From the Back Forty: Biden Celebrates as the Crazy Bubbles Over

The Biden bunch gathered – sans Harris – to celebrate four years of what they believe was a great success.

by Sarah Cowgill | Dec 1, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

Joe Biden (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

Editor’s Note: From the Back Forty is Liberty Nation’s longest running and most popular weekly column. 

The heartland celebrated Thanksgiving this past week with family and friends and found time to discuss the most current political ridiculousness among somber and sentimental moments and a few big surprises. Who knew Meta-man Mark Zuckerberg would sit and conspire for the future with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago? Or that everyone who’s anyone on the Biden team – notably without Kamala Harris – would happily celebrate a four-year reckoning. The not-so-surprising moment was when a Democratic state lawmaker sought a way out of the next four years without relocating to another country. That was the kicker.

Trump Caused This

When Trump clinched the temporary title of president-elect, New York State Assemblywoman Sen. Liz Krueger had a thought bubble over her head: A Northeastern secession from the union. New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut can just join Canada! “It’s not unreasonable to think outside of the box,” Krueger, chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee, told Politico with a straight face.

Jesse McColl in Plano, TX, asked: “Hmm. Where have we seen this before?”

But Krueger had a plan to shift the boundaries, although neither Canada nor the other three states on the list had been asked if they wanted any part of the idea:

“I know that Canada has basically said, ‘Yeah, we’re not letting you all in.’ As individuals, they basically made it clear. But that’s why I thought, ‘Oh, why do I have to leave this country? I love this country, and if Trump wins a second term, it’s not actually my fault or people in New York.’ So I thought I would suggest to Canada that instead of us all trying to illegally cross the border at night without them noticing, which is pretty hard because there’s a lot of us, that they should instead agree to let us be the southeast province, a new province of Canada, and I offered, even though I hadn’t gotten agreement from other states yet, that I thought New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, would combine and be a great new province as the southeast province of Canada.”

Living large in the Mississippi Delta, David Ming couldn’t stand the irony of an issue that had Harris losing soundly: Illegal immigration. “Funny how she made the comment about crossing the border illegally into Canada. What’s the difference between that and what’s going on at the southern border of our county? Party of inclusion and unity, my foot.”

Jill Rose in Mechanicsburg, OH, referred to US history and assumed Krueger was absent that year in Seventh grade, saying, “Didn’t we solve this issue in the 1860s?

“Being from the south, I can attest that you are not allowed to leave,” offered Tamera Zornes Anderson from Booneville, Arkansas.

Did Not See This Coming

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is optimistic about Trump’s second term and is rumored to be ready to “support the national renewal of America.” Didn’t we just censor the living daylights out of political speech with angry fact-checkers running amok on his platform? Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday to talk. There were early signs that the media giant was shifting gears near the time he publicly praised Trump for rising defiantly after being winged in the ear by an assassin’s bullet.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller hinted at a partnership of sorts during an episode of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News. “Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America, all around the world with this reform movement that Donald Trump is leading,” Miller told guest host Brian Kilmeade.

“Mark Zuckerberg, like so many business leaders, understands that President Trump is an agent of change, an agent of prosperity.” Yes, they’ve had a few talks, Trump and Zuck. “Mark, obviously, he has his own interests, and he has his own company, and he has his own agenda. But he’s made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under President Trump’s leadership.”

Rick Metz in Warren, OH, is not too sure about this: “Either he had a Jesus moment and got some sense – which is a great thing – or sumthin’s shady, we will see. Don’t trust him yet. If he’s serious about change, prove it…all that fact-check garbage has to go immediately; let people think for themselves.”

Vicki K Brasseaux in Louisiana was crystal clear on her perception of Zuck: “Talk about a suppository type of man. Trust not a person who can’t stand for one thing but falls for everything. Zuckerberg is only watching out for his behind.”

Biden at a Garden Party

Near the South Lawn fountain, surrounded by his allies, Joe Biden and his family enjoyed a three-course supper, wearing black tie attire to celebrate their final Thanksgiving in the White House. They toasted the man, myth, and legend and congratulated each other on a job well done – even though three weeks prior, the nation delivered a devastating blow to Joe at the ballot box, re-electing his old nemesis rather than his chosen successor.

LN News: Now on Roku and Fire

The president said during his opening remarks: “One thing I’ve always believed about public service and especially the presidency is the importance of asking ourselves, ‘Have we left the country in better shape than we found it?'”

“And tonight, I can say with all my heart the answer to that question is a resounding ‘yes,’ because of you,” he continued. The royal ‘you’ included Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, sitting with former Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. The selfy-flashes must have been blinding.

But guess who was not there to bask in the lovefest? That would be Harris, the aforementioned chosen successor who decided to consider her options in California. As Mark Yaske in Lakewood, OH, mused: “The last party on the Titanic.”

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Read More From Sarah Cowgill National Columnist

Climate and energy fantasy and tyranny

Models, myths and misinformation on climate drive models, myths and misinformation on energy

Paul Driessen

It’s mystifying and terrifying that our lives, livelihoods and living standards are increasingly dictated by activist, political, bureaucratic, academic and media ruling elites, who disseminate theoretical nonsense, calculated myths and outright disinformation.

Not only on pronouns, gender and immigration – but on climate change ... and energy, the foundation of modern civilization and life spans.

We’re constantly told the world will plunge into an existential climate cataclysm if average planetary temperatures rise another few tenths of a degree, due to using fossil fuels for reliable, affordable energy, raw materials for over 6,000 vital products, and lifting billions out of poverty, disease and early death.

Climate alarmism implicitly assumes Earth’s climate was stable until coal, oil and gas emissions knocked it off kilter ... and would be stable again if people stopped using fossil fuels.

In the real world, climate has changed numerous times, often dramatically, sometimes catastrophically, and always naturally. Multiple ice ages and interglacial periods, Roman and Medieval warm periods, a Little Ice Age, major floods, droughts and dust bowls all actually happened – long before fossil fuels.

Data for tornados, hurricanes and other extreme weather events prove they are not getting more frequent or intense. You might argue that Harvey and Irma marked a sudden increase in major hurricanes in 2017 – but that’s only because after Wilma there’d been a record twelve years of zero Category 3-5 hurricanes.

We need to ignore the fear-mongering, look at actual historic records, and recognize that more dangerous, unprecedented calamities upward trends simply aren’t there. We need to insist that alarmists distinguish and quantify human influences versus natural forces for recent temperature, climate and weather events – and show when, where and how human activities replaced natural forces. They haven’t done so.

The only place manmade temperature and climate catastrophes exist is in Michael Mann and other GIGO computer models. These climate models are worthless for policymaking because they aren’t verified by actual measurements, don’t account for urban heat island effects, and cannot incorporate the vast scale and complexity of atmospheric, planetary and galactic forces that determine Earth’s climate.

In reality, people and planet are threatened far more by global cooling than warming. Even a couple degrees drop in average global temperatures would drastically reduce growing seasons, arable land, plant growth, wildlife habitats and agricultural output – especially if it’s accompanied by reductions in plant-fertilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Plants, animals and people would face starvation.

We’re also told ruling elites could prevent this imagined crisis by switching us to wind, solar and battery power. (They also want to eliminate cows and modern agriculture, over misplaced concerns about methane and fertilizer, but that’s anudder discussion.)

Build a coal, gas or nuclear power plant – and unless governments shut it down or cut off fuel supplies, the plant provides plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity nearly 24/7/365 for decades. Build a massive sprawling wind or solar installation, and you have to back up every kilowatt with coal, gas or nuclear power – or with millions of huge batteries – for every windless, sunless period.

The economic and ecological effects would be ruinous.

Coal, gas and nuclear plants can be built close to electricity-intensive urban centers. Tens of thousands of wind turbines and billions of solar panels must go where there’s good wind and sunshine, far from urban areas, connected by high voltage transmission lines. In fact, for Net Zero, says the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world would need 50,000,000 miles of new and upgraded transmission lines by 2040!

All those “clean, green, renewable, sustainable, affordable” wind, solar and battery systems, backup generators, transmission lines and electric vehicles would require millions of tons of iron, copper, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, lithium, concrete, plastics and numerous other metals and minerals.

Onshore wind turbines require nine times more materials per megawatt – and offshore turbines need fourteen times more – than a combined-cycle natural gas power plant, the IEA calculates. Solar panels and EVs have the same problem.

To get these materials, billions of tons of overlying rock must be removed to reach billions of tons of ores – which then must be processed in huge industrial facilities that use mercury and toxic chemicals ... emit vast quantities of greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants ... and are powered by coal or natural gas. Many components for these “green” technologies are derived from oil and natural gas.

US and other Western facilities control and recycle these pollutants. Chinese and Russian facilities pay little attention to air and water pollution, workplace safety, or fossil fuel use, efficiency and emissions – yet they supply over 80% of “renewable” energy raw materials, because the West increasingly bans mining and processing and makes energy prohibitively expensive to operate mines and factories.

Pseudo-renewable energy worldwide would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars, would have to be subsidized by trillions of taxpayer dollars, and would dramatically increase electricity rates.

Electric vehicle, appliance and heating mandates would double or triple all these infrastructure, materials, mining and land use requirements, ecological impacts and costs.

American residential electricity prices in 2023 ranged from 10.4¢ per kilowatt-hour (Idaho) to 28.4¢ per kWh (California). British families paid 47¢ per kWh! UK factories and businesses paid up to three times what their US counterparts did. German families, factories and businesses are in the same capsizing boat.

But EU industrial leaders say energy prices must continue rising, to cover the soaring costs of the “energy transition.” If they don’t, factories, jobs and emissions will move overseas. But if they do, families will freeze jobless in the dark.

What many call the Climate Industrial Complex has a monumental stake in perpetuating this situation. Collectively, its members have incredible power, control much of government and education, hold enormous financial stakes in green tech subsidies, and often censor contrarian viewpoints.

Just as ominous, if it becomes clear that the Brave New World of Net Zero Energy cannot provide sufficient affordable electricity and other necessities for modern industries, healthcare and living standards, two-thirds of America’s ruling elites favor food and energy rationing to combat climate change and retain their anti-capitalism, anti-growth agenda. It’s likely the same in Europe and Canada.

The Biden Administration and other governments are already dictating the kinds of vehicles we can drive and what appliances and heating systems we can use. They’re already exploring ways to limit the kind and size of homes we can live in, how warm and cool we can keep them, how often we can travel by air, the kinds and amounts of meat we can eat, and many other aspects of our lives.

Meanwhile, China, India, Indonesia and dozens of other countries are building hundreds of coal and gas generating units – further underscoring the insanity and futility of trying to control energy sources, quantities and emissions.

This is what America’s 2024 state and national elections are about – and elections in Europe, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The longer these elites remain in power, the more our liberties, lives and living standards will resemble life a century ago under authoritarian regimes. Vote accordingly.

Paul Driessen is a senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environmental, and human rights issues.

What Passes For A "Demonstration Project" Among Our Government Geniuses

October 19, 2023/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian

A couple of days ago, a Substack called Doomberg had a piece titled “False Utopia.” The piece featured a discussion of a post of mine from February 2023 with the title “We Must Demand A Demonstration Project Of A Mainly Renewables-Based Electrical Grid.” My post argued that we should demand a demonstration project of a mainly renewables-based electrical grid that would include all the key elements — generation mainly from solar and wind, plus sufficient back-up or storage to make the whole thing work for the long term without involvement of the evil fossil fuels, plus any other necessary elements to make the whole thing work.

The Doomberg guys called my post “brilliant,” which is very flattering. I would not say it was brilliant, but only that it says obvious things that for some reason few other people are saying. Among the people who will definitely not mention the need for an all-element fossil-fuel-free renewable grid demonstration project are government officials and green energy advocates. The reasons they won’t mention this need could be:

1. They are not bright enough to understand the subject, or 
2. Their understanding is impaired because they are too blinded by religious fervor to “save the planet,” or
3. They are intentionally deceiving the public to make money or fame or career advancement for themselves. 
4. Or it could be all three!

Meanwhile though, the government “net zero” or “Green New Deal” (or whatever they are currently called) promotional sites are full of talk of things they call demonstration projects. So are they responding to my demand? The opposite. All of what they call demonstration projects follow a common approach, which is only to attempt to demonstrate various portions of the full system that would be needed to provide reliable 24/7/365 electricity from predominantly wind and solar generation.

Consider for instance the latest news on energy storage. A few days ago on October 13, the Department of Energy announced big new grants and subsidies for a series of what they call “hydrogen hubs.” Here is a report from E&E News Energy Wire. Excerpt:

The Department of Energy on Friday announced seven projects that will receive $7 billion to build landmark hydrogen hubs, delivering a major boost to a nascent U.S. industry. The long-awaited move is a key piece of the Biden administration’s climate agenda. On Friday, the White House said it expects the DOE funding to help cut 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, roughly equivalent to removing 5.5 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road each year. “With this historic investment, the Biden-Harris administration is laying the foundation for a new, American-led industry that will propel the global clean energy transition,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

According to this further piece from Energy Wire on August 21, the Biden Administration has set a goal of having the U.S. produce 10 million metric tons of “green” hydrogen (by electrolysis from water) by 2030. The E&E piece states that the massive funding for “hydrogen hubs” is coming from a part of the Energy Department called the “Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations,” and also cites the Department as calling the hydrogen hubs “demonstrations.” So this must be the demonstration project we are calling for!

Not quite:

DOE envisions the hydrogen hubs as a demonstration of production, storage, transport and consumption.

I guess at least this is intended to be a demonstration of more than just production of the hydrogen. But still, they are clearly leaving out the critical piece of the puzzle, which is the demonstration of how much of this hydrogen, and capacity to make more of it, will be needed, and at what cost, to get the country — or even some small town — through a full year (or two or five) without need for fossil fuel backup. That completely obvious elephant is not part of this multi-billion dollar “demonstration.”

And DOE is not putting all of its energy storage eggs in the hydrogen basket. They separately have another big bucks effort called the “Long Duration Storage Shot” that is throwing bucketsful of cash at various research efforts into batteries. But the battery efforts are even farther removed from any relevant demonstration project. From DOE’s opening webpage describing that initiative (with a date of September 2021):

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade. Achieving the Energy Earthshots will help America tackle the toughest remaining barriers to addressing the climate crisis, and more quickly reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 while creating good-paying union jobs and growing the clean energy economy. . . . The Long Duration Storage Shot establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade.

On September 22, 2023 the Administration announced some $325 million for “15 projects across 17 states and one tribal nation” to “accelerate the development” of these “long duration” battery technologies. The $325 million may seem rather paltry compared to the $7 billion just thrown at the hydrogen hub thing last week; but don’t worry, they have many billions more to spread around on this over the coming months.

So are these battery technologies, or any one of them, even a potential solution to the problem of making a mostly wind/solar electricity grid work without fossil fuel backup? Again, you will not find any mention at those links, or at other government or advocate sites discussing the issue of how many of these batteries would be necessary and at what cost to actually fully back up a predominantly wind/solar grid and make it into a functional 24/7/365 electricity system. Indeed, you will not find any mention at any such sites of the fundamental problem with all batteries as the means to back up an intermittently-supplied grid, as identified in the big (and otherwise badly flawed) Royal Society energy storage report that came out in September. 

That problem is that stored energy as the backup mechanism entails engineering requirements that no battery can ever meet. Those include: holding at least several months of average usage, being capable of keeping that energy in storage for years in anticipation of worst-case once every multiple decades wind “droughts,” and being capable of discharging over the course of months if not a full year. The “10+ hours of duration” mentioned as the goal of the Energy Department’s battery program is almost trivial against the real engineering requirements.

Hydrogen, by contrast, has the theoretical capability of meeting all of those engineering requirement. However, there are many elements that don’t currently exist that would be needed to make a fully-functioning wind/solar/hydrogen storage 24/7/365 electricity grid. These include not just the electrolyzers, but also storage for huge amounts of hydrogen (underground caverns?), a full collection of thermal power plants capable of meeting peak demand burning pure hydrogen, and a transport system (pipelines?) to take the hydrogen from the electrolyzers to the storage caverns and then on to the power plants.

I could do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on this to get a rough idea as to cost, which would come to a multiple (not necessarily a huge one, but nonetheless a multiple) of what our current electricity system costs. But I’m not going to do it. The reason I’m not going to do it is that there as an obvious fact that tells you all you need to know, which is that no one in the country is spending their own private money to build out this system. They are all waiting for the government handouts. If this system could be built profitably at a cost competitive with what we have, there would be investors falling all over themselves to build it. When Thomas Edison built his first electricity plant, he did not go to the government for handouts to build it.

Because this is all a fantasy kept alive by government handouts, as soon as the handouts go away or even slow down, the whole thing will dry up and fade away.

Trying To Head Off New York's Total Self-Destruction

March 23, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

It’s budget time in Albany. In recent years, the custom has come to be that most if not all important policy issues for the year get considered as part of the annual budget, even if they aren’t germane to that subject. So everything is on the table. The Governor and Legislature, both in control of progressive Democrats, are competing to see who can come up with the most destructive proposals to add to the mix. The basic mind-set of all the elected officials is that if only we raise enough tax money and spend it on enough handouts to favored constituencies, we can shortly achieve nirvana and utopia.

There is exactly one conservative-side think tank in New York State, known as the Empire Center, that makes a systematic effort to put forth a contrary agenda. The Empire Center is just out with a big Report called Next New York, with a series of chapters setting out counter-proposals in the major policy areas: public safety, K-12 education, Medicaid and healthcare, energy, transportation and transit, housing, and so forth. Today the Empire Center held a conference, which I attended, in connection with the release of the Report.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll try to cover several of the subjects from the Report. For today, I’ll start with my favorite, energy policy. The energy section of the Report, titled “Heading off New York’s Home-Made Energy Crisis,” begins at page 69, and was written by the Empire Center’s energy guru, James Hanley.

I guess it’s fair to say at this point that we do have an “energy crisis” in New York, but the key word is “home-made.” Everything about energy in New York that could remotely be called a “crisis” is entirely the creation of our politicians. There is no rational reason why energy policy should even be a significant political issue in New York. We have a perfectly good, functional energy system. By far the larger part of it — the non-electrified part, including nearly all transportation, industry, agriculture, and home heat outside the large cities — came into being through private initiative and works with little to no input or interference from politicians and bureaucrats. The other, smaller part — the electrified portion plus urban natural gas distribution — has historically been subject to substantial government regulation, but until quite recently the whole point of the regulation was only to prevent the monopoly utilities from raising their rates to a point of overcharging the customers.

Then our politicians got the idea that there was an imperative to address and solve “climate change” through the device of a politically-directed total re-do of the energy system into something that has never previously been tried nor proven to work. (Don’t get me started on the question of how a place like New York, with a fraction of 1% of world greenhouse gas emissions, is supposed to be able to affect “climate change” by using less fossil fuels, when the places that emit the large majority of world GHGs, like China and India, are adding new coal power plants as fast as they can build them.).

At pages 69-75 of the Report, Hanley provides a brief history of how this subject of reducing GHG emissions got a toe-hold in New York and then rapidly metastasized. Governors Pataki and Paterson began the game in the 90s and 00s, with things like a “renewable portfolio standard” and joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (2005). Andrew Cuomo (first elected Governor in 2010) ramped things up by blocking fracking in the extensive Marcellus Shale that underlies a large part of the state, and by having his environmental bureaucrats block natural gas pipelines on bogus “water quality” concerns. But the full suppression of fossil fuels and the wind/solar mania did not really take full control in New York until 2019, when the progressive Democrats finally took both houses of the State Legislature. They used that control to pass something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which was then signed by Cuomo.

Suddenly, we are on a crash program to get rid of all fossil fuels, electrify everything, and depend completely on the wind and sun for the generation of our energy. Hanley:

The CLCPA’s overarching goal is an 85 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a net-zero state economy by 2050. Intermediate steps on the way include 6,000 megawatts of installed solar and 185 trillion BTU savings in energy efficiency by 2025, 70 percent renewable energy production and 3,000 megawatts of battery storage by 2030, 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind production by 2035 and 100 percent zero-emissions electricity production by 2040.

I believe that I have used terms like “ridiculous,” “preposterous,” “incompetent,” and “irresponsible” to characterize the legally-mandated goals to which the CLCPA commits our state. Hanley is much more gentle in his use of words:

To say the CLCPA’s goals are ambitious is an understatement, and yet they will not be adequate to provide the state with sufficient clean energy to ensure the continuing reliability of the electrical grid.

One place where Hanley makes a real contribution to the debate is by producing a chart, based on data from the federal Energy Information Administration and Department of Energy, that makes the absurdity of the CLCPA goals apparent:

In the eleven years from 2010 to 2020, the percent of New York’s electricity coming from “renewables” inched up from about 22% to about 28%. But most of that 6% increase came from that blue line, “hydro,” aka almost entirely the Niagara Falls power plant, going from about 18% to about 22% of state electricity production. Meanwhile, in that 11 year period when everyone was starting to obsess about wind and solar and federal subsidies ramped up dramatically, the percent of electricity from wind (the orange line near the bottom of the graph) went all the way from about 2% to about 4%. And the percent from solar remained a barely-perceptible 1% or so, represented by a gray line that is so close to the x-axis of the graph that you can barely see it next to the brown line representing wood.

And then supposedly the percent of electricity from renewables takes off like the blade of a hockey stick in 2020 and gets to 70% by 2030. Unmentioned is that we don’t have another Niagara Falls. Therefore this whole increase now has to come from wind and solar. Oh, and we’re already two years in since the data in Hanley’s graph. How much of this has happened so far? Almost none.

Meanwhile the consumption of electricity is supposedly going to double or so, due to the electrification of automobiles and home heating.

I’ll throw in a few figures from research of my own to further illustrate the absurdity. According to EIA data here, New York’s electricity consumption in 2021 was 141,423,778 MWh. If that doubles from electrification of automobiles and heating, then we’ll need about 280 million MWh in a year. Per Hanley’s summary of the CLCPA above, the state authorities are calling for adding 6000 MW of solar and 9000 MW of offshore wind by 2035. At highly optimistic capacity factors of 25% for solar and 40% for wind, here’s what that will get you:

6000 x 0.25 x 8760 + 9000 x 0.40 x 8760 = 44,676,000 MWh

In other words, as ambitious as the plans for wind and solar may be, even if all gets built this will provide less than a sixth of the electricity that will be needed. And with wind and solar generation, such electricity as gets generated will come at random times that could include long weeks of no wind and almost no sun in the dead of winter.

But meanwhile they are proceeding apace to shut down the existing natural gas capacity.

Hanley concludes his section of the Report with a series of highly sensible recommendations, like ending the fracking ban, ending the pipeline moratorium, and scaling back renewable energy subsidies and tax credits. I actually think we will likely be better off going full speed ahead on the innumerate nonsense and running hard into the green energy wall.

 

The Deep State’s Crumbling Fantasies

Exclusive: Craige McMillan asserts God is shifting 'back into Old Testament mode'

 

By Craige McMillan October 28, 2022 

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a sensible man who builds his house on the rock. Down came the rain and up came the floods, while the winds blew and roared upon that house – and it did not fall because its foundations were on the rock" (Matthew 7:24 Phillips).

Hubris doesn't seem to be a problem amongst the secular-prone "intellectual" world that has governed America for ages. But then, why would it be?They have had free rein in directing America's thought processes. Public "education" was designed to indoctrinate leftist ideas into the nation's population at an early age.

• Colleges and universities went from "tenure" to protect free thought, to "tenure" to enforce groupthink among the faculty.
• Big Tech required a well-indoctrinated workforce to code, but proved unable to comprehend intellectual diversity.
• Government became the Deep State's god, because they could use it to control people they disagreed with.
• Fake elections took until now to be exposed, another Big Tech gift to the nation.

I guess they liked the Bible quote, "Start children off in the way they should go and even when they are old they will not turn from it" (Proverbs 22:6 NIV)..................To Read More.....

The Complete and Total Failure of the Democrat’ Sham Jan. 6 Committee

 

by Washington Examiner October 21, 2022

If you want to see just how out of touch with reality the Democratic Party has gotten itself over the Jan. 6 riot, look no further than former FBI agent Peter Strzok. The adulterous and unethical FBI agent told MSNBC this week, “If you look at the scale in terms of the threat to democracy — I mean, 9/11 was a tragedy. We lost thousands of lives in a horrific way that we still mourn to this day, but when you look at something that is an attack on democracy, something that could actually bring about a fundamental change to American governance as we understand it, 9/11 is nothing compared to January 6.”

So a protest that turned into a riot in which one rioter was killed by police is a very big deal compared to the mere intentional murder of thousands of innocent Americans. Got it.  Democrats think 9/11 is “nothing” compared to Jan. 6. No wonder their party is cruising toward an epic beating this November.

If you think Strzok is alone in his Jan. 6 delusions, just look at Harvard University’s latest poll asking voters to identify what are the “most important issues of the day.” Republicans said immigration (37%), inflation (24%), and jobs (21%). The nation as a whole said inflation (37%), jobs (29%), and immigration (23%). Pretty much the same..........To Read More...

Leftism Has No Boundaries and is Insane!

By Rich Kozlovich

One thing that should be obvious to the most casual observer is the left is insane.  They have no boundaries, they're arrogant, ignorant and arrogant about their ignorance virtually reveling in their stupidity and lack of moral foundation, with no respect for anyone, or anything they disprove of, including others on the left as we've seen with AOC.  

On Oct. 14, 2022 J.D. Rucker published this piece, Brainwashed Climate Lunatics Throw Tomato Soup on Van Gogh’s Favorite Painting, saying:

In the latest climate change “activism” that makes absolutely no sense, a couple of loonies throw Heinz tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” before gluing themselves to the wall.

If you want to see a demonstration of their stupidity and arrogance, make sure to watch the video as I can't duplicate it here. The painting was covered with glass so it wasn't damaged, and I was never impressed with Vincent van Gogh, as an artist or a person, but so what, what's that have to do with this outrageous behavior? 

There are millions who love his work, and this piece is worth over 85 million Euros, about 82 or 83 million dollars, and they believed they had the right to try and destroy it in the name of "climate change".  Now if they were protesting lousy art, at least that would be a rational explanation, totally unjustified and deserving serious punishment, but at least that would be a rational explanation.  But climate change?  

Then we have Climate protesters glue themselves to John Constable masterpiece, and although the painting wasn't damaged, it's not any stretch of the imagination to see it happening in the future.  Leftists are perpetrators of violence and disharmony.  They're really good at one thing. Destroying stable societies and replacing them with insane tyrannies.  That's history and that history is incontestable. 

Silvio Canto on October 15, 2022 asks, What did Van Gogh do? saying:  

It was no "Starry, starry night Paint your palette blue and gray" for Vincent Van Gogh in London.   Instead, Van Gogh got some soup:.............Publicity stunts?  Well, I'm glad that we are calling a spade a spade. The story gets more interesting because apparently the duo did it to save the planet.  Yes, another couple of young people on a mission or whatever:..........What's more important?   Let me tell these clowns what's important.  You need to respect the law, private, or public property and the people who enjoy watching these art pieces.  They are people, too.....Maybe we should throw some tomato soup on the teachers brainwashing these young people.

We probably should thank these misfits, since the more they do these kind of insane things the more they turn society off on their message.  A message filled with false narratives, fake science, and scientific corruption, and being carried by the young and stupid!  All suffering from a mental disorder I call The Thunberg Syndrome.

Reality Cannot Penetrate Into The Fantasy World Of Climate Campaigners

April 05, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

It was only a few weeks ago when the UN’s International Energy Agency issued its Report on “CO2 Emissions in 2021.” (The Report does not bear a precise date, but only “March 2022.”) I covered the IEA’s Report in my previous post a few days ago. The Report gives detail as to the obvious fact that world CO2 emissions, after a downward blip in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, have resumed their rapid increase, mostly attributable to massive deployment of coal-fired electricity generation resources in large-population developing countries like China and India.

In any rational world, this Report would have to have dashed any remaining dreams of climate campaigners that overall world CO2 emissions would see anything but large ongoing increases for the foreseeable future. The climate-obsessed jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe already represent only a shrinking minority of world energy consumption, headed for insignificance as the large-population countries of the developing world join the fossil fuel age. For example, why would a small-population jurisdiction like New York — with about 20 million people, compared to about 2.8 billion for the combination of China and India, and with existing fossil-fuel electricity generation capacity of about 25 GW — struggle to reduce its fossil-fueled electricity generation by, say, one GW per year, when China alone is adding 38 GW of coal-fired power plants this year, and another 47 GW next year, with hundreds more gigawatts worth of coal plants already in the pipeline?

The answer is that reality just can’t penetrate into the fantasy world of the climate campaigners.

To prove my point, another UN agency, the IPCC, came out just yesterday with its own Report with the title “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” This is the output of the IPCC’s so-called Working Group III, the portion of the “AR6” assessment report that deals with “mitigation” strategies. In the aggregate, this new Report has some 3000 pages. For those without the tolerance to wade through that kind of volume, here is the Summary for Policy Makers; and here is the press release; and here is a piece over at Bloomberg titled “Five Takeaways from the UN’s Latest 3,000-Page Climate Report.”

Let’s start with the press release. The headline is “The evidence is clear: the time for action is now. We can halve emissions by 2030.” A few pithy excerpts:

Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach. However, there is increasing evidence of climate action, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today. . . . “We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries. There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

OK guys, how exactly are you going to “halve emissions by 2030” with China going all-out to build new coal plants on a scale far beyond anything the world has ever seen, and India (with population almost as large as China) not far behind, and the rest of Asia and all of Africa waiting in the wings? You will not find the answer. Go through the press release and the SPM and all you find is studious avoidance of any mention of the development plans of places like China and India. Even the names “China” and “India” appear to be on some kind of taboo list. For example, here from the SPM is a chart of total world GHG emission since 1990:

Eastern Asia? I wonder who that could be.

As you would expect from these people, there is the usual assertion, based on the completely deceptive “levelized costs,” that wind and solar electricity generation are now as cheap or cheaper than generation by fossil fuels. Four “renewable” technologies are considered: onshore wind, offshore wind, solar photovoltaic, and concentrated solar. From page 14 of the SPM:

In 2020, the levelised costs of energy (LCOE) of the four renewable energy technologies could compete with fossil fuels in many places. . . . LCOE . . . includes installation, capital, operations, and maintenance costs per MWh of electricity produced. The literature uses LCOE because it allows consistent comparisons of cost trends across a diverse set of energy technologies to be made.

The SPM does mention that LCOE “does not include grid integration costs,” but fails to note that those are almost certainly a large multiple of what is included in the LCOE measure.

So perhaps you might think, this can’t possibly be fooling anybody. If so, you are not understanding the depths of ignorance and incompetence that pervade our governing class here in New York. As I previously reported back in December, our City Council had just passed a new local law banning any new building from using natural gas for heat or cooking starting in 2024 for smaller buildings and 2027 for larger. That was just the City, but now the entire State wants to get in on the game. From Reuters yesterday:

New York Governor Kathy Hochul will soon release a budget that likely will include a plan to make New York the first state to ban natural gas and other fossil fuels in new construction, according to Food & Water Watch and other environmental groups. . . . In her State of the State address in January, Hochul committed to "zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions for new construction no later than 2027."

I can’t wait until the people finally catch on to what their betters have in store for them.

 

Can New York Arrest Donald Trump?

May 22, 2021 By Jonathon Moseley 

Leftists are fantasizing about Donald Trump being arrested, booked, and put on trial. Well, they are fantasizing about that…again. The New York State Attorney General’s investigation of the Trump Organization is now “no longer purely civil in nature,” Fabien Levy, the spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James, confirmed to Politico by email. “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan D.A. We have no additional comment at this time.”

It is important for political observers, cowardly-lion Republicans, patriots, and activists to know what is happening here. More ammunition and detail are needed to arm the reader properly for this latest tempest in a teapot being sold as a hurricane.

Leftists are so enthusiastic about Trump’s imminent arrest that the government of Palm Beach County is making plans to arrest the former President at his Mar-a-Lago resort in high-society Palm Beach, Florida. According to Politico, ...........Do sensible people think that local County officials sit around making plans for something that might happen and that others would handle? For crimes like these, an accused might turn himself in or show up in court.

If New York state issued an indictment, arresting Trump would require opening a case in Florida with its governor, Ron DeSantis, executing the indictment through the state’s police. The Palm Beach County government would not be involved. The Secret Service would handle surrounding events...........

First, New York is investigating “The Trump Organization” (“TTO”), a business, not Donald Trump, the individual. Companies can be charged with crimes. Therefore, is Donald J. Trump going to be arrested? No. 

Second, what does it mean that the investigation is now a “criminal” probe? Nothing. At most, it means that some people from different offices down the hall have been called in and asked “Well, what do you make of this?” 

Third, will New York prosecutors indict The Trump Organization? Yes. Everything I hear says they’re crazy up there. New York’s legal system was woke before anyone knew the word. Because it is New York, where the grand jury and the petit (trial) jury are drawn from the mostly Democrat voters, and the prosecutors and judges are all soaked in just one political party, it is likely that they will indict TTO. No one can stop them. 

Fourth, is this indictment dangerous? Probably not. There will be a trial that the prosecutors will lose at the end (which may be a year or two down the road). 

 Fifth, does it matter? No. Three words: Statute of limitations...........To Read More....

 

Equality, Efficiency, and Trade

May 21, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

When I was first learning about economics in the 1970s and 1980s, Arthur Okun’s equality-efficiency tradeoff was part of just about any discussion of public policy.

Folks on the left acknowledged that their policies would lead to less prosperity, but they argued that result was acceptable because the benefits of a more-equal society would offset the cost of reduced economic output.

Needless to say, there were vigorous debates about how much additional equality could be achieved and how much economic damage might be caused by any particular policy, but few if any economists pretended that more government was actually good for growth.

Unfortunately, that has changed. A growing number of people on the left (especially those with tax-free jobs at international bureaucracies) now claim that bigger government actually is the way to get more growth.

Here’s their theory.

This illogical hypothesis is so absurd and so anti-empirical that I now get excited when I find economists who still use Okun’s framework when analyzing various reforms.

For instance, there is a new study from the European Central Bank that looks at whether a pro-growth policy (free trade) leads to less equality.

The working paper, authored by Roland Beck, Virginia Di Nino, and Livio Stracca, specifically measures the impact of membership in so-called “globalisation clubs.”

The mounting criticisms against globalisation…have sparked a lively debate about whether the narrative of the benefits of free trade and capital flows is still intact. …In this paper, we reconsider the effects of globalisation on income and inequality studying the consequences of quasi-natural experiments like accessions to “Globalisation Clubs”. …Our list of Globalisation Clubs includes the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which all require their members to pursue some form of either liberal trade or investment policies or a combination of both. …The main purpose of our study is to shed light on the hypothesis that globalisation leads to an efficiency-equity trade-off which is a fundamental concern in economics dating at least back to Okun (1975). In other words, is the hypothesis that globalisation increases economic efficiency to the detriment of cohesion and equality supported by the data?

Here are the key results.

The analysis leads to three main findings. First, with the exception of financial liberalisation we find that all our “globalisation shocks” lead to a significant increase in trade openness – a prerequisite for considering them globalisation shocks in the first place. Second, the effects on per capita income are mixed; positive for WTO accessions and trade openness shocks, insignificant for OECD accessions and even negative for EU accessions and financial liberalisations. …Finally, we find little evidence that globalisation shocks lead to more inequality. The Gini coefficients (market and net) tend not to change or even to fall, and the labour share of income to be unchanged or even rise, in the wake of a globalisation shock.Taken together, our results point to mostly positive effects for countries following globalisation shocks and challenge the view that globalisation is necessarily an efficiency-equity trade-off.

I’m not surprised by these findings.

There’s no reason to think that OECD membership will lead to better policy and there are good reasons to think EU membership might push policy in the wrong direction.

The WTO, by contrast, has a good track record of trade liberalization. So these results from the study make sense.

The primary takeaway from this research is that free trade is good for prosperity. Not only does it lead to more growth, but low-income people enjoy above-average gains.

Though I would argue that free trade would be just as desirable if rich people were the ones who enjoyed above-average gains. The key point is that all groups benefit when there are reforms to shrink the size and scope of government, and we shouldn’t get worked up if some people benefit more than others.

But there’s a secondary takeaway. This European Central Bank study also is an example of methodologically sound research (i.e., recognizing that more government is not a free lunch).

P.S. While I applaud the honesty of left-leaning economists who use Okun’s framework, that doesn’t stop me from criticizing some of their crazy conclusions.

Ever Deeper And Deeper Into "Climate" Fantasy

April 24, 2021/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

It never ceases to amaze me how the very mention of the word “climate” causes people to lose all touch with their rational faculties. And of course I’m not talking here just about the ordinary man on the street, but also, indeed especially, about our elected leaders and government functionaries.

The latest example is President Biden’s pledge, issued at his “World Climate Summit” on April 22, to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 - 52% from the levels of 2005, and to do so by 2030. In my last post a couple of days ago, I remarked that “Biden himself has absolutely no idea how this might be accomplished. And indeed it will not be accomplished.” Those things are certainly true, but also fail to do full justice to the extent to which our President and his handlers have now left the real world and gone off into total fantasy.

Back in 2016, when Barack Obama was President and it was time to go along (or not) with the Paris Climate Agreement, the idea still existed in the government that pledges to reduce GHG emissions ought to bear some relationship to reality. The pledge made by Obama on behalf of the U.S. in the Paris Agreement was to reduce GHG emissions by 26 - 28% from the 2005 level, and to do so by 2026. In 2016, U.S. GHG emissions were already down by more than 12% from the 2005 level, from 7,423.0 MMT CO2e in 2005 to 6520.3 MMT CO2e in 2016, according to the EPA’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (see chart at pages ES 7-9); and that had been with very minimal coercive input from the government. If a 12% reduction could be achieved in the first 11 years, then a further 14% reduction in another 10 years would not be wildly out of line.

Indeed, it appeared that Obama’s people had the already-existing gradual pace of decline in mind when they made their commitment. Much of the decline in GHG emissions from 2005 to 2016 came about from the fracking revolution, and accompanying substitution of (lower emissions) natural gas for (higher emissions) coal; and most of the rest resulted from gradual efficiency improvements in energy usage throughout the economy. It would not have been crazy in 2016 to expect those things to continue at roughly the same pace.

But let’s consider where we are now. GHG emissions for 2019 were 6,558.3 MMT CO2e, which was actually up from 2016. Emissions for 2020 are said to have been down about 10% from 2019, but almost entirely due to steep declines in driving and air travel due to the pandemic. Those emissions from transport almost certainly will come back, perhaps not all right away, but almost all within a couple of years, if indeed there are not increases.

Even with the 10% decline in emissions in 2020, we’re down only about 20% from 2005. If you believe that travel will shortly come back to pre-pandemic levels, we will then be down only about 10% from 2005. Biden’s pledge is a 50% reduction from 2005, so something in the range of 30 - 40% additional in just nine years. And note that Biden is not just talking about the electricity sector (only about 30% of emissions), but about things like transportation (driving and flying), home heating, agriculture and industry that today almost completely depend on fossil fuels.

In a piece at Substack on April 22, Roger Pielke, Jr., gives an idea of what Biden’s pledge would mean in the real world.

Net greenhouse gas emissions were 6.635 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005, so a 50% reduction target is 3.318 Gt in 2030. In 2019, there were 5.769 Gt of net emissions, meaning that by 2030, the U.S. will have to reduce its emissions by about 2.450 Gt, or more than 270 Gt per year. That equates to an annual rate of emissions reductions of about 6.3% to 2030.

Since we’re not likely to have solar-powered airplanes or steel mills any time soon, the main focus of emissions reductions of this magnitude can only be the electricity sector. And then, given that the entire electricity sector is only about 30% of emissions, the whole sector basically needs to go to zero emissions to meet the Biden target. What would that look like? Pielke:

In January 2021, according to the US Energy Information Agency in the United States there were 1,852 coal and natural gas power plants that generated electricity. By 2035, to hit President Biden’s target all of these power plants will have to be either shut down or converted into zero-emissions power plants (using carbon capture and storage technologies that presently do not exist).  There are 164 months until 2035. That means that more than 11 of the fossil fuel power plants operational in January 2021 will need to be closed every month, on average, starting today until 2035. 

And of course there is nothing out there remotely capable of filling the gap caused by shuttering those 1,852 plants. Wind and solar, even if you blanket the country with them, are next to useless without keeping the majority of the coal and natural gas plants as backup. Nuclear? Theoretically it could work, but given the lead times involved there would have to be hundreds of such plants already far along in planning and construction to try to meet this kind of goal. There aren’t. And the same environmentalists demanding an end to fossil fuels also oppose nuclear with equal fanaticism, and would be there to block you at every step of the process.

For a closer look at reality on the ground, let’s consider some recent developments in New York. New York fancies itself as the great climate messiah, leading the country and even the world into the future zero emissions utopia. In 2019 New York enacted something called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which they describe on their website as follows:

On July 18, 2019, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). New York State’s Climate Act is the among the most ambitious climate laws in the world and requires New York to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030 and no less than 85 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels.

Regulations to implement these drastic emissions reductions mandated by the law were finalized by the Governor in December 2020. Surely,, then, we are well off to a great start on our emissions reductions?

Actually, at the same time as we have adopted this noble-sounding Act and regulations, what we’ve really been doing is closing our big zero-emissions nuclear power plant and replacing it with brand-new natural gas facilities. Until last year, about 25 - 30% of the electricity for New York City came from a nuclear plant about 40 miles north of the City called Indian Point. Even as he has also talked endlessly about carbon emissions reductions, Governor Andrew Cuomo has made closing the Indian Point reactors a political priority. Of the two operating reactors at Indian Point, one closed in 2020, and the second is now scheduled to cease operations on April 30, 2021 — that is, at the end of the current week.

But they couldn’t close Indian Point without something to replace the power. And so, two big new natural gas-burning facilities have opened in the past few years. First, a 680 MW natural gas plant called CPV Valley Energy Center opened in Wawayanda, New York in February 2018; and then a 1000 MW natural gas plant called Cricket Valley Energy Center opened in Dover, New York, in April 2020.

Supposedly the big solution going forward is going to be vast amounts of offshore wind turbines to be built out in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island. So far, it’s nothing but talk. One of the proposals to advance the farthest calls for a big 15 wind turbines off the Eastern tip of the island. But if the turbines are built, the power will need to come onshore by cable at some location. In January the Town of East Hampton granted an easement for the cable to come onshore in an area called Wainscott — and immediately a group of wealthy homeowners in the area brought a lawsuit to block it. We’ll see where that goes.

But it gets even worse. Just last week, something called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the federal government canceled two of the wind energy development zones off Long Island. According to a report April 20 in the Wall Street Journal:

“Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officials said the zones off the island’s coast raised problems with maritime traffic, marine life feeding areas, and concerns over visibility from South Shore beaches. In short, they were a nuisance to fishermen, shippers and gentry with homes in the tony Hamptons area full of Manhattanites during the summer.”

In other words, despite the big talk, and lots of spending and subsidies, all the “progress” so far towards zero emissions has been negative. I guess it can be like the “anti-poverty” efforts of the government, where every year we have more and more programs and spend more and more money and the measured poverty never goes down.

 

The World as I See It: The International Criminal Court (ICC) is Corrupt to the Core!

 By Rich Kozlovich

On Feb 16, 2021 Hugh Fitzgerald published this piece, Why the ICC’s Claim of Jurisdiction Over Israel and Palestinians for War Crimes is Disturbing. in Jihad Watch saying:

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel (chosen from the 18 members of the ICC) has concluded that the claims of the International Criminal Court to have jurisdiction to open a criminal investigation of possible war crimes that may have been committed by Israel or the Palestinians during Operation Protective Edge, which was fought in Gaza in 2014. What makes this decision particularly disturbing is that Israel is not a member of the ICC, and only members of the ICC are held subject to its jurisdiction. But different rules apply, apparently, when it comes to Israel.

He went on to say:

A previous Jihad Watch report on this is here, and a news article about this travesty is here: “ICC has jurisdiction to probe Israel, Hamas for war crimes, pretrial judges rule,” by Jacob Magid, Times of Israel, February 5, 2021.

In the Times of Israel article Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted stating:  

“Today the ICC proved once again that it is a political body and not a judicial institution,”..... “The ICC ignores the real war crimes and instead pursues the State of Israel, a state with a strong democratic government that sanctifies the rule of law, and is not a member of the ICC..... “In this decision,” ....“the ICC violated the right of democracies to defend themselves against terrorism, and played into the hands of those who undermine efforts to expand the circle of peace. We will continue to protect our citizens and soldiers in every way from legal persecution.”

The article went on to claim they can try HAMAS terrorists also, but can someone name one time, even after all the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas, Hezbolla, or any of the rest of these Muslim terrorist groups, the ICC has ever charged any of them with a crime?  Maybe I've missed it, but overall, they, just like the corrupt UN Human Rights Council, can find unending ways of condemning Israel, but never giving anything but lip service to the crimes of Muslim terrorists. 

I think this unaccountable "criminal court", the ICC is, just like the United Nations, corrupt to the core and irredeemable.  Here was a comment by me regarding ICC claims they could arrest and try Americans for crimes of any kind, and like Israel, the United States isn't a signatory of the ICC.  

"If these leftist loons should ever arrest and attempt to try any American with their scurrilous claims of criminal activity, the United States should issue international warrants for kidnapping for those who undertook to arrest and/or try any American, even if that arrest occurred on foreign soil.  They should also issue warrants for those who issued these illegal warrants, and any jurist of the ICC who was a party to this illegal activity.  Every one of them should be dealt with as criminals".

 That quote is from my article, The International Criminal Court: Leftists Out of Control

Yemen: Houthi Strike on Saudi Airport Likely War Crime, where civilians were clearly and deliberately targeted at the international airport in Saudi Arabia.  And according to Geopolitical Futures:

"Houthi rebels are intensifying their assault on the Saudi-backed and internationally recognized government in Yemen. In the city of Marib, the Houthis have launched attacks on multiple fronts in the past 24 hours. And the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted two drone attacks targeting the Saudi city of Khamis Mushait – the fifth Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia in four days."

This is the same group whose terrorist status was changed by Joe Biden: 

"Last week the Biden administration announced that it was reversing the Trump administration’s decision to name the Yemeni Houthis (formally, Ansar Allah) a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group"...... (Editor's Note:  These group change their names like I change my socks, based on whose in charge at that moment, but they're all part and parcel of the same package. RK)

However, the state department went on to say:

"We call on the Houthis to immediately cease attacks impacting civilian areas inside Saudi Arabia and to halt any new military offensives inside Yemen, which only bring more suffering to the Yemeni people."

The author made a statement that should have been obvious to the most causal observer:

"Now, there is a very clear contradiction here. What do we usually call attacks on civilians, of the sort that led to this State Department rebuke?  Terrorism."

Daniel Greenfield addressed this in his piece, Biden Takes "Death to America" Terrorists Off Terror List, where he outlines their criminal activities and destructive terrorist intentions, especially their stated desire to destroy America stating: 

"None of this stopped Biden’s State Department from taking the Houthis off the terror list."

So, as I see it, this brings me to these three things.  

1. If this is the mettle of Joe Biden's intellect and foreign policy initiatives, especially after the amazing Middle East successes by President Trump, can we assume the Middle East and world are now in deep trouble?
2. Is the ICC going to claim jurisdiction over the Yemen Houthis movement?  This is clearly a criminal act of war isn't it?  And since they now, by their actions against Israel and the United States, are clearly going to ignore the idea they can only have jurisdiction on members, will they do so against the Yemeni Houthis movement?  And since they haven't they done so in the past, we must ask; why not?  
3. Finally, is Biden now to share in their guilt? And if so, will the ICC declare he's a war criminal?  
   

Here's a thought worth meditating on.  If they were to go after the United States or Israel, both countries will pretty much ignore them, will take no physical action against them.  If they go after Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or any of the many other maniacally violent terrorist groups out there, can they be sure they'll be safe, even in their personal lives?  Answer: No!  

And that's were the rubber really meets the road, isn't it?