprehensive, coherent debates. They are usually guided only by their own strong opinions, personal experiences, preferences and a deep seated emotional need to feel good about themselves. Liberalism likes to destroy. Ugliness is loved and exalted harmony is replaced by incomprehensibility. In other words, it is a form of elitist arrogance, intellectual ignorance and either acceptance or hate determined by emotional self-satisfaction.
The idea that liberals are smarter and run rings around other people intellectually is exposed as an abject fraud. The idea that they're open-minded, the idea that they're even aware of competing points of views, that has been exposed as fraud as well. The level of arrogance that they possess is such that for them there are no opposing ideas-- except when they are confronted with them.
They're a bunch of overhyped know-nothings who do not have an expansive view of the world. They're in a prison that's created by their own conceit. They're in a prison that's the result of their own arrogance and they live in a place where there is no reality. Liberals do not expose themselves to any ideas or thinking other than their own. They assume, for example, that conservatism is racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, all of the cliches they attach to it. Not only is liberalism a gated community, there's a moat.
Daily confronted with reality, they regularly, purposely avoid it. They have instead constructed in their minds a socialist utopian idyllic dreamland, fantasyland that doesn't exist, can't exist, won't ever exist. And when they are confronted with a reality against their own constructs, it is the last thing they expect to happen, so they deny reality.
The closer liberals stand to ruin, the duller grows their realization. The more self-convinced liberals are that they have the correct view, the more they distort or ignore the evidence in order to suit their existing expectations. And resort to purely hateful ad hominem attacks, even violence! Modern liberalism does not let germane, cogent fact, sound logic or reasoned conclusions get in the way of its self-congratulatory/self-satisfying, emotion-based ideology. Even when that same ideology is the very source of, or feeds the dysfunction liberalism is railing against. This worldview seems only another manifestation of egotism, which develops when man has reached a point at which he will no longer admit the right to existence of things not of his own contriving. It will try and destroy anything and everything that gets in the way of its addiction to its ideology, including others, itself and /or its children.
There's no reason to ever feel inferior to these people. There's no reason to grant them superior or elite status in any way. There’s no reason to let them lead, or to follow them either. We must discover the audacity to brave the liberal inquisition that hands out good conduct certificates to their adherents and stigmatizes all others from the heights of its false self-proclaimed authority.
“The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite.”--paraphrasing Eccl. 1:15
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/progressives_have_embraced_the_counterfeit.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/randi_weingarten_explains_it_all_for_you.html
https://spectator.org/bidens-secretary-of-education-prioritizes-politics-over-students/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/chelsea-clinton-book-lgbtq-children
Ihttps://patriotpost.us/opinion/96995-the-view-is-tv-trash-masquerading-as-intelligent-conversation-2023-05-02
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96944-bidens-campaign-kicks-off-with-gaslighting-2023-05-02
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/28/how-far-will-corporate-media-go-to-cover-for-and-re-elect-joe-biden/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-far-will-corporate-media-go-to-cover-for-and-re-elect-joe-biden&utm_term=2023-05-01
https://johnkassnews.com/from-the-archives-the-biden-way-becomes-the-chicago-way/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-the-archives-the-biden-way-becomes-the-chicago-way
https://nypost.com/2023/04/30/congress-unconstitutional-pay-scam-gets-members-34k-raises/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-ethics-reform-hearing-senate-democrats-john-roberts-clarence-thomas-ketanji-brown-jackson-sonia-sotomayor-d0304d65
https://justthenews.com/government/security/billionaire-investor-warns-us-china-brink-war
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/15000_a_week_and_more_coming.html
https://freebeacon.com/media/difficult-to-describe-with-words-cnn-reporter-stunned-by-number-of-illegal-immigrants-in-texas-city/
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/watch-dhs-secretary-mayorkas-gives-bizarre-definition-of-a-secure-border/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/karine-jean-pierre-roasted-claiming-illegal-immigration-90-people-think-stupid
https://nypost.com/2023/05/01/dem-mayors-stop-blaming-texas-for-migrant-woes-its-on-biden/
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/democrat-cities-have-highest-homicide-rates-report-finds/
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/non-law-enforcement-agencies-like-irs-and-epa-spend-billions-on-guns-and-ammo-watchdog-says/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/high-tax-blue-states-losing-residents-tax-revenue-red-states-reap-benefits-lead-in-job-and-population-growth
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_shriveling_of_blue_states_accelerates.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-layoffs-jumped-in-march-as-job-openings-fell-3805c6a1
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/chart-of-the-day-us-economy-slip-sliding-into-recession/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/the_new_robber_barons.html
Virtue Signaling and the Response
Many leftist protagonists are inheritance welfare liberals, the effluent of generational wealth and privilege, who choose to live in the safety and comfort of suburbia, with their enclaves of clubs and finer eating establishments. These left-wing elitists harbor fear of and contempt for grassroots Americans, in part because they have little social intersection with those who form the backbone of our nation. They arrogantly deride the foundational family and faith values that are common among grassroots folks. And they certainly don't understand our embrace of American Liberty, the antithesis of the statist government power they advocate.
After the virtue signalers elected biden, who promptly enabled putin to invade Ukraine, they laughingly replace their biden yard signs with Ukrainian flags. The vast majority of these suburban leftists have never raised their hand to support and defend our country, or anything else. They depend on the grassroots folks for their protection, whether from gangbangers who venture into their neighborhoods or despots in foreign lands.
One of the virtue-signaling signs that reemerges once the other signs have worn out their usefulness is the rainbow mafia version — variations of rainbow colors that also adorn the backs of vehicles. That theme, in support of the left-wing's gender destruction cult, has become the most prolific of the left-wing virtue projections, an excessive emphasis that at first glance seems curious. Amid all the issues that left-wingers/dems should focus on if they're serious about lifting up their constituents, why do their national, state, and local leftist cadres expend so much highly visible political capital defending abject gender deviance? That deviance now increasingly includes the most offensive of the aberrant offenders, including transgender men competing as women in sports, trans groomers infiltrating elementary schools as teachers, drag queen kindergarten groomers, and now, even the most grotesque of the bunch, child gender mutilators who are profiting from cutting body parts off of children. left-wingers/dems are even passing legislation to remove children from parents who won't allow their child to be chemically or physically mutilated. Every House lib/dem voted against a bill to restrict men from competing as women in sports. Biden had already signaled he would veto it.
So quick is the left-wing to defend these special constituents that after a gender-confused assailant murdered six people at a Nashville Christian school, they pulled out all the stops to deflect attention from the assailant's gender pathology, including by promoting yard signs that note Protect Kids, Not Guns. Ironically, those signs include rainbow lettering. The Nashville case provides the evidential trail exposing the left-wing deviant defense political strategy.
Follow along...recall that the Nashville attack occurred just ahead of the Trans Day of Vengeance. And on that day of vengeance, a gender-confused Colorado Springs man was arrested after the discovery of his hate manifesto detailing his plans to attack schools and churches. (Notably, information about that case was not released to the public until 6 days after the suspect was arrested for reasons not explained.) Now, weeks after the Nashville assault, the assailant's writings indicating her motive have still not been released. No dots to connect here; move along. If you question that--you're a fascist.
As for why her sociopathic rants have not been released, professor Joseph Giacalone of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice speculated: "I think what the FBI is really concerned here with ... is that if there is something in there that is truly damaging for the transgender community, I think they are hesitant to do it because they are afraid of a violent backlash against that protected class of people." And herein lies the answer to the question of why libs/dems expend enormous political capital defending deviance.
The delay in releasing the assailant's writings is because she is among the Left's prized protected class of gender-confused constituents. If the release of her rantings indicated that the motive for her attack was hatred for those who disagreed with her identity and ideology, thus fitting the criterion for a hate crime, the Dept of Justice would be obligated to classify it as such. And that would result in an immediate political backlash from the left-wing base — those who support the whole LGBTQ+++ ad nauseam spectrum of gender deniers, especially if that hate crime declaration implied a connection between her gender confusion and mental illness.
liberals/democrats know they can give no ground regarding defense of their deviant gender-outlier constituents because that connects the dots to the 5% of their constituents who are in the gay and lesbian category, and that group is supported by a majority of the libs/dems' largest and most critical voting bloc, women. Yes, another irony being that a large number of leftist biological women support the tiny but very vocal nonbinary miscreants. lib/dem strategists believe their female voters are emotionally incontinent idiots who can be manipulated into dependably voting lib/dem by promoting emotionally provoking issues.
In 2022, men voted Republican by a 14-point margin, while women voted Democratic by an 8-point margin. That's a 22-point gender gap. So, rather than libs/dems risk offending women voters, make the issue about guns instead of gender pathology. And then give all those emotionally incontinent white privilege virtue signalers Protect Kids Not Guns yard signs. Throw in some statehouse protests to bolster that diversion.
Of course, we ALL want to protect kids from the rising generation of sociopathic killers, the vast majority of whom are killing each other, not schoolchildren. And fortunately, most school kids are protected by resource officers with guns. If those suburban leftists were really concerned about children, they would be posting yard signs that read: Protect Kids, Not Groomers. Tag team that with Protect Kids, Not Failed left-wing Social Policies.
Through executive orders and budget requests, the biden regime has sought to embed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” principles across the entirety of the federal government – and in turn to touch the lives of every American. Now members of the Republican House majority, who see this whole-of-government effort as a woke assault on America and its core values, are working to combat it using the power of the purse.
So,this being America and supposedly people have a right to work to achieve their goals, millions and millions and millions of rational citizens elected GOP politicians to do that. And one way the GOP is doing that is in a series of letters to House appropriations leaders, Rep. Banks and like-minded colleagues have identified and called for the defunding of all "woke programs and initiatives that are rooted in discrimination and promote far-left ideology in the federal government” in 2024 spending bills." Banks and caucus members delivered the letters to the chairmen and ranking members of each of the 12 House Appropriations Committee subcommittees in late March following the release of biden’s $6.8 trillion 2024 deficit budget request Note: biden has brought the total current deficit total to $32+ Trillion.
Examples include:
-Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act’s spending on programs aimed at increasing race-based hiring and recruitment in STEM.
-The State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund.
-The Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for “environmental justice” activities.
-The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, claiming that “white supremacists and violent anti-government domestic extremists” are “infiltrating security and law-enforcement agencies.”
-The Dept of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain transgender illegal aliens at facilities only with staff who have received “LGBT Sensitivity and Awareness Training,” and medical personnel with experience delivering hormone therapies.
-The Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, requesting that the Department of Energy consider social equity and environmental and energy justice in state and community energy programs.
These exclude broader items highlighted in the letters, like the $3.5 billion earmarked for energy efficiency and renewable energy in the 2023 Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Given that the letters represent only a partial accounting of such programs, the vagueness of budget language, and the discretion with which federal agencies can act, tax dollars advancing such efforts may well substantially dwarf these figures.
Each letter flags examples of “woke” offices or policies to which Congress allocated funding in relevant 2023 spending bills, and the associated dollars, and calls for those “and all programs that discriminate based on race, gender, and sexual orientation or seek to disparage our nation’s core ideals and history [to] be decreased to $0” in the 2024 versions of the bills.
Some of the 2023 programs the Republican members seek to zero out in 2024 include:
“We believe that the House Republican majority has a responsibility to use its spending powers to ensure that we do not contribute further funding to anti-American and divisive initiatives,” the signatories to each letter wrote.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_great_sorting_thats_taking_place_in_america.html
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/soros-quietly-resumes-lobbying-with-1-6-million-to-boost-biden-bills/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/joe_bidens_hatespeech_reelection_bid.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/what_is_a_democrat.htmlv
After the virtue signalers elected biden, who promptly enabled putin to invade Ukraine, they laughingly replace their biden yard signs with Ukrainian flags. The vast majority of these suburban leftists have never raised their hand to support and defend our country, or anything else. They depend on the grassroots folks for their protection, whether from gangbangers who venture into their neighborhoods or despots in foreign lands.
One of the virtue-signaling signs that reemerges once the other signs have worn out their usefulness is the rainbow mafia version — variations of rainbow colors that also adorn the backs of vehicles. That theme, in support of the left-wing's gender destruction cult, has become the most prolific of the left-wing virtue projections, an excessive emphasis that at first glance seems curious. Amid all the issues that left-wingers/dems should focus on if they're serious about lifting up their constituents, why do their national, state, and local leftist cadres expend so much highly visible political capital defending abject gender deviance? That deviance now increasingly includes the most offensive of the aberrant offenders, including transgender men competing as women in sports, trans groomers infiltrating elementary schools as teachers, drag queen kindergarten groomers, and now, even the most grotesque of the bunch, child gender mutilators who are profiting from cutting body parts off of children. left-wingers/dems are even passing legislation to remove children from parents who won't allow their child to be chemically or physically mutilated. Every House lib/dem voted against a bill to restrict men from competing as women in sports. Biden had already signaled he would veto it.
So quick is the left-wing to defend these special constituents that after a gender-confused assailant murdered six people at a Nashville Christian school, they pulled out all the stops to deflect attention from the assailant's gender pathology, including by promoting yard signs that note Protect Kids, Not Guns. Ironically, those signs include rainbow lettering. The Nashville case provides the evidential trail exposing the left-wing deviant defense political strategy.
Follow along...recall that the Nashville attack occurred just ahead of the Trans Day of Vengeance. And on that day of vengeance, a gender-confused Colorado Springs man was arrested after the discovery of his hate manifesto detailing his plans to attack schools and churches. (Notably, information about that case was not released to the public until 6 days after the suspect was arrested for reasons not explained.) Now, weeks after the Nashville assault, the assailant's writings indicating her motive have still not been released. No dots to connect here; move along. If you question that--you're a fascist.
As for why her sociopathic rants have not been released, professor Joseph Giacalone of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice speculated: "I think what the FBI is really concerned here with ... is that if there is something in there that is truly damaging for the transgender community, I think they are hesitant to do it because they are afraid of a violent backlash against that protected class of people." And herein lies the answer to the question of why libs/dems expend enormous political capital defending deviance.
The delay in releasing the assailant's writings is because she is among the Left's prized protected class of gender-confused constituents. If the release of her rantings indicated that the motive for her attack was hatred for those who disagreed with her identity and ideology, thus fitting the criterion for a hate crime, the Dept of Justice would be obligated to classify it as such. And that would result in an immediate political backlash from the left-wing base — those who support the whole LGBTQ+++ ad nauseam spectrum of gender deniers, especially if that hate crime declaration implied a connection between her gender confusion and mental illness.
liberals/democrats know they can give no ground regarding defense of their deviant gender-outlier constituents because that connects the dots to the 5% of their constituents who are in the gay and lesbian category, and that group is supported by a majority of the libs/dems' largest and most critical voting bloc, women. Yes, another irony being that a large number of leftist biological women support the tiny but very vocal nonbinary miscreants. lib/dem strategists believe their female voters are emotionally incontinent idiots who can be manipulated into dependably voting lib/dem by promoting emotionally provoking issues.
In 2022, men voted Republican by a 14-point margin, while women voted Democratic by an 8-point margin. That's a 22-point gender gap. So, rather than libs/dems risk offending women voters, make the issue about guns instead of gender pathology. And then give all those emotionally incontinent white privilege virtue signalers Protect Kids Not Guns yard signs. Throw in some statehouse protests to bolster that diversion.
Of course, we ALL want to protect kids from the rising generation of sociopathic killers, the vast majority of whom are killing each other, not schoolchildren. And fortunately, most school kids are protected by resource officers with guns. If those suburban leftists were really concerned about children, they would be posting yard signs that read: Protect Kids, Not Groomers. Tag team that with Protect Kids, Not Failed left-wing Social Policies.
Through executive orders and budget requests, the biden regime has sought to embed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” principles across the entirety of the federal government – and in turn to touch the lives of every American. Now members of the Republican House majority, who see this whole-of-government effort as a woke assault on America and its core values, are working to combat it using the power of the purse.
So,this being America and supposedly people have a right to work to achieve their goals, millions and millions and millions of rational citizens elected GOP politicians to do that. And one way the GOP is doing that is in a series of letters to House appropriations leaders, Rep. Banks and like-minded colleagues have identified and called for the defunding of all "woke programs and initiatives that are rooted in discrimination and promote far-left ideology in the federal government” in 2024 spending bills." Banks and caucus members delivered the letters to the chairmen and ranking members of each of the 12 House Appropriations Committee subcommittees in late March following the release of biden’s $6.8 trillion 2024 deficit budget request Note: biden has brought the total current deficit total to $32+ Trillion.
Examples include:
-Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act’s spending on programs aimed at increasing race-based hiring and recruitment in STEM.
-The State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund.
-The Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for “environmental justice” activities.
-The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, claiming that “white supremacists and violent anti-government domestic extremists” are “infiltrating security and law-enforcement agencies.”
-The Dept of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain transgender illegal aliens at facilities only with staff who have received “LGBT Sensitivity and Awareness Training,” and medical personnel with experience delivering hormone therapies.
-The Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, requesting that the Department of Energy consider social equity and environmental and energy justice in state and community energy programs.
These exclude broader items highlighted in the letters, like the $3.5 billion earmarked for energy efficiency and renewable energy in the 2023 Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Given that the letters represent only a partial accounting of such programs, the vagueness of budget language, and the discretion with which federal agencies can act, tax dollars advancing such efforts may well substantially dwarf these figures.
Each letter flags examples of “woke” offices or policies to which Congress allocated funding in relevant 2023 spending bills, and the associated dollars, and calls for those “and all programs that discriminate based on race, gender, and sexual orientation or seek to disparage our nation’s core ideals and history [to] be decreased to $0” in the 2024 versions of the bills.
Some of the 2023 programs the Republican members seek to zero out in 2024 include:
“We believe that the House Republican majority has a responsibility to use its spending powers to ensure that we do not contribute further funding to anti-American and divisive initiatives,” the signatories to each letter wrote.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_great_sorting_thats_taking_place_in_america.html
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/soros-quietly-resumes-lobbying-with-1-6-million-to-boost-biden-bills/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/joe_bidens_hatespeech_reelection_bid.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/what_is_a_democrat.htmlv
Sunday Sermon in 3 Parts
Sunday Sermon in 3 Parts;
I.No one serious wants a theocracy
America did not have a Christian founding in the sense of creating a theocracy. However, Its founding was deeply shaped and influenced by Christian moral truths. More importantly, it created a regime that was hospitable not only to Christians, but also to practicioners of other religions.
50 of the 56 Founders were Christians(1), who produced a remarkable synthesis of reason and religion, rationality and Christianity living in harmony, not conflict. America was never anti-religious or non-religious, religion was welcomed and inhabited a significant role in public square. Perhaps this is why God was mentioned 4 times in the Declaration of Independence, not to mention over 200 times in our 50 state constitutions. Lacking an official religion doesn’t abolish the fact that we still see our society as a religion based.
Our religion based ethical codes and our country’s resulting good deeds are far from coincidental. Charity and Good works (Such as spreading and defending freedom, providing a basic social safety net, or foreign aid) are motivated a code of ethics based on Judeo Christian religion.
Of course, all levels of our government have a self-imposed obligation. as specified in our 1st Amendment, to prevent state sponsored religion, which includes secular humanism(2). In addition to the 1st amendment, which applies to our national government, the first section of the 14th amendment also extends religious freedom by preventing states from enacting laws that would inhibit any one religion.
But the government does not have the authority to prohibit the free exercise and support of religion, nor protect anyone from being offended by it. Nothing in our laws protect people from being offended, being offended is an internal personal problem, with as many possibilities as there are individuals, not a societal one. Government’s only duty is to ensure the voluntary and free exercise and support of religion.
This reasonable practice is not, contrary to its critics claims, problematic for society. There is no wave of religious on atheist violence in America(3). The religious do not go around attacking atheists in America. Quite the contrary, today, virtually all of those events occur in the opposite direction.
“The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.”—Thomas Moore
1. Including deists. Deism is accepted as part of Christianity.
2. Since it is a religion in the sense its dogma means an absolute commitment to the perceived order of its reality and the ordination of human life within it.
3. With the exception of Islamic. It is ironic that liberals in America complain that American pluralism and religious freedom do not exist. It is ironic that Islamists hate us because they know those freedoms in America absolutely do exist.
II. Science as Faith
To show how science can reverse itself, Einstein found the proposition that the universe had a beginning repugnant. But observation of evidence by “non-believers” resulted in findings that contradicted the equations in mathematical formula—the science Einstein had relied on for his servitude to his faith in his belief. Such as Alexander Friedmann’s work showing the need for an implausible degree of fine tuning to maintain the tension between the drag of gravity and the pull of expansion. And Georges Lemaitre work (a physicist and Belgium priest) demonstrating that galaxies are speeding away from one another and that space itself was expanding.
But faith, even when it’s called science, has its own gravity and expansion, making it adherents do things that aren’t strictly playing by the rules in order to protect their turf. Even Stephen Hawking, when making his mathematical calculations about the universe, need to introduce the concept of “imaginary time,” admitting it was merely an expedient way to support his claim, that it did not correspond to anything in the real physical universe.
Then there’s the Boltzmann brain, an example which attempts to explain non-intelligent designed evolution, portends that a brain could self-assemble as a result of chance arrangements of atoms due to random quantum fluctuations at the subatomic level, given enough universes and time. Such rationale involves monumental question begging, it assumes the prior existence of features in a universe, such as gravity, matter, time, reliable mathematics, and so on which themselves demand explanations.
Sometimes what is right before us is the hardest thing to see. Or as Fred Hoyle, astrophysicist and former atheist-materialist, said: “The properties of the universe fall within narrow and improbable ranges that are absolutely necessary for any complex life form to exist.” Which using inductive thinking leads us to Stephen C. Meyer observation: “Science points to the existence of a personal God as found in Judaism and Christianity. To start with, the material Universe had an opening day of stupendous felicity, now routinely called by Fred Hoyle’s name—The Big Bang, in which the features of this Goldilocks universe have been dished out in astonishingly providential proportions and since the beginning large amounts of new functional genetic information have a reason to make new forms of life possible in a relatively short geological time.”
“From the greatness and beauty of creating things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.”--Wisd. 13:5
III. The Science
“Knowledge grows through successive attempts to ‘falsify’ purported general theories. As H. H. Hoppe proffered, a single simple set of falsifications never prove a theory once and for all...Those [theories] that survive are those which pass critical tests that include applications of the basic principles of human action to new areas. Those become part of the body of empirical knowledge. There is a more or less precise symmetry between the prediction and the explanation.”--N. Barry
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible, to us." --Albert Einstein
“With respect to the origins of the world...it began by creation…But the manner and order according to which creation took place concerns the faith only incidentally.”---St. Thomas
…numerous discoveries of modern science confirm the expectations of Christianity more than they do of the philosophy that matter is all the exists… what the debate is about is not proof but credibility.”---Stephen Barr (Bartol Research Institute, U of Delaware).
“Perhaps we must scientifically rethink how to feel at home in God’s universe.”—Gary Mar
*******************************************************************
"Entire fields of inquiry, especially in human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design...A 1993 Gallop poll showed that approximately 90% of Americans think that God-guided evolution occurred. Only 10% could be considered true Darwinists, believing in nature without God. That 10% however has significant control of our educational system..."—(W.A. Dembski). Words have distinct meanings. Intelligent Design should not be confused with Creationism. Intelligent Design is a substantive science that is being ignored or pooh-pooped by the faction in positions of control in our society's information generators and dispensers. Listening to the critics of Intelligent Design it seems that they find fault with it not because it is scientifically substandard but because it threatens their status quo. Ignoring is an immunizing tactic or strategy used to protect a belief against refutation and often employs denying the existence of criticism. Those more interested in appearing right than in learning use such means as ignoring what threatens their belief system.
Empiricism, a fundamental building block of the modern world, is a commitment to the value of scientific inquiry and a healthy skepticism toward untestable explanations by postulate. It “…is a commitment to submit all factual claims to the critical scrutiny of scientific inquiry.”—(Gary Mar). The Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Godel’s Theorems and quantum theory are all scientific reason to disbelieve that matter is the only reality. Intelligent Design is the systematic study of intelligent causes and specifically of the effects they leave behind. It uses valid scientific and empirically detecting methods to recognize intentional design effects and then reverse engineers to detected design. It asks that age-old question: Whence cometh the order of nature? Darwinism, meaning nature-driven evolution, for example “… fails to satisfy the criterion of irrefutable evidence...Darwinism’s principle concerning macro-evolution has still not been observed to happen.”—(Dermott J. Mullan). For one, “There hasn’t been enough time for the improbable odds for evolution to occur, an evolution of ‘positive’ change which has not yet been observed in nature.”--(John Leffler). "Darwinism, or natural evolution, as a well substantiated scientific theory...with its astronomical improbability... is in trouble...the alternative appears to entail the notion of a power superior to man--and nothing is more abhorrent in a secular humanistic age... I venture to predict that eventually Darwinism will be discarded: scientific integrity demands it. "—(W.Smith).
Intelligent Design derives a measure of its animating source from the scientific attitude captured in Karl Popper’s words: "It is difficult to understand how the physical universe could produce abstract entities such as rules, and then could come under the influence of these rules, so that these rules in their turn could exert very palpable effects upon the physical universe.”. But its source of being a sound belief is derived from scientific work which includes that from researchers such as C. Thaxton, P. Johnson, W. Bradley, T. Olsen, M. Behe, J. Wells, S. Meyer, P. Nelson & W. Dembski who have found that past decades of science point to the implausibility of unintelligent causes for life. Other researchers have also been collecting evidence, including H. Ross and M. Denton who have identified over 70 signals of Intelligent Design, naming them "anthropic coincidences". R. Penrose puts the odds of those "coincidences" occurring at 1 in 10 to the123 power (10 to the 6 power is a million, to the 9 power is a billion!). “A result is usually defined as statistical significant if there is no more than a 5% probability that the outcome was the result of chance.”—(P.L. Bernstein). In other words, the universe is extremely finely tuned and chance (natural causes) is not a plausible scientific explanation for it. In fact the universe is so finely balanced that if the proportions of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the universe diverged slightly from their present values, there wouldn't be any stars, nor planets. If the strong nuclear force was stronger, no hydrogen would form, if it were weaker, only hydrogen would form. If gravity were stronger, stars would burn out too rapidly to support life. If it were weaker, there'd be no planets. In short, the fundamental forces of nature have to fall within very precise tolerances to allow for any life at all. “The universe seems to have been precisely calibrated for life from the beginning”--(Anthropic Principle).
The prevailing view of the anti-I.D. crowd claims that the natural forces of evolution alone accounts for life and all its diversity. The problem with that claim is that there isn't any sound evidence to support it. The evidence that exists, called Microevolution, only supports limited variation within fixed boundaries. Inheritance with modification, selection and infusion is what accounts for evolution, which simply put is the creation of the necessary complex-specified information inherent in biological systems. Yet scientific proof that this doesn't occur "naturally" in nature can be simply seen in the fact that generation after generation resembles their parents, within a narrow range of variation, or as F. Harold said: "like begets like". The Law of Conservation of Information (that information in a closed system remains constant or diminishes, due to entropy, therefore it cannot generate additional information spontaneously) explains that modification without outside influence cannot account for increased complexity. Macroevolution, the unlimited capacity of organisms to transform beyond their boundaries, is not supported by science. It is only extrapolated from Microevolution. This skepticism is already part of mainstream science, found in part in the works of S.J. Gould, S. Kauffman, I. Prigogine, M. Eigen and F. Crick.
In other words, organisms experience only limited change over time. Simply put naturally occurring Microevolution cannot explain such facts as: the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, the origin of multicellular life, the origin of sexuality, the scarcity of transitional forms in the fossil record, the biological Big Bang that occurred in the Cambrian era, the development of complex organ systems and the development of irreducibly complex molecular mechanisms. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced by slight modifications of the precursor system, since any precursor system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. Natural selection can only select a functional system; otherwise it is not fit for survival. Selection cannot cumulate partial changes, holding them in reserve until all the necessary components are assembled. For an irreducibly complex system to function, all components of the system have to be in place simultaneously. An example of one such system is bacterial flagellum. It requires the presence of 50 separate proteins. Remove one component and it doesn't function. The eye is another example. “Nature is not a product of blind mechanical forces...her complex structures cannot be reduced to numerous small parts that accidentally came together over time, they exhibit irreducible complexity and therefore could not have evolved through incremental changes."---R.P. Kraynak
Another aspect to be considered is one of the cornerstone assumptions of Darwinism’s evolution theory, the Uniformitarian principle. That expounds that the present observed laws of nature have always been in operation exactly as they are today. Natural selection supporters point to as part of their proof. The problem with their theory however is that there are many natural phenomena, such as polonium radiohalos, decay of the earth’s magnetic filed, and helium retention in zircon which are impossible to explain using the Uniformitarian principle.
There enters into the evolutionalist’s mentality a quite strong dose of unconscious anthropomorphism, such that if there is a creator they ask, why did it not do a better job? What this bias ignores is that if there be what’s termed imperfections, defined mind you, from a human perspective, that does not prove or disprove existence of a teleology any more than imperfections in a machine authorize the hypothesis that the machine made itself without an outside creative force.
The concept of Natural selection is actually an oxymoron. It attributes the power to choose (which properly belongs only to intelligent agents) to natural causes, which inherently lack that capability. It can't yield actual (meaning intentional) design, only the appearance of it. The principle characteristic of intelligent action is choice. Choosing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest and specifying the one that was chosen encapsulates how we recognize intelligent action.
If you can't ascertain that a thing is designed, you can't ascertain that the process giving rise to the thing has actual design. Unless you can infer an intelligent agent from the structure, dynamics and function of things, you are not going to infer such an agent from the process. In order to detect design, 2 features must be present, complexity and specification. Complexity guarantees that the object in question is not capable of being explained by chance. Specification guarantees that the object exhibits the right sort of pattern associated with intelligent causes.
Complex-specificity is well defined and empirically detectable. Complex-specificity is holistic. Undirected "natural causes" are incapable of explaining it. It cannot simply add together individual components to form itself; it must be processed by intelligent agency. Its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That means it is a top down concept, implying a designer. Intelligent Design starts with data from nature and looks for proof of intelligent design, using reliable methods developed within the scientific community. The fine-tuning of the universe is both complex and specified and readily yields proof of actual design, a transcendent design, not reducible to physical theories alone. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly limited to the physical world we know could have presided over the origin of the universe, or life.
I.D. is an argument that fully complies with scientific claim and not made from ignorance, and not dependent on religious faith. This premise of a 'Designer' starts out ambivalent, with no prior religious commitment and consequently leaves itself no choice but a belief in faith. It is based on what we know about the inherent constraints of "natural causes", an outcome of a careful and sustained debate about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design. All of which points to Intelligent Design.
I.D. is not an argument from ignorance, nor is it a matter of personal incredulity. Rather it is carefully deducted from what we've learned about nature and its limitations. Science can demonstrate intelligent causation and can dovetail well with religious faith, such as Christianity; in fact it can actually help validate it. If science is allowed to explore the concept of intelligence design, then the concept of God, insofar as it manifests the characteristic features of intelligent causation, becomes a legitimate task for scientific investigation. Since I.D. does not need a creator that creates time, space, matter or energy, nor does it require a time-frame, it works well with Christianity. And further, evidence of design is distinct from the morality, aesthetics, goodness, optimality or perfection of the design. A great theological truth is that God acts in the world by dispensing information. Therefore the act of creating the universe by God is the proto-type for all intelligent agency.
Conversely, the dogma that no aspect of nature stands outside the absolute control of nature's laws easily leads to pantheism and idolatry, imputing into the world a significance it does not deserve. The pantheism that is rapidly establishing itself in our modern day culture, specifically through the environmental movement, which worships the creation, rather than the Creator, is completely backwards idolatry. It assigns ultimate value to something that is inherently incapable of achieving ultimate value. “The entire natural universe exhibits design and direction, evolving by producing self-organizing wholes of ever-greater complexity… the chance of appearance of complex forms is extremely low.”—(P. Davies, R.W. Chambers & A.J. Carlyle). “...the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it is applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future...so very flimsy and dubious a hypothesis..."—(M. Muggeridge).
“When it is the laws of nature themselves…are seen to form an edifice of great harmony and beauty, the question of a cosmic designer seems no longer irrelevant but inescapable.”--Stephen Barr.
“The existence of God can be inferred from consideration of the works he has made.”--Ronald A Knox
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/17/3-realities-chance-cant-explain-about-life-s-origins-that-intelligent-design-can/
I.No one serious wants a theocracy
America did not have a Christian founding in the sense of creating a theocracy. However, Its founding was deeply shaped and influenced by Christian moral truths. More importantly, it created a regime that was hospitable not only to Christians, but also to practicioners of other religions.
50 of the 56 Founders were Christians(1), who produced a remarkable synthesis of reason and religion, rationality and Christianity living in harmony, not conflict. America was never anti-religious or non-religious, religion was welcomed and inhabited a significant role in public square. Perhaps this is why God was mentioned 4 times in the Declaration of Independence, not to mention over 200 times in our 50 state constitutions. Lacking an official religion doesn’t abolish the fact that we still see our society as a religion based.
Our religion based ethical codes and our country’s resulting good deeds are far from coincidental. Charity and Good works (Such as spreading and defending freedom, providing a basic social safety net, or foreign aid) are motivated a code of ethics based on Judeo Christian religion.
Of course, all levels of our government have a self-imposed obligation. as specified in our 1st Amendment, to prevent state sponsored religion, which includes secular humanism(2). In addition to the 1st amendment, which applies to our national government, the first section of the 14th amendment also extends religious freedom by preventing states from enacting laws that would inhibit any one religion.
But the government does not have the authority to prohibit the free exercise and support of religion, nor protect anyone from being offended by it. Nothing in our laws protect people from being offended, being offended is an internal personal problem, with as many possibilities as there are individuals, not a societal one. Government’s only duty is to ensure the voluntary and free exercise and support of religion.
This reasonable practice is not, contrary to its critics claims, problematic for society. There is no wave of religious on atheist violence in America(3). The religious do not go around attacking atheists in America. Quite the contrary, today, virtually all of those events occur in the opposite direction.
“The increasing influence of the Bible is marvelously great, penetrating everywhere. It carries with it a tremendous power of freedom and justice guided by a combined force of wisdom and goodness.”—Thomas Moore
1. Including deists. Deism is accepted as part of Christianity.
2. Since it is a religion in the sense its dogma means an absolute commitment to the perceived order of its reality and the ordination of human life within it.
3. With the exception of Islamic. It is ironic that liberals in America complain that American pluralism and religious freedom do not exist. It is ironic that Islamists hate us because they know those freedoms in America absolutely do exist.
II. Science as Faith
To show how science can reverse itself, Einstein found the proposition that the universe had a beginning repugnant. But observation of evidence by “non-believers” resulted in findings that contradicted the equations in mathematical formula—the science Einstein had relied on for his servitude to his faith in his belief. Such as Alexander Friedmann’s work showing the need for an implausible degree of fine tuning to maintain the tension between the drag of gravity and the pull of expansion. And Georges Lemaitre work (a physicist and Belgium priest) demonstrating that galaxies are speeding away from one another and that space itself was expanding.
But faith, even when it’s called science, has its own gravity and expansion, making it adherents do things that aren’t strictly playing by the rules in order to protect their turf. Even Stephen Hawking, when making his mathematical calculations about the universe, need to introduce the concept of “imaginary time,” admitting it was merely an expedient way to support his claim, that it did not correspond to anything in the real physical universe.
Then there’s the Boltzmann brain, an example which attempts to explain non-intelligent designed evolution, portends that a brain could self-assemble as a result of chance arrangements of atoms due to random quantum fluctuations at the subatomic level, given enough universes and time. Such rationale involves monumental question begging, it assumes the prior existence of features in a universe, such as gravity, matter, time, reliable mathematics, and so on which themselves demand explanations.
Sometimes what is right before us is the hardest thing to see. Or as Fred Hoyle, astrophysicist and former atheist-materialist, said: “The properties of the universe fall within narrow and improbable ranges that are absolutely necessary for any complex life form to exist.” Which using inductive thinking leads us to Stephen C. Meyer observation: “Science points to the existence of a personal God as found in Judaism and Christianity. To start with, the material Universe had an opening day of stupendous felicity, now routinely called by Fred Hoyle’s name—The Big Bang, in which the features of this Goldilocks universe have been dished out in astonishingly providential proportions and since the beginning large amounts of new functional genetic information have a reason to make new forms of life possible in a relatively short geological time.”
“From the greatness and beauty of creating things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.”--Wisd. 13:5
III. The Science
“Knowledge grows through successive attempts to ‘falsify’ purported general theories. As H. H. Hoppe proffered, a single simple set of falsifications never prove a theory once and for all...Those [theories] that survive are those which pass critical tests that include applications of the basic principles of human action to new areas. Those become part of the body of empirical knowledge. There is a more or less precise symmetry between the prediction and the explanation.”--N. Barry
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible, to us." --Albert Einstein
“With respect to the origins of the world...it began by creation…But the manner and order according to which creation took place concerns the faith only incidentally.”---St. Thomas
…numerous discoveries of modern science confirm the expectations of Christianity more than they do of the philosophy that matter is all the exists… what the debate is about is not proof but credibility.”---Stephen Barr (Bartol Research Institute, U of Delaware).
“Perhaps we must scientifically rethink how to feel at home in God’s universe.”—Gary Mar
*******************************************************************
"Entire fields of inquiry, especially in human sciences, will need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design...A 1993 Gallop poll showed that approximately 90% of Americans think that God-guided evolution occurred. Only 10% could be considered true Darwinists, believing in nature without God. That 10% however has significant control of our educational system..."—(W.A. Dembski). Words have distinct meanings. Intelligent Design should not be confused with Creationism. Intelligent Design is a substantive science that is being ignored or pooh-pooped by the faction in positions of control in our society's information generators and dispensers. Listening to the critics of Intelligent Design it seems that they find fault with it not because it is scientifically substandard but because it threatens their status quo. Ignoring is an immunizing tactic or strategy used to protect a belief against refutation and often employs denying the existence of criticism. Those more interested in appearing right than in learning use such means as ignoring what threatens their belief system.
Empiricism, a fundamental building block of the modern world, is a commitment to the value of scientific inquiry and a healthy skepticism toward untestable explanations by postulate. It “…is a commitment to submit all factual claims to the critical scrutiny of scientific inquiry.”—(Gary Mar). The Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Godel’s Theorems and quantum theory are all scientific reason to disbelieve that matter is the only reality. Intelligent Design is the systematic study of intelligent causes and specifically of the effects they leave behind. It uses valid scientific and empirically detecting methods to recognize intentional design effects and then reverse engineers to detected design. It asks that age-old question: Whence cometh the order of nature? Darwinism, meaning nature-driven evolution, for example “… fails to satisfy the criterion of irrefutable evidence...Darwinism’s principle concerning macro-evolution has still not been observed to happen.”—(Dermott J. Mullan). For one, “There hasn’t been enough time for the improbable odds for evolution to occur, an evolution of ‘positive’ change which has not yet been observed in nature.”--(John Leffler). "Darwinism, or natural evolution, as a well substantiated scientific theory...with its astronomical improbability... is in trouble...the alternative appears to entail the notion of a power superior to man--and nothing is more abhorrent in a secular humanistic age... I venture to predict that eventually Darwinism will be discarded: scientific integrity demands it. "—(W.Smith).
Intelligent Design derives a measure of its animating source from the scientific attitude captured in Karl Popper’s words: "It is difficult to understand how the physical universe could produce abstract entities such as rules, and then could come under the influence of these rules, so that these rules in their turn could exert very palpable effects upon the physical universe.”. But its source of being a sound belief is derived from scientific work which includes that from researchers such as C. Thaxton, P. Johnson, W. Bradley, T. Olsen, M. Behe, J. Wells, S. Meyer, P. Nelson & W. Dembski who have found that past decades of science point to the implausibility of unintelligent causes for life. Other researchers have also been collecting evidence, including H. Ross and M. Denton who have identified over 70 signals of Intelligent Design, naming them "anthropic coincidences". R. Penrose puts the odds of those "coincidences" occurring at 1 in 10 to the123 power (10 to the 6 power is a million, to the 9 power is a billion!). “A result is usually defined as statistical significant if there is no more than a 5% probability that the outcome was the result of chance.”—(P.L. Bernstein). In other words, the universe is extremely finely tuned and chance (natural causes) is not a plausible scientific explanation for it. In fact the universe is so finely balanced that if the proportions of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the universe diverged slightly from their present values, there wouldn't be any stars, nor planets. If the strong nuclear force was stronger, no hydrogen would form, if it were weaker, only hydrogen would form. If gravity were stronger, stars would burn out too rapidly to support life. If it were weaker, there'd be no planets. In short, the fundamental forces of nature have to fall within very precise tolerances to allow for any life at all. “The universe seems to have been precisely calibrated for life from the beginning”--(Anthropic Principle).
The prevailing view of the anti-I.D. crowd claims that the natural forces of evolution alone accounts for life and all its diversity. The problem with that claim is that there isn't any sound evidence to support it. The evidence that exists, called Microevolution, only supports limited variation within fixed boundaries. Inheritance with modification, selection and infusion is what accounts for evolution, which simply put is the creation of the necessary complex-specified information inherent in biological systems. Yet scientific proof that this doesn't occur "naturally" in nature can be simply seen in the fact that generation after generation resembles their parents, within a narrow range of variation, or as F. Harold said: "like begets like". The Law of Conservation of Information (that information in a closed system remains constant or diminishes, due to entropy, therefore it cannot generate additional information spontaneously) explains that modification without outside influence cannot account for increased complexity. Macroevolution, the unlimited capacity of organisms to transform beyond their boundaries, is not supported by science. It is only extrapolated from Microevolution. This skepticism is already part of mainstream science, found in part in the works of S.J. Gould, S. Kauffman, I. Prigogine, M. Eigen and F. Crick.
In other words, organisms experience only limited change over time. Simply put naturally occurring Microevolution cannot explain such facts as: the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, the origin of multicellular life, the origin of sexuality, the scarcity of transitional forms in the fossil record, the biological Big Bang that occurred in the Cambrian era, the development of complex organ systems and the development of irreducibly complex molecular mechanisms. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced by slight modifications of the precursor system, since any precursor system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. Natural selection can only select a functional system; otherwise it is not fit for survival. Selection cannot cumulate partial changes, holding them in reserve until all the necessary components are assembled. For an irreducibly complex system to function, all components of the system have to be in place simultaneously. An example of one such system is bacterial flagellum. It requires the presence of 50 separate proteins. Remove one component and it doesn't function. The eye is another example. “Nature is not a product of blind mechanical forces...her complex structures cannot be reduced to numerous small parts that accidentally came together over time, they exhibit irreducible complexity and therefore could not have evolved through incremental changes."---R.P. Kraynak
Another aspect to be considered is one of the cornerstone assumptions of Darwinism’s evolution theory, the Uniformitarian principle. That expounds that the present observed laws of nature have always been in operation exactly as they are today. Natural selection supporters point to as part of their proof. The problem with their theory however is that there are many natural phenomena, such as polonium radiohalos, decay of the earth’s magnetic filed, and helium retention in zircon which are impossible to explain using the Uniformitarian principle.
There enters into the evolutionalist’s mentality a quite strong dose of unconscious anthropomorphism, such that if there is a creator they ask, why did it not do a better job? What this bias ignores is that if there be what’s termed imperfections, defined mind you, from a human perspective, that does not prove or disprove existence of a teleology any more than imperfections in a machine authorize the hypothesis that the machine made itself without an outside creative force.
The concept of Natural selection is actually an oxymoron. It attributes the power to choose (which properly belongs only to intelligent agents) to natural causes, which inherently lack that capability. It can't yield actual (meaning intentional) design, only the appearance of it. The principle characteristic of intelligent action is choice. Choosing one among several competing possibilities, ruling out the rest and specifying the one that was chosen encapsulates how we recognize intelligent action.
If you can't ascertain that a thing is designed, you can't ascertain that the process giving rise to the thing has actual design. Unless you can infer an intelligent agent from the structure, dynamics and function of things, you are not going to infer such an agent from the process. In order to detect design, 2 features must be present, complexity and specification. Complexity guarantees that the object in question is not capable of being explained by chance. Specification guarantees that the object exhibits the right sort of pattern associated with intelligent causes.
Complex-specificity is well defined and empirically detectable. Complex-specificity is holistic. Undirected "natural causes" are incapable of explaining it. It cannot simply add together individual components to form itself; it must be processed by intelligent agency. Its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That means it is a top down concept, implying a designer. Intelligent Design starts with data from nature and looks for proof of intelligent design, using reliable methods developed within the scientific community. The fine-tuning of the universe is both complex and specified and readily yields proof of actual design, a transcendent design, not reducible to physical theories alone. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly limited to the physical world we know could have presided over the origin of the universe, or life.
I.D. is an argument that fully complies with scientific claim and not made from ignorance, and not dependent on religious faith. This premise of a 'Designer' starts out ambivalent, with no prior religious commitment and consequently leaves itself no choice but a belief in faith. It is based on what we know about the inherent constraints of "natural causes", an outcome of a careful and sustained debate about the precise interrelationships between necessity, chance and design. All of which points to Intelligent Design.
I.D. is not an argument from ignorance, nor is it a matter of personal incredulity. Rather it is carefully deducted from what we've learned about nature and its limitations. Science can demonstrate intelligent causation and can dovetail well with religious faith, such as Christianity; in fact it can actually help validate it. If science is allowed to explore the concept of intelligence design, then the concept of God, insofar as it manifests the characteristic features of intelligent causation, becomes a legitimate task for scientific investigation. Since I.D. does not need a creator that creates time, space, matter or energy, nor does it require a time-frame, it works well with Christianity. And further, evidence of design is distinct from the morality, aesthetics, goodness, optimality or perfection of the design. A great theological truth is that God acts in the world by dispensing information. Therefore the act of creating the universe by God is the proto-type for all intelligent agency.
Conversely, the dogma that no aspect of nature stands outside the absolute control of nature's laws easily leads to pantheism and idolatry, imputing into the world a significance it does not deserve. The pantheism that is rapidly establishing itself in our modern day culture, specifically through the environmental movement, which worships the creation, rather than the Creator, is completely backwards idolatry. It assigns ultimate value to something that is inherently incapable of achieving ultimate value. “The entire natural universe exhibits design and direction, evolving by producing self-organizing wholes of ever-greater complexity… the chance of appearance of complex forms is extremely low.”—(P. Davies, R.W. Chambers & A.J. Carlyle). “...the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it is applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future...so very flimsy and dubious a hypothesis..."—(M. Muggeridge).
“When it is the laws of nature themselves…are seen to form an edifice of great harmony and beauty, the question of a cosmic designer seems no longer irrelevant but inescapable.”--Stephen Barr.
“The existence of God can be inferred from consideration of the works he has made.”--Ronald A Knox
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/17/3-realities-chance-cant-explain-about-life-s-origins-that-intelligent-design-can/
Fauci-the shot- and the lies
Sent from an anonymous friend....
- Judicial Watch received 552 pages of records from the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS) which include the initial grant application and annual reports to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from EcoHealth Alliance, describing the aim of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to create mutant viruses “to better predict the capacity of coronaviruses to infect people.” That FACT contradicts fauci's testimony to Congress. Think he'll be indicted by our left-wing regime?
Early in 2020, on the same day that a frightening new illness officially got the name Covid-19, a team of scientists from the US and China released critical data showing how quickly the virus was spreading, and who was dying. The study was cited in health warnings around the world and appeared to be a model of international collaboration in a moment of crisis. Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it. A few observers took note of the peculiar move, but the whole episode quickly faded amid the frenzy of the coronavirus pandemic. What is now clear is that the study was not removed because of faulty research. Instead, it was withdrawn at the direction of Chinese health officials amid a crackdown on science. That effort kicked up a cloud of dust around the dates of early Covid cases, like those reported in the study. “It was so hard to get any information out of China,” said Ira Longini, of the University of Florida, who described the back story of the removal publicly for the first time in a recent interview. “There was so much covered up, and so much hidden.”
Meanwhile, STIKO, the German vaccine regulatory authority, have released a draft of their updated Covid vaccination recommendations, for the 25th time! It excludes healthy children under 18 years of age from vaccination, because they’re not at serious risk from infection. Of course, we’ve known this for 3 years, but they’ve vaccinated almost 10 million kids anyway, all to no purpose. Maybe somebody can apologize, or something. Adults up to 59 years of age should have 3 “immunological exposures” to SARS-2, one of which can be infection. All those young adults who were forced into accepting boosters back in 2021 despite documented infections can just unboost themselves now, I guess. Too bad about that. Finally, for at-risk groups and those 60 and over, STIKO recommends annual vaccination against Covid and influenza, preferably in the Fall, to reinforce protection during the winter months. For this recommendation as for all the others, they have no meaningful evidence to speak of.
What’s particularly interesting about the turn in Germany is home to BioNTech, the company that deserves the credit that Pfizer gets for BNT162b2, the mRNA miracle jab. BNT162b2 - as its initials suggest - is a BioNTech invention that Pfizer had the good fortune to commercialize for a 50/50 split of $70 billion in sales. Yet the mRNA vaccine nationalism that has protected Pfizer and Moderna from government(1) and left-wing media scrutiny in the US doesn’t seem to be working for BioNTech in its home turf. Remember, one of the great advantages of the mRNAs was supposed to be that they were plug-and-play, that Moderna and BioNTech could swap out genomes to catch up with the new spikes. Turns out that even if we skimp out on human testing that normally lets us be sure that the jabs are safe, we can’t keep up. The virus mutates too fast, and we can’t predict how it will change, we can only respond. Oh well.
"Titers against BQ.1.1 and XBB.1 were 8-22 times and 13-35 times lower than against BA.1 and D614G, respectively, with the Wildtype/Omicron BA.1 vaccine. Titers against BQ.1.1 and XBB.1 were 4-12 times and 8-22 times lower than against BA.4/BA.5 and D614G, respectively, with the Wildtype/Omicron BA.4/BA.5 vaccine. Our findings highlight ongoing concern that the breadth of antibody response from current updated vaccines is not optimal for the pace of virus evolution."--study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
Meanwhile, Switzerland has ended all vaccination recommendations, even for the old and the vulnerable. They have suspended all vaccination recommendations saying: “in view of the anticipated low levels of virus transmission and the high levels of population immunity.”
So, we had to punish the unvaccinated and be harangued by left-wing media for our personal medical choices, because the goal of vaccination was “from the beginning to protect against severe outcomes.” An ordinary honest, thinking person beamed from 2019 into the present might ask why it has been necessary for all of government and society to obsess so repeatedly about these doubtful products, but the left-wing accepted this periodic ritual as totally normal.
Neither available vaccines nor the science have changed all that much at all since the whole circus started. What has changed since 2021, are attitudes towards vaccines, and China virus vaccines in particular. Regulators did not to channel scientific findings into medical recommendations, but rather a political (if highly idiosyncratic) triangulation between some subset of the scientific research and what was held to be culturally or socially acceptable in the moment. That’s why they can’t stop changing their minds.
For 2 years, mRNA jab advocates have used “age-adjusted rate ratios” to claim unvaccinated people have higher Covid hospitalization and death rates than the vaccinated. These ratios have huge flaws, especially in the US, which collects data in ways that systematically overestimate vaccine effectiveness. We underestimate the overall number of vaccinated people (some counties claim that over 100% of their residents have received at least one jab). But we overestimate Covid hospitalizations and deaths of vaccinated people, since anyone who is hospitalized without a known vaccine status is considered “vaccinated.” So the numerator - ill vaccinated people - is too high, and the denominator - all vaccinated people - too low.
The US also calls vaccinated people “unvaccinated” until at least a week after they have received their 2nd jab. Other drugs don’t get this special treatment, and it is particularly stupid for the mRNA “vaccines,” which work for a few months at most and likely increase the risk of infection after the first dose.
All these errors work the same way, to make vaccines appear more protective than they actually are. That fact is not a coincidence. The people collecting and processing the data are the same ones who pushed the jabs.
But the biggest problem with the any vaccine data is deeper and more unfixable than the biases in the data collection around the mRNAs. It is what epidemiologists call “healthy vaccine user bias.” People who take the time to be vaccinated tend to care more about their health and have better access to health care than those who do not.
Further, mass vaccination campaigns for the elderly usually exclude people who are so sick or near death that they or their physicians believe vaccination will not benefit them. In Britain, for example, vaccination rates peak for people in their late seventies and then decline, because a greater percentage of people over 80 are simply too frail to be jabbed. 4% of nursing home residents in Britain who received a f1st Covid jab did not finish their vaccination with a 2nd, implying they or their carers believed they could not tolerate the side effects of a 2nd dose.
Measuring healthy vaccine bias can be tricky, but British vaccine data offer an glimpse at the phenomenon. Britain’s Covid data is generally more honest than what’s available in the US. Britain has a national health care system and a national immunization registry, so it collects more accurate numbers than the US. More importantly, to process the raw data, Britain has an Office of National Statistics, a bureaucracy that reports to the Parliament and is not part of any government ministry its data might embarrass. No government organization can ever be completely immune from political pressure, but ONS is closer than most.
So ONS prints data about the vaccines and deaths that the US government will not. For example, besides the age-adjusted ratios, it reports raw monthly numbers of deaths by vaccination status. It breaks out deaths by age, splits them into Covid and non-Covid deaths, and even provides the number and timing of shots the people who died had received. And in doing so, it provides a beautiful look at healthy vaccine user bias.
1st off, vaccinated people are a far larger group than the vaccinated. 125,000 70-79 year olds in England had not been vaccinated, compared to almost 4.5 million who had. All by itself this huge gap makes comparisons between the two groups nearly impossible. The 3% of seventy-somethings who are not vaccinated are probably very different than the 97% who are.
The pool of unjabbed people remains very small, but death rates in the group have fallen notably - from an annualized rate to 4.5% to only 3.2%. Why? The most likely reason is that some people who went vaccinated because they were too sick to be jabbed and had a very short life expectancy died between 2021 and 2022. Without that artificial statistical boost, death rates in the vaccinated group are reverting to more normal levels.
But all the vaccinated groups with the exception of people who received a 3rd-dose/booster more than 21 days earlier now have a HIGHER death rate than the vaccinated. Most of those groups are very small, but the 2-dose unboosted group is not. In fact, it is larger than the vaccinated group. And it has an annual death rate of almost 5.%% per year, almost twice the level of the jabbed group.
How come the 2-dose regimen, which was an apparent lifesaver in June 2021, turned to poison a year later? How come death rates in that group have roughly tripled? One possibility is that the jabs themselves become far more dangerous a year after they’re given. But in that case, how to explain the that people who have received at least 3 doses dose have a risk of death that is lower than both the unjabbed and 2-dose groups - about 2.1%?
So 2 jabs sharply raise all-cause mortality, but a 3rd lowers it? That explanation is biologically implausible, to say the least. No, in reality, those are a perfect illustration of healthy vaccine user bias. People who have received 2 Covid shots and then became sick - from the jabs, or just coincidentally - are not getting a 3rd. They are stuck in a pool of people who are at much higher risk of death than people who are healthy enough to be jabbed again.
These swings in all-cause mortality are huge, far higher than the jabs or any medical treatment would produce even if it worked. In other words, ALL THIS STATISTICAL MOVEMENT IS INDEPENDENT OF ANY BIOLOGICAL CHANGES THE JABS PRODUCE. It doesn’t prove the jabs are helpful - or harmful. It doesn’t prove only that people who receive them appear healthier for a while afterwards because they are healthier before. It is noise that makes finding a real signal harder.
And that’s why, for the Covid jabs, we needed real, large placebo-controlled clinical trials that measured safety and effectiveness and all-cause mortality over a period of years, not months (because when a government is giving or forcing a treatment on healthy adults, all-cause mortality is what matters).
But we never got those. Instead, we’re left with hopelessly corrupted epidemiological data from hopelessly corrupted health agencies.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/what_happened_in_hospitals_during_covid.html
https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/the-covid-lockdown-scolds-killed-people-but-they-still-have-no-shame/
https://www.clayandbuck.com/clay-discusses-faucis-disastrous-record/
https://reclaimthenet.org/groups-pushing-vaccine-passports-mandates-were-quietly-funded-by-pfizer
https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-depth-us-officials-reject-compensation-for-people-diagnosed-with-covid-19-vaccine-injuries_5216736.html?utm_source=ref_share&src_src=ref_share&utm_campaign=mb-cc&src_cmp=mb-cc
1. Like its Covid cousin, the RSV shot consists of a strand of mRNA inside a tiny ball of fat, or lipid nanoparticle. The mRNA hijacks our cells so they make a protein that is part of the virus. Our immune systems then recognize that protein as an invader, giving us a headstart in making antibodies to attack the real virus. How can Moderna's RSV jab be approvable?The company's own trial shows its shot caused 200 side effects (10 severe) for each RSV infection it stopped. You read that right: 200 to 1. RSV is a cold for most adults. A review of death certificates found that RSV kills about 35 American adults a year - about as many as die in lightning strikes, and one four-hundredth as many as Moderna has claimed. Yes, you read that right; Moderna has overstated adult deaths from RSV by a factor of 400.
Shhhh, here's the truth they'll hate you for.
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Sent: 4/21/2023 8:38:29 AM Central Standard Time
Subject: Shhhh, here's the truth they'll hate you for....
Part I
In New York City the number of dismissed criminal cases in jumped 44% in 2019 and 69% in 2021. Misdemeanors dismissed in 2019 increase 49% and 82% in 2021.
The results. Shootings increased by 102%, murders by 51%, robberies by 40%, petty larceny by 43% and misdemeanor assaults by 23%.
2% of American counties experienced 56% of the murders in 2020. They contain 31% of the population. 5% of the counties that contain 47% of the population account for 73% of the murders. These counties are generally in heavily urban areas. In the safer suburban and rural areas gun ownership is 38% and 79% higher than an urban areas respectively. 27 out of 30 of the cities with the highest murder rates are run by left-wing democratic regimes. Within those 14 have soros backed prosecutors, resulting in 68% of the homicides in those 30 cities.
A 2021 study by the national bureau of economic research found that by deterring violent crime through the more efficient deployment of experience, senior officers would potentially improve civilian interactions without deterring public safety, lower criminal justice costs associated with punishing minor fences, reduce the cost of subjecting innocent persons to enforcement and reduce negative spillovers of the use of force. Such intervention reduces violent crime, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, without increasing arrests, use of force or the police's operating budget.. likewise slowing down the revolving door that repeatedly returns by the criminals to the streets with little or no penalty for their actions also prove effective.
Went over 70% of the people released under mandated zero bail policies go on to commit additional crime, including violent offenses such as robbery and murder, they're simply no rational public safety related basis to continue such a practice, especially in light of the increasing violent crime rates across the us.
We’ve heard a lot lately about how Republicans don’t care about dead kids -- just keep your hands off their guns! The bullhorn insurrection staged by Tennessee legislators, for example, was justified on the grounds that they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDREN’S LIVES!!! The statistic that’s supposed to make us give up our guns PRONTO is that since 2020, gun violence has become the leading cause of death for American children. You’re supposed to be thinking of the little kids killed in school shootings, like in Uvalde or the Christian school in Nashville. In fact, the odds that a child will be killed in a mass school shooting are 1 in 10 million.
The trick is that “children” includes 16-to-19-year-old gang members. Exclude 16-to-19-year-olds, and the number of kids killed by guns every year plummets from 2,811 to a few hundred. AND it turns out, black teenagers are using guns to kill a lot of other black teenagers. But black-on-black violence is not considered newsworthy. By contrast, any white-on-black violence, even the sort of thing that wouldn’t make local news if the perp were black, will get front-page coverage at The ny times, international headlines and a call from biden. AND consider that, in most urban areas, the huge majority of murders never result in any arrests at all. For example, the “clearance” rate for murder -- which is much higher than the “arrest” rate -- is only 22% in Chicago, 43% in Baltimore and 37% in Philadelphia.
According to police arrests:
-- On March 29, 2023, 16-year-old Vincent Lee Bradley III and 17-year-old Devonte J. Pool fired at least 33 shots, gunning down a 16-year-old high school student, Larry Marshall III, in Tacoma, Washington.
-- A few days earlier, 16-year-old Lorenzo A. Brooks and 19-year-old Aaron Randolph Carter allegedly shot and killed 18-year-old Jasiah Smith in a Fredericksburg, Virginia, parking lot.
-- A week before, 19-year-old Adrian Granville and 24-year-old Teonjenique Howard were shot and killed at the Embassy Suites hotel in Portland, by an unknown suspect -- the same hotel where 15-year-old Dendrae Barber fatally shot 18-year-old Parnell Badon Jr. in Nov. 2022.
-- On March 7, 2023, two brothers, Jacob Tobias Bryant, 18, and John Aalen Bryant Jr., 20, along with an unnamed 16-year-old juvenile, fatally shot a 17-year-old in Georgetown, South Carolina.
-- On Feb. 23, 2023, Keith Melvin Moses, 19, shot and killed a 9-year-old girl, T’yonna Major, and her mother in a shooting spree in Orlando, Florida, that left several others wounded or dead.
-- On Jan. 23, 2023, 18-year-old Preston Walls removed his ankle bracelet before gunning down rival gang members, 18-year-old Gionni Dameron and 16-year-old Rashad Carr, at a violence reduction program in Des Moines, Iowa.
-- On Jan. 4, 2023, 18-year-old Jakari Harps fatally shot 17-year-old Breck Gerard Williams Jr. and 14-year-old Adrian Daniels in Fort Worth, Texas.
-- Before Christmas last year, 17yr-old Lavon Longstreet and 18yr-old TaeShawn Adams-Wright killed 19yr-old Johntae Hudson at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, standing over Hudson’s body and firing “multiple rounds into his body."
-- Earlier in December, 17-year-old Tejuan Johnson and 18-year-old Jaylan Dubose shot and killed 15-year-old Nonaisha Jones and 19-year-old Logan Lawson in the Roselawn neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.
All these incidents of “children” dying by gun violence consisted of black teenagers killing other black teenagers -- and a 9-year-old. More than 50% of all black teenagers who died of any cause in 2020 were killed by guns. Black males 15- to 34-years-old were more than 20 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white males that age. Far from highlighting the crisis of black teenagers shooting one another and declaring a national emergency, the left-wing media, corporate America and liberal/democrats mightily egged on black violence after the death of Our Lord Floyd (george). They get to watch the riot from the safety of their lily-white neighborhoods. The only people who actually give a damn about black people getting killed are the police. And who have the left-wing declared war on? Propose anything that would actually reduce the plague of black-on-black crime, such as arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning criminals, and liberals scream, STOP PUTTING BLACK BODIES IN PRISON!
Needless to say, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the Tennessee representatives who attacked democracy because they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDREN’S LIIIIIVES, are HUGE blm supporters. They scream lies like“ending police violence,” blacks being “lynched by police officers,” and accuse the police of running a “system of white supremacy.” Jones told teen vogue that “more policing does not lead to community safety.” despite that thousands of black men who are still alive thanks to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s more policing policy would disagree. Instead, Jones proposed “more funding to social workers, public education and ending poverty.” LOL, why, after 4,000+ years of civilization, hasn't anybody else thought of that?
NPRbs even blamed “white supremacy” for the death of Tyre Nichols Apparently “White supremacy” is such an awesome force, it even infected the 5 black Memphis police officers charged with Nichols’ death.
So, you want to know who doesn’t care about “our children's lives?' The left-wing media, george soros-supported left-wing prosecutors and the entire left-wing democratic Party.
What definitely is not the answer is making it more difficult for good folks who are forced to live in dangerous neighborhoods to be able to acquire a firearm or a concealed carry permit for self-defense. For example in Indiana 20% of adults, many who are minorities living in high crime areas commonly have concealed handgun permit, while in Illinois that number is 3.3%, predominantly affluent suburban White males. The truth is that America's murder problem isn't caused by the nation's millions of law-abiding firearms. The efforts by gun control advocates to restrict gun ownership and use by the lawful will never lower murder rates, or crime rates, and will only further embolden criminals to pray on the helpless.
Further reading:
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/chart-of-the-day-the-profile-of-a-mass-shooter/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/steve-dettelbach-define-assault-weapon
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/most_of_the_media_entertainers_educators_and_other_democrats_only_pretend_to_care_about_children_the_poor_and_the_middle_class.html
https://www.theblaze.com/news/ramaswamy-don-lemon-debate-gun-control
Part II
Meanwhile, based on biden’s performance in office, don't expect him to admit that he has been advised by the Three Stooges. Albeit his stooges would not be the 3 of yesteryear’s Hollywood, Larry, Moe, and Shemp. They, too, are deceased. More likely, he has been advised by Vice President kamala harris, Secretary of Homeland Security alejandro mayorkas, and Secretary of Transportation pete buttigieg. Of course, there is a fourth stooge whom Joe counsels with. That would be his son, hunter. biden is on record as having said Hunter is the “smartest guy” he knows, though admittedly hunter cannot even keep track of the whereabouts of his computer, the one with incriminating evidence on it. In Joe’s world, smart people lose things. Even Joe loses things, for instance, 100 or so classified documents.
Uncle joe probably presides over the least distinguished cabinet in history. No joke! There is kamala, who as vice president has had to shuffle and reshuffle her staff so many times that Washington insiders suspect COVID-19 is alive and well in her office. Why can she not keep staff members for more than a few weeks? There is Secretary of Homeland Security mayorkas, who has appeared before congressional committees so often that he might well be suspected of being a subversive or a foreign agent. And, of course, there is Secretary buttigieg, who, like all of these three modern-day stooges, has a dreadful time getting down to our southern border to see how things are going. Frankly, I sympathize with the secretary. What if he got kidnapped down there? What if the White House refused to pay his ransom?
Why cannot Joe put together a cabinet of some distinction? Well, a cabinet of distinction would be difficult to put together for either party as things stand right now. There is a troubling problem facing both political parties. America is lacking in leadership. Henry Kissinger. The democrats apparently take their leadership from something deeply flawed and dangerous, called “woke.”
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement&utm_term=2023-04-16
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/classified-documents-show-the-white-houses-real-enemies-are-americans/
https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/hunter-biden-laptop-coverup-ex-officials-deserves-consequences-say
https://www.theblaze.com/news/us-government-allegedly-had-full-access-to-users-private-messages
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/christopher_wray_and_the_politicization_of_the_fbi.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-the-whistleblower-51e4a38b
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/merrick-garland-at-center-of-hunter-biden-whistleblower-claim/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/gop-reacts-to-hunter-biden-irs-whistleblower-fetterman-raises-eyebrows
https://www.wsj.com/articles/shhh-the-cfpb-could-be-listening-townstone-crime-free-speech-chicago-brandon-johnson-mortage-48d4c260
Sent: 4/21/2023 8:38:29 AM Central Standard Time
Subject: Shhhh, here's the truth they'll hate you for....
Part I
In New York City the number of dismissed criminal cases in jumped 44% in 2019 and 69% in 2021. Misdemeanors dismissed in 2019 increase 49% and 82% in 2021.
The results. Shootings increased by 102%, murders by 51%, robberies by 40%, petty larceny by 43% and misdemeanor assaults by 23%.
2% of American counties experienced 56% of the murders in 2020. They contain 31% of the population. 5% of the counties that contain 47% of the population account for 73% of the murders. These counties are generally in heavily urban areas. In the safer suburban and rural areas gun ownership is 38% and 79% higher than an urban areas respectively. 27 out of 30 of the cities with the highest murder rates are run by left-wing democratic regimes. Within those 14 have soros backed prosecutors, resulting in 68% of the homicides in those 30 cities.
A 2021 study by the national bureau of economic research found that by deterring violent crime through the more efficient deployment of experience, senior officers would potentially improve civilian interactions without deterring public safety, lower criminal justice costs associated with punishing minor fences, reduce the cost of subjecting innocent persons to enforcement and reduce negative spillovers of the use of force. Such intervention reduces violent crime, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, without increasing arrests, use of force or the police's operating budget.. likewise slowing down the revolving door that repeatedly returns by the criminals to the streets with little or no penalty for their actions also prove effective.
Went over 70% of the people released under mandated zero bail policies go on to commit additional crime, including violent offenses such as robbery and murder, they're simply no rational public safety related basis to continue such a practice, especially in light of the increasing violent crime rates across the us.
We’ve heard a lot lately about how Republicans don’t care about dead kids -- just keep your hands off their guns! The bullhorn insurrection staged by Tennessee legislators, for example, was justified on the grounds that they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDREN’S LIVES!!! The statistic that’s supposed to make us give up our guns PRONTO is that since 2020, gun violence has become the leading cause of death for American children. You’re supposed to be thinking of the little kids killed in school shootings, like in Uvalde or the Christian school in Nashville. In fact, the odds that a child will be killed in a mass school shooting are 1 in 10 million.
The trick is that “children” includes 16-to-19-year-old gang members. Exclude 16-to-19-year-olds, and the number of kids killed by guns every year plummets from 2,811 to a few hundred. AND it turns out, black teenagers are using guns to kill a lot of other black teenagers. But black-on-black violence is not considered newsworthy. By contrast, any white-on-black violence, even the sort of thing that wouldn’t make local news if the perp were black, will get front-page coverage at The ny times, international headlines and a call from biden. AND consider that, in most urban areas, the huge majority of murders never result in any arrests at all. For example, the “clearance” rate for murder -- which is much higher than the “arrest” rate -- is only 22% in Chicago, 43% in Baltimore and 37% in Philadelphia.
According to police arrests:
-- On March 29, 2023, 16-year-old Vincent Lee Bradley III and 17-year-old Devonte J. Pool fired at least 33 shots, gunning down a 16-year-old high school student, Larry Marshall III, in Tacoma, Washington.
-- A few days earlier, 16-year-old Lorenzo A. Brooks and 19-year-old Aaron Randolph Carter allegedly shot and killed 18-year-old Jasiah Smith in a Fredericksburg, Virginia, parking lot.
-- A week before, 19-year-old Adrian Granville and 24-year-old Teonjenique Howard were shot and killed at the Embassy Suites hotel in Portland, by an unknown suspect -- the same hotel where 15-year-old Dendrae Barber fatally shot 18-year-old Parnell Badon Jr. in Nov. 2022.
-- On March 7, 2023, two brothers, Jacob Tobias Bryant, 18, and John Aalen Bryant Jr., 20, along with an unnamed 16-year-old juvenile, fatally shot a 17-year-old in Georgetown, South Carolina.
-- On Feb. 23, 2023, Keith Melvin Moses, 19, shot and killed a 9-year-old girl, T’yonna Major, and her mother in a shooting spree in Orlando, Florida, that left several others wounded or dead.
-- On Jan. 23, 2023, 18-year-old Preston Walls removed his ankle bracelet before gunning down rival gang members, 18-year-old Gionni Dameron and 16-year-old Rashad Carr, at a violence reduction program in Des Moines, Iowa.
-- On Jan. 4, 2023, 18-year-old Jakari Harps fatally shot 17-year-old Breck Gerard Williams Jr. and 14-year-old Adrian Daniels in Fort Worth, Texas.
-- Before Christmas last year, 17yr-old Lavon Longstreet and 18yr-old TaeShawn Adams-Wright killed 19yr-old Johntae Hudson at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, standing over Hudson’s body and firing “multiple rounds into his body."
-- Earlier in December, 17-year-old Tejuan Johnson and 18-year-old Jaylan Dubose shot and killed 15-year-old Nonaisha Jones and 19-year-old Logan Lawson in the Roselawn neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio.
All these incidents of “children” dying by gun violence consisted of black teenagers killing other black teenagers -- and a 9-year-old. More than 50% of all black teenagers who died of any cause in 2020 were killed by guns. Black males 15- to 34-years-old were more than 20 times more likely to die by gun homicide than white males that age. Far from highlighting the crisis of black teenagers shooting one another and declaring a national emergency, the left-wing media, corporate America and liberal/democrats mightily egged on black violence after the death of Our Lord Floyd (george). They get to watch the riot from the safety of their lily-white neighborhoods. The only people who actually give a damn about black people getting killed are the police. And who have the left-wing declared war on? Propose anything that would actually reduce the plague of black-on-black crime, such as arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning criminals, and liberals scream, STOP PUTTING BLACK BODIES IN PRISON!
Needless to say, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the Tennessee representatives who attacked democracy because they were JUST TRYING TO SAVE CHILDREN’S LIIIIIVES, are HUGE blm supporters. They scream lies like“ending police violence,” blacks being “lynched by police officers,” and accuse the police of running a “system of white supremacy.” Jones told teen vogue that “more policing does not lead to community safety.” despite that thousands of black men who are still alive thanks to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s more policing policy would disagree. Instead, Jones proposed “more funding to social workers, public education and ending poverty.” LOL, why, after 4,000+ years of civilization, hasn't anybody else thought of that?
NPRbs even blamed “white supremacy” for the death of Tyre Nichols Apparently “White supremacy” is such an awesome force, it even infected the 5 black Memphis police officers charged with Nichols’ death.
So, you want to know who doesn’t care about “our children's lives?' The left-wing media, george soros-supported left-wing prosecutors and the entire left-wing democratic Party.
What definitely is not the answer is making it more difficult for good folks who are forced to live in dangerous neighborhoods to be able to acquire a firearm or a concealed carry permit for self-defense. For example in Indiana 20% of adults, many who are minorities living in high crime areas commonly have concealed handgun permit, while in Illinois that number is 3.3%, predominantly affluent suburban White males. The truth is that America's murder problem isn't caused by the nation's millions of law-abiding firearms. The efforts by gun control advocates to restrict gun ownership and use by the lawful will never lower murder rates, or crime rates, and will only further embolden criminals to pray on the helpless.
Further reading:
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/chart-of-the-day-the-profile-of-a-mass-shooter/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/steve-dettelbach-define-assault-weapon
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/most_of_the_media_entertainers_educators_and_other_democrats_only_pretend_to_care_about_children_the_poor_and_the_middle_class.html
https://www.theblaze.com/news/ramaswamy-don-lemon-debate-gun-control
Part II
Meanwhile, based on biden’s performance in office, don't expect him to admit that he has been advised by the Three Stooges. Albeit his stooges would not be the 3 of yesteryear’s Hollywood, Larry, Moe, and Shemp. They, too, are deceased. More likely, he has been advised by Vice President kamala harris, Secretary of Homeland Security alejandro mayorkas, and Secretary of Transportation pete buttigieg. Of course, there is a fourth stooge whom Joe counsels with. That would be his son, hunter. biden is on record as having said Hunter is the “smartest guy” he knows, though admittedly hunter cannot even keep track of the whereabouts of his computer, the one with incriminating evidence on it. In Joe’s world, smart people lose things. Even Joe loses things, for instance, 100 or so classified documents.
Uncle joe probably presides over the least distinguished cabinet in history. No joke! There is kamala, who as vice president has had to shuffle and reshuffle her staff so many times that Washington insiders suspect COVID-19 is alive and well in her office. Why can she not keep staff members for more than a few weeks? There is Secretary of Homeland Security mayorkas, who has appeared before congressional committees so often that he might well be suspected of being a subversive or a foreign agent. And, of course, there is Secretary buttigieg, who, like all of these three modern-day stooges, has a dreadful time getting down to our southern border to see how things are going. Frankly, I sympathize with the secretary. What if he got kidnapped down there? What if the White House refused to pay his ransom?
Why cannot Joe put together a cabinet of some distinction? Well, a cabinet of distinction would be difficult to put together for either party as things stand right now. There is a troubling problem facing both political parties. America is lacking in leadership. Henry Kissinger. The democrats apparently take their leadership from something deeply flawed and dangerous, called “woke.”
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement&utm_term=2023-04-16
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/classified-documents-show-the-white-houses-real-enemies-are-americans/
https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/hunter-biden-laptop-coverup-ex-officials-deserves-consequences-say
https://www.theblaze.com/news/us-government-allegedly-had-full-access-to-users-private-messages
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/christopher_wray_and_the_politicization_of_the_fbi.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-the-whistleblower-51e4a38b
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/merrick-garland-at-center-of-hunter-biden-whistleblower-claim/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/gop-reacts-to-hunter-biden-irs-whistleblower-fetterman-raises-eyebrows
https://www.wsj.com/articles/shhh-the-cfpb-could-be-listening-townstone-crime-free-speech-chicago-brandon-johnson-mortage-48d4c260
Coal Use
Coal use to generate electricity, to produce cement and steel, and for other purposes increased globally in 2022, despite ineffectual Paris climate agreement commitments to reduce and ultimately end coal use.
Coal-generated electricity increased by 19.5 gigawatts in 2022, enough to power approximately 15 million homes. These new power plants have operational lives extending well beyond the 2050 date to reach net-zero emissions as demanded by left-wing climate activists and their excessive climate agreements.
Last year, 14 nations fired up new coal plants, and 8 countries announced new plants were under construction. China, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe both added new coal plants and announced the construction of new plants is underway. China led the way in coal power expansion, adding 26.8 gigawatts of new coal plants, with 100 gigawatts of new coal plants under construction in 2023. China’s coal growth was more than double the amount of coal-fueled plants taken offline in the US in 2022. India added 3.5 gigawatts of new coal power plants.
These numbers don’t even include the increase in electricity production at existing plants (meaning more coal use) that were, for various internal and external reasons, operating at less than full capacity. Nor does it account for the growth in coal used for production of cement and steel, or for other marginal uses.
Coal use grew even in Europe, as some countries switched from natural gas to coal in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted the gas supplies on which they had become dependent.
The increased use of coal in 2022 shows the futility the Paris climate agreement signatories have set for themselves in reaching net-zero. To do that by 2050, approximately 117 gigawatts of coal power must be destroyed annually, with no new coal-using plants being brought online, as GEM's Global Coal Plant Tracker estimates. Only 26 gigawatts were retired in 2022, all of which was offset by coal power growth in China alone.
But then, the left-wing never lets germane/cogent facts, sound logic and reasoned conclusions get in the way of their utopian ideology and myths.
“Good sense is a fountain of life to him who has it, but the instruction of fools is folly.”--Proverbs 16-22
Coal-generated electricity increased by 19.5 gigawatts in 2022, enough to power approximately 15 million homes. These new power plants have operational lives extending well beyond the 2050 date to reach net-zero emissions as demanded by left-wing climate activists and their excessive climate agreements.
Last year, 14 nations fired up new coal plants, and 8 countries announced new plants were under construction. China, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe both added new coal plants and announced the construction of new plants is underway. China led the way in coal power expansion, adding 26.8 gigawatts of new coal plants, with 100 gigawatts of new coal plants under construction in 2023. China’s coal growth was more than double the amount of coal-fueled plants taken offline in the US in 2022. India added 3.5 gigawatts of new coal power plants.
These numbers don’t even include the increase in electricity production at existing plants (meaning more coal use) that were, for various internal and external reasons, operating at less than full capacity. Nor does it account for the growth in coal used for production of cement and steel, or for other marginal uses.
Coal use grew even in Europe, as some countries switched from natural gas to coal in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted the gas supplies on which they had become dependent.
The increased use of coal in 2022 shows the futility the Paris climate agreement signatories have set for themselves in reaching net-zero. To do that by 2050, approximately 117 gigawatts of coal power must be destroyed annually, with no new coal-using plants being brought online, as GEM's Global Coal Plant Tracker estimates. Only 26 gigawatts were retired in 2022, all of which was offset by coal power growth in China alone.
But then, the left-wing never lets germane/cogent facts, sound logic and reasoned conclusions get in the way of their utopian ideology and myths.
“Good sense is a fountain of life to him who has it, but the instruction of fools is folly.”--Proverbs 16-22
The EPA & You
The EPA’s order regulating tailpipe CO2 emissions of model year 2027 to 2032 cars, SUVs and pickup trucks was clearly intended to force automakers to produce electric vehicles so that they’d account for 66% of sales in 2032 — roughly 10 times the 6% share they accounted for in 2022.
It's doubtful that we have the necessary critical conditions that we need to continue to examine. Among those conditions is whether automakers can procure the raw materials to produce so many electric vehicles. That includes, energy analyst and historian Daniel Yergin says, about two and a half times as much copper as gas-powered vehicles. That will be tough. 50% of the world’s copper is produced in politically unstable Peru and Chile. A big new mine opening in Mongolia is inconveniently landlocked between China and Russia. And car batteries require cobalt, some 70% of which is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under working conditions you don’t want to know about.
Then there’s the little detail about where electric car owners are going to get the electricity to keep their vehicles going. There aren’t many charging stations available now. Even if there were, America would need a lot more electricity than it generates now in order to power an electric vehicle fleet that large. And the U.S. electricity supply has actually been getting less reliable.
Thanks to environmentalists, America has been phasing out nuclear and coal-fired plants, which can reliably increase production to meet high demand. The nation depends increasingly on wind- and solar-produced electricity, which is only reliable when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining — not all the time in most of North America.
By the way, the states with the biggest political support for renewables don’t, unfortunately, have much reliable wind and sunshine. Current wind production is highest in the Great Plains, including Texas. Solar power provides only 16% of California’s electricity, whereas hydropower is limited outside the Pacific Northwest.
And don’t count on more power plants being built to accommodate all these electric vehicles. Progressives excel at using environmental lawsuits to stop new construction — a point made recently by thoughtful young liberals such as the atlantic’s Derek Thompson (“we lag behind in actually building what we’ve invented”) and the ny times Ezra Klein (who laments “an avalanche of well-meaning rules and standards that slow public projects in San Francisco — and nationally”). This “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone” threatens to block the electric power plants, transmission lines and charging stations required for the huge increase in electric vehicles ordered by the Biden administration.
But will people buy those cars? Even with subsidies, electric vehicles cost more than gas-powered ones. It takes much longer to charge one than to fill a gas tank. Electric cars can turn into bricks if their batteries are drained by air conditioners or heaters, often needed almost everywhere in North America. Gallup finds that only 12% of Americans want a new electric vehicle, and 41% say they’d never buy one. Pew finds that 55% oppose a 2035 phaseout of gas-powered cars.
“Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable, only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technological advances.”--the great historian of technology Vaclav Smil
It is looking like the biden regime has set a goal that can only be achieved at exorbitant cost and over-determined resistance, which leads to the suspicion that biden is doing what the left-wing elites always do --issue orders, to propitiate a core constituency, expecting it to be overturned by the courts, which they then ignore.
Tell me again, who's the threat to our democracy?
Further reading:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/ignore-the-earth-day-hype-to-save-the-planet-invest-in-fossil-fuels/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_many_disadvantages_of_electric_cars.html
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/uncle-joe-has-a-car-you-cant-refuse
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/epa-out-control-heres-our-plan-stop-illegal-actions
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/analysis-what-youre-not-being-told-about-the-electric-vehicle-revolution/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/government_fiat_will_not_make_electric_cars_viable.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inflation-reduction-acts-bait-and-switch-oil-gas-energy-prices-permitting-climate-spending-gdp-41132805
Lithium Batteries;
“A giant earthmover machine is required to move 500 tons of earth/ore which will be refined into one lithium car battery. It burns 900-1000 gallons of fuel in a 12- hour shift. Lithium is refined from ore using sulfuric acid. The proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass, Nevada is estimated to require up to 75 semi-loads of sulfuric acid a day! The acid does not turn into unicorn food as AOC believes. Refining lithium has created several EPA SUPERFUND SITES. IT IS VERY TOXIC TO THE ENVIRONMENT! A battery in an electric car, let’s say an average Tesla, is made of : 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic, etc...... averaging 750-1,000 pounds of minerals, that had to be mined and processed into a battery that merely stores electricity... Electricity which is generated by oil, gas, coal, or water (and a tiny fraction of wind and solar)… That is the truth, about the lie, of "green" energy. There’s nothing green about the green new deal. You people better learn how to vote or this nonsense will continue to flow down on top of you from the throne of government upon of which you put these people. Stop drinking the Green New Deal’s sulfuric acid Kool-Aid!
Dr. Phillip A. Fields University of South Alabama College of Medicine
5851 USA Dr
N MSB 1164
Mobile, Alabama 36688
251/460-6766
It's doubtful that we have the necessary critical conditions that we need to continue to examine. Among those conditions is whether automakers can procure the raw materials to produce so many electric vehicles. That includes, energy analyst and historian Daniel Yergin says, about two and a half times as much copper as gas-powered vehicles. That will be tough. 50% of the world’s copper is produced in politically unstable Peru and Chile. A big new mine opening in Mongolia is inconveniently landlocked between China and Russia. And car batteries require cobalt, some 70% of which is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo under working conditions you don’t want to know about.
Then there’s the little detail about where electric car owners are going to get the electricity to keep their vehicles going. There aren’t many charging stations available now. Even if there were, America would need a lot more electricity than it generates now in order to power an electric vehicle fleet that large. And the U.S. electricity supply has actually been getting less reliable.
Thanks to environmentalists, America has been phasing out nuclear and coal-fired plants, which can reliably increase production to meet high demand. The nation depends increasingly on wind- and solar-produced electricity, which is only reliable when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining — not all the time in most of North America.
By the way, the states with the biggest political support for renewables don’t, unfortunately, have much reliable wind and sunshine. Current wind production is highest in the Great Plains, including Texas. Solar power provides only 16% of California’s electricity, whereas hydropower is limited outside the Pacific Northwest.
And don’t count on more power plants being built to accommodate all these electric vehicles. Progressives excel at using environmental lawsuits to stop new construction — a point made recently by thoughtful young liberals such as the atlantic’s Derek Thompson (“we lag behind in actually building what we’ve invented”) and the ny times Ezra Klein (who laments “an avalanche of well-meaning rules and standards that slow public projects in San Francisco — and nationally”). This “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone” threatens to block the electric power plants, transmission lines and charging stations required for the huge increase in electric vehicles ordered by the Biden administration.
But will people buy those cars? Even with subsidies, electric vehicles cost more than gas-powered ones. It takes much longer to charge one than to fill a gas tank. Electric cars can turn into bricks if their batteries are drained by air conditioners or heaters, often needed almost everywhere in North America. Gallup finds that only 12% of Americans want a new electric vehicle, and 41% say they’d never buy one. Pew finds that 55% oppose a 2035 phaseout of gas-powered cars.
“Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable, only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technological advances.”--the great historian of technology Vaclav Smil
It is looking like the biden regime has set a goal that can only be achieved at exorbitant cost and over-determined resistance, which leads to the suspicion that biden is doing what the left-wing elites always do --issue orders, to propitiate a core constituency, expecting it to be overturned by the courts, which they then ignore.
Tell me again, who's the threat to our democracy?
Further reading:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/ignore-the-earth-day-hype-to-save-the-planet-invest-in-fossil-fuels/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_many_disadvantages_of_electric_cars.html
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/uncle-joe-has-a-car-you-cant-refuse
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/epa-out-control-heres-our-plan-stop-illegal-actions
https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/analysis-what-youre-not-being-told-about-the-electric-vehicle-revolution/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/government_fiat_will_not_make_electric_cars_viable.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-inflation-reduction-acts-bait-and-switch-oil-gas-energy-prices-permitting-climate-spending-gdp-41132805
Lithium Batteries;
“A giant earthmover machine is required to move 500 tons of earth/ore which will be refined into one lithium car battery. It burns 900-1000 gallons of fuel in a 12- hour shift. Lithium is refined from ore using sulfuric acid. The proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass, Nevada is estimated to require up to 75 semi-loads of sulfuric acid a day! The acid does not turn into unicorn food as AOC believes. Refining lithium has created several EPA SUPERFUND SITES. IT IS VERY TOXIC TO THE ENVIRONMENT! A battery in an electric car, let’s say an average Tesla, is made of : 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic, etc...... averaging 750-1,000 pounds of minerals, that had to be mined and processed into a battery that merely stores electricity... Electricity which is generated by oil, gas, coal, or water (and a tiny fraction of wind and solar)… That is the truth, about the lie, of "green" energy. There’s nothing green about the green new deal. You people better learn how to vote or this nonsense will continue to flow down on top of you from the throne of government upon of which you put these people. Stop drinking the Green New Deal’s sulfuric acid Kool-Aid!
Dr. Phillip A. Fields University of South Alabama College of Medicine
5851 USA Dr
N MSB 1164
Mobile, Alabama 36688
251/460-6766
Yesterday; 4/27/2023 9:51:13 AM Central Standard Time
Subject: China
Source: Anonymous
On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs. The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant has in the past few months completed the delivery of 25 tons of highly enriched uranium to get production started. That deal means that Russia and China are now cooperating on a project that will aid their own nuclear modernizations and, by the Pentagon’s estimates, produce arsenals whose combined size could dwarf that of the United States. This new reality is prompting a broad rethinking of American nuclear strategy that few anticipated. Instead, the US is now facing how to manage a 3-way nuclear rivalry, which upends much of the deterrence strategy that has successfully avoided nuclear war.
“Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history...There is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor.”-- John J. Mearsheimer
1989 marked the end of any hopes for an elected government and a gradual transition to democracy in China. Nevertheless, the American consensus continued to believe that China would gradually evolve toward a democracy and free market economy, notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary. China has continued to believe that its model of a technocratic autocracy and state capitalism is superior to western civilization’s political structures. Subsequently, the US is facing a formidable adversary in China who controls vital natural and industrial resources but, the front lines of what may be a new Cold War are mainly economic and technological ones.
In 2013 xi jinping rose to power. He quickly moved to submit his power, eliminating political rivals and reshaping the country’s economic model in which the state is the unquestionable authority, saying: “Capitalism is bound to die out.” He sent thousands of party members to prison and to reeducation camps.
While the US wasted trillions of $ in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China invested in high technology and infrastructure projects at home and abroad. As a result, China enjoys undisputed leadership in many industries. The CIA’s World Fact Book identifies those as: mining and ore processing, iron, steel, aluminum, other metals; coal; machine building; armaments; textiles and apparel; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizer; consumer products; food processing; rail cars; locomotives; automobiles; ships; aircraft; telecommunications equipment; commercial space launch vehicles; and satellites.
China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative has made China the primary financier for vital infrastructure and development efforts in developing countries throughout the world. William and Mary college estimates more than 13,000 of those BRI projects, worth almost $1 trillion across 165 countries, has China out spending the US and other major powers on international development by 2 to 1. It is positioning China strategically across the globe. Meanwhile, in 2017 China moved past the US in Purchasing Power Parity, which calculates national wealth using a relative cost of equivalent goods and services.
China has launched its versions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And although in 2020 China displaced the US as the European Union’s largest trading partner in goods, still, china retains status as a developing country (which allows them to only partially abide by the open trade rules of the World Trade Organization) and a favored nation status by the US. Apparently the prospect of a massive marketplace outweighs all the evidence of destructive dumping, intellectual property theft, and unfair trading practices.
China’s plans are to supplant the US as the economic and military superpower, first in Asia, then globally. The message is basically: we are a great power; respect us. We’re not coming for you—unless you try to contain us.
Its industrial policy plan is to use its vast subsidies and financial incentives to move China away from low value-added and labor-intensive manufacturing to leadership and key industries such as: AI, the Internet of Things, smart appliances, semiconductors, robotics, machine learning, green energy, electric and autonomous vehicles, aerospace equipment, ocean engineering, high-tech ships, railway equipment, power equipment, new materials, biotech, medicine and medical devices, and agricultural machinery.
China is also building a powerful military. It's adding nuclear warheads to its arsenal, improving delivery capabilities and expanding its blue water navy. Its Long March hypersonic rocket circled the Earth in a test. Such a system could circumvent US missile defenses. Meanwhile, China continues to build stronger ties with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Cambodia.
Meanwhile, China has become more authoritarian, not less. China is not moving towards us; it’s moving away. It’s 2021 five-year plan’s goal is economic self-reliance and indigenous innovation. It does not include meaningful reforms to address the concerns that have been shared by the United States and many other countries.
If China continues to grow and the US stumbles, the US will see its strategic advantages vanish and China become more assertive and aggressive. Even if weaker, (and China has vulnerabilities too), it may still become more aggressive. US beware.
“We clung to the assumption that China would liberalize its economy and liberalize its form of government, and of course that didn’t happen.”--H.R. McMaster
“Those who try to prevent China’s rise will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.”--xi jinping and China’s Wolf Warrior diplomacy
“Mao Zedong [one of history’s greatest murderer/enslaver] is back in favor in China.”-Nouriel Roubini
Further Reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/bidens_susceptibility_to_blackmail_has_unleashed_domestic_and_international_chaos.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/anybody_notice_whats_going_on_in_taiwan.html
https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-says-its-ready-to-fight-after-massive-drills-around-taiwan-releases-animated-video-of-attack
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-footage-shows-release-chinese-nationals-us-amid-massive-spike-encounters
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/fallout_from_bidens_afghanistan_pullout_fiasco_spreads_to_terrorist_threats_against_the_us.html
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/20/bidens-racial-equity-order-threatens-the-meritocracy-that-makes-our-military-great/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bidens-racial-equity-order-threatens-the-meritocracy-that-makes-our-military-great&utm_term=2023-04-20
The Leak & the Lying
https://www.foxnews.com/video/632499391511
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/next-battlefield-china-college-campus
It's owned by China
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/tiktoks-dark-side-why-more-just-fun-app-need-remove
On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs. The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant has in the past few months completed the delivery of 25 tons of highly enriched uranium to get production started. That deal means that Russia and China are now cooperating on a project that will aid their own nuclear modernizations and, by the Pentagon’s estimates, produce arsenals whose combined size could dwarf that of the United States. This new reality is prompting a broad rethinking of American nuclear strategy that few anticipated. Instead, the US is now facing how to manage a 3-way nuclear rivalry, which upends much of the deterrence strategy that has successfully avoided nuclear war.
“Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history...There is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor.”-- John J. Mearsheimer
1989 marked the end of any hopes for an elected government and a gradual transition to democracy in China. Nevertheless, the American consensus continued to believe that China would gradually evolve toward a democracy and free market economy, notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary. China has continued to believe that its model of a technocratic autocracy and state capitalism is superior to western civilization’s political structures. Subsequently, the US is facing a formidable adversary in China who controls vital natural and industrial resources but, the front lines of what may be a new Cold War are mainly economic and technological ones.
In 2013 xi jinping rose to power. He quickly moved to submit his power, eliminating political rivals and reshaping the country’s economic model in which the state is the unquestionable authority, saying: “Capitalism is bound to die out.” He sent thousands of party members to prison and to reeducation camps.
While the US wasted trillions of $ in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China invested in high technology and infrastructure projects at home and abroad. As a result, China enjoys undisputed leadership in many industries. The CIA’s World Fact Book identifies those as: mining and ore processing, iron, steel, aluminum, other metals; coal; machine building; armaments; textiles and apparel; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizer; consumer products; food processing; rail cars; locomotives; automobiles; ships; aircraft; telecommunications equipment; commercial space launch vehicles; and satellites.
China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative has made China the primary financier for vital infrastructure and development efforts in developing countries throughout the world. William and Mary college estimates more than 13,000 of those BRI projects, worth almost $1 trillion across 165 countries, has China out spending the US and other major powers on international development by 2 to 1. It is positioning China strategically across the globe. Meanwhile, in 2017 China moved past the US in Purchasing Power Parity, which calculates national wealth using a relative cost of equivalent goods and services.
China has launched its versions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And although in 2020 China displaced the US as the European Union’s largest trading partner in goods, still, china retains status as a developing country (which allows them to only partially abide by the open trade rules of the World Trade Organization) and a favored nation status by the US. Apparently the prospect of a massive marketplace outweighs all the evidence of destructive dumping, intellectual property theft, and unfair trading practices.
China’s plans are to supplant the US as the economic and military superpower, first in Asia, then globally. The message is basically: we are a great power; respect us. We’re not coming for you—unless you try to contain us.
Its industrial policy plan is to use its vast subsidies and financial incentives to move China away from low value-added and labor-intensive manufacturing to leadership and key industries such as: AI, the Internet of Things, smart appliances, semiconductors, robotics, machine learning, green energy, electric and autonomous vehicles, aerospace equipment, ocean engineering, high-tech ships, railway equipment, power equipment, new materials, biotech, medicine and medical devices, and agricultural machinery.
China is also building a powerful military. It's adding nuclear warheads to its arsenal, improving delivery capabilities and expanding its blue water navy. Its Long March hypersonic rocket circled the Earth in a test. Such a system could circumvent US missile defenses. Meanwhile, China continues to build stronger ties with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Cambodia.
Meanwhile, China has become more authoritarian, not less. China is not moving towards us; it’s moving away. It’s 2021 five-year plan’s goal is economic self-reliance and indigenous innovation. It does not include meaningful reforms to address the concerns that have been shared by the United States and many other countries.
If China continues to grow and the US stumbles, the US will see its strategic advantages vanish and China become more assertive and aggressive. Even if weaker, (and China has vulnerabilities too), it may still become more aggressive. US beware.
“We clung to the assumption that China would liberalize its economy and liberalize its form of government, and of course that didn’t happen.”--H.R. McMaster
“Those who try to prevent China’s rise will have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.”--xi jinping and China’s Wolf Warrior diplomacy
“Mao Zedong [one of history’s greatest murderer/enslaver] is back in favor in China.”-Nouriel Roubini
Further Reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/bidens_susceptibility_to_blackmail_has_unleashed_domestic_and_international_chaos.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/anybody_notice_whats_going_on_in_taiwan.html
https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-says-its-ready-to-fight-after-massive-drills-around-taiwan-releases-animated-video-of-attack
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-footage-shows-release-chinese-nationals-us-amid-massive-spike-encounters
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/fallout_from_bidens_afghanistan_pullout_fiasco_spreads_to_terrorist_threats_against_the_us.html
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/20/bidens-racial-equity-order-threatens-the-meritocracy-that-makes-our-military-great/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bidens-racial-equity-order-threatens-the-meritocracy-that-makes-our-military-great&utm_term=2023-04-20
The Leak & the Lying
https://www.foxnews.com/video/632499391511
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/next-battlefield-china-college-campus
It's owned by China
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/tiktoks-dark-side-why-more-just-fun-app-need-remove
Communism: California Style
Printed for educational purposes. Ed.
NEWS & POLITICS
California Goes Full Communist: Utilities to Base What They Charge on How Much You Make BY ROBERT SPENCER 10:29 AM ON APRIL 16, 2023 Share Tweet California Goes Full Communist: Utilities to Base What They Charge on How Much You Make.
The state of California is implementing full Marxism before our very eyes under the guise of “equity.” And so now there can be no possible doubt if there ever was for anyone: instituting Communism has been what “equity” initiatives have been about all along. Now three of its most powerful utility companies are saying that they’re going to charge based not on how much of their product was used, but on how much money the user makes.
In simpler times, if you bought something, you paid for it. Rich or poor, tall or short, black or white, female or male, wise or foolish, everyone paid the same amount for a product. But in our more enlightened era, we know how unjust that really is. It deprives the poor of access to vital goods and services, and that injustice must be redressed.
That’s what Communism is all about, at least in theory: leveling out economic differences between people by confiscating earnings from the rich and awarding them to those who have less. This is the fundamental reason why Marxism, despite its extraordinarily bloody historical record, still appeals to so many people, rich, poor, and in between: it appears to redress the injustices in life and provide everyone with a decent living.
The problem with it arises from the fact that capitalism is inescapable. It is an iron law. It is not actually an economic system that can be discarded and replaced with a better one. It is simply the way human interactions work. If the California utility companies are going to make people who have more money pay more for the same goods and services they could get for less money if they had less, there will be several results: wealthier people will seek to hide their wealth through various means, so as to pay the lower rate. Some enterprising entrepreneurs will make a good living by helping them do this. So from the Marxism of the utility companies will come more capitalism.
Also, people will see that there is no point in working harder to try to earn more money, as the state will just confiscate it in various ways. Consequently, people will work less, and less hard. The standard of living will decline, because productivity will have declined. This is why Communist countries have always been economic failures: they block the capitalist incentive that people have to work hard, and thus destroy the only path to prosperity.
That is the disastrous path that Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric are now planning to follow. ABC 7 in Los Angeles reported Friday that the three utility giants “filed a joint proposal this week for a flat-rate charge based on income.” Not a flat-rate charge, period, but one based on how much money you make. “The plan would break monthly bills in two parts: The fixed-income rate, plus a reduced usage charge based on consumption. Under the proposal, it would cost as little as $15 a month for low-income households and up to $85 more per month for households making more than $180,000 a year.”
Related: One Hair Gel to Rule Them All: Newsom’s Plans to Conquer the Nation
What the utility companies don’t realize, because Marxists never realize, is that they will thereby be incentivizing being a low-income household and penalizing those making more than $180,000 a year. They will thus get more low-income households and fewer that make more than $180,000 a year. The old Marxist adage, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” rewards having a need, but not having an ability: those who produce are essentially made the slaves of those who do not. Since no one loves being a slave, this means that there will progressively be fewer people who have ability and ever more who have need. That’s the real “progress” to which Leftist “progressives” are leading us today.
All this is in the works in California because this is the way Gavin Newsom’s state government wants it: “The income-based bill proposal is part of the companies’ compliance with legislation passed by the California state government last year requiring these types of plans for utilities. The California Public Utilities Commission would have to approve the proposal and make a final decision by mid-2024. The fixed rate could start showing up on bills as soon as 2025.” After that, watch for the wall to be built around California to keep those who are productive from escaping becoming slaves to “equity,” unless the whole country has embraced Marxism by then.
NEWS & POLITICS
California Goes Full Communist: Utilities to Base What They Charge on How Much You Make BY ROBERT SPENCER 10:29 AM ON APRIL 16, 2023 Share Tweet California Goes Full Communist: Utilities to Base What They Charge on How Much You Make.
The state of California is implementing full Marxism before our very eyes under the guise of “equity.” And so now there can be no possible doubt if there ever was for anyone: instituting Communism has been what “equity” initiatives have been about all along. Now three of its most powerful utility companies are saying that they’re going to charge based not on how much of their product was used, but on how much money the user makes.
In simpler times, if you bought something, you paid for it. Rich or poor, tall or short, black or white, female or male, wise or foolish, everyone paid the same amount for a product. But in our more enlightened era, we know how unjust that really is. It deprives the poor of access to vital goods and services, and that injustice must be redressed.
That’s what Communism is all about, at least in theory: leveling out economic differences between people by confiscating earnings from the rich and awarding them to those who have less. This is the fundamental reason why Marxism, despite its extraordinarily bloody historical record, still appeals to so many people, rich, poor, and in between: it appears to redress the injustices in life and provide everyone with a decent living.
The problem with it arises from the fact that capitalism is inescapable. It is an iron law. It is not actually an economic system that can be discarded and replaced with a better one. It is simply the way human interactions work. If the California utility companies are going to make people who have more money pay more for the same goods and services they could get for less money if they had less, there will be several results: wealthier people will seek to hide their wealth through various means, so as to pay the lower rate. Some enterprising entrepreneurs will make a good living by helping them do this. So from the Marxism of the utility companies will come more capitalism.
Also, people will see that there is no point in working harder to try to earn more money, as the state will just confiscate it in various ways. Consequently, people will work less, and less hard. The standard of living will decline, because productivity will have declined. This is why Communist countries have always been economic failures: they block the capitalist incentive that people have to work hard, and thus destroy the only path to prosperity.
That is the disastrous path that Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric are now planning to follow. ABC 7 in Los Angeles reported Friday that the three utility giants “filed a joint proposal this week for a flat-rate charge based on income.” Not a flat-rate charge, period, but one based on how much money you make. “The plan would break monthly bills in two parts: The fixed-income rate, plus a reduced usage charge based on consumption. Under the proposal, it would cost as little as $15 a month for low-income households and up to $85 more per month for households making more than $180,000 a year.”
Related: One Hair Gel to Rule Them All: Newsom’s Plans to Conquer the Nation
What the utility companies don’t realize, because Marxists never realize, is that they will thereby be incentivizing being a low-income household and penalizing those making more than $180,000 a year. They will thus get more low-income households and fewer that make more than $180,000 a year. The old Marxist adage, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” rewards having a need, but not having an ability: those who produce are essentially made the slaves of those who do not. Since no one loves being a slave, this means that there will progressively be fewer people who have ability and ever more who have need. That’s the real “progress” to which Leftist “progressives” are leading us today.
All this is in the works in California because this is the way Gavin Newsom’s state government wants it: “The income-based bill proposal is part of the companies’ compliance with legislation passed by the California state government last year requiring these types of plans for utilities. The California Public Utilities Commission would have to approve the proposal and make a final decision by mid-2024. The fixed rate could start showing up on bills as soon as 2025.” After that, watch for the wall to be built around California to keep those who are productive from escaping becoming slaves to “equity,” unless the whole country has embraced Marxism by then.
Their Lies, your health (physiologically, economically and politically)
The following is a Personal/Political Opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of the AV Site or the editorial Staff.
From Anonymous
In summer 2021, liberal/democratic politicians and public health bureaucrats insisted only unvaccinated people were being hospitalized with or dying from Covid.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Centers for Disease Control director Dr. rochelle walensky said on July 16, 2021.
“Unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent COVID-19 hospitalizations,” jeff zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told nprbs the same day.
“It’s really an outbreak among the unvaccinated,” Dr. fauci told CNNbs 9 days later.
No wonder that on Sept. 9, biden announced, “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated” as he promised “a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated.” After all, it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Only it wasn’t! Not even then!
As early as June 2021 - less than 6 months after mRNA jabs began, less than five months after anyone could be considered fully vaccinated - a significant fraction of people hospitalized with Covid had been jabbed.
These days, of course, almost everyone hospitalized for Covid has been jabbed, though the figures are tough to come by. They’re buried deep on state health department Websites or in Excel files that must be downloaded and examined. But they’re not impossible to find. The left-wing media simply refused to report them, because they would have raised questions about how well the shots worked. From time to time, though, they pop up. Unusually, Maryland openly reveals the actual number of hospitalizations by vaccination status - rather than a “rate ratio” that depends on several dubious assumptions. The Maryland data could not be clearer. Nearly everyone who has been hospitalized for the last year has been vaccinated. The jabs have failed.
But that’s not the (most) interesting fact. Unless you’ve been asleep the last 18 months, you already knew the vaccines do not work about Omicron. The most interesting fact is when they started to fail, in July 2021, as the US government told Americans that 2 mRNA shots provided near-total protection from Covid, more than 20% people hospitalized with Covid in Maryland was “fully vaccinated.” (In June the figure was 18%.) Did public health officials like Dr. fauci know the real numbers? If not, they should have. After all, the National Institutes of Health - where Dr. Fauci worked for more than 40 years - is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Worse, Maryland’s 20% “fully vaccinated” hospitalization figure for July 2021 is a significant underestimate, since Maryland systematically misclassified vaccinated people as unvaccinated.
This is not a conspiracy theory. As Maryland itself explains: "Identification of post-vaccination infections requires that vaccination data be reported to the state immunization registry and… be matched to the SARS-CoV-2 test result. Therefore, post-vaccination infections may be undercounted."
This problem was not unique to Maryland, or 2021. Every state had and has a similar issue. As Massachusetts put it last year: "The number of cases in vaccinated people may be undercounted due to.... an inability to match records across systems." Other countries were more careful, classifying people as unknown when their vaccination status was, well, unknown. But then, the US has always reported Covid data in a way designed to make the mRNA shots look as good as possible. It only classifies people as “vaccinated” 2 weeks after their 2nd mRNA shot. This artifice hides the fact that real-world data shows people are MORE likely to contract Covid for weeks after the first shot. No other drug has its effectiveness counted only during the period when it is most likely to work.
Finally, states overestimated the total number of people who received vaccines and in some cases reported more than 100% vaccine coverage. This error might sound trivial. In fact, it is crucial, because many states hide the raw numbers for hospitalizations and deaths by vaccine status and instead provide “age-adjusted rate ratios.” But those ratios depend on accurate estimates of the number of unjabbed people. If 300 vaccinated die of Covid out of 1 million, compared to 50 out of 150,000 unvaccinated, the vaccines will seem quite effective (even though more vaccinated people have died). But if even 10% of the people reported as vaccinated actually are not, then real figures are 300 out of 900,000 vaccinated compared to 50 out of 150,000 unvaccinated. In that case, exactly the same proportion of vaccinated and unvaccinated people have died.
Vaccine advocates, at least the smarter ones, are well aware of all these issues. But they don’t care, because every one works the same way, to make the vaccines appear more effective. They just figure you won’t invest the time or energy to understand all the ways they’re lying. And that’s the most dangerously arrogant left-wing attitude of all.
Meanwhile, Dr. Madhava Setty, an anesthesiologist, decided - in his words - to go in “the belly of the beast” and attended the World Vaccine Congress, which bills itself as the largest, most established meeting dedicated to vaccines. Instead, he discovered widespread ignorance about the data on mRNA Covid shots - combined with a deep arrogance among conference leaders toward anyone who questioned those jabs.
"It was supposed to be a fact-finding mission but within the first few hours I couldn't hold my tongue and began to ask simple but thoughtful questions of the presenters who were clearly ignorant of the vast body of evidence that demonstrates that these shots are neither. Remember, these are supposed to be the most informed scientists and physicians, the ones who help set policy on the jabs and communicate it to the world. But for the most part, they’re still stuck in November 2020, when Pfizer and Moderna released the clinical trial results purporting to show the jabs prevented 95% of Covid cases."
Obviously, name-calling is counterproductive and the paranoid speculations of some of the loudest mRNA vaccine skeptics, like Dr. Michael Yeadon, do not help those of us trying to raise more serious objections, but it is very hard to talk to people who don’t even know what they don’t know, unless they have interest in finding out.
Fallacy of Appealing to Prestige (Argumentum Ad Verecundiam): The appeal to respect or prestige instead of pertinent data, sound logic and reasoned conclusions.
Fallacy of Appealing to Force (Argumentum Ad Baculum): Argument by force or coercion.
Fallacy of Insufficient Evidence: Acceptance of inadequate data as a basis for a conclusion.
Fallacy of Misplaced Authority: Using an expert’s opinion, merit or respect in matters beyond the scope or even mastery of his field of specialization or authority.
From Anonymous
In summer 2021, liberal/democratic politicians and public health bureaucrats insisted only unvaccinated people were being hospitalized with or dying from Covid.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Centers for Disease Control director Dr. rochelle walensky said on July 16, 2021.
“Unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent COVID-19 hospitalizations,” jeff zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told nprbs the same day.
“It’s really an outbreak among the unvaccinated,” Dr. fauci told CNNbs 9 days later.
No wonder that on Sept. 9, biden announced, “This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated” as he promised “a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated.” After all, it was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Only it wasn’t! Not even then!
As early as June 2021 - less than 6 months after mRNA jabs began, less than five months after anyone could be considered fully vaccinated - a significant fraction of people hospitalized with Covid had been jabbed.
These days, of course, almost everyone hospitalized for Covid has been jabbed, though the figures are tough to come by. They’re buried deep on state health department Websites or in Excel files that must be downloaded and examined. But they’re not impossible to find. The left-wing media simply refused to report them, because they would have raised questions about how well the shots worked. From time to time, though, they pop up. Unusually, Maryland openly reveals the actual number of hospitalizations by vaccination status - rather than a “rate ratio” that depends on several dubious assumptions. The Maryland data could not be clearer. Nearly everyone who has been hospitalized for the last year has been vaccinated. The jabs have failed.
But that’s not the (most) interesting fact. Unless you’ve been asleep the last 18 months, you already knew the vaccines do not work about Omicron. The most interesting fact is when they started to fail, in July 2021, as the US government told Americans that 2 mRNA shots provided near-total protection from Covid, more than 20% people hospitalized with Covid in Maryland was “fully vaccinated.” (In June the figure was 18%.) Did public health officials like Dr. fauci know the real numbers? If not, they should have. After all, the National Institutes of Health - where Dr. Fauci worked for more than 40 years - is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Worse, Maryland’s 20% “fully vaccinated” hospitalization figure for July 2021 is a significant underestimate, since Maryland systematically misclassified vaccinated people as unvaccinated.
This is not a conspiracy theory. As Maryland itself explains: "Identification of post-vaccination infections requires that vaccination data be reported to the state immunization registry and… be matched to the SARS-CoV-2 test result. Therefore, post-vaccination infections may be undercounted."
This problem was not unique to Maryland, or 2021. Every state had and has a similar issue. As Massachusetts put it last year: "The number of cases in vaccinated people may be undercounted due to.... an inability to match records across systems." Other countries were more careful, classifying people as unknown when their vaccination status was, well, unknown. But then, the US has always reported Covid data in a way designed to make the mRNA shots look as good as possible. It only classifies people as “vaccinated” 2 weeks after their 2nd mRNA shot. This artifice hides the fact that real-world data shows people are MORE likely to contract Covid for weeks after the first shot. No other drug has its effectiveness counted only during the period when it is most likely to work.
Finally, states overestimated the total number of people who received vaccines and in some cases reported more than 100% vaccine coverage. This error might sound trivial. In fact, it is crucial, because many states hide the raw numbers for hospitalizations and deaths by vaccine status and instead provide “age-adjusted rate ratios.” But those ratios depend on accurate estimates of the number of unjabbed people. If 300 vaccinated die of Covid out of 1 million, compared to 50 out of 150,000 unvaccinated, the vaccines will seem quite effective (even though more vaccinated people have died). But if even 10% of the people reported as vaccinated actually are not, then real figures are 300 out of 900,000 vaccinated compared to 50 out of 150,000 unvaccinated. In that case, exactly the same proportion of vaccinated and unvaccinated people have died.
Vaccine advocates, at least the smarter ones, are well aware of all these issues. But they don’t care, because every one works the same way, to make the vaccines appear more effective. They just figure you won’t invest the time or energy to understand all the ways they’re lying. And that’s the most dangerously arrogant left-wing attitude of all.
Meanwhile, Dr. Madhava Setty, an anesthesiologist, decided - in his words - to go in “the belly of the beast” and attended the World Vaccine Congress, which bills itself as the largest, most established meeting dedicated to vaccines. Instead, he discovered widespread ignorance about the data on mRNA Covid shots - combined with a deep arrogance among conference leaders toward anyone who questioned those jabs.
"It was supposed to be a fact-finding mission but within the first few hours I couldn't hold my tongue and began to ask simple but thoughtful questions of the presenters who were clearly ignorant of the vast body of evidence that demonstrates that these shots are neither. Remember, these are supposed to be the most informed scientists and physicians, the ones who help set policy on the jabs and communicate it to the world. But for the most part, they’re still stuck in November 2020, when Pfizer and Moderna released the clinical trial results purporting to show the jabs prevented 95% of Covid cases."
Obviously, name-calling is counterproductive and the paranoid speculations of some of the loudest mRNA vaccine skeptics, like Dr. Michael Yeadon, do not help those of us trying to raise more serious objections, but it is very hard to talk to people who don’t even know what they don’t know, unless they have interest in finding out.
Fallacy of Appealing to Prestige (Argumentum Ad Verecundiam): The appeal to respect or prestige instead of pertinent data, sound logic and reasoned conclusions.
Fallacy of Appealing to Force (Argumentum Ad Baculum): Argument by force or coercion.
Fallacy of Insufficient Evidence: Acceptance of inadequate data as a basis for a conclusion.
Fallacy of Misplaced Authority: Using an expert’s opinion, merit or respect in matters beyond the scope or even mastery of his field of specialization or authority.
They Want Barrabas
The following is a Personal/Political Opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the AV site or the Editorial Staff
Sent from a friend.... 4/20/23
I agree that Trump has been hounded since he announced he was running for President!!!!!!
1st it was Russian Collusion, subsequently proven to be a sham, with mrs. clinton illegally paying for the bogus-lie-filled steele dossier. hillary, comey, steele, sussmann, page, and strzok should have all been prosecuted for their part in this malicious prosecution.
Then it was the Ukraine phone call. Trump asking Volodymyr Zelensky to help investigate former VP biden and his quid pro quo in the firing of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma and hunter. A perfectly legal call. joe, hunter, and other agents of the BObama regime should be sitting in jail for these illegalities.
Having gone 0 for 4, including the 2 failed Impeachments, the left-wing/democrats have ramped up ever more lawfare to target “the man,” relying on long-discredited felon lawyer michael cohen and failed porn-star stormy daniels, to bring federal charges for a long-past statute of limitations misdemeanor (at best) past the statue of limitations.
They also have on the docket a sham grand jury out of Fulton County (one of the most corrupt jurisdictions in the country, next to New York) alleging vote tampering and election interference, where Trump provides Georgia’s RINO Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger evidence of a myriad of voting irregularities to investigate. Another perfect phone call.
And lastly, the DoJ, FBI, and the biden regime are targeting Trump for mishandling classified documents, resulting in a midnight FBI raid, while at the same time Trump was cooperating with federal agents to clarify any potential documents that he should not have had in his possession. Subsequently, dozens if not hundreds of documents have been found in biden’s unguarded possession, next to his corvette in Delaware. Not a peep.
Again, what is justice? How many bites at the apple do ones’ political opponents get, while they skate time and again, for equal if not more egregious criminal behaviors?
We are either a nation established on justice, or a nation premised on power (like all dictatorships)
Left-winger nancy pelosi states it plainly, when she says: “No one is above the law and everyone has a right to trial to prove innocence.” But for hate-filled power hungry and angry liberals/democrats Trump is already guilty, you see, now all they need to do is find the crime.
If Trump, one of the most powerful men in the world can be targeted for malicious prosecution, how do we the people fare in this application of justice? Good and hard, I’d imagine.
“There is no way Trump can get a fair trial in Manhattan. The Rule of Law does not apply to Trump. The hatred for Trump is so great, the Left has convinced itself any and all means to destroy him is fair game--”--Alan Dershowitz
Tell me again, who’s the REAL threat to democracy!
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/can_you_convict_a_ham_sandwich.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/analysis-a-close-look-at-the-cases-against-trump-and-why-they-dont-amount-to-much_5195468.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/04/05/alan-dershowitz-delivers-a-solid-review-about-the-ridiculous-nature-of-the-trump-indictment-and-the-remaining-cases-as-constructed/
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnnantz/2023/04/18/trump-might-be-a-modern-samson-n2622078
Meanwhile, yes, indeed, there is evidence that more than reasonably suggests irregularities in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. Let’s do specifics.
As ace investigative journalist Mollie Hemingway has documented in her classic book on this subject (Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections), when Republican lawyers and operatives showed up at the convention center voting station in Philadelphia on election day: "It was worse than anybody had feared. GOP poll watchers couldn’t see a thing. Parade gates had been set up, and the counting was happening so far away behind those gates that the poll watchers couldn’t tell what was going on at all. Votes were being counted on tables set up in row after row. Visibility was limited even at the tables in the nearest row. Seeing what was happening seven rows away was flat-out impossible. The poll watchers said that it was like standing in one end zone trying to observe something in the opposite end zone. Early voting isn’t legal in Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Philadelphia would open seventeen such locations where people could vote in September and October, prior to the election. Nearly $35 million in Mark Zuckerberg funds flowed into government offices in Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania to assist Democrats with their mail-in voting push. The Trump campaign had a legal right to observers within a reasonable distance from the counting. Why did election officials in overwhelmingly Democratic Philadelphia go out of their way to deprive the campaign of that right? Pennsylvania’s legislature had set a clear deadline for counting votes and had declined an opportunity to revise it after a global pandemic hit. That’s when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took matters into its own hands and issued a decision that ‘squarely alters’ the law, according to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito."
Note: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is notoriously left-wing. Their decision to illegally override the state Legislature was rigging an election!
There’s more on Pennsylvania, specifically in the book Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024 by Christina Bobb. In it, she tells the tale of the rigging maneuvers in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania generally. She writes: "The Democrat governor and secretary of state for Pennsylvania disregarded the Pennsylvania Constitution and mailed out no-excuse absentee ballots. Those ballots changed the outcome of the election for multiple races in the state, and it changed the results of the presidential race too. President Trump was winning by over 700,000 votes, until Pennsylvania added another 1.4 million mail-in ballots to the tally. Suddenly the result flipped."
That is rigging an election.
Here, from May of 2020, is this release from the U.S. Department of Justice that is as follows: "Former Philadelphia Judge of Elections Convicted of Conspiring to Violate Civil Rights and Bribery. A former Judge of Elections has been convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia."
And then there was this release from the DOJ issued in 2022: "Former U.S. Congressman and Philadelphia Political Operative Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Charges. US Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams announced today that former U.S. Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers, 79, of Philadelphia, PA, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Pennsylvania elections."
And note this 1994 story from the front page of the New York Times about Pennsylvania’s history of rigging elections: "Saying Philadelphia’s election system had collapsed under “a massive scheme” by Democrats to steal a State Senate election in November, a Federal judge today took the rare step of invalidating the vote and ordered the seat filled by the Republican candidate... Judge Newcomer ruled that the Democratic campaign of William G. Stinson had stolen the election from Bruce S. Marks in North Philadelphia’s Second Senatorial District through an elaborate fraud in which hundreds of residents were encouraged to vote by absentee ballot even though they had no legal reason — like a physical disability or a scheduled trip outside the city — to do so."
The biden Dept of Justice is apparently deliberately, willingly ignoring the hard, documented fact that, yes indeed, Trump is right in Pennsylvania. To say otherwise is the real fraud. And to know that voter fraud has a history here in Pennsylvania, all the Department of Justice has to do is read its own press release files.
Will they do that? Will anybody at the DOJ do their homework? Will the left-wing media ever report the hard, documented facts? Of course not. Because none of this is about truth and facts, it's because liberal ideology at its core is just hate.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/russians_busted_for_us_election_interference__using_radical_black_nationalist_group.html
lib/dem denial video
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1541828714761277440
How google rigged an election
https://patriotpost.us/articles/75142?mailing_id=5464&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5464&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
Sent from a friend.... 4/20/23
I agree that Trump has been hounded since he announced he was running for President!!!!!!
1st it was Russian Collusion, subsequently proven to be a sham, with mrs. clinton illegally paying for the bogus-lie-filled steele dossier. hillary, comey, steele, sussmann, page, and strzok should have all been prosecuted for their part in this malicious prosecution.
Then it was the Ukraine phone call. Trump asking Volodymyr Zelensky to help investigate former VP biden and his quid pro quo in the firing of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma and hunter. A perfectly legal call. joe, hunter, and other agents of the BObama regime should be sitting in jail for these illegalities.
Having gone 0 for 4, including the 2 failed Impeachments, the left-wing/democrats have ramped up ever more lawfare to target “the man,” relying on long-discredited felon lawyer michael cohen and failed porn-star stormy daniels, to bring federal charges for a long-past statute of limitations misdemeanor (at best) past the statue of limitations.
They also have on the docket a sham grand jury out of Fulton County (one of the most corrupt jurisdictions in the country, next to New York) alleging vote tampering and election interference, where Trump provides Georgia’s RINO Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger evidence of a myriad of voting irregularities to investigate. Another perfect phone call.
And lastly, the DoJ, FBI, and the biden regime are targeting Trump for mishandling classified documents, resulting in a midnight FBI raid, while at the same time Trump was cooperating with federal agents to clarify any potential documents that he should not have had in his possession. Subsequently, dozens if not hundreds of documents have been found in biden’s unguarded possession, next to his corvette in Delaware. Not a peep.
Again, what is justice? How many bites at the apple do ones’ political opponents get, while they skate time and again, for equal if not more egregious criminal behaviors?
We are either a nation established on justice, or a nation premised on power (like all dictatorships)
Left-winger nancy pelosi states it plainly, when she says: “No one is above the law and everyone has a right to trial to prove innocence.” But for hate-filled power hungry and angry liberals/democrats Trump is already guilty, you see, now all they need to do is find the crime.
If Trump, one of the most powerful men in the world can be targeted for malicious prosecution, how do we the people fare in this application of justice? Good and hard, I’d imagine.
“There is no way Trump can get a fair trial in Manhattan. The Rule of Law does not apply to Trump. The hatred for Trump is so great, the Left has convinced itself any and all means to destroy him is fair game--”--Alan Dershowitz
Tell me again, who’s the REAL threat to democracy!
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/can_you_convict_a_ham_sandwich.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/analysis-a-close-look-at-the-cases-against-trump-and-why-they-dont-amount-to-much_5195468.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/04/05/alan-dershowitz-delivers-a-solid-review-about-the-ridiculous-nature-of-the-trump-indictment-and-the-remaining-cases-as-constructed/
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnnantz/2023/04/18/trump-might-be-a-modern-samson-n2622078
Meanwhile, yes, indeed, there is evidence that more than reasonably suggests irregularities in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. Let’s do specifics.
As ace investigative journalist Mollie Hemingway has documented in her classic book on this subject (Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections), when Republican lawyers and operatives showed up at the convention center voting station in Philadelphia on election day: "It was worse than anybody had feared. GOP poll watchers couldn’t see a thing. Parade gates had been set up, and the counting was happening so far away behind those gates that the poll watchers couldn’t tell what was going on at all. Votes were being counted on tables set up in row after row. Visibility was limited even at the tables in the nearest row. Seeing what was happening seven rows away was flat-out impossible. The poll watchers said that it was like standing in one end zone trying to observe something in the opposite end zone. Early voting isn’t legal in Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Philadelphia would open seventeen such locations where people could vote in September and October, prior to the election. Nearly $35 million in Mark Zuckerberg funds flowed into government offices in Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania to assist Democrats with their mail-in voting push. The Trump campaign had a legal right to observers within a reasonable distance from the counting. Why did election officials in overwhelmingly Democratic Philadelphia go out of their way to deprive the campaign of that right? Pennsylvania’s legislature had set a clear deadline for counting votes and had declined an opportunity to revise it after a global pandemic hit. That’s when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took matters into its own hands and issued a decision that ‘squarely alters’ the law, according to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito."
Note: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is notoriously left-wing. Their decision to illegally override the state Legislature was rigging an election!
There’s more on Pennsylvania, specifically in the book Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024 by Christina Bobb. In it, she tells the tale of the rigging maneuvers in Philadelphia and in Pennsylvania generally. She writes: "The Democrat governor and secretary of state for Pennsylvania disregarded the Pennsylvania Constitution and mailed out no-excuse absentee ballots. Those ballots changed the outcome of the election for multiple races in the state, and it changed the results of the presidential race too. President Trump was winning by over 700,000 votes, until Pennsylvania added another 1.4 million mail-in ballots to the tally. Suddenly the result flipped."
That is rigging an election.
Here, from May of 2020, is this release from the U.S. Department of Justice that is as follows: "Former Philadelphia Judge of Elections Convicted of Conspiring to Violate Civil Rights and Bribery. A former Judge of Elections has been convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia."
And then there was this release from the DOJ issued in 2022: "Former U.S. Congressman and Philadelphia Political Operative Pleads Guilty to Election Fraud Charges. US Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams announced today that former U.S. Congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers, 79, of Philadelphia, PA, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, and conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election for orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff the ballot boxes for specific Democratic candidates in the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Pennsylvania elections."
And note this 1994 story from the front page of the New York Times about Pennsylvania’s history of rigging elections: "Saying Philadelphia’s election system had collapsed under “a massive scheme” by Democrats to steal a State Senate election in November, a Federal judge today took the rare step of invalidating the vote and ordered the seat filled by the Republican candidate... Judge Newcomer ruled that the Democratic campaign of William G. Stinson had stolen the election from Bruce S. Marks in North Philadelphia’s Second Senatorial District through an elaborate fraud in which hundreds of residents were encouraged to vote by absentee ballot even though they had no legal reason — like a physical disability or a scheduled trip outside the city — to do so."
The biden Dept of Justice is apparently deliberately, willingly ignoring the hard, documented fact that, yes indeed, Trump is right in Pennsylvania. To say otherwise is the real fraud. And to know that voter fraud has a history here in Pennsylvania, all the Department of Justice has to do is read its own press release files.
Will they do that? Will anybody at the DOJ do their homework? Will the left-wing media ever report the hard, documented facts? Of course not. Because none of this is about truth and facts, it's because liberal ideology at its core is just hate.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/russians_busted_for_us_election_interference__using_radical_black_nationalist_group.html
lib/dem denial video
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1541828714761277440
How google rigged an election
https://patriotpost.us/articles/75142?mailing_id=5464&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5464&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
CVS Goes Fully Woke
CVS Goes Fully Woke - Look at the Insane Requirements Employees Must Now Follow:
Report Sent from Anonymous
The following is for discussion purposes and is a personal/Political Opinion. It is not the official position of the AV site or the editorial staff.
By Johnathan Jones April 17, 2023 at 9:03am
CVS Pharmacy, a health care corporation that hires people who presume to embrace science in medicine, has gone fully “woke” and will require all employees — without exception — to buy into the falsehood that people can change their genders.
Employees at the retail giant’s thousands of U.S. stores have recently been given a policy on how to address their “trans” coworkers, which included a note that any restroom is to be used by anyone at any time.
Additionally, employees who tell their supervisors they intend to engage in gender-bending will be entitled to time off, and the company will force their colleagues to address them by their preferred pronouns.
The company’s new “gender transition guidelines” were obtained by Fox Business, and they make it very clear how company executives feel about skeptics of the gender madness consuming so much of the culture.
For employees who intend to undergo a gender transition, CVS told them to let everyone know, so the company can “provide support and to make your transition as smooth as possible.” You may also wish to have appropriate medical care to support your transition, including treatments such as hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery,” the guide said.
It added: “During and after the transition has occurred, CVS Health encourages you to continue to partner with your Leader and your Advice & Counsel representative, and to immediately report any issues that you might have with your employment, your work environment, and/or your Leader, co-workers, clients, and customers.”
As if validating the delusions of confused people was not enough, CVS also told its employees that it will poison the working environment in stores by forcing everyone on the payroll to pretend that a man masquerading as a woman — or vice versa — is what they say they are.
Buried among a bunch of other corporate jargon regarding how committed the company is to diversity, CVS included “Guidelines for Supporting a Colleague who is Transitioning.”
It asks employees whose sole purpose is to come to work each day with the hope of making a living and being comfortable while doing so to be hyper-vigilant in regard to ensuring they do not misgender anyone around them.
“People use different terms to refer to themselves, but some terms are universally considered disrespectful and violate CVS’s policy against discrimination and harassment,” the company told its employees. “Terms like transgender, trans-male/trans-female, non-binary or ‘male’ or ‘female’ should be used.”
Meanwhile, women who might not be thrilled by the idea of sharing intimate personal spaces with men no longer have a choice. Emloyees are instructed to use bathrooms that are “the most appropriate” to make them feel validated.
“Any colleague, customer, or patient — transgender or otherwise — may choose to use the restroom and/or locker room that is appropriate to the gender they identify with,” CVS told employees.
More likely than not, the person or people who authored this new policy did so under the impression they were being “progressive” in joining the left in its charge to undo the country’s social fabric.
In reality, this is all nothing more than more bad business from “woke” corporate America.
The policy is an immoral directive that reads as though it is intended to intimidate people who might want to simply come to work to help customers while simultaneously not having their employer force them to pick a side on divisive issues.
This guideline is likely to poison relationships among staff members at company stores.
It also raises some serious questions about whether CVS is the right place for people to obtain quality medicine from people who are qualified to sell it.
CVS is asking consumers to trust their medication doses, vaccinations, and other needs to a company that has taken a stance against science.Ski
Report Sent from Anonymous
The following is for discussion purposes and is a personal/Political Opinion. It is not the official position of the AV site or the editorial staff.
By Johnathan Jones April 17, 2023 at 9:03am
CVS Pharmacy, a health care corporation that hires people who presume to embrace science in medicine, has gone fully “woke” and will require all employees — without exception — to buy into the falsehood that people can change their genders.
Employees at the retail giant’s thousands of U.S. stores have recently been given a policy on how to address their “trans” coworkers, which included a note that any restroom is to be used by anyone at any time.
Additionally, employees who tell their supervisors they intend to engage in gender-bending will be entitled to time off, and the company will force their colleagues to address them by their preferred pronouns.
The company’s new “gender transition guidelines” were obtained by Fox Business, and they make it very clear how company executives feel about skeptics of the gender madness consuming so much of the culture.
For employees who intend to undergo a gender transition, CVS told them to let everyone know, so the company can “provide support and to make your transition as smooth as possible.” You may also wish to have appropriate medical care to support your transition, including treatments such as hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery,” the guide said.
It added: “During and after the transition has occurred, CVS Health encourages you to continue to partner with your Leader and your Advice & Counsel representative, and to immediately report any issues that you might have with your employment, your work environment, and/or your Leader, co-workers, clients, and customers.”
As if validating the delusions of confused people was not enough, CVS also told its employees that it will poison the working environment in stores by forcing everyone on the payroll to pretend that a man masquerading as a woman — or vice versa — is what they say they are.
Buried among a bunch of other corporate jargon regarding how committed the company is to diversity, CVS included “Guidelines for Supporting a Colleague who is Transitioning.”
It asks employees whose sole purpose is to come to work each day with the hope of making a living and being comfortable while doing so to be hyper-vigilant in regard to ensuring they do not misgender anyone around them.
“People use different terms to refer to themselves, but some terms are universally considered disrespectful and violate CVS’s policy against discrimination and harassment,” the company told its employees. “Terms like transgender, trans-male/trans-female, non-binary or ‘male’ or ‘female’ should be used.”
Meanwhile, women who might not be thrilled by the idea of sharing intimate personal spaces with men no longer have a choice. Emloyees are instructed to use bathrooms that are “the most appropriate” to make them feel validated.
“Any colleague, customer, or patient — transgender or otherwise — may choose to use the restroom and/or locker room that is appropriate to the gender they identify with,” CVS told employees.
More likely than not, the person or people who authored this new policy did so under the impression they were being “progressive” in joining the left in its charge to undo the country’s social fabric.
In reality, this is all nothing more than more bad business from “woke” corporate America.
The policy is an immoral directive that reads as though it is intended to intimidate people who might want to simply come to work to help customers while simultaneously not having their employer force them to pick a side on divisive issues.
This guideline is likely to poison relationships among staff members at company stores.
It also raises some serious questions about whether CVS is the right place for people to obtain quality medicine from people who are qualified to sell it.
CVS is asking consumers to trust their medication doses, vaccinations, and other needs to a company that has taken a stance against science.Ski
Intervening
Officially, the US has no industrial policy. But in practice, it has had one in place for decades that has shrunk America’s manufacturing sector and blunted its technological edge: Tax and regulatory policies that discourage capital-intensive investment, subsidies for white-collar professionals rather than skilled workers, and shrinks support for the basic scientific research that sustains productivity. As a result, the US depends on China and others for strategic goods, and runs chronic deficits that have swollen our obligations to foreigners. All nations have industrial policies, and America need one that fosters industry rather than stifles it.
What happens when it's government that defines profit opportunities, and a country's culture deprecates commercial self-interest to the point that business leaders who "do good" are praised over those who "make good"? What happens when the invisible hand is replaced by the grip of regulation, subsidies and "social" responsibility? The recent financial crisis provides the answer.
For decades, government has intervened in the market, in the name of the "public interest." Through laws and administrative regulation governments have pushed private businesses to go far beyond prudent, self-interested profit-making. Did anyone bother to ask whether such do-goodism might be at odds with old-fashioned prudence, or whether, in the final analysis, it might be bad for its intended beneficiaries? Did new-model business leaders dare to think there could be unintended consequences from the liberals’ creed of corporate social responsibility?
All this might have been learned from the Enron debacle. In its prime, Enron was the most politically connected and politically correct company in America, and even created a subsidiary to invest in inner-city, minority-owned businesses. And Enron lost money in doing all of that. And yet, when the company collapsed, liberals screamed about corporate greed rather than about the perils of corporate welfare and "social" responsibility.
Milton Friedman foresaw it all in a prescient 1962 article arguing that business can effectively serve only one master — its owners — by winning profits in accord with investor expectations, while respecting legal and ethical norms. Friedman warned against attempting to serve multiple masters: "If businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders, how are they to know what it is? More important still: What will result?"
Government regulation and political correctness are at the root of recent organizational failures that, in turn, have resulted in massive taxpayer-financed bailouts. New government intervention is trying to address the problems created by prior intervention — and futilely, it appears. The remedy is a reliance on invisible-hand profit-making where the good can really crowd out the bad. A new legal relationship between government and the economy is required — free-market capitalism in place of political capitalism. With this should come a new understanding of the proper philosophy of entrepreneurial capitalism — tough-love prudence in place of the amorphous doctrine of "corporate social responsibility."
"What principle separates the Republicans from the Democrats...When have the Republicans won big? When they stood for something and told the people what that something was...Too many Republicans seem to think that being 'inclusive' means selling out your principles to try to attract votes. It never seems to occur to them that you can attract a wider range of voters by explaining your principles in a way that more people understand...Most Americans' principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats...The Democrats have the media, the unions, the environmental extremists and lawyers who sue on their side. Why should Republicans throw away their one advantage by becoming imitation Democrats?" --Thomas Sowell
Further reading:
The more liberal the state, the worse its position
https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/all-states/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/a_note_from_inside_gulag_california.html
You must Lie!
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324911254112
What happens when it's government that defines profit opportunities, and a country's culture deprecates commercial self-interest to the point that business leaders who "do good" are praised over those who "make good"? What happens when the invisible hand is replaced by the grip of regulation, subsidies and "social" responsibility? The recent financial crisis provides the answer.
For decades, government has intervened in the market, in the name of the "public interest." Through laws and administrative regulation governments have pushed private businesses to go far beyond prudent, self-interested profit-making. Did anyone bother to ask whether such do-goodism might be at odds with old-fashioned prudence, or whether, in the final analysis, it might be bad for its intended beneficiaries? Did new-model business leaders dare to think there could be unintended consequences from the liberals’ creed of corporate social responsibility?
All this might have been learned from the Enron debacle. In its prime, Enron was the most politically connected and politically correct company in America, and even created a subsidiary to invest in inner-city, minority-owned businesses. And Enron lost money in doing all of that. And yet, when the company collapsed, liberals screamed about corporate greed rather than about the perils of corporate welfare and "social" responsibility.
Milton Friedman foresaw it all in a prescient 1962 article arguing that business can effectively serve only one master — its owners — by winning profits in accord with investor expectations, while respecting legal and ethical norms. Friedman warned against attempting to serve multiple masters: "If businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders, how are they to know what it is? More important still: What will result?"
Government regulation and political correctness are at the root of recent organizational failures that, in turn, have resulted in massive taxpayer-financed bailouts. New government intervention is trying to address the problems created by prior intervention — and futilely, it appears. The remedy is a reliance on invisible-hand profit-making where the good can really crowd out the bad. A new legal relationship between government and the economy is required — free-market capitalism in place of political capitalism. With this should come a new understanding of the proper philosophy of entrepreneurial capitalism — tough-love prudence in place of the amorphous doctrine of "corporate social responsibility."
"What principle separates the Republicans from the Democrats...When have the Republicans won big? When they stood for something and told the people what that something was...Too many Republicans seem to think that being 'inclusive' means selling out your principles to try to attract votes. It never seems to occur to them that you can attract a wider range of voters by explaining your principles in a way that more people understand...Most Americans' principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats...The Democrats have the media, the unions, the environmental extremists and lawyers who sue on their side. Why should Republicans throw away their one advantage by becoming imitation Democrats?" --Thomas Sowell
Further reading:
The more liberal the state, the worse its position
https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/all-states/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/a_note_from_inside_gulag_california.html
You must Lie!
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324911254112
The Cult
The following is strictly a personal/political opinion meant to encourage discussions, and not the official viewpoint of the AV site or the Editorial Staff.
The source wishes to remain Anonymous.
Twitter has made several major changes to its policy determining that users are now allowed to refer to so-called “transgender” people by their actual genders and their original, gender-appropriate names. The original anti-science/anti-reality policy, first enacted in 2018, forbade users from engaging in “misgendering or dead-naming of transgender individuals.” The new guidelines have removed this sentence altogether from the “Slurs and Tropes” section.
The move is yet another representation of Elon Musk’s efforts to shift Twitter back towards a pro-free speech policy, as well as to increase transparency on the site, both of which were key promises he made when he first set out to buy Twitter last year. Prior to the rule change, several high-profile honest users were still facing penalties for referring to “transgender” individuals by their correct names and genders. For example the satirical site Babylon Bee was locked out of its own Twitter account for mockingly referring to richard levine, an official in the biden regime and a man who believes he is a woman, as the Bee's “Man of the Year.” Also Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was locked out for noting, correctly, that levine had been married and previously fathered children before his “transition” in 2014. When Fox News' Tucker Carlson then posted screenshots of both Kirk’s and the Bee’s posts, he was censored.
The trans activists are demanding a change in the way humans see themselves(1). That seems to be the inevitable culmination of the fact that medicine and science have now completely divorced heterosexual sex from reproduction. Because the dirty little not-so-secret of trans folks is that making yourself look like the opposite sex doesn’t mean you will have anything like normal sexual function. Hormones are a polite way to say chemical castration, surgically made vaginas frequently don’t work very well. What really matters to them is self-actualization, and what could be a higher form of self-actualization than to override one’s own DNA and change gender?
left-wing ideology has become a secular religion, providing dogma for a community of like-minded brethren, a catechism of sacred beliefs, a well populated demonology, and a beatific confidence in the righteousness of its cause. In essence, a secular humanism like any other religious dogma. An expressive individualistic or authentic self so thin that one amounts to nothing more than some kind of sexual or racial identity.
1. Principals central to woke dogma:
Further reading:
The cult
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96329?mailing_id=7420&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7420&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://spectator.org/five-quick-things-transgenderism-embodies-our-cultural-collapse/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/who_is_allowed_into_the_privileged_class.html
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/18/gender-fluid-is-the-poisonous-fruit-of-the-keep-your-options-open-gospel/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/transgender-attack-turning-point-washington-video
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/bud-light
https://www.theblaze.com/news/piers-morgan-katie-porter-riley-gaines-debate
The source wishes to remain Anonymous.
Twitter has made several major changes to its policy determining that users are now allowed to refer to so-called “transgender” people by their actual genders and their original, gender-appropriate names. The original anti-science/anti-reality policy, first enacted in 2018, forbade users from engaging in “misgendering or dead-naming of transgender individuals.” The new guidelines have removed this sentence altogether from the “Slurs and Tropes” section.
The move is yet another representation of Elon Musk’s efforts to shift Twitter back towards a pro-free speech policy, as well as to increase transparency on the site, both of which were key promises he made when he first set out to buy Twitter last year. Prior to the rule change, several high-profile honest users were still facing penalties for referring to “transgender” individuals by their correct names and genders. For example the satirical site Babylon Bee was locked out of its own Twitter account for mockingly referring to richard levine, an official in the biden regime and a man who believes he is a woman, as the Bee's “Man of the Year.” Also Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was locked out for noting, correctly, that levine had been married and previously fathered children before his “transition” in 2014. When Fox News' Tucker Carlson then posted screenshots of both Kirk’s and the Bee’s posts, he was censored.
The trans activists are demanding a change in the way humans see themselves(1). That seems to be the inevitable culmination of the fact that medicine and science have now completely divorced heterosexual sex from reproduction. Because the dirty little not-so-secret of trans folks is that making yourself look like the opposite sex doesn’t mean you will have anything like normal sexual function. Hormones are a polite way to say chemical castration, surgically made vaginas frequently don’t work very well. What really matters to them is self-actualization, and what could be a higher form of self-actualization than to override one’s own DNA and change gender?
left-wing ideology has become a secular religion, providing dogma for a community of like-minded brethren, a catechism of sacred beliefs, a well populated demonology, and a beatific confidence in the righteousness of its cause. In essence, a secular humanism like any other religious dogma. An expressive individualistic or authentic self so thin that one amounts to nothing more than some kind of sexual or racial identity.
1. Principals central to woke dogma:
- the primacy of group over the person
- emphasis on will at the subjugation reason or nature
- elevation of human power and rejection of natural and divine rights(2)
- sexual revolution wreaking havoc on the structure of the family
- forget and surpress character, intelligence, aptitude, religious beliefs
- choice of what one desires for oneself over good or evil as defined by any outside woke source
- always blame others for your own faults, failings, or unfilled desires.
Further reading:
The cult
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96329?mailing_id=7420&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7420&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://spectator.org/five-quick-things-transgenderism-embodies-our-cultural-collapse/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/who_is_allowed_into_the_privileged_class.html
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/18/gender-fluid-is-the-poisonous-fruit-of-the-keep-your-options-open-gospel/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/transgender-attack-turning-point-washington-video
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/bud-light
https://www.theblaze.com/news/piers-morgan-katie-porter-riley-gaines-debate
The EV Mandate
Sent from "A Friend"
The biden regime's EPA is planning to dictate new emissions regulations for cars that will increase the Electric Vehicle market share of vehicles sold from today’s 6% up to 67% by 2032. biden's EV mandate will force Americans to drive more expensive, less capable cars. If EVs were actually as good as their advocates say, they wouldn't require lavish subsidies—let alone biden's mandate on top of lavish subsidies. Forcing EVs = harming Americans.
Today's EVs, despite promises that they would already surpass gasoline vehicles, are not cost-effective for the vast majority of Americans. That's why, despite huge government subsidies, only 6% of us buy EVs. Mandating EVs violates our rights and hurts the poor most of all. EVs may become even less cost-effective in the future due to rising electricity prices and growing shortages that are occurring as reliable power plants are shut down in favor of unreliable solar and wind, as well as increasing raw material prices (due to artificial, government-created demand for batteries). Range issues and recharge times are a logistical nightmare, even if you can afford a home recharge station. This is why EV owners use them in addition to gasoline cars.
67% EVs would be ruinous for the poor and middle class. Currently, the fossil fueled part of the transportation sector consumes about 25% of all US energy. This means that to handle a huge influx of EVs, the already fragile electricity sector would have to rapidly add reliable electricity capacity—the opposite of what's happening. Most EVs are significantly inferior in utility at a higher price per vehicle. And if electricity bottlenecks continue, the price disadvantage will worsen, while the threat of electricity rationing/restricting for EVs will be real.
biden's EV mandate will cause electricity shortages. US power grids are already struggling from retirements of reliable power plant capacity in favor of unreliable solar and wind. Forced electrification of vehicles will exacerbate the problem and make electricity more expensive. A reliable grid is a foundation of our quality of life. We depend on ultra-reliable electricity for the refrigerators that preserve our food, the water treatment plants that keep our water drinkable, the air conditioning that keeps us cool, the factories that produce our goods, etc.
The root cause of our grid’s reliability problems is simple: America is shutting down reliable power plants—plants that can be controlled to produce electricity when needed in the exact quantity needed. And it is attempting to replace them with unreliable solar and wind. Thanks to government mandates and subsidies, solar and wind--“unreliables”--provide about 13% of American electricity. This 13% has already caused big electricity price increases and huge reliability problems. Instead of admitting this failure, biden is doubling down.
The biden regime is dictating 2 deadly policies at the same time:
- Drastically reducing the supply of reliable electricity by shutting down reliable power plants
- Drastically increasing demand for reliable electricity by mandating EVs
This is a recipe for national immobility. biden's EV mandate emulates California's reckless policy, which combines outlawing new oil-fueled vehicles by 2035 and wrecking its grid by shutting down reliable power plants. As The Babylon Bee sardonically put it, State With No Electricity Orders Everyone To Drive Cars That Run on Electricity. California is already having major problems with EV charging. In August, 2022, CAISO, the California grid operator asked consumers to cut electricity usage during a heatwave, including using less air conditioning and refraining from “charging electric vehicles.” Note that EV charging is a threat to the California grid while only a small share of CA’s over 30 million vehicles are electric and solar or wind are only a fraction of what they are supposed to become. With less reliable power and far more EVs the situation would be catastrophic. Imagine if, during the California blackouts of 2020 or the Texas blackouts of 2021 these grids were both far more dependent on unreliable solar and wind and had a massive fleet of EVs that needed charging. Imagine the death toll and economic damage.
Plans to rely heavily on unreliable solar and wind electricity generation, a key feature of biden’s dangerous dictates to power America’s EVs, requires the high voltage transmission system to grow massively in the next few years. At the current pace of transmission line building, it would take from many decades to centuries to build out our grid. New mandates add even more stress to the infrastructure, making everything in the supply chains more expensive while upgrades become more urgent. biden's EV mandate will also make use dependent on foreign supply chains. A crash mandate means a rapid, artificial increase in mining, processing, and manufacturing, and with regulations hostile in the US, this means more dependence on China.
The Inflation Reduction Act promised additional subsidies for manufacturers who sourced their materials from inside the US, a protectionist policy to build up domestic supply chains. But biden has systematically blocked US mining opportunities. Because of the clear impossibility to source many critical materials from the US, the Treasury Dept has already signaled flexibility in the rules on how the subsidies for domestic production will apply. Which means we will be dependent on others. China dominates the supply chains of many critical minerals and given the environmental policies of the Biden regime, this will not change in favor of US mining anytime soon.
In the future, EVs could benefit Americans and significantly reduce emissions if: 1) competition makes them genuinely superior for most people 2) we dramatically increase electricity production using low-cost, reliable, scalable tech—most likely nuclear. If the biden regime wants to facilitate cost-effective EVs, the number one thing it needs to do is publicly reverse its attack on reliable power plants that would absolutely destroy our grid for existing electricity needs, let alone huge EV needs. The proper policy toward battery EVs is to let them compete on the open market with gasoline vehicles, natural gas vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, etc. And if you want to increase the competitiveness of all EVs, then stop screwing up the grid by mandating unreliable solar and wind power.
Further reading:
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96480?mailing_id=7420&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7420&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/americas_coming_energy_crisis.html
The biden regime's EPA is planning to dictate new emissions regulations for cars that will increase the Electric Vehicle market share of vehicles sold from today’s 6% up to 67% by 2032. biden's EV mandate will force Americans to drive more expensive, less capable cars. If EVs were actually as good as their advocates say, they wouldn't require lavish subsidies—let alone biden's mandate on top of lavish subsidies. Forcing EVs = harming Americans.
Today's EVs, despite promises that they would already surpass gasoline vehicles, are not cost-effective for the vast majority of Americans. That's why, despite huge government subsidies, only 6% of us buy EVs. Mandating EVs violates our rights and hurts the poor most of all. EVs may become even less cost-effective in the future due to rising electricity prices and growing shortages that are occurring as reliable power plants are shut down in favor of unreliable solar and wind, as well as increasing raw material prices (due to artificial, government-created demand for batteries). Range issues and recharge times are a logistical nightmare, even if you can afford a home recharge station. This is why EV owners use them in addition to gasoline cars.
67% EVs would be ruinous for the poor and middle class. Currently, the fossil fueled part of the transportation sector consumes about 25% of all US energy. This means that to handle a huge influx of EVs, the already fragile electricity sector would have to rapidly add reliable electricity capacity—the opposite of what's happening. Most EVs are significantly inferior in utility at a higher price per vehicle. And if electricity bottlenecks continue, the price disadvantage will worsen, while the threat of electricity rationing/restricting for EVs will be real.
biden's EV mandate will cause electricity shortages. US power grids are already struggling from retirements of reliable power plant capacity in favor of unreliable solar and wind. Forced electrification of vehicles will exacerbate the problem and make electricity more expensive. A reliable grid is a foundation of our quality of life. We depend on ultra-reliable electricity for the refrigerators that preserve our food, the water treatment plants that keep our water drinkable, the air conditioning that keeps us cool, the factories that produce our goods, etc.
The root cause of our grid’s reliability problems is simple: America is shutting down reliable power plants—plants that can be controlled to produce electricity when needed in the exact quantity needed. And it is attempting to replace them with unreliable solar and wind. Thanks to government mandates and subsidies, solar and wind--“unreliables”--provide about 13% of American electricity. This 13% has already caused big electricity price increases and huge reliability problems. Instead of admitting this failure, biden is doubling down.
The biden regime is dictating 2 deadly policies at the same time:
- Drastically reducing the supply of reliable electricity by shutting down reliable power plants
- Drastically increasing demand for reliable electricity by mandating EVs
This is a recipe for national immobility. biden's EV mandate emulates California's reckless policy, which combines outlawing new oil-fueled vehicles by 2035 and wrecking its grid by shutting down reliable power plants. As The Babylon Bee sardonically put it, State With No Electricity Orders Everyone To Drive Cars That Run on Electricity. California is already having major problems with EV charging. In August, 2022, CAISO, the California grid operator asked consumers to cut electricity usage during a heatwave, including using less air conditioning and refraining from “charging electric vehicles.” Note that EV charging is a threat to the California grid while only a small share of CA’s over 30 million vehicles are electric and solar or wind are only a fraction of what they are supposed to become. With less reliable power and far more EVs the situation would be catastrophic. Imagine if, during the California blackouts of 2020 or the Texas blackouts of 2021 these grids were both far more dependent on unreliable solar and wind and had a massive fleet of EVs that needed charging. Imagine the death toll and economic damage.
Plans to rely heavily on unreliable solar and wind electricity generation, a key feature of biden’s dangerous dictates to power America’s EVs, requires the high voltage transmission system to grow massively in the next few years. At the current pace of transmission line building, it would take from many decades to centuries to build out our grid. New mandates add even more stress to the infrastructure, making everything in the supply chains more expensive while upgrades become more urgent. biden's EV mandate will also make use dependent on foreign supply chains. A crash mandate means a rapid, artificial increase in mining, processing, and manufacturing, and with regulations hostile in the US, this means more dependence on China.
The Inflation Reduction Act promised additional subsidies for manufacturers who sourced their materials from inside the US, a protectionist policy to build up domestic supply chains. But biden has systematically blocked US mining opportunities. Because of the clear impossibility to source many critical materials from the US, the Treasury Dept has already signaled flexibility in the rules on how the subsidies for domestic production will apply. Which means we will be dependent on others. China dominates the supply chains of many critical minerals and given the environmental policies of the Biden regime, this will not change in favor of US mining anytime soon.
In the future, EVs could benefit Americans and significantly reduce emissions if: 1) competition makes them genuinely superior for most people 2) we dramatically increase electricity production using low-cost, reliable, scalable tech—most likely nuclear. If the biden regime wants to facilitate cost-effective EVs, the number one thing it needs to do is publicly reverse its attack on reliable power plants that would absolutely destroy our grid for existing electricity needs, let alone huge EV needs. The proper policy toward battery EVs is to let them compete on the open market with gasoline vehicles, natural gas vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, etc. And if you want to increase the competitiveness of all EVs, then stop screwing up the grid by mandating unreliable solar and wind power.
Further reading:
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96480?mailing_id=7420&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7420&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/americas_coming_energy_crisis.html
Who What Where When etc.
“Who controls the past, controls the future and who controls the present controls the past.”—George Orwell from 1984
Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers liberals now substitute race for class and seek to create a revolutionary coalition based on racial and ethnic categories. This ideology, commonly known as critical race theory, or wokeism, has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resource departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks in school curricula.
It employs euphemisms such as “equity, social justice, diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching.” It is all little more than a reformulation where identity is the means and Marxism is the end(1). It’s adoption, already starting to spread and play out in many places and ways, means the end of private property, individual rights, merit, equality under the law, and freedom of speech. Replacing it would be a racist redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, injustice by proper definition and an ever-growing omnipotent bureaucratic authority. With all that time spent channeling hate, no wonder one does not have the time, all the germane the facts or even the inclination to consider the authenticity of any of their claims.
This is a revolution against the American people.
How can that be you say? Well, to start because too many people have developed an acute fear of speaking up and out about social and political issues, especially those involving race, since CR theorists construct their ideology(2) like a mouse trap. Disagree with them and that is irrefutable evidence of your ignorance, bigotry, bias, white supremacy, or hatred. Hence dissenters are encouraged or forced to remain silent and accept supposed guilt.
Rather than equal citizens under the law, Americans have become subjects with unequal privileges and duties based on their assigned identity group. Given this deprivation of rights, mere appeals to the Constitution or to the rule of law that the American power elite long ago dismantled will no longer do. Any genuine conservatism must be radical, as in the words of the left-winger Marcuse, it must constitute a “counterrevolution.” Conservatives should do more than criticize today’s illegitimate regime and leftist ideas; they should envision alternatives.
It’s time to force proponents of absurd liberal ideology and all too real revolution to explain it accurately and factually, and then defend, using the same “critical method,” their assumptions, logic, and consequences of their beliefs and subsequent behaviors on all levels. To be honest about any alleged injustices in America and its history and place them in the context of our nation’s creation of high ideals and the very real progress we have made in our concretely realizing them And in comparison to everywhere else relevant in the world.
Of course, this will require of us the effort and courage to stand and speak the truth. To withstand epithets. To face the mob. And to shrug off scorn from the arrogant elites who serve this false idol of theirs.
A conservative political philosophy would be utopian by recognizing that all political systems share in religious sentiment. This includes the natural rights under “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” To conserve the American system would mean first to conserve actual religion — Christianity as a fighting faith. And insofar as political philosophy itself requires participation in moral sentiment in order investigate it, it must also address the questions of patriotism and community that it has long disparaged: It would provide a vision of republican governance.
2nd, conservatives should emulate the Left by starting their own long march through the institutions. This is quite simple to do — if one has the political will. The strategy must be the three P’s, the 1st 2 being “parity” or “purge.” This New Right must demand parity in bureaucracy, education, the military, and government contracts — liberals and radicals — dominate American universities (gateways to the halls of power), where so-called underprivileged groups are the most represented and so-called privileged groups are the most underrepresented. Considering their stated party affiliation, more than 90% of professors are left-wing, with college administrators even more left-wing. And government-funded support for the left-wing democratic Party is becoming even more lopsided: One professor estimates the current ratio in hiring liberal to conservative professors is 50:1. Unlike Republicans who raise money from conservative businessmen but have no incentive to actually win elections, the left-wing democratic Party must win elections in order to pay off its constituents. If academia consists of centrist liberals at best, and left-wing democratic hacks at worst, then Republicans can justly demand their own spoils. Red state governors and legislatures could mark half the jobs, in both education and bureaucracy, for their own. Looking at blue states as a model, there is no reason why taxpayers in red states like Indiana, Florida, Idaho, South Dakota, or Texas should employ any leftists under the farce of academic impartiality. And unlike engineering bridges, social scientists build worthless statistical models that no one heeds, especially not politicians.
Importantly, conservatives should not focus on banning ideas like critical race theory (which they themselves can teach), but on changing personnel: firing DEI administrators and hiring conservatives. Conservative taxpayers pay for these institutions, public spaces, and jobs. They should take them back: city councils, police and sheriff’s departments, school boards (and public schools where salvageable), and library boards. Because personnel is policy, conservatives should demand their own institutions hire from conservative colleges and disparage degrees from universities that are mere luxury brands.
Conservatives should take a cue from left-wing democrats and begin their own purges. Civil service protections, instead of securing expertise, have been used to secure left-wing democratic Party interests in the bureaucracy, where, in open “resistance” to a president, bureaucrats refused to carry out their orders and even lied to the commander-in-chief about troop levels in Syria.
left-wing democrats combed through social media after Jan. 6, 2021, farcically called an “insurrection,” to punish those who voted for Trump. Under biden, they implemented vaccine mandates to expel conservatives from the military, universities, and businesses, even while retaining openly racist left-wing democratic partisans. Conservatives should learn this lesson. With a few executive orders, a conservative president and conservative governors could disband the entire taxpayer-funded diversity, equity, and inclusion priesthood as a violation of equal protection under the Constitution. And even as they remove tenured left-wing democrat bureaucrats, red state legislatures should eliminate the term limits that bind the duration and impede the expertise of their own elected representatives.
The final P is “parallel institutions.” Conservatives should create more institutions of their own, forming alternative systems with their own rules: charter and home-schooling cooperatives, media outlets, homesteads, farmers’ markets, and independent businesses. There has been a resurgence in private associations. Able-bodied men, no longer isolated, are returning to republican manliness, not with FBI-infiltrated militias or online strangers but, with trustworthy lifelong friends to build a community alongside. Rural Christian women are questioning the corporate, cosmopolitan harem, its cats substituting for children, and are once again becoming the centers of their societies. They are challenging the fiction that they are “free” when corporate servants, and “enslaved” when guiding the health and morals of their own children.
Finally, and with the help of these parallel institutions, conservatives have already begun their own culture war. Roger Kimball’s Encounter Books publishes radical ideas. Alternative media outlets, and particularly Tucker Carlson, questioned the dogmas at the core of the Covid-19 pandemic — the likely origins of the virus, the efficacy of masks, the true cost of the deadly lock-downs, the safety of the vaccines. And they questioned the corrupt collusion between the FBI and social media to conceal hunter biden’s laptop to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.
Lifesite News informs its readers of the importance in issues from aborted babies for scientific experimentation. Darren Beattie’s Revolver News calls out the character types and habits of the ruling class, both its mannerisms and sexual obsessions. He first exposed the lies of the Jan. 6 “insurrection” by showing how federal agents had infiltrated and directed the supposed right-wing organizations that mobbed the Capitol. Most importantly, a host of New Right social media influencers have torn down the leftist images and replaced them with noble images.
Under this law of fashion, a New Right uses honor and shame to openly mock the misbehavior encouraged by identity politics: the corrosive feminized politics of the longhouse, in which indirect means of confrontation have turned bureaucracy and corporations into ineffective, incompetent tyrannies; black criminality, in which 12% of the population constitutes 60% of the nation’s known murder offenders; the mental illness and degeneracy that underlies the trans movement; the corrupt oligarchy that uses “diversity” to legitimize its decadent rule. Moreover, the New Right celebrates health — strong men and beautiful women — as part of a broader vitalist movement that has taken hold of young men and women across the West. It points out that the leftist Puritanical priesthood is ugly, asexual, unhealthy and fatalistic.
In conclusion, the myth about the left-wing, which became prevalent in the 1980s, was that it lost. But its ideas are now taught in almost every school in America. A New Right would do well to learn from the left-wing.
1. They reject all constraints on their “production of self” in the cult of authenticity. They’ve turned against the need to live in a political community with the compromises that entails. Their politics has, therefore, become an inhuman force, a demonic method for dismantling a human person and spurring the fragmented anti-selves into an endless Civil War.
2. They dehumanize the individual in order to affect a collective orthodoxy based on things patently untrue, to which all most enthusiastically assent (even when presented with evidence to the contrary) and not simply in word and deed but most importantly in thought. The individual must be willing to except the “ideological” narrative at any given point in time, even if it happens to contradict previously held and promoted beliefs.
Further reading:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-fallout-from-tennessees-mini-jan-6
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-state-house-justin-jones-justin-pearson-expelled-a0d6e11c
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/07/democrats-who-called-for-innocent-republicans-to-be-fired-post-j6-complain-their-party-faces-consequences-for-inciting-tennessee-insurrection/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=democrats-who-called-for-innocent-republicans-to-be-fired-post-j6-complain-their-party-faces-consequences-for-inciting-tennessee-insurrection&utm_term=2023-04-10
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/a_sober_look_at_the_state_of_our_beloved_country.html
The UNSILENT majority fights back: One grassroots effort to DESTROY cancel culture
https://unsilencedmajority.org
COUNTER THE left-wing's ATTACK ON THE U.S.A.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/80504?mailing_id=5891&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5891&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/san-francisco-california-downtown/2023/04/06/id/1115285/
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/small-businesses-file-bankruptcy-record-pace-surpassing-covid-crash
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-transgenderism-most-dangerous-extremist-movement-united-states
https://www.wsj.com/articles/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-propublica-harlan-crow-1c4c2f41
Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers liberals now substitute race for class and seek to create a revolutionary coalition based on racial and ethnic categories. This ideology, commonly known as critical race theory, or wokeism, has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resource departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks in school curricula.
It employs euphemisms such as “equity, social justice, diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching.” It is all little more than a reformulation where identity is the means and Marxism is the end(1). It’s adoption, already starting to spread and play out in many places and ways, means the end of private property, individual rights, merit, equality under the law, and freedom of speech. Replacing it would be a racist redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, injustice by proper definition and an ever-growing omnipotent bureaucratic authority. With all that time spent channeling hate, no wonder one does not have the time, all the germane the facts or even the inclination to consider the authenticity of any of their claims.
This is a revolution against the American people.
How can that be you say? Well, to start because too many people have developed an acute fear of speaking up and out about social and political issues, especially those involving race, since CR theorists construct their ideology(2) like a mouse trap. Disagree with them and that is irrefutable evidence of your ignorance, bigotry, bias, white supremacy, or hatred. Hence dissenters are encouraged or forced to remain silent and accept supposed guilt.
Rather than equal citizens under the law, Americans have become subjects with unequal privileges and duties based on their assigned identity group. Given this deprivation of rights, mere appeals to the Constitution or to the rule of law that the American power elite long ago dismantled will no longer do. Any genuine conservatism must be radical, as in the words of the left-winger Marcuse, it must constitute a “counterrevolution.” Conservatives should do more than criticize today’s illegitimate regime and leftist ideas; they should envision alternatives.
It’s time to force proponents of absurd liberal ideology and all too real revolution to explain it accurately and factually, and then defend, using the same “critical method,” their assumptions, logic, and consequences of their beliefs and subsequent behaviors on all levels. To be honest about any alleged injustices in America and its history and place them in the context of our nation’s creation of high ideals and the very real progress we have made in our concretely realizing them And in comparison to everywhere else relevant in the world.
Of course, this will require of us the effort and courage to stand and speak the truth. To withstand epithets. To face the mob. And to shrug off scorn from the arrogant elites who serve this false idol of theirs.
A conservative political philosophy would be utopian by recognizing that all political systems share in religious sentiment. This includes the natural rights under “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” To conserve the American system would mean first to conserve actual religion — Christianity as a fighting faith. And insofar as political philosophy itself requires participation in moral sentiment in order investigate it, it must also address the questions of patriotism and community that it has long disparaged: It would provide a vision of republican governance.
2nd, conservatives should emulate the Left by starting their own long march through the institutions. This is quite simple to do — if one has the political will. The strategy must be the three P’s, the 1st 2 being “parity” or “purge.” This New Right must demand parity in bureaucracy, education, the military, and government contracts — liberals and radicals — dominate American universities (gateways to the halls of power), where so-called underprivileged groups are the most represented and so-called privileged groups are the most underrepresented. Considering their stated party affiliation, more than 90% of professors are left-wing, with college administrators even more left-wing. And government-funded support for the left-wing democratic Party is becoming even more lopsided: One professor estimates the current ratio in hiring liberal to conservative professors is 50:1. Unlike Republicans who raise money from conservative businessmen but have no incentive to actually win elections, the left-wing democratic Party must win elections in order to pay off its constituents. If academia consists of centrist liberals at best, and left-wing democratic hacks at worst, then Republicans can justly demand their own spoils. Red state governors and legislatures could mark half the jobs, in both education and bureaucracy, for their own. Looking at blue states as a model, there is no reason why taxpayers in red states like Indiana, Florida, Idaho, South Dakota, or Texas should employ any leftists under the farce of academic impartiality. And unlike engineering bridges, social scientists build worthless statistical models that no one heeds, especially not politicians.
Importantly, conservatives should not focus on banning ideas like critical race theory (which they themselves can teach), but on changing personnel: firing DEI administrators and hiring conservatives. Conservative taxpayers pay for these institutions, public spaces, and jobs. They should take them back: city councils, police and sheriff’s departments, school boards (and public schools where salvageable), and library boards. Because personnel is policy, conservatives should demand their own institutions hire from conservative colleges and disparage degrees from universities that are mere luxury brands.
Conservatives should take a cue from left-wing democrats and begin their own purges. Civil service protections, instead of securing expertise, have been used to secure left-wing democratic Party interests in the bureaucracy, where, in open “resistance” to a president, bureaucrats refused to carry out their orders and even lied to the commander-in-chief about troop levels in Syria.
left-wing democrats combed through social media after Jan. 6, 2021, farcically called an “insurrection,” to punish those who voted for Trump. Under biden, they implemented vaccine mandates to expel conservatives from the military, universities, and businesses, even while retaining openly racist left-wing democratic partisans. Conservatives should learn this lesson. With a few executive orders, a conservative president and conservative governors could disband the entire taxpayer-funded diversity, equity, and inclusion priesthood as a violation of equal protection under the Constitution. And even as they remove tenured left-wing democrat bureaucrats, red state legislatures should eliminate the term limits that bind the duration and impede the expertise of their own elected representatives.
The final P is “parallel institutions.” Conservatives should create more institutions of their own, forming alternative systems with their own rules: charter and home-schooling cooperatives, media outlets, homesteads, farmers’ markets, and independent businesses. There has been a resurgence in private associations. Able-bodied men, no longer isolated, are returning to republican manliness, not with FBI-infiltrated militias or online strangers but, with trustworthy lifelong friends to build a community alongside. Rural Christian women are questioning the corporate, cosmopolitan harem, its cats substituting for children, and are once again becoming the centers of their societies. They are challenging the fiction that they are “free” when corporate servants, and “enslaved” when guiding the health and morals of their own children.
Finally, and with the help of these parallel institutions, conservatives have already begun their own culture war. Roger Kimball’s Encounter Books publishes radical ideas. Alternative media outlets, and particularly Tucker Carlson, questioned the dogmas at the core of the Covid-19 pandemic — the likely origins of the virus, the efficacy of masks, the true cost of the deadly lock-downs, the safety of the vaccines. And they questioned the corrupt collusion between the FBI and social media to conceal hunter biden’s laptop to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.
Lifesite News informs its readers of the importance in issues from aborted babies for scientific experimentation. Darren Beattie’s Revolver News calls out the character types and habits of the ruling class, both its mannerisms and sexual obsessions. He first exposed the lies of the Jan. 6 “insurrection” by showing how federal agents had infiltrated and directed the supposed right-wing organizations that mobbed the Capitol. Most importantly, a host of New Right social media influencers have torn down the leftist images and replaced them with noble images.
Under this law of fashion, a New Right uses honor and shame to openly mock the misbehavior encouraged by identity politics: the corrosive feminized politics of the longhouse, in which indirect means of confrontation have turned bureaucracy and corporations into ineffective, incompetent tyrannies; black criminality, in which 12% of the population constitutes 60% of the nation’s known murder offenders; the mental illness and degeneracy that underlies the trans movement; the corrupt oligarchy that uses “diversity” to legitimize its decadent rule. Moreover, the New Right celebrates health — strong men and beautiful women — as part of a broader vitalist movement that has taken hold of young men and women across the West. It points out that the leftist Puritanical priesthood is ugly, asexual, unhealthy and fatalistic.
In conclusion, the myth about the left-wing, which became prevalent in the 1980s, was that it lost. But its ideas are now taught in almost every school in America. A New Right would do well to learn from the left-wing.
1. They reject all constraints on their “production of self” in the cult of authenticity. They’ve turned against the need to live in a political community with the compromises that entails. Their politics has, therefore, become an inhuman force, a demonic method for dismantling a human person and spurring the fragmented anti-selves into an endless Civil War.
2. They dehumanize the individual in order to affect a collective orthodoxy based on things patently untrue, to which all most enthusiastically assent (even when presented with evidence to the contrary) and not simply in word and deed but most importantly in thought. The individual must be willing to except the “ideological” narrative at any given point in time, even if it happens to contradict previously held and promoted beliefs.
Further reading:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-fallout-from-tennessees-mini-jan-6
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-state-house-justin-jones-justin-pearson-expelled-a0d6e11c
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/07/democrats-who-called-for-innocent-republicans-to-be-fired-post-j6-complain-their-party-faces-consequences-for-inciting-tennessee-insurrection/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=democrats-who-called-for-innocent-republicans-to-be-fired-post-j6-complain-their-party-faces-consequences-for-inciting-tennessee-insurrection&utm_term=2023-04-10
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/a_sober_look_at_the_state_of_our_beloved_country.html
The UNSILENT majority fights back: One grassroots effort to DESTROY cancel culture
https://unsilencedmajority.org
COUNTER THE left-wing's ATTACK ON THE U.S.A.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/80504?mailing_id=5891&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5891&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/san-francisco-california-downtown/2023/04/06/id/1115285/
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/small-businesses-file-bankruptcy-record-pace-surpassing-covid-crash
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-transgenderism-most-dangerous-extremist-movement-united-states
https://www.wsj.com/articles/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-propublica-harlan-crow-1c4c2f41
The DEBT
Source; From an Anonymous Friend
The Congressional Budget Office has the federal deficit higher at $1.1 trillion in just the first 6 months of fiscal year 2023, which began last October.
The revelation continues to debunk the LIE--AGAIN-- that Biden is reducing the deficit.
The $1.1 trillion in the first half of 2023 is $430 billion more than the 2022 increase over the same period, bringing the national debt to around $32.5 trillion.
biden spending increased 13%, $357 billion, with $3.1 trillion spent in six months, while revenues fell 3% to $2 trillion. That latter figure is $73 billion less than the first half of 2022. Income and payroll tax revenues were down 2%, $33 billion.
All this while inflation has been raging at 40-year highs and interest rates continue to rise. 5.6 % for food and 8. 3% for housing---about 35% to 40% of individuals expenses.
Notably, there was an estimated 11%, $132 billion, increase on the 3 largest entitlements, all going bankrupt by the way, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Spending for Social Security benefits rose by $61 billion, or 10%, because of increases both in the number of beneficiaries and in the average benefit payment, which rose primarily because of cost-of-living adjustments. Medicare outlays increased by $49 billion, or 14%, because of changes in payment rates and in the types and quantity of care beneficiaries received. Medicaid outlays increased by $22 billion, 18%, as a result of enrollment increases that were mainly attributable to provisions in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act requiring states to maintain the eligibility of all enrollees until the end of the unnecessary and deeply mismanaged coronavirus public health emergency.
Given intensifying instabilities in the U.S. Banking System, the Federal Reserve continues to spike systemic liquidity with inflation-driving Money Supply creation, which should continue to exacerbate the price inflation problem. At the same time, the FOMC keeps hiking interest rates in an effort to kill economic activity, which otherwise is neither overheating nor driving the inflation, contrary to the publicly expressed views of the FOMC and its Chairman. The best bet coming out of all these numbers is for a spike in inflation, eventually much higher than currently headlined.
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/12/biden-budget-extends-his-silent-war-on-the-middle-class/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=biden-budget-extends-his-silent-war-on-the-middle-class&utm_term=2023-04-14
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-prices-federal-open-market-committee-markets-biden-e830165d
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/wake_up_america__were_losing_our_country.html
The Congressional Budget Office has the federal deficit higher at $1.1 trillion in just the first 6 months of fiscal year 2023, which began last October.
The revelation continues to debunk the LIE--AGAIN-- that Biden is reducing the deficit.
The $1.1 trillion in the first half of 2023 is $430 billion more than the 2022 increase over the same period, bringing the national debt to around $32.5 trillion.
biden spending increased 13%, $357 billion, with $3.1 trillion spent in six months, while revenues fell 3% to $2 trillion. That latter figure is $73 billion less than the first half of 2022. Income and payroll tax revenues were down 2%, $33 billion.
All this while inflation has been raging at 40-year highs and interest rates continue to rise. 5.6 % for food and 8. 3% for housing---about 35% to 40% of individuals expenses.
Notably, there was an estimated 11%, $132 billion, increase on the 3 largest entitlements, all going bankrupt by the way, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Spending for Social Security benefits rose by $61 billion, or 10%, because of increases both in the number of beneficiaries and in the average benefit payment, which rose primarily because of cost-of-living adjustments. Medicare outlays increased by $49 billion, or 14%, because of changes in payment rates and in the types and quantity of care beneficiaries received. Medicaid outlays increased by $22 billion, 18%, as a result of enrollment increases that were mainly attributable to provisions in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act requiring states to maintain the eligibility of all enrollees until the end of the unnecessary and deeply mismanaged coronavirus public health emergency.
Given intensifying instabilities in the U.S. Banking System, the Federal Reserve continues to spike systemic liquidity with inflation-driving Money Supply creation, which should continue to exacerbate the price inflation problem. At the same time, the FOMC keeps hiking interest rates in an effort to kill economic activity, which otherwise is neither overheating nor driving the inflation, contrary to the publicly expressed views of the FOMC and its Chairman. The best bet coming out of all these numbers is for a spike in inflation, eventually much higher than currently headlined.
Further reading:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/12/biden-budget-extends-his-silent-war-on-the-middle-class/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=biden-budget-extends-his-silent-war-on-the-middle-class&utm_term=2023-04-14
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-prices-federal-open-market-committee-markets-biden-e830165d
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/wake_up_america__were_losing_our_country.html
Do Our Senators and Congressmen No Longer Represent Us?
Source; ANONYMOUS
Sent: 4/18/2023 8:48:51 AM Central Standard Time
Subject: After 26+ months
How have things gone so wrong in 2 years? Well, one obvious reason is biden's thoroughly incompetent Cabinet. Not one has the expertise to do the jobs they've been given. They were each selected not for their talent or experience, but for their skin color or sexual orientation. buttigieg has proven completely unqualified as head of the Transportation Dept. He rarely goes to work, and he uses government or military planes for personal travel. He has yet to visit East Palestine and address the Chernobyl-like cataclysm that just occurred. He's an abject coward.
Energy secretary granholm, a failed former governor, is a colossal joke — one even she thinks is funny. When asked when gas prices might go down, she just laughed, kamala-style. yellen, blinken, price, sullivan, mayorkas at DHS, garland — the most Stalinist prosecutor in U.S. history. austin and milley, both more concerned about virtually non-existent "White rage" and proper "pronouns" for "trans" members of the military than our readiness for the world war that biden has almost assuredly set in motion. biden and his cronies get rich off war, so the endless conflicts are unsurprising. They are war criminals who have allowed fifty thousand Ukrainian civilians to be slaughtered for their greedy cause. Russia will not give up. These warmongers should all know that, for there is a couple of hundred years of history they might have studied. The Ukrainian citizens and troops and the Russian troops are all just pawns in an immoral geopolitical game.
Then there is China, our most dangerous and threatening adversary. Everyone should know well by now that Joe Biden is owned by China. Were it not for a sharp-eyed journalist in Montana publicizing "the balloon's" presence, it would probably be spying still today. He is one of the "captured elites" whom China has bought and for whom China has paid — can't forget McConnell and countless others! These captured elites don't mind communism, totalitarianism, the outrageous tyrannical agenda of the WEF, and that old Nazi klaus Schwab.
Whoever pulled the strings to install Biden should go to prison. Whoever is really calling the shots and implementing such terrible policy — lockdowns, vax mandates, restricting the capture of domestic energy, mandating DIE, ESG, CRT, etc. throughout every institution and corporation in the U.S. — should be sent to prison for treason. Whoever they are, they are traitors to this nation; they're waging a war against the American citizenry. The vaccines alone have killed thousands; their pro-criminal policies have killed countless innocents; the open border has caused the deaths of thousands of migrants, and of law-abiding Americans who fell victim to criminal aliens and the fentanyl crisis.
The economy is the worst it's been in 4 decades. Our national debt is dangerously $31+ trillion and growing — the interest alone is $750 billion a year. None of this is sustainable. The "green agenda" is unnecessary climate communism to control how we all live. If their "15-minute cities" come to America, there may very well be a 2nd Civil War. They want to mandate E.V.s, but there is not enough lithium on the planet to put everyone in an inefficient electric vehicle.
left-wing ideological ignorance, selfishness, envy, foolish and hateful fantasies are destroying the best country on Earth. In forcing this upon us all the biden regime has been a blight in every way possible. biden was installed by a cabal of treasonous players interested only in their own wealth and power, and the destruction has been by design.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_democrat_left_welcomes_antisemites_cop_haters_and_terrorist_supporters.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/obama_bad_biden_worse.html
https://spectator.org/desantis-unleashes-the-truth-about-the-left-in-pennsylvania-speech/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/democrat_left_goes_all_in_on_hate_disruption_and_violence.html
https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/house-minority-leader-hakeem-jeffries-under-fire-for-defending-uncles-antisemitic-comments-while-in-college/
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vbWFyay1sZXZpbi1wb2RjYXN0/episode/ZjA3YTNkNWUtZDAyYS0xMWVkLThhMGMtY2JmNzhjZTUxNGY4?ep=14
Sent: 4/18/2023 8:48:51 AM Central Standard Time
Subject: After 26+ months
How have things gone so wrong in 2 years? Well, one obvious reason is biden's thoroughly incompetent Cabinet. Not one has the expertise to do the jobs they've been given. They were each selected not for their talent or experience, but for their skin color or sexual orientation. buttigieg has proven completely unqualified as head of the Transportation Dept. He rarely goes to work, and he uses government or military planes for personal travel. He has yet to visit East Palestine and address the Chernobyl-like cataclysm that just occurred. He's an abject coward.
Energy secretary granholm, a failed former governor, is a colossal joke — one even she thinks is funny. When asked when gas prices might go down, she just laughed, kamala-style. yellen, blinken, price, sullivan, mayorkas at DHS, garland — the most Stalinist prosecutor in U.S. history. austin and milley, both more concerned about virtually non-existent "White rage" and proper "pronouns" for "trans" members of the military than our readiness for the world war that biden has almost assuredly set in motion. biden and his cronies get rich off war, so the endless conflicts are unsurprising. They are war criminals who have allowed fifty thousand Ukrainian civilians to be slaughtered for their greedy cause. Russia will not give up. These warmongers should all know that, for there is a couple of hundred years of history they might have studied. The Ukrainian citizens and troops and the Russian troops are all just pawns in an immoral geopolitical game.
Then there is China, our most dangerous and threatening adversary. Everyone should know well by now that Joe Biden is owned by China. Were it not for a sharp-eyed journalist in Montana publicizing "the balloon's" presence, it would probably be spying still today. He is one of the "captured elites" whom China has bought and for whom China has paid — can't forget McConnell and countless others! These captured elites don't mind communism, totalitarianism, the outrageous tyrannical agenda of the WEF, and that old Nazi klaus Schwab.
Whoever pulled the strings to install Biden should go to prison. Whoever is really calling the shots and implementing such terrible policy — lockdowns, vax mandates, restricting the capture of domestic energy, mandating DIE, ESG, CRT, etc. throughout every institution and corporation in the U.S. — should be sent to prison for treason. Whoever they are, they are traitors to this nation; they're waging a war against the American citizenry. The vaccines alone have killed thousands; their pro-criminal policies have killed countless innocents; the open border has caused the deaths of thousands of migrants, and of law-abiding Americans who fell victim to criminal aliens and the fentanyl crisis.
The economy is the worst it's been in 4 decades. Our national debt is dangerously $31+ trillion and growing — the interest alone is $750 billion a year. None of this is sustainable. The "green agenda" is unnecessary climate communism to control how we all live. If their "15-minute cities" come to America, there may very well be a 2nd Civil War. They want to mandate E.V.s, but there is not enough lithium on the planet to put everyone in an inefficient electric vehicle.
left-wing ideological ignorance, selfishness, envy, foolish and hateful fantasies are destroying the best country on Earth. In forcing this upon us all the biden regime has been a blight in every way possible. biden was installed by a cabal of treasonous players interested only in their own wealth and power, and the destruction has been by design.
Further reading:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_democrat_left_welcomes_antisemites_cop_haters_and_terrorist_supporters.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/obama_bad_biden_worse.html
https://spectator.org/desantis-unleashes-the-truth-about-the-left-in-pennsylvania-speech/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/democrat_left_goes_all_in_on_hate_disruption_and_violence.html
https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/house-minority-leader-hakeem-jeffries-under-fire-for-defending-uncles-antisemitic-comments-while-in-college/
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vbWFyay1sZXZpbi1wb2RjYXN0/episode/ZjA3YTNkNWUtZDAyYS0xMWVkLThhMGMtY2JmNzhjZTUxNGY4?ep=14
Subject: Your energy--Part I--The SPR bye-bye
Author; Wants to remain anonymous
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is a crucial tool to protect America’s oil security—which is a foundation of its national security (oil powers our military) and economic security (oil powers modern mobility).
The biden regime is abusing the SPR and, as a result, threatening our oil security.
The purpose of the SPR is to aid the US in securing a reliable supply of oil and oil fuels by providing an “emergency” stockpile of up to 1/10th of US oil consumption—to be used during major “interruptions” of supply such as “sabotage” or disaster, then refilled after. The SPR is only an aid to oil security. The core of oil security is facilitating a reliable, affordable oil supply by protecting industry’s freedom to invest in, produce, refine, and transport oil. Without oil industry freedom, the SPR's modest stockpile can’t make us secure.
Instead of protecting our oil security by protecting oil industry freedom and backing it up with an ample reserve, biden has doubly damaged it by
1. Attacking the oil industry's freedom, then
2. Dangerously depleting our reserve for political purposes
For the last over 15 years, the global anti-fossil-fuel movement, with major leadership by biden, has artificially reduced the supply of oil by opposing oil investment, production, refining, and transport. When global anti-fossil-fuel policies make oil supply go down, and oil demand goes up, oil prices go up. And when oil prices are going up, the prices of everything in our global, oil-based economy go up.
biden blames “putin’s war” for today’s oil prices. But the root cause is global anti-fossil-fuel policies, supported by biden—which made oil (and other fossil fuel) prices artificially high pre-war and prevented the free world from quickly increasing production in response.
biden also blames the Covid-19 pandemic for reducing oil supply. But supply would have recovered faster had biden and others not spent 2020-2021 making supply-suppressing threats to the industry, such as biden’s promise: “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel.”
More broadly, had biden and liberal/democrats spent the last 4 years liberating US fossil fuel investment, production, and transport instead of restricting and threatening them, America would produce significantly more oil.
How biden has further harmed oil security by abusing the SPR
The 638 million barrels of oil in the SPR when biden took office were supposed to be used for short-term, “emergency” “interruptions” such as “sabotage” or disaster. Instead they were used for political purposes.
The proper response by biden to Europe’s and our vulnerability to Russia and to rising oil prices would have been: apologize for supporting anti-oil policies and lead a reversal of them to minimize further damage to our security and economy. But instead of responding to artificially high oil prices, a consequence of anti-oil policies, with a reversal of those policies, biden chose to keep his anti-oil policies but lower short-term prices by depleting our SPR—now down to its lowest level since the early 1980s.
Even when full (at 714 million barrels), the SPR contains only 1/10th of US annual oil consumption (>7 billion barrels) and now (at 370M barrels) it contains 1/20th. This means less oil for real emergencies—such as wars, terrorist attacks or cyberattacks on US oil operations.
The administration claims putin's war is exactly the kind of “emergency” the SPR is designed for. Wrong! putin's war is not an oil emergency that justifies depleting the SPR now; it is a potential oil emergency that justifies keeping the SPR as full as possible.
Since oil prices have gone down since biden’s biggest SPR withdrawals, he is bragging that they can profitably refill it. But even if they can, it doesn’t change the fact that the depletion was reckless, putting our oil security in jeopardy at a critical time.
biden’s main goal in dangerously depleting the SPR has clearly been to lower gasoline prices to help his party’s election prospects—the same goal he had when he asked OPEC+ to delay production cuts for just one month so that subsequent price increases would happen post-election.
A President’s discretion over the SPR gives them the grave responsibility to use their best judgment about when to deplete it—doing so only when that is, in their honest judgment, what is best for the country’s oil security. biden failed to uphold this responsibility.
The solutions to our crippled oil security are:
1. Focus on liberating the oil industry as much as possible, including withdrawing this administration’s many threats.
2. Commit to using the SPR responsibly, not politically.
Unfortunately, the Biden regime is 1) continuing its attacks on the oil industry's freedom, and 2) taking no responsibility for its abuse of the SPR.
Stay tuned for part II Your Energy--Part II, Myths America
Author; Wants to remain anonymous
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is a crucial tool to protect America’s oil security—which is a foundation of its national security (oil powers our military) and economic security (oil powers modern mobility).
The biden regime is abusing the SPR and, as a result, threatening our oil security.
The purpose of the SPR is to aid the US in securing a reliable supply of oil and oil fuels by providing an “emergency” stockpile of up to 1/10th of US oil consumption—to be used during major “interruptions” of supply such as “sabotage” or disaster, then refilled after. The SPR is only an aid to oil security. The core of oil security is facilitating a reliable, affordable oil supply by protecting industry’s freedom to invest in, produce, refine, and transport oil. Without oil industry freedom, the SPR's modest stockpile can’t make us secure.
Instead of protecting our oil security by protecting oil industry freedom and backing it up with an ample reserve, biden has doubly damaged it by
1. Attacking the oil industry's freedom, then
2. Dangerously depleting our reserve for political purposes
For the last over 15 years, the global anti-fossil-fuel movement, with major leadership by biden, has artificially reduced the supply of oil by opposing oil investment, production, refining, and transport. When global anti-fossil-fuel policies make oil supply go down, and oil demand goes up, oil prices go up. And when oil prices are going up, the prices of everything in our global, oil-based economy go up.
biden blames “putin’s war” for today’s oil prices. But the root cause is global anti-fossil-fuel policies, supported by biden—which made oil (and other fossil fuel) prices artificially high pre-war and prevented the free world from quickly increasing production in response.
biden also blames the Covid-19 pandemic for reducing oil supply. But supply would have recovered faster had biden and others not spent 2020-2021 making supply-suppressing threats to the industry, such as biden’s promise: “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel.”
More broadly, had biden and liberal/democrats spent the last 4 years liberating US fossil fuel investment, production, and transport instead of restricting and threatening them, America would produce significantly more oil.
How biden has further harmed oil security by abusing the SPR
The 638 million barrels of oil in the SPR when biden took office were supposed to be used for short-term, “emergency” “interruptions” such as “sabotage” or disaster. Instead they were used for political purposes.
The proper response by biden to Europe’s and our vulnerability to Russia and to rising oil prices would have been: apologize for supporting anti-oil policies and lead a reversal of them to minimize further damage to our security and economy. But instead of responding to artificially high oil prices, a consequence of anti-oil policies, with a reversal of those policies, biden chose to keep his anti-oil policies but lower short-term prices by depleting our SPR—now down to its lowest level since the early 1980s.
Even when full (at 714 million barrels), the SPR contains only 1/10th of US annual oil consumption (>7 billion barrels) and now (at 370M barrels) it contains 1/20th. This means less oil for real emergencies—such as wars, terrorist attacks or cyberattacks on US oil operations.
The administration claims putin's war is exactly the kind of “emergency” the SPR is designed for. Wrong! putin's war is not an oil emergency that justifies depleting the SPR now; it is a potential oil emergency that justifies keeping the SPR as full as possible.
Since oil prices have gone down since biden’s biggest SPR withdrawals, he is bragging that they can profitably refill it. But even if they can, it doesn’t change the fact that the depletion was reckless, putting our oil security in jeopardy at a critical time.
biden’s main goal in dangerously depleting the SPR has clearly been to lower gasoline prices to help his party’s election prospects—the same goal he had when he asked OPEC+ to delay production cuts for just one month so that subsequent price increases would happen post-election.
A President’s discretion over the SPR gives them the grave responsibility to use their best judgment about when to deplete it—doing so only when that is, in their honest judgment, what is best for the country’s oil security. biden failed to uphold this responsibility.
The solutions to our crippled oil security are:
1. Focus on liberating the oil industry as much as possible, including withdrawing this administration’s many threats.
2. Commit to using the SPR responsibly, not politically.
Unfortunately, the Biden regime is 1) continuing its attacks on the oil industry's freedom, and 2) taking no responsibility for its abuse of the SPR.
Stay tuned for part II Your Energy--Part II, Myths America
Your Energy--Part II, Myths America
Author; Wants to remain anonymous
• Undeniable energy fact 1: Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing
Cost-effective energy—affordable, reliable, versatile, scalable energy—is essential to human flourishing, it provides the ability to use machines to be productive and prosperous.
• Undeniable energy fact 2: The world needs much more energy
Billions of people lack the cost-effective energy they need to flourish. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. 1/3 of the world uses wood/dung for heating/cooking. Much more energy is needed.
• Undeniable energy fact 3: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective
Fossil fuels provide 80%+ of the world’s energy and they are still growing—especially in the countries most concerned with cost-effective energy. E.g., China.
• Undeniable energy fact 4: Unreliable solar/wind are failing to replace fossil fuels
Despite claims solar + wind provide < 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy and even that depends on huge subsidies and reliable fossil-fueled power plants.
• Undeniable energy fact 5: Fossil fuel energy gives incredible climate mastery ability
Fossil fuels helped drive down climate disaster deaths by 98% over the last century, powering machines that protect us against storms, extreme temperatures, and drought.
Myths about fossil fuels
• Myth: The TX winter blackouts were a failure of fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
Truth: Fossil fuels perform beautifully in far worse winter weather than Texas had in February 2021. TX blackouts were caused by defunding reliable/resilient power in favor of unreliable solar/wind.
• Myth: Replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind will make us more secure because we'll depend less on hostile countries.
Truth: Not only are solar/wind incapable of replacing fossil fuels, but the control of their supply by China dwarfs any nation's influence over fossil fuels.
• Myth: Continued CO2 emissions will cause “irreversible” climate change.
Truth: Future technologies will enable us to reverse the rise in CO2 levels if we want. But nothing can reverse mass-death caused by trying to rapidly eliminate CO2 emissions.
• Myth: Fossil fuels “kill” millions of people a year via air pollution.
Truth: This claim:
1. Ignores how fossil fuels extend every life on Earth
2. Uses pseudoscientific speculation about pollution deaths.
3. Ignores the fact that fossil fuels can be burned very cleanly.
• Myth: The anti-fossil-fuel movement is leading to better sources of energy.
Truth: Anti-fossil-fuel activists are responsible for artificially restricting the supply of fossil fuels and thereby causing a deadly, worsening global energy crisis.
Some big-picture facts about energy and climate:
Fossil fuel energy gives us an incredible climate mastery ability
• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 emissions correlate with 1°C warming, + greening
The warming of the last 170 years has been mild and manageable, about 1° C.
• Undeniable climate fact: Deaths from cold far exceed deaths from heat. While liberal institutions portray a world as increasingly riddled with heat-related death, the fact is that as Earth has gotten 1°C warmer far more people die from cold than heat (even in India!).
• Undeniable climate fact: Warming from CO2 occurs more in colder places. The view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) at colder times (nighttime) during colder seasons (winter). This is good news!
• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 has a diminishing effect. Rising CO2 leads to diminishing warming. Yet liberal climate science is unanimous that the public is shamefully not made aware of this actual “greenhouse effect.”
The Myths about alternatives:
• Myth: We can rapidly reduce fossil fuels at very low cost.
Truth: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective, why they are 80% of global energy and growing. Rapidly reducing fossil fuels, in a world that needs more energy, is catastrophic.
• Myth: Solar and wind are cheap.
Truth: Solar and wind are unreliable, parasitical sources of energy that add costs to the grid. Claims of “cheapness” are based on ignoring the full costs of solar + wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid that gives them 24/7 life support.
• Myth: Solar/wind is cheaper than fossil fuels because Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is lower for solar/wind.
Truth: LCOE, by Lazard’s own admission, doesn’t include many costs of solar/wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid needed for 24/7 life support.
• Myth: Solar and wind are “winning in the marketplace,” outcompeting fossil fuels and nuclear with superior economics.
Truth: Unreliable, parasitical solar and wind are only “winning” when given massive preferences—mandates, subsidies, and no penalty for unreliability.
• Myth: Nuclear is too expensive, so we should use solar/wind instead.
Truth: Solar/wind aren’t reliable; nuclear is.Nuclear is only expensive because it has, with the lies of “green” activists, been falsely labeled unsafe and effectively criminalized.
• Myth: Just a small area of solar panels plus storage can power the world.
Truth: Storing just 3 days of global energy would cost $590 trillion at Elon Musk’s current prices. And the panels would take up more space than all the world’s cities, towns, and villages combined. Musk says that “to power the whole Earth” we need just solar panels and “some batteries.” What is “some batteries”? To store a mere 3 days of world energy, to be prepared for weeks (let alone seasons) with lower-than-usual sunlight, takes >1,350 terawatt-hours in batteries. The world uses over 165k TWh of energy annually, or ~1.36 billion MWh in 3 days. 1000 Tesla Megapacks (3916 MWh of storage) have a price over >$1.7 billion. This would mean 3 days of storage using Tesla batteries would cost >$590 trillion. That's 6X world GDP! Arguing that solar panels and batteries can provide energy to 8 billion people using modest space is like arguing that Rolls-Royces can transport 8 billion people using modest space.Yes, there’s space for 8 billion Rolls-Royces—but the human time it would take to produce them is cost-prohibitive. The main lie of “Just a small area of solar panels can power the world” is that it ignores the insane cost of the necessary batteries. But it also drastically underestimates how much space solar panels require. For example, a viral Twitter post underestimates area by some 25 times. If 1.8 million square km of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million sq km). This excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission.
Myth: We can be like other countries who have 80% “clean electricity”
• The most persuasive argument for biden regime’s radical policy of 80% “clean electricity” by 2030 is that other countries are already at 80%. But this is BS because those countries, unlike us, can use huge amounts of 1) nuclear, 2) hydro, or 3) imported power. 80% “clean electricity” by 2030—from 30% today—will cause reliability problems, yet a group of prominent green electricity advocates recently claimed, with flawed logic, in an open letter, that “reliability can be preserved and enhanced.” The most compelling argument given for reliable 80% "clean electricity" by 2030 is that other places, such as France and Ontario, have achieved this. But this is a deeply dishonest lie because those places can, unlike us, use huge amounts of nuclear and hydro. France gets 2/3 of its electricity from reliable nuclear power. Ontario gets a combined 80% of its electricity from nuclear power and hydropower. By contrast, the US gets 20% of electricity from nuclear and <7% from hydro--neither of which can meaningfully increase by 2030. There is NO place in the world that gets a large share of its electricity from solar and wind without huge imports from its neighbors’ reliable fossil fuel power plants. And yet the US, which cannot import most of its needed electricity, is considering 50%+ solar and wind!
• Myth: The world is experiencing unprecedented danger from extreme weather thanks to fossil fuels.
Truth: The world is experiencing unprecedented safety from extreme weather due to fossil fuels—because fossil fuels' climate mastery benefits overwhelm any negative climate side-effects.
• Myth: We don't need fossil fuels to protect ourselves from extreme weather—we can just use alternatives.
Truth: As Europe is illustrating, there is no near-term replacement for fossil fuels for the 1/4 of the world that uses abundant energy—let alone the 3/4 of the world that doesn't.
• Myth: Media claims about increasing hurricane frequency are accurate.
Truth: liberal media has deliberately misrepresented the flat long-term hurricane trend. E.g., the ny times cherry-picking a starting point—the low point of 1980—to make a flat trend seem upward. If you believe The ny times or other liberal sources would you have any idea that the data looked like this?
• Myth: Hurricane intensity is expected to get catastrophically higher as temperatures rise.
Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense. This is not catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.
ESG
The preposterous financial pretense of “ESG investing” is that the promoters of it have so accurately identified universal norms of long-term value creation--Environmental, Social, and Governance norms—that imposing those norms on every company is justified.
Truth: ESG was a movement cooked up at the UN—not exactly a leading unbiased expert in anything—to impose moral and political agendas, largely left-wing ones, on institutions that would not adopt them if left to their own devices. The number one practical policy advocated by the ESG movement today is: divest from fossil fuels in every way possible, and associate yourself with “renewable” solar and wind in every way possible. This policy is helping destroy energy production around the world. The most egregious immorality of the ESG movement, led by larry fink's blackrock, is its effort to destroy vital fossil fuel projects in poor places that desperately need them, which is guaranteed to perpetuate poverty. Example: South Korea canceled coal plants in South Africa and the Philippines after “Global investors including Blackrock...warned the South Korean utility to drop coal power projects.”
Author; Wants to remain anonymous
• Undeniable energy fact 1: Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing
Cost-effective energy—affordable, reliable, versatile, scalable energy—is essential to human flourishing, it provides the ability to use machines to be productive and prosperous.
• Undeniable energy fact 2: The world needs much more energy
Billions of people lack the cost-effective energy they need to flourish. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator. 1/3 of the world uses wood/dung for heating/cooking. Much more energy is needed.
• Undeniable energy fact 3: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective
Fossil fuels provide 80%+ of the world’s energy and they are still growing—especially in the countries most concerned with cost-effective energy. E.g., China.
• Undeniable energy fact 4: Unreliable solar/wind are failing to replace fossil fuels
Despite claims solar + wind provide < 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy and even that depends on huge subsidies and reliable fossil-fueled power plants.
• Undeniable energy fact 5: Fossil fuel energy gives incredible climate mastery ability
Fossil fuels helped drive down climate disaster deaths by 98% over the last century, powering machines that protect us against storms, extreme temperatures, and drought.
Myths about fossil fuels
• Myth: The TX winter blackouts were a failure of fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
Truth: Fossil fuels perform beautifully in far worse winter weather than Texas had in February 2021. TX blackouts were caused by defunding reliable/resilient power in favor of unreliable solar/wind.
• Myth: Replacing fossil fuels with solar/wind will make us more secure because we'll depend less on hostile countries.
Truth: Not only are solar/wind incapable of replacing fossil fuels, but the control of their supply by China dwarfs any nation's influence over fossil fuels.
• Myth: Continued CO2 emissions will cause “irreversible” climate change.
Truth: Future technologies will enable us to reverse the rise in CO2 levels if we want. But nothing can reverse mass-death caused by trying to rapidly eliminate CO2 emissions.
• Myth: Fossil fuels “kill” millions of people a year via air pollution.
Truth: This claim:
1. Ignores how fossil fuels extend every life on Earth
2. Uses pseudoscientific speculation about pollution deaths.
3. Ignores the fact that fossil fuels can be burned very cleanly.
• Myth: The anti-fossil-fuel movement is leading to better sources of energy.
Truth: Anti-fossil-fuel activists are responsible for artificially restricting the supply of fossil fuels and thereby causing a deadly, worsening global energy crisis.
Some big-picture facts about energy and climate:
Fossil fuel energy gives us an incredible climate mastery ability
• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 emissions correlate with 1°C warming, + greening
The warming of the last 170 years has been mild and manageable, about 1° C.
• Undeniable climate fact: Deaths from cold far exceed deaths from heat. While liberal institutions portray a world as increasingly riddled with heat-related death, the fact is that as Earth has gotten 1°C warmer far more people die from cold than heat (even in India!).
• Undeniable climate fact: Warming from CO2 occurs more in colder places. The view in climate science is that more warming will be concentrated in colder places (Northern latitudes) at colder times (nighttime) during colder seasons (winter). This is good news!
• Undeniable climate fact: CO2 has a diminishing effect. Rising CO2 leads to diminishing warming. Yet liberal climate science is unanimous that the public is shamefully not made aware of this actual “greenhouse effect.”
The Myths about alternatives:
• Myth: We can rapidly reduce fossil fuels at very low cost.
Truth: Fossil fuels are uniquely cost-effective, why they are 80% of global energy and growing. Rapidly reducing fossil fuels, in a world that needs more energy, is catastrophic.
• Myth: Solar and wind are cheap.
Truth: Solar and wind are unreliable, parasitical sources of energy that add costs to the grid. Claims of “cheapness” are based on ignoring the full costs of solar + wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid that gives them 24/7 life support.
• Myth: Solar/wind is cheaper than fossil fuels because Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is lower for solar/wind.
Truth: LCOE, by Lazard’s own admission, doesn’t include many costs of solar/wind—above all the cost of a reliable grid needed for 24/7 life support.
• Myth: Solar and wind are “winning in the marketplace,” outcompeting fossil fuels and nuclear with superior economics.
Truth: Unreliable, parasitical solar and wind are only “winning” when given massive preferences—mandates, subsidies, and no penalty for unreliability.
• Myth: Nuclear is too expensive, so we should use solar/wind instead.
Truth: Solar/wind aren’t reliable; nuclear is.Nuclear is only expensive because it has, with the lies of “green” activists, been falsely labeled unsafe and effectively criminalized.
• Myth: Just a small area of solar panels plus storage can power the world.
Truth: Storing just 3 days of global energy would cost $590 trillion at Elon Musk’s current prices. And the panels would take up more space than all the world’s cities, towns, and villages combined. Musk says that “to power the whole Earth” we need just solar panels and “some batteries.” What is “some batteries”? To store a mere 3 days of world energy, to be prepared for weeks (let alone seasons) with lower-than-usual sunlight, takes >1,350 terawatt-hours in batteries. The world uses over 165k TWh of energy annually, or ~1.36 billion MWh in 3 days. 1000 Tesla Megapacks (3916 MWh of storage) have a price over >$1.7 billion. This would mean 3 days of storage using Tesla batteries would cost >$590 trillion. That's 6X world GDP! Arguing that solar panels and batteries can provide energy to 8 billion people using modest space is like arguing that Rolls-Royces can transport 8 billion people using modest space.Yes, there’s space for 8 billion Rolls-Royces—but the human time it would take to produce them is cost-prohibitive. The main lie of “Just a small area of solar panels can power the world” is that it ignores the insane cost of the necessary batteries. But it also drastically underestimates how much space solar panels require. For example, a viral Twitter post underestimates area by some 25 times. If 1.8 million square km of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million sq km). This excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission.
Myth: We can be like other countries who have 80% “clean electricity”
• The most persuasive argument for biden regime’s radical policy of 80% “clean electricity” by 2030 is that other countries are already at 80%. But this is BS because those countries, unlike us, can use huge amounts of 1) nuclear, 2) hydro, or 3) imported power. 80% “clean electricity” by 2030—from 30% today—will cause reliability problems, yet a group of prominent green electricity advocates recently claimed, with flawed logic, in an open letter, that “reliability can be preserved and enhanced.” The most compelling argument given for reliable 80% "clean electricity" by 2030 is that other places, such as France and Ontario, have achieved this. But this is a deeply dishonest lie because those places can, unlike us, use huge amounts of nuclear and hydro. France gets 2/3 of its electricity from reliable nuclear power. Ontario gets a combined 80% of its electricity from nuclear power and hydropower. By contrast, the US gets 20% of electricity from nuclear and <7% from hydro--neither of which can meaningfully increase by 2030. There is NO place in the world that gets a large share of its electricity from solar and wind without huge imports from its neighbors’ reliable fossil fuel power plants. And yet the US, which cannot import most of its needed electricity, is considering 50%+ solar and wind!
• Myth: The world is experiencing unprecedented danger from extreme weather thanks to fossil fuels.
Truth: The world is experiencing unprecedented safety from extreme weather due to fossil fuels—because fossil fuels' climate mastery benefits overwhelm any negative climate side-effects.
• Myth: We don't need fossil fuels to protect ourselves from extreme weather—we can just use alternatives.
Truth: As Europe is illustrating, there is no near-term replacement for fossil fuels for the 1/4 of the world that uses abundant energy—let alone the 3/4 of the world that doesn't.
• Myth: Media claims about increasing hurricane frequency are accurate.
Truth: liberal media has deliberately misrepresented the flat long-term hurricane trend. E.g., the ny times cherry-picking a starting point—the low point of 1980—to make a flat trend seem upward. If you believe The ny times or other liberal sources would you have any idea that the data looked like this?
• Myth: Hurricane intensity is expected to get catastrophically higher as temperatures rise.
Truth: Mainstream estimates say hurricanes will be less frequent and between 1-10% more intense. This is not catastrophic if we continue our fossil-fueled climate mastery.
ESG
The preposterous financial pretense of “ESG investing” is that the promoters of it have so accurately identified universal norms of long-term value creation--Environmental, Social, and Governance norms—that imposing those norms on every company is justified.
Truth: ESG was a movement cooked up at the UN—not exactly a leading unbiased expert in anything—to impose moral and political agendas, largely left-wing ones, on institutions that would not adopt them if left to their own devices. The number one practical policy advocated by the ESG movement today is: divest from fossil fuels in every way possible, and associate yourself with “renewable” solar and wind in every way possible. This policy is helping destroy energy production around the world. The most egregious immorality of the ESG movement, led by larry fink's blackrock, is its effort to destroy vital fossil fuel projects in poor places that desperately need them, which is guaranteed to perpetuate poverty. Example: South Korea canceled coal plants in South Africa and the Philippines after “Global investors including Blackrock...warned the South Korean utility to drop coal power projects.”
The "Woke" and the Buck
Source; Sent to me from a friend
“The greatest guilt of modern industrialists is not the fumes of their factory smokestacks, but the pollution of this country’s intellectual life, which they have condoned, assisted and supported.”--Ayn Rand
A Rasmussen poll asked what should be the highest priority for business in the United States. 84% said business should focus on earning profits, providing good benefits and pay to employees and offering consumers high-quality products and services at the lowest priced. 3% said social justice causes.
Yes, there are rabid racists. They come in all shades and races. But they are few in relative number and condemned by all sane people in any political party. Yet too many of us have been cowered to face these racial bullies. Too many of us are unwilling to respond to real racism perpetrated by the liberal/democrat Party repudiating their bigotry in loud, bold language. Instead we slink to diversity awareness programs at work and school and pretend they are useful. We yield to the propaganda our children are fed in the liberal-monopoly government schools at the expense of the canons of Western civilization without standing up to demand better of our educators, reluctant to stand up for our children against the onslaught of illiberal education due to the tactics of revenge liberals will rain down upon them. Yes, people are made scared to talk about race in this country for fear of what's going to happen to them if they do.
If there’s segregation look who's behind it. It is your civil rights & liberal/democrat leaders. Don’t listen to their flowery rhetoric; look at their actions and the results. These leaders want segregated everything these days. Maybe they need to get out and start hanging out with the rest of us. Maybe they need to try actually living where Americans live and where Americans work, they’ll find that the obsession with race and racism in this country is found only on the left.
However, what in the hell is the grievance anymore? What are the grievances and misconceptions we supposed to talk about? That would satisfy the left? What are we supposed to understand? Are we supposed to blame others for the violent harms done by an individual, or a mob? How tough life is in general? How disadvantaged we all are? What are we supposed to understand, sob stories we all have about how difficult it is to get through the day? What are we supposed to talk about and what are we supposed to hide and what are we supposed to lie about, that liberals would approve of so that we're no longer called racists? They're the ones with unresolved issues of race. They're the ones who have problems with it, and so they accuse the rest of the country of putting them in positions of suffering, 'cause they can't reconcile the problems they have with their own choices and responsibilities.
Honest Americans resent calling this nation a bunch of racists. In fact we here are showing bravery on race. WE here are totally willing to discuss it openly and honestly, right here, right now! Let us tell you what we like about America and what we don't like, instead of obfuscating by hiding behind a bunch of policy proposals and your hateful demonization of us, Be honest and brave and judge someone by the "content of their character and not the color of their skin."
Americans of good faith, who live lives with love in our hearts, charity in our actions, and malice toward only those who seek to destroy us must stand up for ourselves and resist these baseless charges and worthless observations. It is obvious that our acts alone do not satisfy the race-warmongers among us, and it behooves us to conclude that they never will. We, Americans of goodwill, must push back and declare that the sentiments of liberals/democrat are invalid, untrue, and unacceptable.
Don’t confuse free market capitalism with corporate oligarchism or crony-capitalism. Such autocratic supporting corporations are occurring favor and colluding with the liberal/democrat party by using their financial muscle to create a one-party political machine. In addition to those efforts, corporate CEOs have become activists and propagandist for radical liberal/democrat causes— organizing petitions, letters, and other politically motivated, public efforts, and even basing corporate success and achievement in radical social activism, while oftentimes doing business with, silence about and complying with Communist genocidal regimes like China.
Woke institutions are run by an overwhelming liberal managerial class without who’s acquiescence the lie that is wokeism could never have taken hold. These are NPR listening people who have fallen under the impression that pious, unempirical virtual signaling attacking any difference in status is a form of moral enlightenment and political activism.
Wokeness remade American capitalism in its own image. The modern woke-industrial complex divides us as a people. By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when we as Americans lack both.
Woke capitalists are actually not free market advocates but monopolists. They favor the strong state that can support/promote their product/service; or a superstate such that they need only work with one party and its rule making capabilities(1).
Woke corporations working in tandem with woke politicians hope to be spared higher taxes, increased regulations, and antitrust legislation aimed at monopolies. They promote open borders, cheap labor and breaking up traditional structures such as the family and other intervening institutions between the individual and the state. They want to control competition in their favor.
In sum, they threaten our most basic and fundamental liberties.
“None has so revolutionized ordinary expectations of human life, lengthened the lifespan, made the elimination of poverty and famine thinkable, enlarged the range of human choice as Capitalism.”--M. Novak
1. Thus, their interest in also breaking down the power of individual states and moving towards globalism.
Further reading:
Poll: Voters Want Corporations to Focus on Services Not Social Justice
https://apple.news/A_5ioE_DRPfuuCw5saxJoUw
Most Americans Oppose Woke Corporations--NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll
https://apple.news/AwTQ9MZiKOzGOCrfyPSTCtw
Capitalism is Popular But Woke Big Business Is Not
https://apple.news/AKNtoSLyMO8qodIdd5e7QvQ
https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/07/big-businesss-alliance-with-the-political-left-is-turning-into-a-major-strategic-blunder/
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/political-paternalism-not-free-markets-cause-economic-shocks
https://patriotpost.us/articles/86976-why-big-business-went-woke-2022-03-17
How corporations surrendered to hard-left wokeness
https://apple.news/AZYCZXVcPRYShyCG4nVZJHQ
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/woke_hiring_reduced_american_competitiveness.html
Are you one of us or one of THEM? Former Levi's exec reveals 'CULTISH' acts of woke corporations
https://apple.news/Aj9gdgDU8R1uKsDocRMSEVA
'Woke' ESPN Silent About NBA Decision to Play Games In a Country Where Gays Face the Death Penalty
https://apple.news/AQLpt0drwPr-NKEPIEXRvnQ
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/bank-account-deplatforming-cancel-cultures-new-weapon
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/26/meet-the-billionaires-club-pumping-critical-race-theory-into-your-childs-classroom/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-woke-esg?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20221117Trending-FTXESG&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/biden_officials_defy_critical_civil_rights_law.html
Wall Street, Corporations Team Up with Soros-Funded Group to Pressure States Against Election Reforms--teaming up with the Brennan Justice Center to pressure states against reforms.
https://apple.news/A-bY3BzvsPGqwzwR_Qf04zw
US company Blackstone Founder Pumped $100M into Marxist Education for Students Studying in China
https://apple.news/ASCzsfdHPOCuqC93MKVu8gw
“The greatest guilt of modern industrialists is not the fumes of their factory smokestacks, but the pollution of this country’s intellectual life, which they have condoned, assisted and supported.”--Ayn Rand
A Rasmussen poll asked what should be the highest priority for business in the United States. 84% said business should focus on earning profits, providing good benefits and pay to employees and offering consumers high-quality products and services at the lowest priced. 3% said social justice causes.
Yes, there are rabid racists. They come in all shades and races. But they are few in relative number and condemned by all sane people in any political party. Yet too many of us have been cowered to face these racial bullies. Too many of us are unwilling to respond to real racism perpetrated by the liberal/democrat Party repudiating their bigotry in loud, bold language. Instead we slink to diversity awareness programs at work and school and pretend they are useful. We yield to the propaganda our children are fed in the liberal-monopoly government schools at the expense of the canons of Western civilization without standing up to demand better of our educators, reluctant to stand up for our children against the onslaught of illiberal education due to the tactics of revenge liberals will rain down upon them. Yes, people are made scared to talk about race in this country for fear of what's going to happen to them if they do.
If there’s segregation look who's behind it. It is your civil rights & liberal/democrat leaders. Don’t listen to their flowery rhetoric; look at their actions and the results. These leaders want segregated everything these days. Maybe they need to get out and start hanging out with the rest of us. Maybe they need to try actually living where Americans live and where Americans work, they’ll find that the obsession with race and racism in this country is found only on the left.
However, what in the hell is the grievance anymore? What are the grievances and misconceptions we supposed to talk about? That would satisfy the left? What are we supposed to understand? Are we supposed to blame others for the violent harms done by an individual, or a mob? How tough life is in general? How disadvantaged we all are? What are we supposed to understand, sob stories we all have about how difficult it is to get through the day? What are we supposed to talk about and what are we supposed to hide and what are we supposed to lie about, that liberals would approve of so that we're no longer called racists? They're the ones with unresolved issues of race. They're the ones who have problems with it, and so they accuse the rest of the country of putting them in positions of suffering, 'cause they can't reconcile the problems they have with their own choices and responsibilities.
Honest Americans resent calling this nation a bunch of racists. In fact we here are showing bravery on race. WE here are totally willing to discuss it openly and honestly, right here, right now! Let us tell you what we like about America and what we don't like, instead of obfuscating by hiding behind a bunch of policy proposals and your hateful demonization of us, Be honest and brave and judge someone by the "content of their character and not the color of their skin."
Americans of good faith, who live lives with love in our hearts, charity in our actions, and malice toward only those who seek to destroy us must stand up for ourselves and resist these baseless charges and worthless observations. It is obvious that our acts alone do not satisfy the race-warmongers among us, and it behooves us to conclude that they never will. We, Americans of goodwill, must push back and declare that the sentiments of liberals/democrat are invalid, untrue, and unacceptable.
Don’t confuse free market capitalism with corporate oligarchism or crony-capitalism. Such autocratic supporting corporations are occurring favor and colluding with the liberal/democrat party by using their financial muscle to create a one-party political machine. In addition to those efforts, corporate CEOs have become activists and propagandist for radical liberal/democrat causes— organizing petitions, letters, and other politically motivated, public efforts, and even basing corporate success and achievement in radical social activism, while oftentimes doing business with, silence about and complying with Communist genocidal regimes like China.
Woke institutions are run by an overwhelming liberal managerial class without who’s acquiescence the lie that is wokeism could never have taken hold. These are NPR listening people who have fallen under the impression that pious, unempirical virtual signaling attacking any difference in status is a form of moral enlightenment and political activism.
Wokeness remade American capitalism in its own image. The modern woke-industrial complex divides us as a people. By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when we as Americans lack both.
Woke capitalists are actually not free market advocates but monopolists. They favor the strong state that can support/promote their product/service; or a superstate such that they need only work with one party and its rule making capabilities(1).
Woke corporations working in tandem with woke politicians hope to be spared higher taxes, increased regulations, and antitrust legislation aimed at monopolies. They promote open borders, cheap labor and breaking up traditional structures such as the family and other intervening institutions between the individual and the state. They want to control competition in their favor.
In sum, they threaten our most basic and fundamental liberties.
“None has so revolutionized ordinary expectations of human life, lengthened the lifespan, made the elimination of poverty and famine thinkable, enlarged the range of human choice as Capitalism.”--M. Novak
1. Thus, their interest in also breaking down the power of individual states and moving towards globalism.
Further reading:
Poll: Voters Want Corporations to Focus on Services Not Social Justice
https://apple.news/A_5ioE_DRPfuuCw5saxJoUw
Most Americans Oppose Woke Corporations--NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll
https://apple.news/AwTQ9MZiKOzGOCrfyPSTCtw
Capitalism is Popular But Woke Big Business Is Not
https://apple.news/AKNtoSLyMO8qodIdd5e7QvQ
https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/07/big-businesss-alliance-with-the-political-left-is-turning-into-a-major-strategic-blunder/
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/political-paternalism-not-free-markets-cause-economic-shocks
https://patriotpost.us/articles/86976-why-big-business-went-woke-2022-03-17
How corporations surrendered to hard-left wokeness
https://apple.news/AZYCZXVcPRYShyCG4nVZJHQ
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/woke_hiring_reduced_american_competitiveness.html
Are you one of us or one of THEM? Former Levi's exec reveals 'CULTISH' acts of woke corporations
https://apple.news/Aj9gdgDU8R1uKsDocRMSEVA
'Woke' ESPN Silent About NBA Decision to Play Games In a Country Where Gays Face the Death Penalty
https://apple.news/AQLpt0drwPr-NKEPIEXRvnQ
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/bank-account-deplatforming-cancel-cultures-new-weapon
https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/26/meet-the-billionaires-club-pumping-critical-race-theory-into-your-childs-classroom/
https://www.theblaze.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-woke-esg?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20221117Trending-FTXESG&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/biden_officials_defy_critical_civil_rights_law.html
Wall Street, Corporations Team Up with Soros-Funded Group to Pressure States Against Election Reforms--teaming up with the Brennan Justice Center to pressure states against reforms.
https://apple.news/A-bY3BzvsPGqwzwR_Qf04zw
US company Blackstone Founder Pumped $100M into Marxist Education for Students Studying in China
https://apple.news/ASCzsfdHPOCuqC93MKVu8gw
A Read on the Civilization of the West.
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:
While thou shalt flourish great and free
The dread and envy of them all.
James Thomson
“The civilization of the West… Was not the result of some inevitable process through which other cultures will automatically pass. It emerged from a unique history in which chance and accident often played a vital part. The institutions and ideas that therefore provide for freedom and improvement in the material conditions of life cannot take root and flourish without an understanding of how they came about and what challenges they have had to surmount. Non-western people who wish to share in the things that characterize modernity will need to study the ideas and history of Western civilization to achieve what they want and Westerners who wish to preserve them must do the same.”—Donald Kagan
"What lies beyond the nation, the community of mankind, is too vague to inspire the benefits of devotion."--Reinhold Niebuhr
The American international system and American power is the heritage and predominance of Anglo-American culture and its English-speaking members. One that has been on the winning side in every major international conflict, including ones against greater concentrations of military and economic might, dating back to the late 1600’s. One that has changed the way the world lives, thinks, and organizes itself as much as any great civilization of the past. One that has been willing to tolerate the stress, uncertainty and inequality of outcomes associated with relatively free-markets, allowing it to consistently lead in technological development, functionally flexible financial markets, widespread prosperity, and individual freedom.
In other words, one superbly adapted to provide the economic, social, cultural, and political changes demanded by progress. A progress propelled by faith in the idea that originated in the tenants of its Judeo-Christian philosophy, that the world is built in such a way as to be capable of providing an evolving ordered form of a free and open society. A society that combines liberty with major scientific and technological advances necessary to unleash extraordinary historical affluence and prosperity. One that contains a distinctive political and moral worldview that is a strong force for developing a culture that makes people both not just individualistic but optimistic too.
Perhaps that is why Anglo-American powers are so frequently involved in attempting to resolve deplorable conditions, that are almost as old as humanity itself, where ever they may exist in the world. And why foreign opinion is often perplexed and confused about our evangelizing-like energies directed toward such worthy objectives.
Perhaps that is also why some of those outside Anglo-American societies exhibit a self-conscious, systemic hatred and fear of Anglo-American civilization, an old tradition in much of the world, dating back to the late 1600’s too. This hatred and ignorance, that we’ll term Waspophobia, has developed a rather nuanced bias explanation of Anglo-American civilization. One it defines as containing an all-encompassing worldview that’s inflexible, absolute, inhuman in its will to power, insolently, arrogant, hypocritical, intolerable, lazy, naive, and vulgar. One that philosopher Martin Heidegger even went so far as to mistakenly describe as a culture that reduces life to a consumption of meaningless products and meaningless events through and with human relationships empty of everything worthwhile. Or as Osama bin Laden restated in simpler terms, as one of: “fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling and usary...the worst civilization witnessed in the history of mankind.”
Alas, all of that is just a rehashed theme that has been used to expediently place blame for virtually all the ills in societies outside of the Anglo-American ones. A theme whose roster of users include some rather infamous mass murderers, such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Hussein, and Kim Il Jon, to name just a few.
Henri Bergson argued against the above by stating that humanity, which has an instinct for tradition and stasis, also has an instinct for growth, change and competition and ultimately the quest is the meaning of life. Abandoning the quest is materialistic. To turn aside from this challenge is to embrace a merely material existence and to abandon the values that make human life truly human. Societies that grasp this dynamic achieved material well-being too. Societies that resist this do not.
Nevertheless, world order is largely due to and rests on the power of the Anglo-American alliance. An Anglo-American cultural that has been the major, and at times, only force in the world defending and advancing liberty, protecting the weak, caring for the sick, providing for the poor, introducing what’s referred to as principles of morality, democracy, justice, and equality, at home and abroad. All of which makes Waspophobia and the justification of it not only absurd but, down right dangerous, for all humanity.
Anglo-American strategic global policies believe in one world composed of many theaters, all linked by a global system resting on economic links as well as military strength. Whoever controls such can choose the architecture that shapes the world. The primary ambition of Anglo-American power then is not dominance in a particular theater, it is to dominate the structure that shapes the conditions within which the actors in the theaters live. To influence significantly, if not deterministically, what game is played. In this case, it is free-market capitalism operating under representative and limited government, a form of civilization organization far from perfect, just proven better than all the rest.
In Anglo-American free-market capitalism people generally have the right to do what they want. Local government is limited, civil society is vigorous. Speech and religions are free to practice, opportunities abound, behavior resulting in reward and risk exists. The non-Anglo-American forms of societal organization, essentially socialism, communism, fascism and monarchism are all, in varying degrees, opposed to all of the aforementioned and attempt to slow, halt or even reverse Anglo-Americanism.
Before going on let’s do a little background first. Henri Bergson postulated that there are only 2 basic types of social organization. The first is a ‘closed society’ meaning a community of individuals guided wholly by instinct and mainly static. There is nothing voluntary in these societies. In this form of society myth, legend, intuition, visions, poetry and awe all act to cause individuals to behave in ways conducive to the society. But since humans have a tendency to learn, grow and change, hence, Bergson’s second type, an "open society", a dynamic one based instead on ideals and aspirations rather than traditions and archaic rules, one where custom yields to conscience.
It is not the race of the individual but their beliefs and values that distinguish them. What becomes evident in examining open societies is that it is the mechanism responsible for human progress and development, that which provides a bettering of both the quantity and quality of life, for all members. And what is progress and development but change. And, as Marx described, capitalism is a social system built on change, that “…draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization…” Free-market capitalism then is both a result of and motor for an open society.
Karl Popper elaborated further on open and closed societies. He found that closed societies exercise, for some, a powerful hold over the human mind. Fearing the prospects of freedom found in open ones, closed society proponents usually resist and usually eventually win out, except in the Anglo-American case. This is noticeable in the fact that as one moved from west to east, societal types go from open to closed types, coinciding with the Anglo-American influence. However, the significant aspect here is that the Anglo-American sphere, in general, exemplified that an open society is not a violation of human nature but, its fulfillment.
And Capitalism is the ultimate form an open society takes. It is much more than just working hard or smarter. It is about risk-taking, embracing change, tolerating setbacks, and accepting the sometimes amoral or even immoral consequences of the impact an open society can have on beliefs and institutions. It means that in order to maintain the infrastructure and patterns necessary for a healthy open society requires, at base, acting in a rational way to achieve certain results. It is a system that demands behavior guided by reason. Yet humans cannot easily separate reason from interest and passions. More often than not we simply dress our conclusions in the color of reason. Bias, interest, and prejudice can twist reason to its own purpose. Consequentially, that tendency do such means that relying solely on the process of rationalization can be as cruel as any, maybe more so.
The Anglo-American experience has protected against this specific negative human tendency primarily through the guiding hand of religion, primarily a Judeo-Christian version that places the origin of humanity’s shortcomings and conflicts within human nature itself rather than in selected or yet to be refined or perfected economic or political ideologies. One that much more often than not, and certainly more so than all the other tried alternatives, can tame, channel, or quell those errant passions.
It is also from the recognition of that benefit of religion that another element becomes apparent when honestly examining open societies. That being that in most respects the most thoroughly modernized societies, by any definition that rests on economic and technological progress, are those that are significantly more religious than others. This manifests itself in the Anglo-American world, where a secular modernity was not able to overcome entrenched customary religion, through dynamic religion that infiltrated and supplemented static religion in the religious life of the Anglo-Ameriphones. The Anglo-Ameriphones owed their progress and especially much of the willingness to endure necessary suffering and sacrifice, including death at times, to dynamic religious convictions that transcended their immediate concerns and self.
The difference of this dynamic religion, for the Anglo-Ameriphones, was as Milton said: “Truth needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are shifts and defenses that error uses against its power.” For Anglo-Americans, their religious belief was, on the one hand, that God exists and reveals his will regarding moral rules and religious doctrines to humans; on the other that human understanding of these revelations remains partial and subject to change. Change then, which came to be seen as permanent, necessary, and even sanctioned by the Anglo-American religions, made them a necessary tool and driver for development of a healthy open society in the Anglo-American world. Ones that acknowledge more fully the aspects of the human psyche and is therefore all the better for it.
The importance of all this is that Anglo-American world came to recognize early that reason, scripture, and tradition all have their uses but, any one of them unchecked will go too far and close a society. The belief that reason can discover a substantially perfect or complete social model defies the requirements of an open society as much as the belief that such a perfect model can be found in scripture or tradition alone. An open society must contain the paradox of being secular and religious, dogmatic, and free.
Embodying that paradox became possible in the Anglo-American culture through the individualistic tenets it found contained within Judeo-Christianity. Such a relationship with the transcendent, one not containing and resisting change and modernity, became increasingly important in a world of accelerating change and uncertainty. In turn the effort involved in engaging with an ever-changing world gave a fuller expression to religious faith and generated a set of values that became a source of individual guidance across the entire spectrum of one’s life, including one’s political views. This allowed the Anglo-American world to experience more radical and sweeping changes than virtually all of the rest of the world, across time. Yet, at the same time, these countries remain what they have long been: among the most stable political regimes in the modern world.
In fact, without such guiding behavior commonly found in Anglo-American society, as history has shown, choice, decision and control become removed from the bulk of society’s participants, driving towards an elitist system that losses touch with public sentiment and can, and have often, developed much death and destruction, often greater than the very things the alternative promised to deliver society from.
The lesson is that after centuries of experience with strong religion in the Anglo-American world, far from being dangerous, such behavior has strengthened the basis of an open society and enabled it to meet new challenges, significantly better than all the alternatives, including the collective forms, especially ones that share a common ancestry with Marxism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau knew that religion is simply too entwined with our moral and civil lives to ever be disentangled from it. Rousseau spoke of religion in terms of human needs instead of divine truth. That it brought with it the conscience of charity, of concern for one’s neighbors, virtue, humility, modesty, and wonder. Therefore, religion has its roots in needs that are both rational and moral. As such, a rigid or absolute separation of religion from politics is both impossible and foolish. “The mind decides in one way or another, despite itself, and prefers being mistaken to believing in nothing.” We seem therefore to be theotropic creatures, with a yearning to connect our lives to something in the beyond. It was the attempt to eliminate such, starting with the atheism of the French Enlightenment, that turned men into beasts and continued to father such future permutations of itself, such as the aforementioned Marx’s Communism a century later.
In the aftermath of WWI, those defining themselves as progressive, eager to embrace changing the future, realizing this human need to believe in a transcendent, began generating potent theological-like justifications for repugnant---and godless---ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism. They believed that western civilization was on an upward one-way track, possible only through modern secularism, and that other societies would inevitably follow once enlightened by them, the progressives. Poverty, colonialism, or ignorance could be the only obstacles. And religion, to the progressives, was the incomprehensible existential feedstock nurturing those obstacles to be done away with.
Marxism then, the supposed most potent solution to obtaining modern secularism and to overcome the obstacles to it, grew dramatically, before its horrendous results destroyed its hold, in nations outside the Anglo-American sphere. It did so because it provided the missing Anglo-American framework by which people could understand and deal with the massive change, prosperity, and open society the modern world brings. Its ideology had no reason to believe in the proven successful Anglo-American faith in order and prosperity arising from the random and spontaneous interplay of millions of free individuals under the general rules of free-market capitalism. So instead, it came to rely on, build and export, usually with militant force, government leviathans; organizational forms that, since they can allow no other competing forms to exist, must eventually crush both the human spirit and body.
Yet despite proof all round that the Anglo-American formula has delivered great improvements in the quantity and quality of the lives of its beneficiaries, for centuries many foreigners came to despise, reject, resist, or misuse the blessing of its institutions and cultural norms. And some Anglo-Americans too came to do the same. Perhaps that’s because most Anglo-Americans have never known (thank your public-school education monopoly for that) or have forgotten how long and hard it was to build and develop those successful characteristics and traits.
Individuals also have a natural tendency to exaggerate their own importance in the scheme of things, to view themselves as the moral center of the world, which is what the analogy of the Judeo-Christian concept of Original Sin is all about. And the Judeo-Christian message on the concept of Original Sin incorporates the belief in self-redemption through self-change. Encountering and respecting other selves then, becomes a kind of education, we learn to limit our pretensions, to develop greater respect for learning and change and for other’s views and feelings.
Or maybe its because people derive their identity in part from the important groups to which they belong. Reinhold Niebuhr warned that when self-importance occurs through one’s group identity, the process of learning to question and check it is substantially diminished. In fact, the opposite occurs, it becomes greatly enhanced. Because of that we commit ourselves much stronger and deeper to the group, becoming less concerned about outsiders. The larger and grander the abstraction, the less critical we are of the group’s claims and the greater its propensity to become absurd. The noblest aspirations are undermined by a flaw (original sin) deep in our nature. The more assured we are the greater the danger.
And groups are much more fluid and unstable in the Anglo-American sphere. Perhaps it’s because complex tribal ties and dynastic obligations, traditional forms of defense, technological growth and habits ingrained during previous eras of weaker and less responsible societal institutions and government continue to shape the expectations of those who fail to favor and resist the Anglo-American formula.
Niebuhr, recognizing the above human flaw, found that we can create a truer democracy (a better world) the “more we can overcome the pretension of embodying it perfectly.” This requires a complex mix of evil and good in actions, while avoiding being paralyzed by this into passivity or inaction (known as post-modern neo-liberal existential nihilism). A formula that creates a mentality and habit of the people to govern themselves, promote enterprise, readily join spontaneous and private activities in an ordered free society with growing human and social capital.
This amounts to a better but imperfect Anglo-American formula striving against an imperfect evil in an imperfect world, not able to achieve perfect victory or perfect justice but “just enough” to prevent further disaster and evil. By apprehending this with a sense of religious faith, pride diminishes and responsibility increases. In other words, the need to be firm in our convictions but continue to test their foundations and search for hidden assumptions and secret flaws. Tolerating a diverse and less uniform approach in global affairs is likely over time to lead to more effective and widely accepted institutions.
In the long run the choice to favor such formula, by those resisting, will in all likehood occur, if Francis Fukuyama is correct. Fukuyama believes that humanity is basically the same everywhere, the cultural differences they exhibit are developed and not given and essential. That is not to imply though that such adaptation will be quick nor not without costly even ruinous consequences for some. For as Joseph Herder’s work points out, cultural is the stuff and substance of human nature, it shapes the way we understand and define ourselves, our goals and the world. Humanity may be equal but not the same, giving rise to different and sometimes conflicting perceptions and ideas. And danger can arise from this in many ways, even when: “To be the object of contempt or patronizing tolerance…the response is often pathological exaggeration of one’s real or imaginary virtues, as resentment and hostility towards the proud, the happy the successful.” –Isaiah Berlin
“Develop and maintain an open, dynamic society at home; turn the economic energy of that society out into world trade; protect commerce throughout the world and defend the balance of power in the world’s chief geopolitical theaters; open the global system to others, even to potential competitors in time of peace; turn the system against one’s opponents in time of war; promote free-market/free-government values and institutions wherever one can…American strategy must always concern itself with these goals…Be cautious and prudent, but above all be globally engaged...Any diminution of America’s cultural vitality, commitment to liberty and enterprise, social mobility, and pluralism, and any serious decline in either the creativity of American religious faith or its denominational and theological diversity would…impair its ability to carry out that strategy.” ---Walter Russell Mead
Further readings:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/15/joe-biden-enabling-communists-everywhere-he-goes/
biden Chooses 'Climate Changes' over Genocide in Opening Remarks with Chinese Dictator Xi Jinping
https://apple.news/ATzYuvoyqM6Ot9PoJg8GxEQ
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/biden_flipflops_on_us_ties_with_saudi_arabia_earning_contempt.html
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/five-big-foreign-policy-changes-gop-might-push-now-election-over
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:
While thou shalt flourish great and free
The dread and envy of them all.
James Thomson
“The civilization of the West… Was not the result of some inevitable process through which other cultures will automatically pass. It emerged from a unique history in which chance and accident often played a vital part. The institutions and ideas that therefore provide for freedom and improvement in the material conditions of life cannot take root and flourish without an understanding of how they came about and what challenges they have had to surmount. Non-western people who wish to share in the things that characterize modernity will need to study the ideas and history of Western civilization to achieve what they want and Westerners who wish to preserve them must do the same.”—Donald Kagan
"What lies beyond the nation, the community of mankind, is too vague to inspire the benefits of devotion."--Reinhold Niebuhr
The American international system and American power is the heritage and predominance of Anglo-American culture and its English-speaking members. One that has been on the winning side in every major international conflict, including ones against greater concentrations of military and economic might, dating back to the late 1600’s. One that has changed the way the world lives, thinks, and organizes itself as much as any great civilization of the past. One that has been willing to tolerate the stress, uncertainty and inequality of outcomes associated with relatively free-markets, allowing it to consistently lead in technological development, functionally flexible financial markets, widespread prosperity, and individual freedom.
In other words, one superbly adapted to provide the economic, social, cultural, and political changes demanded by progress. A progress propelled by faith in the idea that originated in the tenants of its Judeo-Christian philosophy, that the world is built in such a way as to be capable of providing an evolving ordered form of a free and open society. A society that combines liberty with major scientific and technological advances necessary to unleash extraordinary historical affluence and prosperity. One that contains a distinctive political and moral worldview that is a strong force for developing a culture that makes people both not just individualistic but optimistic too.
Perhaps that is why Anglo-American powers are so frequently involved in attempting to resolve deplorable conditions, that are almost as old as humanity itself, where ever they may exist in the world. And why foreign opinion is often perplexed and confused about our evangelizing-like energies directed toward such worthy objectives.
Perhaps that is also why some of those outside Anglo-American societies exhibit a self-conscious, systemic hatred and fear of Anglo-American civilization, an old tradition in much of the world, dating back to the late 1600’s too. This hatred and ignorance, that we’ll term Waspophobia, has developed a rather nuanced bias explanation of Anglo-American civilization. One it defines as containing an all-encompassing worldview that’s inflexible, absolute, inhuman in its will to power, insolently, arrogant, hypocritical, intolerable, lazy, naive, and vulgar. One that philosopher Martin Heidegger even went so far as to mistakenly describe as a culture that reduces life to a consumption of meaningless products and meaningless events through and with human relationships empty of everything worthwhile. Or as Osama bin Laden restated in simpler terms, as one of: “fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling and usary...the worst civilization witnessed in the history of mankind.”
Alas, all of that is just a rehashed theme that has been used to expediently place blame for virtually all the ills in societies outside of the Anglo-American ones. A theme whose roster of users include some rather infamous mass murderers, such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Hussein, and Kim Il Jon, to name just a few.
Henri Bergson argued against the above by stating that humanity, which has an instinct for tradition and stasis, also has an instinct for growth, change and competition and ultimately the quest is the meaning of life. Abandoning the quest is materialistic. To turn aside from this challenge is to embrace a merely material existence and to abandon the values that make human life truly human. Societies that grasp this dynamic achieved material well-being too. Societies that resist this do not.
Nevertheless, world order is largely due to and rests on the power of the Anglo-American alliance. An Anglo-American cultural that has been the major, and at times, only force in the world defending and advancing liberty, protecting the weak, caring for the sick, providing for the poor, introducing what’s referred to as principles of morality, democracy, justice, and equality, at home and abroad. All of which makes Waspophobia and the justification of it not only absurd but, down right dangerous, for all humanity.
Anglo-American strategic global policies believe in one world composed of many theaters, all linked by a global system resting on economic links as well as military strength. Whoever controls such can choose the architecture that shapes the world. The primary ambition of Anglo-American power then is not dominance in a particular theater, it is to dominate the structure that shapes the conditions within which the actors in the theaters live. To influence significantly, if not deterministically, what game is played. In this case, it is free-market capitalism operating under representative and limited government, a form of civilization organization far from perfect, just proven better than all the rest.
In Anglo-American free-market capitalism people generally have the right to do what they want. Local government is limited, civil society is vigorous. Speech and religions are free to practice, opportunities abound, behavior resulting in reward and risk exists. The non-Anglo-American forms of societal organization, essentially socialism, communism, fascism and monarchism are all, in varying degrees, opposed to all of the aforementioned and attempt to slow, halt or even reverse Anglo-Americanism.
Before going on let’s do a little background first. Henri Bergson postulated that there are only 2 basic types of social organization. The first is a ‘closed society’ meaning a community of individuals guided wholly by instinct and mainly static. There is nothing voluntary in these societies. In this form of society myth, legend, intuition, visions, poetry and awe all act to cause individuals to behave in ways conducive to the society. But since humans have a tendency to learn, grow and change, hence, Bergson’s second type, an "open society", a dynamic one based instead on ideals and aspirations rather than traditions and archaic rules, one where custom yields to conscience.
It is not the race of the individual but their beliefs and values that distinguish them. What becomes evident in examining open societies is that it is the mechanism responsible for human progress and development, that which provides a bettering of both the quantity and quality of life, for all members. And what is progress and development but change. And, as Marx described, capitalism is a social system built on change, that “…draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization…” Free-market capitalism then is both a result of and motor for an open society.
Karl Popper elaborated further on open and closed societies. He found that closed societies exercise, for some, a powerful hold over the human mind. Fearing the prospects of freedom found in open ones, closed society proponents usually resist and usually eventually win out, except in the Anglo-American case. This is noticeable in the fact that as one moved from west to east, societal types go from open to closed types, coinciding with the Anglo-American influence. However, the significant aspect here is that the Anglo-American sphere, in general, exemplified that an open society is not a violation of human nature but, its fulfillment.
And Capitalism is the ultimate form an open society takes. It is much more than just working hard or smarter. It is about risk-taking, embracing change, tolerating setbacks, and accepting the sometimes amoral or even immoral consequences of the impact an open society can have on beliefs and institutions. It means that in order to maintain the infrastructure and patterns necessary for a healthy open society requires, at base, acting in a rational way to achieve certain results. It is a system that demands behavior guided by reason. Yet humans cannot easily separate reason from interest and passions. More often than not we simply dress our conclusions in the color of reason. Bias, interest, and prejudice can twist reason to its own purpose. Consequentially, that tendency do such means that relying solely on the process of rationalization can be as cruel as any, maybe more so.
The Anglo-American experience has protected against this specific negative human tendency primarily through the guiding hand of religion, primarily a Judeo-Christian version that places the origin of humanity’s shortcomings and conflicts within human nature itself rather than in selected or yet to be refined or perfected economic or political ideologies. One that much more often than not, and certainly more so than all the other tried alternatives, can tame, channel, or quell those errant passions.
It is also from the recognition of that benefit of religion that another element becomes apparent when honestly examining open societies. That being that in most respects the most thoroughly modernized societies, by any definition that rests on economic and technological progress, are those that are significantly more religious than others. This manifests itself in the Anglo-American world, where a secular modernity was not able to overcome entrenched customary religion, through dynamic religion that infiltrated and supplemented static religion in the religious life of the Anglo-Ameriphones. The Anglo-Ameriphones owed their progress and especially much of the willingness to endure necessary suffering and sacrifice, including death at times, to dynamic religious convictions that transcended their immediate concerns and self.
The difference of this dynamic religion, for the Anglo-Ameriphones, was as Milton said: “Truth needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are shifts and defenses that error uses against its power.” For Anglo-Americans, their religious belief was, on the one hand, that God exists and reveals his will regarding moral rules and religious doctrines to humans; on the other that human understanding of these revelations remains partial and subject to change. Change then, which came to be seen as permanent, necessary, and even sanctioned by the Anglo-American religions, made them a necessary tool and driver for development of a healthy open society in the Anglo-American world. Ones that acknowledge more fully the aspects of the human psyche and is therefore all the better for it.
The importance of all this is that Anglo-American world came to recognize early that reason, scripture, and tradition all have their uses but, any one of them unchecked will go too far and close a society. The belief that reason can discover a substantially perfect or complete social model defies the requirements of an open society as much as the belief that such a perfect model can be found in scripture or tradition alone. An open society must contain the paradox of being secular and religious, dogmatic, and free.
Embodying that paradox became possible in the Anglo-American culture through the individualistic tenets it found contained within Judeo-Christianity. Such a relationship with the transcendent, one not containing and resisting change and modernity, became increasingly important in a world of accelerating change and uncertainty. In turn the effort involved in engaging with an ever-changing world gave a fuller expression to religious faith and generated a set of values that became a source of individual guidance across the entire spectrum of one’s life, including one’s political views. This allowed the Anglo-American world to experience more radical and sweeping changes than virtually all of the rest of the world, across time. Yet, at the same time, these countries remain what they have long been: among the most stable political regimes in the modern world.
In fact, without such guiding behavior commonly found in Anglo-American society, as history has shown, choice, decision and control become removed from the bulk of society’s participants, driving towards an elitist system that losses touch with public sentiment and can, and have often, developed much death and destruction, often greater than the very things the alternative promised to deliver society from.
The lesson is that after centuries of experience with strong religion in the Anglo-American world, far from being dangerous, such behavior has strengthened the basis of an open society and enabled it to meet new challenges, significantly better than all the alternatives, including the collective forms, especially ones that share a common ancestry with Marxism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau knew that religion is simply too entwined with our moral and civil lives to ever be disentangled from it. Rousseau spoke of religion in terms of human needs instead of divine truth. That it brought with it the conscience of charity, of concern for one’s neighbors, virtue, humility, modesty, and wonder. Therefore, religion has its roots in needs that are both rational and moral. As such, a rigid or absolute separation of religion from politics is both impossible and foolish. “The mind decides in one way or another, despite itself, and prefers being mistaken to believing in nothing.” We seem therefore to be theotropic creatures, with a yearning to connect our lives to something in the beyond. It was the attempt to eliminate such, starting with the atheism of the French Enlightenment, that turned men into beasts and continued to father such future permutations of itself, such as the aforementioned Marx’s Communism a century later.
In the aftermath of WWI, those defining themselves as progressive, eager to embrace changing the future, realizing this human need to believe in a transcendent, began generating potent theological-like justifications for repugnant---and godless---ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism. They believed that western civilization was on an upward one-way track, possible only through modern secularism, and that other societies would inevitably follow once enlightened by them, the progressives. Poverty, colonialism, or ignorance could be the only obstacles. And religion, to the progressives, was the incomprehensible existential feedstock nurturing those obstacles to be done away with.
Marxism then, the supposed most potent solution to obtaining modern secularism and to overcome the obstacles to it, grew dramatically, before its horrendous results destroyed its hold, in nations outside the Anglo-American sphere. It did so because it provided the missing Anglo-American framework by which people could understand and deal with the massive change, prosperity, and open society the modern world brings. Its ideology had no reason to believe in the proven successful Anglo-American faith in order and prosperity arising from the random and spontaneous interplay of millions of free individuals under the general rules of free-market capitalism. So instead, it came to rely on, build and export, usually with militant force, government leviathans; organizational forms that, since they can allow no other competing forms to exist, must eventually crush both the human spirit and body.
Yet despite proof all round that the Anglo-American formula has delivered great improvements in the quantity and quality of the lives of its beneficiaries, for centuries many foreigners came to despise, reject, resist, or misuse the blessing of its institutions and cultural norms. And some Anglo-Americans too came to do the same. Perhaps that’s because most Anglo-Americans have never known (thank your public-school education monopoly for that) or have forgotten how long and hard it was to build and develop those successful characteristics and traits.
Individuals also have a natural tendency to exaggerate their own importance in the scheme of things, to view themselves as the moral center of the world, which is what the analogy of the Judeo-Christian concept of Original Sin is all about. And the Judeo-Christian message on the concept of Original Sin incorporates the belief in self-redemption through self-change. Encountering and respecting other selves then, becomes a kind of education, we learn to limit our pretensions, to develop greater respect for learning and change and for other’s views and feelings.
Or maybe its because people derive their identity in part from the important groups to which they belong. Reinhold Niebuhr warned that when self-importance occurs through one’s group identity, the process of learning to question and check it is substantially diminished. In fact, the opposite occurs, it becomes greatly enhanced. Because of that we commit ourselves much stronger and deeper to the group, becoming less concerned about outsiders. The larger and grander the abstraction, the less critical we are of the group’s claims and the greater its propensity to become absurd. The noblest aspirations are undermined by a flaw (original sin) deep in our nature. The more assured we are the greater the danger.
And groups are much more fluid and unstable in the Anglo-American sphere. Perhaps it’s because complex tribal ties and dynastic obligations, traditional forms of defense, technological growth and habits ingrained during previous eras of weaker and less responsible societal institutions and government continue to shape the expectations of those who fail to favor and resist the Anglo-American formula.
Niebuhr, recognizing the above human flaw, found that we can create a truer democracy (a better world) the “more we can overcome the pretension of embodying it perfectly.” This requires a complex mix of evil and good in actions, while avoiding being paralyzed by this into passivity or inaction (known as post-modern neo-liberal existential nihilism). A formula that creates a mentality and habit of the people to govern themselves, promote enterprise, readily join spontaneous and private activities in an ordered free society with growing human and social capital.
This amounts to a better but imperfect Anglo-American formula striving against an imperfect evil in an imperfect world, not able to achieve perfect victory or perfect justice but “just enough” to prevent further disaster and evil. By apprehending this with a sense of religious faith, pride diminishes and responsibility increases. In other words, the need to be firm in our convictions but continue to test their foundations and search for hidden assumptions and secret flaws. Tolerating a diverse and less uniform approach in global affairs is likely over time to lead to more effective and widely accepted institutions.
In the long run the choice to favor such formula, by those resisting, will in all likehood occur, if Francis Fukuyama is correct. Fukuyama believes that humanity is basically the same everywhere, the cultural differences they exhibit are developed and not given and essential. That is not to imply though that such adaptation will be quick nor not without costly even ruinous consequences for some. For as Joseph Herder’s work points out, cultural is the stuff and substance of human nature, it shapes the way we understand and define ourselves, our goals and the world. Humanity may be equal but not the same, giving rise to different and sometimes conflicting perceptions and ideas. And danger can arise from this in many ways, even when: “To be the object of contempt or patronizing tolerance…the response is often pathological exaggeration of one’s real or imaginary virtues, as resentment and hostility towards the proud, the happy the successful.” –Isaiah Berlin
“Develop and maintain an open, dynamic society at home; turn the economic energy of that society out into world trade; protect commerce throughout the world and defend the balance of power in the world’s chief geopolitical theaters; open the global system to others, even to potential competitors in time of peace; turn the system against one’s opponents in time of war; promote free-market/free-government values and institutions wherever one can…American strategy must always concern itself with these goals…Be cautious and prudent, but above all be globally engaged...Any diminution of America’s cultural vitality, commitment to liberty and enterprise, social mobility, and pluralism, and any serious decline in either the creativity of American religious faith or its denominational and theological diversity would…impair its ability to carry out that strategy.” ---Walter Russell Mead
Further readings:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/nov/15/joe-biden-enabling-communists-everywhere-he-goes/
biden Chooses 'Climate Changes' over Genocide in Opening Remarks with Chinese Dictator Xi Jinping
https://apple.news/ATzYuvoyqM6Ot9PoJg8GxEQ
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/biden_flipflops_on_us_ties_with_saudi_arabia_earning_contempt.html
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/five-big-foreign-policy-changes-gop-might-push-now-election-over
Problems With Our Elections.
by Bob W
Source; Bob W.
Monday, November 14, 2022,
All,This isn't directed at (deleted)… but rather to general comments here and in articles across the country.
First, don't fall into the trap of treating the 2022 midterms the way many treated the 2020 election… as if they reflected a legitimate expression of the will of the people who actually voted.The many problems with our elections have not yet been solved… and may never be, given the dominance of elections by Democrat machines in major urban voting enclaves.
Those enclaves are the modern equivalent of the southern Plantations that used slave labor. Democrats just switched from raising cotton and tobacco to raising the dead at election time and claiming they (Democrats) represent minorities.
The reality is that vote fraud is systemic and well-practiced across the country by Democrats. The 2020 election was such a massive victory for Trump that it required the brazen unprecedented shenanigans we all witnessed as feckless "Republican leaders" sat idly by and did exactly NOTHING!
The same game was played during the midterms… despite improvements to election processes in many Republican states, Democrat enclaves that perpetrate fraud were too well-entrenched.
How many people know that the SEIC, the most radical Left "union" on the planet, "maintains" many of the Dominion (and other malleable) voting machines? The SEIU are 100% radicalized Democrats. They see rigging elections as a public service.
It isn't to program the machines (algorithms in the code) to count in bizarre ways. Add to that the fraudulent ballots that are particularly powerful in areas with very loose vote-by-mail standards, and you have a perfect storm of fraud tools for Democrat election officials to use each election cycle.
Targeting Trump for revenge is silly… McConnell was in charge of a lot of Republican money and he pulled money from candidates in NH, AZ and other states to support the Democrat-in-Republican-clothes in Alaska. He has a lot of explaining to do, too. If self-centered blowhards like McConnell and McCarthy are simply allowed to lead the GOP in Congress, we might as well just prepare a burial site for our Constitutional Republic.
Whatever unfolds over the next two years, you can be (insert appropriate expletive here) sure that, unless serious efforts are made to break down the massive vote fraud in Democrat-controlled urban voter plantations (New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago,…), it is unlikely we can save our Constitutional Republic from the ravages of crazed Democrats lusting for complete power/control.
As for Harvard's view of Narcissistic Leaders, I found it ironic that Barack Hussein Obama was not presented as a shining example. He is the most narcissistic person who ever held the office of President… at least in my lifetime. He makes Trump look like an altar boy by comparison.
And by the way, speaking of Trump, his style is to gather what he and those advising him believe to be the best people to advise him on key issues. He listens to them (unlike a true narcissist) and he takes their advise seriously, but he will always make the final decision. We don't need leadership by committee! To claim to know what basis he uses to make his final decisions is something that simply isn't possible. We go on his track record. He has good records and bad ones. Perhaps the bad ones were those he wasn't sure about but relied on others, or perhaps he simply thought he knew better when he didn't. Aside from Trump himself, anyone who claims to know which is the case is simply being dishonest to everyone.
The anti-Trump sentiment being displayed today is from (1) those who never cared for him and (2) those who are angry at the midterm elections (as if they were honest) and feel the need to blame someone.
In either case, it is toxic to Republican conservatives and Populists who form the foundation for the MAGA movement.
You think MAGA will just die off?
Think again.
Trump will have the last word on this tomorrow.
Bob W.
Monday, November 14, 2022,
All,This isn't directed at (deleted)… but rather to general comments here and in articles across the country.
First, don't fall into the trap of treating the 2022 midterms the way many treated the 2020 election… as if they reflected a legitimate expression of the will of the people who actually voted.The many problems with our elections have not yet been solved… and may never be, given the dominance of elections by Democrat machines in major urban voting enclaves.
Those enclaves are the modern equivalent of the southern Plantations that used slave labor. Democrats just switched from raising cotton and tobacco to raising the dead at election time and claiming they (Democrats) represent minorities.
The reality is that vote fraud is systemic and well-practiced across the country by Democrats. The 2020 election was such a massive victory for Trump that it required the brazen unprecedented shenanigans we all witnessed as feckless "Republican leaders" sat idly by and did exactly NOTHING!
The same game was played during the midterms… despite improvements to election processes in many Republican states, Democrat enclaves that perpetrate fraud were too well-entrenched.
How many people know that the SEIC, the most radical Left "union" on the planet, "maintains" many of the Dominion (and other malleable) voting machines? The SEIU are 100% radicalized Democrats. They see rigging elections as a public service.
It isn't to program the machines (algorithms in the code) to count in bizarre ways. Add to that the fraudulent ballots that are particularly powerful in areas with very loose vote-by-mail standards, and you have a perfect storm of fraud tools for Democrat election officials to use each election cycle.
Targeting Trump for revenge is silly… McConnell was in charge of a lot of Republican money and he pulled money from candidates in NH, AZ and other states to support the Democrat-in-Republican-clothes in Alaska. He has a lot of explaining to do, too. If self-centered blowhards like McConnell and McCarthy are simply allowed to lead the GOP in Congress, we might as well just prepare a burial site for our Constitutional Republic.
Whatever unfolds over the next two years, you can be (insert appropriate expletive here) sure that, unless serious efforts are made to break down the massive vote fraud in Democrat-controlled urban voter plantations (New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago,…), it is unlikely we can save our Constitutional Republic from the ravages of crazed Democrats lusting for complete power/control.
As for Harvard's view of Narcissistic Leaders, I found it ironic that Barack Hussein Obama was not presented as a shining example. He is the most narcissistic person who ever held the office of President… at least in my lifetime. He makes Trump look like an altar boy by comparison.
And by the way, speaking of Trump, his style is to gather what he and those advising him believe to be the best people to advise him on key issues. He listens to them (unlike a true narcissist) and he takes their advise seriously, but he will always make the final decision. We don't need leadership by committee! To claim to know what basis he uses to make his final decisions is something that simply isn't possible. We go on his track record. He has good records and bad ones. Perhaps the bad ones were those he wasn't sure about but relied on others, or perhaps he simply thought he knew better when he didn't. Aside from Trump himself, anyone who claims to know which is the case is simply being dishonest to everyone.
The anti-Trump sentiment being displayed today is from (1) those who never cared for him and (2) those who are angry at the midterm elections (as if they were honest) and feel the need to blame someone.
In either case, it is toxic to Republican conservatives and Populists who form the foundation for the MAGA movement.
You think MAGA will just die off?
Think again.
Trump will have the last word on this tomorrow.
Bob W.
The West Is Haunted
Guest Author;
Kevin O'Neil
By Kevin O'Neil
The West is haunted.
Founded on Judeo-Christian Principles, western nations have been enabled to build the best societies in this world, none come even close to challenge that, none. They had riches poured into their laps, they hit the jackpot, to put it crudely! The family, finance, the arts, politics, science, everything was filled with an energy that flowed from the Bible and its Author.
Then the inevitable happened and they forgot from Whom their blessings flowed and now live, like Hamlet, with their father's ghost, the ghost of Christianity. The West is a haunted house. In their hearts they know that the glory has departed (any fool can see that) but are too corrupt, cowardly and sophisticated to 'man-up' and repent, turn back to the Rock, and take up the beacon which they allowed the scientists and sociologists and all their ilk to convince them to throw away. The COVID debacle may have been a G-dsend as it exposed the nakedness of our exalted intelligentsia.
How can cowards admit their error and retrace their steps? They can't, a coward cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, as it says in Revelation. It takes courage to repent and people generally avoid it like children at bath-time.
But people are not so stupid as to realise that maybe - just maybe - they could have their cake and eat it. They could publicly repent, cover themselves with sack-cloth and ashes on the street corners and, by so doing, exhibit their high virtue. They haven't been worshipping at a foreign altar, they just made a little faux pas, but are now back on track, better than ever, the New Improved Version.
The human heart is utterly corrupt and deceitful. It's like mercury under G-d's finger, He presses down and it slips out from under, keeping its pride intact. So-called 'self-loathing' is really 'self-loving' in disguise. But G-d isn't fooled.
When Hamlet was visited by the ghost of his father and commanded to do the right thing and avenge his murder, Hamlet spent the entire play in indecision. He didn't have the courage to give the ghost a bit of his mind, neither did he have the courage to execute vengeance. "To be or not to be..." Fatal indecision!
The West must come to terms with the ghost in the house, or else she's history.
Guest Author;
Kevin O'Neil
By Kevin O'Neil
The West is haunted.
Founded on Judeo-Christian Principles, western nations have been enabled to build the best societies in this world, none come even close to challenge that, none. They had riches poured into their laps, they hit the jackpot, to put it crudely! The family, finance, the arts, politics, science, everything was filled with an energy that flowed from the Bible and its Author.
Then the inevitable happened and they forgot from Whom their blessings flowed and now live, like Hamlet, with their father's ghost, the ghost of Christianity. The West is a haunted house. In their hearts they know that the glory has departed (any fool can see that) but are too corrupt, cowardly and sophisticated to 'man-up' and repent, turn back to the Rock, and take up the beacon which they allowed the scientists and sociologists and all their ilk to convince them to throw away. The COVID debacle may have been a G-dsend as it exposed the nakedness of our exalted intelligentsia.
How can cowards admit their error and retrace their steps? They can't, a coward cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, as it says in Revelation. It takes courage to repent and people generally avoid it like children at bath-time.
But people are not so stupid as to realise that maybe - just maybe - they could have their cake and eat it. They could publicly repent, cover themselves with sack-cloth and ashes on the street corners and, by so doing, exhibit their high virtue. They haven't been worshipping at a foreign altar, they just made a little faux pas, but are now back on track, better than ever, the New Improved Version.
The human heart is utterly corrupt and deceitful. It's like mercury under G-d's finger, He presses down and it slips out from under, keeping its pride intact. So-called 'self-loathing' is really 'self-loving' in disguise. But G-d isn't fooled.
When Hamlet was visited by the ghost of his father and commanded to do the right thing and avenge his murder, Hamlet spent the entire play in indecision. He didn't have the courage to give the ghost a bit of his mind, neither did he have the courage to execute vengeance. "To be or not to be..." Fatal indecision!
The West must come to terms with the ghost in the house, or else she's history.
I have been silent for too long.
The Tradesman:
Something I found on Twitter;
cindyseestruth
@cindyseestruth
· 3h
#VIRGINIA...... “YOU JUST MADE ME A FELON!” Virginia House passes Ban on AR-15 style rifles, Suppressors & High Capacity Magazines... AND all hell breaks loose as law enforcement forces Americans out onto the street as their anger erupts
Below is one response to that twitter post, but added to, and paraphrased by me, with my apologies to the original poster;
All across America, Law abiding Americans are under a vicious attack by, "oligarchic elitist puppet masters", through the political machinations of the Democratic Party. They are using Legislative and Propaganda means, via the Controlled Media to destroy us and the Constitution. If we don't get rid of them in Nov. we will lose America to Lying Socialists Elitists, who do not have Americas best interests at heart. In fact they have no American interests at heart, only their own personal interests and aggrandizement.
This ATTACK is not just happening in Virginia. It is happening in EVERY Democratic/Socialist Controlled State in the Union. To effectively start fighting back against this aggression, we can begin by starting a mass letter & postcard campaign which will 'START THE FIGHT' against the Elitists in power. It will have the added benefit of uniting political opposition, and bolstering those in power who are set against them. Unfortunately it will only be a START, and that start needs to include All the various factions and political groups who disagree with the agendas of the Democrats.
The Letters and Postcards must detail the disgust loyal law abiding Americans have for the tactics and outright corruption sponsored by the D's. In fact they need to outright condemn them. We need to use the truth against them and their "Illusion of Truth" Propaganda they want us to believe just because it is repeated over and over. That is exactly how that Propaganda works. It starts with a lie, added to that is a small truth everyone will recognize, and repeat many many times. After enough repetitions, the people associate the lie with truth in their minds. The Democrats and their hidden Masters are extremely proficient at that method of bluffing the public.
These are the same tactics and lies that the original Fascists in Italy and Germany used to suppress the outrage of honorable citizens, to be able to set up their bloody regimes. Regimes which were responsible for between 70 & 85 Million deaths. DO WE WANT THAT TO HAPPEN HERE BECAUSE OF THE DEMOCRATS? I don't think so. Rest assured, it will happen if we don't curtail the Democrats political power until they come to their senses and publicly refute their hidden masters.
All honorable Americans, no matter what their personal politics, need to band together to stop the current Elitist Democratic/Socialists, and their hidden Puppet Masters, from ever repeating what happened in WW II when Germany and Italy succumbed to the siren song of Socialism. We need to VOTE AGAINST EVERY DEMOCRAT in every Election until either their political power is forever broken, or the rational Americans who believe in our Republic, and the original Democratic Party Principles encompassed within the Constitution, change that party back to a Loyal American Party.
If we as Americans wish to preserve the Republic, and all that it stands for, we must act now to eliminate this serious threat to the Constitution and to our Liberty and Freedom.
The Tradesman
What We Have Lost.
by The Tradesman 12/19
Originally our Founding Fathers created an experiment in Governance that was unprecedented. It was the People governed by themselves and the methods of that governance was categorized within the US Constitution. That Constitution was not what controlled the people, it was intended to govern the actions of the Government. Within it's parameters it set out what was and what was not allowed for the Governments to do unless 3/4 of the people wanted to interpret it's article or articles in a slightly different way than originally stated. In effect it was a Clarification the people put on themselves without changing the basic structure of that Constitution.
Under the Constitution as originally interpreted, The States were Sovereign Nations unto themselves but banded together in a perpetual union for the mutual protection and mutual benefits for all. The Federal central government was controlled by the states who in turn were controlled by their citizens. The States were controlled by their individual Constitutions originally, and the overriding political theory was; The states could decide how they wanted their laws to be made, and if people were not satisfied they could change them or move to another State were the laws were more to their liking. At that point, the Bill of Rights only pertained to laws the Federal Government enacted.
As time went on, Things were being slowly changed by Amendments to the Constitution. Again those Amendments by their very nature, are not permanent, and do not create a permanent change to the Original strictures of the Constitution. All they do, and were intended to do, was to allow the following generations to interpret the legal meanings of the Constitution and what it impacted, as determined by a 3/4 majority of the people themselves.
After the Civil War there was a forced change to the interpretation of the Constitution. Some of it was necessary to redress past improper racial and religious intolerance and discrimination. Some of the provisions were devastating to the original intent of the Constitution that allowed the Federal government supreme control over the States and the people. That was done through the 14th amendment. the vast majority of the 14th Amendment is right and proper in restoring rights that were wrongly stripped from a class of Americans, for the 84 years the Constitution was in effect. Later interpretations by the Court system used it to grant certain rights it's original meaning did not intend to grant, and it was not done by the parliamentary process of legislation. Specifically Birthright citizenship without proper restrictions the original legislators intended. See; http://www.14thamendment.us/amendment/14th_amendment.html for what the sponsors of that Amendment intended it to be and how it has been expanded by Justices Legislating from the bench.
Now we come to thinks that have skewed over the last 110 years. Starting with Theodore Roosevelt and his idea of classic Liberalism. Originally, Liberalism was not intended to destroy businesses, but instead to temper the monopolistic industrial capitalism the industrial age brought forth. Roosevelt made it clear in his first State of the Union message what he wanted for America; “The old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.” It was the meager beginnings of the Socialist Welfare State to come.
Now enters the 16th Amendment. That Amendment further abrogated the rights of the people and strengthened the power of the Federal central government by ignoring the Constitutional principle of an apportioned taxation. Apportioned Taxation means based upon the population of the state, in proportion to the rest of the states. Example, if a state was home to 10% of the total population of the nation as found by the census, that state's share of any federal income tax would be 10% of the total tax burden to be levied. Now in excess of that the government taxes the income of each citizen at the SAME rate percentage wise.
The 17th Amendment was the Amendment that Stripped the States of their Constitutional control of the Senators who were supposed to Represent the States interests in Congress as determined by the State Legislatures. The Senators were never meant to directly be elected by the people nor to directly represent the people. With that Amendment the Senators were only responsible to their own political party.
Lets speak about the hidden side of Socialism before I go on, since it more than any other thing, is responsible for most of the loss we have experienced. Socialism presents itself as a protectorate for the people to make them Equal in every aspect. If Socialism really intended to do what it's creators implied it would do, is to make everyone equally poor and stifle out every innovation and advancement unless that advancement added to more total control by the Socialist Leaders. A central government like that is not desirable. It would only tend to make cookie cutter individuals marching to the same tune. In reality it does not represent all of the people, it represents a handful of the people who want to give orders to the rest of the people, without any constraints whatsoever. It centralizes power in that handful of people, and they in turn usually abuse it from the beginning.
Now we turn to the FDR administration. It was the Administration which under the cover of "helping" the population during the Great Depression, in fact extended that depression by institution Controls to Regulate but instead hindered. They in one form or another are still with us today, and we are paying for them even though they have not solved any of the underlying problems. That was the start of general institutionalized Socialism in the US. The basic problem is, it's been initiated slowly over the generations to the point the current generation does not know what it has lost in self actualization, and legality.
The sad fact is; The originators of those processes have always been a part of America, since before it's beginnings as a Nation of Sovereign States. They were the ones who wanted to elect G. Washington King so they could emulate the British House of Lords in the new nation. They were the ones who demanded that Slavery be allowed to benefit themselves financially. They were the ones who fought the end of slavery. After the civil war, they saw the writing on the wall, they camouflaged themselves and pretended to be Champions of the oppressed. All except the Dixiecrat's who refused to change from the Antebellum ways until the JFK administration. All those changes were initiated and promoted by what is now the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is the modern party of excessive taxation.
Listing that taxation;
The inheritance tax. Accounts Receivable Tax. Building Permit Tax. CDL license Tax. Cigarette Tax. Corporate Income Tax. Dog License Tax. Excise Taxes. Federal Income Tax. Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA). Fishing License Tax. Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax.Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon avg.). Gross Receipts Tax. Hunting License Tax.Inheritance Tax. Inventory Tax. IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax).License Plate/ Registration tax. Liquor Tax. Luxury Taxes. Marriage License Tax. Medicare Tax. Personal Property Tax.Property Tax. Real Estate Tax. Service Charge Tax. Social Security Tax (FICA) (which the government stole). Road Usage Tax. Recreational Vehicle Tax. Sales Tax. School Tax. State Income Tax. State Unemployment Tax (SUTA).Telephone Federal Excise Tax. Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax. Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes. Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax. Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax. Telephone State and Local Tax. Telephone Usage Charge Tax. Utility Taxes. Vehicle Sales Tax. Watercraft Registration Tax. Well Permit Tax. Workers Compensation Tax.
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'
What I have listed is only the beginnings of what we have lost, and does not cover what we stand to lose unless we band together and take back our rightful control over our elected Representatives who profess to be the Government when the People themselves who are the Government.
The Tradesman
by The Tradesman 12/19
Originally our Founding Fathers created an experiment in Governance that was unprecedented. It was the People governed by themselves and the methods of that governance was categorized within the US Constitution. That Constitution was not what controlled the people, it was intended to govern the actions of the Government. Within it's parameters it set out what was and what was not allowed for the Governments to do unless 3/4 of the people wanted to interpret it's article or articles in a slightly different way than originally stated. In effect it was a Clarification the people put on themselves without changing the basic structure of that Constitution.
Under the Constitution as originally interpreted, The States were Sovereign Nations unto themselves but banded together in a perpetual union for the mutual protection and mutual benefits for all. The Federal central government was controlled by the states who in turn were controlled by their citizens. The States were controlled by their individual Constitutions originally, and the overriding political theory was; The states could decide how they wanted their laws to be made, and if people were not satisfied they could change them or move to another State were the laws were more to their liking. At that point, the Bill of Rights only pertained to laws the Federal Government enacted.
As time went on, Things were being slowly changed by Amendments to the Constitution. Again those Amendments by their very nature, are not permanent, and do not create a permanent change to the Original strictures of the Constitution. All they do, and were intended to do, was to allow the following generations to interpret the legal meanings of the Constitution and what it impacted, as determined by a 3/4 majority of the people themselves.
After the Civil War there was a forced change to the interpretation of the Constitution. Some of it was necessary to redress past improper racial and religious intolerance and discrimination. Some of the provisions were devastating to the original intent of the Constitution that allowed the Federal government supreme control over the States and the people. That was done through the 14th amendment. the vast majority of the 14th Amendment is right and proper in restoring rights that were wrongly stripped from a class of Americans, for the 84 years the Constitution was in effect. Later interpretations by the Court system used it to grant certain rights it's original meaning did not intend to grant, and it was not done by the parliamentary process of legislation. Specifically Birthright citizenship without proper restrictions the original legislators intended. See; http://www.14thamendment.us/amendment/14th_amendment.html for what the sponsors of that Amendment intended it to be and how it has been expanded by Justices Legislating from the bench.
Now we come to thinks that have skewed over the last 110 years. Starting with Theodore Roosevelt and his idea of classic Liberalism. Originally, Liberalism was not intended to destroy businesses, but instead to temper the monopolistic industrial capitalism the industrial age brought forth. Roosevelt made it clear in his first State of the Union message what he wanted for America; “The old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.” It was the meager beginnings of the Socialist Welfare State to come.
Now enters the 16th Amendment. That Amendment further abrogated the rights of the people and strengthened the power of the Federal central government by ignoring the Constitutional principle of an apportioned taxation. Apportioned Taxation means based upon the population of the state, in proportion to the rest of the states. Example, if a state was home to 10% of the total population of the nation as found by the census, that state's share of any federal income tax would be 10% of the total tax burden to be levied. Now in excess of that the government taxes the income of each citizen at the SAME rate percentage wise.
The 17th Amendment was the Amendment that Stripped the States of their Constitutional control of the Senators who were supposed to Represent the States interests in Congress as determined by the State Legislatures. The Senators were never meant to directly be elected by the people nor to directly represent the people. With that Amendment the Senators were only responsible to their own political party.
Lets speak about the hidden side of Socialism before I go on, since it more than any other thing, is responsible for most of the loss we have experienced. Socialism presents itself as a protectorate for the people to make them Equal in every aspect. If Socialism really intended to do what it's creators implied it would do, is to make everyone equally poor and stifle out every innovation and advancement unless that advancement added to more total control by the Socialist Leaders. A central government like that is not desirable. It would only tend to make cookie cutter individuals marching to the same tune. In reality it does not represent all of the people, it represents a handful of the people who want to give orders to the rest of the people, without any constraints whatsoever. It centralizes power in that handful of people, and they in turn usually abuse it from the beginning.
Now we turn to the FDR administration. It was the Administration which under the cover of "helping" the population during the Great Depression, in fact extended that depression by institution Controls to Regulate but instead hindered. They in one form or another are still with us today, and we are paying for them even though they have not solved any of the underlying problems. That was the start of general institutionalized Socialism in the US. The basic problem is, it's been initiated slowly over the generations to the point the current generation does not know what it has lost in self actualization, and legality.
The sad fact is; The originators of those processes have always been a part of America, since before it's beginnings as a Nation of Sovereign States. They were the ones who wanted to elect G. Washington King so they could emulate the British House of Lords in the new nation. They were the ones who demanded that Slavery be allowed to benefit themselves financially. They were the ones who fought the end of slavery. After the civil war, they saw the writing on the wall, they camouflaged themselves and pretended to be Champions of the oppressed. All except the Dixiecrat's who refused to change from the Antebellum ways until the JFK administration. All those changes were initiated and promoted by what is now the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is the modern party of excessive taxation.
Listing that taxation;
The inheritance tax. Accounts Receivable Tax. Building Permit Tax. CDL license Tax. Cigarette Tax. Corporate Income Tax. Dog License Tax. Excise Taxes. Federal Income Tax. Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA). Fishing License Tax. Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax.Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon avg.). Gross Receipts Tax. Hunting License Tax.Inheritance Tax. Inventory Tax. IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax).License Plate/ Registration tax. Liquor Tax. Luxury Taxes. Marriage License Tax. Medicare Tax. Personal Property Tax.Property Tax. Real Estate Tax. Service Charge Tax. Social Security Tax (FICA) (which the government stole). Road Usage Tax. Recreational Vehicle Tax. Sales Tax. School Tax. State Income Tax. State Unemployment Tax (SUTA).Telephone Federal Excise Tax. Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax. Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes. Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax. Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax. Telephone State and Local Tax. Telephone Usage Charge Tax. Utility Taxes. Vehicle Sales Tax. Watercraft Registration Tax. Well Permit Tax. Workers Compensation Tax.
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'
What I have listed is only the beginnings of what we have lost, and does not cover what we stand to lose unless we band together and take back our rightful control over our elected Representatives who profess to be the Government when the People themselves who are the Government.
The Tradesman
A war is being waged against America
By The Tradesman 12/2019
A clandestine war is being waged against America and Her Moral Traditions and no one seems to know about it.
The following are my personal opinions and as such are protected by the First Amendment on Freedom of Speech, Political Speech, Freedom of Religion Religious Beliefs Speech. The foregoing is my legal disclaimer.
I have been silent for too long. What is happening to America is criminal. I am not Politically Correct now and will never will be. Political Correctness is one of the weapons that is being used by our enemies, to shatter the Societal Standards, the Moral Standards, the Religious Standards. The Common Decency, the Honesty and Integrity, and everything else that once was decent and commonplace, and practiced as accepted methods of conduct, on how we were supposed to comport ourselves with each other both publicly and privately. What I am going to say, will be called by many names they consider vile and unacceptable, by the very perpetrators who are bent on ending our Self Governance, and destroying our lives.
Where to start, where to start? Lets begin with the current perversion agenda being touted and promoted by various factions we call the Left, but in fact are more evil than anything we may consider even remotely human, let alone humane. The blithering twisted sycophants to this evil, have cropped up all over the world in double quick time. I consider them minions of the Devil himself. These people have been using everything at their command to overturn Accepted Family Values, Accepted Ethical Values, Accepted Standards of interpersonal conduct. They have touted what was once considered unnatural. Things like Pederasty, Pedophilia, Murder of Innocent Babies, just for starters.
These God forsaken miscreants actually are trying to make our children believe that sex, drugs, violence is completely acceptable behavior between an adult and a child. They promote a sadistic misogynistic set of practices as a Religion. They teach our young that anything they say to do is OK to do. They even go so far as to supplant Christian and Judaic beliefs with Satanic Rituals. they preach the falsehood that there are over 46 different genders instead of two sexes. This is proselytized under the color of law, and anyone who disagrees or calls foul is subject to legal repercussions.
The question is; why are they doing that? They are doing that to prevent anyone from challenging their ascension to even higher political power and money.The leaders feel they are entitled to use and abuse anyone not of their cliques and peer groups. They are behind human sex trafficking on a worldwide scale. They have absolutely no respect for any human life but their own.
Lets list some things they have brought about which 20 years ago would have condemned them. Here is where it goes against Political Correctness. Much of which has been deemed legal by Supreme Court Rulings that were once considered Unconstitutional until a highly partisan Liberal faction gained control of the Supreme Court. Again, my Political Opinion.
Consider the laws,regulations, and lower court rulings that allow or force someone to go against their Religious beliefs and force them to conform to and promote or pay for situations that they are Religiously against. Abortion, Contraception,celebrating what was once considered unnatural or bestial acts. Homosexuality and Homosexual practices. Lesbianism and Lesbian practices, Bestiality and Bestial sexual practices. I'm not saying they should be punished for those practices, just not be allowed to flaunt them as the natural order of things, because they are not. Especially where it comes to training children.
It was not enough for them to allow those to be decriminalized, they now try and force feed and propagandize our children, that those acts are perfectly natural and acceptable. There are even places that promote the ideology that forced pedophilia and sex with children are sanctioned by law. I kid you not, they are trying to get a law passed to that effect in a Western State I will not name. The basic problem is;Liberals belief in a “living” Constitution that can be bent, twisted, and broken by ideologies and liberal judges to fit their view of what an American utopia should look like. They ignore rights they don’t like (like the 2nd Amendment) and create nonexistent rights they do want by deliberately misinterpreting the Constitutional laws that pertain.
The same people who want to criminalize Christianity and Judaism as unhealthy and obsolete practices, and want to institute Islamic Sharia Law that condemns all those practices with the exception of sanctioned child sex, child forced marriage, beating of women and treating them the same as slaves were treated before the Civil War, killing homosexuals ans Lesbians. In short Islam is against everything that the Progressives are pushing, but the progressive handlers are in fact pushing Islam, thinking they can control it once they take total control. Islam believes in draconian punishments for not conforming to their religion or paying an ongoing bribe to be allowed to be left alone. Beheading for failure to convert to Islam or rejecting Islam. Oh yes the list is ongoing.
What I want to see is for people to start standing up for what's right and fighting to remove the scum who have beleaguered our way of life to enhance their own. This is an actual war, and in war there is violence and killing. To date it has been the innocent who have been killed and maimed. It's time us bring the fire to the enemy and root them out even if it means exterminating them like they will exterminate us given the chance.
America was built on the principles of Freedom, Truth, Honor, Justice, and Individual Responsibility. We must re-affirm those principles and use them to expose the Left and their minions for what they are. We must stop being afraid of what they will call us or how they will use the color of law to silence us. What they propose and promote is vile in the extreme. Have we succumbed to the falsehoods of Political Correctness used as a weapon, to subvert our normal sense of fair play and compassion into lockstep with their preferred perversions?
I am not advocating that we should condemn those who are built different than us. I fully agree we must at the very least TOLERATE them. Tolerance does not mean we agree with them, nor does it mean we must ostracize or ridicule them if we don't agree with their life styles unless they are actually hurting someone with those lifestyles. Neither does it mean they or the Government have the right to force us to agree with them through color of law like they now are doing. The societal standards must be reset back to what was once accepted as proper. The Parents not the schools must be responsible for the moral training of their kids. The religions that advocate any violence to others or advocate against others must be prevented from trying to force those precepts on the public. that goes for the Government also.
The current trends, pushed by the small but vocal factions, which are using and twisting our highest principles to indoctrinate and legalize those precepts into enforced public conformity must be overruled by the largest majority of the people, not just 50% + 1. Standards like our Republic was built on and prospered with for over 243 years must be the basis for our continuance into the future as a Nation. For way too long the minorities have been used by the hidden faction to subvert our common sense responses as hateful, have used our highest values to set up unworkable situations, then used the color of law and the color of religion,as enforcement pretending to be appalled by non-compliance as anti-social evil. Those Satanic controlling yet hidden factions, have basically used mind controlling Propaganda, lies, horrific innuendos, to brainwash the public and the minorities into believing the situations the hidden controllers want are the only decent and correct ones.
No matter what your personal beliefs are, no matter what your personal lifestyles are, we must use the essence of the Ten Commandments as a guide to a workable and prosperous society. Leaving the Religious side of those Commandments aside, the Moral Principles they embrace and explain, are the principles that protect both the Individuals and the Society when used as the basis for any society. They must also be adhered to voluntarily, by the People and their Governments. They must be adopted by Societies as the basis for those societies.
There is no Social Justice, there is only the concept of Equal Justice. Social Justice is the perversion of the concept of Equal Justice by the hidden controllers. The ideology of stripping one segment of societies rights to reimburse another segments for past practices is the same in effect as re-instituting those past practices not redeeming past treatment. The same goes for Equal Opportunity. Equal Opportunity does not mead getting a handout, it means having a level playing field to be able to work for a better lifestyle. In fact everything has always been Root Hog or Die, instead of sitting back complaining and expecting everything.
Deliberate ignoring of the law in the name of compassion, by other Government entities to advance a questionable belief and which puts public safety at risk, is another agenda pushed on Americans by the same hidden elitists to further their agendas of destruction, and needs to be stopped, forcibly if necessary. There are many things which have been forced on the American Public that need to be eliminated, or changed to the benefit of the largest majority of the public, not just 50% + 1. In fact everything specifically protected by the Written Constitution needs to be re-instituted and make the Government subject to the rules too. No more passing a law by Congress for the people and exempting themselves from it.Congress forgets it's our hired servants, not our masters.
The Tradesman
By The Tradesman 12/2019
A clandestine war is being waged against America and Her Moral Traditions and no one seems to know about it.
The following are my personal opinions and as such are protected by the First Amendment on Freedom of Speech, Political Speech, Freedom of Religion Religious Beliefs Speech. The foregoing is my legal disclaimer.
I have been silent for too long. What is happening to America is criminal. I am not Politically Correct now and will never will be. Political Correctness is one of the weapons that is being used by our enemies, to shatter the Societal Standards, the Moral Standards, the Religious Standards. The Common Decency, the Honesty and Integrity, and everything else that once was decent and commonplace, and practiced as accepted methods of conduct, on how we were supposed to comport ourselves with each other both publicly and privately. What I am going to say, will be called by many names they consider vile and unacceptable, by the very perpetrators who are bent on ending our Self Governance, and destroying our lives.
Where to start, where to start? Lets begin with the current perversion agenda being touted and promoted by various factions we call the Left, but in fact are more evil than anything we may consider even remotely human, let alone humane. The blithering twisted sycophants to this evil, have cropped up all over the world in double quick time. I consider them minions of the Devil himself. These people have been using everything at their command to overturn Accepted Family Values, Accepted Ethical Values, Accepted Standards of interpersonal conduct. They have touted what was once considered unnatural. Things like Pederasty, Pedophilia, Murder of Innocent Babies, just for starters.
These God forsaken miscreants actually are trying to make our children believe that sex, drugs, violence is completely acceptable behavior between an adult and a child. They promote a sadistic misogynistic set of practices as a Religion. They teach our young that anything they say to do is OK to do. They even go so far as to supplant Christian and Judaic beliefs with Satanic Rituals. they preach the falsehood that there are over 46 different genders instead of two sexes. This is proselytized under the color of law, and anyone who disagrees or calls foul is subject to legal repercussions.
The question is; why are they doing that? They are doing that to prevent anyone from challenging their ascension to even higher political power and money.The leaders feel they are entitled to use and abuse anyone not of their cliques and peer groups. They are behind human sex trafficking on a worldwide scale. They have absolutely no respect for any human life but their own.
Lets list some things they have brought about which 20 years ago would have condemned them. Here is where it goes against Political Correctness. Much of which has been deemed legal by Supreme Court Rulings that were once considered Unconstitutional until a highly partisan Liberal faction gained control of the Supreme Court. Again, my Political Opinion.
Consider the laws,regulations, and lower court rulings that allow or force someone to go against their Religious beliefs and force them to conform to and promote or pay for situations that they are Religiously against. Abortion, Contraception,celebrating what was once considered unnatural or bestial acts. Homosexuality and Homosexual practices. Lesbianism and Lesbian practices, Bestiality and Bestial sexual practices. I'm not saying they should be punished for those practices, just not be allowed to flaunt them as the natural order of things, because they are not. Especially where it comes to training children.
It was not enough for them to allow those to be decriminalized, they now try and force feed and propagandize our children, that those acts are perfectly natural and acceptable. There are even places that promote the ideology that forced pedophilia and sex with children are sanctioned by law. I kid you not, they are trying to get a law passed to that effect in a Western State I will not name. The basic problem is;Liberals belief in a “living” Constitution that can be bent, twisted, and broken by ideologies and liberal judges to fit their view of what an American utopia should look like. They ignore rights they don’t like (like the 2nd Amendment) and create nonexistent rights they do want by deliberately misinterpreting the Constitutional laws that pertain.
The same people who want to criminalize Christianity and Judaism as unhealthy and obsolete practices, and want to institute Islamic Sharia Law that condemns all those practices with the exception of sanctioned child sex, child forced marriage, beating of women and treating them the same as slaves were treated before the Civil War, killing homosexuals ans Lesbians. In short Islam is against everything that the Progressives are pushing, but the progressive handlers are in fact pushing Islam, thinking they can control it once they take total control. Islam believes in draconian punishments for not conforming to their religion or paying an ongoing bribe to be allowed to be left alone. Beheading for failure to convert to Islam or rejecting Islam. Oh yes the list is ongoing.
What I want to see is for people to start standing up for what's right and fighting to remove the scum who have beleaguered our way of life to enhance their own. This is an actual war, and in war there is violence and killing. To date it has been the innocent who have been killed and maimed. It's time us bring the fire to the enemy and root them out even if it means exterminating them like they will exterminate us given the chance.
America was built on the principles of Freedom, Truth, Honor, Justice, and Individual Responsibility. We must re-affirm those principles and use them to expose the Left and their minions for what they are. We must stop being afraid of what they will call us or how they will use the color of law to silence us. What they propose and promote is vile in the extreme. Have we succumbed to the falsehoods of Political Correctness used as a weapon, to subvert our normal sense of fair play and compassion into lockstep with their preferred perversions?
I am not advocating that we should condemn those who are built different than us. I fully agree we must at the very least TOLERATE them. Tolerance does not mean we agree with them, nor does it mean we must ostracize or ridicule them if we don't agree with their life styles unless they are actually hurting someone with those lifestyles. Neither does it mean they or the Government have the right to force us to agree with them through color of law like they now are doing. The societal standards must be reset back to what was once accepted as proper. The Parents not the schools must be responsible for the moral training of their kids. The religions that advocate any violence to others or advocate against others must be prevented from trying to force those precepts on the public. that goes for the Government also.
The current trends, pushed by the small but vocal factions, which are using and twisting our highest principles to indoctrinate and legalize those precepts into enforced public conformity must be overruled by the largest majority of the people, not just 50% + 1. Standards like our Republic was built on and prospered with for over 243 years must be the basis for our continuance into the future as a Nation. For way too long the minorities have been used by the hidden faction to subvert our common sense responses as hateful, have used our highest values to set up unworkable situations, then used the color of law and the color of religion,as enforcement pretending to be appalled by non-compliance as anti-social evil. Those Satanic controlling yet hidden factions, have basically used mind controlling Propaganda, lies, horrific innuendos, to brainwash the public and the minorities into believing the situations the hidden controllers want are the only decent and correct ones.
No matter what your personal beliefs are, no matter what your personal lifestyles are, we must use the essence of the Ten Commandments as a guide to a workable and prosperous society. Leaving the Religious side of those Commandments aside, the Moral Principles they embrace and explain, are the principles that protect both the Individuals and the Society when used as the basis for any society. They must also be adhered to voluntarily, by the People and their Governments. They must be adopted by Societies as the basis for those societies.
There is no Social Justice, there is only the concept of Equal Justice. Social Justice is the perversion of the concept of Equal Justice by the hidden controllers. The ideology of stripping one segment of societies rights to reimburse another segments for past practices is the same in effect as re-instituting those past practices not redeeming past treatment. The same goes for Equal Opportunity. Equal Opportunity does not mead getting a handout, it means having a level playing field to be able to work for a better lifestyle. In fact everything has always been Root Hog or Die, instead of sitting back complaining and expecting everything.
Deliberate ignoring of the law in the name of compassion, by other Government entities to advance a questionable belief and which puts public safety at risk, is another agenda pushed on Americans by the same hidden elitists to further their agendas of destruction, and needs to be stopped, forcibly if necessary. There are many things which have been forced on the American Public that need to be eliminated, or changed to the benefit of the largest majority of the public, not just 50% + 1. In fact everything specifically protected by the Written Constitution needs to be re-instituted and make the Government subject to the rules too. No more passing a law by Congress for the people and exempting themselves from it.Congress forgets it's our hired servants, not our masters.
The Tradesman