Bed, Bath, in the Great Beyond

Timothy Birdnow

Go woke go broke!

Bed, Bath, and Beyond Goes Broke

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Where is the Redress of Grievance?

Selwyn Duke

Trump is right, actually. Unfortunately, it will never happen.

But there's a reason I never have Gropin' Joe Biden and "president" in the same sentence.

Trump Demands Either 'Immediate Election' or Make Him 'Rightful President' Now

Tim adds:

I don't either. He's a usurper, a thief who stole power from the rightful President. He belongs in prison.

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Redacted

James Doogue

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Erasing History

Michael Smith

Tim adds: more...

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Beaten Down by Feminazism

Michael Smith

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Big Brother is Watching

Chester McAteer

The 2022 annual transparency report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reveals the FBI, between December 2020 and November 2021, scoured private emails, texts and other electronic communications of some 3.4 million U.S. residents, without obtaining a Warrant.

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Is the Winter of 2022 - 2023 About to be Cold?

Anthony R. Lupo

Interesting that Old Farmer's Almanac is calling for a very cold winter. A few weeks ago, I posted an interesting story about how the massive Hunga Tonga Volcano may have contributed to a warm summer. In the Southern Hemisphere it's been a different story! Could a cold winter be in our offing?

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An Uplifting Thing

John Lees

Today I have been doing a deep deep dive into Antarctic (and Greenland) ice mass loss/gain.
As many of you are aware, the estimate of how much ice is being lost or gained depends almost entirely on assumptions made regarding the motion of the bedrock beneath the ice.
Now, this is something almost comical. In 2012 a paper was published in which a comparison was made between the predicted bedrock uplift and values obtained via actual measurement using a form of ultra accurate GPS.
So, here is the plot of the predicted and measured values.
Anyone familiar with statistics textbooks will recognize this plot.
It's a random cluster of values with no correlation.
So what do we learn? The predictions clearly had little value.
The problem for Antarctica is that there are only a few locations where the rock breaks the surface of the ice sheet. And everywhere else, you can not measure the motion of the bedrock.
So for those vast regions of solid ice, the untested predicted values are all that we have. And the predicted values are plainly crap:
from: https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/190/3/1464/570434



Frank Lasee replies:

There is almost no snow in Antarctica. It stands to reason that there is little motion. Because extremely cold and little snow. Little expansion of the glaciers.

Greenland huge snows. And it warms some more in the summer. And is subject to different more variable ocean currents. glaciers constantly growing and lots of ice bergs. Caused by the growing glaciers.

Mr. Lees responds:

This motion (bedrock uplift) is caused by the removal of vast quantities of ice at the end of the last glaciation. The same reason why Sweden or Canada are rising. So, this is a measure of the "rebound" not the accumulation of snow currently.

Tim adds:

That makes me wonder John; is perhaps there so much more dry land in the northern hemisphere at least in part a function of the smaller ice mass in the Arctic as opposed to the Antarctic? As you say less wieight is causing Canada and Sweden to rise. Perhaps the greater weight of ice in Antarctica has prevented more land from uplifting in South America? Just a speculative thought.

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Paved with Good Intentions

Gregory Wrightstone

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is sending $740,000 to Pennsylvania for "critical infrastructure to combat climate change” – but most of the money will go toward repaving parking lots.

How is that going to solve a non-existent problem?

Tim adds:

It will help with the urban heat island effect, perhaps. Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. would like it!

But in terms of actually accomplishing anything but cutting the air conditioning bills around the new lots it won't amount to anything.

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The Road to Serfdom

Selwyn Duke

https://nypost.com/2022/08/30/california-lawmakers-approve-landmark-fast-food-workers-bill/

If this becomes law, it will simply accelerate the transition to automation. These workers will be replaced with robots.

Tim adds:

Perhaps CA can just pass a law saying the businesses cannot lay anyone off. Then everyone will be happy!

That is exactly the way serfdom was born; Roman Emperor Diocletian imposed laws forcing employers to keep workers on, and forcing workers to remain on the job. He wanted to stop the exodus of people from the provinces, particularly farms, who were coming to Rome to live on the dole. It was the genesis of serfdom and the feudal order.

We are becoming a feudal society. So why not just pass such a law? Telling employers what they must pay is a good first step.

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Thibault ofThunder

Timothy Birdnow

I was listening to the Jesse Kelly show yesterday. Kelly was talking about the FBI agent who was escorted out of the building. I hadn't heard about that, but I immediately knew it to be more than it seemed.

Apparently a cat named Tim Thibalt got tossed out of the FBI HQ for his role in pressuring Facebook to censor any story about Hunter Biden's laptop prior to the election. Those on our side cheered; justice is being served!  But is it?

First, as Kelly observed, every agent is escorted out of the building when they leave employment with the FBI. We don't know this guy was fired - he might have been offered early retirement and will still get his pension. And even if sacked he undoubtedly has a lucrative position waiting for him out there - University big wig, news analyst for CNN, political career, maybe a Congressional run in a safe district. He will not pay for this.

And there is almost no chance he will be prosecuted.

So the frog march may have been more of an honor guard. Kelly was a high level guy, heading up the field office in D.C.!

But wait! There's more!

Donald Trump has stated that Mr. Thibault was present at the raid on Mar-A-Lago.

Fox news disputes Trump's claim, but I rather suspect they have no way of knowing this. Certainly Fox has become less than supportive of Donald Trump in recent times.

And apparently an update to the story says Thibolt was allowed to resign  instead of being fired.

Now why is that, do you suppose?

While Congress could supeona him regardless of his status with the bureau, they are less likely to do so if he is no longer in the employ of the FBI. Also, this gives the FIBbers cover; they can claim they realized they had a problem and dealt with it. In short, it's a cya moment and little more.

How many other actions were taken against a sitting President by Mr. Thibolt and his co-conspirators? Who else was working for partisan ends in the FBI? Who knew about this, and when did they know it?

What did Wray know? Garland?

What did Thibolt actually say to Mark Zuckerberg, for that matter, to get him to censor the Biden Laptop story?

These are allegations serious as a heart attack.

Remember, they claimed this was "Russian disinformation" in keeping with the lie that Trump was colluding with the Russians, a lie that has been exploded since the original Mueller investigation opened.

FBI whistleblowers went to Sen. Chuck Grassley and others with complaints about hyper-partisanship at top levels of the FBI.

I myself was censored at Facebook over this story. I was informed it was "disinformation" and it was not going to appear to anybody.

A search on Bing turned up just one result when I asked about Thibolt and the Mar-A-Lago raid. Interesting; Trump - who had a lawyer present - is simply ignored over this. You would think the media would at least report his allegations. But no. Only Fox did and they just dismissed the claim out of hand. Something still smells of a cover up. If there was any evidence to the contrary they would have reported this and said "Trump lies again!" Silence is quite noisy here.

(BTW the DOJ admits some of the files seized were under attorney-client privilege. I guess basic civil rights do not apply to Donald J. Trump.)

Increasingly it looks like we have a nest of vipers in our national security and policing operations. They openly, actively manipulated the election. This is the stuff of banana republics.

And the only way anything will come of it is if the GOP wins big in November,  and perhaps not even then. Remember - the FBI holds all sorts of raw files on every Republican in D.C. It may be they lose their nerve once they take Congress. Oh, they might grandstand a bit but in the end won't dig deeply into this - or do anything about it. I doubt Wray will get sacked.

We have lost America. This isn't the country I knew.

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Woman Troubles

Dana Mathewson

Here's a good article by Dennis Prager about how women are disproportionately hurting the country:
https://pjmedia.com/columns/dennis-prager/2022/08/30/women-are-disproportionately-hurting-our-country-n1625100

And Dennis is not a misogynist!

Tim adds:

No he's not and he's a brilliant man.

He's right. The "womyn's movement" is one of the principle sources of trouble and social upheaval we have.

They have turned women into not companions and co-equals but into competitors and effeminate men. Why are most trans people male to female? Because our society has become completely feminized and little boys are taught early on they are bad and should be girls. Some really believe that. And then they face discrimination as they get older and realize the answer is right there.

It's particularly why we are seeing so many "women athletes" tear up the sports records now; they are men who saw the route to success, and there was no longer a stigma against being a "sissy".

The large majority of kids in college now are girls.

They are in all positions of power these days in many areas of life. And what has this done? It's unbalanced our society, which is predicated on the complementary nature of men and women.

We are all women now. I think that explains the drop in testosterone that science has chronicled, as well as the weight gain by Americans in the last forty years (women traditionally are more prone to having more fat cells and less muscle mass). The declining testosterone, declining male sperm counts, etc. mean men are becoming biologically more like women. The end result is more weight all around. And since men aren't women they don't try as hard to keep it off. Why bother? The prize is a butch woman who will emasculate you anyway.

Nancy Pelosi certainly peddled a common feminist myth that men screwed up the world and women can run it better. But history has never born that out. Men certainly have their share of faults, but women have just as many and, frankly, they really don't like each-other that much on average. There is nothing more vicious than an angry feminist, for example.

At any rate, we have reorganized society along a more female-centric model and now everything is crumbling. This model is at odds with Biblical Christianity and Judaism and the model we had in place, and now it's all coming unraveled. Coincidence?

The sexes are like a scale, with one side holding the male virtues and the other holding the feminine. It is now seriously out of balance. Male virtues are sneered at and men have become hollow, dodging responsibilities and failing to accept their role. Women have taken over the male role, and many act and even look like men now.

God created them male and female. We told God he was wrong and are unable to understand why our society is in such chaos. Until we put an end to feminism and restore the balance things will continue to spin out of control.

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Neither Efficient nor Cheap

James Doogue

Wind and solar energy are neither efficient nor cheap, which is why Western countries have dramatically reduced energy consumption since the early 2000's, despite billions of dollars in energy cost subsidies. Meanwhile Chinese energy consumption, which is 90% reliant on thermodynamically superior fossil fuels and nuclear energy, has increased by well over 50 percent and its electricity consumption has increased by over 200 percent.

The path to decarbonisation using wind and solar energy is creating a greater economic and social cost than any climate change consequences caused by using fossil fuels. The cure is worse than the disease, but to date much of the symptoms have been disguised by importing high energy intensive goods from China.

The reality our politicians need to come to grips with, is that wind and solar cannot provide the low carbon future they have promised without significant reductions in our standard of living. Western countries need to accept what China knows. That is, fossil fuels are the necessary bridge to a nuclear-based, low-carbon future.

The Energy of Nations
Energy blindness is leading to policy blunder. The slightly abridged Quillette article by John Constable and Debra Lieberman 24 August 2022

Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline.

According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period.

According to the European Environment Agency, energy consumption in the EU stalled with the financial crisis of 2008, has fallen by about 13 percent from the peak of 2006 and is now at levels not seen since before 1990. Even in North America, energy consumption is stagnant. Post-2007, total energy consumption in the United States fell substantially and then flatlined, falling again because of the pandemic, and, by 2020, it had lost about 13 percent of the 2007 high. Canadian demand is faltering similarly. Across the Pacific, Australia has shown weak to non-existent growth in demand since 2008 and Japanese energy demand has fallen by over 20 percent from its 2004 peak.

Some will reasonably ask, "Isn’t reduced energy demand, even for electricity, just evidence of increased efficiency?” Counterintuitively, the answer is "No.” In fact, greater energy efficiency in one domain merely provides energy for consumption in another. Energy efficiency will either increase demand for the now-cheaper good or service or, if demand for the good or service cannot increase rapidly, the saved energy will be economised to improve the quality of life in another sector, and so total energy consumption will tend to rise.

This is a matter of documented history. The increasingly efficient use of coal from the late medieval period onwards resulted in centuries of greater creativity, freedom, and enterprise—and more coal consumption, not less. In fact, the increased consumption of coal led to the greater wealth and sophistication that eventually led to the harnessing of electricity as a carrier and higher-quality energy sources such as oil, gas, and uranium, the use of which increased energy consumption still further. History shows conclusively that energy efficiency improvements precipitate increases in consumption and are, therefore, extremely unlikely to be causing the sweeping cross-national reductions in Western energy demand.

So, what is causing Western energy consumption to collapse? Regrettably, it is due to environmental policy and its far-reaching unintended consequences. Of these interventions, the most damaging are emissions trading schemes and the unprecedented investment in renewable energy, both of which are significantly increasing consumer costs and causing consumption to plummet. The EU’s emissions trading scheme adds about €17 billion a year to energy costs within the bloc, and the UK’s newly independent version is expected to cost a staggering €6.7 billion in the current financial year. In addition to this, the EU has spent an incredible €800 billion providing income support to renewables since 2008, a total that is still increasing at €69 billion a year. The UK alone is paying over €12 billion every year topping up incomes for wind and solar. So far, the US is a relatively minor player, having spent a mere €120 billion from 2008 to 2018, which is probably part of the reason that things are not as bad on that side of the Atlantic.

The expectation was that these subsidies would bring down the cost of renewable energy and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases at an affordable cost. Both hopes have been disappointed. Capital and particularly operating costs have remained stubbornly high, while grid system management costs are rising sharply.

Because green electricity is still extremely expensive, the cost of preventing the emission of a tonne of carbon dioxide by switching to wind or solar vastly exceeds even high-end estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon, which is a monetised value of the harm done to human welfare by the climate change arising from that carbon dioxide. The conclusion is obvious. The cure is worse than the disease.

The intentions may have been good, but by committing these vast subsidies to renewables, politicians have failed to provide an economically compelling example of a low-carbon energy transition and have succeeded only in making energy much more expensive, resulting in price-rationing and falling consumption.

While Western energy consumption is stalling or collapsing, one country is increasing its energy use, propping up our consumption with its exports and giving the rest of the world a false sense of security: China.

Since 2007, when the West began its energy starvation diet, Chinese energy consumption has increased by well over 50 percent and its electricity consumption has increased by over 200 percent. In 2007, the US was consuming 30 percent more electricity than China, but China's electricity use is now 70 percent higher than that of the US. Moreover, China is 90 percent reliant on thermodynamically superior fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and only some of the immense wealth being generated in China by these fuels is being exported. What are they doing with the rest? Time will tell.

The West must change course

But right now, as a matter of extreme urgency, the West must reverse the decline in the quality of its energy supply and the consequent collapse in energy consumption. Further improvements in energy efficiency might help protect consumers over the short term by keeping money in the bank and shielding them from the consequences of bad energy policies, but they are not a long-term substitute for a healthy and physically sound energy supply. If we value the quality of human lives—if we value our freedom—then toying with low-density energy sources is an indulgence; and if reducing carbon emissions is a requirement, as we believe it is, then reason shows that fossil fuels are the necessary bridge to a nuclear-based, low-carbon future.

With the Chinese economy on a thermodynamically sound footing and those in the West very much not, the world has turned upside down in the blink of an eye. The economic consequences of this are serious, the security implications potentially terrifying. Our energy blindness is both costly and dangerous.

Full article here: https://quillette.com/2022/08/24/the-energy-of-nations/

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The Violence of the Lambs

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ERIC the Red

Timothy Birdnow


29 Aug ERIC – the Epicenter of Voter Fraud

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Lying by Omission

Warner Todd Huston

WaPo Leaves Race of Suspected Shooters Out of Brian Robinson Story

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Went Woke Went Broke

Frank Lasee

We need to make more go woke go broke. ESG is dangerous and bad for your portfolio.

PJ Media

It's official. Warner Bros. is done with woke culture.

Tim adds:

I'll believe it when I see it. I suspect they'll pull in their horns some but still spew out the woke nonsense on their programming. Just be a little more cagey about it.

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Rise and Fall

John Lees

For anyone who is mystified by the continued controversy over the Antarctic ice loss/gain estimates, then this one image provides some key insight.
THIS - is the uncertainty in the (Glacial Isostatic Adjustment) model used to estimate the behaviour of the earth's crust underneath all that ice.
The uncertainty range is enormous. This is more than the rate at which scientists estimate that ice is being lost or gained.
If the crust is rising, then the ice must be vanishing. If the crust is falling then the ice must be stacking up on top of it.
Depending on which value we choose we can make anything we wish for become a reality.
Now that I have seen this, I totally get why scientists are having a food fight in the cafeteria over the issue:
[ The uncertainty of GIA models in Antarctica in mm yr–1 of equivalent water height (EWH) ]
(From: https://academic.oup.com/gji/article/231/1/426/6522180 )

Tim adds:

They also have an irritating tendency to confuse sea and land ice. Sea ice will do nothing to change the isostatic balance. Land ice will. Antarctica is gaining ice in the East but the WAIS is a floating body of ice in water. So it's losing ice; so what? But they keep telling us "Antarctica is losing ice" when what they mean is the floating ice in the sea is diminishing. It's not at all the same thing.

There are multiple reasons why WAIS might lose ice, and a slight atmospheric warming isn't one of them. Antarctica remains well below freezing year round, and the ocean is blocked by the Antarcitc Circumpolar Current, which is wide and deep and cold. But we know there is considerable undersea volcanism there, which can explain the melting sea ice. So they simply wish the whole difference away.

It's like the government banning five gallon toilets in America because California experienced a drought; it has absolutely nothing to do with us here in Missouri, who usually have too much water. Continents are vast. But they treat it all as one because it serves their purposes.

Oh, and land rising can well be a function of more ice in another place. If EAIS is gaining mass, wouldn't it make sense that the West would see some land rise?

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Decline and Fall

Ryan Setliff

Tim adds:

Not sure I agree with Ryan here. As the Chinese would say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If we would get serious, restore the free market, we could perhaps still save this country. But I fear we won't do it. At this point the good have given up and the bad are giddy with victory and are now overrunning every institution. The ignorant masses remain, well, ignorant masses, willfully so.

But we might be able to influence what will take America's place. We have to carry on the fight. The larger the debt the worse the collapse will be - and the more radical the new thing that will take America's place will likely be.

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Sea Level Rise?

John Lees

I just encountered yet another person making bizarre claims about sea level.
Here is my now standard reply:
"It's quite amazing that there is so much lying in the media about sea level rise. Especially because in developed countries such as here in the UK, we have very long term precision records of the exact height of the sea.
In some places these date back to the early 1800's.
Here is the sea level at Newlyn in Cornwall.
Yes, the sea level is rising in relative terms, but at a very slow rate. There is zero indication that this rate of rise is increasing due to "climate change".
It's extraordinarily

slow rise of only 1.84mm per year.
So at that rate it would take 150 years to rise 27cm.
27cm is about the height of my wellies.
If people can not adapt to such a tiny rate of rise, then they deserve to drown:"

Peter Hatgelakas adds:

Yet the rise or fall of sea level is mostly a local geologic phenomenon based on subsidence or shifting delta river positions, sand bars, shoals, which have nothing to do with global sea level. And here is the kicker. The ocean basins are not fixed in their dimensions. They yield plastically to load. Put more load on the ocean floor and it deforms to accommodate that load. Thus sea level globally does not significantly rise. Tectonism and ice ages are the main reasons for global sea level rises and falls. I have a question, How much of the planet’s water can go into the atmosphere? How much of the planet’s water is atomically bound in rock forming minerals? Minerals and atmosphere are components to water capture that no one talks about, yet those two components may decide the argument. To my knowledge there has not been a comprehensive study of factors effecting sea level rises and falls. The people doing such studies are largely oblivious to all the components of the problem. Largely they are not qualified to do the study

Mr. Lees adds:

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