American Elephants


The Western World Has Gone Stark Raving Mad. by The Elephant's Child

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Here’s the box they built around the statue of Winston Churchill in Britain. Police also protected the cenotaph, and protesters bravely threw some statues into the River Thames.

In Whittier, California, BLM protesters defaced a statue of John Greenleaf. Who is he?  He was a prominent Quaker abolitionist, known for his anti-slavery writings.  A picture shows the usual graffiti. Sometimes, it seems, we get a little over-excited about attacking statues. Of course, unlike attacking real people, statues just sit there and behave like the inanimate objects they are, and there’s no fuss unless the police catch you at it, and even then it depends on what the local rules are about attacking statues. It is entirely about the symbolism, and attacking a king symbolically ranks a little higher than a symbolic mere member of Parliament, for example.

Of course in America we went for bigger targets than mere statues (which were attacked as well) but that can’t compare to HBO blacklisting Gone With the Wind. Good Grief! Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Hattie McDaniels, who is black, won the first Oscar ever given to a person of another race. It was well deserved, but there’s the rub. She played the role of Mammy, a slave.

Well, never mind Oscars, the outrage was furious. Banning Gone With the Wind!  America’s favorite movie of all time. What happened immediately was that everybody went out and bought a copy for their own, and just think through the economics of that little stunt, and how it would reverberate down through the years. I can even quote you the opening lines of the book: “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as the Tarelton twins were.”

HBO decided that unbanning Gone With the Wind was probably the better idea, but because of George Floyd and all, they hired  Black scholar and TCM host Jacqueline Stewart. She is a professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.  Cinema and Media Studies is a major at the University of Chicago? It has not been yet announced just when GWTW and Scarlett and Brett will return to streaming services. Jacqueline Stewart will provide an introduction to the movie, so you understand the correct viewpoint. This is a very odd time, we can’t seem to decide whether we can allow history to remain unchanged, or if we have to have a do-over that we like better. Historically, we do recognize that the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Southern forces fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and on April 15, President Lincoln issued a public declaration than an insurrection existed and called for 75,000 militia to stop the rebellion.  It ended on April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S, Grant at the Appomattox Court House, with a remarkable lot of history in between those two dates. If you are unfamiliar with the Civil War, study up! You’ll be glad you did. Here’s a guide to books on the war.

You might want to look up the Emancipation Proclamation.

Race has come up as a major subject in the international outrage over the death of George Floyd. Statues are being destroyed in this country, in Britain, Australia, Scotland–Robert the Bruce, the Scottish King who freed Scotland from England’s clutches, and who knows where else, which accomplishes nothing at all, but expresses varying degrees of outrage over varying subjects. The Civil War in general, any generals who fought for the South,  anything named for a general who fought for the South, that sort of thing.  Fort Bragg and Fort Benning are especially mentioned as needing to be renamed immediately to appease the anger about race.  Quick, can you tell me where Fort Bragg is, and who it is named for? Didn’t think so. How about Fort Benning — location, named for? If we are going to be outraged and change names, shouldn’t we know what we are talking about, and how it relates to, for example, “CHAZ” or “CHOP” as it is now, on six blocks of Capitol Hill in Seattle? And what does that have to do with putting a box around the statue of Winston Churchill in Britain?

What seemed to happen to George Floyd was clearly an outrage, but what actually happened was not as it seemed. The call to police about Floyd was that he was trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. We never learned if it was counterfeit or not. There must have been some kind of resisting arrest going on for him to end up on the ground with an officer holding him down with his knee.

Floyd was a very large man who worked as security in a night club, a “bouncer” as they are called, as did the police officer, and they apparently worked at the same establishment. The cause of death is unclear. Yes, he was saying “I can’t breathe” but before the choke hold as well. He was apparently high on fentanyl. The autopsies (there were two) also mentioned a heart attack, and another fatal condition. The officer has been charged with murder, but in the middle of international outrage. I have no idea. It just sounds like it is a lot more complicated than we were led to believe. The outrage over what was seen on film was huge. The emotion stirred up was huge and has led to all the rest.

Hopefully, enough information will eventually come out to clarify the whole thing. Why it has led to the destruction of Columbus statues, names of anything connected to the South in the Civil War, remains unknown. Aunt Jemima syrup has changed its name and picture. Kellogg’s Rice Crispies has been attacked for Snap, Crackle and Pop who seem to be three white boys. The same white boys are on the Cocoa Crispies box, although the cereal is brown.  In other words, a big section of America has become certifiable. A City Councilman in Charlotte, SC has declared that it is time to proclaim that racism is a public health crisis. The worst reaction is the call to defund the police. which is beyond stupid. Unfortunately it has all been exacerbated by the CORONA-19 turmoil and societal shutdown and all the chaos that has caused. Emotions were already stirred up by people locked down.

This too shall pass.  From the Federalist: “Why White People Will Always Be Racists: Whites are continually put into the position of forever having to prove the negative, that they’re not racists. This is impossible. And that’s the point.”



The President’s Wednesday Press Conference by The Elephant's Child

Today, Wednesday 18th, Presidential Press Conference. Long, but very informative. Worth your time. Here’s what they are doing, why, and how, and what they expect to result from their actions. Democrat talking point that calling it the “Chinese virus” is somehow “racist” appears. Embarrassing.  Everybody in the entire world knows it originated in Wuhan, China. It is customary to call viruses by the name of the locale where it first appeared to specify exactly which virus it is. You may have heard of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. That’s not racist either.



Politics, Politics and More Politics, Ours & Theirs. by The Elephant's Child

Politics. Many of our friendly nations are currently embroiled in politics. Our Democrats are trying for a do-over of the previous election, because they simply cannot get over the fact that they lost the 2016 election to the hated Trump.  Just why they hate President Trump so much remains a mystery, because he is doing a remarkable job of getting the economy back on track, which is what we elected him to do.

Canada is not entirely happy with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but he is going to keep his job and form a minority government. His Liberals are again the largest party, but have lost their parliamentary majority.

The British have a Prime Minister in Boris Johnson, but are embroiled in Brexit. From what I can tell, the people want out of the European Union, but the Parliament does not. The battle goes on, and on. Back in 2007, Valery Giscard d’Estaing was writing a Constitution for the European Union, and briefly looked at the American Constitution, but couldn’t handle all those freedoms, and rejected it outright as an example. Unfortunate.

The Israelis are having a crisis of sorts because Prime Minister Netanyahu could not form a government because of the (weird to Americans) way the Israeli government is formed. The Prime Minister gets elected, I think, and then has to create a government by getting all the other parties to agree to what he comes up with, or something like that. We all get accustomed to our own form of government and do not understand any other countries’ politics, which usually is just as complex as ours, and often more so.

South America is a mess, but since we don’t speak their languages, we don’t pay all that much attention. Odd, but I don’t know how many Americans could name the countries of South America on an unlabeled map. And of course, we always call ourselves “Americans” which undoubtedly annoys the citizens of Central and South, who are just as much “Americans” as we are.

Hong Kong and China are getting bloody. China is Communist, which works only for those at the top, and until they are overthrown. We have enough world history about what works and what does not to teach us all – how to go about doing government. The most passionate are always the least-informed, and sure that they have a better idea.

Apparently our colleges and universities are graduating a new class, sure that the answer to the problem of the rich is Socialism or Communism. They are, of course,  tutored by professors who discover that there are successful entrepreneurs who without the qualification of a PhD in something or other receive enormous salaries and benefits for keeping a corporation healthy and thriving. No Fair! If you wondered why a college education costs so much today, there you go.

President Trump is beginning to move governmental agencies out of the “swamp” and closer to the people they are supposed to be serving. Thus the Farm Bureau is moving to farming country which is excellent, but those who are being moved from cosmopolitan D.C. to farm country are not happy.  I think it’s a great idea.



The Climate Has Been Changing for Millions of Years by The Elephant's Child

On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Elizabeth Warren announced that Climate Change is “A Bigger Threat Than World War II”, and launched a Two Trillion “infrastructure investment plan” to address the threat of climate change, which she claims is a bigger threat to the American way of life than the enemies the Allied forces faced in World War II. The climate crisis in this country is a threat to the very existence of every living thing on this planet.

Not to be outdone in the climate panic department, our very own governor, Jay Inslee, who is running for the presidency on a climate based campaign in which the American people have showed no interest whatsoever, told an NBC News correspondent that President Trump’s stance on global warming is “treason.”

Something that is becoming increasingly obvious about Democrats is that they simply do not do their homework. It is remarkably obvious as well in the other 23 declared candidates for the presidency. They open their mouths and say something that should disqualify them from not only the presidency, but from whatever office they currently hold. Before you start spouting about existential threats to all life on the planet, you should have actually looked into the science. You could start with Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr.Tom Christy who measure the temperatures of the Earth for NASA at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

The climate of the earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years. When the current interest fading into panic first reared it’s ugly head, all sorts of grants became available to anyone who could write a good grant proposal. Science departments in many universities felt that they could accomplish something with more powerful computers and the program used by financial people to forecast what the markets would do. Trouble was there were all sorts of unanswered questions out there, like the part played by clouds. They entered what they knew for sure, which was not all that much, and then their best guesses, and a few wild ones, and so we arrived at the current state of affairs.

Thing is, the planet is actually cooling, not warming. Glaciers are not melting, they are growing. Glacier National Park has quietly removed the signs “Gone by 2020” after the glaciers just kept on not being gone, but actually growing. The increased CO² in the atmosphere is greening the earth, since carbon dioxide, which we exhale, is a natural fertilizer for plants.The increased greening is visible from space.

The major greenhouse gas (95%) of the atmosphere is not Carbon Dioxide (CO²) but water vapor. (Clouds) According to Dr. Tim Ball, the next most important greenhouse gas of relevance is methane CH4, but it is only 0.000175 percent of atmospheric gases and 0.036 percent or all greenhouse gases. Water vapor is 95% of the atmosphere by volume, and is by far the most abundant and important greenhouse gas. And we just don’t understand clouds at all.

Surely when you were a kid, at some point you lay out on the lawn on a nice summer day to just watch the clouds drifting across the sky. If the action of clouds is a major determinant of climate, how do you measure that? Sometimes there are layers of clouds, each layer going in different directions. Sometimes there are lovely white clouds in front, and off in the distance big black thunderclouds, everything moving.

Then there is Christiana Figueres. She was the general secretary of the IPPC who admitted in a press conference that the goal of environmental activists was not to save the world from ecological calamity — but to destroy Capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

There are numbers of others in the climate field who have made similar admissions. There are innumerable books on climate and the error of climate panic, from Britain, Australia, Canada and the U.S. There’s a wide range of websites devoted to climate, I’ve listed just a few in the sidebar.

*The photo is looking due north. If you head over to the snowy peak and jump off towards the North, you will be where I grew up. This mountain is the northernmost anchor of the West range of mountains in Idaho. Nice country.



The State of the Polar Bear, 2018 by The Elephant's Child

The State of the Polar Bear report was published on the 27th by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. It confirms that polar bears are continuing to thrive, in spite of recent reductions in sea ice levels. This finding contradicts the claims by environmentalists and some scientists that decreased levels of sea ice would wipe out declining bear populations.

The report’s author, Dr. Susan Crockford, is a world renowned expert on polar bears. She says there is now very little evidence to support the idea that the  polar bear is threatened with extinction because of climate change.

“We now know that polar bears are very resourceful creatures. They have made it through warm periods in the past and they seem to be taking the current warming in their stride too”. 

It appears now that it is the residents of the Arctic Circle who have the most to worry about. Increasing numbers of bears all year around, have meant reports of people being threatened, and even mauled, particularly from Nunavut in the far North of Canada.

Dr, Crockford explains:

The people of Nunavut are not seeing starving, desperate bears – quite the opposite. Yet polar bear specialists are saying these bears are causing problems because they don’t have enough sea ice to feed properly. The facts on the ground make their claims look silly, including the abundance of fat bears. Residents are pushing their government for a management policy that makes protection of human life the priority.”

Polar bear numbers have continued to increase slightly since 2005, although sea ice levels have been at a low level.  The predicted decline in polar bear numbers just did not happen.

  • • Despite marked declines in summer sea ice, Chukchi Sea polar bears continue to thrive: reports from the first population-size estimate for the region, performed in 2016, show bears in the region are abundant (almost 3000 individuals), healthy and reproducing well.
  • National Geographic received such a profound backlash from its widely viewed ‘this is what climate change looks like ’ starving polar bear video, released in late 2017, that in 2018 it made a formal public apology for spreading misinformation
  • .• In Canada, where perhaps two-thirds of the world’s polar bears live, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife (COSEWIC) decided in 2018 to continue to list the polar bear as a species of ‘Special concern’ rather than upgrade to ‘Threatened.’
  • • Polar bear attacks made headlines in 2018: two fatal attacks in Nunavut, Canada and a narrowly averted death-by-mauling in northern Svalbard caught the world by surprise. Despite the folks parading around in polar bear costumes at climate marches, we need to remember that the bears are wild animals and dangerous.

The report is available here.



Saving Endangered Species in the World’s Zoos by The Elephant's Child

This is the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s little “Peanut”. He (or she) is  a Tamandua, who was born December 20, 2018. His name is “Mani” which means peanut. The Tamanduas are also called “lesser anteaters.” They have long snouts to sniff out ant, termite and bee colonies. Long claws enable it to dig into nests and a long sticky tongue lets it lick up the insects.  A single Tamandua can eat up to 9,000 ants in a single day! They are native to Spanish speaking countries. They didn’t say how they provide that many ants.

Here’s a wonderful website for days when you are finding the news too depressing. http://www.zooborns.com. Zoos around the world are engaged in helping to preserve endangered species. The website shows off the babies, and often their parent as well. Great fun, cute babies, and you are introduced to all sorts of animals and birds that are new to you. Fun site to prowl around. Enjoy.



Jordan Peterson Talks About Free Speech in Canada by The Elephant's Child

Here’s another approach to the strange twist our modern societies have taken. Canada’s laws are a little different than our Constitution, and not as old. Very interesting., and very complicated.



Here’s Obama’s Border Patrol Chief, Who Supports Trump’s Wall by The Elephant's Child

You may have noticed that not many politicians seem to be interested in talking to the people who actually are responsible for manning the border, and keeping those who are not obeying the law out. Odd, but fairly typical. It might also be interesting to see how many of our very vocal politicians have actually been to the border, talked to the Border Patrol and to the people who live and work along the border.

I don’t think that the Angel Moms who have lost children to illegals had any more luck in meeting with Senator Schumer than they did with Speaker Pelosi. I suspect that neither Pelosi nor Schumer have ever been to the border. Our Border with Canada is more of a problem for Canadians, as our illegal aliens try to move on North, and the Canadians don’t like it. 



American Life Expectancy Has Declined for the Third Year in a Row by The Elephant's Child

he Center for Disease Control and Prevention just revealed that American life expectancy has declined for the third year in a roll. The last time that happened was at the end of the first World War and the huge flu pandemic. The reason is clear – drug overdoses, and suicide. Last year 70,000 Americans died of a drug overdose.

This is double that of Canada, relative to population, and three times the rate in England and Wales. The health care system, on the other hand, works. The number one killer in the United States for decades has been heart disease. Between 2000 and 2017 the death rate from heart disease has dropped by more than 35%, and last year there were 63,000 fewer deaths from heart disease than in 2,000, and one-third the rate in 1969. I should note that if you take the suicide and drug overdoses out of the tabulation, life expectancy is back to increasing slowly. This is a lesson in how statistics can be deceiving.

The United States has also made tremendous gains against cancer, the second-most prolific killer of Americans. From 2016 to 2017, the overall mortality rate from cancer declined 2.1%. And since its peak in 1991, the U.S. cancer death rate has fallen nearly 30%.

Cancer kills more people, as a share of the population, in other countries. Canada’s cancer mortality rate is 198 deaths per 100,000 people — 30% higher than the corresponding rate in the United States. The United Kingdom’s cancer death rate is 80% higher than in the United States.

Socialized medicine does much worse. The government-run systems in Canada and Britain are not able to serve the needs of their patients. In England, 28,000 patients whose doctors referred them urgently to a hospital had to wait more than two months to start treatment. Almost 11,000 of those patients had to wait more than three months. In the U.S. 45 drugs for cancer have been approved between 2009 and 2013, Canada’ health care system covered just 13. Don’t let anyone sell you on Single-Payer Health Care.

There aren’t many things that are better done by a large bureaucracy. Health Care is not one of them. When a bureaucracy does it, cost becomes the major factor, and cutting costs ranks higher than anything individual. The other thing to take away from those statistics is the urgency of drastically cutting the flow of drugs into the country.

 



Important Voices: by The Elephant's Child

William Voegeli, from The Pity Party:

” In contrast to America, countries like Canada and Australia treat immigration the way Harvard treats college admission or the New England Patriots treat the NFL draft as a way to get the talented that can benefit the institution and keep out the untalented.  Here in America, we increasingly treat immigration as if it were a sacred civil right possessed by 7 billion foreigners.”

Economist Dierdre McCloskey:

In the countries that most enthusiastically embraced capitalism, some two hundred years ago, real per-capita economic growth has increased by 1.5 percent annually. Owing to the miracle of compound interest, this increase has meant a 19-fold increase in living standards over the past two centuries, which, she contends, is a “change in the human condition” that “ranks with the first domestication of plants and animals and the building of the first towns.” … this enormous economic result has a cause that was cultural rather than economic. Humans did not suddenly become more acquisitive or creative. Rather “when people treat the marketers and inventors as having some dignity and liberty, innovation takes hold.” The new respectability of bourgeois life, the belief that the creativity of capitalism’s creative destruction more than offset its destruction, was the decisive attitudinal change that rendered human life in the past two centuries decisively different from what it had been throughout the preceding millennia.



How Do You Solve A Problem Like Human Nature? by The Elephant's Child

There are faint signs that perhaps the tensions involved over the debate about “globalism” and “national sovereignty” may be clearing a bit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that European Union (EU) member states must be prepared to transfer their powers over to Brussels at such a debate.

“In an orderly fashion, of course” Merkel said, as she explained that Germany had given up some of its sovereignty in order to join the EU, but national parliaments were in charge of deciding whether or not sign on to international treaties.

The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) leader said that trust and the willingness to compromise are essential in discussing the controversial UN migration pact, which the debate has continued to divide her own party.

Some important allies are pulling out of the agreement – Australia has left saying they will not risk their ‘hard won’ success in controlling their own borders. Trump has said no, and others are trying to figure out where they stand.

Chancellor Merkel accused critics of the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of “advocating ‘nationalism’ in its purest form.” She paraphrased her French counterpart Emmanuel Macron who recently claimed that “patriotism is the exact opposite because nationalism is treason.” Europe must surrender national sovereignty she said, to Brussels over “foreign affairs, migration, and development, as well as an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources.” She also called for the creation of a real, true EU army and she stated that only through globalism can the world see peace.

This is an old, old argument — even on the original Thanksgiving we celebrate — can’t we all just get along? Well, no we can’t. It is now and always has been a pipe dream. And on throughout world history. The first humans probably started dispersing because they couldn’t get along together and were fighting about the kill that Roku dragged home for dinner, or who was going to get the choice piece of meat. You probably noticed in all the talk about happy family get-togethers for Thanksgiving dinner, there was also a lot of talk about how to deal with Uncle Harry who was a far Left Trump hater, or Uncle Ralph who was a bigoted Conservative.

The concept of a perfect society, or utopia, is as old as humanity. That is really the origin of communism and socialism and Nazism. They believed they were creating the perfect system. Here in America the Utopian Movement gained traction in 19th century America when thousands of people formed communities hoping to improve on existing society. The heyday was between 1820 and 1860. One of the remaining groups from that period is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Church, founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith. There was also the Oneida Community in upstate New York, the Shaker Movement, Brook Farm, a utopian community in Massachusetts.

We have had a lot of movements for “world peace.” There was the “war to end all wars” followed by the League of Nations”, followed by the rise of socialism with Mussolini and Hitler and World War II and the United Nations and the Cold War and another bunch of wars and Angela Merkel ought to be aware that the odds are quite definitely not in her favor.

In the present, Europe is suffering from Merkel’s invitation to all the unhappy people from the Middle East and Africa to migrate to Europe in the mistaken idea that Europe’s problem of declining birthrates and lack of young people to do the scut work and boring jobs would be solved by migration. Instead they got an invasion of Moslems whose religion demanded that those who did not submit to Allah should be killed. The migrants were welcomed all over Europe with gifts of food and clothing, flowers and song. The migrants were happy to accept the gifts, complained bitterly about the accommodations provided, and wanted to be supported by European generosity. They have instead proved willing to burn cars, rape any available women and girls, and engage in occasional shootings, and their communities have become dangerous ‘no-go’ districts. Merkel has just still not given up on her ideas of utopia.

In spite of all the Never-Trumpers, the deranged ‘celebrities’ in a constant search for the nearest microphone, and the newest “Democratic-Socialists”, plain old free-market capitalism in a constitutional republic seems to work better than anything else. The news of the day is not usually about how peaceful and happy the nations of the world are, but about their quarrels. Quarreling remains human nature, and we seem to be stuck with it.



There Are Too Many Polar Bears In Nunavut! by The Elephant's Child

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun:” The Inuit are complaining that there are too many polar bears in Nunavut, and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, or so says a draft management plan from the Canadian territorial government that contradicts conventional scientific thinking.

The proposed plan says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety, and it’s high time that Inuit knowledge drove management policy instead of the other way around. We have the bureaucracy problem down here too. Bureaucrats safe in comfortable offices far away from the specifics they are regulating don’t respect local knowledge. Rather like Hillary, referring to a majority of the people in the center of the country as “deplorables”—bureaucrats are apt to think they have more degrees and are thus smarter than the locals they are regulating. Polar bears killed two Inuit last summer.

The plan leans heavily on Inuit knowledge, which yields population estimates higher than those suggested by western science for almost all of the 13 included bear populations.

Scientists say only one population of bears is growing; Inuit say there are nine. Environment Canada says four populations are shrinking; Inuit say none are.

The proposed plan downplays one of the scientific community’s main concerns.

“Although there is growing scientific evidence linking the impacts of climate change to reduced body condition of bears and projections of population declines, no declines have currently been attributed to climate change,” it says. “(Inuit knowledge) acknowledges that polar bears are exposed to the effects of climate change, but suggests that they are adaptable.”

Susan Crockford is the wildlife biologist who is expert on polar bears and issues an annual report. Her 2017 report is here.

The environmental activists who run around in polar bear suits at venues where they can expect press attention can’t be bothered to study up on the polar bear situation, nor can the mainstream media. Nor, apparently does Tom Steyer, billionaire climate activist and true believer who is running around the country trying to convince people about the “need to impeach” President Trump for denying imminent global warming. It has been a warm year in Central Europe so far this year, but it is not due to global warming, the globe has been cooling off, or at least not warming at all. This is the third year in a row that the globe has cooled off from it’s El Nino high in 2015. Arctic ice has stabilized over the past 10 years and this year the Northwest Passage was closed the entire year. The Hudson Bay freeze up has come earlier than average. They even had snow in Texas. There are currently fewer sunspots on the sun.

A Max Planck Institute Climate Modeler has said that we have a 10 year reprieve, earlier climate models were too sensitive. And so it goes. Panic and reprieve. Facts are so troublesome.

Mark Morano of Climate Depot has a Facebook video about his recent book debunking the climate alarmists like Al Gore and Tom Steyer.




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