May 03, 2017
Dems try to figure why they lost 2016..
Jack Kemp
http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/2017/05/5_1_2017_4_44.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/cartoons/2017/05/5_1_2017_4_44.html
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Another Great Read from Victor Davis Hansen
Wil Wirtanen
As usual VDH nails it
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447231/why-progressives-lie-leftist-agenda-requires-deception
Wil Wirtanen
As usual VDH nails it
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447231/why-progressives-lie-leftist-agenda-requires-deception
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May 02, 2017
Petition to Veto Budget Deal
Timothy Birdnow
I started at petition at the White House website urging the President to veto the budget deal. Everyone should sign it.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/veto-proposed-federal-budget
Trump has to find his backbone sooner than soon. He needs to do this now, not when it is too late.
I started at petition at the White House website urging the President to veto the budget deal. Everyone should sign it.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/veto-proposed-federal-budget
Trump has to find his backbone sooner than soon. He needs to do this now, not when it is too late.
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Trump Surrenders the RIGHT to Build a Border Wall with Budget Deal
timothy Birdnow
Turns out this budget deal is even worse than we thought; not only does it not fund a border wall, it actually forbids President Trump from building one despite the fact that it was authorized by a previous Congress. So if Mexico volunteers the money Trump still cannot build it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/05/01/daily-202-eight-ways-trump-got-rolled-in-his-first-budget-negotiation/590687f2e9b69b3a72331f09/
And the World's Greatest Negotiator is happy with this deal, promising to sign it!
Pardon moi French, but what the HELL is going on?
Trump must know he will get the blame for this and that it will be trumpeted to all and sundry that he broke his promise. He must know that the border wall was the cornerstone of his election, that this and Obamacare were the two primary reasons why he is where he is. He must know this will quite possibly cost the GOP one or both branches of Congress in two years and that once that happens Trump will be neutered like a dog. He must understand that this will likely make him a one term President.
Was there a deal made with Chuckie Schumer? Did perhaps the smelly old Schu promise to support a tweaking of Obamacare in return for this? If so then Trump is a bigger fool than any have taken him for; Schumer won't keep any promise that materially benefits Trump or the GOP.
Trump was elected to do certain things and he is failing to do them. He wasn't elected because America wanted another politician but because America wanted Shiva, the destroyer. Trump's mission was to smash the rotten structure that is Washington, not join them. If he continues to play footsie with them he will be a one term President.
Trump desperately needs to veto this. Why? Well, first it stinks. Second, conventional wisdom says that Congress gets blamed when there is a government shutdown. If so, why shouldn't Trump allow it to happen? Even if it won't go that way, so what? It might cost Trump some immediate popularity, but he's flirting with disaster in two years anyway, so why not? It is vital he make a stand now rather than wait until he is out of options. He cannot possibly think he'll be in a stronger position than at present. The demands of the Democrats and the Fake News Media will only increase, not decrease. Failure to stand up to bullies leads to bloody noses and stolen lunch money; better to take the risk of a beating now than to guarantee numerous beatings later.
Frankly, Trump holds the cards. I am not sure who is advising him but whoever they are they should be fired. (I fear it is his darling little daughter Ivanka, who wants to be loved by the Establishmment.) Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly! Trump is buzzing around where he oughtn't.
He's a street fighter who has decided to become a gentleman. I hate to inform him, but mongrels are never accepted in polite society and those nouveau rich are always treated with at best smug condescension. He will never be one of them. The best thing eh can do is enact his agenda and let history rehabilitate his memory. That's what Reagan did; the beautiful people hated Reagan, but now everyone has to speak well of him. Trump should learn this.
And he will only succeed if he takes a stand and smacks his opponents down. He can't count on his pseudo-friends in the GOP, who have always been rooting for his failure. It's time to fight, Mr. President!
VETO THAT DAMNED BILL!
Turns out this budget deal is even worse than we thought; not only does it not fund a border wall, it actually forbids President Trump from building one despite the fact that it was authorized by a previous Congress. So if Mexico volunteers the money Trump still cannot build it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/05/01/daily-202-eight-ways-trump-got-rolled-in-his-first-budget-negotiation/590687f2e9b69b3a72331f09/
And the World's Greatest Negotiator is happy with this deal, promising to sign it!
Pardon moi French, but what the HELL is going on?
Trump must know he will get the blame for this and that it will be trumpeted to all and sundry that he broke his promise. He must know that the border wall was the cornerstone of his election, that this and Obamacare were the two primary reasons why he is where he is. He must know this will quite possibly cost the GOP one or both branches of Congress in two years and that once that happens Trump will be neutered like a dog. He must understand that this will likely make him a one term President.
Was there a deal made with Chuckie Schumer? Did perhaps the smelly old Schu promise to support a tweaking of Obamacare in return for this? If so then Trump is a bigger fool than any have taken him for; Schumer won't keep any promise that materially benefits Trump or the GOP.
Trump was elected to do certain things and he is failing to do them. He wasn't elected because America wanted another politician but because America wanted Shiva, the destroyer. Trump's mission was to smash the rotten structure that is Washington, not join them. If he continues to play footsie with them he will be a one term President.
Trump desperately needs to veto this. Why? Well, first it stinks. Second, conventional wisdom says that Congress gets blamed when there is a government shutdown. If so, why shouldn't Trump allow it to happen? Even if it won't go that way, so what? It might cost Trump some immediate popularity, but he's flirting with disaster in two years anyway, so why not? It is vital he make a stand now rather than wait until he is out of options. He cannot possibly think he'll be in a stronger position than at present. The demands of the Democrats and the Fake News Media will only increase, not decrease. Failure to stand up to bullies leads to bloody noses and stolen lunch money; better to take the risk of a beating now than to guarantee numerous beatings later.
Frankly, Trump holds the cards. I am not sure who is advising him but whoever they are they should be fired. (I fear it is his darling little daughter Ivanka, who wants to be loved by the Establishmment.) Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly! Trump is buzzing around where he oughtn't.
He's a street fighter who has decided to become a gentleman. I hate to inform him, but mongrels are never accepted in polite society and those nouveau rich are always treated with at best smug condescension. He will never be one of them. The best thing eh can do is enact his agenda and let history rehabilitate his memory. That's what Reagan did; the beautiful people hated Reagan, but now everyone has to speak well of him. Trump should learn this.
And he will only succeed if he takes a stand and smacks his opponents down. He can't count on his pseudo-friends in the GOP, who have always been rooting for his failure. It's time to fight, Mr. President!
VETO THAT DAMNED BILL!
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Why Aren't We Punishing Traitors?
Timothy Birdnow
An FBI translator with top secret clearance lied to her bosses and went into ISIS territory to marry a German member of the Islamic State, but returned to the U.S. She has been given leniency by the government.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/investigates-fbi-syria-greene/
Quesiton; does this not fit the definition of Treason? Treason is punishable by the death penalty. Isn't it about time we start applying that standard to traitors like this Daniela Greene?
Until we start taking these things seriously we will face endless retreat. We may not be formally at war with ISIS but they are at war with us, and it's high time we recognize that fact. Radical Islam is a totalitarian ideology and we keep pretending it's 1980 and the Russians are our biggest worry.
An FBI translator with top secret clearance lied to her bosses and went into ISIS territory to marry a German member of the Islamic State, but returned to the U.S. She has been given leniency by the government.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/investigates-fbi-syria-greene/
Quesiton; does this not fit the definition of Treason? Treason is punishable by the death penalty. Isn't it about time we start applying that standard to traitors like this Daniela Greene?
Until we start taking these things seriously we will face endless retreat. We may not be formally at war with ISIS but they are at war with us, and it's high time we recognize that fact. Radical Islam is a totalitarian ideology and we keep pretending it's 1980 and the Russians are our biggest worry.
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Marxism Coming for Your Children
Timothy Birdnow
Won't you tell me how to get, how to get to - Red Square!
http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/major-u-s-university-publishes-communism-for-kids/#!
Not content with Communism for Dummies (an oxymoron if there ever was one) the major university publisher MIT Press has published a wonderful children's book extolling the joys of Marxism and the life of Bolshevism. From WND:
"The book, "Communism for Kids,†has been published by a major U.S. university publisher, MIT Press, and is now available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.
_The book, penned by German author Bini Adamczak and translated by Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis, teaches children the tenets of Karl Marx through a series of fairy tales.
Adamczak reportedly specializes in political theory and "queer politics.â€
His thesis is that communism is "not that hard†but has not been implemented in the right way.
End excerpt.
Uh, what other way can it be implemented? It flies in the face of Natural Law and human nature. It has to be forced on people because nobody willingly works for someone else for no pay - we call that slavery and banned it by international accord. People can be tricked into believing in it until it fails; look at what is happening in Venezuela right now, the protests that have erupted all over the worker's paradise because they are starving and naked and have no hope. Mind you, Chavez had the benefit of the failure of many predecessors to guide him and he still squeezed the last drops out of what was once a fairly wealthy Latin American country.
Again from the article:
"The book uses cartoon drawings of "lovable little revolutionaries†to help convince kids of the "evils†of capitalism.
"Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children’s story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening,†MIT Press states.
"It all unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers – not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called ‘the state,'†the jacket description continues.
"Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more,†MIT Press states."
End excerpt.
The idea is to get 'em young and brainwash them. It's as simple as that.
Children are taught to share because it is in their nature not to. That's why we have Barney the Dinosaur or Big Bird or any of the other seemingly socialist characters promoting such things. Sharing is a good thing when it is voluntary, and the capitalist West has given far more to charitable enterprises than any Marxist ever did. Why? Because we hold charity to be a positive value. But why? Simple; our Judeo-Christian heritage taught us that. But the key is that it is voluntary, a selfless act aimed at spiritual growth and/or Heavenly reward. It is not something that can be compelled, not something that can be enshrined as a primary principle in the way a government operates. Government is coercion; that is the whole point of it.
The Prophet Samuel warned the Israelites about chucking their loose confederation for a King:
""This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.""
End quote.
By making the State the final word on charity and the disposition of wealth one must inevitably coerce "right behavior". Socialism is necessarily bought with blood. And as all things coerced it will never take root in the people who resent it.
Children, of course, know nothing of this but do understand the concept of sharing, which has been carefully taught to them. So leftists realize the key to their future is to get the children on board. I suspect the book does not show the gulags that are an inevitable part of communism, or the show trials, the executions, the starvation, the poverty. Frankly, such a book should have been written as a horror story instead.
In a Marxist state a book not approved by The Party cannot even be possessed. And, of course, the parents wouldn't have the $12.95 to shell out for their kids entertainment.
It is despicable that MIT Press would publish such a thing.
Anybody interested in taking a crack at writing "Marxism Coming for Children"? It could be delightfully gruesome.
Won't you tell me how to get, how to get to - Red Square!
http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/major-u-s-university-publishes-communism-for-kids/#!
Not content with Communism for Dummies (an oxymoron if there ever was one) the major university publisher MIT Press has published a wonderful children's book extolling the joys of Marxism and the life of Bolshevism. From WND:
"The book, "Communism for Kids,†has been published by a major U.S. university publisher, MIT Press, and is now available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.
_The book, penned by German author Bini Adamczak and translated by Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis, teaches children the tenets of Karl Marx through a series of fairy tales.
Adamczak reportedly specializes in political theory and "queer politics.â€
His thesis is that communism is "not that hard†but has not been implemented in the right way.
End excerpt.
Uh, what other way can it be implemented? It flies in the face of Natural Law and human nature. It has to be forced on people because nobody willingly works for someone else for no pay - we call that slavery and banned it by international accord. People can be tricked into believing in it until it fails; look at what is happening in Venezuela right now, the protests that have erupted all over the worker's paradise because they are starving and naked and have no hope. Mind you, Chavez had the benefit of the failure of many predecessors to guide him and he still squeezed the last drops out of what was once a fairly wealthy Latin American country.
Again from the article:
"The book uses cartoon drawings of "lovable little revolutionaries†to help convince kids of the "evils†of capitalism.
"Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children’s story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening,†MIT Press states.
"It all unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers – not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called ‘the state,'†the jacket description continues.
"Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more,†MIT Press states."
End excerpt.
The idea is to get 'em young and brainwash them. It's as simple as that.
Children are taught to share because it is in their nature not to. That's why we have Barney the Dinosaur or Big Bird or any of the other seemingly socialist characters promoting such things. Sharing is a good thing when it is voluntary, and the capitalist West has given far more to charitable enterprises than any Marxist ever did. Why? Because we hold charity to be a positive value. But why? Simple; our Judeo-Christian heritage taught us that. But the key is that it is voluntary, a selfless act aimed at spiritual growth and/or Heavenly reward. It is not something that can be compelled, not something that can be enshrined as a primary principle in the way a government operates. Government is coercion; that is the whole point of it.
The Prophet Samuel warned the Israelites about chucking their loose confederation for a King:
""This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.""
End quote.
By making the State the final word on charity and the disposition of wealth one must inevitably coerce "right behavior". Socialism is necessarily bought with blood. And as all things coerced it will never take root in the people who resent it.
Children, of course, know nothing of this but do understand the concept of sharing, which has been carefully taught to them. So leftists realize the key to their future is to get the children on board. I suspect the book does not show the gulags that are an inevitable part of communism, or the show trials, the executions, the starvation, the poverty. Frankly, such a book should have been written as a horror story instead.
In a Marxist state a book not approved by The Party cannot even be possessed. And, of course, the parents wouldn't have the $12.95 to shell out for their kids entertainment.
It is despicable that MIT Press would publish such a thing.
Anybody interested in taking a crack at writing "Marxism Coming for Children"? It could be delightfully gruesome.
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Perry Appoints Skeptic to Report on Upgrading Power Grid
Timothy Birdnow
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is worried about the U.S. electric grid and has ordered a study be done to make recommendations on how to upgrade it. That study is being handed over to climate change skeptic Travis Fisher. Predictably, liberal heads are imploding.
(By the way, liberal heads don't really explode because they are in near vacuum.)
The Gang Green website Treehugger has the biofuel aka poop:
"Today Perry appointed a certain Travis Fisher to lead the study. According to Hannah Northey at E&E News, Fisher is a political appointee at the Department of energy who previously worked with "the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit energy think tank that advocates "free-market" energy and environmental policy.†He also tweeted about it; I copy some here. Northey quotes some of his op-eds in The Hill:
Fisher warned that the U.S. EPA clean air rules posed a threat to coal-fired power plants, and that the agency was "coming after" gas plants as anti-nuclear activists threatened reactor closures. "These closings pose a serious threat to the grid as we know it," Fisher wrote. "Forcing reliable sources of energy off the grid will only increase the risk of blackouts and raise electricity prices for households across America.
What does today's @EPA have in common with the villain from the original @Ghostbusters? Too much. https://t.co/wQ3xKxvzSG @AEA
— Travis Fisher (@ts_fisher) June 13, 2016
"But excessive regulation isn't the only issue facing the grid," Fisher continued. "Other policies undermine our electric system by subsidizing unreliable sources of power like wind and solar, which provided around 4 percent of our electricity generation last year. Subsidizing unreliable generation while wiping out reliable sources is a huge gamble — a real-time experiment to see whether or not we can keep the lights on."
Is this the way @AWEA and @NRDC go about their research? Fake numbers from undocumented phone calls? #KeepTheLightsOn http://t.co/CG7BM2mhoV
— Travis Fisher (@ts_fisher) November 24, 2014
End excerpt.
Whatever one thinks of Trump - and there are many with very good reasons for skepticism - it cannot be disputed that something like this would never, ever have happened under Hillary Rodham Clinton. The NeverTrump crowd actually supported Hillary out of pique for Mr. Orange Hair Surprise, but at least our side has a chance. Had Hillary won she would have secured the radical position in firm control of America for a generation to come.
Even if Trump winds up a huge disappointment (and it looks like he is heading that way) at least we have a few victories like this.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is worried about the U.S. electric grid and has ordered a study be done to make recommendations on how to upgrade it. That study is being handed over to climate change skeptic Travis Fisher. Predictably, liberal heads are imploding.
(By the way, liberal heads don't really explode because they are in near vacuum.)
The Gang Green website Treehugger has the biofuel aka poop:
"Today Perry appointed a certain Travis Fisher to lead the study. According to Hannah Northey at E&E News, Fisher is a political appointee at the Department of energy who previously worked with "the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit energy think tank that advocates "free-market" energy and environmental policy.†He also tweeted about it; I copy some here. Northey quotes some of his op-eds in The Hill:
Fisher warned that the U.S. EPA clean air rules posed a threat to coal-fired power plants, and that the agency was "coming after" gas plants as anti-nuclear activists threatened reactor closures. "These closings pose a serious threat to the grid as we know it," Fisher wrote. "Forcing reliable sources of energy off the grid will only increase the risk of blackouts and raise electricity prices for households across America.
What does today's @EPA have in common with the villain from the original @Ghostbusters? Too much. https://t.co/wQ3xKxvzSG @AEA
— Travis Fisher (@ts_fisher) June 13, 2016
"But excessive regulation isn't the only issue facing the grid," Fisher continued. "Other policies undermine our electric system by subsidizing unreliable sources of power like wind and solar, which provided around 4 percent of our electricity generation last year. Subsidizing unreliable generation while wiping out reliable sources is a huge gamble — a real-time experiment to see whether or not we can keep the lights on."
Is this the way @AWEA and @NRDC go about their research? Fake numbers from undocumented phone calls? #KeepTheLightsOn http://t.co/CG7BM2mhoV
— Travis Fisher (@ts_fisher) November 24, 2014
End excerpt.
Whatever one thinks of Trump - and there are many with very good reasons for skepticism - it cannot be disputed that something like this would never, ever have happened under Hillary Rodham Clinton. The NeverTrump crowd actually supported Hillary out of pique for Mr. Orange Hair Surprise, but at least our side has a chance. Had Hillary won she would have secured the radical position in firm control of America for a generation to come.
Even if Trump winds up a huge disappointment (and it looks like he is heading that way) at least we have a few victories like this.
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Professor Tells Student to Stop Reading Bible
Jack Kemp
https://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2017/05/01/professor-tells-student-to-stop-reading-bible-n2320681?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Professor Tells Student to Stop Reading Bible
Todd Starnes
|
Posted: May 01, 2017 1:02 PM
It’s apparently okay to read history books at Northern Arizona University, but not the Good Book.
Mark Holden, a 22-year-old history major, tells me he was ordered to leave a lecture hall after his professor objected to him reading the Bible before the start of the class.
Holden alleges that Professor Heather Martel ordered him to put away the Good Book around six minutes before a scheduled history class. It’s unclear why she objected to the reading of God’s Word.
According to her biography, Professor Martel is a noted scholar who is working on an essay titled, "The Gender Amazon: Indigenous Female Masculinity in Early Modern European Representations of Contact.†She also teaches classes on Global Queer History and Feminist Theory.
When Holden declined to stop reading his Bible, the professor summoned Derek Heng, the chairman of the department. Heng then proceeded to explain the situation.
Holden recorded the conversation and turned it over to congressional candidate Kevin Cavanaugh. In turn, Cavanaugh provided me with a copy of the audio.
"So Professor Martel says that she doesn’t want you sitting in front of her because you put, you know, a Bible out, right?†Heng said.
READ THE REST!
https://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2017/05/01/professor-tells-student-to-stop-reading-bible-n2320681?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Professor Tells Student to Stop Reading Bible
Todd Starnes
|
Posted: May 01, 2017 1:02 PM
It’s apparently okay to read history books at Northern Arizona University, but not the Good Book.
Mark Holden, a 22-year-old history major, tells me he was ordered to leave a lecture hall after his professor objected to him reading the Bible before the start of the class.
Holden alleges that Professor Heather Martel ordered him to put away the Good Book around six minutes before a scheduled history class. It’s unclear why she objected to the reading of God’s Word.
According to her biography, Professor Martel is a noted scholar who is working on an essay titled, "The Gender Amazon: Indigenous Female Masculinity in Early Modern European Representations of Contact.†She also teaches classes on Global Queer History and Feminist Theory.
When Holden declined to stop reading his Bible, the professor summoned Derek Heng, the chairman of the department. Heng then proceeded to explain the situation.
Holden recorded the conversation and turned it over to congressional candidate Kevin Cavanaugh. In turn, Cavanaugh provided me with a copy of the audio.
"So Professor Martel says that she doesn’t want you sitting in front of her because you put, you know, a Bible out, right?†Heng said.
READ THE REST!
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The Hefty Price Tag for "Big Clean" Energy
Timothy Birdnow
We are now hearing from the Gang Green that renewable energy is becoming competitive with traditional sources. It's the latest mantra from the people who are nothing but mantra, but is it true?
Nope.
Turns out that Big Clean receives far more ins subsides than any other energy source. Congressman Lamar Alexander makes the case:
"But with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, federal incentives for energy production shifted heavily towards renewable energy and energy efficient technologies. Fossil energy may have received the bulk of early federal incentives, but by 2008 fossil fuels accounted for just one-third of the cost of energy tax incentives.
This trend has continued over the past decade. According to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), federal tax credits and subsidies for renewable energy increased by 54 percent between 2010 and 2013. Solar energy alone saw federal support increase by 500 percent from $1.1 billion to $5.3 billion. In the same period, federal support for fossil and nuclear energy declined. Federal subsidies and tax incentives for oil and gas declined by 20 percent, while federal support for nuclear energy declined by 12 percent.
Just last month, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided testimony to Congress on tax preferences provided to energy producers in 2016. According to the CBO, approximately $10.9 billion, or 59 percent, of federal energy tax preferences went to renewable energy. $2.7 billion, or 15 percent, went to energy efficient technologies or electricity transmission, for a combined 74 percent of energy tax preferences. In contrast, $4.6 billion or 25 percent of energy related tax incentives went to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, which is the only reliable, emissions free energy source, received only 1 percent of tax incentives while facing the toughest regulatory burden.
Those figures don’t include federal investment in renewable energy research and development. At the Department of Energy (DOE), the federal government sponsors over $9 billion in civilian science and energy research and development. This research portfolio falls under the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which I chair. In the past decade, investment in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at DOE has grown by over 40 percent, while the corresponding budgets for fossil and nuclear energy R&D have declined. At almost $2 billion, EERE’s R&D budget is more than the R&D budgets for nuclear, fossil, and electricity combined. It has also surpassed the basic energy sciences research within the Office of Science, where DOE has an exemplary track record for achievements in discovery science that can lead to groundbreaking energy technology.
In the DOE loan portfolio, 20 of the 30 loan guarantees were for renewable energy projects. DOE has issued over $30 billion in loans and loan guarantees and not a single loan has been issued for fossil energy technology.
To add more context, according to the EIA, fossil fuels provide 67 percent of electricity generated, while renewables make up 13 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. It is clear that fossil energy is the primary power source for our economy, even when the federal government has put a finger on the scales for renewable energy for over a decade.
According to an analysis of this same EIA data conducted by the Institute for Energy Research, federal government policies have led to solar power generation being subsidized by over 345 times more than coal, oil and natural gas electricity production, while wind is being subsidized over 52 times more than fossil fuels per unit of electricity production."
End excerpts.
When one actually reads these numbers it is staggering how much of our tax revenue is being wasted on a solution without a problem. Global Warming is a Nonesuch, a fable told to scare children and liberals (but I repeat myself.) In spite of the predictions made by the 20 climate models (which all use the same data and make the same assumptions so make the same mistakes) there has been no statistically significant planetary warming since at least 1990 and more likely 1995 ('98 was a powerful El Nino year and skews the results.) A twenty year pause is highly significant. And it IS a pause, despite the best efforts by NOAA to "smooth" the data to make it appear there has been no pause. Satellites show no warming, and neither do Argo probes into the deep oceans. Warming is only evident at surface stations, which are being phased out systematically or surrounded by cityscape; the result is climate scientists are creating averages to determine temperatures since they don't have any real data and as a result they have to make certain assumptions such as warming.
Let me illustrate this. Let's say a prosecutor argues in court that an accused killer left home at 6 p.m. and returned home at 8:15. The murder victim was killed in her home at somewhere between 6 and 7 and it takes a half hour to drive each way. O.K., will the jury find the accused guilty based on that alone? Mind you, there are no witnesses except those who saw the man leave and arrive back home.
No prosecutor in his right mind would bring such a case to court, and yet this is precisely what is being done with Global Warming. There is no real world evidence, just some tantalizing circumstantial evidence.
In the movie "My Cousin Vinny" defense attorney Vincent Gambini explains to his accused murderer cousin how it works using a deck of playing cards. He says the prosecution will try to make them look like bricks, showing them from a particular angle, pointing out they have the right shape and color. What the prosecutor won't do is show them from on edge because that will destroy his case. Global Warming is like that; the Alarmist crowd shows you the evidence from a managed perspective to get you to believe it's indisputable. But in the end they won't show you their cards edge on.
It's a magic trick, an illusion.
And so we waste billions of dollars on "renewable energy" which works on a small scale but is largely useless on a large one. Lots of people are getting very rich off of this, or have made permanent successful careers. Governments like it because it allows further growth of the State over the individual. Internationalists like it because it knits the world together in an international order and sucks money out of the rich First World. It's a winner for everybody except the taxpayers who are forced to fund it, and the energy consumers who are forced to pay higher prices.
Frankly, I prefer street thugs to these types; the street thug is honest about robbing you.
We are now hearing from the Gang Green that renewable energy is becoming competitive with traditional sources. It's the latest mantra from the people who are nothing but mantra, but is it true?
Nope.
Turns out that Big Clean receives far more ins subsides than any other energy source. Congressman Lamar Alexander makes the case:
"But with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, federal incentives for energy production shifted heavily towards renewable energy and energy efficient technologies. Fossil energy may have received the bulk of early federal incentives, but by 2008 fossil fuels accounted for just one-third of the cost of energy tax incentives.
This trend has continued over the past decade. According to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), federal tax credits and subsidies for renewable energy increased by 54 percent between 2010 and 2013. Solar energy alone saw federal support increase by 500 percent from $1.1 billion to $5.3 billion. In the same period, federal support for fossil and nuclear energy declined. Federal subsidies and tax incentives for oil and gas declined by 20 percent, while federal support for nuclear energy declined by 12 percent.
Just last month, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided testimony to Congress on tax preferences provided to energy producers in 2016. According to the CBO, approximately $10.9 billion, or 59 percent, of federal energy tax preferences went to renewable energy. $2.7 billion, or 15 percent, went to energy efficient technologies or electricity transmission, for a combined 74 percent of energy tax preferences. In contrast, $4.6 billion or 25 percent of energy related tax incentives went to fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, which is the only reliable, emissions free energy source, received only 1 percent of tax incentives while facing the toughest regulatory burden.
Those figures don’t include federal investment in renewable energy research and development. At the Department of Energy (DOE), the federal government sponsors over $9 billion in civilian science and energy research and development. This research portfolio falls under the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which I chair. In the past decade, investment in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at DOE has grown by over 40 percent, while the corresponding budgets for fossil and nuclear energy R&D have declined. At almost $2 billion, EERE’s R&D budget is more than the R&D budgets for nuclear, fossil, and electricity combined. It has also surpassed the basic energy sciences research within the Office of Science, where DOE has an exemplary track record for achievements in discovery science that can lead to groundbreaking energy technology.
In the DOE loan portfolio, 20 of the 30 loan guarantees were for renewable energy projects. DOE has issued over $30 billion in loans and loan guarantees and not a single loan has been issued for fossil energy technology.
To add more context, according to the EIA, fossil fuels provide 67 percent of electricity generated, while renewables make up 13 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. It is clear that fossil energy is the primary power source for our economy, even when the federal government has put a finger on the scales for renewable energy for over a decade.
According to an analysis of this same EIA data conducted by the Institute for Energy Research, federal government policies have led to solar power generation being subsidized by over 345 times more than coal, oil and natural gas electricity production, while wind is being subsidized over 52 times more than fossil fuels per unit of electricity production."
End excerpts.
When one actually reads these numbers it is staggering how much of our tax revenue is being wasted on a solution without a problem. Global Warming is a Nonesuch, a fable told to scare children and liberals (but I repeat myself.) In spite of the predictions made by the 20 climate models (which all use the same data and make the same assumptions so make the same mistakes) there has been no statistically significant planetary warming since at least 1990 and more likely 1995 ('98 was a powerful El Nino year and skews the results.) A twenty year pause is highly significant. And it IS a pause, despite the best efforts by NOAA to "smooth" the data to make it appear there has been no pause. Satellites show no warming, and neither do Argo probes into the deep oceans. Warming is only evident at surface stations, which are being phased out systematically or surrounded by cityscape; the result is climate scientists are creating averages to determine temperatures since they don't have any real data and as a result they have to make certain assumptions such as warming.
Let me illustrate this. Let's say a prosecutor argues in court that an accused killer left home at 6 p.m. and returned home at 8:15. The murder victim was killed in her home at somewhere between 6 and 7 and it takes a half hour to drive each way. O.K., will the jury find the accused guilty based on that alone? Mind you, there are no witnesses except those who saw the man leave and arrive back home.
No prosecutor in his right mind would bring such a case to court, and yet this is precisely what is being done with Global Warming. There is no real world evidence, just some tantalizing circumstantial evidence.
In the movie "My Cousin Vinny" defense attorney Vincent Gambini explains to his accused murderer cousin how it works using a deck of playing cards. He says the prosecution will try to make them look like bricks, showing them from a particular angle, pointing out they have the right shape and color. What the prosecutor won't do is show them from on edge because that will destroy his case. Global Warming is like that; the Alarmist crowd shows you the evidence from a managed perspective to get you to believe it's indisputable. But in the end they won't show you their cards edge on.
It's a magic trick, an illusion.
And so we waste billions of dollars on "renewable energy" which works on a small scale but is largely useless on a large one. Lots of people are getting very rich off of this, or have made permanent successful careers. Governments like it because it allows further growth of the State over the individual. Internationalists like it because it knits the world together in an international order and sucks money out of the rich First World. It's a winner for everybody except the taxpayers who are forced to fund it, and the energy consumers who are forced to pay higher prices.
Frankly, I prefer street thugs to these types; the street thug is honest about robbing you.
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07:36 AM
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Post contains 1132 words, total size 7 kb.
May 01, 2017
The Soros Connection Soft Power Hour
Mark Musser
What is George Soros? This is how Dr. Robert E. Kaplan of Jerusalem has put the question. Not who is he? But what is he? It is highly unlikely that even a rich powerful man like Soros could have such a dominating influence over world affairs without state sponsorship of his activities. Who might that state be? Kaplan thinks he has the answer - Germany. While Russian tampering concerns dominate news headlines, one area of concern that has been overlooked for many decades is Germany’s mounting influential power over media, academia, and/or book publishing, something which Kaplan calls "soft power†in his illuminating book entitled "The Soros Connection" where he demonstrates the very real possibility that George Soros is a political and economic wrecking ball working as a foreign agent for the German state that works alongside the German media. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. I was given the privilege of becoming acquainted with Dr. Kaplan in person last December when I participated in Yad Vashem's holocaust seminar. I have written an article http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/george_soros_and_german_media in honor of the time I spent with him that can be linked up with here – George Soros and German Media. Here is a link to Dr. Kaplan’s book called the Soros Connection. https://www.amazon.com/Soros-Connection-Robert-Kaplan-ebook/dp/B01LXC2CNL
Last month in Houston I made a presentation at Chafer Theological Seminary’s annual conference on "German Idealism, Theological Romanticism, Biblical Criticism, and Postmodern Fascism†https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohLxxPNxAwo that perhaps some of you may find of interest to take a look at as well. You can view it on the attached link. I have always suspected that there was a strong relationship between German Higher Criticism of the Bible and Anti-Semitism. The German Theological Liberalism of the Second Reich was surprisingly very Anti-Judaism, particularly with regard to their all-out attempt to de-Judaize Christianity from the Old Testament (Torah) as they viewed Judaism as a form of particularistic religious segregation out of step with Enlightenment Reason that was preventing their ‘Liberal’ Protestant Social Gospel from coming to full fruition, even criticizing certain Christians who still clung to their Old Testaments. Their Biblical Criticism was done for the same purposes so they could transcend the written historical biblical text to place themselves into the spiritual vanguard of German national and social religious progressivism since the Bible as written was considered out of step with the modern age (which of course it is …..). Wellhausen’s reconstruction of the Old Testament is especially suspect precisely because the German progressive philosophical ‘theology’ based on Kantian Idealism and Hegelian Spirit (vs. the Bible) allows for spiritual growth and development for the all the world’s religions – except for the Jews. Wellhausen’s infamous JEPD Theory – largely based on a Romantic nationalist theologian by the name of de Wette – essentially was evolution in reverse as the Jews left their pure and simple Hebrew religion (based on a false romantic view of history) by complicating it later on with the alleged unspiritual legalism of Deuteronomy. According to Wellhausen and others, Deuteronomy was supposedly one of the last books put together in the Old Testament rather than be one of the first (largely written by Moses).
Kant’s Idealism is also very troubling, which was the philosophical foundation for German Theological Liberalism, as he too wanted to de-Judaize Christianity with his so-called autonomous reason. I was unaware of the depths of his Anti-Semitism. According to Dr. Michael Mack in German Idealism and the Jew, Kant’s whole philosophical enterprise was largely designed to "euthanize Jewishness†(Kant’s own words) from German philosophy and theology, which was viewed as alien or heteronomous since it is based on coercion, ritualism, and materialism rather than the exercise of autonomous freedom of reason. Schleiermacher, the very father of Theological Romanticism, continued Kant’s de-Judaizing of Christianity. Schleiermacher was not only a strong Anti-Judaistic (particular of past Judaism) nationalist, but also sits at the very foundations of German Theological Liberalism. In truth, German Theological Liberalism of the later 1800’s IS German Theological Romanticism of the early 1800’s – just more developed. For example, Dr. Adolf Harnack, the quintessential German Theological liberal of the late 1800’s, actually wrote the Kaiser’s war speech that kicked off World War I.
In short, German Theological Liberalism and progressivism died in the trench warfare of World War I. Secular Romanticism and Existentialism (which German Theological Romanticism & Existentialism are rooted in) together with ‘scientific’ Social Darwinism filled in the vacuum and spiritual void left behind. Worse, the German theological liberals did such a good job of secularizing Christianity for well over 100 years by supposedly destroying the biblical text, that the spiritual life of Germany became hollow after World War I which helped unleash the baser passions, feelings, and instincts of a secular profane world that was no longer accountable to God. Age old Christian anti-Semitism thus became far more lethal and dangerous.
What is George Soros? This is how Dr. Robert E. Kaplan of Jerusalem has put the question. Not who is he? But what is he? It is highly unlikely that even a rich powerful man like Soros could have such a dominating influence over world affairs without state sponsorship of his activities. Who might that state be? Kaplan thinks he has the answer - Germany. While Russian tampering concerns dominate news headlines, one area of concern that has been overlooked for many decades is Germany’s mounting influential power over media, academia, and/or book publishing, something which Kaplan calls "soft power†in his illuminating book entitled "The Soros Connection" where he demonstrates the very real possibility that George Soros is a political and economic wrecking ball working as a foreign agent for the German state that works alongside the German media. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. I was given the privilege of becoming acquainted with Dr. Kaplan in person last December when I participated in Yad Vashem's holocaust seminar. I have written an article http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/george_soros_and_german_media in honor of the time I spent with him that can be linked up with here – George Soros and German Media. Here is a link to Dr. Kaplan’s book called the Soros Connection. https://www.amazon.com/Soros-Connection-Robert-Kaplan-ebook/dp/B01LXC2CNL
Last month in Houston I made a presentation at Chafer Theological Seminary’s annual conference on "German Idealism, Theological Romanticism, Biblical Criticism, and Postmodern Fascism†https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohLxxPNxAwo that perhaps some of you may find of interest to take a look at as well. You can view it on the attached link. I have always suspected that there was a strong relationship between German Higher Criticism of the Bible and Anti-Semitism. The German Theological Liberalism of the Second Reich was surprisingly very Anti-Judaism, particularly with regard to their all-out attempt to de-Judaize Christianity from the Old Testament (Torah) as they viewed Judaism as a form of particularistic religious segregation out of step with Enlightenment Reason that was preventing their ‘Liberal’ Protestant Social Gospel from coming to full fruition, even criticizing certain Christians who still clung to their Old Testaments. Their Biblical Criticism was done for the same purposes so they could transcend the written historical biblical text to place themselves into the spiritual vanguard of German national and social religious progressivism since the Bible as written was considered out of step with the modern age (which of course it is …..). Wellhausen’s reconstruction of the Old Testament is especially suspect precisely because the German progressive philosophical ‘theology’ based on Kantian Idealism and Hegelian Spirit (vs. the Bible) allows for spiritual growth and development for the all the world’s religions – except for the Jews. Wellhausen’s infamous JEPD Theory – largely based on a Romantic nationalist theologian by the name of de Wette – essentially was evolution in reverse as the Jews left their pure and simple Hebrew religion (based on a false romantic view of history) by complicating it later on with the alleged unspiritual legalism of Deuteronomy. According to Wellhausen and others, Deuteronomy was supposedly one of the last books put together in the Old Testament rather than be one of the first (largely written by Moses).
Kant’s Idealism is also very troubling, which was the philosophical foundation for German Theological Liberalism, as he too wanted to de-Judaize Christianity with his so-called autonomous reason. I was unaware of the depths of his Anti-Semitism. According to Dr. Michael Mack in German Idealism and the Jew, Kant’s whole philosophical enterprise was largely designed to "euthanize Jewishness†(Kant’s own words) from German philosophy and theology, which was viewed as alien or heteronomous since it is based on coercion, ritualism, and materialism rather than the exercise of autonomous freedom of reason. Schleiermacher, the very father of Theological Romanticism, continued Kant’s de-Judaizing of Christianity. Schleiermacher was not only a strong Anti-Judaistic (particular of past Judaism) nationalist, but also sits at the very foundations of German Theological Liberalism. In truth, German Theological Liberalism of the later 1800’s IS German Theological Romanticism of the early 1800’s – just more developed. For example, Dr. Adolf Harnack, the quintessential German Theological liberal of the late 1800’s, actually wrote the Kaiser’s war speech that kicked off World War I.
In short, German Theological Liberalism and progressivism died in the trench warfare of World War I. Secular Romanticism and Existentialism (which German Theological Romanticism & Existentialism are rooted in) together with ‘scientific’ Social Darwinism filled in the vacuum and spiritual void left behind. Worse, the German theological liberals did such a good job of secularizing Christianity for well over 100 years by supposedly destroying the biblical text, that the spiritual life of Germany became hollow after World War I which helped unleash the baser passions, feelings, and instincts of a secular profane world that was no longer accountable to God. Age old Christian anti-Semitism thus became far more lethal and dangerous.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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Post contains 819 words, total size 6 kb.
Ignorance, intolerance, violence
Paul Driessen
As Mark Twain might say, our students are being taught a lot of facts that just ain’t so – by a lot of academics who know all kinds of things for sure that just ain’t so. The recent science and climate marches underscore both this and the dangers of having such ignorance determine economic and energy policy. Topping my current list of wildly misinformed, malpracticing academics is a University of Michigan history professor who claims plant-fertilizing, life-giving carbon dioxide is more deadly than sarin gas!
Perhaps even more dangerous, this ignorance is compounded by rampant intolerance toward other views, and even violence toward anyone who tries to present contrarian perspectives on climate change, sustainability, personal responsibility and other topics, on college campuses or other public forums. For example, just yesterday, CFACT was denied previously given permission to participate in the "People’s Climate March,†when the CFACT team turned up with large posters that contradicted the "planet is being destroyed†meme. Once again, the "people†is only the far left, and freedom of speech is only for people of the far left.
My article this week explores the nature and scope of this problem – what George Mason University professor Walter Williams calls a "spreading cancer.â€
Ignorance, intolerance, violence
Using junk science marches, ignorant professors, resistance and violence to drive public policy
Paul Driessen
Recent science and climate marches demonstrated how misinformed, indoctrinated, politicized and anti-Trump these activists are – and how indifferent about condemning millions in industrialized nations and billions in developing countries to green energy poverty. Amid it all, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole helped illustrate how the marchers became so ignorant, insensitive and intolerant. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-other-poison-gas-killing-syrians-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
It’s always amazed me how frequently academics, journalists, politicians and students confuse poisonous carbon monoxide (CO) with plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide (CO2). But Professor Cole’s April 17 article in The Nation presents unfathomable ignorance from the intellectual class that is "educating†our young people, while displaying and teaching intolerance toward countervailing facts and viewpoints.
Bashar al Assad’s sarin gas attack "consumed the world’s attention,†Prof. Cole intones, but President Trump is committed to releasing hundreds of thousands of tons a day "of a far more deadly gas – carbon dioxide.†Even CO2 that is washed out of the atmosphere "typically goes straight into the oceans,†he continues, "where it turns them acidic,†threatening a "mass die-off of marine life.â€
Cole’s polemical nonsense is too extensive to address in full. But these two claims require rebuttal.
A deadly gas? Carbon dioxide is the Miracle Molecule https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Molecule-Carbon-Dioxide-Life-ebook/dp/B00Q3GWZTE that enables plants to grow and makes all life on Earth possible. Plants absorb CO2 exhaled by humans and animals, and emitted by burning wood, dung, fossil fuels and biofuels – and then release oxygen that people and wildlife need to survive.
Hundreds of studies demonstrate how slightly higher atmospheric CO2 levels (rising from 0.03% a century ago to 0.04% today) are making crop, forest and grassland plants more drought resistant, helping them grow faster and better, and "greening†vast areas that had been brown and barren. Claims that CO2 has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have always controlled Earth’s climate, and is now causing "dangerous manmade climate change,†are not supported by actual planetary evidence.
Marine life thrived when CO2 levels were many times higher during past geologic eras. Far from being or becoming acidic, the oceans are mildly alkaline, and their vast volumes of water will not become acidic from human fossil fuel use: that is, to drop from their current pH of 8.1 into the acidic realm below 7.0 on this logarithmic scale. Oceans may become slightly less alkaline with another century or two of human carbon dioxide emissions, but most marine organisms will be unaffected; others will adapt or evolve.
The science marchers forget that President Trump’s actions are in response to eight Obama years of "highly politicized so-called research on climate,†under grants that "anticipated particular scientific outcomes before funding was provided,†Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer told me. Real science "is not based on political agendas, belief systems or computer models. It’s based on evidence – and actual observations have found normal icecap fluctuations, seas rising a foot or less per century, drought cycles little different from the twentieth century, and a decline in major landfalling hurricanes.â€
These inconvenient truths http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/04/29/skeptics-to-attend-peoples-climate-march-with-new-report-billboards-rejecting-premise-of-march/ contradict the dominant narratives in college classrooms and political circles. Climate alarmists thus demand that they be vilified, banned and silenced, through vile, even violent confrontations if need be – along with other conservative speech on and beyond too many campuses.
It’s as if reality, truth, discussion and debate have become irrelevant where feelings, leftist dogma, climate science or public policies are involved. Even more troubling, it’s as if our culture, education and public forums have been taken over by jack-booted fascists, Mao’s Red Guards, Maduro thugs, and "heroes†like Pavlik Morozov, memorialized by Stalin for betraying his father to the secret police.
Some intolerant protesters may be delicate snowflakes, too easily intimidated, offended or made to feel "unsafe†by conservative or other contrarian thought. However, the near-constant intimidation and threats of expulsion or violence have become a deliberate tactic, used repeatedly to impose speech codes and political agendas – and too often ignored, acquiesced in or supported by professors, administrators and politicians who welcome the silencing of opposition voices or lack the courage to confront it. During Science March weekend in Huntsville, Alabama, shots were fired into the offices where reality-based climatologist John Christy works. "Mainstream media†and academia coverage was minimal.
They demand diversity of race, language, handicaps, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status and sexual self-identification. They cannot tolerate diversity of thought, speech or faculty and student ideology.
George Mason University economics professor Walter Williams calls it "a spreading cancer,†https://capitalresearch.org/article/metastasizing-academic-cancer/?blm_aid=34662 a re-emerging mentality that gave us loyalty oaths, which today come in the form of demands that faculty members sign "diversity statements, especially as part of hiring and promotion procedures…. The last thing diversity hustlers want is diversity of ideas.†The goal is "political conformity among the faculty indoctrinating our impressionable, intellectually immature young people,†Williams says.
As far-left protest marches, window smashing, limousine burning and physical assaults in Berkeley, Portland, Washington, DC and other cities attest, the cancer is metastasizing – particularly when movements and political groups believe their money, power, influence and control are threatened.
On the climate front, at stake are $100 billion a year in reparation funds for poor countries, $7 trillion a year for companies that want to build "sustainable low-carbon†energy systems, and boundless power for politicians and bureaucrats who want to control economic growth, livelihoods and living standards. They cannot tolerate "climate deniers,†even those who merely question the extent of human influences, the degree and impact of temperature and climate changes, whether changes will all be bad, or the supposed inability of wildlife and wealthy, technologically advanced societies to adapt to future changes.
Members of this activist, governing and corporate elite also excel at inflating trivial risks and dismissing easy solutions, to advance their agendas and self-interests. For example, as President Trump revises many Obama era environmental rules, activist groups are using other tactics to continue their war on coal.
Dry ash from coal-fired power plants can be used in wallboard and to partially replace sand in high-strength concrete for bridges, roads and buildings. However, regulations, engineering considerations and other factors limited that option and resulted in most wet and dry ash being sent to impoundments that can leak barely detectable pollutants into surface and ground water. Studies have shown that these levels of chromium and other metals pose little risk to humans, but scare campaigns are creating pressure to force utility companies to spend billions of dollars relocating the ash and closing more power plants.
The best solution is likely to leave the ash in place, shore up the coffer dams, put solid clay seals over the deposits, and let them dry out, locking the metals in place. Radical groups demand relocation and seek to bankrupt the utilities – after which they intend to intensify their attacks on natural gas-fired power plants, drilling, fracking, and the factories, petrochemical plants and other industries that use fossil fuels.
In essence, they have brilliantly established a mantra that can ensure victory in every campaign. Whatever they support is safe, sustainable, climate-friendly environmental justice; whatever they oppose is dangerous, unsustainable, ecologically destructive and unjust. End of discussion.
In the process, they are unwilling or unable to recognize two facts. One, cheap, reliable energy improves living standards, saves lives, and supports new technologies and opportunities, with poor families benefitting most. Policies that make energy less accessible and affordable harm the poorest most of all.
Two, fossil fuels have undeniable environmental impacts, but allow us to produce vast amounts of cheap energy from relatively few acres. Replacing those fuels with wind, solar and biofuel energy would require hundreds of millions of acres worldwide that are now cropland or wildlife habitats. Those "eco-friendly†alternatives are actually our least sustainable https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/21/unsustainable-cow-manure/, most ecologically destructive https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-re-all-victims-of-the-great-green-swindle-sqk6wg0bz energy options.
The stakes are too high to let intolerant ideologues continue to control energy policy decisions.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
As Mark Twain might say, our students are being taught a lot of facts that just ain’t so – by a lot of academics who know all kinds of things for sure that just ain’t so. The recent science and climate marches underscore both this and the dangers of having such ignorance determine economic and energy policy. Topping my current list of wildly misinformed, malpracticing academics is a University of Michigan history professor who claims plant-fertilizing, life-giving carbon dioxide is more deadly than sarin gas!
Perhaps even more dangerous, this ignorance is compounded by rampant intolerance toward other views, and even violence toward anyone who tries to present contrarian perspectives on climate change, sustainability, personal responsibility and other topics, on college campuses or other public forums. For example, just yesterday, CFACT was denied previously given permission to participate in the "People’s Climate March,†when the CFACT team turned up with large posters that contradicted the "planet is being destroyed†meme. Once again, the "people†is only the far left, and freedom of speech is only for people of the far left.
My article this week explores the nature and scope of this problem – what George Mason University professor Walter Williams calls a "spreading cancer.â€
Ignorance, intolerance, violence
Using junk science marches, ignorant professors, resistance and violence to drive public policy
Paul Driessen
Recent science and climate marches demonstrated how misinformed, indoctrinated, politicized and anti-Trump these activists are – and how indifferent about condemning millions in industrialized nations and billions in developing countries to green energy poverty. Amid it all, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole helped illustrate how the marchers became so ignorant, insensitive and intolerant. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-other-poison-gas-killing-syrians-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
It’s always amazed me how frequently academics, journalists, politicians and students confuse poisonous carbon monoxide (CO) with plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide (CO2). But Professor Cole’s April 17 article in The Nation presents unfathomable ignorance from the intellectual class that is "educating†our young people, while displaying and teaching intolerance toward countervailing facts and viewpoints.
Bashar al Assad’s sarin gas attack "consumed the world’s attention,†Prof. Cole intones, but President Trump is committed to releasing hundreds of thousands of tons a day "of a far more deadly gas – carbon dioxide.†Even CO2 that is washed out of the atmosphere "typically goes straight into the oceans,†he continues, "where it turns them acidic,†threatening a "mass die-off of marine life.â€
Cole’s polemical nonsense is too extensive to address in full. But these two claims require rebuttal.
A deadly gas? Carbon dioxide is the Miracle Molecule https://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Molecule-Carbon-Dioxide-Life-ebook/dp/B00Q3GWZTE that enables plants to grow and makes all life on Earth possible. Plants absorb CO2 exhaled by humans and animals, and emitted by burning wood, dung, fossil fuels and biofuels – and then release oxygen that people and wildlife need to survive.
Hundreds of studies demonstrate how slightly higher atmospheric CO2 levels (rising from 0.03% a century ago to 0.04% today) are making crop, forest and grassland plants more drought resistant, helping them grow faster and better, and "greening†vast areas that had been brown and barren. Claims that CO2 has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have always controlled Earth’s climate, and is now causing "dangerous manmade climate change,†are not supported by actual planetary evidence.
Marine life thrived when CO2 levels were many times higher during past geologic eras. Far from being or becoming acidic, the oceans are mildly alkaline, and their vast volumes of water will not become acidic from human fossil fuel use: that is, to drop from their current pH of 8.1 into the acidic realm below 7.0 on this logarithmic scale. Oceans may become slightly less alkaline with another century or two of human carbon dioxide emissions, but most marine organisms will be unaffected; others will adapt or evolve.
The science marchers forget that President Trump’s actions are in response to eight Obama years of "highly politicized so-called research on climate,†under grants that "anticipated particular scientific outcomes before funding was provided,†Princeton University physicist Dr. Will Happer told me. Real science "is not based on political agendas, belief systems or computer models. It’s based on evidence – and actual observations have found normal icecap fluctuations, seas rising a foot or less per century, drought cycles little different from the twentieth century, and a decline in major landfalling hurricanes.â€
These inconvenient truths http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/04/29/skeptics-to-attend-peoples-climate-march-with-new-report-billboards-rejecting-premise-of-march/ contradict the dominant narratives in college classrooms and political circles. Climate alarmists thus demand that they be vilified, banned and silenced, through vile, even violent confrontations if need be – along with other conservative speech on and beyond too many campuses.
It’s as if reality, truth, discussion and debate have become irrelevant where feelings, leftist dogma, climate science or public policies are involved. Even more troubling, it’s as if our culture, education and public forums have been taken over by jack-booted fascists, Mao’s Red Guards, Maduro thugs, and "heroes†like Pavlik Morozov, memorialized by Stalin for betraying his father to the secret police.
Some intolerant protesters may be delicate snowflakes, too easily intimidated, offended or made to feel "unsafe†by conservative or other contrarian thought. However, the near-constant intimidation and threats of expulsion or violence have become a deliberate tactic, used repeatedly to impose speech codes and political agendas – and too often ignored, acquiesced in or supported by professors, administrators and politicians who welcome the silencing of opposition voices or lack the courage to confront it. During Science March weekend in Huntsville, Alabama, shots were fired into the offices where reality-based climatologist John Christy works. "Mainstream media†and academia coverage was minimal.
They demand diversity of race, language, handicaps, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status and sexual self-identification. They cannot tolerate diversity of thought, speech or faculty and student ideology.
George Mason University economics professor Walter Williams calls it "a spreading cancer,†https://capitalresearch.org/article/metastasizing-academic-cancer/?blm_aid=34662 a re-emerging mentality that gave us loyalty oaths, which today come in the form of demands that faculty members sign "diversity statements, especially as part of hiring and promotion procedures…. The last thing diversity hustlers want is diversity of ideas.†The goal is "political conformity among the faculty indoctrinating our impressionable, intellectually immature young people,†Williams says.
As far-left protest marches, window smashing, limousine burning and physical assaults in Berkeley, Portland, Washington, DC and other cities attest, the cancer is metastasizing – particularly when movements and political groups believe their money, power, influence and control are threatened.
On the climate front, at stake are $100 billion a year in reparation funds for poor countries, $7 trillion a year for companies that want to build "sustainable low-carbon†energy systems, and boundless power for politicians and bureaucrats who want to control economic growth, livelihoods and living standards. They cannot tolerate "climate deniers,†even those who merely question the extent of human influences, the degree and impact of temperature and climate changes, whether changes will all be bad, or the supposed inability of wildlife and wealthy, technologically advanced societies to adapt to future changes.
Members of this activist, governing and corporate elite also excel at inflating trivial risks and dismissing easy solutions, to advance their agendas and self-interests. For example, as President Trump revises many Obama era environmental rules, activist groups are using other tactics to continue their war on coal.
Dry ash from coal-fired power plants can be used in wallboard and to partially replace sand in high-strength concrete for bridges, roads and buildings. However, regulations, engineering considerations and other factors limited that option and resulted in most wet and dry ash being sent to impoundments that can leak barely detectable pollutants into surface and ground water. Studies have shown that these levels of chromium and other metals pose little risk to humans, but scare campaigns are creating pressure to force utility companies to spend billions of dollars relocating the ash and closing more power plants.
The best solution is likely to leave the ash in place, shore up the coffer dams, put solid clay seals over the deposits, and let them dry out, locking the metals in place. Radical groups demand relocation and seek to bankrupt the utilities – after which they intend to intensify their attacks on natural gas-fired power plants, drilling, fracking, and the factories, petrochemical plants and other industries that use fossil fuels.
In essence, they have brilliantly established a mantra that can ensure victory in every campaign. Whatever they support is safe, sustainable, climate-friendly environmental justice; whatever they oppose is dangerous, unsustainable, ecologically destructive and unjust. End of discussion.
In the process, they are unwilling or unable to recognize two facts. One, cheap, reliable energy improves living standards, saves lives, and supports new technologies and opportunities, with poor families benefitting most. Policies that make energy less accessible and affordable harm the poorest most of all.
Two, fossil fuels have undeniable environmental impacts, but allow us to produce vast amounts of cheap energy from relatively few acres. Replacing those fuels with wind, solar and biofuel energy would require hundreds of millions of acres worldwide that are now cropland or wildlife habitats. Those "eco-friendly†alternatives are actually our least sustainable https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/21/unsustainable-cow-manure/, most ecologically destructive https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-re-all-victims-of-the-great-green-swindle-sqk6wg0bz energy options.
The stakes are too high to let intolerant ideologues continue to control energy policy decisions.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
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Hihad Against American History
Timothy Birdnow
One of the cornerstones of liberal revolution - indeed, any revolution - is to not just change people's minds but to make it so there is nothing to remember. In other words, they seek to erase the past. See, their ideas are predicated on no competition; everyone has to go along or they won't work, the thinking goes, and to accomplish this one must make it so nobody knows there WAS a beforehand. George Orwell illustrated that in his novel 1984 with ideas like Newspeak, a way to make it impossible to even think incorrectly by changing language. Ditto Aldous Huxley, who showed how history was carefully manipulated by sleep teaching techniques and jingles.
In fact, the Islamic world (a cult of tyranny if there ever were one) has done this sort of thing for centuries, starting with Muhammed's destruction of the idols in the Ka'ba when he took Mecca. Instead of allowing those idols to remain as historical relics and reminders of the bad old days when the People worshipped them he smashed and demolished them, an attempt to wipe them from the memory of the newly conquered people.
I wrote about this and about the Left's mini-me version of it at Canada Free Press a few years ago.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/murdering-memorials-god-and-man-in-st.-louis
Liberals hate American monuments for the same reason as the Muslims; they are a reminder that there was a time before their immaculate coming, a time when people were free and often more happy. They can't have that, so they seek to remove these reminders.
Writing in American Thinker Monica Showalter discusses the removal of Confederate memorials in that most Confederate city of New Orleans. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/the_talibanlike_attack_on_new_orleans_history.html
She is right to be concerned about it and does a decent job of criticizing the repressive liberals. But I fear she misses the point in that she fails to mention the reason for it, this attempt to impose amnesia on the American People. And, as I say, even if you think the Confederacy was the equivalent of the Third Reich (which it most assuredly was not) shouldn't we remember it so as not to repeat its mistakes?
After all, concentration camps remain preserved for our memory. But the Left knows the Confederacy was NOT the Third Reich and that there is still a warm sentiment toward it in the deep South. It must be eraseed! There can be no reminder of any alternative to the Progressive worker's paradise.
It's happening here in St. Louis as well. There have been repeated attempts to remove the confederate memorial from Forest Park, the heart of the city of St. Louis. While it has failed in the past new efforts are underway to dispose of this piece of Missouri history.
Missouri was a border state and was held in the Union purely by force. Unlike the misnamed Civil War back east, Missouri pitted people from the same state in combat over the direction of Missouri. Eventually Union troops prevailed, but not before a valiant and often vicious stand by the pro-Confederate side. We can honor both sides in that war here, and should if we are to remember who we are as a People.
But leftists never accept such things. They are sore losers and ungracious winners and when they do triumph they immediately attack their fallen foes. If they could they would urinate on the graves of their enemies.
Take what happened at St.Louis University. After the "Occupy SLU" leftists invaded the University campus SLU President Fred Pistello cut a deal to honor the terrorists with a statue. Shortly thereafter a chorus of complaints erupted against the statue of Fr. Desmet, the Jesuit responsible for converting many native Americans in the West. He was, the complaints claimed, a racist white guy and the statue humiliated the Indians, who are portrayed as kneeling before him (as any good Catholic would do when receiving the Sacrament of Reconcilliation back then.) The University removed the statue despite protests from alumni, and while it was supposed to be relocated to the University's museum it has remained in a bssement, covered with tarps. And while the University was forced to abandon (for now) the statue honoring the brave trespassers who invaded the campus (and whom the President and administration refused to simply evict) the statue honoring the University's Jesuit tradition remains hidden, a victim of the iconoclasty of leftists.
I am mindful of the Book of Daniel 7:25:
"25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
Doesn't that sound exactly like the modern Left? They think to change times and laws. They attack, attack, attack and wear out their opponents.
And striking at the memorials, at the symbols and images and memories, is key to "wear out the Saints". It's how they roll.
We have got to stop growing so weary. They can be beaten by the very same tactics they employ. Remember they are human too (although one wonders at that some times.) If we are tired so are they. They maintain their energy because the media and academia presents an artificial image of their victories. We must disabuse them of that lie.
It can be done. We need to stand up.
One of the cornerstones of liberal revolution - indeed, any revolution - is to not just change people's minds but to make it so there is nothing to remember. In other words, they seek to erase the past. See, their ideas are predicated on no competition; everyone has to go along or they won't work, the thinking goes, and to accomplish this one must make it so nobody knows there WAS a beforehand. George Orwell illustrated that in his novel 1984 with ideas like Newspeak, a way to make it impossible to even think incorrectly by changing language. Ditto Aldous Huxley, who showed how history was carefully manipulated by sleep teaching techniques and jingles.
In fact, the Islamic world (a cult of tyranny if there ever were one) has done this sort of thing for centuries, starting with Muhammed's destruction of the idols in the Ka'ba when he took Mecca. Instead of allowing those idols to remain as historical relics and reminders of the bad old days when the People worshipped them he smashed and demolished them, an attempt to wipe them from the memory of the newly conquered people.
I wrote about this and about the Left's mini-me version of it at Canada Free Press a few years ago.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/murdering-memorials-god-and-man-in-st.-louis
Liberals hate American monuments for the same reason as the Muslims; they are a reminder that there was a time before their immaculate coming, a time when people were free and often more happy. They can't have that, so they seek to remove these reminders.
Writing in American Thinker Monica Showalter discusses the removal of Confederate memorials in that most Confederate city of New Orleans. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/the_talibanlike_attack_on_new_orleans_history.html
She is right to be concerned about it and does a decent job of criticizing the repressive liberals. But I fear she misses the point in that she fails to mention the reason for it, this attempt to impose amnesia on the American People. And, as I say, even if you think the Confederacy was the equivalent of the Third Reich (which it most assuredly was not) shouldn't we remember it so as not to repeat its mistakes?
After all, concentration camps remain preserved for our memory. But the Left knows the Confederacy was NOT the Third Reich and that there is still a warm sentiment toward it in the deep South. It must be eraseed! There can be no reminder of any alternative to the Progressive worker's paradise.
It's happening here in St. Louis as well. There have been repeated attempts to remove the confederate memorial from Forest Park, the heart of the city of St. Louis. While it has failed in the past new efforts are underway to dispose of this piece of Missouri history.
Missouri was a border state and was held in the Union purely by force. Unlike the misnamed Civil War back east, Missouri pitted people from the same state in combat over the direction of Missouri. Eventually Union troops prevailed, but not before a valiant and often vicious stand by the pro-Confederate side. We can honor both sides in that war here, and should if we are to remember who we are as a People.
But leftists never accept such things. They are sore losers and ungracious winners and when they do triumph they immediately attack their fallen foes. If they could they would urinate on the graves of their enemies.
Take what happened at St.Louis University. After the "Occupy SLU" leftists invaded the University campus SLU President Fred Pistello cut a deal to honor the terrorists with a statue. Shortly thereafter a chorus of complaints erupted against the statue of Fr. Desmet, the Jesuit responsible for converting many native Americans in the West. He was, the complaints claimed, a racist white guy and the statue humiliated the Indians, who are portrayed as kneeling before him (as any good Catholic would do when receiving the Sacrament of Reconcilliation back then.) The University removed the statue despite protests from alumni, and while it was supposed to be relocated to the University's museum it has remained in a bssement, covered with tarps. And while the University was forced to abandon (for now) the statue honoring the brave trespassers who invaded the campus (and whom the President and administration refused to simply evict) the statue honoring the University's Jesuit tradition remains hidden, a victim of the iconoclasty of leftists.
I am mindful of the Book of Daniel 7:25:
"25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time."
Doesn't that sound exactly like the modern Left? They think to change times and laws. They attack, attack, attack and wear out their opponents.
And striking at the memorials, at the symbols and images and memories, is key to "wear out the Saints". It's how they roll.
We have got to stop growing so weary. They can be beaten by the very same tactics they employ. Remember they are human too (although one wonders at that some times.) If we are tired so are they. They maintain their energy because the media and academia presents an artificial image of their victories. We must disabuse them of that lie.
It can be done. We need to stand up.
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The Banana Republic of Greater Chicago
Timothy Birdnow
Illinois is a cesspool of corruption and here is more proof of that assertion. The stlate's previous Democratic governors handed out high paying, little to no work jobs like candy to a group of children at Christmas.
From the Belleville News Democrat:
"In August 2012, state Sen. James Clayborne’s office sent to the Illinois Department of Transportation a job resume of a Washington Park clerk, who was making $11,000 in his job for the village.
According to a report filed this week, the job candidate called IDOT numerous times in December 2012 and January 2013 to ask about the status of his job offer — and to request that his salary be about $75,000 instead of about $55,000.
His resume reflected no qualifications to match the stated job duties, according to the report."
[...]
"The exchange was an example cited in a report filed recently in federal court in Chicago by Noelle Brennan, a court-appointed monitor. The report details the practice of political patronage hiring in the state during the administration of former Gov. Pat Quinn.
Clayborne and state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, were among those lawmakers named in the report as being the political or legislative connections for people seeking IDOT jobs."
[...]
""Personnel transactions were frequently initiated at the request of the governor’s office, rather than by a state agency,†the report said. "The governor’s office passed resumes of politically-connected candidates and persistently followed up with the agency to check on the status of the personnel requests. At times, the governor’s office specifically instructed an agency to create a personnel request, to find a position for a candidate, or to approve a pending personnel request.â€
[...]
"The report detailed how people were improperly given jobs through political connections. Some jobs in state government can be Rutan-exempt, referring to a Supreme Court case. A Rutan-exempt job is one in which loyalty to the boss is a must — such as those with confidential information, a senior adviser or public spokesmen — so a governor may hire or fire whomever.
However, the state watchdog report found that low-level positions in IDOT were filled under Rutan-exempt rules as "political favors.†The reported added, in most instances, state employment cannot be based on political affiliation"
End excerpts.
This is the way things are done in the greater, greater Chicago area. Is it any wonder that former governor and now jailbird Rod Blagojavich tried to sell Barack Obama's former Senate seat? That was SOP for the state. His mistake was bucking Obama, who had the power to destroy Blago when he refused to simply give the seat to Obama's favorite aunt Valerie Jarrett.
Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner is seeking to terminate the employment of numerous "civil servants" hired illegally. He is hard pressed, because they are unionized and the union contract will not permit Rauner to simply fire them. That is what is wrong with unionizing government employees.
It's why so many rust belt states are broke; you can't get rid of the graft and corruption as long as these unions are snorting at the trough.
The only thing keeping the state of Illinois going is money from energy; Illinois has oil and has become a top producer of coal. Funny; these are the very things the party that dominates the state despise. I propose Southern Illinois secede from Chicago and form their own state, and let the Obama worker's paradise fend for itself. Maybe they can join Canada or something.
Illinois is a cesspool of corruption and here is more proof of that assertion. The stlate's previous Democratic governors handed out high paying, little to no work jobs like candy to a group of children at Christmas.
From the Belleville News Democrat:
"In August 2012, state Sen. James Clayborne’s office sent to the Illinois Department of Transportation a job resume of a Washington Park clerk, who was making $11,000 in his job for the village.
According to a report filed this week, the job candidate called IDOT numerous times in December 2012 and January 2013 to ask about the status of his job offer — and to request that his salary be about $75,000 instead of about $55,000.
His resume reflected no qualifications to match the stated job duties, according to the report."
[...]
"The exchange was an example cited in a report filed recently in federal court in Chicago by Noelle Brennan, a court-appointed monitor. The report details the practice of political patronage hiring in the state during the administration of former Gov. Pat Quinn.
Clayborne and state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, were among those lawmakers named in the report as being the political or legislative connections for people seeking IDOT jobs."
[...]
""Personnel transactions were frequently initiated at the request of the governor’s office, rather than by a state agency,†the report said. "The governor’s office passed resumes of politically-connected candidates and persistently followed up with the agency to check on the status of the personnel requests. At times, the governor’s office specifically instructed an agency to create a personnel request, to find a position for a candidate, or to approve a pending personnel request.â€
[...]
"The report detailed how people were improperly given jobs through political connections. Some jobs in state government can be Rutan-exempt, referring to a Supreme Court case. A Rutan-exempt job is one in which loyalty to the boss is a must — such as those with confidential information, a senior adviser or public spokesmen — so a governor may hire or fire whomever.
However, the state watchdog report found that low-level positions in IDOT were filled under Rutan-exempt rules as "political favors.†The reported added, in most instances, state employment cannot be based on political affiliation"
End excerpts.
This is the way things are done in the greater, greater Chicago area. Is it any wonder that former governor and now jailbird Rod Blagojavich tried to sell Barack Obama's former Senate seat? That was SOP for the state. His mistake was bucking Obama, who had the power to destroy Blago when he refused to simply give the seat to Obama's favorite aunt Valerie Jarrett.
Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner is seeking to terminate the employment of numerous "civil servants" hired illegally. He is hard pressed, because they are unionized and the union contract will not permit Rauner to simply fire them. That is what is wrong with unionizing government employees.
It's why so many rust belt states are broke; you can't get rid of the graft and corruption as long as these unions are snorting at the trough.
The only thing keeping the state of Illinois going is money from energy; Illinois has oil and has become a top producer of coal. Funny; these are the very things the party that dominates the state despise. I propose Southern Illinois secede from Chicago and form their own state, and let the Obama worker's paradise fend for itself. Maybe they can join Canada or something.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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NY Times climate change readers unsubscribe because of Times climate agnostic!
Jack Kemp
The irony of this is just too delicious. NY Times devout climate change believers cancel their subscriptions because the Times hired a more middle of the road intelligent writer. To a global warming believer, this is the equivalent of a Catholic newspaper writing that The Pope may be wrong in supporting the Divinity of Jesus. The cancelling readers see this Times writer - and the Times itself - as engaging in blasphemy and sacrelige! I LOVE IT!
Maybe Mrs. Sulzberger and the women editors of the NY Times could next wear Ivanka Trump designed dresses to the next Times Annual Meeting or their New Year's party!
Jack
http://nypost.com/2017/05/01/times-subscribers-are-fleeing-in-wake-of-climate-change-column/
People are still hating on New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — with a "#ShowYourCancellation†movement growing on social media over the weekend — following his controversial piece on climate change.
"I’ve been a @nytimes loyalist for over 15 years. But hiring a ‘climate agnostic’ has gone too far,†Heather Randell tweeted Sunday. "I’m canceling. #showyourcancellation.â€
Beth Holbrook wrote, "Cancelled @nytimes subscription. As a scientist, I take offense at BS opinion pieces misrepresenting scientific facts #ShowYourCancellation.â€
Marlene Amaro added, "Trusted NYT all my life……oh well.â€
Stephens, who worked at the Wall Street Journal before arriving at the Times earlier this month, penned his very first column for the paper last week — which was titled, "Climate of Complete Certainty.â€
It ran online Friday and print the next day.
In it, Stephens argued that "claiming total certainty about the science†of climate change — and not accepting both sides of th
e argument — ultimately "traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong.â€
While he didn’t give his opinion on the subject, the piece sparked overwhelming outrage from what he described as "the nasty left.â€
The furor remained throughout the weekend, with countless media outlets, journalists, scientists and others calling on the Times to fire Stephens.
Many cancelled their subscriptions and then posted proof online — taking pictures of the paper’s emailed responses to them leaving.
"We’re sorry to see you go and hope we may be able to serve you again in the future,†the messages read.
But not everyone was scrapping their subscriptions.
Read the rest!
The irony of this is just too delicious. NY Times devout climate change believers cancel their subscriptions because the Times hired a more middle of the road intelligent writer. To a global warming believer, this is the equivalent of a Catholic newspaper writing that The Pope may be wrong in supporting the Divinity of Jesus. The cancelling readers see this Times writer - and the Times itself - as engaging in blasphemy and sacrelige! I LOVE IT!
Maybe Mrs. Sulzberger and the women editors of the NY Times could next wear Ivanka Trump designed dresses to the next Times Annual Meeting or their New Year's party!
Jack
http://nypost.com/2017/05/01/times-subscribers-are-fleeing-in-wake-of-climate-change-column/
People are still hating on New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — with a "#ShowYourCancellation†movement growing on social media over the weekend — following his controversial piece on climate change.
"I’ve been a @nytimes loyalist for over 15 years. But hiring a ‘climate agnostic’ has gone too far,†Heather Randell tweeted Sunday. "I’m canceling. #showyourcancellation.â€
Beth Holbrook wrote, "Cancelled @nytimes subscription. As a scientist, I take offense at BS opinion pieces misrepresenting scientific facts #ShowYourCancellation.â€
Marlene Amaro added, "Trusted NYT all my life……oh well.â€
Stephens, who worked at the Wall Street Journal before arriving at the Times earlier this month, penned his very first column for the paper last week — which was titled, "Climate of Complete Certainty.â€
It ran online Friday and print the next day.
In it, Stephens argued that "claiming total certainty about the science†of climate change — and not accepting both sides of th
e argument — ultimately "traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong.â€
While he didn’t give his opinion on the subject, the piece sparked overwhelming outrage from what he described as "the nasty left.â€
The furor remained throughout the weekend, with countless media outlets, journalists, scientists and others calling on the Times to fire Stephens.
Many cancelled their subscriptions and then posted proof online — taking pictures of the paper’s emailed responses to them leaving.
"We’re sorry to see you go and hope we may be able to serve you again in the future,†the messages read.
But not everyone was scrapping their subscriptions.
Read the rest!
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Elitism hiding within good advice at AT
Jack Kemp
There is a rather good article at Amer. Thinker today called "How the Right can learn from the Neocons" by Paul Gottfried. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons.html In it, the author proposes that the Right form alliances with wealthy donors who could create new major media, a worthy cause. But mixed with that are some insulting remarks directed at bloggers and people who just write comments at websites, as if they all had access to funding a new cable network and were just merely immature, overgrown adolescents who are wasting their time with their blogs.
Starting with a quote from Mr. Gottfired, here is my commentt AT where I attack his not so subtle snide remarks.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons_comments.html#disqus_thread
JackKemp • 11 minutes ago
"Starting up a blog with one’s buds or becoming a website troll is a form of self-indulgence..."
Speaking as former Amer. Thinker writer (I had over 300 posted pieces) and as a current website troll here and elsewhere, I want to reply to the one faceted and extreme viewpoint expressed in Gottfried's words quoted above.
The author's premise, that conservatives need to copy the tactics of the neocons and create new well funded media outlets (I've seen internet talk of some potential new cable tv station that would more resemble the original Fox News before Murdoch's sons watered down its viewpoint) is a wise strategic move to attempt to win the culture (and thus political) wars. I cannot fault it. But...
But blogging for one's buds or being a website troll is essentially the poor (or middle class) person's only direct accessible avenue of redress of grievances. I - and many others posting in this and other Amer. Thinker comment sections - are not about to be get their own column at National Review or Townhall.com. So just because someone doesn't have very wealthy connections who can finance a major media site, that doesn't make them, prima facie, self-indulgent or overgrown adolescents. It just means they believe, rightly or wrongly, that blog or comment posting is about as good as its going to get for them. An article once appeared at Pamela Geller's site where she stated that the Left has much more developed and financed outlets for budding writers than the Right does. To make a sports analogy, the Left has a farm team system to develop talent where the Right does not. That is still true today.
They used to say that if you are poor and distraught, you are called "crazy" - and if you are a rich distraught person, you are "eccentric." Just because a number of bloggers and web site trolls aren't rich and well connected, that doesn't truly make them self-indulgent crazy adolescents.
Hillary Clinton, when she was formulating her own healthcare law in the 1990s, condescendingly dismissed either small health care businesses or small other businesses that would be hurt by her plan, as being "underfunded." As if not being very wealthy was enough to consider one's position or needs unworthy of consideration. Gottfrields remarks about bloggers and internet trolls being "adolescents" aren't that much different in tone than Hillary's in the 1990s.
A NOTE FROM TIM:
Gottfried writes a fine essay until he goes off the rails here. You do a fine job pointing it out.
I also disagree with his assertion that the key is to get big money donors. That's what the neocons did and it's part of why they are so supportive of terrible ideas like amnesty; the donors want it, not that it is good for either our cause or America. He who pays the bills is the boss. And so many of the monied types are liberals, having gone to Ivy League schools, worked in international busineses, and played with the multicultural glitterati. Most of these people see us as rubes, and wouldn't support our cause. It was different with the neocons who came out of academia and the Democratic Party and thus had a veneer of "cosmopolitanism" about them.
While I don't disagree with Gottfried's point about starting a new Fox (or two or three) I do disagree with him in thinking we can get the money to do this easily. Will the Koch brothers - norotiously pro-amnesty - give money to a group pushing to repatriate illegal aliens? Somehow I doubt it will happen.
And he forgets Matt Drudge and Jim Hoft and others who started with nothing to build influential websites. Drudge almost brought Bill Clinton down, and certainly it was his work in the '90's that kept Hillary from the Presidency. He was just a guy with a website, one of those Gottfried sneers at.
Tim
There is a rather good article at Amer. Thinker today called "How the Right can learn from the Neocons" by Paul Gottfried. http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons.html In it, the author proposes that the Right form alliances with wealthy donors who could create new major media, a worthy cause. But mixed with that are some insulting remarks directed at bloggers and people who just write comments at websites, as if they all had access to funding a new cable network and were just merely immature, overgrown adolescents who are wasting their time with their blogs.
Starting with a quote from Mr. Gottfired, here is my commentt AT where I attack his not so subtle snide remarks.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/how_the_right_can_learn_from_the_neocons_comments.html#disqus_thread
JackKemp • 11 minutes ago
"Starting up a blog with one’s buds or becoming a website troll is a form of self-indulgence..."
Speaking as former Amer. Thinker writer (I had over 300 posted pieces) and as a current website troll here and elsewhere, I want to reply to the one faceted and extreme viewpoint expressed in Gottfried's words quoted above.
The author's premise, that conservatives need to copy the tactics of the neocons and create new well funded media outlets (I've seen internet talk of some potential new cable tv station that would more resemble the original Fox News before Murdoch's sons watered down its viewpoint) is a wise strategic move to attempt to win the culture (and thus political) wars. I cannot fault it. But...
But blogging for one's buds or being a website troll is essentially the poor (or middle class) person's only direct accessible avenue of redress of grievances. I - and many others posting in this and other Amer. Thinker comment sections - are not about to be get their own column at National Review or Townhall.com. So just because someone doesn't have very wealthy connections who can finance a major media site, that doesn't make them, prima facie, self-indulgent or overgrown adolescents. It just means they believe, rightly or wrongly, that blog or comment posting is about as good as its going to get for them. An article once appeared at Pamela Geller's site where she stated that the Left has much more developed and financed outlets for budding writers than the Right does. To make a sports analogy, the Left has a farm team system to develop talent where the Right does not. That is still true today.
They used to say that if you are poor and distraught, you are called "crazy" - and if you are a rich distraught person, you are "eccentric." Just because a number of bloggers and web site trolls aren't rich and well connected, that doesn't truly make them self-indulgent crazy adolescents.
Hillary Clinton, when she was formulating her own healthcare law in the 1990s, condescendingly dismissed either small health care businesses or small other businesses that would be hurt by her plan, as being "underfunded." As if not being very wealthy was enough to consider one's position or needs unworthy of consideration. Gottfrields remarks about bloggers and internet trolls being "adolescents" aren't that much different in tone than Hillary's in the 1990s.
A NOTE FROM TIM:
Gottfried writes a fine essay until he goes off the rails here. You do a fine job pointing it out.
I also disagree with his assertion that the key is to get big money donors. That's what the neocons did and it's part of why they are so supportive of terrible ideas like amnesty; the donors want it, not that it is good for either our cause or America. He who pays the bills is the boss. And so many of the monied types are liberals, having gone to Ivy League schools, worked in international busineses, and played with the multicultural glitterati. Most of these people see us as rubes, and wouldn't support our cause. It was different with the neocons who came out of academia and the Democratic Party and thus had a veneer of "cosmopolitanism" about them.
While I don't disagree with Gottfried's point about starting a new Fox (or two or three) I do disagree with him in thinking we can get the money to do this easily. Will the Koch brothers - norotiously pro-amnesty - give money to a group pushing to repatriate illegal aliens? Somehow I doubt it will happen.
And he forgets Matt Drudge and Jim Hoft and others who started with nothing to build influential websites. Drudge almost brought Bill Clinton down, and certainly it was his work in the '90's that kept Hillary from the Presidency. He was just a guy with a website, one of those Gottfried sneers at.
Tim
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
08:48 AM
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