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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Tell Me Their Names!

By Rich Kozlovich
Editor's Note: Originally I posted this article on Saturday, November 23, 2013. I get tired of watching these people screaming racism at every turn, and in fact falsely claiming acts of racism, as in the Jussie Smollett case. Furthermore the race baiters in the Democrat party and the media, in spite of the fact his claims have been shown false and has been indicted, still support him. Why? What we need is clarity, so I felt it was important to publish this again, with updates. RK
For the readers of Paradigms and Demographics this won’t be anything new, but (kudos to Fox) recently Fox News has been running features on a growing problem in the black community called “knockout”. According to black youths its 'just a game’. Interesting game! They pick out a person who is alone or seeming incapable of standing against a young violent thug…or thugs….and beat them senseless. The goal is to do it with one punch, but often times they just beat them to death. Men or women, it doesn’t matter, just so long as they're white, and defenseless. 



You will notice in this video they keep calling them "teens", but fail to clarify in almost all these incidents it's being done by "black teens". They even have an "expert" telling us is we should believe they can't help themselves because this a brain development problem all kids go through.

Baloney, it's a black cultural problem.

These punks are nothing but cowardly curs, but they’re all black cowardly curs, so the mainstream media says nothing. Big mouths like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP leadership, and all the trash talking Hollywood crowd who just thought it was just terrible a thug like Trayvon Martin (whom idiots like Richard Dreyfus started calling ‘a child’) was killed are saying nothing.

 They are just as silent now as they were when that 13 month old baby was murdered, shot between the eyes, by two black ‘children’ named De'Marquise Elkins age 17 and Dominique Lang age 14.  All because this poor mother didn't give them money she didn't have. Apparently black ‘children’ really are that dangerous. They shot the mother also. 

This murder was not ruled a hate crime and President Obama, who likened Trayvon Martin to a son, never called or even acknowledged the murder. Why?

By the way - without looking it up - what was that 13 month old child’s name?

You don’t know it do you?

You know Trayvon Martin’s name, why don’t you know that child’s name? Martin was a criminal and a thug, but you all know his name, and it was presented in such a way to generate sympathy for him.

That 13 month old baby really was innocent. He never did one bit of harm to anyone. He wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t a thug, but most importantly, he was a white baby deliberately and viciously murdered, so little was made of it by the media.

If it wasn’t for the internet no one would know about this tragedy. For those who disagree with me, tell me, please – what was that poor child’s name?

Recently an article appeared, entitled, Three “Knockout” Attacks Reported In Philadelphia Area saying:
“knockout” attacks have been reported in several states around the country and now investigators believe three people have been attacked in our area. Police in Lower Merion are investigating two attacks in the area, and Philadelphia detectives are investigating an attack in Northeast Philadelphia. It’s a violent crime that in other parts of the country has proven fatal."
This article demonstrates the pattern of cowardice displayed by these cowardly black youths. One victim said:
“Someone asked me for a cigarette and by the time I got my hands out my pocket I was getting hit by four kids.” He says, “It was hard seeing and I’m still having trouble breathing and swallowing.”
Then, “On October 29th, two black ‘children’ beat “a 63-year-old man who was walking his dog.” “He punched him right in the mouth and knocked him to the ground.” In another case “an elderly man was also attacked when he was mowing his lawn outside of his home.” The victim said some "kid" came up to him and just punching him in the mouth". "He ended up laying the street with his lawnmower.” It turns out this "kid" did it on a dare.  He said "give me five dollars and I’ll knock that guy out.”

This elderly man is now using a cane and a walker to get around. He has had to undergo multiple medical procedures”, and Jesse Jackson and his mob of race baiters, which includes the main stream media, remain silent.

By the way, what was that old man’s name?

There was a recent article in FrontPage.com entitled, EricHolder, Hate Crimes and Double Standards, by Colin Flaherty, where-in he highlights this national violent out of control racism by blacks against whites, and in some cases against homosexuals.   
  1. In Brooklyn ten black people surrounded a car, then beat the two white occupants, a husband and wife. They even called them racial names, as in “Get those crackers” "and “get that white whore.”All in front of witnesses in the middle of the day. The Brooklyn DA says he will not file hate crime charges.
  2. In New Haven, a few days before that, 500 black people attending a party called ““An All Black Affair,” destroyed property and rioted in a downtown restaurant". Then outside. Then in two more restaurants. Not only are there no hate crime charges, New Haven police did not arrest anyone for anything during these rampages. Race was the central organizing feature of the party — and the riot.
  3. A few days before that in St. Paul, a car full of black people robbed and assaulted a white woman. They called her a “white bitch”  while holding her down so one of the assailants could urinate on her.
  4. A few days before that in Tacoma, a car full of black people shouted racial expletives at two white soldiers. Soon one soldier was dead from a knife. No hate crime charges have been filed.
  5. A few days before that in Pittsburgh, a group of black people pulled a white woman from her car, and while beating her, yelled “Shut up white [expletive].” The other said, “Get that white [expletive]."
  6. In Iowa – yes Iowa — hordes of black people beat white people in  and out of the Iowa State Fair for three nights in a row in 2011. A police report says some of the people involved were chanting “Beat Whitey Night.”
It only takes a few magic words to turn a vicious assault into a federal hate crime.  Hate crimes? Really? Then why aren't we seeing the Justice Department going after these people under hate crime laws? Holder is still trying to figure out some way to put Zimmerman in jail, so what's different here?

These thugs are black, and Holder is a vile racist, and the members of the main stream media have sunken to the level of sewer trout, except that is an insult to sewers.

By the way. What were all of these people’s names?

Thomas Sowell, on October 24, 2013, wrote an article entitled Early Skirmishes in a Race War" noting that: "officials and media aren’t being honest about the violence.” He first outlines the problem and what is going on and then ends the article with these paragraphs.
“books are emerging that are more clearly a white backlash, in the sense that they attack behavior patterns among contemporary blacks in general. Perhaps the most clearly “backlash” books are those written by Paul Kersey, whose central theme is that whites have created thriving cities, which blacks subsequently took over and ruined. Examples include his books about Birmingham  (The Tragic City) and Detroit Escape from Detroit).” 
“Kersey even takes a swing at Rush Limbaugh (and at yours truly) for saying that liberal policies destroyed these cities. He says that San Francisco and other cities with liberal policies, but without black demographic and political takeovers, have not been ruined.  
His books are poorly written, but they raise tough questions.”  
“It would be easy to simply dismiss Kersey as a racist. But denouncing him or ignoring him is not refuting him. Refuting requires thought, which has largely been replaced by fashionable buzzwords and catchphrases when it comes to discussions of race.” 
“Thought is long overdue. So is honesty.”
The media is still as corrupt and vile as it was then. On February 28, 2020 Andrea Widburg posted the article, "There's a very good reason the media are silent about the Milwaukee mass shooting", saying:
On Wednesday, an angry ex-employee got a gun, put a silencer on it, went to the MillersCoors facility where he had once worked, and shot five people to death before shooting himself. One would expect to have a barrage of news stories about America's gun violence problem and the need to ban guns. After all, on Tuesday, before the shooting happened, the Democrat candidates were all over each other trying to explain why each would be more effective at destroying the Second Amendment. Instead, we got crickets.  
The reason for the media's silence became apparent when the media identified the shooter: 51-year-old Anthony Ferrill was black. This meant that the media couldn't use its white supremacist narrative to justify grabbing guns. The narrative broke down even further when social media posts revealed that Ferrill may well have been an Elizabeth Warren–supporter, ......
Nothing has changed, the media and the left are just as contemptable, and more so in my opinion, than when this poor child was murdered by young black thugs.

However, there is still one thing still remains the same. No one can remember that 13 month old child’s name?

His name was Antonio Santiago, and had he not been murdered, he would have been seven years old this month.

Cruz Scorches Sotomayor over Trump Critique

February 29, 2020 By Daniel John Sobieski

Before Sonia Sotomayor, the “wise Latina” as she once referred to herself, was nominated by President Barack Hussein Obama in May 2009 and confirmed as Supreme Court justice that August, her legal expertise and judgment were being questioned by those noting her high reversal rate
high reversal rate by the court she was being elevated to:

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

“Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senate’s duty to do so,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

Well, the Senate gave her a pass, with Sen. Lindsey Graham, who mentions it frequently, being the sole Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voting to advance her nomination to the full Senate for a vote. Not giving her a pass these days is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has noted the double standard and bad law she applied in criticizing colleagues Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh for essentially being “Trump judges” by fighting the incessant lower court injunctions applied nationally to block President Trump’s policies and what the American people elected him to do, as reported in Texas Lawyer magazine:
Sen. Ted Cruz used Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on universal injunctions to criticize Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her dissent, accusing a “handful of judges” as acting as part of the “resistance movement” against the Trump administration in blocking its policies.  
He compared her opinion, which he noted no other justices signed onto, to “an arsonist complaining about the noise from the fire trucks.”  
Sotomayor last week chided the Trump administration for repeatedly coming to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking stays on district court injunctions.  
“It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the court would grant it,” she wrote.
...................... It took Cruz just two minutes during the hearing to reduce Sotomayor’s protest to a pile of politically motivated babble:..........To Read More.....

My Take - The article points out Sotomayor's hypocrisy, and her real concern, which is a second term as by Donald Trump as President.  Currently there are, according to Wikipedia, 870 authorized Article III judgeships: nine on the Supreme Court, 179 on the courts of appeals, 673 for the district courts and nine on the Court of International Trade. 

Trump has now appointed 187 judges to the federal courts and even the 9th district, which has been notoriously left wing, is now deciding cases on the basis of law rather than their own leftist ideology.  Trump could potentially appoint another 200 or more if elected, including another Supreme Court Justice. 

As for Sotomayor, has anyone else in the world ever described her as wise?  


Yet Sotomayor fashions herself as a "wise" Latina, while history demonstrates she's either a corrupt or an incompetent jurist, and a disgrace as a human being.  The perfect Obama appointee. 


The New York Times Is About to Face a Reckoning For Its Lies

Harmeet Dhillon Feb 28, 2020

There’s finally a chance that The New York Times will be held accountable for lying to the American people.  The Trump campaign just filed a lawsuit against the Times for a 2019 article that falsely claimed the campaign had “an overarching deal” with “Vladimir Putin’s oligarchy” to “help the campaign against Hillary Clinton” in exchange for “a new pro-Russian foreign policy, starting with relief from the Obama administration’s burdensome economic sanctions.”

The Times peddled a wild, baseless conspiracy theory, yet the author, who spent nearly a decade as the Times’s executive editor, simply presented his politically-motivated assumptions as unassailable fact. It was a classic example of the “collusion delusion” that gripped the political left throughout the first two-and-a-half years of the Trump administration...........To Read More.....

My Take - Do I believe this will succeed?  No.  Do I believe the Trump team thinks this will succeed?  No.   It's been pretty much established the press can say just about anything they wish about public figures, especially politicians.

 Having said that, I think we may have to understand what the Trump team considers a success.  If this gets into court NYT employees will have to testify, and do so truthfully, and when that happens it will expose them for the corrupt liars they are.  That's the goal in my opinion, and the public impact will be devastating.  Potentially putting a newspaper with a declining reader and advertiser base out of business.

Success!

Democrats Demand Open Borders for the Coronavirus

Their only hope for victory is infecting America.

Fri Feb 28, 2020 Daniel Greenfield  82

Over 90 Chinese migrants were caught by the Border Patrol trying to enter the United States this year.  According to Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), on February 10, three Chinese nationals were apprehended illegally entering Texas with flu-like symptoms, and had to be quarantined. "Luckily they did not have the coronavirus," he said. "But this is a wake-up call."   Border Patrol personnel have been handed respirators and told to isolate the large number of Chinese migrants who are continuing to illegally enter the United States..........

Warren had called for replacing ICE with "something that reflects our values” and infects us with their diseases.  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Mayor Bill de Blasio have called for abolishing ICE. Senator Bernie Sanders, as the most radical candidate, wants to abolish ICE, CBP, and stop deportations.................

Bernie’s call to abolish the Border Patrol would create open borders for drug cartels, smugglers, murderers, rapists, and any migrants infected with the coronavirus, not to mention other diseases.........To Read More.......

   

Democrats freak out over Mike Pence's role coordinating coronavirus efforts

By Andrea Widburg

For people who are neither leftists nor caught in the grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Vice President Mike Pence is an intelligent, principled, competent man. When President Trump announced on Wednesday that he was putting Pence in charge of coordinating the federal government's response to the coronavirus, it seemed like an eminently sensible decision. For Democrats, though, Pence is the man who caused an HIV outbreak in Indiana. This is a lie...........These are not principled people. These are political hacks who will never let a crisis go to waste...............To Read More....

Friday, February 28, 2020

ICE Should Deport George Soros as a Nazi Collaborator

It’s time for the Shadow Party's Godfather to face justice. 

Mon Feb 24, 2020 Daniel Greenfield 263

  The deportation of a Nazi death camp guard from his residence in Queens, New York, in 2018 by ICE was described as the removal of the "last known Nazi collaborator from the United States."
That’s not quite true.

There’s another Nazi collaborator living on Fifth Avenue. He’s a billionaire and untouchable because his dubious fortune has been used to finance the Democrat Party, radical leftists, assorted anti-Semites, and opponents of ICE: the agency that should step in to remove the aged Hungarian from the United States.

The legal basis for removing Soros is quite clear.

The Holtzman Amendment states that "Any alien… under the direction of, or in association with...  (II) any government in any area occupied by the military forces of the Nazi government of Germany, (III) any government established with the assistance or cooperation of the Nazi government of Germany, or (IV) any government which was an ally of the Nazi government of Germany, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion is inadmissible." It provides grounds for deportation even retroactively........ To Read More....

Trump Calls Out Sotomayor For Her Activism

Sheriff David Clarke, Ret. Feb 27, 2020

President Trump is right to call out Justice Sotomayor, and other unelected black robed social justice activist hacks who are masquerading as non-partisan upholders of the rule of law.

Remember when the United States Supreme Court carefully guarded their time-honored independence from the politics of the Executive and Legislative branches?

In those days, rarely were they ever seen or heard from outside of rendering opinions, and they kept those decisions based on the law, not politics. Those days are over thanks to judges who believe it is their role to act as a super legislature.

Recently Justice Sotomayor showed her disdain for President Trump in an exercise of judicial activism when in a dissenting opinion in Wolf v. Cook County, she accused the Court of putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the Trump administration by siding more times than not in his favor.......To Read More.....

My Take - For a sitting Supreme Court Justice to openly and publicly criticize white justices for bias is unheard of.  Yet the most consistently original constructionist in the court is Clearance Thomas.  A black justice. 

Years ago I read WHORES: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment by Larry Klayman.  I find him a bit odd, but one thing came out clear as a bell in this book, and time has been showing this to be true; the federal judiciary is filled with political hacks. 

Sotomayor epitomizes that declaration.

A wise Latina?  She claims there's no real definition for wise, well, again she's wrong.  Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge and understanding.  Wise decisions aren't based on the philosophical flavor of the day, especially leftist flavor's of the day since they're a changable as the latest ladies fashion. 

Wisdom is based on truth.  Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality.  Everything were told has a historical foundation and context.  Everything we're told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality.  If want's presented to us fails in either of those categories, it's wrong.  Saying it's right may be politically comfortable, but it isn't wisdom.

One more thought.  Who besides Sotomayor ever said she was wise?  

Too Often Black History Month Sidelines African-American Triumphs For Politics

It’s time to restore real black history: recognition of achievement and overcoming obstacles as citizens integral to this great nation.

By 26, 2020 @ The Federalist

The first black studies department opened at San Francisco State University in 1968, much to the chagrin of conservative black columnist George Schuyler, who had advocated teaching black history since he began his journalism career in 1923 at the black socialist monthly magazine The Messenger.

His objection had to do with the radicalization, politicization, and attendant distortion of black history. Schuyler fearlessly mocked patronizing white liberals and attacked exploitative white communists. During his extended travels to the South in 1925-1926 for the Pittsburgh Courier, Schuyler reported on the accomplishments of black areas of towns and cities and came to admire people like “Mr. James,” who built up a profitable produce wholesale company in Charleston, West Virginia.
 
In the 1920s, despite segregation and Ku Klux Klan resurgence, most black Americans took great pride in economic independence and their performance as soldiers in all the country’s wars. Black leaders such as James Weldon Johnson, Kelly Miller, and William Pickens staked their claim as Americans and distinguished themselves from black Africans. In 1922, they took part in the bipartisan “[Marcus] Garvey Must Go!” campaign against the black nationalist who had ludicrously declared himself the president of Africa. In the 1950s, Schuyler began championing Booker T. Washington and his belief in black economic self-empowerment.

This is a far cry from Democrats’ disrespectful reaction to President Donald Trump’s public honoring of 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman Brig. Gen. Charles McGee during the State of the Union address. It reveals the influence of white socialists and communists who radicalized young blacks, primarily on college campuses in the 1960s. In Schuyler’s April 23, 1955, column, he reported on the “bore from within” strategy discussed in a Political Affairs article and warned readers to expect “a mass invasion of Reds, crypto-Communists and fellow travelers into the NAACP, Urban League, churches, fraternities, societies, etc.”

Teaching the Wrong Version of Black History

This strategy included education. White socialist Tom Kahn enrolled in 1960 at Howard University to radicalize black students while pretending to fight for civil rights. In 1956, Spelman College hired Howard Zinn, who had been a card-carrying Communist Party USA member from about 1948 to 1953. In 1963, he was fired for insubordination by the college’s first black and first male president.

Zinn used the cover of civil rights to radicalize students. He turned them against the administration — as well as their parents and church leaders — by encouraging them to defy rules about chapel attendance and curfews. In the Aug. 6, 1960, issue of The Nation, Zinn bragged about transforming a Christian women’s college from what he denigrated as a “finishing school” to a “school for protest.”
 
The evidence of Zinn’s disdain for the United States, which he called a “myth” and a “pretense,” is abundant. For example, he told students that under our system of government, voting made no difference, and in the 1960s, he advocated on behalf of the North Vietnamese enemy as he led anti-draft protests. In his magnum opus, “A People’s History of the United States,” first published in 1980, Zinn grossly distorted American history through selective and misleading quotations, critical omissions, plagiarism of dubious sources, and invention of facts to present a racist country, irredeemable because of capitalism and nationalism.

Sadly, the Zinn version of black history is the one almost always taught to students during Black History Month. As I point out in my book, “Debunking Howard Zinn,” Zinn studiously ignored the achievements of the anti-communist NAACP, praised black communists who often sacrificed fellow blacks to the party, and valorized the Black Panthers and black Muslim separatists such as Malcolm X. Zinn also left out key critical facts about Frederick Douglass, making him appear, as Zinn did with all other blacks, a helpless victim of the American system — wherein blacks’ only hope lay with white communists, a fact unnoticed by today’s critics of “white saviorism.”

Changing the Celebration of Black History

The Zinn push has unfortunately tainted the celebration of black history. Even the U.S. Department of Education newsletter linked to suggested readings including Malcolm X’s autobiography and James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.” Time Magazine recommended six movies, all about anger, sexuality, or the Black Panthers.

It did not recommend “Created Equal,” the stunning new movie about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In fact, Time gave most space to a group inspiring riots and police assassinations, Black Lives Matter. During the first week of February, teachers in the country’s three largest school districts — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — wore Black Lives Matter T-shirts to school.
 
Time cited Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, a white teacher from Portland, Oregon, and lead curriculum writer at the Zinn Education Project. Although enjoying nonprofit status as an educational organization, ZEP is overtly political, offering Zinn-inspired downloadable lessons, videos, and books that weave in Trump attacks, conduct smear campaigns against educational organizations, such as the Bill of Rights Institute, and offer materials for the Boston Teachers Union to participate in the Black Lives Matter Week of Action and “Abolish Columbus Day” classroom kits for lobbying on the state, city, and school level.

Time presents ZEP as meeting “the rising demand for resources.” As evidence of the success of teaching black history, the article offers the 80 percent success rate of students, including in underperforming schools, in passing a pilot Advanced Placement African diaspora pilot program. The Columbia Teachers College’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education website, where it was developed, reveals an ideological focus on “common experiences across the diaspora such as imperialism, resistance to oppression and cultural practices.”

After also delving into “music, dance, cuisine, customs and other foundational chapters in the black experience,” students are encouraged to “engage in an inner dialogue with themselves” — part of what one teacher called a “healing process.” “Success” is measured by testimonials from students such as Thalias Henry, who said “he is now able to draw a direct line from the African continent to ‘events in the real world’ such as Ferguson and Black Lives Matter.”

Kayla Sergeant came to appreciate the connection of a “special food … to a specific tribe or people.” According to an article published in the last days of the Obama administration by the American Historical Association’s then-President Patrick Manning, the program was intended “to reach beyond the existing AP constituency.” But the 100 percent nonwhite participation rate indicates a reverse bias. The focus on the diaspora continues the focus on African and not American identity.

The ‘1619 Project’ Injects Racism into America’s DNA

Similarly, The New York Times’ “1619 Project” attempts to de-mythologize the 1776 founding date by presenting the arrival of a ship bearing about 20 Africans in 1619 as the beginning of an exploitation legacy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also takes that time, “400 years ago,” as the launch for its series on Black History Month, interviewing Morehouse College professor Frederick Knight, who “specializes in the African Diaspora.” (Yet the linked black history quiz concerns mostly black celebrities and sports stars.)
 
Under the “1619 Project,” even the old Marxist slogan of “black and white, unite and fight” is abandoned, as the project’s critics find a home at the World Socialist. The charge of racism being in the DNA of this country recalls Zinn’s claim that American racism was not limited to prejudiced individuals but baked into the structure of the country. The “1619 Project” delivers a false toxic narrative of universal black victimization and universal white oppression, spurring racial animus.
It’s time to restore real black history: recognition of achievement and overcoming obstacles as citizens integral to this great nation. The examples of George Schuyler, Booker T. Washington, Charles McGee, Clarence Thomas, and Mr. James offer good places to start during Black History Month.

Mary Grabar, the author of "Debunking Howard Zinn," earned her PhD from the University of Georgia and taught college English for 20 years. She is now a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization in Clinton, New York. Her writing can be found at DissidentProf.com and at marygrabar.com.

The oceans cannot become acidic, period

By | February 27th, 2020 | Environment | 11 Comments @ CFACT

If you really believe the environmental, liberal leftist propaganda that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide can create enough excess carbonic acid in the oceans for there pH to drop below 7 (I will explain later) I have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in buying.
 
Ocean acidification, is a recent hobgoblin being advanced to maintain the fear of the continual use of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, ultimately to be absorbed into the oceans and increase its acidity. It is a good fall back position if the planet is not warming enough to maintain the public in a state of fear. After all an acidic ocean would surely lead to the end of of all hard shelled animals in the sea, as their calcium carbonate shells could no longer form, and those already in existence would slowly dissolve.
 
The oceans cannot become acidic, period 1I will shortly prove this to be quite incorrect, but a small academic industry has popped up developing research projects to prove that it is time to be worried, very very worried. Gregory Wrightstone, says in his new book of INCONVENIENT FACTS “fund it and they will find it”.
 
So back to the beginning, what is ocean acidification. To understand that, you most first know that all liquids are usually acidic or basic with a small number being neutral, such as distilled water. To determine this we measure each liquids pH which is a symbol describing the proportion of hydrogen ions in the solution as compared to neutral distilled water. It is a logarithmic scale that goes from zero, which would be the most acidic, to 14 which is the most basic. In a logarithmic scale each higher whole number represents something ten times greater than the previous whole number. Okay I am losing some of you but the diagram to the left will give sense to it all.
 
Rainwater is quite acidic, at pH 5.4, while seawater is definitely alkaline, at pH 7.8 to 8.1.
 
In fact the sea creatures that make their shells or exoskeletons out of calcium carbonate are already used to large swings in pH on the continental shelves near the mouths of rivers, particularly during floods. The rivers that flow into the bays and estuaries are often significantly acidified. Yet oyster communities thrive in these areas. It is also believed that 2 billion years ago our oceans may have been acidic.
 
The pH of the ocean varies slightly depending on the season, water depth and latitude. The pH level trends slightly less alkaline in the tropics, during the winter and at depth. Since the industrial revolution, and its increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the pH may have declined by one tenth of a ph whole number. It is certainly possible that during this century the pH could decline another one tenth of a whole number leaving the oceans still very alkaline or basic. Remember, in a logarithmic scale a whole number means ten times more than the next lower number.
 
Recognizing there is little chance of large changes in pH the alarmists are now claiming small changes in whole numbers will still have major impacts. Past records do not support this. More sensible research using chemical models show that, in fact, the ocean pH would have to drop all the way to 6.0 for the shells of existing sea animals to begin dissolving. Even the most dramatic alarmists do not project ocean pH dropping that much .
 
The best research supporting a lack of concern over our oceans is done in chemical laboratories. Even there they can not easily duplicate the buffering action of the the limestone and other minerals in the ocean which further restrict any increase on the impact of carbonic acid in the ocean.
 
Under modern conditions, the oceans can not become acidic, and no where near as acidic as the rainwater that falls upon them daily. Climate extremists do not talk of slight decreases in alkalinity, as that will not strike fear into the hearts of the public. The very term ocean acidification conveys the notion of a looming catastrophe. On this basis they have a weapon to increase the costs of energy by opposing fossil fuel and supporting the subsidization of wind and solar energy,
 
The long term geologic history reveals some very inconvenient facts for the climate alarmists spreading fear that acidic oceans will dissolve sea shells. Data from the early climate provide no basis for any such fear. In 2009, a team of oceanographers lead by Y. Liu and W. Liu, examined corals in the South China Sea and reconstructed the pH History for the last 7000 years. Below is the chart comparing their findings to the carbon dioxide content taken from the Vostok ice core over those same years in Antarctica.
 
The oceans cannot become acidic, period 2
 
It is apparent that the current pH values and the rate of decrease are neither unprecedented nor unusual. In fact, the lowest measured alkalinity was about 6000 years ago when CO2 levels were one third today’s levels. An acidified ocean is just one more thing to tell your friends not to worry about.
 
Portions of this essay have been excerpted from the outstanding book INCONVENIENT FACTS: The Science That Al Gore Does Not Want You To Know, with permission of the author Gregory Wrightstone. For detailed discussion of the many frauds in the climate change delusion, his book is among the very best sources.

Author

  • CFACT Senior Science Analyst Jay Lehr has authored more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books.
 

Embarrassing Festival Of Never Trump Losers Occurs For Some Reason

Kurt Schlichter Feb 27, 2020

Ahoy, suckers! Conservative, Inc., is back at it again, trading in its classic cruise ship motif for a figurative dinghy in its never-ending quest to separate you from your money and themselves from the shredded tatters of their ruined dignity.
Woke Rule No. 1 is that anything with “Principles” in its name is a grift. Now, something called “Principles First” – ugh – is trying to shoehorn into CPAC’s spotlight with its National Summit on Principled Conservatism” to be held in D.C. on February 29th, and for the low, low, almost certainly lib tech tycoon-subsidized price of $10, you can attend this sexless Never Trump Freaknik.

It’s an opportunity to get one-on-one with all your favorite relevancy-challenged B-list MSNBCNN guests for a full day of complaining about Donald Trump and having them show you on the doll exactly where Trump hurt them. Brace yourselves for impassioned pleas by impotent weirdos to vote for the crusty commie curmudgeon because Trump sends mean tweets, plus plenty of “Oh well I nevers” and “We’re better than thats” as Pearl Clutchfest 2020 gets well and truly lit. Just don’t be surprised if the marquee outside reads “Puppet Show and Never Trump.”

From political consultants who are no longer consulted to writers who are no longer read, this is the Woodstock for conservatives who never actually conserved anything..........To Read More....

Religion, Free Press Vital for Preserving Liberal Democracy Against Socialism, Progressivism: Barr

By Janita Kan February 27, 2020

Attorney General William Barr warned that a “strain of progressivism” that has emerged over the last few decades is moving America away from the liberal democracy envisioned by our Founding Fathers, adding that the remedy for this is by protecting religious freedom, free press, and the decentralization of government power.

Barr expressed his concerns over the recent push of progressivism that subscribes to the philosophy that demands the use of “coercive power of the state to remake man and society.” He said this movement has become increasingly militant and totalitarian in style as they go about changing society.

These progressives, he said, seek power through the democratic process to advance their policy agendas, which he describes as having become more “aggressively collectivist, socialist, and explicitly revolutionary.” He said the goal of this progressive program is to use public money to provide benefits to the public in order to build a constituency of supporters who would eventually become dependents.........

Barr said although the Founding Fathers had envisioned that religion and government should be separate spheres, they were strong believers that religion was “indispensable to sustaining our free system of government,” while quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, a political scientist and historian who chronicled America’s democratic republic in the 1800s. He believed religion was “democracy’s most powerful antidote to any tendency toward a tyrannical majority hijacking the system for despotic ends.”..................To Read More.....

Bad to Worse in South Africa

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, February 25, 2020

In February 2019, I wrote that South Africa’s government would make “apartheid denial” a crime. It’s not technically illegal yet, but South Africa’s president likens it to treason: “[A]partheid was so immoral in its conception and so devastating in its execution that there is no South African living who is not touched by its legacy,” said South African president Cyril Ramaphosa. “I would even go to say that to deny this, in my view, is treasonous.”

Treason to what? To “nonracialism,” which President Ramaphosa says, “is a fundamental and immutable principle that defines the character of our democratic nation.” He has an odd conception of “nonracialism.”

South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment policy (BEE) discriminates actively against whites. Mr. Ramaphosa chaired a commission that started the practice. Even the leftist The Nation reports that he used race preferences shamelessly to line his own pockets.

According to South African law, the people who get systematic preferences under BEE are “African, Coloured, or Indian persons,” so Indians get race preferences, too. It is common to point out that South African Indians benefited from apartheid.

Some South Africans think there is still “Indian privilege.” The Indian Gupta family became rich and powerful through political connections and bribery. Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) head Julius Malema says Indians in Natal treat [black] Africans worse than Afrikaners do.

When he lived in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi didn’t care about the rights of blacks. He said that the “British race should be the dominant race.” His objection was that the British “dragged [Indians] down to the position of a raw Kaffir.” Needless to say, Gandhi is not much of a hero in South Africa..............The lesson for whites is that you can’t secure protection by surrendering power.

Constitutions, promises, hopes, and wishes are no substitute for numbers, money, and sovereignty. Nelson Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation” was a transition phase in black state conquest of South Africa. That phase is approaching for our entire civilization. We can’t afford another South Africa............To Read More.....

62 Million Americans Voted for Trump, Only 6 Newspapers Endorsed Him

By Daniel Greenfield 2 Comments Thursday, February 27, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Warren Buffett started the year by dumping his portfolio of 30 newspapers in a fire sale. After having spent $344 million on a stable of local papers including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Buffalo News, and the Omaha World-Herald, the Oracle of Omaha had to let them go for a mere $140 million.

“They’re going to disappear,” Buffett said of the papers. “It went from monopoly to franchise to competitive to ... toast.”

In February, McClatchy, the country's second largest local newspaper chain, the owners of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, the News & Observer, the State and many other major local papers, filed for bankruptcy.

We’re barely into 2020 and the apocalypse which wiped out 7,800 media jobs in 2019 is speeding on. That was down from the 15,000 media jobs lost in 2018, but only because it’s hard to cut jobs that don’t exist anymore. By the end of the decade, there will be no local newspapers. Only a few national ones.

The internet is certainly to blame, but digital media took nearly as bad a beating as dead tree media with the Gawker relaunch, the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and many other lefty digital darlings bleeding.

On CNN, the Miami Herald's Julie Brown claimed that the lack of local newspapers, "has contributed to the divisions that we're experiencing around the country."

The media has been making similar claims for a year now based on a dubious study. But the problem with the papers in the McClatchy, Gannett, Tribune, or other media stables is that they’re echoes of the same national agenda repackaged for a local audience. In the age of the internet, readers are cutting out the middleman and watching CNN or MSNBC, or reading the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Who needs a third-rate local lefty version when you can just buy access to the real lefty thing?

Local papers aren’t really local. They’re investments owned by lefty tycoons like Warren Buffett. As the investments become hopeless, they’re turning into non-profits owned by lefty tycoons like Jeff Bezos. If the local paper is just going to consist of recycled talking points from the Washington Post or the New York Times, then who needs the “local” paper? Local communities don’t. That’s why they’re dying.

The local newspaper is dead. The national media writing its eulogies long ago fired the fatal shot.

What local media markets are really missing is diversity. Vital media markets used to have dueling papers. There are fewer dueling papers and even fewer conservative ones. Of the 100 largest papers in the country, only 2 endorsed Trump in 2016. Only 6 papers endorsed Trump across the country.

It’s telling that “local” newspapers wouldn’t support a candidate that local communities voted for.

How representative are local papers when 62 million people voted for a presidential candidate who went on to win the election that only 6 papers endorsed? Who are those papers really representing?

Why would any of those 62 million people bother reading newspapers that have nothing to say them?

The 6 papers that endorsed Trump were mostly locally owned. 4 were either family-owned local papers or had a single owner. Another was a publishing group of 2 papers. Only one was a smallish media group. These are true local papers because they are locally owned and represent the local population.

The local newspaper died long ago when it vanished into the maw of national media groups which made them interchangeable. The absence of political diversity was a reflection of hiring practices that reflected the political views of national corporations, instead of the perspectives of local communities.

McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, California. Tribune is based out of Chicago. Gannett is run out of McLean, Virginia, less than a half hour away from Capitol Hill.

There's nothing local about any of this.

The media groups hollowed out local papers. A single dominant local paper with national standing because of its role in a media group often functioned as a virtual monopoly for a particular area. But these miniature versions of the Washington Post weren’t widely read outside local government and business leaders. They were local chapters of a national influence operation with a bad business model.

That’s why the media is upset at the decline and fall of the corporations that controlled local news.

The media keeps insisting that local newspapers are a vital civic institution. But, as the other Marx once said, “Who wants to live in an institution?”

People invest in institutions to the extent that they reflect their values and worldview. Civic comes from the Latin ‘civis’ or citizen. Civic institutions that are not rooted in the civitas are foreign bodies. No institution that usurps the citizenry can be anything other than an engine of cultural colonialism.

Partisan civic institutions are, like the Holy Roman Empire, neither civic nor institutions. They’re the propaganda operations of a political faction which are maintained with money diverted from taxpayers and with funding from wealthy interests connected to that faction. They have no institutional future.

The Left launched its bid for power by hijacking institutions and, in doing so, destroying their legitimacy. Hijacking institutions allows radicals to temporarily wield their power at the cost of crashing the plane. That’s how the institutional legitimacy of academia, the media, and the entertainment industry died.

America is not divided because local newspapers are dying. They’re dying because they’re on one side of the divide. True institutions reflect the diversity of the civitas. False institutions reflect only themselves.

The newspaper business is much more vital and interesting in cities like New York and Boston that still have conservative papers. Discussion and debate are dynamic when there’s more than one point of view. That’s another reason why the people who used to read newspapers moved on to the internet.

The media is an echo chamber. A false institution that does not listen to the citizenry, only hectors it.

And the voice of its echo chamber is losing power.

Trump won even though only a handful of papers endorsed him. He won the White House over the opposition of the big media conglomerates that are racing each to bankruptcy court.

The media makes much of its endorsements. But how much do they really matter?

In one survey 69% of Americans said that a newspaper endorsement of a candidate would have no impact on their vote. 14% said that it would make them more likely to vote for and 14% more likely to vote against. Newspaper endorsements of political candidates couldn’t possibly matter any less.

An older survey however noted that endorsements by “independently owned papers seemed to influence readers more than larger and group-owned papers”.

True local newspapers can still be trusted. Conglomerate papers posing as local aren’t.

Local papers were once local. When they went national, they stopped being civic institutions. The lack of endorsements for Trump and the lack of political diversity are symptoms of the problem. When newspapers became a partisan institution, they stopped being relevant to the lives of much of the country. And they also stopped being interesting even to those readers who agreed with their politics.

As Buffett put it, they “went from monopoly to franchise to competitive to ... toast.”

Trying to subsidize them as non-profits with tech money from Silicon Valley, as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are doing, won’t change that. Take it from Warren Buffett who lost a fortune trying.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page MagazineClick here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

Protect Life Rule Upheld

By —— Bio and Archives--February 25, 2020

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 yesterday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Title X funding rule for federal family planning programs, called the Protect Life Rule, is constitutional. The Trump administration’s rule means the defunding of Planned Parenthood by as much as $60 million in Title X funds annually.

The HHS issued the rule to stop the flow of Title X federal funds to family planning facilities that perform abortions or do abortion referrals. This regulation means that clinics that receive federal family planning grants called Title X — which pay for birth control, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and cancer screenings — will not be allowed to be housed in the same buildings as those that also provide abortions. It does not reduce Title X funds; it redirects them to providers that do not perform or promote abortions.

The Protect Life Rule was originally signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Reagan’s effort to direct tax dollars to entities that provide health care to women but do not perform abortions was tied up in court and was ultimately overturned in the first days of Bill Clinton’s presidency........To Read More....

New York vs. Florida, Round #3

January 11, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
 
I looked last year at how Florida was out-competing New York in the battle to attract successful taxpayers, and then followed up with another column analyzing how the Sunshine State’s low-tax policies are attracting jobs, investment, and people from the Empire State.
Time for Round #3.

A new article in the Wall Street Journal explains how successful investors, entrepreneurs, and business owners can save a massive amount of money by escaping states such as New York and moving to zero-income-tax states such as Florida.

This table has the bottom-line numbers.

As explained in the article, taxpayers are discovering that the putative benefits of living in a high-tax state such as New York simply aren’t worth the loss of so much money to state politicians (especially now that the 2017 tax reform sharply reduced the tax code’s implicit subsidy for high-tax states).
There’s a way for rich homeowners to potentially shave tens of thousands of dollars from their tax bills. They can get that same savings the next year and the following years as well. They can cut their taxes even further after they die. What’s the secret? Moving to Florida, a state with no income tax or estate tax. Plenty of millionaires and billionaires have been happy to ditch high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California. …A New York couple filing jointly with $5 million in taxable income would save $394,931 in state income taxes by moving to Florida… If they had moved from Boston, they’d save $252,500; from Greenwich, Conn., they’d knock $342,700 off their tax bill. …Multimillionaires aren’t just moving their families south, they are taking their businesses with them, says Kelly Smallridge, president and CEO of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. “We’ve brought in well over 70 financial-services firms” in the past few years, she says. “The higher the taxes, the more our phone rings.”
An article in the Wall Street Journal late last year explained how states such as Florida are big beneficiaries of tax migration.
David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones and Barry Sternlicht are among the prominent transplants who have pulled up roots in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut in recent years for Florida. New Yorker Carl Icahn has said he is moving his company to Miami next year. …The loss of the super-wealthy isn’t just a matter of reputation. The exodus of billionaires can crimp state budgets. …The SALT cap has widened the gap between Florida and other states with no income tax, such as Wyoming, and New York City, where residents can owe income taxes at rates that approach 13%.
In a column for National Review, Kevin Williamson analyzes the trade-offs for successful people…and the implications for state budgets.
…one of the aspects of modern political economy least appreciated by the class-war Left: Rich people have options. …living in Manhattan or the nice parts of Brooklyn comes with some financial burdens, but for the cool-rich-guy set, the tradeoff is worth it. …metaphorically less-cool guys are in Florida. They have up and left the expensive, high-tax greater New York City metropolitan coagulation entirely. …Florida has a lot going for it…: Lower taxes, better governance, superior infrastructure… The question is not only the cost, but what you get for your money. Tampa is not as culturally interesting as New York City. …the governments of New York City and New York State both are unusually vulnerable to the private decisions of very wealthy households, because a relatively small number of taxpayers pays an enormous share of New York’s city and state taxes: 1 percent of New Yorkers pay almost half the taxes in the state, and they know where Florida is. New York City has seen some population loss in recent years, and even Andrew Cuomo, one of the least insightful men in American politics, understands that his state cannot afford to lose very many millionaires and billionaires. “God forbid if the rich leave,” he has said. New York lost $8.4 billion in income to other states in 2016 because of relocating residents.
Earlier in 2019, the WSJ opined on the impact of migration on state budgets.
Democrats claim they can fund their profligate spending by taxing the rich, but affluent New Yorkers are now fleeing to other states. The state’s income-tax revenue came in $2.3 billion below forecast for December and January. Mr. Cuomo blamed the shortfall on the 2017 federal tax reform’s $10,000 limit on state-and-local tax deductions. But the rest of the country shouldn’t have to subsidize New York’s spending, and Mr. Cuomo won’t cut taxes.
To conclude, this cartoon cleverly captures the mentality of politicians in high-tax states.


Needless to say, grousing politicians in high-tax states have no legitimate argument. If they don’t provide good value to taxpayers, they should change policies rather than whining about out-migration.

By the way, this analysis also applies to analysis between nations. Why, for instance, should successful people in France pay so much money to their government when they can move to Switzerland and get equivalent services at a much-lower cost.

Heck, why move to Switzerland when you can move to places where government provides similar services at even lower cost (assuming, of course, that anti-tax competition bureaucracies such as the OECD don’t succeed in their odious campaign to thwart the migration of people, jobs, and money between high-tax nations and low-tax nations).

P.S. If you want to see how states rank for tax policy, click here, here, here, and here.

Democrats Took America from the Deep State to the Hate State, Now Taking it to the Red State

By —— Bio and Archives--February 23, 2020

Looks like the same Intel agents, the ones who bought into the largely debunked Christopher Steele Dirty Dossier, are back for a second run.  Nobody but the Desperado Democrats are cheering it on.  “Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said.” (NYT, Feb. 20, 2020)..................The masses are watching a Spy Game playing out that shows how the Democrats have taken America all the way from the Deep State to the Hate State, in a game now well on its way taking it to the the Red State..........To Read More......

Ukraine opens criminal investigation ... of Joe Biden!

Targets quid pro quo in firing of prosecutor probing son Hunter's firm By WND Staff
  
Published February 27, 2020

Ukraine has launched a criminal case against former Vice President Joe Biden alleging he pressured authorities to force the resignation of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.  The Interfax-Ukraine news agency, quoting Shokin's lawyer, reported the country's State Bureau of Investigations opened the case under an appeal by Shokin.  Shokin's lawyer, Oleksandr Teleshetsky, said at a press conference Feb. 27 that the charge is interfering in the work of an official of a law enforcement agency.   Shokin included Biden's name in his motion, which prompted the opening of the case, Interfax said. But the investigation itself mentions only a "U.S. citizen."...........To Read More.....

Unelected and Unprincipled Socialist Bureaucrats Destroyed the Credibility of the U.S. Intelligence Apparatus

By —— Bio and Archives--February 25, 2020

Democrats and their media accomplices are making a big deal out of the President replacing the Director of National Intelligence with Ambassador Richard Grenell. According to an article in the Hill, President Trump â€Å“moved to oust acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire after a senior DNI official briefed the House Intelligence Committee about Russian efforts to aid his reelection.

According to Time, the magazine for communists on the go, the CIA, National Security Agency, and the FBI got together and agreed that “Russian hackers aren’t just meddling in this year’s U.S. elections, they’re trying to help Trump win re-election.” Earlier this month, FBI director, Christopher Wray, went before the House Judiciary Committee and testified that Russia is still meddling in our elections.

Democrats are resurrecting the Russia hoax just in time for the next election, and the FBI director is on the hoax band wagon, along with his comrades from Spooksville. Wray knows the Russians are meddling in U.S. elections by supporting the President on socials media, but he can’t do anything about it because of the Constitution. The FBI’s hands are tied because the people supporting the President on social media are U.S. citizens, and they have a right to free speech.

However, the FBI and intelligence agencies classify anyone who supports the President as a Russian agent, even if they are a U.S citizen. As a matter of fact, I doubt any Russians want President Trump reelected. It more likely that spooks, from within our own intelligence community, went on social media and pretended to be Russians supporting the President to give credibility to the hoax. The intelligence community has a reputation for dishonesty.

The Intelligence community can’t be trusted to tell the truth. On top of that, military intelligence can’t be trusted either. That’s because Obama fired every senior officer that made the mistake of disagreeing with his communist agenda. Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal for disagreeing with his policies during an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. By 2013, five years into his 8 year reign, Obama had fired 197 senior military officers, and the media, Democrats, the FBI and intelligence agencies were all fine with that.
 
Obama also fired a White House national security aide, Jofi Joseph, for criticizing his policies on Twitter, and nobody expressed concern over that either. However, when President Trump fires anyone, regardless of the reason, the media and Democrats go completely bananas and imagine all kinds of crazy conspiracies. On top of that, the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies have their own certifiable nuts that exhibit symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome every time the President appears on camera.........To Read More....


 

Pentagon policy chief's firing was part of White House purge

By Lara Seligman and Daniel Lippman
 
The White House demanded the ouster of Pentagon policy chief John Rood last week after the former industry executive opposed the administration on plans to pull U.S. troops from Syria and its policy toward Chinese tech giant Huawei, six current and former Trump administration officials tell POLITICO.............At the National Security Council, Rood was known for his tendency to explode at underlings, leading to a steady string of high-level departures from the Pentagon over the past year. On top of that, the NSC chafed at Rood’s opposition to several key White House agenda items.Trump’s campaign to root out “anti-Trump” members of his administration following his impeachment acquittal provided the NSC the perfect opportunity to finally oust Rood, current and former officials said..........To Read More...

My Take - Considering this appeared in Politico, it was pretty mild.  They claim others are worried this is not the end of "the purge', and they have reason for that - it isn't - it's the beginning, and after the election, it will grow.  They claim Rood was a good Republican and served admirably, which is an interesting statement from Politico.  However, I think it might be wise to ask; what's that mean?  We've come to see that serving "admirably" as a "good" Republican has come to mean being a Trump Deranged RINO. 

I've dealt with this kind of “leader” a lot in my life.  They’re arrogant, abusive, unfair, unreasoable, and only their view matters and anyone who disagrees is treated contemptuously.  Everyone has to walk on eggs around them, and make no mistake about this - they like it!  They're bullies, which means they're also cowards. 

Well, if he’s right about everything, maybe that’s acceptable.  Not to me, but maybe others can accept that, if he’s always right.  But from what I’ve already read, he’s not only not right, he seems to be not right a lot.  He’s clearly embracing narratives that would make him acceptable to a corrupted Deep State Bush/Obama foreign policy crowd, all of whom need to be purged

Over the years, for whatever reason, I seem to be able to trigger this kind of attitude, temper tantrums and abusive behavior in these kinds of seriously flawed “leaders”.  The military is full of them.  In the military, there's not much you can do about it.   However, in civilian life, mistaking amiability for weakness can be a serious error in judgement.   In many ways Trump reminds me of me, and mistaking Trump for a fool is an even bigger error judgement. 

I hated the officers when I was in the Navy.  I still hate the officers.  This guy epitomizes why!  I have no doubt there’s a lot of schadenfreude (a delightful sin) going on at the National Security Council right now.   I don’t even know him and I’m feeling schadenfreude. 
 
 

The Far-left’s National Strategy to Take Over Your Community

Kay Coles James  Feb 27, 2020

Why are wealthy left-wing donors across the country, the abortion industry, and national gun-control groups more interested in your local school board and city council races than most of the people who live in your own town?
Because they’re funding efforts to ensure their far-left agenda pervades our entire society – from getting their abortion curricula into our schools to changing our election laws – and they want to make sure that no city, no town is left to stand against them.

National left-wing organizations are collecting and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to flip local city councils, school boards, and county prosecutors’ offices to the left. They are flooding small elections with big money, and it’s giving them unprecedented influence over our local affairs and greater access to our children.

We’re witnessing the election of leftist local prosecutors who are refusing to prosecute whole classes of crimes. Rather than working with their state legislatures or city councils to reform the criminal justice system the right way, they are choosing to ignore the laws they took oaths to uphold and are single-handedly nullifying laws they don’t like..........To Read More.....

Mark Zuckerberg Funds a Plan to Turn California Into a Silicon Valley Ghetto

By Daniel Greenfield 2 Comments Wednesday, February 26, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Why do people live in California? The weather is nice and so are the property taxes.

Unlike a lot of blue states where property taxes make home ownership all but impossible for working class and even middle class families, California has the 16th lowest property taxes in the country. These low rates have allowed California homeowners and businesses who predated the dot com boom to survive in a state and in municipal areas that are rapidly becoming unaffordable to all but a small few.

While housing prices are skyrocketing, property taxes are fixed at the time of sale with assessments limited to 2% increases a year due to Proposition 13 or the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation.

The 1978 proposition dates back to a time when the state’s taxpayers protected their own financial interests. After a string of successful tax increases and debt hikes, Proposition 13 is on the chopping block. The choppers have been clever enough to introduce a partial repeal that will remove protections for commercial real estate while, for now, promising to preserve them for homeowners. But, it goes without saying, that Proposition 13 protection for homeowners will be the final stage of the assault.

Splitting the assault on commercial and residential real estate in two divides the opposition and allows it to be picked off separately by the oligarchy of unions, non-profits and dot coms that run California.

That’s why every other commercial on local television is either for Michael Bloomberg or the push to tax commercial properties at market value. The commercials are almost comically misleading, the most frequent offender features a supposed firefighter with a soul patch who claims that the money is needed to stop natural disasters from affecting schools. There are also ridiculous claims that the $11 billion in projected revenue is needed to save children from school drinking fountains tainted with lead.

Seven years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District spent $1.3 billion to hand out 650,000 iPads to all its students, but, for some reason, didn’t get around to removing those lead pipes. California schools keep blowing through enough billions to finance a dozen small countries while always crying poverty.

And the guy behind many of those ads, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, is the 4th richest man in the world.

With a net worth of over $79 billion, Zuckerberg could replace every pipe in California and not even notice the cost. But instead the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the name of the charity and political organization of one of the world’s wealthiest couples, has spent $2.1 million to raise other people’s taxes even after Facebook had used Ireland as a tax shelter to avoid paying taxes in the United States.

Zuckerberg’s assault on Proposition 13 could wipe out small businesses in California as the tax increases from commercial real estate get passed down to small business tenants. Meanwhile Facebook is fighting the IRS in court over its Irish tax scam to avoid paying the $9 billion in taxes that it owes.

Facebook falsely claimed that its international headquarters was in Dublin even as an email by Sheryl Sandberg, its COO, admitted that it was a tax shelter and the "international headquarters" would be "tiny." Instead of paying its taxes, Facebook’s CEO wants to raise taxes for small businesses.

Despite claims that this initiative is philanthropic, shifting the tax base from income tax to property tax would be personally profitable. The Facebook IPO was big enough to have had a significant impact on California’s budget. Zuckerberg was personally on the hook for $200 million. Other employees and investors were good for over $2 billion in state taxes. Additional stock sales the next year reportedly cost the Facebook boss billions in federal and state taxes. The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative gets its funding from Zuckerberg’s Facebook shares. CZI is going to war against small business for its own profit.

So much for Mark’s charity.

California’s middle class gets wiped out while Mark Zuckerberg gets closer to that fabled $100 billion.

Schools and Communities First, the PAC funded by millions in dirty Facebook money, touts the backing of unions, the ACLU, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, and assorted radical leftist groups, but CZI is the one that really matters. The unions and politicians, two sides of the same crooked coin, are obviously in it for all the money that they can squeeze out of embattled California taxpayers. And, in its own way, so is CZI.

Wiping out property tax protections won’t hurt the big dot com firms like Facebook. But it will make it even harder for any prospective rivals to function in an area with impossible rents and the highest housing costs in the country. That’s why one startup was charging $1,200 in rent for bunk beds for aspiring Zuckerbergs who “want to focus on their startups”, but can’t actually afford to live there.

The pressures of commercial rents are already catastrophically punishing. Zuckerberg’s move to crush commercial real estate protections will significantly raise the cost of doing business for competitors without Facebook’s deep pockets, potentially reduce future income tax impacts on his own vast fortune and those of many Facebook employees, and leave behind chaos as Facebook expands elsewhere.

The dot com has shifted its strategy in the last two years from massive expansion in Menlo Park and San Francisco to Zuckerberg’s announcement to Facebook employees last year that the area is “tapped” and that the company would be expanding outside the Bay Area. And now that the area is “tapped”, Zuckerberg can nuke it from orbit and make sure that other companies will have trouble affording it.

Meanwhile Zuckerberg and Facebook get props for their social justice. That’s CZI’s mission statement.

The collateral damage from this Silicon Valley civil war will extend far beyond helping Zuckerberg’s net worth hit eleven figures, and the pressure cooker of the Bay Area which is on the verge of exploding.

The downward pressure of commercial property tax hikes will turn much of the rest of California into the Bay Area with impossible rents squeezing out small businesses and the people that depend on them. If you want to see the future of California, imagine a handful of dot coms, satellite startups, and the businesses owned by them, from Whole Foods to the leftovers of the entertainment industry, and gig economy delivery services making up the leftovers of the economy. And a whole lot of poor people living in housing subsidized by dot coms like Facebook, which dumped $1 billion into affordable housing, and taking tech vans for hundreds of miles to do grunt work for the tech masters of the universes.

The California Schools And Local Communities Funding Act is a dot com trojan horse that would turn the state into a Silicon Valley ghetto while wiping out the protections that made a middle class life possible.

Facebook has already transformed the virtual geography of social relationships. The Proposition 13 modification would have an equally devastating effect on the physical geography of California. And it’s a potential testbed for Zuckerberg’s initiatives that will extend far beyond California’s borders.

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative draws on nearly limitless funding and its subset, Chan-Zuckerberg Advocacy, has seen only limited use of its power to back a pro-crime initiative in Ohio and tax hikes in California. But fully unleashed, CZI could fundamentally reshape states and cities for the power and profit of one of the wealthiest men in the world. It’s already reshaping California. For the worse.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donationThank you for reading.