It's Time To Purge The Climate Scam From The Federal Websites

January 28, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

On November 12, 2024 — a week after the election — I had a post titled “Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration: Climate And Energy Edition.” The first subject covered in that post was “Communications.” I stated there:

[C]hanging the communications of the prior administration should be an easy and obvious first priority. However, the Trump people notably did a poor job on this subject the first time out. The subject of climate and energy is pervasive through the websites of dozens of federal agencies.

I had followed the EPA website in particular during the first Trump term, and it had been little changed even a year after Trump took office.

This time around, Trump and his people are doing a far better job of hitting the ground running on many issues. That is notably true in the area of climate and energy communications: a week in, there are already some meaningful changes at the websites of various agencies. However, changing communications on these issues is not a small task; the government websites during the Biden era had pervasive climate propaganda in thousands of locations.

So, a week into the new administration, here are some of the things that have either changed or not so far.

Department of Energy

My November post noted that there was a big section, dominating the Department’s website, titled “Combating the Climate Crisis.” Today, if you go to the Department’s opening web page, it’s quite different. The front page headline is “Restoring Energy Dominance,” followed by “President Trump’s Day One Actions will Return the Department to Regular Order.” Here’s how it starts:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), effective today, is ending the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) pause and returning to regular order following direction given by President Donald J. Trump to “unleash American Energy Dominance.”

Another big front-page topic back in November was “Energy Justice.” Today, if you go to the link that I had then for “Energy Justice,” you will be taken back to the opening page with the headline “Restoring Energy Dominance.” The whole “Energy Justice” thing seems to have disappeared. That’s great progress. On the other hand, if you go to the old November link for “Combatting the Climate Crisis,” you will find that a page full of the old Biden-era claptrap is still up:

There is no greater challenge facing our nation and our planet than the climate crisis. That’s why President Biden has laid out the boldest climate agenda in our nation’s history—one that will spur an equitable clean energy economy and cement America on a path to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. . . .

To their credit, the old links to this stuff on the introductory page are gone, and using the site’s search function doesn’t turn this up. Likely, it will be memory-holed shortly.

And yet there is still plenty of junk stuff up on this website that needs to go. As a few examples:

• A section on “Decarbonization” (“The shift to a low-carbon economy will be one of the most significant economic transformations in history. Through the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE’s) decarbonization initiatives, the United States is poised to capture the economic and other benefits of revolutionary decarbonization technologies.”)
• A section on “Carbon Management” (“Carbon management encompasses a suite of technologies used to capture, transport, convert, and store carbon dioxide, as well as remove it directly from the atmosphere.”)
• A section on the “Floating Offshore Wind Shot” (“The Floating Offshore Wind Energy Shot™ seeks to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy by more than 70% by 2035 for deep water sites far from shore.”)
• A section on the “Net Zero Economy” (“A net-zero economy averts or removes as much greenhouse gas as it produces. Achieving this balance by 2050 is a pivotal undertaking for the United States”)

And there are many more such. So there is a long way to go. However, they have made a reasonable start. Given that it has only been a week, I would rate the effort an A-.

EPA

In my November post, I noted that there was a huge Climate Change section of the website that dominated from the opening page. Today, references to the subject on the opening page are gone. If you look under the tab “Environmental Topics” on the opening page, you will not find “climate change,” and if you try the closest topic on that tab, “Air,” you will not find “climate change” there either. They certainly are not making this easy!

However, if you type the words “climate change” into the search function of the site, the first link that comes up is www.epa.gov/climate-change, which is the exact same address I had back in November. It will take you to the old Climate Change section of the website that appears to be changed little if at all. It’s buried, but still very much still there. And it contains plenty of the same old nonsense. Examples:

• They continue to pretend that CO2 in the atmosphere has something to do with “human health”: Understanding and addressing climate change is critical to EPA's mission of protecting human health and the environment.
• There are sections on things like “Causes” and “Impacts” of climate change that pretend that this is a huge human-caused problem.
• Endless pages on climate change “indicators” pretend to link all the usual extreme weather events, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, etc., etc., to human use of fossil fuels. (“Rising global average temperature is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. Scientific studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change.”)

There are vast amounts of stuff here that need to go sooner rather than later. Yes, it has only been a week. Still, I rate the effort a B.

NOAA/NASA

These are the people who keep track of the weather and climate data, and are famous for scare-mongering with endless press releases and hype about “warmest day/month/year ever.” My November 2024 post had this link to a typical NOAA release from January 2024, titled “2023 was the world’s warmest year on record, by far.” That link is still live at the NOAA website.

Overall, it is not clear to me that the NOAA or NASA websites have yet changed much if at all. The “News” tab of the NOAA website has a list of “Latest News Releases” that include several last-minute initiatives of the Biden-Harris administration, including this gem: “Biden-Harris Administration, NOAA invest $15 million to help protect Western U.S. communities from wildfire.”

Go to the NASA website, and down at the bottom of the opening page you will find a link for “Earth & Climate.” At that page you will find a further link for “Climate Change,” that is as full of climate propaganda as any government page I have seen. Small excerpt:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. . . . While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years. . . . The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia.

You get the idea. Somebody needs to start paying attention to this quickly. Yes, it has only been a week. Still, I would give this effort a C at best.

I’ll be watching these pages for periodic updates from time to time. I can’t wait to see a lot of this stuff disappear.

What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of "Misinformation" Currently Circulating?

What Is The Most Pernicious Example Of "Misinformation" Currently Circulating? 

May 17, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

“Misinformation” — It has been one of the most-used buzzwords of the past few years. The “misinformation” label has been applied by advocates on both sides of the political divide in the attempt to discredit their opponents. Numerous assertions that have dominated the news cycle for months or even years have ultimately proven to be completely false, that is, “misinformation.” Examples of such assertions that have been established as “misinformation” include the assertion that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election; the assertion that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian plant; and the assertion that the Covid virus originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

After the thorough discrediting of so many false narratives during these years, there remain plenty of narratives still out there that richly deserve the “misinformation” label. But of those, which is the very worst, the very most pernicious? Here is my candidate: the assertion that the cheapest way to generate electricity today is with wind and solar generators.

I recognize that there are many candidates for the title of the worst of all misinformation, and we are dealing here with a very crowded field. Numerous other endlessly-repeated false assertions contend for the title, many of them having very large real-world consequences. For example, other serious contenders for the title of “most pernicious misinformation” could include the assertion that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a danger to human health and welfare; or the assertion that Israel is conducting a “genocide” against Palestinians. Undoubtedly, you have other candidates to add to the list.

So why do I say that the assertion of wind and solar being the cheapest ways to generate electricity is the very most pernicious of misinformation currently out there? Here are my three reasons: 

1. ) the assertion is repeated endlessly and ubiquitously, 
2. ) it is the basis for the misallocation of trillions of dollars of resources and for great impoverishment of billions of people around the world, and 
3. ) it is false to the point of being preposterous, an insult to everyone’s intelligence, yet rarely challenged.

How ubiquitous is the assertion that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity? Try Googling the question “What is the cheapest way to produce electricity?” You will get multiple pages of results advocating for wind and solar electricity, with almost no mention of the problems or costs of intermittency. A few examples of what turns up:

• The top result from Galooli.com, March 13, 2022, “Which Renewable Energy is Cheapest? A Guide to Cost and Efficiency”: “According to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook and other research projects, solar and wind energy have continued to occupy the top spots in terms of the cheapest renewable energy sources. Both energy sources cost significantly less than fossil fuel alternatives and continue to become more affordable every year.”
• Next up, decarbonization.com, August 2, 2023, “Ranked: The Cheapest Sources of Electricity in the U.S.”: “According to Lazard’s 2023 analysis of unsubsidized LCOE in the U.S., both onshore wind and utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies are more cost-effective than combined cycle natural gas power plants. In the case of onshore wind, this has been true since 2015.”
• Next, carbonbrief.com, October 13, 2020, “Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA.”: “The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency. . . .”

Keep going for dozens of these for page after page. Try to find in any of them a serious discussion of the costs of backup, storage, or transmission upgrades to try to make an electrical grid work with these intermittent generators. You won’t. And don’t think that the high-brow mainstream sources can be trusted for anything better. Here is the New York Times from August 17, 2023:  

“The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal.”

In the face of hundreds of different journalism outlets endlessly repeating in unison the mantra of cheap “renewable” electricity, it becomes difficult to blame the voters or the politicians for just nodding along with the crowd. Why do any mentally taxing independent thinking when everybody seems to be saying the same thing?

The problem is that the idea that wind and solar make the cheapest electricity is plain wrong. At least, it is plain wrong if the electricity you are talking about is the reliable sort that works whenever you want to turn on the switch. The idea that wind and solar are cheapest fails to take account of any of the ancillary costs necessary to make a fully-functioning grid: the entire system of backup facilities to provide the power when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining; the transmission facilities to take the power from wherever is windy or sunny to anywhere else it may be needed on a moment’s notice; the batteries or other storage facilities to save up energy in anticipation of inevitable wind and solar droughts; and so forth. In short, the idea that wind and solar generation of electricity are the “cheapest” is classic misinformation, the endless repetition of an assertion that is clearly false and known to be false.

Meanwhile, among the people incapable of seeing through the fog of misinformation on this subject are our current President, and the Governors of New York and California. In the case of the states, they throw tens of billions of dollars of handouts and subsidies to develop wind and solar facilities (hundreds of billions of dollars in the case of the feds), never having the presence of mind to realize that none of that would be necessary of this method of generation were actually cheaper as claimed.

Between the vast mis-allocation of resources and the sheer preposterousness of the proposition in question, I think that this assertion of wind and solar electricity generation being “cheapest” definitely has the claim for the number one spot.

Biden's War Against Misinformation. Now there's a Chuckle if There Ever Was One!

I find the whole thing stunning. It’s as if the Democrat Party walked into numerous mental health institutions and just started rounding up patients at random and said “ok-you’re running for this office…you there in the bow-tie…you’re running for this office”…this is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” on steroids. It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.  James Seigfreid

By Rich Kozlovich 

So often I come across meaningless babble from this administration that explains nothing and answers nothing, and is an affront to reason and logic.  John Kerry thinks if Putin was more concerned about CO2 emissions the world would like him better.  

Hello John, Putin launched an aggressive unprovoked attack against a nation, and slaughtered a bunch of innocent people and you think the solution is CO2 emissions?  If there ever was anything that proved the nation dodged a massive bullet when he was rejected as President of the United States, and that he's an incomparable nitwit, that's it. 

Kamala Harris babbles word salads no one understands, cackling.  Joe Biden has no idea what he's saying most of the time, or for that matter where he's at, and has to be juiced up to appear in public.  Karine Jean-Pierre defines the insane actions of the Biden administration with obfuscations.  

How's this?

• Why isn't the administration enforcing America's immigration laws? 
• Inflation is under control.
• American's economy is in crisis, spending is out of control, inflation is skyrocketing, there are energy blackouts, and crime is worse than ever, what do you intend to do about it all?  
• The real problem is racism.  We're facing a crisis of white supremacy, and domestic terrorists, so we're militarizing the FBI and the IRS, and arresting Donald Trump, and anyone who supports him, and those military personal who refuse vaccinations and gender training are going to be kicked out of the military.
  
• What do you intend to do about Islamic terrorists?  
• Islam is a religion of peace, so everything is fine and we're going to give Iran the right to make nuclear bombs to create stability in the Middle East.

Wow!  I think I'm ready for Press Secretary at the very least. Not one bit of that made sense, I'm now perfectly qualified to be part of the Biden administration.   

Okay, so I made all those three bullet points up, but based on all the nutty things they say, would you really know that if I didn't tell you?  

Update:  Here's a really outstanding article from John Droz Jr., More Misleading Statistics, which has a great Abbot and Costello style take on the clabber emanating from the Biden Administration.

Australia Wants to Fine ‘Big Tech’ for Posting Disinformation

How will a government that imposed tyrannical COVID mandates moderate news content responsibly?

 

By: Dave Patterson June 29, 2023 - 6:46 amArticles, Opinion, Privacy & Tech @ Liberty Nation News 

 

Australia is in the forefront of taking on Big Tech in the disinformation wars. A couple of years ago, social media behemoth Facebook, apparently in a moment of lunacy, decided to bar “publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” as Liberty Nation reported. After an exchange of barbs between the Australian government and Facebook’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, cooler heads prevailed, and hurt feelings were salved. BFFs again, right? Well, maybe not. Recently the Australian government made it clear it was passing laws allowing stiff fines against tech giants for failing to remove content that is not true – or, more likely,  stuff it doesn’t like.

Did Hunter Get a Sweetheart Deal?

“Communications Minister Michelle Rowland will on Sunday (June 25) release draft legislation to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) powers to hold digital platforms to account for spreading harmful fake news,” Anthony Galloway wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. No one is claiming the ACMA is exacting retribution for Facebook’s lapse in sanity over unfriending Australia; more likely, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a left-leaning politician, is exercising his socialist bliss.

Australia Wants Big Penalties

From what the ACMA proposes, penalties will not be just slaps on the wrists with a promise not to sin again. “Under proposed draft laws, the Australian Communications and Media Authority will have the power to impose potentially multi-billion-dollar fines on tech companies who repeatedly fail to stop and take down undesirable content,” Australia’s television station 9News’ staff explained. For Australia, the penalizing media posts it determines to be disinformation is in keeping with the country’s general propensity toward exercising firm control over its citizenry.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aussie mandates were some of the most draconian and lamebrained. “Dr. Kerry Chant, the Chief Health Officer in New South Wales, Australia, told citizens to avoid talking to each other, even if they are masked and vaccinated, because talking could spread COVID-19,” the medical “expert” claimed at a July 19, 2021, news conference, according to American Military News. What’s frightening is that these same government bureaucrats will be the ones determining what is disinformation and misinformation, which is not comforting.

Europe Going After Big Tech More Subtly

The enthusiasm for applying government power against free speech and thought in the guise of tamping down fake news seems to be all the rage globally. In an open letter with the salutation, “Dear CEOs of Big Tech,” the prime ministers of Moldova, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine wrote:

“Foreign information manipulation and interference, including disinformation is being deployed to destabilize our countries, weaken our democracies, to derail Moldova’s and Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and to weaken our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression. Social media has become a potent channel for spreading false and manipulative narratives. Paid ads and artificial amplification on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, are often used to call for violent social unrest, bring violence to the streets and destabilize governments.”

(Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The problem the prime ministers face is that Ukraine is engaged in the same information operations focused on Russia. Nowadays news sources seem eager to push propaganda instead of truth, so the lines are getting blurred. The prime ministers are requesting Big Tech to rein itself in, but when will self-policing result in hefty, punitive fines or worse? When a government gets into the business of regulating speech, it’s a slippery slope from defending citizens from being pummeled with news that will cause harm to information a government bureaucrat finds uncomfortable or offensive.

The best example is the US government’s collusion with social media companies to regulate what is allowed to be seen by the public. “Both Facebook and Twitter created online portals where government agents submitted, and perhaps still submit, censorship directives for official corporate action,” the Heritage Foundation concluded in the commentary When Government Colludes With Big Tech to Censor Americans. “These relationships reflect a coordinated campaign to promote a certain definition of truth and solidify the power of the Biden administration, and Big Tech’s participation undermines its claim to offer neutral platforms,” explained Will Thibeau and Erin Dwinnell.

It’s tricky to manipulate the thoughts and commentary of people in societies advertised as free and open. When attempting to police free expression, the pervasive pitfall is that one person’s fake news is another’s truth. Let the marketplace of ideas make that call.

Read More From Dave Patterson

How Could a Democrat Voter Learn the Truth?

April 6, 2023 By Ian MacConnell

I'm a lifelong Republican voter, born and raised in Massachusetts. My Dad is a well informed, outspoken, rock-ribbed conservative republican. I remember him putting a Barry Goldwater bumper sticker on our station wagon in 1964, when we lived in tough, blue-collar Worcester.This man is afraid of nothing.

I was afforded many opportunities to listen to lively political discourse at family events while I was growing up.  These people loved one another, so the discussions were never nasty or hurtful.Most of the younger members of the family watching these discussions eventually gravitated toward being Republicans.Family fights and ugly words would not have produced that result.That was an important lesson.

It's no secret that deep-blue Massachusetts breeds rabid leftist ideologues — it's the state's chief export (and I do mean chief). However, those people aren't anywhere near the majority in Massachusetts, even though they run the place.  The fact is, these people aren't the majority anywhere, though they try to convince us otherwise.

Here is the problem in a nutshell.  Most Democrat voters don't realize that leftist idealogues have hijacked the Democrat party, actively pushing traditional Democrat politicians out.They don't yet understand that the Democrat party they knew doesn't exist anymore.Almost all of the major news organizations work together to lie to Democrat voters and feed them misinformation constantly. 

Corrupted government entities like the FBI and the DOJ, and the leftists running all social media, have worked together to censor and silence any dissenting voices.The goal is to create a false reality in the eyes of Democrat voters and shield them from the truth.This is vital to ensure their continued support on Election Day. ..............To Read More.....

Why the Left Is Pro-Mask

Understand the Left's support for mask-wearing and you will understand the Left. 

By Dennis Prager @ American Greatness

The world’s most trusted evaluator of medical studies, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, has just released as close to a conclusive report on the effectiveness of masks against respiratory viruses such as COVID-19 as we are likely to have for the foreseeable future. The report assessed data from 78 different studies, including 11 new randomized controlled trials involving 610,872 participants.

Cochrane concluded, in the words of one of the authors, Dr. Tom Jefferson of Oxford University, “There is just no evidence that they (masks) make any difference. Full stop.”

Among the reasons for that assessment was Cochrane’s conclusion that states and countries with mask mandates fared no better than states and countries without.

Moreover, Dr. Jefferson’s conclusions were not limited to cloth and surgical masks. Regarding N95 masks, Jefferson said the same thing: “Makes no difference—none of it.”

As for the early COVID-19 studies that policymakers cited to justify mandates for mask wearing, Jefferson said: “They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”

For example, PolitiFact, one of the so-called “fact-checkers” whose primary function is to declare whatever differs from the Left as “false,” declared in 2021 that studies “have consistently found that mask mandates cause sharp declines in coronavirus case rates.”

Bret Stephens, one of the two or three non-Left columnists at the New York Times, wrote this about the Cochrane study: 

“Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.”

Stephens’ description of those who differed with the Left and the “experts” on universal mask-wearing as having been “furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers'” is, of course, entirely accurate.

We were right, but the Left controlled all the tech giants—and except for Twitter, they still do. They, not we, were the ones who spread misinformation about masks—and about lockdowns, the origins of COVID-19, the claim that there was no early treatment for COVID-19 (just wait for the vaccines and hope you don’t die in the meantime), Trump campaign collusion with Russia, the Hunter Biden laptop and every other issue that divides Left from Right.

Even now, after the Cochrane report, the Left continues to push for mask-wearing.

There were more than 3,000 comments on Bret Stephens’ column in the New York Times. Every single one of the most popular comments said the Cochrane report was flawed. I did not read all 3,000-plus comments, but I could not find one that agreed with Stephens or Cochrane. Note that in order to comment on a New York Times article, one must be a New York Times subscriber. These people are as representative of the American Left as any group could be.

And the Washington Post Editorial Board just published a lead editorial, “In a crowded place, a face mask or respirator keeps the virus away,” taking issue with the Cochrane review.

The people who boast that they—unlike the Right—only “follow the science” are lying to themselves, to us, or to both. Leftists have no interest in “the science” when it conflicts with any position they hold. Science said schools should be kept open, that closing them would do great damage to many young people. Yet, with a few exceptions such as Sweden, the Left clamored for, and where in power, closed schools. Science tells us that COVID-19 vaccines are not helpful—and even potentially injurious—to young people (Denmark strongly discourages any healthy person under 50 from getting a COVID-19 vaccine). Yet until this year, nearly every American university forced students to get vaccinated, and many still do.

So why, even despite the science, does the Left insist on wearing—and forcing others to wear—masks?

I will offer four reasons.

One reason is that the further Left one goes, the more fear governs an individual’s life.

This is true because the more one is governed by fear, the more one is likely to take left-wing positions. And it is true because left-wing positions inculcate fear. In other words, the frightened gravitate to the Left, and the Left makes people frightened.

The second reason the Left still insists on mask wearing is that leftists don’t ask the question, “At what price?” In fact, the moment one asks that question, one becomes a conservative.

The price paid for mask wearing is huge. Not seeing people’s faces has a negative impact on human relations. People whose face cannot be seen are less human—isn’t that why people who oppose the Muslim veil oppose it? Doesn’t the veil dehumanize the woman whose face disappears behind it? What is the effective difference between the veil and the mask? There is none. And what about children who don’t see faces outside of their house? What about patients who don’t see the faces of nurses and doctors? The nursing home residents who can’t see the smiles and hear the unmuffled speech of their caregivers? The harm done is huge.

A third reason for left-wing support for masks is that leftists read, listen to, and watch left-wing media only. Thus, they were completely ignorant of all that we who opposed masks knew thanks to the fact that we also consume non-Left media.

A fourth reason the Left insists on forcing others to wear masks is that controlling others’ lives is in the Left’s raison d’etre. Controlling others is what leftism is all about. That is why the Left seeks ever-expanding government. There is no such thing as increasing the size of government but not increasing the amount of government control over people’s lives. By definition, more government means more control over people’s lives. There is no example of the Left gaining power anywhere in the world and at any time since the Left took over Russia in 1917 and not restricting the freedom of its citizens.

Understand the Left’s support for mask-wearing and you will understand the Left.

Cartoons of the Day, With a Thought or Two!

By Rich Kozlovich 

Well, Democrats are always whining they're being picked on by Republicans. After all, defending themselves against scurrilous and vicious lies demeans Democrats.  How dare they?

 

But never fear, Biden has a plan that's clear as crystal for the direction of America, for freedom and for democracy.  Right?  Waddayathink?

 

See, there's nothing wrong with Ole Sleepy Joe.  They checked his head and there's nothing there, so
"don't worry, be happy", he's got the wind in his face and he's just fine.

The Democrats are always saying if Republicans win it will destroy "Our Democracy", and I know now just  how true that is.  It appears what they're calling "Our Democracy" is in reality "Their Socialist Tyranny" and "Their Vision of Democracy" is the destruction of "Our Republic", and burning the Constitution is merely a matter of free speech.  So we shouldn't read too much into that.  Should we?

 

There they go again.  Do they really want these kids to start reading books?  Who knows what radical ideas they might develop if they did, like capitalism is good and socialism is bad.  Or the left is irrational misanthropic and morally defective.  After all, when they graduate from high school and have to take remedial reading to enter college, why would you think they would read anyway.   YouTube is all they need.  

Oh the horror of it.  The apex of reality!  Is this what happens when leftists, RINO's and Never Trumpers finally are forced to realize Trump could  actually be the right guy to head up the nation?  Maybe, but one thing is for sure, this is what happens when reality conflicts with raw emotion and irrational social paradigms come into conflict with reality.  

 

Are they going to bring up all that conspiracy theory stuff against Hillary, Obama, Biden, DNC and Russian collusion with Trump?   Oh, sure there's a lot of evidence now showing it wasn't a conspiracy theory, and it really was a conspiracy bordering on treason, but C'mon man, that's old news.  There are bigger fish to fry, like stealing the 2022 and 2024 elections, and make no mistake about it, this is nothing more than an effort by Republicans to create distraction from that bigger mission.  So let's just move on already.   Okay? 

Primary source of COVID misinformation is the feds, scientists and scholars tell surgeon general

Academic freedom groups warn feds not to chill research that challenges conventional wisdom or adjudicate "properly scientific questions."

 

 By Greg Piper

U.S Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently asked the public how COVID-19 misinformation "in the digital information environment" had affected health outcomes, trust in the healthcare system and "likelihood to vaccinate," among other issues.

According to vaccine and healthcare policy experts who joined with Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, the misinformation is coming from inside the house.

They filed a comment in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proceeding, accusing the CDC and other health organizations of promoting falsehoods and shoddy research that "shattered the public's trust in science and public health," which will "take decades to repair."........To Read More...

Some Tips On How To Spot "Disinformation"

May 10, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

 If you’re a reader of this blog, you likely are interested in current events. And therefore, it is also likely that you already know that on April 27 our Department of Homeland Security revealed (at a Congressional budget hearing) that it had set up something called its Disinformation Grievance Board. Secretary Mayorkas, who was testifying, stated that the DGB would not have operational authority, but would rather act as an advisory body to study best practices and provide guidance to the government on how to counter disinformation threats. The head of the new Board, who had already been named, is a woman named Nina Jankowicz.

Put aside for a moment any problems you may have with the idea of the federal government trying to decide what is and is not “disinformation.” For this post let’s just look at Ms. Jankowicz and her qualifications for the job.

It seems that prior to her appointment, Ms. Jankowicz had been working at something called the Woodrow Wilson Center. Have you heard of it? It’s a federally-funded think tank, part of the Smithsonian complex in Washington.

According to its own website, the Wilson Center’s mission is to provide “independent research” and “nonpartisan insight and analysis [to help] power the decisions of policymakers, civic leaders, and the general public across a wide spectrum of beliefs and backgrounds.” 

Oh, puh-lease. Disinformation anyone? This is the Smithsonian. If you know anything about the Smithsonian, you know that there is nothing actually “non-partisan” about it, other than perhaps not having a “Democratic Party” sign on the front door. The “non-partisan” claim is just a label intended to mislead. Clearly, anything coming out of it will be at the leftmost end of woke radicalism and hyper-partisanship. Meanwhile, how could they keep operating under the name of that vile racist Woodrow Wilson? Princeton University, where Wilson was President, removed his name from its School of International Affairs back in 2020.

It seems that Ms. Jankowicz, during her time at the Wilson Center, specialized in this subject of “disinformation.” Indeed, she was a go-to source for the mainstream press to help them and their audience to distinguish the real information from the disinformation. For example, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, the Associated Press needed someone who was a bona fide “expert” in disinformation to help the public decide, in the few days remaining before the election, whether the damning emails on the laptop were real or fake. Ms. Jankowicz stepped up. From the AP, October 14, 2020: 

ARE THE NEW EMAILS AUTHENTIC? The actual origins of the emails are unclear. And disinformation experts say there are multiple red flags that raise doubts about their authenticity, including questions about whether the laptop actually belongs to Hunter Biden, said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the nonpartisan Wilson Center in Washington.

Others have also noted (example: Washington Examiner here) that Ms. Jankowicz repeatedly lent her cred as a supposed disinformation expert to the task of supporting Christopher Steele and his Trump/Russia dossier.

So there might be some problems with listening to the “experts” as a way to distinguish real information from disinformation. An alternative approach is to compare what someone says to some verifiable factual information that you might be able to find. For that exercise as to Ms. Jankowicz, I turn to the invaluable New York Post, which thankfully for all of us is available without paywall.

On May 5, the Post came up with a video of Ms. Jankowicz speaking at the City Club of Cleveland in October 2021. Here is a link to the Post article, and here is a link to a video of the full City Club event, which is about an hour long. The title of Ms. Jankowicz’s talk was “Disinformation and Democracy: Civic Discourse in the Digital Age.” I couldn’t watch the whole hour of Ms. Jankowicz speaking, because life is short and she is nuts, but most of it seemed to be about how the Russkies are probably infiltrating the Facebook communications of your local civic association, because after all they’re the Russkies, and they’re really sophisticated, and that’s the kind of thing they do. But at the end of the session, there was a Q&A. And the Q&A got into the subject of whether allegations of Critical Race Theory getting into elementary schools are real versus disinformation. From the Post:

[Ms. Jankowicz] was repeatedly asked about school boards during [her] speech at The City Club of Cleveland. . . . “Critical Race Theory has become one of those hot-button issues that the Republicans and other disinformers, who are engaged in disinformation for profit, frankly … have seized on,” she said. “[I]t’s no different than any of the other hot-button issues that have allowed disinformation to flourish. . . .”

A couple of days later, on May 7, the Post came up with some copies of a new book now being distributed to New York City school kids aged 2 to 5. The book is titled “Our Skin,” by authors Megan Johnson, Jessica Ralli and Isabel Roxas. Here are a couple of good quotes from the book:

“A long time ago, way before you were born, a group of white people made up an idea called race. They sorted people by skin color and said that white people were better, smarter, prettier, and that they deserve more than everybody else,” the book declares. {It goes on]: “Racism is also the things people do and the unfair rules they make about race so that white people get more power, and are treated better than everybody else.”

Don’t believe that these could be accurate quotes? Here is a screenshot of one of the pages:

No Critical Race Theory there!

Anyway, we now live in the bizarre world where Ms. Jankowicz not only gets to accuse others of disinformation, but also gets to advise the government to crack down on those she accuses, while her own statements become the very definition of truth. You’d say it must be a parody, but I don’t think so.

 

Facebook, other tech giants censor inconvenient facts about climate change

By Bjorn Lomborg February 7, 2022

The online world has become a free-speech battleground. Tech platforms have sided with illiberal regimes to censor posts while flagging “misinformation” in free countries. We all share a legitimate interest in avoiding outright falsehoods, but much censorship today — whether at dictators’ behest or in the name of eradicating “misinformation” — ultimately is about restricting discourse to a narrow corridor of the politically acceptable. That makes it harder to identify smart policies.

This is especially troubling for important issues like climate change. Global warming is real and man-made. However, social-media giants — Facebook in particular — are going far beyond censoring people for denying its existence.

Facebook monitors what people say about climate change in 100 countries and uses third-party fact-checkers to identify misinformation for flagging or removal...........To Read More....

How a War on 'Misinformation' Led To a Coronavirus Tragedy .

Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Richard Feynman 

By Bret Swanson 

Spectacular falsehoods, deep truths, and Canadian truckers are finally piercing the long-impervious Covid storyline. 

When a justice of the Supreme Court on January 7 asserted that 100,000 children were hospitalized with Covid-19 “in serious condition, and many on ventilators,” it reflected the ill-informed panic that’s driven policy the last two years. In fact, CDC data showed just around 3,200 children were hospitalized while Covid-positive, few were in serious condition, and almost none were on ventilators. 

The episode was just the latest false droplet in a flood of erroneous Covid-speak. We’ve known since near the beginning that young people are not at serious risk; lockdowns don’t halt the spread and do far more harm than good; and an array of cheap, safe, long-approved generic drugs often stop the virus dead in its tracks when taken early. Yet each of these central facts was suppressed by a sprawling array of old and new media, digital platforms, captured medical journals, non-profit scolds, and public health spokespeople claiming omniscience. 

It turns out Canadian truckers listening to Joe Rogan know more than many “experts.” Had the truckers been in charge the last two years, the world would probably be healthier, and freer.

The Covid saga began with orchestrated misdirection. On January 31, 2020, some of the world’s top virologists told Dr. Anthony Fauci they believed the SARS-CoV-2 virus was probably “engineered” and they “can’t think of a plausible natural scenario.” Within weeks, however, these same scientists insisted in the Lancet and Nature Medicine that the virus was natural and to question its origin was spreading “misinformation” and “prejudice.” Last week we learned Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) granted these scientists $50 million in 2020 and 2021 alone. ........To Read More.....

In today’s America, the wise person willfully suspends belief

January 17, 2021 By Frank Liberato

In 2007, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deemed it necessary to “willfully suspend disbelief” to accept General David Petraeus’ progress report on the Iraq war. In 2021, it seems necessary for the American people to willfully suspend belief in our government institutions, the media, and their corporate overlords. 

The body politic is putrid and lashing out with the most disgusting displays of immorality, deceit, and coercion. Entertainment, education, social media, and the MSM ‘watchdogs of democracy’ are now the defenders, recruiters, and propagandists for this sick, bloated, and festering bureaucracy. 

Twenty years ago, I believed most of what came over the nation’s airwaves. Ten years ago, I was becoming quite the skeptic. Today, after years of unrelenting attacks on the President, I don’t believe any of it.

It’s all lies, half-truths, and misinformation, designed to influence elections and steer the collective mentality toward accepting the loss of freedom, the loss of constitutional rights and, eventually, to embrace communist ideas and authoritarian policies. I’m not sure when it all went south, but I think it was probably long before I first became aware that there was a problem............To Read More.....

 

The World as I See It: You Never Know When Mass Stupidity Will Strike, and You Can Never Plan For It!

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”- J.R.R. Tolkien

By Rich Kozlovich

George Carlin once said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” 

To get a clear understanding of that statement understand the average I.Q. is 90. When you break that down from the highest to the lowest, we find half of the population really is dumber, which of course explains the mass stupidity America has embraced over this fraudulent coronavirus scare, the masks, the lockdowns, the destroyed businesses, along with the disastrous health issues caused by these actions, and most importantly, this fraudulent election. (See

Then, we have a totally corrupt and stupid man, with serious neurological problems entering the White House with a Vice President that's as stupid and corrupt as he, and it's happening due to a very provable case of massive voter fraud and a conspiracy to commit voter fraud, and the Supreme Court won't hear the case, and state courts are refusing to enforce laws passed by the legislature regarding voting procedures on their states in spite of the fact the Constitution clearly states only the state legislatures can make the rules for voting in their states.  

Neither the governor, or any other state officials or bureaucrats can alter whatever laws the legislature passed regarding elections in their States.  That prerogative belongs solely to the Legislature, and the legislature alone.  Any changes must be authorized by them, and yet, we saw local and state election officials changing the rules to meet their particular political agenda and the state and federal courts refused to act according to the law. 

Unfortunately, you just never know when mass stupidity will strike, and you can't plan for it. But one thing is clear, the media play a major role in inflaming mass stupidity when it does strike.

Personally, I deplore the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity and the mendacious spirit of those who write for them. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. 

As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief.  This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit.

Oh, by the way, as much as I would like to take credit for that last two paragraphs, but those aren't my words.  They certainly represent my thoughts, but those were the thoughts and words expressed by Thomas Jefferson describing the abuses of a free press in 1814 in a letter to his friend Walter Jones

"The main difference between misinformation and disinformation is intent. But the two are inextricably intertwined." Cami Ryan, PhD

Nothing has changed, nor it will ever change, regarding the lack of integrity in the media! It has been so from their founding, and will continue to be so until the end of time.  But right now, today, because of modern communications, they have more easily, and more thoroughly, corrupted the nation's perception of reality with the stench of their morality, and stunning level of hypocritical ignorance.   

Worse yet, they work diligently to prevent anyone from exposing their perfidy!  As an example, Big Tech has (hopefully temporarily) destroyed Parler, a conservative open social media site as a counter balance to Twitter, Facebook, LinkidIn, Amazon, etc.  YouTube suspended One America News Network channel for what they're calling misinformation violations for COVID-19 policy, and since it's misinformation, it must be censored. That's a convenient way of saying anything that disagrees with the leftist agenda, AKA, free speech, is misinformation, or hate speech, or promotes violence. 

Yet they have little trouble promoting outright lies.  Somehow these purveyors of moral self-righteousness don't seem to think those lies count, provided of course lies promote false leftist narratives.  

We really are facing George Orwell's 1984, where we're being forced to accept "newspeak", which is "deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public", in short, twisting language to corrupt thought, with the House of Representatives voting to ban, eliminate, or removing gender-specific language from use in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Dinesh D’Souza said that, under the proposals: “Suddenly you’re not allowed, in House communications, to refer to fathers or mothers or grandfathers or grandmothers or brothers or sisters, or even stepsons or stepdaughters or father-in-laws [sic] or mother-in-laws [sic]. The whole gendered vocabulary is essentially abolished.”

Mass stupidity struck!

"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength", and of course the idea that truth is a lie and lies are the truth, is always at the heart of newspeak in pursuit of leftist goals.

Calling them sewer trout would be an insult to trout, and sewers, since both serve a useful purpose, while the media is in collusion with the left, working to hide the true views of Democrats, and one example is their view of religion.  Their animus toward now Justice Amy Coney Barret was her Catholic faith, as Tucker Carlson noted:

“A lot of Democrats are highly, highly hostile to organized religion and a lot of them deeply resent Amy Coney Barrett for her orthodox Catholicism, but they’ve decided not to say anything about it because it’s an election year, so they’re trying to keep it under wraps,” “It’s a political calculation, obviously. But what do they really think? Privately, Democrats are fixated on Amy Coney Barrett’s religious beliefs, we know that in part because today Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California, didn’t realize her mic was on and let the mask slip.”  

Carlson said those remarks were like a “Mazie Hirono impression” in terms of their “sheer incoherence and stupidity.” 

"The big secret in Washington is that a lot of these people dripping with credentials…are actually not very bright." - Leah Barkoukis

 The nation is facing national suicide orchestrated by incredibly stupid people leading incredibly stupid people, working to destroy intelligent people who recognize the disaster on the horizon.  

If we're to believe what the left is demanding, and there's not reason why we shouldn't, we face unbridled immigration, special privileges for select groups, racial and/or social, increases in spending that's going to make yesterday seem frugal, green initiatives that would destroy our energy system, huge increases in taxes, raided retirement funds, regulations that will most likely destroy capitalism, censorship of ideas, and some on the left even want to send conservatives to concentration camps for "re-education", just like Mao did to the Chinese people in the late 60's.   

Best wishes to us all, but I'm not optimistic.  When all this mass stupidity dissipates as a result of  strong doses of reality, we're going to look back and ask: How could we have been so stupid as to let this happen?  

Until then I fear this is going to lead to massively violent demonstrations tearing the nation apart, philosophically, economically and physically.  And we can thank both parties.  The party of Treason and the Stupid party, and this election may alter America beyond fixing, because we no longer have a common view of what America is, what America was, and what America should be. 

This isn't your grandparents America. 

 

Quote of the Day

"The main difference between misinformation and disinformation is intent. But the two are inextricably intertwined." - Cami Ryan, PhD

The 'experts' have subjected Americans to a doozy of an experiment

September 3, 2020 By Jack Hellner

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a renowned expert and brilliant scientist who has never been wrong, and his counterparts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, have been conducting a major experiment on all 330 million Americans in this election year.

The major control groups are most journalists, many governors, and power-hungry politicians named Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

One person they are having trouble controlling is named Trump. He defied the swamp creatures with a China travel ban, continually mobilizes the private sector to find a cure, touts a cheap drug that we block as a potential lifesaver, and gathers his supporters in large groups without masks. Without evidence, the control groups claim the large gatherings are super-spreaders..........To Read More....