Filed under: Bureaucracy, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media Bias, Politics, Science/Technology, Technology | Tags: Antarctic Sea Ice, Ernest Shackleton, Ships Logs are History
A 2008 paper by James Hanson, former Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies … showed the true gravity of the situation. In it, Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric CO2 society should aim for if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted. His climate models showed that exceeding 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We’ve already blown past that limit. Right now, environmental monitoring shows concentrations around 400 ppm.
There were no consequences. Real-world evidence clearly demonstrates that Hansen’s hypothesis is wrong. (Scientific method)
Also in the news is that the El Nino warming effect has ended, and things are getting colder.
Scientists were shocked by what they found when pouring over accounts from the famous South Pole explorers a century ago. The Antarctic Sea Ice is just about the same as it was 100 years ago according to the ships logs of Ernest Shackleton, in addition to other explorations in those waters. Scientists had only really looked at Antarctic sea ice levels from the 1950s onward, which shows a relative decline in sea ice. But researcher Dr. Jonathan Day and his team were the first to look at conditions prior to the 1930s. Current sea ice is just 14 percent smaller than the highest point of the 1900s and 12 percent greater than the lowest point.
Why is that a big deal? It shows that Antarctic sea ice has fluctuated throughout the 20th century—due to natural climate shifts, not man-made warming. The problem is that if you want to predict the state of the climate in a hundred and fifty years, you won’t know whether you were correct or not until 150 years from now, no matter how many computer programs you have or how many peer-reviewed papers you produce.
Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk more than 7 percent per decade since 1979 while Antarctic sea ice has actually grown about one percent per decade — despite what most climate models predicted.
A 2015 NASA study found Antarctica’s ice sheet increased in mass from 1992 to 2008. The study found ice gains in Eastern Antarctica more than offset ice loss from melting glaciers in the west.
Day’s study comes just after the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found the collapse of a major South Pole was sparked by an El Nino during the 1940s, not man-made climate change.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Politics | Tags: A Lighthouse in France, Employment Benefits, Shift Change
Tired of your job? Sometimes it helps to see what other people do. Shamelessly borrowed from Maggie’s Farm. Are these weekly shifts? Or do they have to do this every day?
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Election 2016, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Humor, Immigration, Law, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, Unemployment | Tags: Doesn't Change Anything, Dr. Jill Stein, Recounting the Votes
Jill Stein’s campaign to raise money to challenge the vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan is apparently going nowhere rapidly. Pennsylvania informed her that the deadline was last Monday—a week ago, not today. Wisconsin said they weren’t going to do a recount. And Michigan just finished laboriously counting the ballots from the election for the first time, and Trump won healthily.
Haven’t seen any response from Dr. Stein, but she would seem to retain her 1% in the final tally, if it’s any comfort. Sorry about that.
ADDENDUM: When she filed her challenge to Wisconsin election results, Jill Stein assumed that the recount would be done by hand. State officials decided that counties would not be forced to do a hand recount of ballots. Officials decided a machine recount would do, unanimously. Now Stein is suing to force a hand recount. “We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system” she said in a statement. Since Wisconsin voting machines are not connected to the internet, hacking is unlikely. Officials said no recount will happen until she pays the $3.5 million fee ahead of time.The Democrat Elections Commission chairman cited a 2011 hand recount that changed only 300 votes out of 1.5 million as the basis for declaring a machine recount adequate. Real drama out in the hustings. (what are ‘hustings’ anyway?) Merriam Webster: “Hustings are where babies are kissed, flesh is pressed and media events are staged.
ADDENDUM II: After the first day of Jill Stein’s vaunted recount in Michigan, joined by Hillary, Hillary has gained 1 vote. She needs only 22,000 more for the election to be tied. Stein filed a petition with Michigan’s state Board of Canvassers on Wednesday, asking for a manual recount of every vote cast in Michigan in the presidential election. She also is leading efforts to force recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, claiming her goal is to “ensure the integrity and accuracy of the vote.”But not so fast! Michigan’s Republican attorney general filed a lawsuit on Friday to halt the vote recount attempt pursued in the state by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein.
Michigan voters rejected Stein’s candidacy by massive margins but her refusal to accept that state verified result poses an expensive and risky threat to hard-working taxpayers and abuses the intent of Michigan law,” Bil Schuette said in a statement/
“We have asked the court to end the recount which Stein is pursuing in violation of Michigan laws that protect the integrity of our elections. It is inexcusable for Stein to put Michigan voters at risk of paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process”.
ADDENDUM III: It’s Over! A federal Judge in Michigan ruled that Jill Stein could not possibly win under any circumstances, and thus she had no standing to be able to challenge the election.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Communism, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Freedom, History, National Security, News, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Communism Fails Again, Obama's Statement, The Death of Castro
President Obama’s statement on the passing of Fidel Castro was much more carefully phrased than that of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In fact, it is a marvelous example of an attempt to dot every i and cross every t and offend no one, no one at all.
At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans – in Cuba and in the United States – with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him. …
(Do read the whole thing. It’s quite precious. Makes me want to throw up).
At The Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady counts Castro’s victims, and reviews “The Secret Life of Fidel Castro” a biography by Juan Renaldo Sanchez who was for 17 years a part of the team of elite Cuban security specialists charged with protecting Castro’s life and privacy. It’s worth remembering that Castro begged the Russians to nuke the U.S., and Russian missiles were installed in Cuba.
At The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead explains that “A Dictator Dies a Failure.”
Fidel Castro wanted an independent path for Cuba. He leaves a shattered society and a desperately poor country behind him, less able to shape its destiny than it was in 1959.
At City Journal. Michael Totten had a lovely essay on “The Last Communist City: A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see. ”
I’ve always wanted to visit Cuba—not because I’m nostalgic for a botched utopian fantasy but because I wanted to experience Communism firsthand. When I finally got my chance several months ago, I was startled to discover how much the Cuban reality lines up with Blomkamp’s dystopia. In Cuba, as in Elysium, a small group of economic and political elites live in a rarefied world high above the impoverished masses. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto, would be appalled by the misery endured by Cuba’s ordinary citizens and shocked by the relatively luxurious lifestyles of those who keep the poor down by force. (For some reason, I was unable to link to the essay from 2014, You can find it on Google)
And the great political cartoonist Michael Ramirez captured the moment: (click to enlarge)
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Energy, Immigration, Law, Media Bias, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: Human Nature, Progressives, The Administrative State
Every form or progressivism bases itself on the claim of a special, “scientific” knowledge of what is wrong with humanity and how to fix it. The formula is straightforward: the world is not as it should be because society’s basic “structural” feature is ordered badly.
In one version or another it always boils down to the fact that they don’t like human nature. (Why can’t they be more like — Us?) The quotation is from an essay in the current Claremont Review of Books by Angelo Codevilla. Progressives, Communists, Socialists, in all their forms find human nature deeply flawed, and believe that they can fix it. For our current crop, the avenue seems to be “diversity.”
When they have made everybody equal and all neighborhoods are diverse, and schools are diverse and everybody believes exactly the same diverse things, then there will be no more problems like wars, and high crime rates in the cities run by progressives. The administrative state will take care of keeping the diversity diverse.
Christiana Figureres, Secretary General of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, cheerfully admitted not long ago, that they weren’t really interested in saving the Earth from a climate disaster, but that it was their best chance of ridding the world of Capitalism.
Steven Hayward quoted a paragraph from Boston University law professor Gary Lawson, in a 1994 Harvard Law Review article “The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State.”
The [Federal Trade] Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semi-autonomous Commission administrative law judge. If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.
Here’s Richard Epstein on “The Perils of Executive Power”
One of the most disturbing trends in the United States is the relentless concentration of power in the federal government. Ever since the New Deal, the classical liberal vision of limited government and strong property rights has taken a back seat to a progressive vision of a robust administrative state, dominated by supposed experts, whose powers are largely unimpeded by legal constraints. Wholly apart from Congress, the new administrative state has adopted and enforced its own laws and regulations, and is defined by unilateral actions by the President and other members of the executive branch, all of which threaten the system of checks and balances built into the original constitutional design.
“Obama’s agencies push flurry of ‘midnight’ actions”
Federal agencies are rushing out a final volley of executive actions in the last two months of Barack Obama’s presidency, despite warnings from Republicans in Congress and the reality that Donald Trump will have the power to erase much of their handiwork after Jan. 20.
Regulations on commodities speculation, air pollution from the oil industry, doctors’ Medicare drug payments and high-skilled immigrant workers are among the rules moving through the pipeline as Obama’s administration grasps at one last chance to cement his legacy. So are regulations tightening states’ oversight of online colleges and protecting funding for Planned Parenthood.
Donald Trump has promised to wipe out as much of Obama’s regulatory agenda as he can, saying he will cancel “all illegal and overreaching executive orders” and eliminate “every wasteful and unnecessary regulation which kills jobs.”
So, there you go.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, History, Humor, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Challenging the Vote?, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein
Well, Hillary has had some trouble grasping the nature of modern times. Technology has given her some trouble, emails and erasing things, but one would think that any politician would be aware of YouTube and videos of one’s past statements, however confidently given.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Canada, Capitalism, Communism, Cuba, Foreign Policy, History, Military, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Canadian P.M. Justin Trudeau, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, Good Riddance
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately gathered the mockery of the internet as he issued praise for the dead Cuban tyrant.
“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie [Trudeau’s wife] and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader,”
He also called 90-year-old dictator “larger than life” and a “legendary revolutionary and orator.” Uh huh. Twitter had great fun with that:
Go here for the long, long list of people not impressed and having fun:
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Crime, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Health Care, History, Immigration, Intelligence, National Security, Police, Regulation, Unemployment | Tags: Badly Behaving Democrats, Political Correctness, Progressive Identity Politics
First it was Hillary with her sneering reference to “the Deplorables,” then others began to speak of the “uneducated white working class.” Almost sounds like the old line about “poor white trash.” So who did vote for Trump? The media has insisted that it’s people who worked in dying industries and have lost their jobs. Both Bill and Hillary actually expressed their contempt for coal miners— on the stump. The media talks about manufacturing jobs that are ending and will never come back.
On October 20, 2008, Senator Barack Obama declared “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” President Obama set about fundamental transformation. First they transformed key institutions, shifting power from the people’s sovereignty, ignoring the Constitution and separation of powers, to a centralized administrative state, where an elite exercised executive, legislative and judicial powers without the consent of the people or their elected representatives. The progressive worldview bases its civic morality on the centrality of ascribed group identity and group consciousness, particularly race, ethnicity, and gender. Group interests get priority. Professor John Marini writes:
The new, transformed civic morality of the progressive narrative also divides Americans between dominant or “oppressor” groups—whites, males, native-born, Christians, heterosexuals—and victim or “oppressed” groups—racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities; women; LGBT individuals, and “undocumented” immigrants. Progressive politics doesn’t seek the national interest or the common good. Its purpose is to promote “marginalized” or “oppressed” groups against “dominant” or “oppressor” groups.
“This strategy,” Marini notes “requires the systematic mobilization of animosity.” Progressive identity politics, camouflaged under the rubric of “diversity,” is “a new kind of civil religion,” he says. Its enforcement takes the form of political correctness, carried out by the administrative state and private sector bureaucrats and activists within those institutions of a politicized civil society progressives have captured, which includes the media, universities, schools, major corporations, and even, apparently, professional athletic associations.
Global concerns come before national interests. American sovereignty should be surrendered to supranational authority, like UN treaties on the environment, children’s rights and the laws of war. Hillary promised her first 100 days would look for legislation to provide work permits for millions of border crossers and amnesty legislation. She supported all of Obama’s executive orders and plans to bypass Congress just like Obama did. Who could object to that?
Not just out-of-work uneducated working class. How about policemen who have seen their fellows gunned down by Black Lives Matter Marxists? Firemen, small businessmen whose businesses have been ruined with foolish regulation. Three of my favorite small businesses have disappeared. Hairdressers, crane operators, plumbers and electricians, landscaping contractors, builders, insurance salesmen. There are folks who found out they couldn’t keep their doctor, and the big jumps in cost for ObamaCare voided a lot of Obama promises. How about soldiers who returned from securing Iraq to see Obama waste their efforts and the efforts of their friends who did not make it back, by failing to secure the peace. Or veterans who, seeking medical help from the VA, found themselves unable to get a timely appointment or who saw friends die while on a wait list.
The list of people whose lives and occupations have been directly affected by blundering, backward, progressive ideas is long and growing, and not really accurately described by terms such as “the deplorables” or “uneducated white working class.” The media is inclined to latch on to convenient catch-phrases, shorthand for people of whom they disapprove, add in political correctness and a goodly supply of empathy to show how caring they are, and you have our current journalism.
The media was shocked when Mr. Trump called in the leaders of the major news organizations to bawl them out for their campaign coverage. The media executives agreed that the meeting would be off-the-record, and promptly described the event to the rest of the media. Reporters were shocked, but the people cheered. The underlying assumption from progressives and pundits was that “Trump’s voters were angry because the government was not doing enough for them, not that it was doing too much to them.” Big difference and big and important lack of understanding.
So the progressives continue to indulge their fury that Hillary, for whom they may or may not have voted, didn’t win and Trump did. Democrats are attacking Electoral College electors who are not committed by law — with death threats. Jill Stein, who attracted a teeny percentage of the vote, is attempting to lead a demand for a recount, though why she would have standing is a question.
The Left has frequently behaved badly when they have lost elections, but this year they seem to have exceeded all bounds. Democrats haven’t behaved this badly since Republicans told them they couldn’t own slaves any more.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Crime, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, Free Markets, Freedom, History, Immigration, National Security, The United States | Tags: Illegal Aliens, Legal Immigration
Whenever there is a protest, you are apt to see a sign carried by someone protesting immigration laws saying dramatically “No human being is illegal.” As signs go. it’s hard to beat that one for pure silliness. Democrats have rejected the term “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented people”
Words have meaning that is not determined by the Democratic party, but by the dictionary. In this case — Merriam Webster:
illegal, il•le•gal, adjective: not allowed by law not according to or authorized by law.
That’s pretty straightforward, and descriptive. The meaning is plain, solid fact. Do you see anything demeaning there?
alien, noun: a person who was born in a different country and is not a citizen of the country in which he now lives. A foreign born resident who has not been naturalized and is still a subject or citizen of a foreign country.
Also, straightforward and accurately descriptive.
We have immigration laws, and people who want to become Americans sign up, pay the fees and get put on a wait list to be admitted and begin the citizenship process. There are currently around 4.4 million people who have applied legally to immigrate to America, and are waiting their turn. Please explain why they should be superseded by illegal aliens who have crossed the southern border.
We have “sanctuary cities” whose executives have decided to defy federal law so they can feel good about offering “sanctuary” to illegals, often criminals, who are fearful of being deported. Kate Steinle was shot while walking on a wharf in San Francisco with her father by a criminal illegal alien who had already been deported.
Donald Trump has said he wants to deport criminal illegal aliens promptly. ICE has identified 1.9 million criminal aliens + another 940,000 who have absconded from deportation orders. The numbers create a slightly different impression than does the ‘empathy‘ that Democrats supposedly feel for unfortunate undocumented immigrants. And notice that nobody is much concerned with the poor souls who signed up legally, and are patiently waiting.
It’s all about voting, of course.
In the months leading up to the presidential election, a number of observers expressed concern that lax voter identification laws or procedures were resulting in aliens enrolled on state voter registration lists, thus enabling them to vote illegally. At least one survey of voter rolls in Virginia seemed to bear this out.
President Obama, always one to engage in verbal mischief even as he criticizes others’ perceived moral failings, appeared to encourage aliens to vote illegally in the recent election when, just days before the polling booths opened, he was interviewed by actress Gina Rodriguez who asked what would happen if someone illegally present in the United States voted. Obama assured her that were someone illegally in the United States to vote, no one would come after them because of the sanctity of the voting booth.
Question: So if I vote, will Immigration know where I live? Will they come for my family and deport us?
Answer: Not true, and the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself.
What? That’s hooey, of course. But you might ask yourself why the sneakers given to undocumented, unaccompanied children illegally crossing the border had pictures of Obama stamped on their inner soles. But we do need to know just how prevalent illegal vote fraud is.
Donald Trump won partly based on a platform of strong enforcement of our criminal and immigration laws. His attorney general will be Jeff Sessions who believes in immigration law.
We welcome immigrants and try to make them feel at home. A brand new citizen has the same rights as someone whose ancestors arrived with the Winthrop fleet. If you want to come to America apply properly and wait your turn. It’s worth the trouble.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cool Site of the Day, Freedom, Media Bias, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, The United States | Tags: Journalism Today, Progressivism, The Decline nd Fall of Journalism
We need a little more of this. The media is not doing right by us, and they should be told that we are aware of what they are doing. Good for Tucker Carlson.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Media Bias, Politics, Progressives, The Constitution, Unemployment | Tags: Election 2016, Historicism, Voting Blocs
The picture in the post below of the young man holding a homemade sign saying “DEPORT FASHISOM!” was pretty typical. He probably has no idea what fascism is. One of the biggest problems of the Left is that they believe their own propaganda.
Lots of very big words flung around: populism, illiberalism, misogyny, historicism, positivism and of course, the inevitable and constant “racism,” that offer nothing in the way of understanding. John Marini offered some real understanding in the Claremont Review of Books. The piece is long, and I had to look up the big words, but it’s worth your time and provides real food for thought.
Since the end of the Cold War, American leaders have understood their offices in terms of global and administrative rule, rather than political rule on behalf of the American people and the sovereignty of the American nation. Yet those offices were established on the foundation of the moral authority of the people and their Constitution. Once elected or appointed, politicians and bureaucrats have utilized their will, in both domestic and foreign policy, in an unrestrained manner on behalf of bureaucratic rule. They govern on the implicit premise of elections as plebiscites, but it is no longer clear who confers the legitimacy of an electoral mandate. Bureaucratic rule has become so pervasive that it is no longer clear that government is legitimized by the consent of the governed. Rather it is the consent of the various national—and often international—social, economic, political, and cultural interest groups that determine the outcome of elections. True political rule requires, at a minimum, the participation of citizens in their own rule, even if not in government itself. But this is possible only when people understand themselves as citizens and when the regime recognizes them as citizens. This requires distinguishing American citizens from all others and identifying them as one people.
American elections have increasingly been framed by Washington professionals. Social scientists, media pundits, and policy professionals may tilt liberal or conservative and may differ in their party preferences, but they are united in their dependence upon intellectual authority, derived from empirical science and its methodology, in their understanding of politics and economics. At the same time, historicism or (critical theory) has established itself as the closest thing to a public philosophy when it comes to understanding history, society, and culture. Applied to elections, the empirical method required that politics be understood in terms of measurable and quantifiable aggregates. This proved compatible with the positivist understanding of law and interest group liberalism. Critical post-modern theory established personal autonomy and group diversity as central to what is morally defensible in terms of public policy. As a result, political partisanship and analysis has focused on race, class, gender, and other such demographics, to provide the kind of information that has become central to the shaping and predicting of elections and to legitimize dividing the electorate into categories that came to be understood in moral terms. Consequently, political campaigns have made a science of dividing the electorate into groups and reassembling them as voting blocs committed to specific policies and issues denominated by the demographic categories themselves. This strategy requires the systematic mobilization of animosity to ensure participation by identifying and magnifying what it is that must be opposed.
Do read the whole thing. Mr. Trump has brought in a great assortment of free market experts for advice as he works on filling out his cabinet and advisory team.
Here’s an astonishing fact about the expansion of the administrative state. President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council numbered 25 people. Barack Obama’s National Security Council is over 400 people.
American Elephants 