November 27, 2019

How Roosevelt Depressed America

Timothy Birdnow

Depressions were a normal part of the business cycle, and the Depression of 1920-21 was every bit as bad as the "Great Depression" but it ended because we cut taxes and regulations. Roosevelt's policies took money out of the pockets of the People, who no longer had it to spend while government was "stimulating" the economy, paying people to dig holes and others to fill them in. In fact, Roosevelt caused the "depression within a depression". Had he just left the economy alone America would have ground through that in a couple of years, tops. Of course, the Depression was triggered primarily by the Federal Reserve contracting the money supply all at once - not by anything the market was doing.

Of course, Roosevelt was using taxpayer money to buy votes and give his party the imperium.

I wish we'd get the straight dope on the real causes of the Depression, but the media and academia isn't going to tell the truth on this since they want a socialized economy.

FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and his New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression

In DR’s Folly, Jim Powell ably and clearly explains why New Deal spending failed to lift the American economy out of its morass. In a nutshell, Powell argues that the spending was doomed from the start to fail. Tax rates were hiked, which scooped capital out of investment and dumped it into dozens of hastily conceived government programs. Those programs quickly became politicized and produced unintended consequences, which plunged the American economy deeper into depression.

More specifically, Powell observes, the National Recovery Administration, which was Roosevelt’s centerpiece, fixed prices, stifled competition, and sometimes made American exports uncompetitive. Also, his banking reforms made many banks more vulnerable to failure by forbidding them to expand and diversify their portfolios. Social Security taxes and minimum-wage laws often triggered unemployment; in fact, they pushed many cash-strapped businesses into bankruptcy or near bankruptcy. The Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers not to produce, raised food prices and kicked thousands of tenant farmers off the land and into unemployment lines in the cities. In some of those cities, the unemployed received almost no federal aid, but in other cities — those with influential Democratic bosses — tax dollars flowed in like water.

Powell notes that the process of capturing tax dollars from some groups and doling them out to others quickly politicized federal aid. He quotes one analyst who discovered that "WPA employment reached peaks in the fall of election years. In states like Florida and Kentucky — where the New Deal’s big fight was in the primary elections — the rise of WPA employment was hurried along in order to synchronize with the primaries.” The Democratic Party’s ability to win elections became strongly connected with Roosevelt’s talent for turning on the spigot of federal dollars at the right time (before elections) and in the right places (key states and congressional districts).

Read it all.

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Pope Francis Wants to Ban Nuclear Power

Timothy Birdnow

Pope Francis is on record as a global warmist. The Peronista Pontiff has, in fact, suggested that the Church makes carbon emissions a Sin. He believes the Earth is in mortal peril (and that God is not in charge) from human industrial emissions.

So why, then, does he now call for a moratorium on nuclear power?

Nuclear energy is the only truly "carbon neutral" energy source. It produces power without producing any carbon dioxide. Even wind and solar produce carbon dioxide because a.it takes traditional manufacturing techniques which produce co2 and b."renewable" energy still requires traditional backups. Nuclear produces more energy - much more - than goes into it's production and produces more than enough energy. There are no emissions dumped into the atmosphere, exxcept maybe some steam vented from the boilers.

Using his moral authority to attack nuclear after proclaiming "climate change" a sin is beyond hypocritical and illustrates that this man's real purpose is to attack the free market, not engage in stewardship.

Francis argues that, since there is some risk with nuclear power, we should ban the whole thing:

"It’s my personal opinion, but I wouldn’t use nuclear power until it’s completely safe,” he said. "Some say that it is a risk to the care of creation and that the use of nuclear energy must be banned. I’m drawing the line at security.”

"There is no guarantee of guaranteeing that a disaster will not occur,” he said. "Yes, once every ten years in the world. Then there’s creation. The disaster that nuclear power causes to creation, to the human person.”

But is a dam safe? Dams sometimes break, killing people downstream with floodwaters. Is natural gas safe?  Lots of homes have exploded when they have filled with gas from a leak.

What is safe?  Fire is very unsafe. Had Francis had his way our Paleolithic ancestors would never have employed it. We'd still be thick-browed, lantern-jawed barbarians living in caves.

Look how many acres of land burned in California recently. Look at the fires in the Amazon, or in Africa. By his reasoning we should ban all use of fire.

I don't believe this man is that big a fool. He's more interested in friendship with the world than with serving God, methinks.

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Bloomberg Wants to Increase Immigration

Timothy Birdnow

Speaking in Norfolk, Va. on Nov. 25 Michael Bloomberg said he would recruit "an awful lot more" immigrants to invade America and take American jobs.

According to the article:

The immigrants can "improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy,” Bloomberg told reporters without naming the American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues that would be improved.

Well, one man's improvement is another man's ruin. We don't want a "new and improved" America.

He said:

We need an awful lot more immigrants rather than less,

We have to go out and actually try to recruit immigrants to come here. We need immigrants to take all the different kinds of jobs that the country needs – improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy.

Hasn't this intrusive little man ever read any history? Rome fell because it allowed too many immigrants to come into the Empire. The Ainu of Japan are only a remnant now, having been swallowed up by the immigrating Japanese. Mexico lost their northern territories - Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, because of unrestricted immigration. In modern times Lebanon was turned from a pluralistic, prosperous society into an Islamic hell-hole thanks to the immigration of Palestinians into the country.

We now take in a million immigrants a year, and probably a lot more via illegal immigration. Add that to our 45 to 60 million immigrants already here, and how long will our country's culture remain? We have a culture, a heritage bequethed to us. This will destroy that in years to come. Especially since America no longer teaches our traditions and culture, and in fact most educators despise and disdain them.

That's why Trump was elected; the public understood intuitively that this cannot continue, especially since America is the third most populous nation on Earth. Do we want to keep letting people in until we have a population comparable to India or China?

America needs to know that the filthy rich billionaire Bloomberg wants to steal our country from us.

In related news, the Department of Justice is defending programs to bring in alien workers and allow alien students to stay and take American jobs.

I thought President Trump was going to stop this.

Mike Lee is a huge proponent of this, too. I thought Mike Lee was on our side.

How is it that we Americans can be marginalized in our own homeland? Friend or foe, it just doesn't seem to matter; nobody is championing native born Americans.

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MLB in Trouble, Bernie Demands Answers

Timothy Birdnow

What business is it of his?

.@MLB is proposing to cut 42 Minor League Baseball clubs.

This has nothing to do with what's good for baseball and everything to do with greed.

It would destroy thousands of jobs and devastate local economies.

I'm urging @MLB Commissioner Manfred to stop this proposal. pic.twitter.com/89AZduYrlT

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 25, 2019

Sean is absolutely right. Closing down Minor League teams, like the Vermont Lake Monsters, would be a disaster for baseball fans, workers, and communities across the country. We must protect these teams from corporate greed. https://t.co/g8BZi6HGeH

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 19, 2019

In point of fact, Major League Baseball uses a very different system than other sports. Football, for instance, takes advantage of colleges to act as their minor league, at no cost to themselves. Baseball is different. (It was the St. Louis Cardinals who pioneered minor league ball, which is why they have always been dominant in the National League and why they were so much better than the American League St. Louis Browns.)

This move by MLB suggests the League isn't doing so well. But it also suggests they believe the system has become to unwieldy.

Again, I ask what business is it of Sanders? Shouldn't he be leading May Day parades or something?

Businesses are not in existence to provide jobs or better the community. Sanders never let his socialism get in the way of making personal profit, but he wants others to sacrifice.

Hat tip; Warner Todd Houston

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The War of Fire and Ice; the Heliosphere v. Cosmic Rays

Timothy Birdnow

This is interesting; while we have always known the solar wind acts to deflect cosmic rays from the solar system, we had no idea of just how important the solar wind is, and how fierce is the battle between it and the harsh environment of interstellar space. The Voyager probes are discovering things nobody ever expected.

From the article:

As the solar wind flows outward for billions of miles in every direction, it creates a bubble of energy that surrounds our entire solar system. At the edge of this bubble, where the solar wind finally collides with powerful cosmic rays beaming through interstellar space, there is a hot, thick wall of plasma called the heliopause. This cosmic border sits about 120 times farther from the sun than Earth does, where it helps deflect and dilute the powerful radiation released by distant stars and celestial explosions.

[...]

While Voyager 2 was able to cruise seamlessly through the heliopause in about a day, researchers found that the plasmabarrier was significantly hotter and thicker than previous studies estimated, effectively forming a physical shield between our solar system and interstellar space. According to study co-author Edward Stone, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who has worked on the Voyager program since it launched in 1977, this shield stops about 70% of cosmic radiation from breaking into our solar system.

"The heliopause is the contact surface where two winds [collide] — the wind from the sun and the wind from space, which comes from supernovathat exploded millions of years ago," Stone said in a news conference about the new Voyager studies. "Only about 30% of what's outside of the bubble can get in."

[...]

According to radiation data collected by V2 on its interstellar journey, temperatures in the heliopause reached up to 89,000 degrees Fahrenheit (31,000 degrees Celsius) — roughly double the temperature that previous astronomical models predicted, suggesting a far more violent clash between the solar wind and cosmic rays than scientists ever predicted.

While the heliopause's hot, thick wall of plasma protects our solar system from most of the harmful rays darting through space, the researchers also found that the boundaries of the heliopause are not quite as uniform as anticipated. The edge of heliopause is not a perfect "bubble" after all, but contains porous holes that allow interstellar radiation to leak in at certain points.

This is a fascinating story. Read the whole thing!

At any rate, nobody expected any of this; this shows how much we have to learn, and how claims such as "the science is settled" is balderdash.

It also suggests that interstellar travel may be impossible, or at least far more difficult than Gene Roddenberry or any of the other sci-fi types seem to think. In fact, if we were to accelerate a spaceship to a good fraction of lightspeed we would see this cosmic radiation coming on as gamma rays, and it would fry everyone aboard. It would take massive shielding, and probably an artificial heliosphere to protect the ship's payload. It means things just got even more complex.

The more we learn about the space between stars the more obvious it becomes there is a lot out there, and a lot happening.



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Presidential Charity

Timothy Birdnow

President Donald Trump
donated his third quarter salary to fight opioid abuse.

Did Barack Obama ever do anything like this? I don't know but my guess would be no. His idea of charity involved forcibly taking from some to give to others, not freely giving of himself.

A tip of the old chapeau to William Johnson

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Inflate-a-Pub

Timothy Birdnow

Man I want one of these!

This Inflatable Irish Pub Turns Your Backyard into a Bar

Taking a cue from those inflatable bounce houses at kids’ birthday parties, the Boston-based company rents out a blow-up version of an Irish pub, including the very real beverages for an authentic experience (sort of).

The inflata-bar looks like a real pub inside and out, complete with brickwork,chimneys, a fake fireplace and light fixtures printed right onto the vinyl.

The company offers many versions, the largest fitting roughly 80 people and smaller ‘pubs’ to accommodate smaller events.

In addition to whiskey and stout, the Paddy Wagon Pub offers a full range of drinks and Irish fare including Shepherds Pie, soda bread and curry fries.

You'd have to be careful when playing a game of arrows, for sure, and even more so when you pick up a gal at Last Call!

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November 26, 2019

Drop the Chalupa!

Timothy Birdnow

Alexandra Chalupa, the Democrat at the heart of the Trump Russia Hoax, appears to be tied to Obama and his hacking of state voting systems.

From Gateway Pundit:

However even the usually well-informed Rep. Nunes seems to have missed one of the biggest bombshells of the Democrats’ 2016 election interference that’s been hiding in plain sight: Chalupa’s admission she was involved in a plot to scan a number of state’s voting systems with Obama’s Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security in what Chalupa says is a a DC unit of the hackivist group "Anonymous.”

The Chalupa confession that the DOJ and DHS were hacking into state’s voting systems without the state’s permission is troubling enough, but the added detail about federal agencies working with an unknown independent hacking group raises serious national and cyber security issues.

Now add in that Ali Chalupa spent a dozen years as a DNC operative. Both her knowledge and public discussion of such an operation create a major scandal and legal problem for the DNC, top Obama administration officials, and Joe Biden.

This shocking Democratic election interference has received almost no media attention. It’s the sort of story the Democrats would love to be able to dismiss as conspirocy theory but they can’t.

That’s because the unauthorized intrusions into a number of state voting systems on Election Day was admitted to in a Facebook post by Alexandra Chalupa and then appears to be corroborated by reporting months later that shows that a number of states seem to have had their voting system scanned by computers at the Department of Homeland Security.

So what exactly is a Democratic operative doing at the heart of a hacking of state voting systems? Anybody?

And why did DHS involve themselves in hacking state computers? Voting is a local matter.

Chalupa admitted to colluding with Ukraine to get dirt on Trump, as well as Paul Manafort. She has ties to Eric Ciaramella, the likely "leaker" who was fired from the National Security Council.

Read the whole article; it's an eye-opener!

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November 25, 2019

Holding back to Win the Race

Timothy Birdnow

Jeff Rendall takes on Obama's plea for moderation to his own party at Conservative HQ.

Jeff's take on this is:

If Sanders or Warren ever managed to win the presidency and push through their healthcare hallucinations, it would send Obamacare down to the depths of policy hades forever. Assuming his fans fondly remember Obama for enacting the first big government takeover of the health industry, Sanders-care or Warren-care ("Pocahontas”-care?) would be on the lips of everyone from that point on. Who would bother crediting (blaming?) Obama for the ensuing mess when the first black president was so yesterday in Americans’ remembrances?

I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't agree either. Is it just hubris, just Obama's desire to maintain glory?

That element is there, but if it were the sole determinant Obama would have been much more vocal since leaving office. I am fairly sure Obama has a strategic reason for this.

I left the following comment:

Obama's policies are now the status quo and what Trump is doing is the radical realigning. Obama understands that HE'S now the "conservative" side of this equation. He is in a pickle, because he supports radical change but not the kind Mr. Trump is promoting. So he has to caution patience, to get the Democrats to consolidate the gains he made as opposed to biting off more than is chewable.

Revolution is easy; holding on is the hard part. Obama is learning that now. Fortunately for us the Democrats aren't.

Keep in mind that it has been 11 years since the Anointed One was elected. 21 year olds were only ten when he came to power. 30 year olds were just 19, and so the norm is Obamunism, or close to it. BHO understand that.

Trump is a radical departure, an attempt to realign the world order. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama all followed a policy of Deep State control, internationalism, environmentalism, extreme government regulations and taxation of businesses, etc. Trump is moving us away from this. HE is the radical.

In short, Mr. Obama has always been a suit-and-tie radical. He understand the need to not overplay his hand.

As Saul Alinsky said, a tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Obama knows the ropes; he knows the see-saw Fabian tactic of presenting a thesis, facing an antithesis, then coming to a synthesis. Obamacare was precisely that; there was a demand by his party for socialized medicine, and the Republicans (and the public) pushed back. Obama then offered his "compromise" which was government taking over but not actually owning it. The plan was for this to fail and then pushing further. But it first has to fail. Obama knew that, and he realizes now is the time to appeal to the moderate middle as the voice of small c conservative policy. Attack on other fronts. Let the radical groups push on the social front. Weather the tide of Trumpist populism and then come back for more. That is how the Left has won, both here and abroad.

The radicals are a useful tool and have their place in the drive for the socialist utopia, but they need to be reined in for the moment. Obama understands this.

In a race the frontrunner is frequently not the winner. The BHO knows this.

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There's the Beef!

Timothy Birdnow

I missed this story, but I suspect so did everyone else. Turns out the Impossible Whopper is exactly that.

Apparently Burger King has been cooking the "meatless" burger in gobs of greasy animal fat!

The complaintfiled in a federal court in Florida on Monday, Phillip Williams of Georgia said he visited an Atlanta Burger King in August and ordered an Impossible Whopper, which, when prepared without mayonnaise, he believed conformed to his "strict vegan diet.” Williams was unaware that Impossible Whoppers are by default "cooked on the same grills as its traditional meat-based products, creating a meat-free patty that is in fact covered in meat by-product,” the lawsuit alleges.

It was unclear how Williams became aware of how Impossible Whoppers are prepared. Burger King advertises the plant-based burgers as "100% Whopper, 0% Beef,” and notes on its websitefor the product that the burger is made with mayonnaise — a non-vegan product that contains eggs. In smaller print below the description, the company says guests who want a "meat-free option” can request their Impossible Patties not be prepared on the broiler where beef and chicken products are cooked.

In fact, the things are dripping with animal tissue.

Newsflash tofu eaters; it's not possible to make a meatless product taste like meat unless you add something. Now what could that be?  Oh yeah; MEAT!

This suit should be thrown out as a nuisance, but unfortunately our legal system still does not allow that to happen. In fact, nobody was injured in any palpable way. It's not like they made them eat Soylent Green.

There used to be an old joke about how there is more meat in McDonald's fries than in their burgers. It appears the "meatless" Impossible Whopper meets that definition.



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SCOTUS Sanduskys National Review for Michael Mann

Timothy Birdnow

The so-called "conservative" Supreme Court is going to allow Michael "Nature Trick" Mann to sue National Review  and the American Enterprise Institute for defamation.

According to Yahoo News:

In a 2012 post published on a CEI website, former CEI fellow Rand Simberg compared the investigations into Mann with the then-recent national controversy over Sandusky, who was arrested in 2011 and convicted in 2012 of sexually molesting 10 young boys.

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data," Simberg wrote.

In a later post on National Review's website, conservative writer Mark Steyn quoted from Simberg's article and referred to Mann's research as "fraudulent."

Of course, Mann has sued - and lost to - both Mark Steyn AND Timothy Ball. But SCOTUS sees no reason to not allow this serial litigant to continue to harass detractors.

A conservative court? Hardly.

Penn State was home to both Sandusky and Michael Mann (and I tried to use that analogy but was rejected by most editors in the article I wrote out of fear of being sued). Mann is famous for his "hockey stick" graph which falsely eliminated the Medieval Warming Period to produce a graph that is steady until the mid Twentieth Century. He is also infamous for refusing to hand over his codes and other data despite a Freedom of Information request for them, and for his "Nature trick" in which he sneakily spliced proxy and real data together to produce the results he wanted and thus "hide the decline" as Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia put it.

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Non PC Stocking Stuffer

Timothy Birdnow

Oh man; I want one of these!

Drones with Flamethrowers are Things You Can Buy Now

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Conflict with China

Timothy Birdnow

China sends warships to threaten U.S. vessels in the South China Sea.

From Newsweek:

In a statement Friday issued by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Southern Theater Command spokesperson Sen. Col. Li Huamin reacted to the recent presence of Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyernear the Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands. The two South China Sea land formations were the subject of international disputes, but Beijing claimed exclusive rights to them.

"The Chinese PLA sent ships and aircraft to conduct the whole-process monitoring and verification on the two US warships and warned them to leave," the statement said, saying Li has accused the U.S. of trying "to stir up trouble in the South China Sea under the pretext of freedom of navigation."

"He urged the U.S. side to stop such provocative acts immediately so as to avoid unexpected incidents," the official release added. "Li reiterated that China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and adjacent waters. No matter what tricks the U.S. vessels and aircraft may play, the Chinese military is determined and has the ability to safeguard the national sovereignty and security and maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea."

Remember, this is international waters that China just claimed without any justification. Just because it's called the South China Sea doesn't mean it belongs entirely to China, any more than the Indian Ocean belongs to India.

The article continues:

The U.S. has challenged China's vast claims to the South China Sea, which hosts crucial commercial shipping lanes and vast oil and gas reserves. In recent years, the Pentagon has stepped up so-called "freedom of navigation" operations to enforce its position. These operations were based on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, ratified by China, but only signed by the U.S.

Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing islands, islets and reefs claimed also by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Chinese officials have defended their actions by arguing any actions here were sovereign decisions taken in the name of national security.

China is determined to displace America, and clearly believes they will have to fight us at some point. I for one believe we should not pussyfoot around with the Chinese. We made them a superpower by common agreement with Europe, by sweetheart trade deals, by offering Western technology and education. We can end their power simply by cutting off those things.

A good start would be to end this foolish cold war with Russia. The Russians and Chinese are now allies against US, but that needn't be the case. In fact, China poses an existential threat to Russia, more even than it does to the U.S. The Chinese plan on exporting their surplus population into Russian Siberia at some point, and have in fact been filtering in illegal aliens - whole towns even - into Siberia. Eventually it will be more Chinese than Russian and the Chinese will simply take it. We should make that clear to Putin, and make it clear we support them in their efforts to maintain border integrity. But first we have to lead by example here - which means controlling our own border.

China, like the old Soviet Union, is a paper tiger, in my view. They can be beaten in the same way.

But first we have to face the fact that they are not our friends. That's hard for Americans to do.

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On the New Cold War

Timothy Birdnow

Leftwing Newsweek bemoans the deteriorization of relations between the U.S. and Russia and intimate it's Trump's fault.

From the article:

The Warsaw Pact may have disintegrated along with the communist empire in the 1990s, but NATO has begun to once again focus on deterring Russia, which is resurging into a modern geopolitical giantunder Putin. Among the most consistent talking points in his two decades of power has been the warning that Russia would not tolerate being besieged by foes.

And yet NATO, under the leadership of Washington, has done just that. Since former President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, the U.S. has steadily established a global missile shield involving launchers positioned off both Russia's western and eastern flanks in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, respectively.

Please note the blame is first laid on Bush, but where was the "reset" of relations under Obama and Hillary? The real degeneration happened while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, even while they were bribing her with donations to the Clinton Foundation, with million dollar speeches by her husband, and with her quid-pro-quo by giving the Russians vast quantities of uranium.

But let us continue:

Trump and Putin both initially set out to reverse the course of deteriorating U.S.-Russia relations, avoiding another costly bout for global supremacy. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated Wednesday in his latest speech to NATO, however, the Cold War was still very much alive in U.S. memory as he offered allies $100 billion in defense spending credit.

Notice how no mention of Obama - who presided over the critical period when American and Russian relations tanked - is conspicuously absent in their criticisms.

The fact is  the Bush family and Bill Clinton and Obama all hopelessly mishandled Russia. We should never have expanded NATO. We should not have offered to defend the Ukraine in return for their getting rid of their share of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal. We should have taken a more proactive approach to fostering private enterprise in Russia. We should have tried to minimize our footprint in the Middle East. I supported our war with Iraq but it made the Russians very nervous. We had troops in Afghanistan, in Alaska, in Europe and then in Iraq. The Russians were encircled, and that made them feel threatened.

Syria was the last straw, and anyone who knew anything about the Russians should have known that.

But I am always amazed at how little our intelligence people and leaders understand. I remember when Russia invaded Georgia; Condoleeza Rice, Bush's Secretary of State, looked like a deer in the headlights. Clearly she was caught completely by surprise. I wasn't; Pravda had been railing against Georgia for months leading up to the invasion. It had reached a fever pitch. But Condi Rice probably just read intelligence reports, and the CIA was probably telling her it wasn't going to happen. She needed to just read a few Russian papers.

I think Trump's troop reduction in Syria was the right move, but we're going to have to offer a few more things to the Russians while at the same time continuing to deploy nuclear defense systems. The carrot and the stick. Putin is not Stalin, but he's not a whole lot better than Brezhnev.

There is another article in Newsweek about how Russian scientists were killed in a nuclear test. The Russians are moving ahead with nuclear innovation. They were able to do this because Bill Clinton a. continued to fund the nuclear cities where uranium was enriched, ostensibly to avoid Russian scientists going rogue and working with terrorists and b.because Bill Clinton paid for the destruction of the old Soviet arsenal and freed Putin to build a new, better arsenal. Bad American policy all around. 

At any rate, it amazes me that Newsweek fails to make the obvious connection; the Hillary Clinton-funded campaign against Donald Trump started with  "Russian collusion" accusations - and launched an aggressive attack on Russia for "meddling in our elections" as though we didn't do the exact same thing. This more than anything has led to the current cold war with Russia. There has been enormous pressure on Donald Trump to not appear to be soft on Putin, and our whole national policy is being driven by Hillary Clinton's refusal to accept defeat in the election of 2016. My friend 7lb. Dave used to say America was going to be punished for re-electing the Clintons in 1996. He was so right! The Clintons are the scourge that keeps on giving.

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No Impeachment in the Near Term

Timothy Birdnow

Warner Todd Houston sends us his latest:

Despite Claims, Looks Like Democrats Will Fail to Impeach Trump This Year

Naturally; the political timing of an impeachment now would be terrible.

Look, the Democrats have two ways to go here; either they can actually try to remove the President or they can simply use impeachment as a tool to bloody him up for the next election. As of now there is no chance for a conviction.

So, if they move forward now they risk not only losing the fight but having a backlash in Trump's favor. They cannot appear to have lost prior to the election. They need to either bring this to a head just before the election OR keep it as their nuclear bomb if and when Trump is re-elected. They can investigate and leak and do more damage in the meantime.

To push forward with impeachment now is dangerous for them. They will have no issue to run on and Trump will appear to be a man maligned (which indeed he is) by angry partisans.

I believre they will keep this as a cloud over Trump's head and await developments. They will be able to say at election time "under investigation for impeachment" and hope the public will be soured on Mr. Trump. It's a far better strategy than impeaching and losing their hole card.

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November 24, 2019

Chick-Fil-A's Hard Left Turn

Timothy Birdnow

So, what happened to Chick-fil-A?  The Christian run company, which is closed on Sundays and stoop up to the bullying by the LGBtQEIEIO gang has seemed to cave in a spectacular fashion to Progressive thugs when they summarily dumped the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes but kept funding Muslim refugees and social justice issues.

Well, it turns out they put a liberal who donated to both Obama and Hillary in charge of the Chick-fil-A Foundation.

From Daniel Greenfield:

The Executive Director of the CFA Foundation is Rodney D. Bullard, a former White House fellow and Assistant US Attorney. Some may have mistaken him for a conservative because he was a fellow in the Bush Administration, but he was an Obama donor, and, more recently, had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign while at Chick-fil-A.

Like many corporations, Chick-fil-A branded its charitable giving as a form of social responsibility. Bullard became its Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility. Unlike charity, corporate social responsibility is a leftist endeavor to transform corporations into the political arms of radical causes. Like other formerly conservative corporations, Chick-fil-A had made the fundamental error of adopting the language and the infrastructure of its leftist peers. And that made what happened entirely inevitable.

In an interview with Business Insider earlier this year, Bullard emphasized that the Chick-fil-A Foundation had a "higher calling than any political or cultural war." The foundation boss was preparing the way for the shakeup that was coming in the fall. Even while he claimed that the CFA Foundation had a higher calling than a political or cultural war, he was preparing to accommodate the Left’s cultural war.

Bullard would have been seen as a safe bet. The CFA Foundation and the Christian groups it supported were so entangled that Bullard serves on theSalvation Army’s National Advisory Board and was on the National Board of Trustees of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But Bullard’s vision was not that of charity, but of corporate social responsibility. And the two things are fundamentally different.

As indeed Social Justice warriors always seee charity as a tool for Progressive social change. There is no charity outside of a revolution in society, in their minds.

After chronicling the money spent on left-wing causes by the Chick-fil-A foundation, Greenfield concludes:

Organizations don’t trend rightward. They trend leftward. Any organization that isn’t closely watched will go the way of the Chick-fil-A Foundation. If this can happen at Chick-fil-A, it can happen anywhere.

And indeed it can. We are swimming against a very powerful tide, as it seems all of corporate America has hitched their neo-fascist wagons to the Progressive horse.
This is the exact technique employed to swallow higher education a number of decades ago. Create an environment where you get no respect if you don't say and do the approved things, then filter in moles to hollow out the institutions. Finally banish all opposition as "fringe" and voila!  You have control of all of the institutions, and a huge amount of money to be put at the service of the Left. It doesn't matter if it is a business started on Christian principles or not; in the end the tug leftward will be followed, if for no other reason than to avoid a nasty fight.

But if you are a Christian organization you are supposed to have nasty fights; it's the nature of Christianity, which is a belief that is fundamentally at odds with a sinful world.

It sure would have been nice to have had a company that we could feel good about patronizing.

BTW Andrew Young, the old Leftist from the Carter years, sits on the board at CFA. Huh?  How on God's Green Earth did they allow that commie creep a seat there?

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:52 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The media’s propaganda campaign failed. Badly

Timothy Birdnow

John Nolte explains just how bad the impeachment big top collapsed on the Demo-Media. He cites data from the left-wing Vanity Fair, which, despite desperate efforts to find some good news from the liberal perspective, fails.

By a yuge margin of 62 to 22 percent, the all-important Independent voters who will decide the 2020 election, especially in key states, say that impeachment is "more important to politicians than it is to me.”

Get this…

By another yuge margin, 61 to 23 percent, Independents say impeachment is more important to the media than it is to me.”

Vanity Fair concludes that these numbers can only mean "Impeachment proceedings are viewed as bread and circuses for the anti-Trump crowd in Washington and the media.”

Ya’ think?

Another juicy number is that on the list of priorities Independents hold dear, only 27 percent describe impeachment as a top priority, which means it polls well below the deficit (74 percent), health care (72 percent), and infrastructure (70 percent) — and infrastructure is an issue Trump truly cares about, something he regularly talked about even in the years preceding his presidency. Infrastructure is something that could have happened had Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat-run congress not become coup-obsessed, something I expected Trump and the Nervous Nancy to make a deal on.

Wait, it gets better…

Hilariously, as Vanity Fair is forced to acknowledge, "Even Trump’s absurd border wall scored as a higher priority for Independents.”

"Independents suffer from scandal fatigue and overall confusion,” Vanity Fairadds. "They agreed with the statement ‘[It is] difficult to tell all the investigations in Washington apart’ by a roughly two-to-one margin.”

Nolte goes on to explain how Vanity Fair tries to blame TRUMP for "sewing confusion" by, well, actually telling people what has been happening. The nerve of him!

The Vanity Fair piece closes on a high note, saying that Independents are paying attention. Of course, if they aren't being moved by it, that attention is going to be mighty inconvenient. This whole thing hinged on people being ill-informed but outraged. T'aint happening.



From the article:

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:27 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Protesters Pestering Motorists

Timothy Birdnow

Warner Todd Houston forwards this.

Protesters Try to Stop SUV; it Doesn't Go Well

Something like this happened in St. Louis a few years back. Some gay rights activists held a protest over a police shooting of a transvestite and they blocked the streets. One driver, trapped by an ugly gay mob, drove through them to safety. He was arrested and charged with mayhem, I believe (nobody was hurt). I don't know how the case came out, but the law was firmly against this guy, who was doing nothing but trying to protect himself.

The Left is the aggressors and they should have to accept that they are going to get hurt if they try to harass drivers.

Society has to stop coddling these rowdy "protesters".

Update: there was a woman who was mildly injured (she was hanging on the driver's vehicle) and the man received probation. See here.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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November 23, 2019

Black School-Choice Protesters Shout Down Warren Speech Celebrating Black Women

Dana Mathewson

Does this suggest to you, as it does to me, that a crack may be developing in the monolithic support among black voters for Democrats? If so, it couldn't happen at a better time. And, just possibly, the unlovable Lizzie Warren is the one causing it to happen.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave a speech in Atlanta celebrating black female domestic workers. Yet black protesters disrupted the speech, criticizing Warren for her opposition to school choice.

"Our children, our choice!" chanted mostly black protesters wearing shirts with the phrase "Powerful Parents Network."

Warren, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, paused her speech. Protesters shouted, "We want to be heard!" The candidate's supporters chanted, "Warren! Warren!"

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) — the only member of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Squad to endorse Warren as opposed to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) — tried to calm down the protesters,The Washington Examiner reported.

"No one is here to quiet you, least of all this black woman," Pressley, who is herself black, said. "The senator is here to talk about the contribution fighters like you have made in history."

Indeed, Warren's speech focused on the black washerwomen's strike in 1881 and other events in the history of labor."There are fighters who were here before, fighters we can learn from, and the fighters I want to talk about tonight are black women," the 2020 candidate said.

[...]

Warren's emphasis on black women in the labor movement echoed a speech she gave in September recounting Frances Perkins' response to the 1991 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Her far-left campaign has valorized the labor movement, piggy-backing off of Bernie Sanders' return to old-fashioned socialism.

Yet these black protesters are themselves evidence of the vices of the labor movement. Teachers' unions have gained a stranglehold on public education and the Democratic Party, pushing a one-size-fits-all approach that harms people based on their geographic location. School choice aims to allow parents to pick the right school for their children, rather than just having everyone go to the public school.

In many cities across America, school choice has enabled poor black children to go to better schools and enjoy a better path to success. Teachers' unions insist the only path forward is the failing public schools and the only way to improve the public schools is ... more funding. Schools need to be accountable to children and their parents, not unions that help entrench the problems in the current education system.

Great article, dear readers! It's all here, https://pjmedia.com/trending/black-school-choice-protesters-drown-out-warren-speech-about-black-women/ and I really recommend you read it all!

Maybe it's just me, but anytime Heap Big Chief Spreading Bull gets shouted down, I think it's a victory for common sense!

And remember, a candidate can't get elected President without (what is it?) 10% support from the black community these days? Please correct me if I'm wrong! She certainly doesn't seem to have it.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Re-evaluating Cortez



Timothy Birdnow

Writing in The Federalist a couple of weeks ago John Daniel Davidson  celebrated the five hundredth anniversary of Hernando Cortez and his conquest of Mexico.

As Mr. Davidson points out, Cortez has been largely erased from the history of Mexico, for the same reasons we are now busily erasing the Founding Fathers and the heroes of the Confederacy. Modern Progressivism simply hates white, European historical figures.

But Cortez was, despite all his faults, probably well justified in destroying the Aztecs.

From the article:

Put bluntly, the violence of Aztec civilization was based on a cosmology that demanded ritualized violence on a mass scale. The two shrines atop the main pyramid in Tenochtitlan were dedicated to Tlaloc, the god of water and rain, and Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and the sun. Idols of each deity were housed inside the shrines, shrouded from outside view by curtains. Before sacrifices could be offered to Tlaloc, the ground had to be wetted with human tears, usually the tears of children, whose fingernails would be pulled off by Aztec priests to make them cry before they were slaughtered.

The idol of Huitzilopochtli, the god of both the war and the sun, which the Aztecs considered the source of life and were perpetually afraid would go out, was gruesome. It was made from amaranth seeds and held together with honey and human blood, and inside were bags of jade, human bones, and amulets, which were thought to give life to the god.

The idol was built every year and decorated with rich garments and a golden mask during the festival of Panquetzaliztli, which was held on the winter solstice in honor of the birth of Huitzilopochtli. At the end of the festival, the idol was broken apart and eaten, and sacrificial victims, covered in blue body paint and arrayed in the costume of the god, had their hearts cut out.

Horrifying as all this was, there was a certain macabre logic to it. Not unlike the modern cults of abortion and assisted suicide, Aztecs practiced human sacrifice in the belief it was an absolute necessity that would bring about practical goods. After all, the gods Nanahuatzin and Tecucistecatl set themselves on fire to become the sun and the moon, and the Aztecs, by spilling their own blood and that of their children and enemies, were only repaying the gods what was owed to them, thereby ensuring the continuance and prosperity of their people.

Cortés looked upon all this and concluded, with an iron resolve, that it must be destroyed. After an 80-day siege of Tenochtitlan in the summer of 1521, he ordered the city razed. His men pulled down buildings and walls, and reduced the place to rubble.

There was a reason why this massive empire fell so easily.

As the Spanish pointed out recently when Mexico demanded an apology for conquering their country, there were large numbers of native allies with Cortez, because the Aztecs were vile, evil, oppressors. Mexico fought WITH the Conquistadore's, not against them. In the end they provided the shift in power that made a long-simmering desire for rebellion actually possible. In short, Cortez was a liberator, not a conqueror.

The same often held true in North America. Many of the native tribes were quite nasty, performing human sacrifice, cannibalism, and ritual torture. Take the Comanche, for example; they stole children, raped women, and tortured men to death on a regular basis. They did this well before the coming of the White Man. Despite being excellent guerrilla fighters they had no allies against the Americans. In the end they lost.

This was true of many of the Indians. Custer, for example, had native scouts helping him. Why?  Because they hated the Cheyenne, and Lakota and Arapaho worse than the white settlers. See, these tribes had themselves invaded the Black Hills only about a hundred years prior, and had made endless war against the aboriginal tribes.

This notion of peace prior to the European invasion is bull. That was why the Indians never could mount any credible defense against the encroachment of settlers; they despised each-other and were in a constant state of war. There was little if any trade among the tribes, so little that most tribes didn't even know who lived a couple of hundred miles away. North American Indians did not know of the existence of the Aztec, or Mayans, and especially not of the Incans. They were too likely to be killing each-other or "counting coup" which was a dangerous attempt to position themselves where they COULD kill someone. That someone usually fought back.

It is indeed time to re-re-evaluate the whole Native American issue. Both sides had valid points and grievances. We've got to stop this endless liberal demonization and actually look at the world as it was.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:50 PM | Comments (41) | Add Comment
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