Filed under: Bureaucracy, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Intelligence, Law, Media Bias, Politics, The United States | Tags: Department of Justice, Discussing a Coup, Remarkable Scandal
On Thursday, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley said that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told him that Department of Justice (DOJ) officials met to discuss whether or not to remove President Donald Trump from office in the wake of the president’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. In other words, they were discussing a coup. These are the people appointed to high government office in the department of the United States that is charged with upholding and being responsible to see that the law is obeyed. a coup! If you are not sure of the real meaning of that word, look it up.
This is a shocking disclosure. Sorry, you don’t get to plot to remove the president. especially when you work for the president. The interesting thing all along has been the hatred for the president because he defeated Hillary Clinton for the presidency? Because you don’t like him? Because the Democrat party lost control? I can accept the idea that he scares you because he has a business background rather than a government background, and might not understand all the little things presidents are supposed to overlook, because they’re the Justice Department. You can file articles of impeachment when there is a crime, but there is not, and never has been – a crime. You don’t get to impeach a president because you don’t like him. The Deep State at work.
Nor do you get to impeach a president nor remove him from office because your political party has gone stark raving bonkers. Democrats worship FDR, for saving the country from the Great Depression. But he did no such thing. He had no idea what to do, so he brought in his “Brain Trust” who didn’t know what to do either, so they engaged in endless tinkering which made the Depression last far longer than it would have had he just done nothing. Had he just paid attention to what Coolidge did, which was nothing, the recovery would have come quickly. But Democrats have never understood economics at all. They are fixated on soaking the rich to make everyone equal.
They might turn their attention to all of the things this president is accomplishing for the country, but that would just increase the anger.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Free Speech, Freedom, Intelligence, Law, Media Bias, News, Politics, Socialism, Statism, Technology | Tags: Impossible to Control, Social Media, Uncontrolled Words
The watchmen at the big social media websites are busily trying to police the flow of conversation that they initiated with their ideas about how to become rich and powerful. They thought people would like to share their thoughts, news, ideas, recipes and pictures with their friends. They have indeed become rich and powerful, but they forgot everything they learned in grade school and junior high, or perhaps did not learn about human nature.
The perpetrators of the constant hum of the online conversation we call “social media” blame any problems on “hate speech”, a poorly defined selection of words that someone, somewhere, objects to. All too often, it is simply the opinion of someone in the opposing political party.
One can say whatever one chooses if they agree with what you say, but your words must pass tests of race, ethnic origin, sex, sexual preference, age, political affiliation, part of the country you come from, and a few dozen other qualifying questions. Vulgarity is fine, and broadly circulated, as is any amount of coarseness, crassness, crudity, grossness, indelicacy, rawness, rudeness and tastelessness or don’t you read the comments on popular websites? Here is one definition I found:
Primarily internet or cellular phone based applications and tools to share information among people. Social media includes popular networking websites, like Facebook and Twitter; as well as bookmarking sites like Reddit. It involves blogging and forums and any aspect of an interactive presence which allows individuals the ability to engage in conversations with one another, often as a discussion over a particular blog post, news article, or event.
Having created this mess and trying desperately to find a way to manage the flow of conversation or discussion before the government steps in to slap them down, as Europe is already beginning to do, they are attempting to pacify by creating “independent” judges to parse your speech for anything that might get them in trouble. The fact that they are simultaneously parsing your speech to sell to advertisers is a separate problem.
Human nature. We are a quarrelsome lot. We have a hard time getting along with our immediate family, let alone a bunch of complete strangers. People do not speak well, and write even less well. We have a hard time saying what we mean, and it is usually poorly thought out. We have never really thought clearly about the big questions, let alone the little ones. That’s why Jordan Peterson has made such an impact. He tries to clarify what we are thinking and saying and point out where we have gone astray.
Oddly, with the enormous increase in people using social media, psychologists tell us that loneliness is an increasing problem. I think in the effort to connect people, we have created far greater problems that are just beginning to emerge. I suspect we may have been better off when you had to pick up the phone and dial your friend’s house, and didn’t stay on the line too long because it would cost too much.
I think this phenomenon has had some very unfortunate effects on our society that we do not yet understand. If you have any answers let me know.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Free Speech, Freedom, Intelligence, Law, National Security, Progressives, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: A Fresh Look At Patriotism, Clear Thinking, Useful Links
• Victor Davis Hanson addresses “A License to Hate.” The Left and their smears and hatred, what they say and why. Do read this whole thing, you’ll be glad you did.
• Thomas Lifson, proprietor of American Thinker explains why he is “attending no Pity Parties for furloughed federal workers.
• William McGurn, Wall Street Journal: “The Shaming of Karen Pence.” She’s teaching at a Christian School!
• Victor Davis Hanson on: “Should the FBI Run the Country?“
Filed under: Blogging, Cool Site of the Day, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Environment, Heartwarming, Humor, Immigration, Intelligence, National Security, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, The United States | Tags: CNN"s Jim Acosta, McAllen TX Presidential Visit, Schadenfreude
Jim Acosta, CNN’s White House Correspondent, was in McAllen, Texas today with the President’s party, there to meet with Border Patrol people and get a look at the border. Usually preferring to lecture the President rather than report the news, Acosta today made an effort (unwittingly) to be helpful. There’s a video linked at Breitbart
Acosta:
I found some steel slats down on the border. But I don’t see anything resembling a national emergency situation.. at least not in the McAllen TX area of the border where Trump will be today.
Terminology makes all the difference. A Wall is bad, Must be demonized, “Immoral”, evil, not who we Americans are, no $5 billion, not one cent, etc, etc, etc. Steel slats, on the other hand, you can see right through, and they are not forbidding at all. All is peaceful in McAllen. Why would they need a wall? Why do we enjoy it so much when Leftys make fools of themselves? I think it’s called shadenfreude:
pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. synonyms:delight · pleasure · happiness · joy · joyfulness · gladness · elation · euphoria · exhilaration · cheerfulness · amusement · mirth · mirthfulness · merriment · joviality · jollity ·
Hee hee.ADDENDUM: Jim Acosta undoubtedly has the safest job at CNN right now. If they fired him for making the president look good, they would be admitting that they are, as an organization, attempting to destroy the president on a daily basis, and they can’t admit that.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Energy, History, Humor, Intelligence, Junk Science, National Security, News of the Weird, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, Progressivism, Regulation, Socialism | Tags: Not Going to Happen, The Green New Deal, Very Very Bad Ideas
Supposedly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “‘Green’ New Deal” is quite popular among the new far-leftists in Congress. Democrats remain enamored of the memory of FDR. Some believe that he saved the nation from the Great Depression, (he didn’t). But anything with the term “New Deal” will be more popular on the Left. Young Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has a veritable wealth of ideas that are just plain wrong. She is not stupid, as so many claim. She just has a lot of very, very bad ideas. Money is not a problem – “We’ll just pay for it.” she says. Raise taxes as high as 82% on the wealthy? Fine. Her Green New Deal would cost 8,000 times as much as President Trump’s Border Wall request, according to Tyler O”Neil at PJ Media.
The “Green New Deal” will cost approximately $49,109 trillion in the first ten years, enough to fund Trump’s border wall 8,616 times over. The president is requesting $5.7 billion for the wall.
PJ Media calculated the cost of the “Green New Deal” by integrating each of the cost aspects involved in a Power the Future analysis and calculating their cost for the U.S. over about ten years — and in one case through 2050.
According to Ocasio-Cortez, the “Green New Deal” will force America to transition to an economy run from 100 percent renewable energy. Christopher Clark, a physicist who has studied rapid deployments of renewable energy, told The Hill that building this kind of generating capacity would cost “at least $2 trillion.”
Her idea for “renewable energy” probably does not contain nuclear power, for there seems to be a lot of resistance to building new nuclear power plants, although California’s small Diablo Canyon nuclear plant produces more energy than all of California’s many solar farms and wind turbines put together. The website for the left-wing think tank Data for Progress explains:
The goals of the Green New Deal are nothing short of radical. As the website for the left-wing think tank Data for Progress explains, the Green New Deal aims to “transform the economy and the environment in ways that achieve sustainability, equity, justice, freedom, and happiness.” Achieving happiness has never been easy. Even harder will be the Green New Deal’s aim of completely eliminating the use of coal, oil, and natural gas by 2050.
How all this happiness and energy legerdemain will be achieved is anyone’s guess. Supporters are particularly vague about how they would find the hundreds of billions — or even trillions — of dollars needed to attempt such a plan. Nevertheless, there is one unassailable fact about the Green New Deal: It is not green. Indeed, the entire notion of an all-renewable-energy system is the antithesis of environmental protection and scenic conservation.
Promoters seem to assume that there are vast tracts of vacant land, territory that is just waiting to be covered with renewable energy projects. To fuel the U.S. economy, would require state-sized empty territories to be covered with nothing but wind turbines and solar panels. (All that territory where the Deplorables live) It would require stringing tens of thousands of miles with new high-voltage transmission lines. Vox featured an explanation of the Green New Deal, and the feature was the kind of solar plant that proved to be essentially worthless at Ivanpah, in the Mojave. Doesn’t work. Didn’t produce the energy required, killed birds by the thousands.
Two researchers from Harvard published a study that looked at energy-production data from 1,150 solar projects and 411 onshore wind projects. Meeting U.S. electricity consumption would require 12 percent of the continental U.S. land area for wind— or an area more than twice the size of the state of California. Not going to happen.
Here are some notable facts. Environmentalists and climate change activists want to believe in themselves as “social-justice warriors” fighting for the good, but the policies they promote would seriously harm people, especially the poor and disadvantaged. They are anti-human.
Here is a graph from a panel organized last month by the Heartland Institute, and the European Institute for Climate and Energy. Dr, Craig Idso , Founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change said:
[R]adiosondes’ [balloon] measurements shown in blue reveal that the actual warming rate is three times smaller than that predicted by the models [red bars show warming that should have occurred from 1979-2017, as predicted from 102 different climate models].
See the important graph here: It explains how and why the average of climate models has vastly overestimated the warming. Some climate scientists thought they could put the climate of the world into a computer, and get a program that would correctly predict the future climate. GIGO: garbage in garage out. But that became the “Scientific Consensus”. They knew a few facts, added some estimates and some guesswork, and a significant bunch of mistakes, and lo and behold: “Science”
Do Read the Whole Thing
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Freedom, Immigration, Intelligence, Law, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, Russia, The United States | Tags: An Obsession With Russia, Feelings not Policy, Tucker Carlson Tonight
I suspect most of us have marveled at the strange and vicious Leftist reaction to the election of President Trump. Yes, of course they all believed that Hillary would be elected, and they would remain in power. Barack Obama had been the first black president, which was a great feather in their caps, and Hillary would be the first woman president. It has seemed that they are not all that much interested in policy, as they are interested in the “first black president” part, which absolves them of any notion of racial prejudice now or in the past, and proves, once again, that they are good people.
Put baldly like that, it seems remarkably nutty, but a striking number of serious thinkers believe that Leftist politics is all about feelings. (Think about the outcry about “children in cages”and “little children ripped from the arms of their mothers”, the “sanctuary cities” movement). It is not about good policy, but about what makes them feel good. They actually seem uninterested in policy.
Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue on the cost of the “Russia fixation.” “So there’s been a cost to our Russia fixation, a massive one,” Carlson said. “Years later we’ll look back and wonder what happened. How did everyone in America with an Ivy League education go insane in a single year? Was there some kind of mass poisoning? Ergotism? Historians will sort it out.”
“For now, all we know that the people in charge have lost it,” Carlson declared. “Listen to them explain the intricacies of the Russia conspiracy. They’re mesmerized. It’s a tale so complex and riddled with internal contradictions, it sounds like eastern religion. Only they really understand it. To them, Russia is the touchstone. It’s the comprehensive theory of everything.”
We’ve called it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” but the Democrats have long reacted badly to losing an election, or an argument. They have been fixated on the Russian investigation, and the chance of impeaching Trump over it. Flynn was the first target of the Mueller investigation. The hunt for Russian spies on our soil has metastasized – there are now 17 separate Russia investigations being conducted by the Justice Department, not counting 4 Congressional inquiries.The Russians, we have learned, spent a total of $4,700 on Google ads during the presidential campaign. That doesn’t buy much.
Tucker Carlson points out what happened last night on cable news, on MSNBC, the most serious news program that NBC offers on cable. The two people concerned are a man named Malcolm Nance, who identifies himself as a 35-year veteran of counter-intelligence work,(?) and his most recent book which was heavily promoted by MSNBC, is The Plot to Hack America. The other man is Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News. Williams is highly respected in the news business. He opens the segment by explaining that Russian “disinformation teams” have been working to divide America and convince the population that James Comey and Robert Mueller might have political agendas.
This is all completely insane. The John Birch Society? The KKK? The Christian Right (those religious people are dangerous), The Party of conspiracy theories? Steve Bannon? David Duke? Far-right conspiracy theories to suppress the African American vote? So much for Brian Williams being a respected newsman. The Left hauls these tiresome themes out of their emergency file for accusing Republicans when other accusations fail.
You’ve heard Hillary and her “basket of deplorables” and assumption that the people in the wasteland between the more intelligent coastal cities are obviously a bunch of uneducated dummies. So anyone who disagrees with them is a tool of a foreign power? You probably remember times in the past when they’ve hauled out theories of encampments of dangerous far-right, armed gun nuts ready to break out of the woods of Northern Idaho or Northern Louisiana to…..what? The KKK always seems to be lurking, but they seem remarkably few in number.
The Left expects to be in charge. They choose their candidates by race, skin color, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, not by the value of their ideas. Hillary was interesting as the first woman president, but when she lost, they lost interest. Kamala Harris has the quality of not only being part black, but being a woman as well. Elizabeth Warren was interesting as a woman who was part Native American, but after the DNA test, Democrats lost interest. And then there’s “Beto” O’Rourke. He has something of an all-American boy look, like John Kennedy, and a nice smile, but if he has any ideas, I haven’t heard what they might be.
We should be looking for ideas and policy, what’s good for the country, but what they’re interested in is looks and personality, not qualifications. Do read the whole thing and watch the short video, and puzzle over the obsession with Russia.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Free Markets, Freedom, Germany, History, Intelligence, Japan, Law, Military, National Security, The United States, World War II | Tags: A Carrier Navy, Congressman Carl Vinson, Pearl Harbor Day
U.S. Navy Photo: USS Carl Vinson
Seventy-seven years ago on December 7, 1941, carrier planes from the Imperial Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in a surprise attack on the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It was followed a few days later by an attack on the Philippines.
The surprise attack on the fleet killed 2,402 Americans, sank or submerged 19 ships, including eight battleships damaged or destroyed. Just four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
Victor Davis Hanson writes today of the contribution of one Democratic Congressman from Georgia, Carl Vinson. Do read the whole thing.
The Japanese fleet had missed the three absent American carriers of the Pacific Fleet. Nonetheless, Japanese admirals were certain that the United States was so crippled after the attack that it would not be able to go on the offensive against the Japanese Pacific empire for years, if at all. Surely the wounded Americans would sue for peace, or at least concentrate on Europe and keep out of the Japanese-held Pacific.
That was a fatal miscalculation.
The Japanese warlords had known little of the tireless efforts of one Democratic congressman from Georgia, Carl Vinson.
For nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, Vinson had schemed and politicked in brilliant fashion to ensure that America was building a two-ocean navy larger than all the major navies of the world combined.
If you have a history buff on your gift list, get them a copy of Dr. Hanson’s brilliant new book: The Second Word Wars. If you’re feeling generous, add With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge.
This should be a good reminder to consider carefully who you are electing to serve in Congress. It matters.
