Royal Family Hypocrisy and the 18th Theorem of Government

May 28, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

The United Kingdom has some terrible politicians (see here, here, here, here, and here).

It also has some embarrassing members of the royal family. Way back in 2010, for instance, I wrote about how then-Prince Charles had an unfortunate habit of lecturing others about carbon footprints even though he surely must be responsible for more emissions that 99 percent of the population.

But you don’t need royal blood to be a hypocrite. In previous columns, I’ve written about celebrities (domestic and foreign) and politicians (domestic and foreign) who hector ordinary people, yet live lavish carbon-emitting lifestyles.

Not to mention the hypocritical jet setters who go to Davos.

With all these people in mind, it’s time to unveil my 18th Theorem of Government.

I realize I just released my 17th Theorem of Government yesterday, but I couldn’t resist back-to-back Theorems because a reader sent me a story about another vapid member of the British royal family.

Here are some excerpts from a report by Craig Simpson in the U.K.-based Telegraph.

The Duchess of York berated the crowd at the Cannes Film Festival as she told them to care less about parties and more about the climate. The Duchess attended the elite party held on the Riviera, appearing on stage to auction off a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Footage shows the Duchess scolding the gathered crowd for not staying quiet during her address and berating them about climate change. …Celebrity guests in the audience included Heidi Klum, Kelly Rowland, Demi Moore and Cher… Struggling to be heard over the chattering crowd at a lavish villa in Cap d’Antibes near Cannes, she told the crowd…”What is the future and why are we not making our planet better for the youth of tomorrow? …I am so sorry that we have completely destroyed your planet.”

For what it’s worth, our left-leaning friends are also hypocrites about education and taxation.

P.S. There are plenty of right-leaning hypocrites, but I’m not overly upset when they proclaim traditional morality and then cheat on their spouses. That’s bad behavior, but it doesn’t affect me. I do get upset when they campaign in favor of small government and then vote for bigger government once they get elected.

Jane Fonda Saves the Planet From Herself

By Daniel Greenfield 2 Comments Friday, January 10, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Last year, Jane Fonda sold her “eco-conscious” Beverly Hills mansion, with its 7,102 square feet on a 36,000 square foot lot enclosing a his and her master suite, a glass elevator, 5 bathrooms, glass walls, fireplaces, a fountain, a meditation garden, a fully stocked gym, a pavilion with heat lamps, and a huge pool for $8.5 million after she found no takers at its original $13 million sale price.


“This was the first time in my 79 years,” Fonda enunciates with the deep pathos of an orphan finally getting a full meal as the camera zooms through the cavernous interior of a walk-in closet the size of some people’s homes , “that I have had a closet that you could walk in and see everything you have.”

As Gaia is my witness, If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, I’ll never go without a walk-in closet again.

Heartfelt music more appropriate to the reunion of a lost child and her mother plays in the background as the socialist actress describes her “amazing glass elevator, it’s like a gem”. Then she gushes about having a party with 150 people in the house. “We could have had another 50,” she brags. Then there’s her pool. “It’s so beautiful at night when it’s lit up.”

Fonda didn’t sell her mansion because she suddenly realized that two people living on a 36,000 square foot estate was bad for the environment. Even if the pool was solar heated. She had just broken up with her record producer boyfriend and was looking to scale down by getting something for the single life.

And so, the environmentalist activist went all the way down from a 7,102 square foot mansion to a 6,679 square foot luxury townhouse. The $5.8 million three-story home has 4 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, and a semi-subterranean three car garage which no doubt only stock Teslas. The master suite has its own fireplace, two walk-in closets, a marble bathroom, and its own balcony. There are staff quarters for the servants. And an elevator for a convenient way to get around the three-story condo.

The complex also offers indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and a tennis court. For the environment.

Every so often, Fonda leaves her Century City luxury condo to fly 2,311 miles to Washington D.C. to protest for the environment. Each of these trips by Fonda generates more CO2 than an average person in Madagascar produces in one year. At these ‘Fire Drill Fridays’, she arranges to get herself arrested (with all the CO2 emissions that entails) along with other California celebrities to demand that everyone save the planet by submitting to the poverty, misery, and destruction of the Green New Deal.

Fonda urged protesters to “take the next step beyond individual actions to reduce our carbon footprint”. She could have reduced her carbon footprint by getting rid of 6 of her 7 bathrooms.

But that wouldn’t have gotten the haggard leftist has-been another 15 minutes of fame.

“These are life-and-death decisions,” she falsely claimed before a silent meditation, three “hi-yahs”, and the vanity arrests in a city already overburdened by crime that largely affects its poor population.

Also arrested was Ted Danson, who last year bought a second compound next to his first compound in Santa Monica with a walk-in wine cellar (don’t call it a cave), he already owns a cottage in Nashville, a ten-acre place in California, and a six-acre multi-residence spread on Martha’s Vineyard. The Cheers star and blackface impresario is naturally concerned about the environment. He owns so much of it.

Brooklyn Decker, the Sports Illustrated model, also came to D.C. to fight for the environment. Decker and her husband have two homes, a 7,300 square foot mansion in West Austin, Texason 15 acres of land with an infinity pool, and the other, a 4-acre spread with 7 bedrooms in North Carolina.

Joining them in the Legion of Environmentalist Mansion Crusaders was Rosanna Arquette, an actress who lives in aPacific Palisades 1.36 acre ocean-view walled and gated estate with 7.5 bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and a 10,000-bottle wine cellar with its own tasting room.

"As Greta Thunberg said, 'Our House Is On Fire', and we need to act like it," Fonda wrote.

Or our 10,000-bottle wine cellar anyway.

“You see this coat? I needed something red and I went out and found this coat on sale. This is the last article of clothing that I will ever buy," she boasted at a Capitol Hill rally while showing off a $500 luxurious red coat. The red coat is appropriate for the nation’s most famous celebrity traitor who flew to show solidarity with the Viet Cong who were murdering Americans with nary a carbon offset in sight.

“‘We don’t need more stuff,’ then I have to walk the walk too. So I’m not buying any more clothes.”

And to prove it, Fonda wore the same black sequin suit to the Glamour Women of the Year Awards in New York City and then to the GCAAP Empower Party in Atlanta three days later. How did she get from New York to Atlanta in three days? Probably teleportation. And buying new clothes in Atlanta would have had less environmental impact than dragging her sequin suit on a flight from New York to Atlanta.

But it’s not about actually making a difference. It’s about pretending to.

You can have your indoor elevators, wine cellars, and massive estates, and look good by getting briefly arrested to show how much you care about the environment, even while heating, cooling, and powering houses and lands that consume more energy and emit more carbon than millions of third worlders.

“Proud of @Janefonda’s commitment to save our planet,” an environmentalist site tweeted.

An actual commitment would have meant moving to a 1,500 square foot apartment. Instead of commuting between California and Washington D.C. (not to mention Atlanta and New York City) while also having a place in D.C. While the media has widely reported on her temporary sojourn in D.C., none have bothered to ask or report on what sort of environmentally sustainable quarters she’s occupying.

“I made personal changes,” Fonda said. “Electric car, get rid of single-use plastic, less meat — cut it out altogether — recycle, all those kinds of things.”

But keep the 6,679 square foot luxury home. And have your luxury coats shipped over from China.

“I decided that the last article of clothing that I will ever buy is a red coat. Sure enough, I found one at Neiman Marcus on sale for $500. And that's the coat," she had insisted. "I'm speaking out against consumerism and so I have to walk the talk. And so that's the last thing I'll buy."

By Fonda’s standards, paying only $500 for a coat is a protest against consumerism.

There’s nothing like protesting consumerism by buying a $500 coat “on sale” at Neiman Marcus when you live in California. The coat, worn exclusively by Meghan Markle and working-class comrades of the Viet Cong, normally sells for $750, is virgin wool with lambskin trim and imported from China.

There’s nothing like buying a discounted $500 slave labor coat that had to be shipped all the way over from China to protest consumerism and fight for the environment. This is Fonda’s single greatest moral statement since she sat on a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun while hanging out with America’s enemies.

China has been known to get its lambskin by skinning lambs alive. And its leather often comes from dogs and cats boiled alive. But it’s not as if Fonda cares about the planet, animals or anyone except herself.

Fonda’s only doing these protests until her Netflix series, Grace and Frankie, starts shooting again. At a protest that came too close to the resumption of shooting on her TV series, she avoided being arrested.

"I have to be careful not to get to a point where they're going to keep me for 90 days, because I have to begin preparing for Grace and Frankie in January,” the heroic activist explained, after previously saying, “Everybody's gotta get used to this new normal, getting beyond our comfort zone.”

It’s one thing to get headlines for being arrested. Just so as long as it doesn’t interfere with your closeup and the millions of dollars that allow you to afford the good things in life that you want to take away from the rest of the country. Fonda wants her 7 bathrooms and tiny hovels for the rest of us.

After Fonda returned from collaborating with the enemy in Vietnam, she slandered American POWs as “hypocrites and liars”. But she’s always been the real liar and hypocrite. The pampered celebrity posing with Communist killers and cheering on the murder and torture of American soldiers because it was good for her career. And now championing the Green New Deal while commuting to her massive home, and getting visibly arrested, so long as it doesn’t interfere with her Netflix shooting schedule.

Fonda spoke glowingly of the Communists of Vietnam in propaganda broadcasts. The Green New Deal promises a brutal revolution, with cold and hunger, the breakdown of industry and life, that appeals so much to leftists who believe that people deserve to suffer for social justice. And Jane Fonda hopes to enjoy it from the balcony of her master suite and its fireplace if it gets too cold in Los Angeles County.

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 donation.
Thank you for reading.

Pseudo-Green Leftism

December 8, 2018 By Bruce Walker

The left pretends to care about the environment. It sounds as though Bernie Sanders is going to make this faux interest in protecting the environment a salient point of any 2020 presidential run. In fact, leftism – both economic leftism and social leftism – is the primary cause of environmental problems.

Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, apparently missed the horrific destruction of nature under the Soviets, who were dramatically worse for the environment than the tsars. Indeed, Marxism in virtually every land it has been tried has been an environmental horror story. Nations before Marxist rule and after Marxist rule, like Poland, demonstrated as clearly as possible that Marxism is the worst system of government imaginable for the environment.

What about free-market economic systems and statist economic systems? Can the government compel cleaner air and water, more green spaces, compassion for animals, and the other "green" issues? Coercion is nearly always the worst way possible of achieving objectives, and this is true with environmentalism.

Free markets are better than statism in every way, and not just in the narrow confines of economic choices – and that means businesses and individuals compete with each other to be "greener." If that sounds odd, consider in a grocery how many goods are touted as good for the environment. Once people are affluent, they give their attention to other values, and environmentalism is chic, popular, and sincere. .......To Read More...... 

Green Energy is the Perfect Scam

By Norman Rogers November 12, 2018

Green energy is an incredible money-making scam. The promoters of green energy make billions of dollars promoting dumb energy schemes that are completely useless. What makes the scam extremely clever is that the scammers have convinced the public that the purpose of their scam is to improve the environment. The scammers pretend to be earnest environmental advocates.

Any really good scam needs endorsements from authoritative sounding sources. In the case of green energy, the authoritative sources are in on the scam. The beneficiaries of the green energy scam go way beyond the wind and solar industries.

Non-profit environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, need to be seen as fighting against an urgent looming catastrophe. If they don’t have something dreadful to fight against, no one is going to join their organizations or give them money. Global warming, allegedly caused by carbon dioxide, is the looming catastrophe and green energy is the solution. When the globe failed to warm they renamed the looming catastrophe climate change in place of global warming. Now they blame every instance of bad weather on climate change created by burning coal and oil. What were formerly acts of God are now the fault of the oil and coal companies...........

The biggest victim of the green energy scam is the public in general. Everybody pays more taxes and pays more for energy as a consequence of the scam. But the waste of billions of dollars may not be noticeable when spread over the 320 million Americans. The public has been exposed to relentless propaganda promoting green energy as beneficial and less expensive. The public is the greatest victim, but most people don’t know that they are being victimized, so there is little incentive to organize against the scam.............Read more

Transparocrites: How Transparency Hypocrites Live with Themselves

Posted by riskmonger on November 24, 2017

There are those among us with integrity and strength of character. They attract our respect and inspire us. Then there are those who are just, well, transparent. They meet our minimum expectations. As certain activists try to shift the debate toward ensuring that everyone is transparent, we assess people less frequently on the basis of their moral fibre. This blog will examine how transparency is value neutral, indicative of a lack of trust and allows for a wide range of double standards by Machiavellian operators. I have found that most of the activists who demand transparency are inherent hypocrites: transparocrites!

Activists like Corporate Europe Observatory’s Martin Pigeon, Le Monde’s Stéphane Foucart, US Right to Know’s Carey Gillam, IARC’s Kate Guyton and Members of the European Parliament like Bart Staes and Maria Heubuch have made a good living banging on about the need for transparency … for others … well … namely for people and organisations they don’t like and don’t trust. They are not themselves transparent. They are transparocrites.

As discussed in the last blog, transparency is not a tool to build trust; it is a trap to undermine trust. These mal-intended little activist zealots know this and would rather be accused of being a hypocrite than fall into their own transparency trap......To Read More.....

Observations From the Back Row

De Omnibus Dubitandum!

House's '80 communists' in caucus founded by socialist group
Aaron Klein
Republican Rep. Allen West 'stands by his words' - Rep. Allen West’s remark that up to 80 members of the House are communists was a reference to the membership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was founded by a U.S. socialist group, the Democratic Socialists of America. Some Caucus members still demonstrate a close working relationship with the socialist group West’s spokesman, Tim Edson, clarified in a statement today that West was referring to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in his talk with voters last night in Palm City, Fla. Edson declared that the Florida Republican “stands by his words.”

Court: TSA, not passengers, deserves privacy
by Bob Unruh
Rejects cases filed by Americans enraged over digital strip-searches - A federal appeals court has rejected claims by passengers and pilots that the TSA invaded their privacy and violated their rights by demanding pat-down inspections or full-body scans. The decision affirms a district court ruling from Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., who cited a “secret” order from the TSA as the reason he rejected the cases.
The government, insisting that the “secret” order contains “sensitive security information,” has refused to make public the document outlining the procedures… Institute attorneys had argued that since the TSA “order” has remained “secret,” there has been no opportunity for the public to comment on it, and “passengers and pilots are not only being deprived of their Fourth Amendment rights, but also their due process right to a fair hearing on their challenge to the secret TSA policy.”

“This ruling does not bode well for attempts to ensure transparency in government or efforts to safeguard Americans against virtual strip searches and other excessive groping of our bodies by government agents, especially when there’s no suspicion of wrongdoing,” ...“When civil liberties are tossed out the window – by government agents or by the courts – we all lose. No American should be forced to undergo a virtual strip search or be subjected to such excessive groping of the body as a matter of course in reporting to work or boarding an airplane when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing,” he said.

Few hybrid vehicle owners are repeat buyers
Hybrid sales have been surging as fuel prices take their latest run towards record levels. But the news might not be nearly as good as it would seem if a new study by R.L. Polk is any indication. Despite previous sales surges tied to past petroleum price hikes the U.S. hybrid vehicle market hasn’t been able to maintain its momentum and the Polk study apparently explains why. After living with the high-mileage technology, nearly two of three hybrid owners wind up returning to a more conventional vehicle when it’s time to trade in. “Having a hybrid in the product lineup can certainly give a brand a competitive edge when it comes to attracting new customers,” noted Brad Smith, director of Polk’s Loyalty Management Practice. “The repurchase rates of hybrid vehicles are an indication that consumers are continuing to seek alternative solutions to high fuel prices.”

12 Christians in Iran await verdicts after Easter Sunday apostasy trial
Twelve Christians stood trial Easter Sunday in Iran, where they were called “apostates” in a courtroom and tried on multiple charges, according to sources close to Iran’s Christian community. The Christians had been acquitted on the same charges, including “crimes against the order,” a year ago in Bandar Anzali, a city on the Caspian Sea. The group was first arrested when authorities found them drinking wine while taking communion, according to sources. “It ultimately illustrates that being a Christian is illegal in Iran. No matter how clear or how open a pastor and a church may be, Christians are being brought to trial just for being Christian,” said Jason DeMars, director of the Present Truth Ministries

Deadly Virus Increases Mosquito Blood Lust
Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
Mosquitoes are already blood-sucking machines, but new research indicates that the dengue virus, which the mosquitoes transmit to humans, makes them even thirstier for blood. The virus specifically turns on mosquito genes that make them hungrier for a blood meal; the activated genes also enhance mosquitoes' sense of smell, something that likely improves their feeding skills. The result is a mosquito better able to serve the virus by carrying it more efficiently to human hosts.

Malaria Mosquitoes Accurately Find Their Way to Smelly Feet
Malaria mosquitoes utilize CO2 from exhaled air to localize humans from afar. In the vicinity of their preferred host, they alter their course towards the human feet. Researcher Remco Suer discovered how female malaria mosquitoes use foot odors in the last meters to guide them to their favoured biting place. Suer, who is defending his doctoral thesis May 9 at Wageningen University, part of Wageningen UR, sees possibilities to disrupt the host seeking behaviour of the malaria mosquito.

The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting
Charles Q. Choi
Parasites are sly, using the cleverest of ploys to stay alive while destroying almost everything in their tracks. Parasites have no mercy. Some devour the insides of their hosts. Another replaces the victim’s tongue with its own body. Here are some of the goriest highlights of the moochers.

Malaria Drug Failing–Bring out the DDT
Wesley J. Smith
DDT is a very effective pesticide, that helped the USA eradicate malaria as a health problem in the American South. But Rachael Carson blamed it for many environmental woes, and it became discredited. Many, myself included, believe that millions of poor children and others in Africa and elsewhere have died because DDT was not more aggressively wielded in malaria areas to kill mosquitoes.

Green Environmentalist Wants Eco-Gulags For Climate Change Deniers
Finnish Environmentalist - "the state should enact draconian measures of discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression in order to make people comply with environmental dictates." Before the apologists start and say that this eco-fascist is a lone voice in the wilderness, not representative of the Green environmental movement and all the usual platitudes used to explain away these people; Google “Climate Skeptics should be punished” and consider the 7.4 million hits Google returns. The demands of the Church of Climatology and its supporters for the punishment of sacrilege does not just come from Finland, the calls are global, from people such as the British Royal Family’s Green simpleton Prince Charles, Obama Science Czar John Holdren and NASA junk scientist James Hansen, who took time off from making up climate data, to demand jail for Climate Change Deniers.

Congress flooded with calls to probe Obama
Thousands demanding answers about president's eligibility - Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he’s talked to members of Arizona’s congressional delegation about his Cold Case Posse investigation, which has found probable cause that there was fraud in the creation of the birth documentation for Barack Obama released by the White House in 2011. The investigators also believe that Obama’s Selective Service registration is a forgery, leading to the obvious question of what happens if Obama is ineligible for the presidency. But Arpaio’s effort to persuade federal lawmakers apparently has fallen on deaf ears….The signers then demand that Congress launch an investigation because “not to finally resolve this monumental and unprecedented constitutional issue would be intolerable, and would constitute the most extreme disrespect and contempt for the U.S. Constitution.”

Obama's advancing communism
Exclusive: Erik Rush urges Americans to beat the drum about BHO's 'Marxist agenda' - For 100 years, communists believed that America was the only thing standing in the way of communism truly “succeeding” internationally. That’s a convenient if transparent bit of propaganda, but one which has resulted in leftists remaining dedicated to the objective of bringing America down for decades. American communists, being the pathological narcissists they are, have convinced themselves that they’ll do it the “right way” this time. Having dismantled America, what then could they not accomplish?

Holder: Voter fraud 'does not really exist'
Comment comes as video reveals attorney general's own ballot in jeopardy
A video has been posted online that reveals Attorney General Eric Holder says voter fraud “does not really exist,” even as another video shows that a man was offered Holder’s own ballot in a Washington election.
The evidence of voter fraud issues was created by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, who released videos from three states that show his undercover colleagues easily gaining access to ballots for dead and living people and even registering to vote as Tim Tebow and Tom Brady

Why Dems hate voter ID
Exclusive: Joseph Farah says Obama, Holder have no problem with racial discrimination - It’s time to be very honest about why one political party – and one political party only – is dead-set against requiring voters to properly identify themselves at the polling place before casting their ballots. That party is the Democratic Party. And the reason it opposes voter ID is because it makes voter fraud easier when identification is not required. This should be self-evident to just about everyone – and actually is. Because every public opinion poll on the subject shows 70 to 80 percent of Americans in favor of voter ID laws. Republican voters favor it. Democratic voters favor it. Whites favor it. Blacks favor it. Hispanics favor it. Men favor it. Women favor it. Yet, the Democratic Party establishment and big majorities of Democratic members of Congress hate it…. So what the Democratic Party machine prefers is chaos at the polls, allowing virtually anyone to vote – citizen, non-citizen, legal resident, illegal resident, registered voters, non-registered voters, real voters, impostors.

Donna Laframboise: The WWF’s Vast Pool of Oil Money
The World Wildlife Fund’s first corporate sponsor was Shell oil – which continued to fund it for the next four decades. “Remember the headline in The Independent that pointed an accusing finger: Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers? And the Center for Media and Democracy’s claim thatOil Money Funds Climate Deniers and Attacks on Climate Scientists. And CleanTechnica’s automatic assumption that any politician who accept donations from oil companies is therefore a “shill for oil & gas interests”.



###

To Be Green is to Be Immoral

By Rich Kozlovich,

J. Johnson is has been a long time Green Notes reader from the British Isles. I would like to thank her for sending a number of articles to me, including this article by Jim Lacey, who decries the idea that the left, particularly the green left, occupies the moral high ground. He states clearly:

"The day has long since passed when the Right needs to concede the moral high ground to the Left on any issue. Yes, we may be able to win most of the great debates on the merits of our ideas; but as a wise man once explained to me:

"What I believe rationally is open to debate and change. What I believe emotionally cannot be changed by reason. An emotional belief can only be changed by an emotional argument.”

The Left has known this for decades. That is why the those on the left never misses a chance to brand those on the right with the most contemptible slurs they can think of. We need not descend into the gutter and trade personal insults, but we should never miss a chance to point out the vile results of the policies the Left is pushing. In every sphere of public debate, the moral high ground belongs to the Right. Claim it!”

It is gratifying to see someone support something I have been saying for some time. This is a war that is being fought on two battle fronts. We win the battle of facts; we always have. They win the battle of emotion; they always have. Emotion will trump facts and logic every time. In order to win the war we must win the battle of facts and the battle of emotion. Admittedly we are at an disadvantage because when your position is based on facts and logic you have to stand by those facts, and you have to wait for them to emerge before you can develop a logical argument.

When you win on emotion you aren’t necessarily concerned with logic or facts, nor do you have time constraints. This gives the greenies the ability to say anything that will advance their cause. Truth not withstanding! In short; they lie. The goal of the green movement is to get the “truth” out and they don’t care how many lies they have to tell to do it. Including their lies about pesticides.

They have falsely claimed for years that pesticides cause cancer based on high dose rodent testing. 

Dr. Bruce Ames defends the broad use of pesticides from a number of angles in this article and believes that the lack of pesticides is the real cause of cancer because of poor nutrition.  The theory is:  

"that, as a result of recurrent shortages of vitamins and minerals during evolution, natural selection developed a metabolic rebalancing response to shortage," he said. "Rebalancing favors vitamin- and mineral-dependent proteins needed for short-term survival and reproduction"

If one has any doubt that the green movement is devoid of any claim to the moral high ground please take note that Greenpeace has now turned forty years old and here is their legacy.  One of the writers outright asks why these people aren't charged with crimes against humanity. 

Please follow the links as their is so much more in these three articles. RK

###