February 16, 2020

The Swamp Still Stinks

Timothy Birdnow

Double standard at the DOJ - and the Swamp stinks again!

From Canada Free Press:

The foreman of the jury that convicted Stone was Tomeka Hart, who revealed herself this week with public statements about the case. Hart is a former Democratic Party congressional candidate who made online comments that were critical of both Stone and President Donald Trump. She tweeted about Trump with the hashtag "klanpresident,” shouted "shame, shame shame” outside one of his hotels during a protest and referred to Stone and other supporters of the President as "racists and Putin cronies,” according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. In his view, there is a "serious question as to whether the conviction itself” of Roger Stone "should be reevaluated.”

It was also discovered that another juror was married to an official of the Department of Justice (DOJ) who worked in a division that spearheaded the Stone arrest, while another juror, Seth Cousins, had made donations to Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic Party candidate for President, along with other left wing organizations. With such incredible bias on the jury, Stone had no chance of receiving a fair trial. It is no surprise that his attorneys have asked for a new trial in a secret court filing according to Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller.

The DOJ initially recommended that Stone receive a jail sentence of between seven and nine years in prison. These guidelines were blasted by President Donald Trump who called them "a disgrace.” Of course, convicting Stone was part of the discredited Mueller investigation. Stone was never involved in Russian collusion and had no conversations with Wikileaks.

As President Trump noted, Stone was being prosecuted for "something nobody can even define.” He lied about conversations with a liberal talk show host, supposedly threatened his dog and engaged in other peripheral activities that had no bearing on the original purpose of the Mueller investigation.

Fortunately, United States Attorney General Bill Barr revised the sentencing guidelines to a more reasonable length of between three and four years. Nevertheless, the fact that Stone is being prosecuted is an outrage. He is also under a gag order by the judge, denying him his First Amendment rights of free speech.

 

In contrast to the harsh treatment received by Stone and other Trump associates like Lt. General Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, the denizens of the deep state never receive any consequences for their behavior.

For example, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, no longer must worry about being prosecuted. On Friday, a questionable decision was made not to issue any charges and drop the investigation into McCabe, who was the subject of a criminal referral by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

This decision was made even though Horowitz identified multiple instances of McCabe lying about leaking information to the Wall Street Journal. According to Horowitz, McCabe disclosed "the existence of an ongoing investigation,” which violated both FBI and DOJ policy.

So even now there are two sets of rules, and that from Donald Trump's own Justice Department.

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Department of Labor Still Pursuing Obama Era Policies

Timothy Birdnow

Trump's Department of Labor is STILL pursuing Obama-era lawsuits promoting "social justice".

Powerline dishes.

The culprit is the Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). During the Obama administration, OFCCP became a bastion of leftism. It pursued radical theories of pay discrimination, the goal of which is to force companies to pay male and female employees the same rates with little regard for the work they actually perform and the relevant experience they bring to the job.

Silicon Valley became a prime target of the Obama OFCCP. On its way out the door, the Obamaites filed pay discrimination cases against Oracle, Google, and Palantir. Under Alex Acosta, the DOL pursued these cases (the one against Palantir settled). Under Gene Scalia, it has continued to do so.

Indeed, according to this article by Cory Andrewsof the Washington Legal Foundation, Scalia has done nothing much to curb the OFCCP. Andrews says that "since Secretary Scalia assumed his post in September 2019, the OFCCP has seemingly grown more stridentunder his watch.” (Emphasis added) "At the same time,” he continues, "Secretary Scalia has had nothing to say about OFCCP’s ultra vires enforcement regime.”

Andrews correctly views the OFCCP as an extreme example of the rise of the administrative state, under which inordinate power resides in the hands of largely unchecked bureaucrats:

If [the OFCCP] suspects a federal contractor or subcontractor of violating one of the anti-discrimination provisions in a government contract, the OFCCP doesn’t refer the matter to the DOJ to sue for breach of contract in federal court. Nor does it refer the company to the EEOC for further investigation and possible action under Title VII.

Instead, the OFCCP brings an administrative enforcement action against the accused before the Labor Department’s own administrative law judges. Appeals from that adjudication? The Labor Department decides the appeal, too. . . .

What does it take to actually drain the swamp? Trump appoints people who do nothing. We elected him to stop this kind of crap.

Bear in mind this is Trumps' second shot at this; his former Labor Secretary - Alexis Acosta - pursued the very same strategy, the one started by the Obama Administration.

This is exactly why there should be no Department of Labor in the first place. It is not only none of the Federal government's business, it's also something guaranteed to wreck havoc on the nation. And it is something that will attract radicals from Big Labor and the Progressive reformers.



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New Mexico Goes Red Flag

Timothy Birdnow

New Mexico turns to the Dark Side, passing a "red flag" bill.

From American Military News:

The House voted 39-31 Thursday night to approve the so-called red-flag bill, which would allow law enforcement to petition for a court order to take away a person’s firearms. A judge could require the person to give up their guns for 10 days — an order that could be extended to one year — if probable cause is found that the person poses a threat to themselves or others.

The bill now goes to the desk of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has championed it as one of her key crime-fighting initiatives. She is expected to sign it into law in the next month.

The vote did not fall strictly along party lines. Seven Democrats — Harry Garcia of Grants, Raymundo Lara of Chamberino, Willie Madrid of Chaparral, Rudy Martinez of Bayard, Patricio Ruiloba of Albuquerque, Joseph Sanchez of Alcalde and Candie Sweetser of Deming — joined Republicans in opposing the bill.

Supporters say the measure would save lives in a state beset by gun violence. Opponents say it would likely have no effect on someone who is determined to take a life and that it would violate constitutional rights protected by both the Second and Fourth amendments.

The legislation — introduced by Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, and Reps. Daymon Ely, D-Corrales, and Joy Garrratt, D-Albuquerque — was among the most contentious of this legislative session.

New Mexico would join 17 states and Washington, D.C., in enacting "extreme risk protection” legislation.

I'm not sure where "shall not be enfringed" is unclear.

It's interesting this is happening in a border state. With illegal aliens pouring in, the people of New Mexico have a right and duty to protect themselves. It seems once again the Democrats are more interested in helping illegal aliens and winning their illegal votes than in following the Law or protecting the People.

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Theory of Formation of Planets Wrong?

Timothy Birdnow

Theories about how the planets formed may be wrong - perhaps very wrong.

New research based on data sent back by the New Horizons probe indicate that the body known as Arrokoth (in the Kuiper Belt) formed from two distinct bodies. But, unlike the standard theory that says larger planetoids are formed from violent collisions, Arrokoth appears to have been gently created.

From the Science Alerts article:

Arrokoth, formerly known as (486958) 2014 MU69or Ultima Thule,was visited by the New Horizons probe on New Year's Day last year, way out in the Kuiper Belt.

At a staggering average distance from the Sun of 6.7 billion kilometres (4.1 billion miles), and an orbital period of 293 years, Arrokoth is the most distant single object in the Solar System we've identified.

[...]

The first of the three papers, by New Horizons investigator William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues, found that the two objects in the Arrokoth binary actually formed close together.

There are generally two competing theories about how planets are born.

According to the longstandinghierarchical accretion modelof planetesimal formation, the building blocks of planets are formed when different parts of the solar nebula - the cloud of gas and dust that formed the Sun and planets - violently crash together.

 

On the other hand, thepebble accretion modelsuggests that elements from the same area gradually and gently come together to form binary objects.

The latest data from Arrokoth lends weight to the latter.

If Arrokoth had formed from chunks coming together from different parts of the nebula, it would have shown more evidence of impacts, the researchers said.

Hmm. This is ancient cosmic flotsom, and it SHOULD have been quite violent in the way it combined.

It gets wierder.:

The second paper helped back this up, with astronomer John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute and colleagues studying the surface of Arrokoth. They confirmed that it was smooth and only lightly cratered, a stark difference from other objects in the Solar System.

 

They also confirmed that Arrokoth has no rings or satellites larger than 180 metres (590 feet) within a radius of 8,000 kilometres, and no atmosphere, or gas or dust emission, the presence of which would indicate relatively recent perturbation. That indicates that Arrokoth has been pretty peaceful for a very long time indeed.

But they also studied Arrokoth's craters more closely, and found that the object's surface is likely around 4 billion years old - nearly as old as the Solar System itself.

"Arrokoth's spin state is likely to have evolved only very slowly, there do not appear to be sufficient impacts to act as effective seismic sources, and Arrokoth's likely high porosity would make seismic energy propagation highly inefficient," they wrote in their paper.

"Overall, despite the paucity of craters on its surface, the observed crater density is consistent with a crater retention age of greater than ~4 billion years. The visible surface at the scale of the LORRI image resolution thus plausibly dates from the end of Solar System accretion."

Curiouser and curiouser.  The article concludes:

Finally, in the third paper, astronomer Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory and colleagues studied Arrokoth's peculiar redness. The reddest naturally occurring material - called "ultrared matter" - in the Solar System can be found in the Kuiper Belt, and Arrokoth is coated in it, but the material's exact nature was unclear.

The team found that the object is uniformly cold and red, coated in methanol ice and complex organic molecules they couldn't precisely identify based on the limited spectral data New Horizons was able to gather. These molecules are likely what creates the red colour.

This not only seems to confirm organic molecules as the source of ultrared matter; the uniformity of the colour - as well as the age of the surface as found by Spencer's team - also support the finding that Arrokoth was formed in a highly localised region.

"Arrokoth has the physical features of a body that came together slowly, with 'local' materials in the solar nebula," said Grundy. "An object like Arrokoth wouldn't have formed, or look the way it does, in a more chaotic accretion environment."

Seems the old violent collision theory may be wrong - at least for this body, and perhaps for all the bodies as far out as the Kuiper Belt. Of course, that doesn't mean it worked that way in the inner system.

One has to wonder; if the formation of planets was more gentle than we realize, perhaps other established theories about our solar system are wrong? 

This is why we need to actually go out there and not just sit at home and peer through telescopes. You can't really learn that much from a distance.

And it may be important down the road; early in our history it appears the Earth and other planets (like the Moon) were pummelled by massive amounts of space debris. The moon is terribly pock-marked on the side facing the Earth (yet strangely enough the far side is much gentler and one wonders if the side we see was at one time facing out where it could be hit? If we understand the outer system better we can better predict a chunk of rock or ice. That may save our lives some day. We don't know why Earth was bombarded early on, but it could happen again. We just don't know!

We live in interesting times!

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There are no Moderates

Warner Todd Houston

There are no actual "moderate" Democrats running for president.

Media Pushes False Narrative that Klobuchar and Buttigieg are Moderates

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Life in the Cosmos?

Timothy Birdnow

Warner Todd Houston asked this question of Fakebook:

Question of the day: Why have we seen no indication of life outside planet earth?

My answer is that there probably isn't any. What do you say?

I replied:

That is known as the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi pointed out that aliens would be at all levels of development and so we should find some evidence of their existence. We don't, which means they either do not exist, or they are so far away we cannot find any evidence of them, or they never developed machine technology like we have.

Of course, a star is  not visible to us. What is visible to us is light from the past. A star 400 light years away may have gone nova for all we know. We are seeing it  as it was four hundred years ago. So if there is intelligent life on such a star WE would give no indication of our presence since we hadn't yet developed technology they could see. It would work the same for them.

And as nine of of ten stars are red dwarfs, it means few stars likely to produce life as we know it are hanging around within easy reach. Red dwarf stars are generally flare suns, meaning they emit huge coronal mass ejections. The radiation would sterilize life as we know it. And the strong solar wind (any planets with liquid water would have to be in a close, tidally locked orbit) would sheer the atmosphere clean off such a world.

So the best bet are orange and yellow and white stars, and there just aren't that many close to us.

Personally, I believe there aren't any other intelligent life forms, and if there are they are a long way away. We have a completely unique situation on Earth. We have no "hot Jupiter" as so many extrasolar systems do (and that keeps the sun from flaring a lot.) We have Jupiter and Saturn tidally locked in the outer system, which influences the formation of the inner planets and holds the space debris down to a minimum. Jupiter likely sent a lot of crap our way early on, mainly water, which has made Earth a wet, ocean world. We are not a Super Earth. We have a satellite that is the size of a planet, and it may well have stripped away some of our atmosphere preventing us from becoming like Venus.

So it may be we are alone. And even if we are not, travel near the speed of light would be extraordinarily dangerous; imagine getting hit by space ice at 90% of C!  There appears to be a lot of crap out there. It's part of "dark matter".

So either some sort of really weird ftl drive would have to be invented (and there is no actual theory of such) or spacefarers would have to go slow and sleep through the voyage. You wouldn't do that unless you absolutely HAD to.

Another point; aliens may be blind, in which case they would not even be aware of the stars. Intelligent bats would have a problem with astronomy, for instance. And what of intelligent sea life? Without fire it would be hard to construct a technological civilization, no matter how smart a squid may be. We may be the lucky winners with eyes and oxygenated atmospheres.

And it should be pointed out our ability to sense time could be very different, perhaps to the point where we do not even recognize each-other as living beings. I read a frog is not even aware of most other creatures in the lilly pond; it recognizes flies and other food, but little else. It could be we are frogs in a big pond full of aliens.

My money is on us being alone, or near enough, at least in this part of the Cosmos.

End

Someone said "the math says there is" to which I responded:

The Drake Equations suggest so, but I've always felt they were self-serving and presumptive. They assume there is nothing unique about Earth and that life naturally happens in the right conditions. But we've never been able to create life in a lab, even though we've been trying. Not to say the equations are wrong, just some of the assumptions. We don't even know if physical laws are the same everywhere in the Universe.

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February 15, 2020

Bloomberg campaign downplays report he is considering Hillary Clinton as running mate

Dana Mathewson

From Fox News, so you know there's some credibility both ways. Notice that he is "downplaying" it but not dismissing it outright.
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign on Saturday downplayed a report that he is considering 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as his pick for vice president.

The Drudge Report, citing a source close to Bloomberg’s campaign, reported that Clinton was under consideration after internal polling found that a Bloomberg-Clinton ticket would be a "formidable force.”

The conservative news aggregator, which came to prominence in the 90s for first reporting the Monica Lewinsky scandal, reported that Bloomberg would consider changing his residence to a home he owns in Colorado or Florida, "since the electoral college makes it hard for a POTUS and VPOTUS from the same state.”

But the Bloomberg campaign quickly tamped down that report but fell short of denying it outright.

"We are focused on the primary and the debate, not VP speculation," Bloomberg communication director Jason Schechter said in a statement.

The spotlight has increased on Bloomberg in recent days as he has shifted up the polls. He entered the race late -- and is skipping the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary, Nevada caucuses, and South Carolina primary --the four early voting states that kick off the nominating calendar in order to focus on the Super Tuesday states in March.

As the newsboys used to yell, back in the days when boys used to hawk papers on the street, "Extra, Extra! Read all about it" right here: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bloomberg-campaign-downplays-report-he-is-considering-hillary-clinton-for-vp

I have my doubts, and mainly because I think Little Mike has at least a normal amount of self-preservation instinct. And he's certainly considered this: If he were to agree to this, and (God forbid) the ticket should somehow wind up beating Trump in November, just how long do you suppose President Mike Bloomberg would live before suffering a fatal attack of Arkancide?

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Foreign Collusion at the Ivy League

Timothy Birdnow

Harvard and Yale appear to have been taking a lot of money from potentially hostile foreign actors.

And they complain about "collusion" by our President!

From American Military News:

The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that it is launching an investigation into Harvard and Yale after they failed to disclose about $375 million in gifts and contracts from China and Saudi Arabia in the past four years.

Harvard and Yale are the latest in the Education Department’s continuing efforts to crack down on foreign influence, particularly from China. According to the Wall Street Journal,U.S. universities have failed to report they brought in $6.5 billion from foreign nations since 1990.

A major aspect of the alleged foreign influence on universities is through gifts and grants, which can come with strings attached and might compromise their academic independence.

"This is about transparency,” U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statementWednesday. "If colleges and universities are accepting foreign money and gifts, their students, donors, and taxpayers deserve to know how much and from whom. Moreover, it’s what the law requires. Unfortunately, the more we dig, the more we find that too many are underreporting or not reporting at all. We will continue to hold colleges and universities accountable and work with them to ensure their reporting is full, accurate, and transparent, as required by the law.”

On top of failing to disclose possible financial conflicts to academic freedom, Harvard even sponsored a 30-year old Chinese national who’ve attempted to steal research.

The Chinese national,Zaosong Zheng, was recently arrested at Boston Logan International Airport allegedly with stolen 21 vials of cancer research material he was attempting to smuggle to China. Prosecutors alleged he attempted to steal the material to bring to China so he could conduct his own research in his laboratory.

In addition to Zaosong’s arrest, Charles Lieber,the chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, was arrested on Jan. 28 on charges he lied about his ties the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Plan.

Is it any surprise college campuses - especially the Ivy League - have become such hotbeds of anti-Americanism and Socialism? Our competitors and enemies have bought the education of our children.

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Russian pranksters say they fooled Bernie Sanders by posing as Greta Thunberg

Dana Mathewson

Well, folks, there are these two Russians who seem to be good at fooling people into thinking they are somebody they aren't. Back on Jan. 7 I posted an article about how they "punked" Rep. Maxine Waters into thinking they were St. Greta of Thunberg and her father, fresh from an interview with President Trump, in which he was rather rude to them and told them some things he shouldn't have, and wouldn't Ms. Waters like to hear them, if so we'll set up another call on a better line, etc., etc. Apparently Slapsy Maxie fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

Now they say they schnookered Karl Marx... er, Bernie Sanders. It's not clear at this time whether Bernie has admitted it.

A pair of Russian pranksters who have targeted several high-profile American politicians claim they called Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders late last year posing as teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg with an offer to support his campaign.

Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov Told the Associated Press the call took place in December 2019. The pair posted an audio recording of the purported call to YouTube on Thursday. The Sanders campaign did not immediately return Fox News' request to verify whether or not the recording is authentic.

The recording was released more than two months after the call because of Sanders' success in the Iowa Democratic caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, they said.

On the call, a female pretends to be Thunberg and Stolyarov plays her father, Svante. They offer to lend support to the Vermont senator's campaign. Sanders suggests "Greta" make a public statement in support of him and that they do an event together the next time she visits the United States.

This article, like the other one, includes a video. The entire article is here: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-russian-pranksters-greta-thunberg

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A Cool and Modest Proposal

Timothy Birdnow

This from the Captain Obvious department; dams slow down the flow of rivers and cool the water.

https://phys.org/news/2020-02-hydropower-cool-rivers-mekong-river.html

From the article:

Using 30 years of satellite data, the team discovered that within one year of the opening of a major dam, downstream during the dry season dropped by up to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C). The cooling persisted where the rivers meet the Mekong River, which showed, at most, a 1.4 F (0.8 C) cooling. The researchers published their findings Feb. 13 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The team is also speaking about related research Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Seattle.

Anybody who has ever visited Lake Taneycomo in south-western Missouri knows about this; the lake used to be good for bass fishing but is now only good for trout, as it grew very cold after they dammed just above it to create Table Rock Lake. Now the water is cold and the trout plentiful (thanks to a hatchery.) 

So, what's my point? If the Earth is warming so much from carbon dioxide, maybe we should start damming up all the rivers with hydroelectric plants; kill two birds with one stone!  Generate non-carbon dioxide emitting energy and at the same time cool an allegedly warming world.

Why don't I think the people pushing the Climate Change meme will agree to this?

BTW more trout would be a delight in my humble opinion.

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Don't unpack your Bathing Suit Yet

Timothy Birdnow

A temperature record has been recorded in Antarctica. An island station charted a 69.35* F. record high.

But don't get your panties in a bunch yet, Greta.

First, it is summer in Antarctica.

Second, it is just one station. The article admits:

"We'd never seen a this high in Antarctica," Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP.

He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent's northern tip on February 9, "has no meaning in terms of a climate-change trend," because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set.

[...]

 

"We can't use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It's a data point," he said.

"It's simply a signal that something different is happening in that area."

Third, this was on an off-shore island, not on the continent itself. It was on Seymore Island, off the much warmer Antarctic Peninsula. It's just off Graham Land, which is a highly volcanic region (which may well influence temperatures there.)

Jack Dini writes at Canada Free Press;

The fact that Antarctica is the coldest place on earth has nothing to do with a temperature record at a single weather station. Esperanza is located at the warmest, most northerly part of the mountainous Antarctic peninsula, and is most sensitive to El Nino warming and to the southward flow of warm moist subtropical winds. And Esperanza’s topography always amplifies temperatures when winds form the northwest cause wind events. What happened at Esperanza has nothing to do with Antarctica’ overall climate trends, never mind any global warming trend

Fourth, there is a lot more in the way of data collection now on the frozen continent. Our records are far less complete now than in the past.

And finally, the rest of the continent remains bone-ass cold. McMurdo Station saw an average of minus 5.2 degrees F. yesterday. At the height of summer. It is currently forty below zero at Amundson-Scott
at the South Pole. And it is currently minus 51 F. at Vostok Station.

Ten years ago in August NASA satellites recorded a thermometer-breaking low of -135.8 degrees F. If this is global warming then it is a capricious warming indeed.

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Google to license Mainstream News

Timothy Birdnow

Hmm. I find this quite interesting.

Apparently Google is thinking about paying news organizations for content.

From the article:

A licensing deal would likely be welcomed by that contend Google derives profits from ads alongside their , including "snippets" in search results.

Contacted by AFP Friday, Google indicated it is seeking new ways to help publishers.

"We want to help people find quality journalism—it's important to informed democracy and helps support a sustainable news industry," Google vice president of news Richard Gingras said in a statement.

I'll bet they do!

This means they will place legacy media news in prime position and spike news sources that cannot afford to pay - meaning the largely volunteer conservative citizen journalists.

In my humble opinion this is a backdoor way to shut our side out of the debate. 

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Climate Change Alarmists in their own Words

Timothy Birdnow

Jassy May forwards this from Penelope Arcana Copeland. I've covered some of this before, but this is a nice compendium of Global Warming comments from movers and shakers proving it's not about the science:

Big thanks to Chet McAteer for rounding up these great quotes

"We've got to ride this global warming issue.Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy."
- Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony...climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world."
- Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment

more...

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The Fall of Voluntary Socialism at Panera

Timothy Birdnow

From each according to his ability to each according to his need usually reveals a lot of needy and not many able.



From the article:

The basic idea behind Panera Cares was simple. The restaurants would serve food similar to the fare at other Panera locations. However, patrons would only pay as much as they thought themselves able to pay. In this way, Panera would be able to provide food security on a small scale to the needy.

[...]

In 1875, Karl Marx penned his most famous line, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The idea was not original, but his precise wording is seared into the consciousness of every socialist and pseudo-socialist in the world.

It sounds so good. It is so logical, and yet so altruistic. It goes well with other platitudes like, "the wealthiest nation in the world ought to be able to feed its people.” One can almost hear an elevator music version of John Lennon’s Imagine playing in the background.

Intentionally or not, Panera Cares tested Marx’s premise. Mr. Shaich believed that those who were able would happily pay something extra to provide food for those who could not afford to pay the full price. He also believed that those who could not afford the full price would pay what they could.

Unfortunately, Mr. Shaich’s faith in this premise proved overly optimistic. Eater Detroit describes Panera Cares’s short history. "The restaurants weren’t financially viable… Panera Cares was reportedly only recouping between 60 and 70 percent of its total costs. The losses were attributed to students who "mobbed” the restaurant and ate without paying, as well as homeless patrons who visited the restaurant for every meal of the week.”

Gee, whoda seen that coming?

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India Builds a Wall

Timothy Birdnow

So the government of India, a poor country, can build a wall to hide a slum from a foreign dignitary (Donald Trump) but that same dignitary can't build a wall to keep uninvited aliens from invading our home?

A Wall Is Being Built in Ahmedabad to Block a Slum From Donald Trump's View

From the article:

The wall is being constructed on the road leading from the Ahmedabad airport to Gandhinagar as part of a beautification plan that has been rolled out ahead of Trump’s visit. He is scheduled to address a huge gathering at the Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad at the end of the roadshow.

The ‘Kem Chho Trump’ event is being seen as Modi’s reciprocative gesture to the US president for joining him at the ‘Howdy Modi’ gathering in Houston last year.

As part of the preparations for the event, a lot of infrastructural work has been undertaken all around Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

"Howdy Modi"?  That is hilarious; would make a great parody  song!

Maybe Donald Trump ought to sell the wall as a beautification project on the southern border?  After all, most of the border area in Mexico is probably fundamentally no better than the Ahmedabad slums. And if a brown skinned Third World leader says it's o.k. who are WE to disagree?

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McCabe Speakum with Forked Tongue

Willis Eschenbach had this to say about McCabe:

From the Inspector General's report:

Oct 31, 2016 - McCabe lied to Comey
May 9, 2017 - Lied to FBI INSD Agents - under oath
July 28, 2017 - Lied to IG - under oath
Nov 27, 2017 - Lied to IG 2nd time - under oath

As Scott Adams commented, I'm thinking of becoming a Democrat so I can lie to the FBI if I need to ...

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Grating Greta Scoldilocks Nominated for Nobel

Timothy Birdnow

Scoldilocks - also known as Greta Thunberg and The Great Assperger, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

We all knew this was coming.

The snotty teen with the Cindy Brady hairdo appears fast-tracked to get an honor generally reserved for great scientists and scholars, or those who have actually accomplished something. Thundering Thunberg appears to be getting it for scolding and snotty remarks, thus being the second recipient of this new category (the first being Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon  him!)

Actually, the girl is a victim; she is being used by the Gang Green to promote panic and create a new socialist order. And she is losing her teen years, arguably the best in anyone's life, to be the face of an angry Green Goddess. It's cruel what they are doing to her.

See this Youtube video about "Thunberg Inc." and how there is a lot of money being made off the ditzy chick.

Once again, the left is hiding behind women and children, in this case both. They are using a kind of archetype, too, to do their bidding here; a mentally handicapped kid who is being portrayed as a kind of goddess, or at least a prophetess.

There was an old adage "children should be seen and not heard" and that was because they knew little and thus had little of value to contribute to a discussion. Of course Greta isn't a child; she's a teenager, a creature that believes it knows absolutely everything and that the adults are idiots who were fortunate to survive with their pea brains. Teenagers know just enough to be dangerous, and nowhere near enough to contribute anything useful.

The Left figured that out a long time ago and so started the cult of youth because they could whisper in the young people's ears and steer them. The cult of youth has us believing that young brains are better (they can learn to use gadgets more quickly than us older folks) and that the older people are ossified and senile, thus we should look to the young for the future. It completely ignores the value of WISDOM, something quite different from raw intelligence and rarely acquired without a great deal of experience. Older people used to run the world because they had the experience to do so. The young turks often got killed or otherwise destroyed themselves in a foolish rush to succeed, and the elders were revered precisely because they were elders and knew HOW to survive and succeed.

No more; now we worship the young, who know very little and think they know a great deal. There's a reason why a second year student is called a sophomore (wise fool)...

Scoldilocks is the perfect front woman for something like Climate Change, which is bought hook, line, and sinker by the young people because their public school-educated teachers told them it was true and they believe their parents are, were, and always will be idiots. So they trot out Cindy Brady here and she has "great credibility" because she can whine and throw a tantrum out of "concern" for the Earth (as if worry ever added one second to anybody's life, or accomplished anything of any value - look up the Bible passage on that.)

St. Greta the Grating is now to be given a coveted prize for whine and worry. Wonderful!

The Nobel committee should take a page from Donald Trump and give the prize to Rush Limbaugh.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:37 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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McCabe Exonerated but not Trump?

Warner Todd Houston

Liberals are all over social media slamming news that the Dept of Justice is still looking at ways to charge Andrew McCabe after one investigation of him has resulted in nothing... they say that he's now "cleared" and should be left alone... these are the same liberals who want a brand new impeachment of Donald Trump despite that he was cleared of the last one

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:10 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.

Feminists Hoisted on their Own Petards

Selwyn Duke

I explain in the second half how feminism brought us the MUSS agenda

Girls Suing to Stop ""Trans" Boys from Conquering their Sport

From Tim :

As ye sow, so shall ye reap!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:02 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

Liberal Lost Marbles

Selwyn Duke

You may find the latter part most interesting.

Sickness to Socialism; Leftists are More Likely to Have Mental Problems, Survey Shows

A word from Timothy B.:

Nietzche went mad before he died for the same reason; he looked into the abyss and his mind was recoiled in horror. That's what so many in our modern era are doing; looking into an abyss where neither Nature nor God have any place. It's a terrible thing to stare at.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:58 AM | Comments (221) | Add Comment
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