The press has set the bar so low for Joe
Biden that when he makes a public appearance, it is considered a triumph
if he manages to stay upright. No one expects anything he says to be
coherent, and blatant disregard of the facts is overlooked. But it isn’t
only Slow Joe: the Democrats’ policies have run head-on into reality,
and none of their leaders can comment publicly without telling whoppers.
Like Nancy Pelosi, who assures us in this clip–deemed notable by The Hill, generally a Democratic Party mouthpiece–that government spending
reduces the national debt and doesn’t contribute to inflation: ............. This is a new contribution to economic theory that we could dub
Pelosinomics: if only we increase government spending enough, we can
eliminate the national debt! She makes Joe Biden look almost rational........This appeared here
Dem Rep. Sherman: 75 Cents of Gas Hike Due to Putin, U.S. Production Won’t Impact Oil Price, Need Saudis to ‘Backfill’ - Ian HanchettOn Saturday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox News
Live,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) stated that only “the last 75 cents” of
the increase in gas prices is due to Russia, but the rest is due to
OPEC, oil prices will remain high until “we get the Saudis to backfill”
Russian oil, and he can’t see himself supporting the Keystone pipeline.
Sherman said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:45] “Well, the last 75
cents is because of what Putin has done. Prior to that, it’s what OPEC
has done, constrained supply. And the fact is that the United States is
producing about as much oil as we burn. We’re producing more now than we
did when Biden came into the White House and next year, we will be at
an all-time high in production. But regardless of what we produce, it’s a
worldwide price for oil. The price in Texas is the same basically as
the price in the North Sea. And until we get the Saudis to backfill for
what Russia is not...........
My Take - So let me get this right. More drilling and pumping from OPEC is the answer, but more drilling and pumping in America isn't? Did I get that right? Did I miss something? Now........ I really have to ask .....who could find fault with that kind of logic?
Rep. Ronny Jackson, ex-White House doc, predicts Biden will be forced to resign - By
Mary Kay Linge - Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician-turned-congressman, says he’s “terrified for our country” in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous town hall this week — and that he doubts whether the commander in chief has the cognitive ability to make it through a full term. “He’s completely LOST it!” Jackson (R-Tex.) tweeted Saturday,
along with a video clip — recorded this week — in which Biden bizarrely
answered a reporter’s question about defunding the police by claiming that Republicans accuse him of “sucking the blood out of kids.” “Needs a cognitive exam NOW!” Jackson posted..............
My Take - So..... we get Kamala instead! In turn she picks Pelosi, or Hillary, or.....who knows what kind of leftist misfit. Remember, that's what the 25th Amendment says. Kamala will make the pick and Congress has to confirm. So if he stays the nation will suffer irreparable harm and if he goes the nation may suffer even worse harm.
Understand there currently isn't a Constitutional solution in existence regarding voter fraud, making this a Constitution crisis that must be resolved. Solution?
Combine all the cases regarding voter fraud from every state and demand SCOTUS hear those cases, remove this administration in total, install Trump and Pence with the caveat they're finishing out this fraudulent Biden term and may run again in 2024. Remove each and every Presidential appointment, including all members of the federal judiciary appointed by him, any laws signing by Biden are void including all Executive orders, and it had better be done soon.
As a kid, the only thing close to as tough as the United
States military was those communist bastards they were protecting us
from. We were tougher, of course, but since we were the good guys we
didn’t even consider invading them. Should they invade us, which we knew
they wanted to do, we’d be ready to kick some commie ass! At least,
that’s what we told ourselves, mostly to avoid thinking about the
complete, total and world-wide nuclear annihilation. Times have changed,
and so has the Russian military…or has it?
We
always assumed they were as strong militarily as we were, but mostly
because of parades and their size. Everyone has seen the footage of
battalions marching through Red Square, huge intercontinental ballistic
missiles rolling along with them in a sea of soldiers and tanks. They
sure projected strength and readiness. But maybe they weren’t ready?............We never really saw the Soviets take on
another organized military, their power was largely acquired through
propping up dictators and intimidation – they were very good at
disappearing the disloyal and beating up the weak....their actions in
Ukraine are not that of a world-class military, not by a long-shot..............A
competent military doesn’t get a 40 mile long convey, on which most of
their alleged strategy depends, stuck in the mud and out of gas for 3
weeks..........
What if our government
has been wrong about the Russian military all along like they were about
the Iraqis? And if they were wrong about that, could they also be wrong
about China?............To Read More....
My Take - While I believed Russia could march right down the North European Plain with little trouble and conquer Western Europe, I also believed it would bankrupt them and they wouldn't be able to hold it militarily, economically or philosophically.
I've often said to my friends over this Ukraine issue that Russia isn't very good at war. They did really well against Hitler but only because they were supplied by the Unites States, otherwise, I now believe it wouldn't have happened. The Iraqi's had, and used, the most advanced Russian military equipment and strategy, and America cut through it like a hot knife through butter. What you don't see any longer is just how badly that shook Russian military high command.
I'm now convinced Russia can't march right down the middle of Europe, or anywhere else against an actual army, for that matter. I'm also willing to bet China's realizing that also. Russia and China have some unpleasant history. Think about this. What would be easier for China? Take land away from Russia or launch an air, naval and amphibious attack against Taiwan?
No President of The
United States ever before faced anything comparable to the organized
effort of officials within his administration to sabotage Donald J.
Trump’s presidency and drive him from office. The Memo by Rich
Higgins [216 pp, Kindle 9.99 Hard Copy 22.34 ISBN-0999705938
Washington D.C. Calamo Press 2020] is a first and only book by an
American soldier and patriot who exposes the deep state and the
anti-Trump coup activities.
Rich Higgins earned his early reputation
as an ordnance (explosives) expert in Iraq during and after the War for
Iraqi Freedom of 2002 and 2003. Higgins went from being an ordnance man
to becoming an expert on insurgency warfare, since explosives were the
favored weapons of insurgents. They are usually outgunned and out
manned so they retreat to asymmetric (guerilla) warfare heavily
dependent on hit and run and explosives, which demoralize and disrupt
the efforts of the larger force. ...........To Read More....
It’s a weird feeling, watching the globe-wide death of reason and the
herdlike behavior of virtue-signaling nincompoops. There’s so much of
this it’s hard to know where to begin. This is not intended to be a
complete list, which would take too many pages, just an illustration of
what I mean.
Suddenly, as the preposterous mandates supposedly designed to stop the
spread of the Wuhan virus begin to lift, the herd, bereft at the
widespread mask-dumping, seems to have latched onto the Russian invasion
of Ukraine to prove to us how moral they are. Now, it’s perfectly
understandable to be appalled at the destruction. Contributing to relief
efforts, for example,
is one rational humanitarian response. But the reaction in many
quarters is patently absurd.
One of the greatest opera stars, Russian
Anna Netrebko, has withdrawn her scheduled performances
at the Metropolitan Opera after the General Manager announced,” we can
no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are
supported by him -- not until the invasion and killing has been stopped,
order has been restored, and restitutions have been made.” Unless she
planned to drive a tank to Kiev or to revise the planned operas to sing
the praises of Putin, whatever was the point of this?.......... To Read More
Each
day I skim over the op-eds in the New York Times so that you don't have
to. And what do I come upon yesterday but an op-ed by two prominent
Republican economists (not quite an oxymoron), Martin Feldstein and
Gregory Mankiw, advocating for "A Conservative Case for Climate Action." Uh-oh. And then, upon checking my emails, I learn that there is a nearly-identical op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled "A Conservative Answer to Climate Change," this time with different authors -- former Treasury Secretaries George Shultz and James Baker. A co-ordinated attack!
Get
ready: A bunch of Grand Pooh-Bahs, calling themselves
"conservatives," have formed something they are calling the Climate
Leadership Council to advocate for a new approach to tackling "climate
change." Besides the authors listed above, the members include another
ex-Treasury Secretary (Hank Paulson), an ex-chairman of Wal-Mart (Rob
Walton), a venture capital guy (Thomas Stephenson), and long-time
do-gooder Ted Halstead (who seems be the one who rounded the whole thing
up). All of these guys have co-authored a new paper, just released,
titled "The Conservative Case For Carbon Dividends."
Now,
these authors are obviously a collection of really, really smart guys.
And, because they are really, really smart, they have that special
ability that you and I lack, which is the ability to devise ultimate
solutions to the most difficult societal problems through the magic of
the government's power to tax and spend. And, you will not be surprised
to learn, they have used their very special ability to devise the
solution to that most critical problem of our time, "climate change."
And what is the solution? You guessed it! A large and
steadily-growing tax!:
[T]he federal government would impose a
gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions. It might begin a
$40 per ton and increase steadily. this tax would send a powerful
signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints.
Does anything about this sound familiar? Oh yes, it was
the "Risky Business Coalition," another small collection of Grand
Pooh-Bahs who also issued a clarion call for drastic action by the U.S.
federal government to stop "climate change," this one back in mid-2014.
That call was the subject of my first post in this series on June 25 of
that year, "Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart."
The Climate Leadership Council and the Risky Business Coalition have
substantial overlap in their small list of members -- Paulson, Shultz
and Walton lent their names to both groups. (The other members of the
RBC were Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer.) RBC advocated a massive transition away from fossil fuels and toward so-called "clean energy" -- although its mechanism of how to make that happen was far from clear.
All
the members of this new Climate Leadership Council are obviously people
of great ability and great accomplishment. No one would doubt that
they are really "smart." But, before seeking to impose hundreds of
billions of dollars of new taxes on the American people, do you think
that people this smart could be troubled to ask a couple of the most
basic questions? Questions like: Even assuming the U.N.'s worst-case
projections for world temperature increase caused by CO2 emissions, how
much could this tax be expected to reduce that increase? Of course they
do not address that question. Hey, everybody knows that we have to
reduce carbon emissions -- we're just coming up with the best way to do
it!
However, if we humble peasants are interested in the answer to the
question, we can go the the Cato Institute's handy Carbon Tax Temperature Savings Calculator (which in turn is based on the government's own model known as MAGICC).
If we go there, we will find that, assuming that this new tax can
reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 60% (that will never happen), and that
climate "sensitivity" is 3 deg C per doubling of atmospheric CO2 (crazy
high), then this new tax will save a big 0.032 deg C of warming by 2050,
and 0.076 deg C of warming by 2100. Why, 83 years from now, that's almost enough to be as large as the margin of error of the measurement!
Or
maybe these really "smart" guys could ask whether there is actually any
dangerous warming going on that requires these kinds of massive
government-directed "solutions." I won't go here into the extensive
government temperature data alteration that is the subject of my series "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time." But Roger Simon at PJ Media yesterday
was quick to point out the disastrous timing of the NYT/WSJ op-eds,
coming as they did just a few days after whistleblower John Bates's
revelations of data manipulation at NOAA intended to dupe world leaders
into making "climate" agreements. How much of recent world temperature
increase is real, versus an artifact of altered data? Maybe we will
find out as the new Trump administration takes control of the reins.
Well,
now for the good news. I don't know how it happened, but somehow, at
some point, Republican politicians stopped being susceptible to falling
for the climate alarm scam. The old guys had all fallen for it.
Presidential candidates McCain and Romney were both on board with the
climate alarm bandwagon. And this Climate Leadership Council crowd is
considerably older still (Shultz is 96 (!), Baker 86, Paulson 70,
Feldstein 77). Meanwhile, in today's Congress, you literally won't find
a single Republican to speak in favor of massive fossil fuel
restrictions to stop the existential threat of "climate change." Could
they have figured out that the politics of "climate change" is really
about massive government programs and handouts and growth that will have
little to no effect upon the climate? Probably. You don't actually
have to be very smart to figure that out.
A famous quote from William F. Buckley, Jr.
is "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first
400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty
of Harvard University." Boy did he have that one right. The faculty
of Harvard are genuinely "smart" in a simple sense of the term --
ability to solve a discrete problem, or a puzzle; ability to get a high
score on an IQ test or an SAT test; ability to write a paper to get an A
at Harvard. How about judgment on big public policy questions? Watch
out! What "smart" people also have is tremendous hubris that they have
figured out everything important about the world, and that their
solutions should then be imposed on everyone else through government
power.
And thus we have something calling itself the Risky Business Coalition
coming out this week with a big ad in the Wall Street Journal and a big
report urging everyone -- not least the U.S. government through
coercive means -- to take immediate and drastic action against fossil
fuels to prevent "climate change." Who are the people behind this? The
three co-chairs are seriously accomplished business people, self-made
billionaires all, who undoubtedly meet any test of "smart" you could
come up with: former Mayor Mike Bloomberg; former Treasury Secretary
and head of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson; and Farallon Capital founder Tom
Steyer.
As soon as you start looking at the details of this thing you
realize how limited this category of "smart" is. Bloomberg really was a
pretty good mayor (given the alternatives), but he repeatedly showed
himself completely subject to falling for every overhyped scientific fad
without ever considering the underlying data. (The anti-salt campaign
anyone? Trans-fats?)
Paulson was Treasury Secretary when the
financial crisis hit and promptly got buffaloed into falling for every
bailout request that anyone could think to make. And Steyer? Don't get
me started. And all three of these guys are serious private jet
mega-users, who don't seem to have any comprehension that their behavior
is exactly the opposite of what they want the government to force on
everyone else. Here is a Wall Street Journal compilation
of several hundred trips made by Bloomberg's fleet of four private jets
in just the four years from 2007 to 2010. Did I mention that he is also a fan of private helicopters?
To
someone like me who actually follows the data on this subject, the
timing of this big initiative certainly seems odd. Do these people,
despite their undoubted brilliance and their many accomplishments, even
know that temperatures have failed to rise for some 17 years now
despite the ongoing increase of CO2 in the atmosphere? Do they know
that the models on which they and the government have relied to predict
warming have been proved spectacularly wrong by the evidence of the real world?
Or
perhaps we should turn to the actual Harvard faculty to see where they
are on this issue. Those of you who did not have the honor of attending
that august institution may not be aware that it is currently being
consumed with the debate over whether the Harvard endowment should
divest from all investments in fossil fuel companies. Here's a roundup
from the current issue of Harvard Magazine, with lots of links. It
would be hard to think of an institution with a bigger carbon footprint
than Harvard, let alone the collective carbon footprint of its
jet-setting faculty.
Back in April some 154 faculty members calling
themselves "Harvard Faculty For Divestment" sent an open letter
to the Harvard community calling for the divestment. These signers are
all undoubtedly really "smart," although if you look at the list you
will find it remarkable how few scientists are on it, let alone
scientists whose specialties have anything to do with climate. The
large majority are from the humanities. But they just know that having
the government force everyone but themselves to stop using fossil fuels
is really, really important:
Our sense of urgency in signing
this Letter cannot be overstated. Humanity’s reliance on burning fossil
fuels is leading to a marked warming of the Earth’s surface, a melting
of ice the world over, a rise in sea levels, acidification of the
oceans, and an extreme, wildly fluctuating, and unstable global
climate. These physical and chemical changes, some of which are
expected to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years are already
threatening the survival of countless species on all continents. And
because of their effects on food production, water availability, air
pollution, and the emergence and spread of human infectious diseases,
they pose unparalleled risks to human health and life.
Of
course, not one of them indicates that he or she will cut his own carbon
usage but one bit. Nor will any one of them will support the use of
some form of non-carbon-based energy that might actually work on a large
scale, namely nuclear.
At the Atlantic, Todd Gitlin, a professor at Columbia, wrote an article back in April supportive of the position of the Harvard activist faculty. Here is the response of the first commenter:
Shorter version of this article: Harvard activists tell worldwide poor to shiver in the dark, peasants.
From time to time on this blog I have had occasion to note the extent to which many of the seemingly “smartest” people in our society time and again fall hook, line and sinker for the most preposterous mass hysterias. When it really counts, the people who have risen to the very top ranks of our social hierarchies prove to have no critical thinking capabilities whatsoever. For some entertaining reading about various self-made billionaires, former cabinet secretaries, and the like, making utter fools of themselves, you might try my posts from February 9, 2017 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’ — Part III”), or June 25, 2014 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’”). Both of those posts dealt with the topic of attempts to alter world temperatures through government taxation and spending.
A recent example of the phenomenon of the smart dopes now comes forth from the District Attorney’s office of New York County — that is, the people here in Manhattan charged with the enforcement of the New York State criminal laws. In this instance the subject of the hysteria was the idea that Donald Trump, President of the United States, needed to be charged with some sort of violations of the New York criminal law arising out of his business dealings.
Although prosecutors don’t publicly announce when they start investigations, it is clear from various court filings along the way (e.g., Trump’s lawyers opposing enforcement of subpoenas) that the DA’s criminal investigation of Trump was well underway as early as 2019, that is, in the middle of Trump’s term as President. The Manhattan DA at the time was Cyrus Vance, Jr. If you are old enough, you will recognize from Vance’s name that he is the son of the Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of State when Jimmy Carter was President, and also at various times Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and other such government positions, in between stints as big-time partner of big-time law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Background on the Trump criminal investigation by Vance Jr.’s office can be found in this New York Times piece from February 18, 2021. That piece, written less than a month after Mr. Trump left office, already described the criminal investigation as “long running.” According to the piece, the investigation was “focused on possible tax and bank-related fraud,” and most particularly on “whether the Trump Organization misled its lenders” as to “the value of his properties to obtain loans.”
Now, you may not be one of the world’s great geniuses, but does the subject of this investigation make any sense to you? I’ll bet that before you finished reading that one little paragraph you had asked yourself at least three critical questions:
Since when do banks take the borrower’s word for the value of real estate when they make loans secured by the property? When you took out your mortgage for a lousy one or a few hundred thousand, the bank did an appraisal of the value of the property. Could it really be that banks lent Trump hundreds of millions and just took his word for the value of the property without doing their own appraisal?
Did Trump default on any of the loans? If he had, it would have led the news for months on end; so no, that did not happen. Who has ever heard of such a thing as a criminal prosecution for overvaluing the collateral for a loan when the loan has always been and remains current and never in default?
Didn’t the real estate market experience tremendous appreciation throughout the U.S. from 2010 through the ensuing decade? Given that, wouldn’t exaggerated valuations early in the period therefore look prescient in hindsight?
So you might think, perhaps this investigation was being conducted by some naive young Assistant DAs with little understanding of how the real world works. Wrong. Instead, Vance had recruited two of the very biggest names from New York’s most prestigious law firms to head the probe. You probably have not heard of these guys, but in the world of big New York law firms, anyone would immediately recognize them as from the true nobility. Or to put it another way, these guys are really, really smart:
Carey Dunne is a Harvard Law School graduate, and was a long-time senior partner of the Davis Polk law firm. You may recognize the name of John W. Davis as the Democratic nominee for President in both 1920 and 1924 and also, in his spare time, as the personal lawyer to J.P. Morgan. The Davis Polk law firm continues to represent Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase in many matters to this day. Dunne has also served a term as President of the New York City Bar Association, a kind of ultimate recognition of status in the elite New York legal community. In 2016 Dunne left Davis Polk to join Vance’s DA office as General Counsel, and apparently got named to head the investigation of Trump some time thereafter. Here is a picture of Dunne:
Mark Pomerantz was a long-time partner of the Paul Weiss law firm who joined the investigation of Trump in 2021. Among the very top New York law firms, Paul Weiss is the one most heavily devoted to the litigation practice. In his career Pomerantz had, among other things, been the head of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Pomerantz came out of retirement to join the Trump investigation, and according to the New York Times, agreed to do so without pay. Here is a picture of Pomerantz:
As you can see, these guys are the crème de la crème of the New York legal community. On the other hand, like so many other liberal New Yorkers, they are completely blinded by their hatred of Trump. It seems that in their eagerness, the three simple questions above never occurred to them.
In late February, the Manhattan DA’s offices’s investigation of Trump completely unraveled. Vance had decided not to run for re-election, and a new guy, Alvin Bragg, took office on January 1, 2022. Bragg decided he should take his own look at this, his single most high-profile criminal investigation. The New York Times has a big summary on March 5; and CNN also did a long write-up on March 6.
Brief excerpt from the Times piece:
Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration,with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.
It also seems that Bragg figured out that essentially the only evidence of Trump’s supposed criminal intent in the case was to come from the famous Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney since convicted of multiple charges unrelated to his service for Trump, and now having turned on the ex-boss.
After a series of basically hostile meetings with Bragg, both Dunne and Pomerantz resigned from the office. Although the investigation is still theoretically alive, it is expected to die when the grand jury in question ends its term in April.
Exit quote (from Dunne):
“It’s a righteous case that ought to be brought,” Mr. Dunne told Mr. Bragg.
Dunne thinks that it is “righteous” to single out a guy to investigate endlessly for years because you oppose him politically. His mania blinded him to the most obvious holes in this case. Keep that line in mind any time you find yourself starting to think that the “smartest” people should be trusted with anything.
