Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Doctrine
The message, in brief: The age of unilateral Israeli disarmament and concessions has come to an abrupt end. If Israel's enemies commit acts of war, they had better prepare for asymmetrical and overwhelming responses. Not only is that the only way to establish deterrence, it should be the doctrine for the entire West, rather than the mealy-mouthed appeasement tactics espoused by Kirby that only leads to perpetual conflict.
Monster
I believed then and still think now that Tim Walz is a monster. He knew what he was doing. And, contrary to what he claimed, the federal government warned the governors that this was dangerous. But he did it anyway.
If I were a cynic, I would think it was to save the state money by killing off an expensive demographic, but is anybody that sociopathic?
Tim Walz has never been held accountable for his manslaughter by depraved indifference. Soon, he may be one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Failing Upward
The United States has a big housing crunch, and one of the biggest reasons (there are many) is that Biden and Harris have let in 10 million+ illegal migrants and "refugees" over the past three years.
In other words, Harris, the Border Czar, caused the crisis to a great extent.
Now, she is promising to build three million homes during her term--a rather big boast.
So it's fair to ask: what is her record when it comes to initiatives she was put in charge of? You know, ones like connecting rural homes to high-speed internet and getting the border under control? How about building out half a million EV chargers?
You know the answer: none of these things happened. In fact, despite over $40 billion allocated for the rural internet initiative nearly three years ago, not a single home has been connected.
What Do You See?
In any case, take a close look at the chart the Post produced, and tell us what you see. A controversy has broken out about what it means, because if it is accurate, it shows that the earth is currently near its lowest temperature for the last 485 million years, until we stopped cooling and started warming recently. Is it a bad thing that we stopped cooling? You can find serious scientists who conclude that a modest warming is a net benefit to the planet (and the IPCC kinda sorta admits this in corners of its behemoth reports).
But the thermegaddonites point to the sharp reversal in the right tail (circled) to suggest that this fully man-made (it is assumed) recent warming is a catastrophe for which we must all give up our cars and start eating bugs. Yet you can also make out several other sharp reversals and warmings when there were no SUVs on the road.
Monday, September 30, 2024
Obsolete Product
Charging is somewhat cheaper if you use a slow charger rather than a “rapid” one, which itself, of course, is nowhere near as fast as filling your tank with gas. Slow chargers are OK if you don’t need to get where you are going, or if you think your time has no value. And the cost of the electricity needed to charge an EV will skyrocket if governments proceed with their plans to generate electricity primarily or exclusively from inefficient, intermittent wind and solar power.
Electric vehicles are an obsolete product whose time is always coming, but never arrives. An enormous amount of wealth is being wasted as we await the inevitable crash.
Really? What Kind?
It’s a classic instance of Kamala’s weirdly inappropriate laughter. But does she really own a firearm? (It would be delightful for some journalist to ask her to detail the manufacturer, caliber, barrel length and so on of her gun, but of course that won’t happen.) And is she really prepared to shoot an intruder?
Electric Downgrade
How do you heat houses without burning fossil fuels? The Greens’ answer is: heat pumps. They are pushing heat pumps as an all-electric solution, and the Biden/Harris administration has enacted major subsidies to try to entice homeowners off fossil fuels and onto heat pumps.
If you are not sure what a heat pump is, you are not alone. Neither am I. I am told that it is basically the same as an air conditioner, only in reverse. Heat pumps can, indeed, generate heat, but at what cost? Like all “green” measures, they are absurdly inefficient and therefore expensive. If you haven’t heard much about heat pumps yet, you should start paying attention. They are right up there with wind turbines in the Greens’ plan to downgrade your standard of living.
Also:
But all of this is battlespace preparation on the part of the Left. First they cajole; then they bribe; then they use naked force. Liberals have every intention of depriving you of the option of heating your home (or driving your car, or turning on your lights, or cooking your food, or mowing your lawn) with fossil fuels, the greatest contributors to human material well-being in all of history. Rather, you will be forced to use absurdly inefficient technologies like heat pumps, whether you like it or not, and no matter how much the cost degrades your standard of living.
She Looks Like a Psychopath
John drew attention to Mrs. Tim Walz’s performance of the the Harris campaign’s Turn the page theme over the weekend (video below). No disrespect intended, Mrs. Tim looks a tad demented, if not rabid. This makes for uncomfortable viewing.
Mind Your Own Damn Business
Give Walz some credit. At least he's not setting up a hotline for Harris supporters to start snitching on friends and family planning to vote for Donald Trump. Yet, anyway.
And say ... whatever happened to "mind your own damn business," anyway? Is accosting strangers in the grocery aisles and lecturing them on your politics another form of Walz' "neighborliness"?
Needless to say, this will not end well if these activists actually take Walz' advice, especially in grocery stores. That's where Americans feel the pain and failures of Bidenomics most acutely, and where they are already reminded of the need for a change from the status quo that produced it (in the produce aisle, even!).
Follow the Money
We shouldn't expect too much to come of this. The tiny climate warrior remains a darling of the international press and liberal globalists still trip over themselves seeking new ways to shower honors upon her. But this latest incident reminded me yet again of some of the questions surrounding Thunberg that never seem to be explored thoroughly or receive adequate answers. Among the biggest of these has to be precisely what it is that Ms. Thunberg does for a living. What is her "job" assuming she has one? After all, everyone needs a certain amount of money and resources to get by in this world.
I once again spent a little time today going through her brief biography. In terms of actual substance, it's a brief read indeed since she is only 21 years old. Her parents were a musician and an actor, so they probably weren't penniless, but she clearly wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth either. She has received honors and awards from many climate groups, but she doesn't seem to have ever taken a paying position with any of them. And it's not as if she's spent all of this time getting an advanced education. She only received her high school diploma last year at the age of twenty. She's constantly hopping around the globe for protests and awards, so it must be hard to hold down a professional gig of any sort.
We do know that many of the larger climate activist cult groups around the world have flooded cash and resources into activities that Greta Thunberg has endorsed and participated in, so that might explain her travel expenses and perhaps even lodging during protests. But has any of that money gone directly into Thunberg's own pockets? That's really not how charitable donations (for any cause) are supposed to operate unless the recipient is a paid member of the organization. In that case, records are supposed to be kept as to who was paid and how much they earned. A failure to do so can land you behind bars in some countries. Of course, that's only the case if anyone bothers to ask the questions and review the records. It's unclear if Greta has ever undergone that sort of scrutiny. Meanwhile, she continues to show up here, there, and everywhere while demonstrating no meaningful source of legitimate income. Don't the rest of us deserve some documented answers to these questions?
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Job Description
And let’s be clear, in this race, I’m the only person who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations who traffic in guns, drugs and human beings. I’m the only person in this race who actually served a border state as attorney general to enforce our laws.
She knows Trump was president, right?
Fight
Harris expects to be elected on the basis of her identity and her "joy." And that's all she's prepared to engage on. What does that say about what kind of president she will make -- especially on foreign policy? If she won't fight for herself and her "values," why would anyone expect her to fight for America and its interests?
And that's it. That's the election in a nutshell. We have one candidate who won't fight, and another candidate whose first instincts are to run to a fight. It makes me wonder whether Harris and her campaign really plan to show up for the debate on September 10. If they do, they'd better find a fighting spirit, or it may turn out worse for Harris than the previous debate turned out for Joe Biden.
Zero
Our government, and a number of other Western governments, are committed to a goal of “net zero.” That is, our countries will add nothing further to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any emissions of CO2 (e.g., breathing) will be balanced by absorption of CO2 by, e.g., plants. Various dates are specified in these aspirational statements, none of them realistic. And of course, the world’s main sources of atmospheric CO2 (China and India now account for most of the world’s CO2 emissions) have no intention of cutting their CO2 emissions, let alone cutting them to net zero.
But suppose we did it. Suppose we spent countless trillions, destroyed our electric grid and reduced our standard of living to a pre-industrial level. How much would an American “net zero” affect global temperatures?
Economic Illiterate
First, price controls (notably, price controls on groceries) have a long history, extending back 2,000 years. They always fail, without exception. If price controls worked, every country would have started using them centuries ago. As Milton Friedman demonstrated, and as virtually everyone now acknowledges, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It is caused by governments; in this case, the Biden/Harris administration. Groceries have increased in price, like everything else, due to Bidenflation.Ed Morrissey:
Second, when it comes to prices, there is really only one instance of “gouging.” Companies compete for our business by offering the best products they can, at the best price (for them) that consumers will pay. Competition keeps prices down and quality up; no company can just “gouge.” If it charges too much, consumers will buy somewhere else, or something else.
The exception, of course, is when a company has a monopoly and there is no effective competition. This is why we have Section 2 of the Sherman Act. But there is one monopoly that never goes away, and isn’t subject to antitrust liability: government. At the state level, there is some degree of competition. Thus, if a state charges prices—taxes—that are too high, or offers products—government services—that are of low quality, some residents (but not all) can leave for better-run states. That is exactly what is happening now, as people flee blue states for red states.
But the federal government has no competition. It can engage in price gouging and provide lousy services, and, unless you are willing to move to Costa Rica or Switzerland, there is little you can do about it.
And the federal government’s price gouging includes more than taxes that are way too high. Because the federal government engages in deficit spending for political reasons—what a deal, to give some Americans money without having to tax other Americans to pay for it!—it borrows trillions of dollars, which causes inflation. So it is the federal government’s price gouging, not that of anyone in the food supply chain, that has driven recent increases in grocery prices.
Kamala Harris is one of the premier price gougers of our time.
Kamala Harris doesn't grasp economics well enough to even know its terminology. As Carlson points out, Harris went on obliviously after this error, on a theme her campaign wants to emphasize as its main economic message. It's not us - it's all the price gauging!
How incompetent does one have to be to not stop and correct one's self after misspeaking in this manner?
Grifters Without Borders
I, for one, am excited that in the midst of a U.S.-funded war with Russia, Ukraine has committed to spend $20 billion it doesn't have to green up its energy sector.
Will all that diesel fuel being expended to run tanks and transport trucks, the country really has to offset its carbon emissions.
What I don't yet know is whether Ukraine will close down farms, transition to insect protein, and build 15-minute cities to save planet Earth as Ukrainians get slaughtered on the battlefield.
Perhaps announcements regarding these other Gaia-friendly measures will come soon. Or, perhaps they can go all Soylent Green on us using battlefield casualties.
This is, of course, totally insane. Imagine how easy it would be to destroy an entire field of solar panels with a few artillery shells, not to mention the problem of having to build backup power plants to run when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine. Green energy projects ALWAYS require backup generating capacity, and given how vulnerable solar panels are in particular, it is inconceivable that the total cost of providing this energy [won't] be astronomical and wasted.
Ukraine can do this, though, in the midst of an existential war because they have the unlimited resources of the United States government behind them. There is no way that this wasn't instigated by Biden's people, nor could it be done without US funding.
No doubt a lot of money will be made by Biden allies as well, and of course, that is the real point of all this. It is laughable to think that Ukraine's greatest use of billions of dollars is reducing its carbon footprint, but as long as everybody says it with a straight face the aid keeps flowing, the profiteering continues, and taxpayers foot the bill.
Addition is Hard!
I already know what those on the left will say about this, assuming they say anything at all. They'll say there's no evidence that illegal immigrants commit more crime than Americans born here. Even if that were true, it doesn't change the fact that this particular migrant has raped two people in 20 months. And again, that's a minimum. For all we know he's attacked other homeless women but wasn't caught.
There is simply no reason this person should be in this country. He should have been deported after the first attack, regardless of whether or not the victim testified. Once he agreed to a plea deal, he should have been on a plane or bus back to Nicaragua. Why didn't that happen? Probably because New York City refused to cooperate with ICE and ensured this guy would remain on the street to commit another attack. I don't know that for certain but it has definitely happened before.
I've heard progressive morons from Juan Williams to Jerry Nadler make this argument over the years that the crime rate among illegal aliens is lower than among native-born Americans. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that's correct. So what? Some fraction of illegal aliens commit crimes (beyond entering the country illegally). All of the crimes committed by illegal aliens are in addition to the crimes committed by citizens and those here legally. We're not replacing one population with another, we get both, or all three if we separate out legal immigrants. Do leftists think the presence of millions of illegal aliens somehow decreases the total number of crimes committed compared to the number of crimes that would occur with just the native-born population. It's not about the crime rate among each population, it's about the crime sum. The only acceptable crime rate among illegal aliens is zero.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Nazi Savage Subtraction
So say the cowards who thought they could keep their skirts clean in Tehran from the blood they spill throughout the region. They need to talk tough now, especially for domestic consumption, because the Israelis just exposed the IRGC as incompetent at external security again. The IDF easily penetrated their defenses a few months ago in a strike on an anti-aircraft system near their nuclear-research facility in Isfahan. As the Times of Israel also adds, the Mossad has succeeded in assassinating several officials and experts tied to that nuclear program over the years, but it's not clear to what extent the Iranian people themselves are aware of Israel's success in that campaign.
There's no hiding Haniyeh's death, however. He had just arrived to congratulate the new president of Iran and attend the inauguration. The regime played up his visit, as well as those by other leaders of their terrorist armies, as evidence of their mastery of the region. Israel's assassination punctures that illusion, and more dangerously, exposes the IRGC as perhaps nothing more than well-funded thugs rather than geniuses of totalitarianism. And that could have serious repercussions for an unpopular regime with an already restive population.
Unfortunately, that may make it more likely that Iran will retaliate directly and escalate the war in the region. They tried it once already in a large-scale missile attack that the US, Israel, Jordan, and the UK entirely thwarted, which is what led to the strike on Isfahan. The Iranians quieted down after that demonstration of superior Israeli skill, and perhaps that may still be enough for Tehran to farm out the retaliation to one of its proxies.
Because the message in Tehran yesterday was clear to the Ayatollah Khomenei: You could be next. And as much as these terrorist leaders like to talk about the joys of martyrdom, they seem very reluctant to volunteer.
Case in point: one Ismail Haniyeh, the multi-billionaire who celebrated martyrdom in Gaza from his Doha mansion's green-screen in October.
Well, congratulations, Mr, Haniyeh. You've finally been volunteered for a duty you spent every effort to avoid for the last few decades. Consider that in the context of cowardly, too.
Sociopaths
Molly Jong-Fast knows that J.D. Vance is not agitating to create a racially pure America, but she doesn't want the viewers on MSNBC to know that; she wants them to associate him with the "Hitler" meme they have been pushing for years. And, by extension, she is playing on the mentally ill's propensity to aggrandize themselves and indulge in their sense of victimization through violence.
It really is that simple and disgusting.
These people are sociopaths--and yes, I mean that literally. Who but a sociopath would get in front of a national audience and actually say such a thing, and what kind of "journalist" could sit next to her as she says it and not get outraged?
POLITICO. MSNBC, which is a division of NBC News.
This, my friends, is who owns the information sphere. We need to destroy what last vestige of credibility they have. They are a menace.
Wait, Who's Weird?
How does anyone accuse Republicans of being "weird" or "strange" while promoting the administration that appointed Rachel Levine and Sam Brinton to significant posts? Or the candidate who made a point of appearing on "RuPaul's Drag Race" recently? The same candidate that endorsed an activist that argued that drag queens should have access to children for "Drag Queen Story Hour" events, and later accused of sexual assault?
The American electorate knows what "weird" is, and it's not a VP candidate that asserts the need to strengthen the traditional-family model, even if one doesn't necessarily agree with the specifics of the policy proposal. Put J.D. Vance against Shangela, Brinton, and Levine, and then ask voters which of these are "weird." The answer won't be Vance.
Talentless Hack
Finally, there's more to this than just demonstrating how deep in the bag the "Paper of Record" is for Democrats. If we can't hold politicians accountable for past positions -- including positions they've never actually committed to changing in any public forum -- then what should we discuss? Excluding policy from election debates means nothing more than an endless series of character attacks, which the Times purports to disdain.
If Harris can't handle criticism over her radical agenda from just five years ago, then perhaps the problem isn't "weaponization" at all. It might just be that Democrats short-circuited actual democracy to anoint a talentless hack as their party nominee, and that the New York Times damned well knows it.
That Clears It Up
Reporter: Will you work with the GOP on the border issue?
— The Investigative Examiners (@TruthorConseq12) July 27, 2024
Harris: (I'm still trying to figure out this response!) pic.twitter.com/YUfcThaOb9
Via John Hinderaker.
ActSus
Is ActBlue engaged in money laundering? Almost certainly, yes. Is it washing foreign donations? I have no idea. How could we know?
During the 2012 campaign, the Obama campaign was accused of using similar techniques to launder money because its donation platform didn't use verification to determine the location of a donor, allowing foreigners to donate to his campaign. There's really no easy way to check where the money is coming from because the process is designed to make fraud easy.
Do we have irrefutable proof that ActBlue is artificially flooding money into the Harris campaign? Not yet.
But I bet we will find it, either before or after the campaign. If you or someone you know suspects that ActBlue may have used your name to launder money, go to the FEC website and look up your name.
Totally Normal
I agree that what is happening now is not normal, but which way is it not normal?
Is it not abnormal for a person to serve as U.S. Senator for 36 years, then to go on to be Vice President for 8 years, and still have time left to serve as President, and even to run for reelection as President when he is 81, and then to drop the nomination after excluding competitors and winning it in the primaries, handing the nomination to a person who never won any votes in any bid for the presidency? Is it not abnormal for a President to oversee the criminal prosecution of his predecessor, his rival, and then, after dropping out, to seek to rearrange the Supreme Court to enhance the likelihood that his rival will suffer real criminal punishment?
The Kamala Reset
So Kamala Harris enthusiastically recommended to her followers that they contribute money to the Minnesota Freedom Fund in order to bail out murderers, rioters, rapists, arsonists and other criminals. We don’t know how much money her donation page raised for MFF, but we do know that she contributed, probably significantly, to a $43 million windfall for that left-wing organization. Harris’s actions show that she is pro-crime, and pro-criminal.
Understandably, the Democrats now want to erase that part of her record. The WCCO smear of Trump shows how far they are willing to go in that regard. But it is likely a losing battle: Harris has a broader pro-crime history, as exemplified by her support for maintaining San Francisco as a sanctuary city—a policy that had tragic, fatal consequences. When it comes to her record, Kamala Harris can run, but she can’t hide.
Beta Males for Harris
The Harris campaign is estrogen-filled, with AWFLs, pronoun-pushers, and lots of DEI and accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Everything is about social media influencers, style, RuPaul's Drag Race, and appearances on Ellen and Drew Barrymore.
So I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the beta males are coming out in full force for Harris--pushing their bona fides as antiracist feminists whose goal in life is to apologize for the sin of being born White and male. It is so on-brand it is a Babylon Bee parody brought to life.
Pick a Lane
I don't think Trump is backing out of anything. I am quite confident, in fact, that he would be happy to debate Biden again.
And that is what he agreed to. It is Biden who backed out of the debate, and Harris wanted to debate J.D. Vance, remember?
I think both debates should happen as agreed or proposed. It is only fair.
Doesn't the Harris team agree that Joe Biden is fully capable of being President of the United States, and Joe Biden himself claimed in his withdrawal address that he believes he would have made a great president for the next four years. Biden and Harris are a team, the team agreed to the stipulated conditions, and the debates should go forward as planned.
Why not? What's the excuse?
Of course, Harris will say she is an entirely different candidate with an entirely different campaign, which is fair enough.
But then Harris and her toadies should drop any pretense that Trump agreed to debate her. He didn't. He agreed to debate Biden, and that is entirely different.
As with everything coming out these days from the mainstream media and the Harris campaign, this, too, is a complete farce and hoax. If Harris is different from Biden, then Harris should negotiate with the Trump campaign as any candidate would do. If she isn't, then she should say that she is running for Joe Biden's second term and debate the policies, the mistakes, and Biden's mental capacities on those grounds.
It's either/or in my book. Harris is Biden II, the younger version [of] the person who pulled out of Afghanistan, or she is Kamala Harris, the brat Gen Z hero. Pick a lane.
Savage Trash
Yes, you can burn a flag, you barbarian savages, but you cannot steal one to burn.
Well...in the world of Kamala Harris and her progressive friends, I guess you can.
You can storm any building, spray paint any monument, and terrorize anyone anywhere.
Energy Portfolio
Who knows how much governments around the world have spent to promote “renewable” or “green” energy in the quest for “net-zero” emissions, but it has to be several trillion by now. And yet the world’s share of energy from fossil fuels is little changed from 1970. Here’s the breakdown from the 2024 Statistical Review of World Energy, just out the last few weeks. And what you can readily see is that coal, natural gas, and oil still account for 81 percent of the world’s energy. Nuclear and hydro (which greens still hate) account for another 10 percent, and “other renewables” (mostly wind and solar, but some biomass and geothermal) is still only about 8 percent.
She's An Ally...Of Hamas
So Harris’s first official act as the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee will be to side with Hamas against one of America’s most important allies. Because that is the position of the party whose nomination she seeks. It would be less dishonorable if, like Joe Biden, she simply dropped out of sight.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
The Real Victims
Change can be tough on lawyers. Take, for example, when the 13th Amendment was adopted. There were a lot of lawyers who had mastered the intricacies of chattel slavery, who knew the ins and outs of the Fugitive Slave laws, who made their livings drawing up contracts for the purchase and sale of slaves. At one stroke, the 13th Amendment rendered useless their years of hard work. The lawyers were the real victims!
Vast Cover-Up
The CNN analysis included mainly Democrats, including David Axelrod and former Biden comms director Kate Bedingfield, as well as Van Jones, who looked nearly in tears. Every single one of them posited that Biden would likely need to step aside and open the convention. Axelrod warned Republicans that a new candidate would make Trump much less electable, too.
Why? Because Democrats will assure us that the replacement is also youthful, smart, engaged, and up to the job?
None of the people on that panel understood the scope of the disaster last night. Biden just exposed a vast cover-up, nearly universal among elected Democrats and almost as much within the US national media, designed to keep people in the dark about the president's mental capacity.
They spent the last four years foisting a near-senile old fool onto a nation at a moment of dire crisis. That includes Axelrod. It includes Bedingfield. It includes Van Jones. It includes the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and practically every other establishment media outlet. It also includes Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, every Democrat governor and member of Congress (except Dean Phillips), and most especially Jill Biden, who had to rush the stage to pull Joe off of it:
Democrats now want to pull a switcheroo and hope everyone forgets all about this breathtaking cover-up and corruption. That includes all of those Democrats who voted for Biden in primaries this year on their word that Biden was up to the task -- and whose votes will count for nothing in any scenario that changes the ticket. Talk about betrayal!
We'll game that out separately, but that won't solve the appalling credibility destruction that took place and which applies to all of the above. Elected Democrat officials from Kamala Harris on down participated in a scheme to defraud American voters, not once but twice, and the media aided and abetted it both times.
This demands accountability -- first at the ballot box, and then by investigations into how these frauds were run and perpetrated. It reminds us that we need to make sure we elect people who will pursue those questions and hold people responsible for their attempts to gaslight Americans and con them into voting for an old man who clearly can't perform this job now, let alone for another four years.
And we shouldn't stop pursuing these questions until we get an answer to who has been in charge of policy and decisions in the White House. Because it's clear that Biden clearly is not in charge of anything.
Last night's appalling display reminds us again of the crisis we face in public life. All of the institutions dominated by the Left have betrayed America, as Doddering Joe proved last night. Democrats and their Protection Racket Media allies are preparing new spin today to attempt to extend the cover-up a few more weeks for another con of the American electorate, and Big Tech co-conspirators will soon begin enforcing the new spin on advertising and moderation to enforce silence on Biden's cognitive collapse.
The Charlottesville Cheapfake
Rupar, of course, is ridiculous. The "whopper about... Charlottesville" came from Biden. Who is still bitterly clinging to the notion that Trump said Nazis were fine people? Maybe Biden is so far gone that he actually believes it, but I don't believe Rupar believes it. I'm crediting him with rank cynicism. If the CNN moderators had been fact-checking in real time, they would have had to correct Biden on the "fine people" hoax... and on numerous other things, such as the claim that Trump told people to inject bleach into their arm. But Rupar is free to imagine that the moderators would have fact-checked in a biased way, a la Candy Crowley, and to pine about the debate that might have been.
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Protecting Consumers
Electric vehicle batteries, like the large batteries used to store electricity from inept sources like wind and solar, are prone to burst into flame. And those fires are hard to extinguish.Which raises the following questions:
Where is the Consumer Products Safety Commission? Where is the Congressional investigation? In what other context are products that spontaneously burst into flames legally marketed? If electric vehicles, e-bikes and batteries for wind and solar installations were not darlings of the “green” scam that controls government at most levels, would they even be legal?
Upper Class Welfare
I’m not sure who first observed that a lot of progressivism these days has the effect of transferring income from the middle class to the upper class, this is certainly true of much of the “green” tax credits and subsidies that are supposedly driving our “energy transition.”
Also see student loan debt transfer.
Trying to Supply the Enemies of Western Civilization
Whether the pier will ever assist in delivering material amounts of supplies to Gaza remains to be seen. Personally, I hope that doesn’t happen. Gaza needs to suffer for what it did on October 7, and we should assist Israel in destroying Hamas, not impede its efforts by supplying the enemy.
Savages Gonna Savage
Pluralus: Hamas Could Have let those Hostages Just Drive Away, Saving 200+ Civilians: The rescue of four Israeli hostages on Saturday was going well, with few casualties. Until Hamas attacked and tried to kill the escaping hostages.
Via Glenn Reynolds.
How's Reading and Math Going, Blue Hair?
Students at all levels are now being inculcated with the idea that the great evil of world history is “settler colonialism.” What, exactly, is settler colonialism, a recent addition to the Left’s lexicon? It turns out that in all of history, there are just two main examples of this evil phenomenon: Israel—never mind that the Jews arrived there more than two millennia before the Arabs—and the United States. The Little Satan and the Great Satan. If your children are attending a public K-12 school, it is likely that they are being introduced to this ideology.
Negotiating With Savages
The Biden administration has been shamefully inert for eight months now. If you weren’t following the news carefully, you likely wouldn’t even know that some of Hamas’s captives are Americans. A competent American administration would have told Hamas to release all Americans immediately, or we would not be as gentle with them as the Israelis are.
These Are the New Rules, Right?
Still, in my opinion, if Trump wins in November he would be remiss if he didn’t give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine. Does this mean “throwing in jail” annoying libs like Ocasio-Cortez? Of course not. To my knowledge, she hasn’t done anything illegal. Stupidity is not a crime. On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that Joe Biden has taken upwards of $20 million in bribes from foreign powers and interests. If Trump wins, his Attorney General should immediately bring criminal charges against Biden on whatever is still permitted by the statute of limitations.
As for the other Democrats, they likely are secure against prosecution, since what they have done is a disgrace, but not a crime. But if I am overlooking criminal acts on the part of some Democrats, Trump and his administration should not forgo the opportunity to bring charges wherever they are plausible (not idiotic like the Democrats’ New York and Georgia prosecutions). Brute force is the only thing the Democrats understand, and showing that two can play the criminal prosecution game is the only way to deter Democrats from doing it in the future.
No backsies!
State Religion News
It is good to know that even in today’s anything-goes age, some things are inviolate. Like the “Pride” flag. (If anyone ever explains why being “queer”—their word, not one that I would ever use—is something to be proud of, let me know.) Thus we have kids being arrested for riding their scooters across a Pride flag that was…painted on a street.
A sane person would say, if you don’t want people driving on your religious symbol, don’t put it on a street. But sanity is in short supply these days.
Indict the POS
What are the chances that some local prosecutor couldn't credibly indict Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in a Texas or Florida jurisdiction?
How about accessory to murder? Human trafficking? Collusion with Mexican drug cartels?
Imagine the possibilities. There are countless crimes that Mayorkas has consciously enabled, and I am quite certain we could prove both his consciousness of guilt and the facts of the cases to the satisfaction of local juries.
I have no doubt at all.
Whether you can make the charges stick is another matter, of course, but Judge Merchan and his Deputy, who was so recently in Joe Biden's Justice Department, clearly had no such concerns about their prosecution of Donald Trump. There are so many reversible errors in that trial that hardly anybody expects the convictions to stick.
There are probably thousands of felonies with which he could be charged, and he wouldn't have the excuse that he is senile and incapable of standing trial, unlike the President.
No doubt, lawyers would object that he has immunity for official acts, and perhaps he does. Perhaps Donald Trump does too, come to think of that, because that issue has yet to be adjudicated. Adjudications in such matters can wait until after the trial, right? Those are the rules, as I understand them now.
No one is above the law. Dark Brandon says so.
Defend Democracy
If Joe Biden is re-elected following this outrage, he will be an illegitimate president. What does that mean? It means, I think, that no one should be obliged to follow his executive orders. All such orders will be illegitimate and should be disregarded, as appropriate. Likewise, residents of the sane states, and their public officials, should be free to disregard rules and orders that come out of the Biden administration’s agencies—the Biden EPA, and so on. And rulings of Biden-appointed judges, or of panels on which one or more Biden judges were part of the majority, should not be given any precedential effect.
More fundamentally, the Democratic Party is now illegitimate. We should stop treating it as a normal political organization. We conservatives have played by the rules, trying to hold our country together in the face of increasingly radical and irrational conduct from our political foes. Those days should be gone. The Democratic Party is now exposed as the enemy of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and should be treated accordingly.
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
Coddling Savages Update
Europe is blaming Israel. This is wholly and completely wrong, because the video clearly shows secondary explosions, indicating that Hamas was hiding weapons among the civilians. That is a war crime--committed by Hamas. But Europeans worry about Hamas harming them--after all, millions of Muslims from the region who are committed Hamas supporters live in Europe. They don't worry about Israel harming them, because Israel is a civilized country.
So they attack Israel.
We keep hearing about multiculturalism and diversity being our strengths. Which brings up the question: where are the Europeans or Jews in Gaza or the West Bank? Or Syria. Or in most Middle Eastern countries?
The apartheid states are the Muslim states. Israel has Arab citizens who vote, get rich, become judges and get elected.
The only Jews in Gaza are hostages.
Gateway Energy Storage Fire
Where you run into problems going forward is that oleaginous California Governor Gavin Newsom's insane renewable energy policies have not only precipitously forced his state into near third-world energy status but are actively endangering his citizens. To meet CA's seemingly immutable NetZero goals and effect this marvelous transition, myriad copies of this very storage facility are being planned, with some permitted already, and a fair amount of them being dumped in the middle of residential areas.
Because "green transition."
Residents of Poway and Escondido have been fighting against a planned "Seguro Battery Storage Facility" for a good while now, and the Otay blaze has just added fuel to their arguments.
AI Devours Electricity
And now, here comes AI with its enormous new thirst for electricity. There is literally no hope of meeting this demand without keeping our coal plants operating and adding a great deal of new natural gas capacity—now essentially illegal under Biden rules. Wind and solar? They are a joke. In 2023, gas-fired electricity grew almost ten times as fast as wind and solar combined.
Stupid and Treasonous
The Biden Administration is determined to limit America’s production of fossil fuels, of which we have the largest supply in the world. This will transition us from a position of energy independence, and potentially energy dominance, into a position of subservience to the Chinese Communist Party, on which we will depend for the vast quantities of materials that are needed for wind turbines, solar panels and batteries—which we will not be allowed to mine here. If this plan isn’t outright treasonous, it is possibly the stupidest program ever carried out by a government in world history.And:
The stated rationale for Biden’s policy, of course, is to save the world from carbon dioxide. There are many reasons why this rationale is preposterous, one of which is that our contributions to atmospheric CO2 are pretty much irrelevant. You can see this if you look specifically at the administration’s policies relating to coal.
China is the world’s number one emitter of carbon dioxide, and is steadily pulling away. Then, of course, there is India, the world’s most populous country, which has no intention of trying to supply its vast population with electricity via solar panels.
"Big Oil" to the Rescue
Trump makes a good point. And it is exactly the same point that Democrats make to the “green” industries. Democrats funnel countless billions of dollars to “green” industries and companies, in return for which they receive lavish political support. Why? Because the Democrats’ policies are in the “green” industries’ financial interest.
What’s the difference? The difference is that Trump’s energy policies are right, and the Democrats’ energy policies are wrong. The Democrats’ support for “green” energy hurts consumers to the tune of many billions of dollars, and, perhaps worse, damages the national security. Trump’s support for reliable, affordable American energy will be good for all Americans. Except, I suppose, those who have invested in “green” companies in reliance on the Democrats’ anti-consumer subsidies and mandates.
Make an Example of Them
The Biden Administration insists that Israel must have a plan for the “day after” it completes its victory over Hamas. A reasonable question is: why? Gaza started this war on October 7, and Israel responded as it had to, as any nation would, by fighting and, now, winning the war. Why should it be Israel’s burden to try to make something constructive out of the sickest culture in the world?
Here's the plan: tell the savages to enjoy the Stone Age.
Culture Clash: The Battle of Sweden
Sweden currently has a rate of homicide committed with a firearm that is nearly twice that of any other EU country. That is a brand-new phenomenon, attributable entirely to Sweden’s welcoming attitude toward “refugees,” of which it has imported two million. The Financial Times article quotes Swedes who attribute the problem to a lack of assimilation of immigrants.And:
But hasn’t it become obvious that some groups of people are easier to assimilate than others? And wouldn’t a sane immigration policy, such as the U.S. formerly had, prioritize immigration from countries that are culturally compatible? The answer obviously is Yes, and yet posing the question, let alone answering it, is anathema on the American Left, as on the Swedish Left. But at least in Sweden, they are having an intelligent debate.
Italy Planning to Bring Back Nuclear
In a decisive shift from its past policies, Italy, under the leadership of Premier Giorgia Meloni and Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto, is paving the way for the reintroduction of nuclear energy, with a focus on the latest in reactor technology: small, modular, and IV generation reactors. This move is not merely a policy change but a strategic recalibration aimed at bolstering national energy security and aligning Italy with modern, low-carbon energy technologies.Via John Hinderaker.
No Detransition Necessary
So the alleged energy transition is a creation of liberal reporters and editors, who deliberately mislead the rest of us, or else, equally possible, are so ignorant that they have fallen for propaganda from the “green” interests who hope to rip off—have already ripped off!—trillions of dollars in government money to enrich themselves, while impoverishing the rest of us.
