Filed under: Capitalism, Developing Nations, Economy, Education, Europe, European Union, Immigration, Intelligence, Law, Politics, The United States, United Kingdom | Tags: And What About Us?, The Death of Europe, The Reason Why
This is one of Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge videos from the Hoover Institution, a particularly fascinating and essential one: a conversation with Douglas Murray about his book The Death of Europe and his coming new book The Madness of Crowds. This is deep insight into the state of the world today, and why it is so.
Understanding Britain and America and the oncoming problems, and why people are the way they are. Absolutely brilliant. It’s very long, and worth every minute. No time now, come back and watch it later, or make your own copy from You Tube. You will be rewarded and your understanding deepened.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Canada, Capitalism, China, Cuba, Domestic Policy, Economics, Education, Europe, European Union, Islam, Israel, Latin America, Law, National Security, South America, The United States, United Kingdom | Tags: A Government That Works, Between Angry and Bloody, The Americas
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.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, England, Free Markets, Free Speech, Freedom, United Kingdom | Tags: Candace Owens, Douglas Murray, Gender, Race and Identity
Candace Owens interviews British Journalist and author of “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity” for a dynamic conversation about race, LGBT issues and feminism. Candace Owens is terrific. Not long and worth your time.
Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Canada, Capitalism, Crime, Domestic Policy, England, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media Bias, Politics, Progressivism, Science/Technology, The United States, United Kingdom, United Nations | Tags: Climate Change, CO2 is Essential to Life, Junk Science
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.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, European Union, Foreign Policy, Ireland, Law, Regulation, United Kingdom | Tags: BREXIT and Britain, Brussels Bullying, European Parliament
If you find the results of the European elections somewhat confusing, welcome to the club. John O’Sullivan has a clarifying article at National Review entitled “Understanding the Results of the European Parliamentary Elections.”
Britain’s Theresa May has agreed to resign. Germany’s Angela Merkel has “un-resigned” as she was dissatisfied with whoever was to replace her. The elections were for members of the European parliament, not heads of state, yet several have lost, all very confusing. Hungary’s Victor Orban’s party got 51% of the vote, so his refusal to admit migrants has met with approval. Greens did well, and Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16 year-old who says she can see the molecules of CO² in the air, and led the skip school movement because of climate change, has been awarded a Doctorate by some Swedish university. As you can see, it is indeed very confusing. You will find John O’Sullivan helpful.
The general idea seems to be that the ordinary people of Europe are fairly fed up with the high-handed treatment they are getting from Brussels. The migrants, welcomed by Brussels, are not fitting in well, stabbings and rape, violence and no-go zones are not working out well, and while they like the freedom to move between countries, Brussels is getting way too heavy-handed. But that’s just my impression. Pay no attention to me whatsoever. You will find John O’Sullivan helpful.
Addendum: Angela Merkel spoke out today saying that she didn’t “un-resign” or didn’t mean to or was misunderstood, or something or other. Politics and the press.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Education, England, History, Immigration, Ireland, Scotland, The United States | Tags: American Folkways, Gibberish, Remnants of the Gaelic
I woke up this morning with a nonsense song my father used to sing to me when I was very little, in my head, and tried to write it down. Then I decided to try to search to see if it was a popular song of his day, or a children’s song from his childhood., or indeed, if anything at all would result from a search, after all, this is the computer age!
Here’s what I wrote down, deeply imprinted in my head after all these years, and don’t ask how many.
Shoo, shoo, shoo went the Roo,
Shoo went the Rocklechockle,
Chittle went the Choo,
Crosskey a Vanjo, Faddle Daddle Day,
Cajittle went the Banyan Slando.We went up on yonder hill,
There we sat and cried our fill.
Cried enough tears to fill a water bill,
Cajittle went the Banyan Slando.
I found first:“Mia’s Bicultural Bedtime:
She comented: “I learned this song from my own mother. One of the few early memories I have is of her singing this to me at night time.”
The “Johnny’s gone for a soldier” line suggests the Civil War, but…
John Cowan wrote on Yahoo in 2003:
I got curious about a song half-remembered from my childhood and spent a few hours tracking it down. It makes a marvelous example of the folk process at work, as well as what happens to Irish when the Americans (even those of Irish or Scots-Irish descent) get hold of it.
The original song is “Shule Aroon”, and the first verse and chorus look like this (old orthography):
I would I were on yonder hill
‘Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill,
And every tear would turn a mill,
Is go dtëidh, a mhuirmin,slán!Slubhail, slubhail, slubhail, a rúin!
Slubhail go socair, agus slubhll go cluin,
Slubhail go dti an dorus agus euligh liom,
ls go dtéidh tú, a mhuimin, slán!
On arrival in the colonies, the song split into two versions. The better- known one shed its Irish altogether, aquired a Revolutionary War motif and became:
Here I sit on Buttermilk Hill,
Who should blame me cry my fill?
And every tear would work a mill,
Johnny has gone for a soldier.
Buttermilk Hill is in Westchester Couty, New York; supposedly dairy
cattle were hidden there during the Revolution to protect them from
raiders from either side. The tune changed too, but all versions can be
sung to all tunes, so I ignore this.
But in the southern U.S., where there were lots of Irish and Scots-Irish
people, the Irish was retained in singing, but its meaning was forgotten and its phonetics garbled. This version was collected in Arkansas in 1958, when I was busily being born.
Well I wish I was on yonders hill
There I’d set and cry my fill
Every drop would turn a mill
Ish come bibble ahly-boo-so-real.Shule-shule-shule–roo
Shule-like-sharus-spilly-bolly-qule
First time I saw spilly-bolly-eel
Ish come bibble in the boo-shy-laurie.
Not too much later, I learned the “Buttermilk Hill” version but with the following chorus:
Shool, shool, shool a rool,
Shool a rack-a-shack, shool-a-barbecue,
When I saw my Sally-baba-yeel,
Come bibble in the boo-shy laurie.
And so over the past 200+ years, Irish has turned slowly to complete
gibberish…Ghu only knows what will happen to the song if Americans
keep singing it for the next 200 years.
My version (complete gibberish) but recognizable with the crying-on-a- hill part, came from the South Carolina Scots-Irish who arrived shortly before the Revolution, and my father’s father was descended from that group. My father came from Pennsylvania. The song was unknown to my mother whose people were very early New England.
I don’t know if you find the folkways interesting, but perhaps there’s someone out there with another version. Of course early Americana is beyond out-of-fashion currently, evil, white people invaded a peaceful paradise, displaced and destroyed the gentle indigenous peoples, and if we just tear down all remnants of the founding….
It would probably help a lot more if our schools did a decent job of teaching American history. The current crop of aspiring candidates for the presidency, and the new young representatives in Congress make it clear that there is something deeply wanting in the history department.
