Birdnow's Aviary

September 07, 2026

Revenge of the Sith Court

Timothy Birdnow

The Ninth Circus, er, Circuit Court of peels,, er, Appeals has essentially removed the power of states to remove people from the voter roles and thus set the stage for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

SCOTUS will go down in history as the most important one we've ever seen in America, more than likely. Sadly it's run by a weak-as-water Chief Justice along with a couple of real weenie Justices backing his sorry posterior.

At any rate the Federalist has this to say:

RNC v. Mi Familia Vota is about to test whether states have the right to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote, and whether they can remove noncitizens from their voter rolls within the so-called "quiet period” 90 days prior to a federal election.

Ultimately at issue is the power of the decades-old NVRA to override states’ rights in determining who can and cannot vote in state-run elections.

"If the NVRA preempts States from imposing and enforcing a citizen qualification to vote in their elections, it creates serious constitutional doubt about the constitutionality of the NVRA itself,” the secretaries of state for Kentucky, Mississippi, and Nebraska argue in the friend-of-the-court brief.

The Supreme Court will take up, and perhaps settle, the lingering NVRA issues it dealt with 13 years ago in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. In that case, the court ruled that Arizona could not require proof of citizenship on federal election registration forms, on which individuals need only attest that they are U.S. citizens. But the ruling did not bar states from requiring proof of citizenship on state voter registration forms.

Arizona’s election integrity laws allow applicants without proof of citizenship to register to vote in congressional races but not in presidential elections or by mail. Left-wing activists immediately challenged Arizona’s identification requirements, asserting that the laws violate the 1993 NVRA and disenfranchise voters who cannot provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship.

SCOTUS weighed in ahead of the 2024 election, granting a stay on a lower court decision that sided with the leftist groups but allowing individuals using the federal registration form to vote in the presidential contest and by mail.

Republicans and election-integrity advocates argue that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals "erased” a "constitutional boundary” in declaring Arizona’s election integrity laws unlawful. The secretaries of state note that the U.S. Constitution "confers upon States the authority to determine who is qualified to vote” through the voter qualification clause.

"The Ninth Circuit was wrong in this case. States determine voter qualifications and perform voter list maintenance. Nothing in the National Voter Registration Act changed this longstanding tenet of federalism,” Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen, told The Federalist exclusively in a statement.

If the lower courts are going to argue Trump had no right to restrict mail-in ballots being delivered by the Post Office then how can they turn around and argue the states cannot restrict voter rolls? If Federalism prevents Trump from doing what he did how can the courts turn around and argue for the supremacy of federal law over state law, or more accurately the INTERPRETATION of Federal law? Either this is a state issue alone or it's a federal issue alone; can't have it both ways.

That they Democrats have argued this both ways shows it's only about using the law for political gain, not because it is the right thing to do.

The Democrats are running scared right now; they know much of their political power has come from letting in millions of illegal aliens who will vote for them since they promise protection and money. It's the dirtiest of dirty deals at the expense of Americans. It steals our vote so that they can win. This is the most abusive of actions towards American citizens.

But power is all they seek. Like Palpatine in Star Wars Episode three they shriek in joy "Unlimited power!" as they kill those trying to stop them. They are setting up an empire. (They just had a Star Wars movie marathon on this week and I caught some of it between commercials on the Yellowstone marathon on another channel.)

Once again it falls to SCOTUS. This is why the Senate needs to get off it's duff and start approving judges nominated by Trump. John Thune has foot-dragged on this all along, as did Mitch the Bitch before him.

We need to remake the courts to restore sanity. That's why the Democrats are so jacked up against Trump; the courts are their preferred method of pushing unpopular and unconstitutional ideas on America. He's wrecking that. But JOhn Thune is tossing them a lifeline by not confirming Trump appointees. He needs to go.

America is perched on a knife-edge. How it falls will determine our entire future. Defeat the Sith we MUST! (to Quote Yoda).

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America - the Torch that Lit the World

Timothy Birdnow

Here is the feel-good story of the day. A very inspirational post about how America fundamentally changed the world, written by a person who was brought here as a child.

FTA:

For thousands of years, the world was an old place. Human beings walked, rode animals, sailed with the wind, cooked with fire, and lit the darkness with candles. Civilizations rose and fell, but the basic human experience remained stubbornly familiar.

Then, in 1776, the world roared.

America was where the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment became a living experiment. And with America came a question that changed the human condition: What if?

What if the old limits were not limits at all? What if a human being were free to wonder, experiment, invent, fail, and try again? What if a person could look at the world as it was and imagine it as it could be?

America didn’t invent curiosity. It created a place where curiosity could run. A thought became an experiment, an experiment became an invention, an invention became an industry that transformed the lives of millions. Someone looked at darkness and asked, What if we could make our own light? Someone looked at distance and asked, What if a message could travel faster than a horse? Someone looked at the sky and asked, What if human beings could fly? And someone looked at the Moon and asked the question waiting for humanity since the beginning: What if we could go there?

Granted, there had been great scientific and technical innovation that had been ongoing for generations BEFORE America (the Middle Ages, for instance, saw huge leaps forward in science and technology) but it was the founding of America that saw a sea change; suddenly all sorts of things were being invented and created. Yes, it was also happening in Britain too, and even France and Germany, but one could argue the American Revolution is what sparked a lot of this.

I wouldn't argue that it was the key to all of it, but it certainly was an important building block.

The wild, untamed North American continent presented the early settlers with serious challenges. The crops they were familiar with didn't grow in the soil, or grew sometimes and not other times, and new crops had to be planted, or new techniques developed for growing the old European stuff. (That is the debt the Pilgrims owed to the Indians, who taught them to eat squash and other native plants that allowed them to survive the famine of those first couple of years). By necessity the colonists had to develop new ways. And they had to build their own tools oftentimes from what they could scrounge. Swedish settlers brought the idea of the log cabin, for instance, and it caught on in America where there were plenty of trees and little time to build a structure. Early colonial buildings were sawed lumber frame houses, as in England at the time. Log cabins saved huge amounts of time in construction and a more secure building as the logs were hard to break through.

There were so many things the American settlers either devised or adopted. Eli Witney's cotton gin made cotton a viable clothing source; before it cotton was a luxury item because it took hours to pick the seeds out of the fiber. (Sadly that same gin made slavery a viable industry in the U.S. because the growth of cotton expanded and it still had to be picked by hand.) Of course we went on to invent things like the telephone and viable electric light and a host of other great things. All of this came because we learned to experiment, and there was money to be made by turning ideas into realities.

As this author points out, the very competitive nature of this spurred Europeans to follow suit. France had a revolution that was inspired by ours. And all of these nations liberalized (I hate to use that word) laws, allowing free markets as Adam Smith had suggested rather than maintaining the old highly regulated Merchantilist system that Europe had long promoted.

So the "shot heard round the world" truly was that. And this fellow - an immigrant - figured that out. Sadly many native born Americans have not.

He continues:

That is America: not finished, not satisfied, still reaching for something further out. And God, I hope we never stop.

I know something now I could never have known then. That boy did not simply arrive in America. America arrived in him: the freedom, the possibility, the audacity to believe tomorrow could be better than today.

So yes, I believe that America is exceptional. Not because someone told me to, but because I can look at the evidence: where humanity began, what Americans built, the Moon, and the boy who came from Havana to stand beneath those rockets. We did this. We earned it. And I am damn proud to have become an American.

Yes, it is America that creates, and it is the America in us that leads us ever onward. De Toqueville said that about the American character, that we were always dissatisfied and looking for something better. It is not a vice; it is what has driven us to invent, create, develop, and make the world a better place. Dissatisfaction with the old world is in our DNA. De Toqueville saw it as a virtue too.

And with the closing of the frontier Americans went into creation overdrive; they no longer had the frontier to tame. It's why the 20th century so so many innovations. It's why we fought foreign wars. It's why we went to the Moon. There was the Turner Thesis, which argued there would be immense psychological changes to the American People with the closing of the frontier. Turner was correct and many went off the deep end, adopting crazy socialist ideas. But others went on to create computer technology never before seen, or to build incredible vehicles, like airplanes. Telephone technology went into overdrive with satellite communications, making the whole world interconnected. Yes, America created the world in which we now live.

All of that because our ancestors dreamed about a better life, left their homes and settled in a wilderness, then refused to let the King come over and boss them around.

It is a truly amazing story and if we hadn't heard it over and over we would be amazed by it. Surely if it were a work of fiction by some author, say, James Michener, we would scoff at the improbability. But it really happened.

So bravo for this guy writing this. He shows what gratitude is, and how an immigrant more than any other can understand that Lady Liberty's torch means more than just more voters for Democrats.

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Hillbilly Eulogy

Timothy Birdnow

Tucker Carlson has gone mad, really lost it, and J.D. Vance is being dragged down along with him.

Vance Dishonored Himself for Tucker Carlson

I get it; Vance is friends with Carlson and Carlson was a huge factor in Vance windup up where he is. It's really hard to throw a friend overboard, even when that friend has gone batcrap crazy. It's admirable in a way. But it is a huge political mistake.

I have a lot of Jewish friends on Facebook and all of them are absolutely disgusted with Vance and won't be won back by his kowtowing to Carlson and his anti-Israel Judaphobia. Vance has probably lost all of the Jews, and any money they would have donated. While Jews are more often in the Democrat Party than the GOP, it is not an inconsiderable number of Jews who will now stay home if Vance is the nominee.

Unless Vance makes a big turnaround I'll have to support Amnesty Marco Rubio in the election (spit!) I had been pleasantly surprised by Vance, but that's waning. He's strting to show himself to be just what I feared.

If Vance wants a political future he's going to have to distance himself from the self-destructing Tucker Carlson (as should the rest of the GOP - Carlson is toxic). I know it may seem disloyal to him, and I wouldn't want to be in this position, but it's his only option to remain politically viable.

My hope is Ron DeSantis runs, or Ted Cruz. I can get behind those two guys. I hate having to support Little Marco but I may have to do it (he's been an excellent Secretary of State, but I don't trust him at the helm of the ship as he betrayed us once and a guy who will do that will do it again.)

We desperately need someone who will follow the same policies as Mr. Trump and won't try to make a "legacy" for himself by kowtowing to the Demo-Left as GOP Presidents so often do. That gets them good press but does not build a permanent legacy. Trump didn't do that and that's why history will probably treat him as a great man as opposed to a good one. Reagan was despised when he was in office too and now history admits his greatness. Nobody will argue either Bush was a great President. It's not just about popularity with the media.

Anyone who follows Trumpianism will succeed. Remember, Alexander wasn't the first great in Macedonia; his father Philip had turned his hillbilly barbarian land north of Greece proper into a great power, then Alexander took that and ran with it. Whoever follows Trump could do likewise BUT only if they follow a MAGA program and don't worry about what the media says.

Vance looked like such a prospect. But his flirtation with Carlson sure isn't looking promising.

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Arguing with Idiots: Climate Issue (Again)

Timothy BIrdnow

Below is my response to a polite climate alarmist on Facebook. I won't bother with the original portions of the post as they are covered in my reply. My reply is what is important because it cites solid evidence they can't repudiate:

Dan, it was more than just a couple of good years in Antarctica. Everyone concentrates on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which floats in the water and has lost mass, but East Antarctica has been gaining mass for years.It has been ongoing since 1992.

https://www.antarcticajournal.com/antarctic-ice-sheet-mass-gains-greater-than-losses/

"According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic Ice Sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to present. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.'

end

Icesat showed East Antarctic ice growing all long.

As for losses in the WAIS, we now know there is considerable vulcanism under the ice sheet. Oh, and we know there are glacial quakes hitting the Antarctic Peninsula which also breaks off chunks of ice.

As for water vapor what goes up must come down. And more importantly what goes up generally forms clouds, yet the Earth's cloud cover has been dropping for decades now, which suggests that there is NOT more water vapor in the atmosphere. (In fact the drop in planetary albedo from the reduction in cloud cover explains much of the planetary warming we see). Thermal gradients and the like a grand sounding things but in the end there MUST be increased precipitation or more clouds.

It isn't increased precipitation; we've seen drowning deaths drop in the last twenty years, and we would see more of them if the weather was getting worse and we were having more flash floods.

https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2024-drowning-deaths-decline-globally-but-the-most-vulnerable-remain-at-risk

There has been a modest increase in drowning deaths in the U.S. but the rest of the world has seen a decline, and drowning deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to population increase and people swimming where they ought not.

Climate Alarmists love to postulate positive feedback mechanisms and you do so here with claims the warmer air from carbon dioxide means more water vapor in the atmosphere. But again I say to you that what goes up must come down and furthermore an increase in cloud cover would act to cool the planet back down - just as it does on Mars when there is a dust storm (Mars is a big embarrassment to the alarmists as it has an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide but the planet is colder than we should expect, mostly because the atmosphere is thin, but the atmosphere is thin because it is cold enough for the carbon dioxide to freeze into dry ice.)

The missing water vapor, lie the missing heat, is a real problem for the models. I would add the warming from carbon dioxide would show up as diurnal; it doesn't get as cool at night as it had. This shoots your theory about warming driving the water vapor into the upper atmosphere down.

One more thing; we've been pumping fossil water out of deep aquifers for some time now and that is water that was out of the hydrological cycle, yet we STILL see no increase in clouds or precipitation. BTW this fossil water should have a strong impact on the greenhouse effect as water vapor is the Earth's primary greenhouse gas.

Occam's Razor suggests that the lack of more precipitation and fewer clouds has nothing to do with CO2-driven warming but rather that the water vapor just isn't there. The simplest explanation is always the best - except, apparently, in climate science.

(There are a number of reasons why the cloud cover has reduced, some of which stem from artificial fire-suppression that has ended the really big wildfires, plus the war on pollution that reduced the amount of particulates in the atmosphere to help form clouds, to probably the Earth's axial tilt and a host of other things. Warming certainly isn't one of those factors.) BTW the decline in cloud cover began in 1818. https://iowaclimate.org/2024/09/27/the-recent-decades-of-cloud-cover-decline-may-be-a-continuation-of-a-trend-that-began-in-1818/

At any rate we simply disagree. I appreciate your politeness in this discussion. Cheers!

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Chinese Spy Cars

Timothy Birdnow

How China has overtaken U.S. auto production and is using it to spy on us and why wew must stop the importation of cheap Chinese vehicles at all cost.

FTA:

But China’s worldwide strategy of automotive manufacturing and supply chain expansion — directed by the Chinese government and rooted in state subsidized, unfair, anticompetitive trade practices, intellectual property theft, and documented cybersecurity and surveillance risks — has been successful.

China has become the world’s largest vehicle producer, vehicle market, and automotive exporter, owning nearly 35% of global production. In 2024 alone, China produced 31 million vehicles, which is three times more than the United States.

This extends into the electric vehicle market, with China dominating global battery cell production. In fact, China is projected to account for 4,402 GWh of battery cell production capacity in 2030 — more than North America, Europe, and Asia (ex-China) combined. Of course, in some ways we have invited China’s dominance, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring that 50% of new vehicle sales be zero-emission by 2030. Later in his term, he pledged that his administration would work toward the full electrification of the federal government’s 650,000-vehicle fleet.

These sorts of policies set the stage for Chinese automakers to flood the U.S. market with their cheap EVs. That’s exactly what’s happening in Mexico and Europe where Chinese automakers and suppliers have rapidly expanded their presence.

Most Chinese vehicles incorporate an array of sensors and significant computing and telecommunications capabilities. Allowing vehicles manufactured by Chinese companies into the U.S. market raises the risk that sensitive data could be accessed, aggregated, or exploited by the Chinese Communist Party.

In other words: We could have cheap, Chinese surveillance machines on our streets, in our communities, and near our military bases, spying on our families while parked in our home garages, and sending our personal data back to Beijing.

Thankfully, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania gets it.

An EV is essentially a smart phone on wheels and the Chinese are about to flood America with electronic eyes and we are stupidly going to let them. Why send human spies when you can easily smuggle in a camera?

This artice gets it; we did this to ourselves. China was still a rather pathetic Third World nation until we decided to build them into a superpower. Now they are the greatest threat to Mankind in the world today and that is because we were greedy and wanted to make money using them.

China is going to have to be contained, using policies similar to those we used against the old Soviet Union (the George Kennan plan of Containment.) We have to cut the economic rug out from under them. President Trump has made a good start with his Iran policy, which is really hurting China, whose economy was already in trouble. China could fall amazingly fast if the pressure stays on for a while. But then too they may not; everyone there remembers Tianamen Square. We have to be prepared to be in for the long haul. And I would point out containment only worked on the Soviets when we ramped up the economic and military pressure on them under Reagan. We had forty years of that policy before we REALLY put the pressure on them and they collapsed.

Anyway the Chicoms want Americans to all have spy machines to tell them what is happening here. And like the dopes we are we'll buy their little Matchbox cars and drive them around, giving valuable data to the Chicoms so they can better subvert our country and ultimately conquer us.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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New Wave of Green Lawfare Coming

Timoothy Birdnow

The Gang Green plots new uses for lawfare in their quest to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court and harass American energy.

https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2026/09/06/climate-lawfare-supporters-lay-out-battle-plan-as-supreme-court-showdown-looms/

Leftists never accept a defeat. They believe in their hearts that they are right and ultimately wil win (which proves it is a religion and not simply a belief). They will never stop, never admit defeat. To them it is a minor setback and they just have to regroup and try again. It's exactly like the Devil, who STILL believes he can win in his war against God.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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September 06, 2026

ChatGPFUT

This from Carlos Velazquez:

The Media Research Center recently published on X a striking test of several AI systems including the graphic below. MRC asked ChatGPT to rate, from 1 to 10, how much of a threat President Trump represents to democracy.

According to MRC, ChatGPT answered 9, then placed several authoritarian leaders at the same level, while assigning Hitler a 10.

OpenAI, ChatGPT parent company, subsequently told Fox News that the response "shouldn't happen and is not how the model is trained to behave,” and that ChatGPT is designed to be objective by default.

MRC deserves credit for publishing considerably more about its methodology than just the provocative result.

Researchers say they used a clean computer, a separate email account, a VPN and a private browser window to minimize previous browsing history and cookies. They also published the question they say they asked.

But there is an important lesson here about evaluating any experiment involving artificial intelligence.

AI responses can be highly sensitive to context. What was said earlier in a conversation, instructions telling the AI to adopt a particular viewpoint or role, personalization, memory, and even relatively subtle wording can affect an answer. Consequently, when somebody reports a startling AI response, the ideal evidence is not simply the question and answer, but the complete conversation and the conditions under which the test was conducted.

I am not suggesting that MRC manipulated this test. I have seen no evidence that it did. In fact, the precautions MRC describes are evidence that its researchers were attempting to control some outside influences. My point is broader: AI is unusually easy to influence through context, which makes complete experimental transparency particularly important when testing it for political bias.

Interestingly, asking ChatGPT essentially the same question today produces a very different result: it refuses to assign a numerical political "threat” score at all. MRC itself subsequently repeated its test and reported that ChatGPT would no longer provide the numerical rating.

That doesn't prove MRC's original result was wrong. It demonstrates something equally important: a single AI response is a data point, not necessarily a description of the AI system itself. Reproducibility, complete context and methodology matter enormously when we try to determine whether we have discovered systematic AI bias or simply an anomalous response.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Svensmark was Right

Timothy Birdnow

Well slap my butt and call me Nancy! (Actually you'd better not do that or else!) Turns out that cosmic rays DO impact cloud formation and planetary temperatures afer all!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99033-1

Abstract

Atmospheric ionization produced by cosmic rays has been suspected to influence aerosols and clouds, but its actual importance has been questioned. If changes in atmospheric ionization have a substantial impact on clouds, one would expect to observe significant responses in Earth’s energy budget. Here it is shown that the average of the five strongest week-long decreases in atmospheric ionization coincides with changes in the average net radiative balance of 1.7 W/m

(median value: 1.2 W/m

) using CERES satellite observations. Simultaneous satellite observations of clouds show that these variations are mainly caused by changes in the short-wave radiation of low liquid clouds along with small changes in the long-wave radiation, and are almost exclusively located over the pristine areas of the oceans. These observed radiation and cloud changes are consistent with a link in which atmospheric ionization modulates aerosol's formation and growth, which survive to cloud condensation nuclei and ultimately affect cloud formation and thereby temporarily the radiative balance of Earth.

Looks like the Left owes Heinrik Svensmark an apology.

There have been others who looked at this theory and found it robust. Google it if you like.

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Ice Quakes

Timothy Birdnow

Even though ice mass has been growing in East Antarctica we still had some large shelf collapses in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and it has long been blamed by the kooks that it is caused by Global Warming. Well...

Hundreds of hidden earthquakes found at Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier

While this is not the WAIS but around the Antarctic Peninsula (I preferred when they called it the Palmer Peninsula) there is no reason to not think it's happening elsewhere on the continent.

We were blissfully unaware of all this seismic activity until now. Yet it explains the big ice shelf collapses without needing to resort to the boogieman of Climate Change. Earthquakes and under-ice volcanoes explain any ice loss at the bottom of the world.

Of course that won't stop the Gang Green. These are glacial earthquakes, so called because they happen to large ice sheets and glaciers as a result of movement and tremors, an so the warmiacs can say they are caused by warmer temperatures making the ice move more. No matter what the stimulus these folks go back to their pet hobbyhorse.

But it's a lot of nonsense; Antarctica is far too cold for a one degree warming to lead to such things. Fat chance that will stop them though.

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Dating Fossils

Timothy Birdnow

Yeah; I've gone out with some women past their prime too...

Paleontologists Spent 20 Years Dating Thousands of Fossils – Here’s What They Found

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The Killer Hormone

Timothy Birdnow

You know, Lindsay Clancy is being excused because of her hormones by women in particular but other stripes of liberals (who am I to presume pronouns of the mentally ill?) and if that is true, if hormonal imbalances can lead a mother to murder her three children, then what does that tell us about the transgendered, who are swimming in a sea of alien hormones? Especially the male to female dudes - they are being subject to large doses of estrogen, the very thing that supposedly made Clancy go bananas.

Is it any wonder then that we've been seeing all sorts of murders by trans people?

So if we have to agree hormones can lead to criminal behavior shouldn't we stop giving them to young men? Anybody?

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September 05, 2026

Solar Activity Highest it has Been in 8000 Years

Timothy Birdnow

And at the same time the Earth's cloud cover has disappeared.

The Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years

FTA:

An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades

October 28, 2004

The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal "Nature" from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.

So the Gang Green will fall to the Earth in great wrath, for they know their time is short.

They are going to have to nail this whole New World Order scheme down in the next few decades or start over with Global Cooling again (which is probably why Al Sore, uh, Gore brought it up recently.)

Part of why the Earth's albedo has been dropping (the alarmists try to blame it on melting ice but in reality it's a dearth of clouds as a result of our reducing aerosols in the atmosphere. Also, climate change theory says the atmosphere should have more water vapor in it yet we have fewer clouds. What does that tell us class?

So, less sunlight reflected off the atmosphere, a warmer period in history, and with more parking lots and other artifacts of human construction holding heart via the Urban Heat Island Effect and voila! A slightly warmer world that the Leftists can exploit to fundamentally alter human civilization and promote their socialist schemes.

BTW a warmer world is a better world. You grow more food. If we have a cold period coming it will really hurt mankind as we won't have enough food for everyone. We've largely eliminated hunger in the world and that in no small part because of the warming of the planet. If that is about to end we are screwed.

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Milei Wants the Falklands

Timothy Birdnow

I wish he wouldn't do this but I can't say I blame him. Britain is so weak now why not?

Argentina's Milei Making Play for Falkland Islands

Argentina never had much of a claim to the Falklands. Their claim is based not on any possession of those islands by Argentina but on the old Spanish colonial claim to the islands. They did create a very small colony on East Falkland at Port Soledad, and the British came and wiped that colony out and settled the islands themselves.

The British discovered the islands and they began to look at settling them, but the French came along and planted a small colony, which they ceded to the Spanish. In 1770 the Spanish expelled the British colonists and claimed the island for themselves.

Argentina did claim the islands upon independence, but their claim was weak as they never settled it. The U.S. declared it "free of government", refusing to recognize Argentinian claims. In 1833 the British came back in force, establishing their colony at Port Stanley and thus claiming the islands for themselves.

Argentina just doesn't have much of a claim to these islands. They never settled them didn't use them (why? They controlled the Strait of Magellan while the Brits used Port Stanley as a staging ground for ships to round Cape Horn - a harder passage but one necessitated by Argentina's unwillingness to allow the strait to be used.)

The British did colonize the land but not by much; Port Stanley today has just 2,974 people, and there are another 500 people scattered over the islands, which are the size of the state of Connecticut.

Port Stanley is more British than is Britain these days and the islands are what you think of when you think of the old Empire.

When Argentina tried to seize the islands before they were met by a British military that still had SOME teeth, and by a British government under Margaret Thatcher still willing to defend British interests. They did it with their flagship being a naval vessel already sold for scrap! But the U.S. helped them with logistics, and they flew sorties from Ascensiion Island in the mid-Atlantic. Today they could probably fly sorties from Britain proper, but it's doubtful they will.

Britain is dying and Argentina is trying to feast on the corpse, vulture style.

The British made the Falklands kind of a nature preserve, and the few people who live their live in splendid isolation, a backwater at the end of the Earth. It rains 260 days a year and is always cool, with summer temps in the 50's and winter in the high thirties. oh, sn it's in the middle of the "Roaring Forties" meaning it's incredibly windy all the time, which is why trees don't grow there by and large. A few exist in some sheltered spots, planted by the colonists.

I've long wanted to plant an American colony there and vote to leave the British Empire in favor of independence. Bring only conservative folks who remember the old America. We could easily outvote the natives and make it an independent country.

Well, if Britain can't or won't defend the Falklands maybe the Falklands will vote to become an American protectorate? Plebiscites on the islands show the people do not in any way want to become part of Argentina.

Milei is trying to gin up support in Argentina for his government and this is something that has long stuck in the Argentine craw. Now there is a good chance he might be able to pull it off too. But it is wrong and Argentina has no claim on those islands as far as I am concerned.

Time for Trump to step up to the Sub-Antarctic. It is nowhere nearly as important as Greenland, but we can secure South America by controlling these islands. I think we should make them territories, like the Marshall Islands or Guam or even Puerto Rico. A naval base there would be useful in many ways.

Anyway watch for a second Falkland War, or not. It probably will wind up being another bad deal like Starmer cut for the Chagos Archipelago and Diego Garcia, or like the Brits did with Hong Kong back at the turn of the last century.

BTW oil was discovered down there, making it more attractive. Before that their main exports were wool and fish. Yipee! Now Argentina wants it more than ever.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Walls Closing in on Zuckerberg

Timothy Birdnow

So the Trump Administration can't have it but Mark Zuckerberg can?

Homeland asks DOJ to probe transfer of private state voter data to Zuckerberg-tied nonprofit

Zuck, through his wife Cruella, er, Priscilla, funded the disclosure of data and undoubtedly did so to allow Democrats to misuse it. Zuckerberg hasn't learned a single thing and he continues to play these games.

I should know; I'm pretty much shadow banned on Facebook these days, even though Zuck claims to have ended that practice.

Anyway the DOJ now has the ball, since DHS handed it off to them, and they may well run with it. Hopefully they will get Zuckerberg and he will go where he belongs.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fox in the Henhouse

mothy Birdnow

Here is the skinny on why Fox sacked Maria Bartiromo.

She had to bump Peter Navarro from her show and she explained in a tex message that Fox had sent out communications saying to underplay President Trump's speech on vote fraud and Chinese involvement in stealing elections. They were not happy she narced on them to an outside, one who had President Trump's ear.

Fox is not our friend.

I would add that even John Solomon here makes the mistake of saying Fox is afraid of anything to do with vote fraud because they were FORCED to pay out millions over the matter. No such thing occurred. They CHOSE to settle a case that they probably would have won had they fought it. Fox is the Establishment network, not MAGA, not America's. It's run by guys like Karl Rove, by the Bush wing of the GOP. They have hated Trump as much as the Democrats, or at least almost as much.

My father, rest his soul, always said of Fox that it was a safety valve; it's purpose was to give Conservatives an outlet to blow off steam lest we get mad and launch a counter-revolution like we did with Trump. So they mouth conservative slogans and have a few conservatives on their airwaves but they muzzle them on key issues, the kind of issues that will inflame the true Conservative base. That is the reason why Newsmax or OAN have risen in recent years; those are for the people Fox try to push in teh closet.

I believe my Dad was right. Fox is conservative in a way that seems to lead to failure a lot of the time.

Roger Ailes tried to make it truly Conservative but they forced him out for Meghan Kelly, who is now no longer there either. But I think it was a convenient excuse to get rid of Ailes and move the network Leftward. Rupert Murdoch is an Establishment guy and his children hate not being loved by the Intelligentsia.

And while they settled over vote fraud claims the fact remains this was an issue well before the settlement and only a few people at Fox wanted to touch it. Tucker Carlson was willing to do so (and screwed up big time by exposing himself as a fraud) but they all knew it was happening. It was the Board of Directors telling them to not go there, and that board was full of Bush RINO's.

So now, despite what Bartiromo says, she's going to be gone and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Money talks and bullshit walks, as the saying goes, and that is especially true at El Zoro News. They promoted the invasion of America for cheap labor. And they protected vote fraud.

A fox, er a pox be upon them!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Shiva Judge Ignores SCOTUS, Reimposes Mail in Ban Injunction

mothy Birdnow

Once again some judge with a foreign name issues an injunction to prevent Trump from restricting mail-in voting at the Post Office, and does so on behalf of multiple jurisdictions when in fact she's nothing but a circuit judge in Boston.

Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee (how many Indian and Middle Eastern judges did Obama and Biden appoint? Every one of them seems to be someone who is new to this country) issued the injunction even though she is just a circuit judge and has no authority outside of her district per the U.S. Supreme Court. She issued a 14 day injunction just as mail-in ballots were going out. Why? To keep Trump from being able to appeal this to the appellate court. She's going to dither around while ballots are going out.

Now here's the really galling part:

"The administration on Thursday had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and lift the restraining order so the rule could take effect. The court's 6-3 conservative majority last week lifted a prior order Talwani issued preventing USPS from imposing such restrictions."

So she basically is just ignoring SCOTUS and re-imposing her order as if nothing had happened. In a rational government she would be impeached for this. But we are not living in rational times.

At this point the Trump Administration should simply refuse to comply with this order since it has already been lifted by the Supreme Court. But then, of course, the media will explode, calling Trump a lawless King and hurting the Republicans' chances in November. oh, and they'll use it as grounds for impeachment, even though it is this judge who should be impeached.

I get a kick out of this paragraph:

"Voting rights advocates ‌and several Democratic-led states convinced Talwani last week to temporarily block the rule, arguing it risked disenfranchising voters and was adopted in violation of ‌the U.S. Constitution, which gives states the authority to administer elections."

Mail fraud is fraud and to stop mail in voting fraud the USPS is simply putting restrictions on delivery of mail. It in no way restricts the states rights to set up their own voting schemes. The public is free to drop off the ballot at local voting outlets, even the DMV if the states were so inclined. There are ways around this, but the Democrats don't want to use them because they make it more likely to be exposed. They want it in the mail so they can lose chain of custody and then say "well goolllly...how could we know" when caught. Fedex or UPS could deliver them too.

This article is from Reuters, so naturally it is biased and full of B.S.

If the states feared the difficulty of implementing this then why are they wasting time in court rather than simply getting to it? A private business could pull it off if they were asked. As I said, Fedex could do this with no problem.

This is just because the Democrats have been at or near power for a long time solely because they steal election after election and the GOP has largely let them get away with it over the years. Mail in voting was examined by the Carter-Baker Commission after the election of 2000 and they concluded it was ripe for fraud. Naturally the Democrats implemented it.

I honestly don't even think it's close in this country; an honest tally of votes would see the GOP in complete power and would have for years now. Democrats stole their way to relevance. And the GOP, cowardly and sniveling, let them do it because they feared standing up to bullies. Oh, and the Establishment wanted it close so they could get their RINO guys in office. Look at how they've reacted to Cornyn's loss in Texas; not a penny has gone to Paxton even while they spent tens of millions to get Cornyn across the finish line.

That's why they are so desperate to stop Trump's reforms. And they've had months and months to redo their envelopes and whatnot and wasted it so they could claim voters are being disenfranchised by this rather than simply fix the issue at their end. That is how you know thi is a set-up.

Well, the Administration needs to find ways to punish this Indian chick with the many arms here. She is Shiva and Shiva is just a destroyer.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This Fetterman Guy Needs to Disappear!

Timothy Birdnow

It was just a matter of time.

Fetterman Faces Dem Revolt: Bombshell Report Fuels Push to Oust Him as a Disgrace

We all knew that the Donks were going to turn against him when they felt the time was right.

The Democrats main complaint (and the Wall Street Journal who came up with the "report") is that Fetterman often fails to meet with constituents and is not always available. Gee; you would think the Party of Joe Biden would have that as a resume' enhancer, not as a transgression.

The fact is Fetterman is doing his job, just not in the way they want. If he were supporting all the radical leftist causes now they'd be enthusiastically on board with him.

There are plenty of other Democrats who don't meet with the approved organizations and the like, and have been doing that for years. This is nothing new.

This is just a hit to get rid of a guy who woke up and realized just how insane his party had become.

Fetterman is up for re-election in 2028 and the Democrats fear he will jump ship on key issues in the next two years so they seek to replace him now. Not sure what they can do but what they do will be nasty, rest assured. There is no recall option for the U.S. Senate, of course, which means they are going to dig, dig, dig to find some dirt to force his resignation. He had better watch his back.

Of course he could switch parties, although he doesn't want to do so. He IS a progressive, after all, even if not as crazy as they hoped. Curing his brain tumor restored his sanity apparently.

He could also declare himself an independent. I doubt that would save him; the Democrats will still hunt for dirt to use against him. Like the Mafia you don't cross the jackass party.

"This Fetterman guy needs to disappear" is probably what they are saying in the halls of the Democrats and their fellow-travelers at the Wall Street Journal.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Bloody Red Baron of Ukraine

Timothy BIrdnow

The end is coming soon for the Ukraine.

TAking Down Drones the Old Fashioned Way

This means risking airplanes - open cockpit airplanes and their pilots - to take out attack drones.

I fear J.R. Dunn may miss the significance of this; it means the Ukrainians are running out of ABM tech and are going back to absolute basics. That tells me the war hasn't got much longer to go.

Yes, it IS innovative, to simply use hand-held guns to take out the drones, but it's something very easily countered by the Russians. And again, you waste valuable fuel, valuable pilots and equipment. It's the kind of thing the guys who are losing will do. We've seen this in other wars over the years. Just look at Hamas using PAGERS to communicate because the Israelis could target their cell phones. You go primitive when the tech fails you or you are out of it.

The confederacy, for instance, was reduced to smooth bore long guns while the Union had rifled chambers. In WWI the Russians were often sending men into battle without any guns - just with knives and axes and the like. It never got that bad in Germany in WWI but the Germans definitely ran out of a lot of weapons they used earlier in the war. That is what exhaustion looks like.

That's why I would argue this is not an "innovation" so much as a case of military exhaustion. They no longer have the automated stuff to take those drones out.

This war would have long been over had the Europeans not stuck their noses in it. And while it's sad the Ukrainians would have had to taste bitter defeat and give up land the reality is they have lost so many people they will have to import immigrants to keep their economy afloat - and Ukraine will disappear, cease to exist in anything but name. It will become a part of the Middle East, probably. Ditto Russia, albeit to a lesser extent.

If Ukraine wins (and they won't) it will be a pyrrhic victory. In the end the sweetness of victory will be swallowed by the stark reality of a decimated country and the loss of most of their men. It's what happened to Germany, which is why they are such weenies now. The German men were all gone and many Germans are the children of American or British G.I.'s raised by sad mothers who coddled them as the only source of comfort they had.

At any rate I believe this shows they WON'T win without a major infusion of cash (which the U.S. Congress seems willing to do up to a point) but that will only drag this thing on longer. The Russians are losing a lot of men and materials, so it will destroy them too, but the Ukraine is smaller and has fewer resources at their disposal. And this isn't just a war between two former allies; it's a proxy war between two different visions of the future. The Ruling Class in the West want their vision of a world run by the United Nations and with the plutocracy on top to triumph while Russia and China want an alternative, a continuation of the old empire system where powerful nation-states rule an alliance system of smaller nations. It's a war for all the marbles. The Ruling Class decided to make Ukraine the hill on which to die and that is why they are so desperate to see Russia fail; if they don't succeed their power will begin to wane and the Russo-Chinese alliance will strengthen and grow and they know it. BRICS terrifies them because it is outside of their monetary and political power.

Anyway I believe this is not so much an innovation as a necessity for a country reaching exhaustion.

Now a little mood music:

After the turn of the century

In the clear blue skies over Germany

Came a roar and a thunder men had never heard

Like the screamin' sound of a big war bird

[Verse 2]

Up in the sky, a man in a plane

Baron von Richthofen was his name

Eighty men tried, and eighty men died

Now, they're buried together on the countryside

[Chorus]

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more

The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score

Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree

Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

[Verse 3]

In the nick of time, a hero arose

A funny-lookin' dog with a big black nose

He flew into the sky to seek revenge

But the Baron shot him down (Curses, foiled again!)

[Chorus]

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more

The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score

Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree

Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You are What You Eat, and You Kill That way Too

Timothy Birdnow

Jeannie DeAngelis, who puts the Jeanie in Jeanieology, pens a thought provoking piece at American Thinker this morning on the Lindsay Clancey case and how her diet may have impacted her crazy behavior.

DeAngelis first points out that before Clancey lowered the boom she worked at a hospital which required a COVID vaccination. The clot shot has been implicated in anxiety and depression and a host of other psychiatric disorders.

Then Jeanie gets to the meat of it; Clancey wanted to be "healthy" and ate a diet heavy in plant matter and light in, well, the stuff that makes life worth living.

The article states:

We know that on the night of the murders, Lindsay ordered ThreeV’s Mediterranean Power Bowl, which contained plant-heavy foods. Testimony indicates that when asked whether she wanted protein with the meal, she politely declined. The trial also revealed that the nanny, Elaine Rossi, received detailed daily food-prep notes from Lindsay instructing her to feed the children sweet potatoes; in closing arguments, Reddington also mentioned beets. This is not surprising, given that the nanny said Lindsay appeared overly concerned with weight, fitness, food, and health.

Clancy’s litany of symptoms included: loss of appetite, "crazy brain fog,” disconnection, severe insomnia, anxiety, a diagnosis of being in a postpartum state, apparent preoccupation with food and health, plant-based food choices, detailed household food preparation, and obsession with food and sleep schedules for herself and her children.

I've always said healthy living will kill you. And I'm still alive while people I know who were obsessed with healthy living are not - go figure.

And while I don't think this is a good excuse it certainly is a mitigating circumstance, if true. You think and feel how you eat in many instances. America has become obsessed with "healthy" food, non-carnivorous food, and appearing to be fit and thin are the holy grail of modernity. But that comes at a price, perhaps a great price.

DeAngelis continues:

The literature recognizes that apparent postpartum psychiatric syndromes can occasionally have metabolic or endocrine causes that should be ruled out, especially in a murder trial in which postpartum psychosis is blamed for the brutal strangulation deaths of three children.

There is even a publislhed case of a woman initially diagnosed with postpartum psychosis whose symptoms were ultimately traced to a late-onset urea-cycle disorder.

Key signs of this disorder sound familiar: extreme tiredness (lethargy) and confusion. Psychiatric symptoms such as behavioral changes, hallucinations, delusions, or sudden combativeness are often mistaken for a mental health crisis. Gastrointestinal issues can also occur, including self-imposed avoidance of high-protein foods like meat, known as auto-selective vegetarianism.

This is interesting given Lindsay’s request that protein not be added to her power bowl.

So did green vegetables drive Lindsay Clancey mad? I know most vegetarians are coocoo for Cocoa Puffs and the question always is which came first? The chicken or the egg? Do crazy people become vegetarians or does eating all those vegetables make people crazy?

I don't know but I think Jeannie has a point here.

The article goes on to point to a number of vitamins and minerals lost by mothers before and after child birth.

One interesting point she makes is the lack of sunlight in her part of Massachusetts and how that would lead to a vitamin D deficit. Interesting. Many years ago I had a relative who moved up to Wyoming and her husband had to bring her back because she was going mad. Lack of sunlight during the winter months had the poor woman in a deep depression and they feared she might harm herself. Once she came back down south she perked right up!

In Alaska people actually walk around with sunlamps in hats during the winter to buoy their spirits. Lack of vitamin D leads to black depressions.

Jeannie points out:

While bringing up vitamins and sunlight as possible contributors to murder may seem silly to some, it’s not.

Because medicine itself has investigated the relationship between postpartum depression and micronutrient status, Lindsay's nutritional state isn't inherently outside the scientific conversation about symptoms attributed to postpartum illness.

There is no way to prove that Lindsay Clancy was vegetarian, but historically, vegetarians do struggle with low B12. Although several of the subjects were not anemic, the authors of a 1981 Biological Psychiatry review recommended that serum B12 testing be considered when patients present with the psychiatric symptoms described in the study.

She's right. It certainly is a failure of her doctors in not testing for stuff like this. It may not excuse Clancey but it certainly is a mitigating circumstance. Her lawyers should have looked into this.

That said, I do not in any way excuse her for this. She could have turned her children over to foster care for a while, or asked her husband to take them and go for their own protection. She could have handed them to her own parents or her husbands. She didn't and in fact she lied to her husband and set the murders up carefully. I know it's possible to do terrible things and still be calculating even while insane, but that is why she should be incarcerated, probably for the rest of her life. BUT insanity is a valid defense and always has been in English Common Law and in the laws based on Latin legal codes. I would add we are asking a jury to make that decision when they do not have any sort of background to understand many of the issues involved.

I sat on a jury one time. It was a very long trial and I was picked because the company I worked for had just gone out of business so I was unemployed - the perfect juror for a trial that would last over a month. This was a civil suit where some wealthy people had contracted to build a luxury home and the contractor screwed it up. He refused to fix the problems, and they began a campaign against him, putting out fliers warning people not to do business with him. He countersued.

Now, I have friends who are in the trades and I longed to speak with them about this trial but of course I was muzzled. Still, I knew the rich folks got the shaft even if I didn't like them (they seemed pretty arrogant) and DID like the contractor. We couldn't agree and went back to the judge saying as a jury we were hung (and to quote Madelein Kahn in History of the World "not necessarily!") The judge insisted we come to a verdict and I was a holdout, as were a couple of other guys and one very sweet, soft girl who was just sick about it coming down to her vote. (I talked to her, telling her I supported her decision and that she shouldn't sweat it so much). In the end we crafted the worst pile of parrot droppings of a verdict ever, finding for the contractor but making him pay to fix everything, thus everyone was very unhappy at the end of it. There were no winners, which is why we made the decision the way we did.

The point is we made that decision largely because nobody understood the problems. I spoke with my friends in the trades after. My friend, who is a master plumber, busted out laughing when I told him about the plumbing problem. He knew exactly what the contractor had done to cut costs and it was pretty shady.

The reality is we were wholly unqualified to rule on this subject.

I think this is especially true in this case. The jury could ONLY go on what was presented to them, and they didn't understand it when it was. While it may or may not have made the right decision the fact is it was like putting your faith in a folk healer to diagnose your brain cancer.

The jury system is the best we can think up, but that doesn't make it very good. It ends up coming down to who can do a better job of reading potential jurors and stacking the bench with those who will be favorable to you.

At any rate I generally shy away from the true crime stories for this and other reasons. They don't interest me all that much. But I found Jeannie's article thought-provoking and wanted to share it with you all.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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