Filed under: Politics | Tags: Envy of The Rich, Hard Work Pays Off, The Meaning of Control
We seem to have a remarkable number of groups out there struggling to be in control. Nothing is what it claims to be. Do keep a sharp eye on “The Great Reset” which pretends to rescue the world from climate doom, but is actually a bid to eliminate capitalism. And, of course, Capitalism is what has made America great.
This is a serious concern, for Joe Biden has been using the language of “the Great Reset”, which is “Build Back Better” which he says frequently, It perhaps sounds good, but”The Great Reset” would lead to a depression, probably greater than than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Roosevelt didn’t know how to respond, and according to economists made the depression seven years longer than it needed to be. That was a ghastly time, and ruined many lives.
In the old world, there were often sharp class distinctions, and if your father was a sheep herder, that’s all you could hope for. You were born to a certain class, and the upper classes didn’t want any competition. Kings were always getting overthrown, and they didn’t want the peasants getting restless.
What has made America different is what I have called “the right to rise.” You don’t see it mentioned much or even acknowledged much, which is unfortunate. Sometime late last year, a young black high school senior was written up in the press. He was from Cleveland, if I remember correctly, and he had been walking three miles every day to the public library where he could get homework help. That netted him admission to some 22 colleges, including the one he most wanted to attend. Lots of sneering about his walking 3 miles. But the point is that you can work hard and rise. Become what you dream of becoming. There are not a lot of places on this earth where you can do that. Jeff Bezos started with an idea and a car trunk full of books. The young man from Cleveland will probably be found in a few years, running some major corporation and getting rich.
Jason Riley, who happens to be black, writes for the Opinion Page at the Wall Street Journal, has a book out entitled Please Stop Helping Us. Highly recommended and available, of course, at Amazon.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Biden Believes, Climate Error, True Believers
I am certainly not a climate scientist, but I do study up and read everything I can to try to understand what is going on.
Lord Christopher Monckton, who was a close advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote a letter to the Lancet on the “Climate Crisis” which the Heartland Institute has made public. He does know what he is talking about. It is not long and very worth your time:
The grave error of physics that created a climate ’emergency’
It was all a big mistake. Concern about dangerous global warming arose from a grave error of physics dating back to 1984. No one had noticed until now because climate scientists had borrowed feedback mathematics from control theory, another branch of physics,without understanding it.The control theorists whose science climatologists had borrowed had not realized how it had been misused. An international team of eminent climatologists and control theorists, gathered by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, spent years hunting the error. Their 70-page scientific paper calculates that, after correcting the error, manmade global warming will be only one-third of what climate scientists had predicted. There will be too little global warming to harm us. Small, slow warming will be a good thing overall. There is no climate emergency. There never was. The trillions wasted on destroying jobs and industries can now be spent on the world’s many real environmental problems. Global warming is not among them. As a result of the error, climate scientists had thought that, though only about 1 C° –a quarter of the global warming they were predicting from doubling the CO2 in the air–came directly from the added CO2, that 1 C° of direct warming would trigger another 3 C° of extra warming, called feedback response, mostly from more water vapour–a greenhouse gas–carried in the air the CO2 had warmed. Fig. 1(a) Erroneous and (b) corrected makeup of the natural greenhouse effect. They had thought the natural greenhouse effect–the difference between the emission temperature at the surface without airborne greenhouse gases and the surface temperature in 1850, at the start of the industrial era–was 32 C°. Of this, they had thought 8 C° was direct warming driven by the pre-industrial green-house gases, to which the remaining 24 C° was feedback response (Fig. 1a). They had made two mistakes, one small, one very large. Their small mistake: they had forgotten that without greenhouse gases in the air there would be no clouds to reflect solar radiation harmlessly back to space, like a mirror. The true emission temperature – the temperature that would prevail at the surface if there were no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset–would be about 12 C° larger than they had calculated. Thus, the true natural greenhouse effect was not 32 C° but 12 C° smaller, at just 20 C°. Their very large mistake:they forgot the Sun was shining. For very nearly all of the pre-industrial feedback response until 1850–the extra warming all of which they thought had been triggered by non-condensing greenhouse gases (gases other than water vapour)–was actually triggered not by those gases but by the Sun’s warmth. In effect, they added that solar feedback response to, and miscounted it as part of, the pre-industrial greenhouse-gas feedback response, which they overstated by 3200%.
The remainder of Monckton’s letter can be found here. It’s not long, but invaluable. Joe Biden is a true believer in the “climate crisis”. He intends to make it his initial issue of prime importance. Billions of dollars worth of wind farms and solar arrays which will not produce the energy required for a modern society. He intends to make John Kerry (John Kerry!) his guru for rejoining the Paris Climate Accords which are meant to allay the nonexistent warming that’s supposed to do us all in. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years, and will probably continue doing so. There are cold winters and mild winters, hot summers and mild summers. We had a vast experiment with a project in the Southern California Desert called Solyndra. An enormous array of solar cells were designed to reflect their heat on a tower that was to produce all the energy needed for a big percentage of California. Cost billions, didn’t work, killed thousands of birds, Enter that name in your search engine and see what comes up.
Japan has just committed to switching to electric automobiles in around 3 years. Mr. Toyoda, president of the Toyota Car Company, spoke out, pointing out that Japan does not have enough electricity to support all electric cars, not even close. We can get in remarkable amounts of trouble by not investigating carefully, or as I usually refer to it as “doing your homework.” It’s not what you know that’s going to get you in trouble, but what you don’t know that you don’t know.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Joyeux Noel, Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Eliminate Border Walls, More Drugs?, Open Open Borders
Joe Biden has explained that he really, really believes in climate change. I’d lay odds that he has never read a single scientific article about the problem, which doesn’t seem to actually be a problem. It has been much warmer in the past. He also really, really believes in opening up the borders to welcome more illegal immigrants. Headline in American Greatness: Under Biden, the Term “Illegal Alien” may Become Illegal. Now he’s even talking about tearing down Trump’s border wall. ( Illegal Aliens can easily be persuaded to vote Democrat) A big influx of illegals hits the poorest American workers hard.
“Illegal alien” has been targeted for elimination by the anti-borders Left for several years now, and that effort will kick into high gear in a Biden presidency. One of their favorite lines of attack is the mantra “no human being is illegal,” as if identifying a person’s legal status is equivalent to dehumanizing the person. There has also been much effort to classify the term as a racial slur. This is Political Correctness 101 intended to get people thinking based on emotions, not facts.
This attack on language is a modern-day version of “newspeak” from Orwell’s 1984. Violent rioters are actually peaceful protesters. Confiscatory tax rates are “investing in our children’s future,” and illegal aliens are “undocumented immigrants.”
Do read the whole thing, it’s not long. The TDS people have been trying to blame “separation of families”, and “children in cages” separated from their parents on Trump, but that was entirely the Obama Administration. Obama even had shoes printed up, for the kids who came without shoes, with his picture inside, I guess so they would know who gave them their first shoes?
I also know someone who is convinced that the Democrats get significant donations from the Drug Cartels to look the other way at the drugs coming over our southern border. During this Covid Crisis, drug overdoses have climbed significantly as a cause of death. Whether that can be blamed on lockdowns or increased availability of drugs I have no idea. We have a lot of governors and mayors issuing orders about how to manage the Covid Crisis without much information or expertise backing up what they are doing. Pay close attention, and lets get rid of the incompetents next time.
In the meantime, the Border Patrol is doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. Child trafficking is a real problem, and not all the people who are trying to get in would be a particularly good addition to our society.
Lockdowns, Covid-19, closed businesses, riots, incompetent governors and mayors, protests, looting, just another day like all days in the wake of the Corona virus. A demand arises that Congress appropriate some money to jumpstart the economy once again, so, naturally they do their usual Congressional thing. They appropriate $600 dollars for everybody as an economic stimulus, and add on all the splendid Democrat ideas they’ve been drumming up in the wake of TDS. So it adds up to something just over 2 Trillion dollars added to the federal debt.
Any time someone says “federal debt” do remember that the federal government has no money of its own. Every last cent comes out of your pocket or bank account. So, of course, they add all their greedy wishes and hopes and political payoffs in. (I heard, 2nd-hand, from something on Twitter), that Speaker Pelosi got her plane back. As Speaker, she got her own military plane under Obama, and pilot to fly her around so she didn’t have to spend time in airport lines and associate with the ordinary riff-raff. Some sensible entity in government thought that was ridiculous and removed the privilege, and she has been chafing about it ever since. It may not even be true, but that is just the sort of thing that Democrats tuck into big omnibus bills because with the cover of $600 for everybody, the sky’s the limit. That $600 will probably not even begin to cover your eventual cost.
That’s how Congress works. You might keep that in mind next time you vote. it’s a pretty cushy job.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Big Island, Erupts Often, Most Active Volcano
Kilauea, the volcano on Hawaii’s big island is erupting again. I believe that it is the world’s most active volcano. and erupts with some frequency, but not a predictable schedule. My knowledge of volcanoes is very limited. We do have our own here in Washington State, and though we had some excitement with Mount St. Helens a few years back, there are others in that mountain chain that are just politely sitting there looking beautiful, but refraining from disturbing the peace. This is the biggest Kilauea eruption since 2018.
Anthony Watts at WattsUpWithThat has pictures and film for volcano lovers.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Care for the birds, No care for injured, Poisoned rivers
Joe Biden, believing, apparently, in the autistic child from Sweden who came to the U.S. to lecture the United Nations, wants the electric grid of the United States to be powered solely by energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide by 2035. Good luck with that.
Well, dangerous, unbelievably expensive, and doesn’t work. The wind is intermittent and sometimes doesn’t blow for days, even in the windiest places. There is no dependable power source there. They require constant backup from, well, coal, nukes or fossil fuels. Same with solar energy. And they simply cannot power a modern industrial society. There are clouds, rainy days. Nuclear power works, but since the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, people are afraid of nuclear power. Some people believe that since wind and sun are ‘natural’, they would reduce consumer costs. Enormously mistaken. The cost to society of eliminating fossil fuels would be immense, and accomplish nothing anyway.
Biden apparently wants Gina McCarthy in control of climate in some way, (dreadful appointment) but could not nominate her for the EPA because Congress would never confirm her. So he’s sticking her in some other advisory notch where she will not need confirmation. In her previous slot, she managed to poison an Alaskan river, and then the Colorado River (Really!). I also remember when an Alaskan native fishing village asked to improve the road to the nearest landing field so broken bones or heart attacks who had to get to the hospital could more easily get to the planes for help. She turned them down because it might disturb the local birds.
Other than that, dozens of scientists reveal that today most of the planet is COLDER TODAY than in most of the past 8,000 years. The planet was much warmer over most of the Holocene (past 10,000 years) than it is today. There are a lot of scientists studying all matters climate, and publishing their work. It’s not all that hard to study up and consider what their studies demonstrate. I know, I know, it’s hard to read scientific reports, but they do work hard to make their work accessible to ordinary people.
Climate Depot even has a video available explaining all, at a very accessible price, that I recommend highly.
I inferred, but did not state that Gina McCarthy was Obama’s EPA Administrator.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: The Green New Deal, The Real Science, Warmer in the Past
The Great Reset: ‘You’ll own nothing’ — not a home, a car or — a Christmas tree! It’s time to “rent” your Christmas tree — It’s just better for the environment’
World Economic Forum Touts Christmas tree ‘rental’: Christmas trees are being rented over the festive period in a bid to stop millions from going to landfill.The trees are taken home in a pot and returned in the same one. The farm then re-plants it until the following year.
Marc Morano comments: “The Great Reset/Green New Deal/Build Back Better are all using COVID and a ‘climate emergency’, to very clearly lay out your future. No private ownership of homes or cars or even Christmas trees. Air travel will be permitted only when it is ‘morally justifiable’. The Great Reset has revealed the future it seeks and you are not free.”
This sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. They are quite serious. Andrew Yang: presidential candidate: Climate Change may require elimination of Car Ownership. He suggests a constant roving fleet of electric cars.
The New York Times: “Let’s Quit Fetishizing the Single-Family Home ” ( by NYT columnist Farhad Manjoo): “The single-family home is out of step with the future…a big house with a backyard should be a rarity…single -family zoning has a history in segregation.”
Warmist Eric Holthaus envisions Earth Day 2070; “A world not focused on growth, but on life. A world not focused on ownership, but on solidarity.”
This is the “Green New Deal” unveiled. the Entire economy would operate it — Government would have ‘appropriate ownership stakes’ in ALL Green New Deal businesses.
And don’t forget Al Gore; “This is the time for a ‘Great Reset’ to fix a bunch of challenges, first among them the climate crisis.” Of course as soon as he made big pronouncements of saving the oceans, he bought a waterfront condo in San Francisco.
And as for the climate crisis that Joe Biden is so panicked about: Undisputed temperature reconstructions from around the world show the planet was much warmer over most of the Holocene (the past 10,000 years) than it is today. Modern Iceland is 2 to 4 degrees C. colder than in all of the last 8,000 years.
They don’t do their homework, they do not study up. They simply follow the current propaganda in their crowd. Goes for their “journalists” too. You can check out your sources to find out whether or not they know what they are talking about, and they don’t always. Conventional wisdom is a lot easier. Doesn’t require you to read stuff, or think.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Likes Trains, Secretary of Transportation, South Bend Mayor
What most of us have not noticed is that the Biden campaign and president-elect announcements of coming appointments is all about, is actually about identity politics. When the campaign first started, Joe Biden announced that he would choose a black woman as his vice president, and settled on Kamala Harris, who isn’t black, but qualifies as a “person of color” as her mother was from India and her father from Jamaica.
Susan Rice, left over from the Obama administration, fully qualifies as Black, in spite of many objections to her previous habit extensive lying, will have a major role. Joe Biden has gone on from there, culminating with the selection of Pete Butigieg for Secretary of Transportation, with the specific mention that he would be the first openly gay member of the Cabinet. Apparently there are many identity designations that must be checked off the list in cabinet nominations to properly qualify as “inclusive”. Pete Buttigieg, formerly the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, formerly on the vast list of potential candidates for the presidency, is openly gay and in a gay marriage. There’s nothing there that qualifies him to be in the cabinet. He apparently did all right as mayor, but no spectacular accomplishments. He is bright, a former Rhodes scholar, served in the military.
On being chosen as Joe Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, he quickly promised to fight racial, economic and environmental injustice as the nominee to head the Department of Transportation.
During his speech, he warned there was a dark side to the DOT.
“At it’s worst, misguided policies and missed opportunities can reinforce racial, economic, and environmental injustice, dividing or isolating neighborhoods,” he said, promising to work to deliver “equity” and “empower everyone to thrive.”
He also criticized President Donald Trump’s approach to infrastructure, promising to work so “the idea of an infrastructure week is associated with results and never again a media punchline.”
Buttigieg said that he was a transportation enthusiast, citing his love of riding on Amtrak trains, studying while traveling on a cargo ship, and proposing to his husband Chasten at the Chicago O’Hare airport.
Not sure what other identity politics roles remain to be filled. You want to be particularly attentive when Biden starts with the theme of “Build Back Better”. That’s the theme of “the Great Reset” to be avoided at all costs. If you are not sure of just what “the Great Reset” is, see earlier posts, or go to Climate Depot, linked in the sidebar for good explanation. Or for that matter search for the Time Magazine issue on “The Great Reset”. Truly frightening.
Some days it just feels like the world is coming apart. Governors, and mayors seem to be making things worse rather than better. There’s the regular report of shootings and deaths in Chicago, and Mayor Lightfoot doesn’t seem to be able to get a handle on it. Some weekends are better than others. California’s Governor Gavin Newsum is now facing a recall election, and they are getting close to having enough votes. Portland currently has it’s own autonomous zone, and the riots continue–a sure sign that the rioters are having fun at it. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan will not run for reelection. New York’s dreadful governor Andrew Cuomo is on Joe Biden’s list as his Attorney General, with his record? Joe Biden is filling up his cabinet selections with Obama administration retreads including some very questionable ones like Susan Rice. And Biden wants Pete Butigieg, reportedly as Transportation Secretary. Biden’s selections do not give me any confidence whatsoever.
President Trump’s magnificent “Warp Speed” effort has brought forth vaccines, and they are starting to be delivered. It was said to be impossible, but he did it. I have not read just what the priorities are, nor who is first in line for the vaccine. When the Democrats were through sneering that it couldn’t be done, they started questioning the efficacy simply because it came from President Trump. Lots of sneering about the profits the Pharmaceutical companies might make. From the very beginning with the first cases in this country, President Trump did everything a Commander in Chief could, from ending travel from China, to building military tent hospitals, enlisting the automobile companies to make ventilators, sending military hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles, and getting the supplies needed to where they were needed promptly. The nation’s governors were grateful. Some cranks even went so far as to suggest that nobody should trust the vaccine because it came from the detested Trump. I’d say the nation owes him an enormous debt of gratitude. He has done an outstanding job, and had the coronavirus himself, and recovered.
There are longstanding protocols for the introduction of a new drug, and just how its efficacy is to be proved. They are carefully followed, step by step, and no one wants even one more case. There have been pandemics in the past, the flu at the end of the First World War was dreadful, but we have learned a little more each time there is a pandemic about what to do and what not to do. Melinda Gates announced that she was disappointed to learn that Americans would get the vaccine first, which would seem to take the citizen of the world thing a bit too far.
There ae a lot of big problems out there. Governors are trying to do the right thing, ordering restaurants closed, or any place where people might gather, ordering masks, distancing, shutting businesses down. They don’t know that much about what they are doing and trying to do the right thing, with not always successful results. The American people are sick of being locked down, ordered around, and unsure that anyone knows what they are talking about. The Supreme Court just had to remind the nation that freedom of religion precludes shutting down the churches. I don’t know how long it wll take to get the nation vaccinated. I assume it will go slowly, but the fact that we have arrived at a vaccine is a magnificent accomplishment.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Amnesty for Illegals, Climate Change, Illegal Immigation, Open Borders
The electoral college has voted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to make fomer Vice President Joe Biden now formally the president-elect of the United States. Unfortunately 75-76% of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and around 30% of Democrats also believe the election was stolen. That doesn’t seem to be getting off to a real good start.
One of Biden’s very first efforts will be to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, with John Kerry in charge, to save us from an overheating planet. It wouldn’t take a lot of time and effort to learn that it has been much warmer in the past, with little in the way of ill-effects. But true-believers don’t investigate, they just believe.
The open borders lobby is urging Democrat Joe Biden to quickly grant amnesty for illegal aliens who are living in the United States, as there is a little-known federal program that keeps foreign nationals from being deported. They want amnesty by executive order and use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to grant amnesty to all 11 million to 22 million illegals currently living in the United States. I have the odd notion that there is a legal way to come to the United States, by applying, waiting one’s turn, and working towards citizenship. We welcome new citizens.
Of course there has been much fuss about the “children in cages” at the border amid attempts to make it something the evil Donald Trump did, rather than the act of the Obama administration. Democrats do not admit wrongdoing, they just blame it on someone else. If you remember AOC went down to the southern border to check on the children in cages, and had herself photographed clutching at a chain-link fence and weeping as she stared out at an empty parking-lot. Good visuals always help.
American Elephants 