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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Trans Control Now

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

After Robert ‘Robin’ Westman shot up a Minneapolis church, local authorities and law enforcement refused to discuss the transgender child murderer’s motive, but instead spent a lot of time prattling about the weapon as if the rifle had climbed off the shelf and then opened fire.

Much as with Audrey ‘Aiden’ Hale, the transgender child murderer who attacked the Covenant School in Nashville a few years ago, killing three children and three staff members, there is an active coverup of what would make a young man or woman want to murder children in a religious setting. Audrey Hale left behind a manifesto that the authorities tried to suppress. Robert Westman filled social media with deranged rants, filmed a video manifesto and decorated his gun with calls to kill Trump and Jews, and hate toward Christians.

After every mass shooting, the media turns into impromptu gun experts, enthusiastically discussing calibers and manufacturers, to avoid talking about the motive. Probably knowing that, the killer wrote his motives on his gun and media outlets still refuse to discuss it.

The children murdered at Covenant and the Annunciation Catholic Church are secondary victims of the transgender culture wars. The primary victims were two unstable children who had been routed into the ‘therapy’ system, heavily drugged with mind-altering substances, convinced that they were members of the opposite sex and led to believe that the only thing standing in the way of their happiness were those who refused to accept that they were the opposite sex.

Some years back, Maya ‘Alex’ McKinney, who was 16 at the time and was being ‘transitioned’ from the time she was 11, opened fire at a Colorado school. Like Hale, who had been in various forms of therapy since she was 6 years old, the experiment finally ended in blood and horror.

While most countries are pulling back from the medieval experimentation on children championed by the transgender movement and radical doctors who had taken to claiming that they can identify and begin ‘transitioning’ children as young as two years old, America’s medical and cultural elites have continued the deadly practice while claiming that it helps those children.

Not only doesn’t it help, but it kills.

Robert, Audrey and Maya are just a few of the transgender mass shooters over the past 6 years as a population of mentally unstable people preyed upon by identity politics turn violent. They’re only the tip of the iceberg with the emergence of the violent transgender Zizian cult responsible for at least six murders including the killing of a Border Patrol officer at the Canadian border.

We don’t need ‘gun control’. We do need to stop drugging and grooming children, often already troubled, to join the newest slot in the alphabet movement. The tragic loss of children, often teenage girls, was the result of corrupt culture war politics and the activist teachers, librarians and bored leftist parents who sacrificed their own children on the altar of the movement to fill the time between the BLM riots and the Hamas riots.have blood on their hands for those lost lives.

We don’t have ‘gun violence’. No more than Muslim terrorist attacks like 9/11 or the New Orleans Car Jihad were ‘plane violence’ or ‘car violence’. The three causes of mass shootings are mental illness, urban crime and domestic terrorism. Democrats are responsible for causing, worsening and enabling all three by warping kids, promoting criminals and importing terrorists.

There is no ‘gun violence’ problem, there is ‘gun violence’ as a consequence of leftist policies.

Democrats and the media knowingly blew up Columbine, the first major school shooting, into a nationwide story transforming the two killers into celebrities whose names and crimes continue to be referenced by nearly every school shooter, including Robert Westman and Audrey Hale, in order to achieve their policy goal of gun control. 26 years later, school shootings are a big phenomenon and each time the media blows up each case while knowing that teenage murder suicide is a documented copycat phenomenon that will only lead to more school shootings.

Generations of medicated teenage school shooters since have been copying each other in the hopes of getting their 15 minutes in the media as the poster boys and girls for gun control.

Not satisfied with what they had done, Democrats contrived to find new ways to make things worse. The Obama administration dismantled school discipline policies because they were said to be ‘systemically racist’ leading to the Parkland massacre whose survivors were then enlisted to campaign for gun control when they should have been campaigning for schools to deal with dangerous students before they snap. Pushing transgender transitions on children through schools and libraries took already unstable teens, filled them with hormones meant to rewire their brains and then prepped them for fighting culture wars in high schools across America.

That led to more school shootings like McKinney in Colorado and Dylan Butler in Iowa. After the church shooting in Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey denounced any mention of Robert Westman’s transgender mental health problems claiming that there’s a “whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community” and urged the county to rally behind them.

“Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them,” Frey told CNN. What he really meant was that gun owners needed to be villainized, not the community of mentally ill men who are under the delusion that they are women.

Adults are entitled to believe whatever they like, those who need to be hated however are the grown-ups who decided to take kids and exploit their emotional difficulties for their own political gain. No outrage is too great when aimed at the educational and medical professionals who ruined countless lives to provide more damaged foot soldiers for a radical culture war.

Many believed and still believe that they were doing the right thing. They’re wrong.

And the only way we have any hope of changing that is by having this conversation. Democrats have spent a quarter of a century enabling school shootings while shouting about gun control. We don’t need ‘gun control’. A gun in the hands of a sane, decent and moral American is no more of a threat than a car, a knife or any potentially lethal tool or piece of machinery. And anything, including a car or a can of gasoline, is a deadly weapon in the hands of a bad person.

If we want to stop mass shootings, then what we really need is criminal control, Muslim terrorist control and trans control. Get those three taken care of and most gun violence, except for rare crimes of passion, will disappear. We don’t need to control the number of rounds in a weapon, we need to control the kinds of drugs being dispensed to kids under the guise of treating them.

We need trans control. The culture war of castrating kids, cutting off their body parts, hitting them with dangerous and untested medications in the name of getting them to ‘accept’ a delusion inflicted on them by that same culture war is insane, horrifying and evil.

It’s an evil that must be driven out of every school and medical facility by a combination of parental activism, individual conscience and government intervention. There must be no room for the continuation of these barbaric medical experiments on troubled children. The occasional school shooting is the tip of a bloody iceberg. May the murdered children in Minneapolis be among the last victims of the transgender culture wars and the start of Trans Control Now.

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

 

 

The Federal Reserve is a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:    This is a grouping from the commentaries in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  Any cartoons will have been added by me.   If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

1913 was a seminal year for America with passage of laws that became slow walking disaster for the nation.  In that year the 16th Amendment was passed giving the federal government the right to steal as much as they could from Americans.  It's called income tax.  The 17th Amendment was passed destroying the balance of power between the federal government and the states, pretty much making the 10th Amendment, states rights, fundamentally meaningless.  Originally Senators were chosen by their states to in effect be de facto ambassadors representing their state at the federal level in order to keep the federal government from getting out of control.  And we can see how ending that has worked out. 

In that same year Congress passed, and Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, America's first fascist President, signed the Federal Reserve Act to make sure the United States maintained a sound banking system and a healthy economy. Until then, any time there was a panic (real or imagined), people rushed to their bank to withdraw all their money. That, of course, had a domino effect.

There are 12 regional banks across the United States that make up “the Fed.” Since 1977, the Federal Reserve has been charged with making decisions that promote maximum employment and stable prices. As you know from the news, the Federal Reserve’s independence in setting interest rates frequently comes under attack. President Trump calls its current chairman Jerome “Too Late” Powell because he and many economic observers believe that interest rates should have been lowered months ago.

There were many who didn’t believe a Federal Reserve was needed. For instance, in 1932, Pennsylvania Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chair of the House Banking Committee, said:

“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.”

The disaster of 1913 didn't occur overnight. Just like socialism, it was a slow walk through the institutional structure of America, and now we're facing an out of control Deep State which has passed regulations that make the federal government the absolute moral authority upending parental rights and controlling every aspect of our lives, spending billions of dollars the nation doesn't have on insane and wasteful programs, a national debt that's around 37 trillion dollars, and a federal judiciary filled with radical political hacks destroying the rule of law. 

The FED is a symptom of a government that's out of control and is in serious need of adjustment. 

From Bud Light to Cracker Barrel

From toxic masculinity to deadly gender dysphoria

By Mike Shaw @ From Mike's Point of View

Only a short time ago, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino was adamant in “modernizing” her restaurant chain—to the tune of around $700 million. Of course, the backlash was huge, and at the very least her inane logo change is being reversed. Naturally, this sort of brand vandalism will call to mind Bud Light’s incandescently stupid appointing of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as a brand spokesman in 2023.

In the case of Bud Light, brand vandal Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid was fired, and is now working for LIV Golf. As to Masino, there are plenty of voices calling for her to be sacked, but so far, she remains on as CEO.

Although n=2 is admittedly a small sample size to garner significant conclusions, we might ask ourselves how such long-established brands chose these epicene—and there is no other suitable word—women to grow their business. And, why would an outfit like LIV Golf would mess with such damaged goods as Heinerscheid?

The unfortunate answer seems to be DEI virtue signaling. As always, the same question arises: Surely, qualified women are available for these high-level corporate executive jobs. Why on Earth would you hire a Masino or Heinerscheid? Probably for the same reason you would hire a Hillary Clinton, Claudine Gay, or Kamala Harris: High profile and big titles, masking precious few actual significant accomplishments, not to mention mistakes.

And, no, I am not singling out women here, since the most glaring example is recent memory of someone who has accomplished virtually nothing, rather than accumulate fancy titles is…Joe Biden. It’s just that there seems to be a trend these days of hiring women for top jobs whereby their only “qualification” is a stacked resume of positions carefully placed three to four years apart.

As to DEI, if we can believe the hype, even BlackRock seems to be moving away from it. We shall see. A prominent conspiratorial view is that “they” gave us the Cracker Barrel victory only to lull us into submission.

Meanwhile, another ridiculous trope, “Toxic Masculinity” seems to be emerging into a parody of itself. While there are as many definitions of the term as there are articles written about it, it simply comes down to cases whereby men, in the minds of the predictably academic feminist observer, cause some sort of harm to others—real or imagined—by acting in a manner expected by societal norms.

It is hardly a surprise that the term “toxic femininity” refers to damage that women can do to THEMSELVES by being overzealous in acting out their expected gender roles. So, you see, it’s all about the horrible Patriarchy ruining everyone’s lives.

And what’s the solution? It simply comes down to feminizing men. In the extreme, it morphs into gender dysphoria, which until quite recently was considered a mental illness. Actually, it still is, but now that it can be monetized, by way of hormone treatments and mutilation surgery, most of the medical community is all in. Whatever happened to “First do no harm”?

The notion that gender is simply a social construct was created by the despicable “sexologist” John Money. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to matter that Money was a proven quack having utterly failed in the notorious case of the Reimer twins.

The twins, Bruce and Brain, were born in 1965, and Bruce suffered a tragic accident during a botched circumcision. Money convinced the parents that Bruce should be raised as a girl, Brenda, and trying for some years—without success—to convince him to have “corrective” surgery done giving him a vagina. Bruce, being a product of his genetics refused, and eventually had the proper corrective surgery, giving him a penis.

Money’s therapy included sexual role play between the brothers as early as age six. Money also published false results as the “John/Joan case” portraying it all as a success. The two boys would eventually commit suicide. And, yes, Money had a career at Johns Hopkins of around 50 years.

We know for sure that the recent Minneapolis school shooter was trans. According to Benny Johnson…

"The pattern is undeniable: Today's Annunciation Catholic Church shooter identified as trans. The Nashville Christian shooter identified as trans. The Lakewood Church shooter identified as trans. The Colorado Springs shooter identified as non binary. The Denver shooter identified as trans. The Aberdeen shooter identified as trans. The Iowa high school shooter was a trans activist."

Most notions of “toxic masculinity” would agree that a mass shooting is pretty toxic. How ironic that in at least the latest case, the perp didn’t want to be a man at all.

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Media Balance Newsletter for September 2, 2025

Free... Twice-a-Month...What you won't find in one place, anywhere else.

By John Droz, Jr 

Enjoy the latest edition of our free, critically thinking Media Balance Newsletter, and the picture in this edition says volumes.  So much for "toxic" masculinity.  

We cover Climate to COVID, Elections to Education, Renewables to Religion — showing you what the lamestream media has revised or filtered out.  If you missed it, here is the prior Newsletter.

Please use these links to pass on the Newsletter to other open-minded citizens via social media, etc. Anyone can subscribe (or unsubscribe) by emailing me. (aaprjohn@northnet.org)

We are continuously working at making this twice-a-month publication more interesting, more useful and more accessible to our 20,000± readers.

Due to loyal supporters, the Newsletter has been published 16 years now — thank you! Please let me know the email of anyone you feel would appreciate getting this unique and powerful information. 

PS — My substack site is now quite popular! It's about the lack of Critical Thinking relating to numerous societal matters (education, climate, energy, etc.). If you haven't already, signup for a FREE subscription. Enjoy and pass it on!

 Copyright © 2025; Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (see WiseEnergy.orgElection-Integrity.info & C19Science.info)

Monday, September 1, 2025

P&D Today, and The World as I See It!


History is Everything, and Everything is to be Questioned.

By Rich Kozlovich

In today's edition I have two pieces,  Nitwit Brigade on Parade, Part VI, and I Think, Therefore I Exist! 

Here are seven articles by others I think are worth your time.   

  1. Dems Resent Noem Being Safe, but Hid Ashli Babbitt's Killer for Seven Months By Susan Daniels
  2. The Flesh-Eating Screwworm Will Enrich America By Daniel Greenfield
  3. Ideology Over Integrity: National Bank's ESG Strategy Undermines Its Fiduciary Duty By David McGruer and Tom Harris
  4. Democrats are Pro Crime By Robin Itzler
  5. Appeals Court Rules That President Trump's Emergency Tariff Gambit Is Unlawful By Francis Menton
  6. The Netherlands and the 20th Theorem of Government By Dan Mitchell
  7. Since Upper-Income Taxpayers Finance the American Welfare State, Leftists Should Be Nice to Rich People, Part III By Dan Mitchell

Ah, the French!  Throughout the history of France their leaders never saw an opportunity to be a pain in the butt they could let pass.   French Foreign Minister went to Greenland to declare Greenland is not for sale, and wants Greenland and the Danes to know  “Europe and France stand by them today and tomorrow.”   He went on to criticize America saying “You’ll not make a nation great again by imposing yourself on your neighbors and allies,” ....You’ll make a nation great again by contributing to the freedom of the world and to the ability of friends and partners to thrive and to live in peace and prosperity.”  

Perhaps he should read the history of France, which has attacked it's neighbors for it's entire existence, at least until Hitler slapped the snot out of them, and then went to war afterward to continue to own it's colonial possessions.  As for France's views on anything relevant today.... who cares?  In a few years France as we know it won't even exist, and there will be a Muslim nation with nuclear arms.  

Greenland is the least of France's problems.  It's clear the people of Europe have had it with all the insanity their leadership has imposed on them that if allowed to continue will destroy Europe.  People can only be pushed so far, and  revolution is in the making in Europe and especially in the UK.  In the UK you can get arrested for flying the British flag as it might offend Muslims, who drive through the streets of the major cities of the UK flying flags of Muslim nations, and nothing is done about it.  If you defend yourself against molesters you get arrested and the molesters are sent home.   The vast majority of Brits think the U.K. is in a‘Bad State’, and expect it to get worse.

There's a looming problem for the Democrat leadership, and that's Trump is forcing them to take the sides over supporting illegal aliens, and criminals over their citizens by threatening to send in the National Guard to end the pandemic or violent crime in their cities.  California is a mess, but what is Governor  Newsom worried about?  Illegal aliens won’t get to vote

Governor Pritzker calls it an invasion, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signing an executive order demanding Trump stand down and do anything that deters crime in Chicago and arrest illegal aliens.   Did he say anything about the seven people wounded in Chicago drive-by shooting?

  1. Trump Slams ’Crazy’ Pritzker After Another Weekend of Chicago Violence  He Better Straighten It Out, FAST — or We’re Coming!’
  2.  Pritzker Plays Tough Guy While Trump Pushes to Help the People of Chicago
  3. Senator John Kennedy Slams Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker: ‘Even the Mafia is Leaving Chicago Because of Crime’ (VIDEO)
  4. Chicago’s Far-Left Mayor Brandon Johnson Signs ‘Protective Order’ to Try and Block Trump’s National Guard Deployment, Vows to ‘Take Any Action Necessary’

Wes Moore calls Trump's deploying national guard ‘completely performative’, which I think is  pretty bold for a guy who falsely claimed he won the Bronze Star and is Mayor of a city with an out of control crime.  He says he was told he won it and just accepted that.  Well, I served, and when I was being separated I was required to review my awards, and I knew what I was eligible for that wasn't listed, and if I'd been told I won a Bronze Star, I would have noticed it was missing from that list.  But, we're expected to believe he didn't notice "his Bronze Star" wasn't listed?  I wrote about that one year ago, and it appears he served honorably, but he clearly decided he had to embellish his record, and now that he's shooting off his mouth, it's coming back to haunt him.

 The Democrat party is dying, and there is nothing leftists can do about it - The collectivist side of the political spectrum is in serious trouble these days.  Their polling is dropping like a stone, along with voter registration, and they are in a cash flow crisis.  Even worse for them is the fact that these are just superficial indications of endemic problems that cannot be fixed.  Two of these threaten to bring down the entire edifice.  Closely examining these helps explain the left, and show why the left is doomed.

 There's not such thing as voter fraud, according the Democrats.  Except for this Canadian whose been illegally voting in America for 20 years.


Life is About Patterns and Circles. Patterns of behavior,
and the Social Circles Promoting That Behavior.

 

Democrats are Pro Crime

By Robin Itzler 

Editor's Note:    This is a grouping from the commentaries in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors.  Any cartoons will have been added by me.   If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

 

President Trump continually makes Democrats go with the 20 percent of lunatics on almost every issue. From supporting terrorists (aka Hamas rather than Israel) to wanting males to play in female sports to being against reducing crime in D.C. and possibly other blue cities, Democrats firmly stand with the lunatics. Dan Turrentine, a Democratic strategist and host of the 2Way podcast The Morning Meeting said:

“Just like with immigration, Trump has found another issue where the Democratic Party is on a back foot. They don’t want to admit that there’s a problem — even though nobody in New York City, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles or San Francisco would say things are good. The fact that we have people arguing that crime is not a problem is crazy.”

Top 10 u.s. cities by murder rate (per 100,000 residents).  They ALL have DEMOCRAT mayors!

  1. St. Louis, Missouri; Mayor Tishaura Jones
  2. Baltimore, Maryland; Mayor Brandon Scott
  3. Detroit, Michigan; Mayor Mike Duggan
  4. New Orleans, Louisiana; Mayor LaToya Cantrell
  5. Birmingham, Alabama; Mayor Randall Woodfin
  6. Memphis, Tennessee; Mayor Jim Strickland
  7. Kansas City, Missouri; Mayor Quinton Lucas
  8. Cleveland, Ohio; Mayor Justin Bibb
  9. Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Mayor Sharon Weston Broome
  10. Chicago, Illinois; Mayor, Brandon Johnson

As President Trump successfully lowers crime in Washington, D.C., the lunatic Democrats protest. Who would have ever thought that the Democrat Party would be pro criminal? It will be interesting to see how D.C. votes in the midterms. In the 2024 election, this is how D.C. voted: Kamala Harris won D.C. with 92.5% of the vote while Donald Trump only received 06.6%.

The upcoming elections will be telling all over the nation.  The Democrat leadership is clearly embracing crime against their own citizens.  It also appears their citizens must also be in love with murder, theft, violence and rape since they keep voting for those who not only allow and support it with insane legislation regarding bail, reduced charges, and even failing to prosecute the criminals at all, along with judges who sympathize with the criminals instead of the victims.   They're putting these wolves right back on the streets to slaughter the flock.  

“Coming at a time when Democrats are at a crossroads, Mamdani’s win may embolden progressives, sideline moderates and drive the party further to the left. If this is the direction the Democratic Party moves in, they will end up even less politically relevant than they are today.” Douglas Schoen, Democrat Strategist; August 18, 2025

On Tuesday, when you are out and about, take a moment to think back to our Patriots fighting to free the colonies from Great Britain. On September 2, 1776, our Continental Army led by General George Washington wrote to the Continental Congress of his desire for a permanent, long-term standing army rather than the current short-term enlistments. 

General Washington also sought permission to burn New York City to the ground rather than let it fall into British hands. (Hmmm, would some today argue that should be considered rather than let NYC fall into communist hands with Zohran Mamdani?)

Nitwit Brigade on Parade, Part VI

By Rich Kozlovich

Rosie O’Donnell left America for Ireland because she hates Trump, but she just can't keep quiet over the outrages occurring here.  Outrages I tell you, and they're all because of Trump of course.  The deadly Texas flood.....Trump's fault.  She had a meltdown over Colbert's cancellation, and Molly Ringwald is thrilled.  He can run for President now, and she's all in on that. 

And now Rosie claims the man who killed those children in the Catholic church was ..... watch out now... here it comes.... a Republican MAGA person.  Claiming he was "a white guy, Republican, MAGA person… whaddya’ know… white supremacist.”  Well, he was white, and I'm shocked, apparently she knows the difference between a man and a woman, which shows even a blind coconut can find a monkey once in a while, but other than that, she didn't get a thing right including her diatribe against Trump.  

Even claiming on July 4th there was a revolution brewing against the Trump administration.  Perhaps she was referring to the expressed rage by Hollywood elites over Trump's alleged attack on free speech for daring to attack CBS and other news organizations for the lies they spout against him.  How dare he defend himself?  He's trying to become a king.   But that's not a conspiracy theory!   Why?  Because only Republicans and conservatives can be called conspiracy theorists.   

What is this really?  A deep dive into Trump Derangement Syndrome!  But in spite of their insane hate for Donald Trump, it appears all that "rage" by Hollywood elites have expressed has been ameliorated, because now the Hollywood Democrats are M.I.A. as their party goes down in flames.  So much for Rosie's revolution.   Not only have most of them shut their mouths, they've closed up their wallets.  Imagine that.  Ask yourself this; do the vast majority of Americans really care what all that celebrity trash thinks? 

She was upset that Trump refused to believe Joe Biden was legally electedand he wasn't, calling him an election denier.  Then turns around and claims there's something wrong with Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, and the vote needs to be recounted.

Can you imagine how many thousands of "lost" boxes of ballots would mysteriously turn up in such a recount?   And, she supports the idea that Elon Musk stole the election from Harris.  But that's not election denial.  Why?  Because only Republicans and conservatives can be accuse of being election deniers. 

And supposedly it's the Republicans who are weird? And we know that because Governor Walz said so, and he has a close relationship with weird.  

Now the latest Rosie rant .... and understand, it's not a conspiracy theory mind you, that's only for conservatives and Republicans...is fantasizing about Trump's death, martial law, the end of elections, and demanding to know when America has had enough of Trump, and all the terrible conservatives who support him and do something about him.  Well, most Americans are doing something about Trump.  Most Americans are thanking him.  

As for Rosie, does anyone really think she's sane?  

Update:  Typical leftist, always sure rarely right. Rosie Takes Back Claim Trans Shooter was a ‘Republican MAGA Person’: ’I Messed up’

 Update:  Loony Rosie O’Donnell Says She Got “They” Tattooed on Her Wrist So She Could Remember Her Daughter’s Pronouns

I Think, Therefore I Exist!

By Rich Kozlovich 

Every week Power Line has an article called, This Week in Pictures, none of which I can reproduce here, so what I've done on more than one occasion is take what they've offered and create a snarky satirical paraphrased article.   Let's start with Rene Descartes who was a "17th century French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist considered the father of modern philosophy.....famous for the phrase "I think, therefore I am", ergo, the picture,which I found elsewhere, fits.   

 2-second cookie break: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am." René  Descartes (But he was wrong.) | Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel🎗️

The UK has decided to cover all paintings and pictures of St George for brandishing a spear in his defense of the innocent against the Dragon, and so, they've decided to charge a young Scottish girl for defending herself and her younger sister against an immigrant molester with an ax and a knife.  Does anyone see a parallel there besides me?    

One young boy was told by his teacher guns kill people.   He asked if that meant his pencil failed his math exam?  So, if guns kill people that must mean pens misspell words, cars drive drunk, and spoons make people fat.  

Does anyone remember which Democrats were outraged at the assassination attempt of Donald Trump and immediately demanded gun control?  Think about this.  It's being claimed if Democrats stopped shooting people gun crime would drop 90%.   And it gets better.  Just imagine being so ignorant and stupid as to march in the streets demanding less crime enforcement with less safer streets and a less safe community, marching with signs saying, "Hands Off Our Criminals", "Keep Criminals Safe", "Illegals Before Residents".  

Oh, wait, there really are people that stupid and ignorant, and they're from a party that believe less Judaic/Christian religion will make people more intelligent and rational.  This is the same party that claims men can get pregnant.  I guess they must also believe roosters lay eggs and bulls supply milk.  Boy, what a shock it would be for them at milking time, and one man is suing Smart Water for not making him smart.  He's rightly outraged, since he's as dumb as he's ever been.   I wonder if he's a Democrat?

What is white privilege?  The ability to face life's challenges and the adversity that comes with life without blaming another ethnic group. 

There was a recent media hoohaw about Mamdani's inability to lift weights, but that's not fair. What we need here is a little clarity.  He's a communist, and a leader, and in the communist world it's not the leaders who do the heavy lifting, it's the proletariat that does that.  See, clarity!

Why is it big business thinks high minimum wages and more regulations is a good thing? Because they can afford them and small businesses can't? 

There's a lot of talk about passing legislation on voter fraud, but I would like for someone to explain to me why that's not a hardship on dead voters. 

Socialism is like a chronic disease that needs regular, rigorous and disciplined medication.  And the minute the medication is eliminated, the infection surges back stronger than ever.  The medication?  Honest education, and it wouldn't hurt if people read a history book once in a while.    

If a hat ever drove people crazy, it's the red hat that says "Make America Great Again".  The Democrats are sick and tried of that and may launch a red hat in protest that says, "Newsome Was Right About Everything".  So, don't wait,  order it now, and all it will take is four to six months to fill the order, but only after paying the 37% hat tax and then waiting for the delivery at the end of California's high speed rail line.  

The Flesh-Eating Screwworm Will Enrich America

Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog 

In a stunning milestone for diversity, the first flesh-eating screwworm infested human entered the United States from either Guatemala, El Salvador or some other downtrodden country.

The widely misunderstood ‘New World Screwworm Fly’ is a mostly peaceful parasite whose females lay eggs in open wounds and their larvae, referred to intolerantly by some as ‘maggots’, then use their sharp mouth hooks to eat their way through the host, while feeding on his tissues in what some DEI experts are calling a pointed critique of rapacious capitalism.

The United States had eradicated the screwworm fly after WWII, reducing the nation’s fabulous diversity of flesh-eating parasites, until open borders with Latin America, where this intriguing fly still coexists with the indigenous population, welcomed its return to our shores.

America’s imperialist boycott of the People’s Republic of Cuba, where screwworm infestations are endemic and there are thousands of cases in animals each year, delayed the inevitable remigration but ongoing travel from countries with Cuban-backed guerrilla movements helped hasten the first triumphant return of the first human infested with screwworms to the U.S.

Several months ago, the USDA had intolerantly blocked cattle imports from Mexico after screwworms were detected in that country, but the screwworm, like so many of the migrants and refugees crossing our border in search of a better life, refused to let our racist policies stop it from living its American Dream by coming to our country and laying eggs inside of us.

Some ‘MAGA’ types and radical right wingers are railing against the prospect of the severe pain, swelling fever and secondary infections caused by the highly sensitive flesh-eating parasite, but their crude stereotyping of this latest migrant to cross our border shows their hateful ignorance.

So many of us have forgotten that our ancestors also came here with a dream to lay eggs inside unwary mammals. They faced intolerance because of their flesh-eating customs until society became more tolerant of their ways. And then they forgot their own struggles to fit in. So it’s our duty to extend our hand (and other available body parts) in welcome to these newest arrivals.

Yes, there are certain risks in taking the screwworm to our bosom and integrating her into our society, but those are the same risks which we took when we opened our doors to the world. But the greater the risk, the greater the reward. The future of America will not come from here, but from out there. And we must not forget that today’s hungry screwworm is tomorrow’s CEO.

There are some who are afraid, but being infected by flesh-eating parasites is the price we pay for diversity. We want to live in cities with dozens of ethnic cuisines and people who mow our lawns for less than the price of a Venti Matcha Latte at Starbucks, but we can’t have that without also accepting the terrorist bombings, machete beheadings and horrifying parasitic infestations.

The best way to deal with the screwworm is not to resist it, but to welcome it into our hearts (or hopefully less vital organs), to learn about its unique traditions and non-judgementally resettle it in vulnerable communities around the country. The screwworm is just the latest immigrant to burrow into the body politics of our nation and once we’ve paid the price, we will be better for it.

Elected officials and experts should be dispatched to reassure (and shame) the public out of any irrational prejudices it may have over being devoured from the inside by invasive freeloaders. PBS should feature documentaries about how well and deeply screwworms are integrating into local communities in communities and states we don’t live and couldn’t be paid to set foot into.

And any acts of intolerance against screwworms must be met with immediate documentaries.

Since the screwworms are used to eating flesh, there may be some initial unpleasantness, but it is nothing that we cannot overcome if we make the conscious choice to sacrifice someone else’s children or livestock on the altar of diversity. Anything else would be a betrayal of our most deeply held values to let our fear for our tender flesh stand in the way of social justice.

Like so many refugees, the screwworms come from a troubled part of the world. They have been the victims of generations of imperialistic programs funded by American taxpayers to eradicate them. Their resentments are understandable. That is why we must stand with the screwworms and for the screwworms (but preferably not too close to the screwworms) so they can live free from fear of persecution in even the reddest state and vote for the Democrats.

With 300 screwworm larvae hatching from one egg, the flesh-eating parasites will soon form an invincible bloc that can turn every state into California in under a year. All we have to do is make sure that hundreds of mail-in ballots are promptly directed to whichever host they have infested.

And we really don’t need to worry. Much.

Screwworm infections in humans are mostly non-fatal (with the exception of a gentleman in Costa Rica last year) because the screwworms are not here to kill us, only feed off us and use us to nurture whole families of flesh eating parasites who will only wipe us out when they reach sufficient numbers to take over America. Until then, we have almost nothing to worry about except the occasional radicalized ‘lone wolf’ screwworms who will prematurely try to eat us.

And there is so much we can learn from the screwworms.

When America eradicated the screwworm (just like it tried to eradicate anyone who was at all ‘different’), we lost a vital part of our ecosystem. Instead of listening to nature, we tried to control it only to discover that Mother Earth always finds a way to overcome our western patriarchal science. Now we have the opportunity to atone for our crimes against the screwworm. This time instead of trying to wipe out the screwworm, we can learn from the screwworm how to live in harmony with the natural world. By embracing ecological diversity, we can find inner peace.

And also get in touch with our inner parasites.

We have much in common with the screwworm. Like us, screwworms love their children and try to find the best possible home for them whether it’s an Ivy League college or a ghastly wound, and they stay there until they exit with a PhD in gender studies twenty years later. Like us, screwworms form a parasitic relationship with the taxpaying host and can’t be stopped from eating him alive through any means short of sharp pliers or government defunding.

Also, like us, the only way to defeat the screwworm is to drop large numbers of sterile males to interfere with their reproductive cycle by telling them that children are bad for the planet.

The arrival of the first human infested by screwworms has reopened debate about the virtue of open borders or border security. Some say that if we had secure borders, we wouldn’t have to worry about cartels or flesh-eating parasites, but such thinking is woefully shortsighted.

The future begins with each of us. We must lower our walls, open our doors and welcome our new neighbours to our shores. And one day, as we pass our neighbour, the screwworm, and the screwworm’s daughter, who runs a government nonprofit for screwworms, and the screwworm’s 300 sons who are all on welfare, we can be proud of ourselves, our ethics and our humanism.

In this way, the flesh-eating parasite will become our friend, the flesh-eating parasite.

Each step forward that we take, each screwworm with a useless degree, each screwworm on TV and each screwworm in the school that our sons and daughters attend is a triumph for our deepest values and ideals. They remind us that our civilization, our cultural heritage and our lives are worth nothing if they are not put at the service of our fellow screwworms.

Today a screwworm applies for refugee status. Tomorrow a screwworm will be President.

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

 

 

Appeals Court Rules That President Trump's Emergency Tariff Gambit Is Unlawful

August 30, 2025/ @ Manhattan Contrarian

Editor's Note:  As usual, I find his comments informative and enlightening.  But I have some issues with two of his comments:  "you really need to stretch the language of the statute to find support for his position."  And he doesn't "think that the so-called balance of trade deficit is a national emergency, or anything close to it.  I disagree with both, especially the second one. Trade as has been conducted since the end of WWII has sapped the strength of the nation, slowly but inexorably, and nothing can refute that. It's history, and that history is incontestable.  TRK 

One of the signature initiatives of President Trump’s second term has been what I have called the “tariff gambit” — the rapid blizzard of tariff actions, including declarations of emergencies, tariff impositions, increases and decreases in rates, postponements, and negotiations of new trade deals with various countries. In several prior posts, including here and here, I have raised a series of concerns with this area of the President’s policies.

Putting aside for a moment the question of whether these various tariff initiatives constitute good public policy, a separate question is whether the President has a legal basis to impose, raise and lower tariffs on his own authority, even if he declares a “national emergency.” After all, a tariff is a form of a tax, and the taxing power is one of the core powers of Congress. It is at the heart of what is often referred to as the “power of the purse,” granted to Congress by the Constitution, and fundamental to the separation of powers that is the basis of the constitutional scheme. Has Congress somewhere along the line granted the President essentially plenary authority to set and change tariff rates at his whim as part of his conduct of foreign policy?

In my August 20 post, “A Mini Scorecard For President Trump’s First Seven Months Of Term Two,” I had this to say:

I think it is likely that the CAFC will rule that the IEEPA does not give Trump a unilateral power to set and change tariff rates, even if he has declared a “national emergency.”

On Friday (August 29), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc (that is, all eleven judges) weighed in on that question. Here is a link to the court’s opinion. The bottom line is that the court found — in line with my prediction — that the President does not have the authority to set and modify tariffs that he has been purporting to exercise. (The vote of the court was seven for the majority, and four for a dissent that would have upheld the President’s actions.)

The issue in the case was whether Congress by a statute had granted to the President the unrestricted power, once he has declared an “emergency,” to set and modify tariffs. In his Executive Orders imposing the tariffs, and in the briefing on his behalf in the court, the President had decided to rely on one particular statute, namely the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or the “IEEPA.” (There are other statutes that grant the President emergency powers relating to international trade, but each comes with its own problematic language and restrictions. For whatever reasons, the President’s lawyers made the decision in this case to rest their argument on the IEEPA.)

The majority’s discussion of whether the IEEPA authorizes the President’s tariff initiatives appears at pages 26 et seq. of the opinion. On page 26, the court quotes the statutory language on which the President relies:

IEEPA authorizes the President to:

“investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation, of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

The citation is 50 U.S.C. Section 1702(a)(1)(B).

Go ahead and take your time to read that and see if you can deduce what language supposedly gives the President the authority to set and modify tariff rates at will. I have provided the clue, in the two bolded words. The argument is that the power to “regulate” the “importation” of property includes the power to impose and/or modify tariffs. The court comments:

The statute bestows significant authority on the President to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties or the like, or the power to tax.

The court points out that the statute does not contain the words “tariff” or “duty” or any synonym, while other statutes do give the President explicit authority in this area (although not sufficient authority to support what he has done).

President Trump promptly reacted to the court’s ruling by calling it “highly partisan” and vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court. There have been plenty of highly partisan court decisions frustrating various of Trump’s policies coming out of Democrat-appointed judges, particularly district court judges. However, I would not put this decision in that category. As far as I can determine, two Republican-appointed judges in the CAFC voted with the majority, while interestingly two Obama-appointed judges were among the four dissenters. The problem for Trump here is that you really need to stretch the language of the statute to find support for his position. While the Supreme Court has so far been quite supportive of Trump against activist district court judges, I would not bet on Trump’s side in the Supreme Court in this case.

Meanwhile, the CAFC has temporarily stayed its decision to give the Supreme Court a chance to weigh in.

My general comment is that I don’t think that the so-called balance of trade deficit is a national emergency, or anything close to it. And while the fentanyl importation issue is at least arguable as a national emergency, it is only peripherally related to tariffs. Put those issues together with the lack of statutory support for general presidential authority to set and modify tariffs, even with a national emergency, and this whole tariff gambit thing looks like one of Trump’s very worst initiatives. The courts will be doing him a favor to shut it down.

The Netherlands and the 20th Theorem of Government

August 30, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Ever since unveiling my 20th Theorem of Government, I’ve mostly shared bad news about jurisdictions with profligate politicians (FranceBrazilColombia, MarylandWashington, AustraliaGermany, and Canada).

My only positive example has been Greece, though I was being somewhat charitable since I was highlighting a five-year period where spending grew by more than 4 percent annually (which was progress since nominal GDP grew more than 8 percent annually over the same years).

Today, I’m going to cite a much more impressive example of spending restraint.

Here’s a chart – based on IMF data – showing that the Netherlands had a seven-year period last decade where spending grew by an average of less than 1 percent annually.

The chart shows the two big consequences on Dutch fiscal discipline.

  • The burden of government spending declined by more than 6-percentage points of GDP.
  • Spending restraint turned a large budget deficit into a small budget surplus.

The Netherlands is a rare positive case study for my 20th Theorem.

 

But it’s more than that.

Any nation that has a multi-year period with spending growth averaging less than 2 percent annually also qualifies for my Golden Rule Club.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that fiscal policy has deteriorated a bit since the 2010-2017 period.

Government is now consuming 44.7 percent of GDP. That may not seem like an enormous shift, but keep in mind that the Netherlands has some long-term fiscal challenges.

So any slippage is bad news.

P.S. One bright spot is that the Netherlands has a well-regarded system of personal retirement accounts, which I’ve ranked as 4th-best in the world.

Since Upper-Income Taxpayers Finance the American Welfare State, Leftists Should Be Nice to Rich People, Part III

August 31, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve written a couple of columns (in 2016 and earlier this year) about how upper-income taxpayers finance the vast majority of the welfare state.

 

The data I shared involved the federal budget in Washington.

And I explained that the Bernie-AOC crowd, instead of despising the rich, should be grateful for them (yes, I realize that is very unlikely, but I view myself as the Don Quixote of economic freedom).

The same lesson applies to state and local governments. Or perhaps I should say it especially applies to state and local governments since internal tax migration is much easier than international tax migration.

Interestingly, some folks in New York are capable of learning. Here are some excerpts from a column by Matthew Haag in the New York Times.

 

The rate at which New York State has been adding millionaires to its population in recent years has fallen below that of other large states, potentially costing the state billions in unrealized tax revenue, according to a new report from a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group. At the same time, California, Florida and Texas had large increases in the number of people with annual incomes of at least $1 million residing in their states, all adding them at a faster rate than New York did from 2010 to 2022. The millionaire population in New York nearly doubled over that same time period, but it more than tripled in those other states. …“We have a debate about affordability, but we need to raise more revenue,” said Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, “and we can raise even more revenue if we have even more millionaires.” …the group’s arguments that New York City needs more millionaires and that any increase in personal income taxes could drive them away…is in opposition to the platform of Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman who is the Democratic nominee. Mr. Mamdani has proposed a new 2 percent tax on income greater than $1 million.

Here are the most important numbers in Haag’s column.

While just 1 percent of the city’s taxpayers are millionaires, their contributions make up 40 percent of all personal income tax collected. If New York’s rate of growth had kept pace with that of other states, the group said, the state and city would have together collected $13 billion in additional taxes in 2022.

The bottom line is that folks on the left in New York have to decide what matters most.

 

  • Is their main goal to persecute rich people and drive them away? If that’s the case, they should continue what they’re doing and (for the ones in New York City) even take it to the next level by electing Zohran Mamdani, the Champagne Socialist with a lunatic agenda.
  • Or, is their main goal to provide benefits and services to lower-income people? If that’s the case, they should realize that rich taxpayers are the geese with the golden eggs. As such, they should be very grateful for them and maybe, just maybe, they should hope for more of them.

Sadly, I fear that many folks on the left are motivated by envy and instinctively prefer the persecution option.

P.S. It was interesting to read in the NYT column that California still creates millionaires, but perhaps that is not surprising since the state hasn’t figured out how to tax unrealized capital gains. The problem for the not-so-Golden State is that many of those successful taxpayers then emigrate.

Dems Resent Noem Being Safe, but Hid Ashli Babbitt's Killer for Seven Months

Coward Michael Byrd hid with his dog

 Susan Daniels Aug 31, 2025 @ Susan's Newsletter

Recently the Democrats were irate that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was living in military housing after harassment and death threats were made against her. The decision was made after “doxxing” turned into perceived intimidation.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem  

Assaults on law enforcement has increased dramatically, and Noem is an obvious target. The  assaults on ICE agents jumped 830% in the first six months of this year.

"Following the media’s publishing of the location of Secretary Noem’s Washington D.C. apartment, she has faced vicious doxxing on the dark web and a surge in death threats, including from the terrorist organizations, cartels, and criminal gangs that DHS targets. Due to threats and security concerns, she has been forced to temporarily stay in secure military housing," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. "Secretary Noem continues to pay rent for her Navy Yard residence."

 Ironically, not a single complaint came from the whiners on the Left when then-Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd and his dog were housed at at taxpayer expense for seven months at Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We even paid for his phone calls.

Capitol Police Department Captain Michael Leroy Byrd

 Efforts to identify with him Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by Judicial Watch were ignored by the FBI refused three times.

“In its complaint, Judicial Watch explained to the court that it had asked all three government agencies for all records relating to the billeting of Byrd at Joint Base Andrews during the period from January 6, 2021, to July 2022, including authorization papers, housing, meals, transportation, and visitor logs.

“The documents show that Lieutenant Byrd and a pet stayed in a “Distinguished Visitor Suite” at the “Presidential Inn” (part of Air Force Inns) under a “Capitol Police Presidential Inn Reservation” for the period July 8, 2021, through January 28, 2022.

 The Distinguished Visitor Suite is typically reserved for Brigadier Generals or above.

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“Last month, also as a result of this lawsuit, Judicial Watch (JW) released records from the DC Police about the shooting death of Babbitt, showing that multiple officers claimed they didn’t see a weapon in Babbitt’s hand before Byrd shot her, and that Byrd was visibly distraught afterward. One officer attested that he didn’t hear any verbal commands before Byrd shot Babbitt.”

From those (JW) records: “The new records include the January 6, 2021, Metro PD Death Report for Babbitt (identified as Ashli Elizabeth McEntee-Babbitt Pamatian). The investigators note that the possible Manner of Death was ‘Homicide [Police Involved Shooting].’ The narrative description of the ‘Terminal Event’ (Babbitt’s death) notes that ‘the victim was shot inside of the U.S. Capitol building. After being shot, the victim was transported to Medstar for advance life support, however after several attempts to revive the victim, she succumb [sic] to her injury and was pronounced dead at 1515 hours by Dr. [redacted] the attending physician.’

“Under the ‘Investigation/Medical History’ portion of the report, the investigators wrote, Babbitt ‘was involved in a first amendment demonstration at the U.S. Capitol….(emphasis added) the decedent was shot by a member of Law Enforcement after breeching a secured room at First Street, Southeast, Washington, DC, (U.S. Capitol Building).”

According to congressional and police documents obtained by Just the News, “The Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riots and then was promoted has a lengthy internal affairs and disciplinary record that includes firearm-related incidents, a sweeping congressional investigation has found.

 “The issues in Captain Michael Byrd's background included a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapon's purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon (which he left in a public restroom) and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood.

Other interesting court filings for Byrd include two bankruptcies and two foreclosures. His 1999 Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharged all his debt. In 2009 Byrd filed for Chapter 13, which allows people to make payments on debts, but changed that to Chapter 7 to rid himself of those responsibilities. According to bankruptcy court documents, his income for 2009 was $142,144.

 The Trustee’s Final Report showed he paid $14,547 to clear debts of $1,237,680.00. Lawyers will be relieved to know that the trustee got her $2,393 fee from that amount.

He lost his house to the bank and the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Fund lost $20,555 for a car they financed. Despite foreclosures and bankruptcies, Byrd was able to purchase a $520,000 house in 2019.

Unlike others who would have been at least reduced in rank for his many failings, Byrd apparently was rewarded with a seven-month vacation after the shooting and eventually promoted to the rank of Captain.

Michael Byrd has owed the IRS $56,365.71 since 2019—Case No. FL19-1594— in Prince George’s County Courts. It is still unpaid. With interest and penalties it would now be over $100,000.

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 But this may be what Byrd is waiting for: “For a filed tax return, the IRS generally has a 10-year statute of limitations to collect unpaid taxes from the date of assessment. Once this time, known as the Collection Statute Expiration Date (CSED), expires, the IRS can no longer legally enforce collection of the tax debt.”

If it isn’t refiled within ten years, it is forgiven. I.R.S. has plenty of people and plenty of time to refile against him. However, if he is in jail, where he should be for the murder of Ashli Babbitt, they may have a problem collecting. And since the Air Force just agreed she should receive military funeral honors for her fourteen years of service, his day in court may be sooner than he thinks

 





Ideology Over Integrity: National Bank's ESG Strategy Undermines Its Fiduciary Duty

By David McGruer and Tom Harris

Earlier this year Canada's National Bank Investments (NBI) proudly released its 2024 Report on Responsible Investment, touting its climate commitments, ESG integration (Environmental, Social, and Governance investment practices), and alignment with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. But beneath the polished language and corporate optimism lies a troubling reality: NBI has apparently embraced ideology at the expense of science, economics, and its fiduciary responsibility.

The report opens by declaring climate change an "unavoidable reality" and makes "net-zero" alignment a central tenet of its investment strategy. But such declarations are unsupported by scientific rigor. Nowhere does the report reference scientific findings relating to our climate in any nuanced form. Instead, NBI accepts worst-case climate scenarios as fact, without acknowledging that many experts, including physicists William Happer of Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, challenge the reliability of climate models and warn against the misuse of science in policymaking.

Carbon dioxide (CO2‚), the NBI report's primary villain, is a non-toxic gas essential to plant life, and thus to animal and human life. Increasing atmospheric CO2‚ has coincided with global greening and record agricultural yields. It is not, as NBI implies, an existential threat. Yet they use this false premise to justify a radical reorientation of capital away from energy-intensive industries, regardless of their economic utility or technological innovation.

There is no evidence that NBI performed independent scientific due-diligence before building its strategy around climate catastrophe narratives. Their report references no serious scientific reviews or consultations with dissenting experts. Instead, NBI leans entirely on ESG industry groups and regulatory-driven frameworks such as the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the Canada Climate Law Initiative. In other words, NBI apparently did not verify whether the "climate risk" it fears is real, probable, or material; it simply assumed it.

On the economic side, NBI's embrace of ESG mandates risks undercutting returns and distorting capital allocation. Political scientist and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Bjorn Lomborg estimates that global net-zero pledges could cost trillions of dollars annually with minimal impact on global temperatures, money that could address far more urgent issues such as hunger, sanitation, and basic health care. Furthermore, NBI's blanket exclusions of companies involved in thermal coal, oil sands, and Arctic exploration reflects moral judgment, not financial prudence.

This is not responsible investing. It is social engineering through capital markets. Investors are being nudged, or shoved, into portfolios optimized for ideological compliance, not risk-adjusted performance. Climate risk is grossly exaggerated in NBI's report, while the grave risks of energy scarcity, regulatory overreach, and economic stagnation are ignored.

The human costs of these policies are profound. Across Canada, rising energy prices already strain households and companies. Globally, the consequences are even starker. Billions of people in developing nations rely on affordable hydrocarbons to fuel economic growth, build infrastructure, and achieve basic living standards. When Western financial institutions strangle energy investment, they don't just inconvenience multinational oil firms, they sabotage efforts to eradicate poverty. Restricting energy access delays clean water projects, reduces food security, and condemns millions to lives of needless hardship.

By prioritizing abstract and arbitrary CO2‚ emission targets over concrete human needs, NBI's ESG framework perpetuates real-world harm under the guise of virtue.

What is most absent from the report is any genuine commitment to human flourishing. Energy is the foundation of modern life. Instead of vilifying emissions, investment leaders should champion innovation in reliable, affordable energy, including oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. A truly responsible investment framework begins with a clear-eyed, unbiased, full-context view of science, economics, and ethics, not ESG orthodoxy.

The deeper concern is NBI's apparent breach of fiduciary duty. Canadian fiduciaries, under both common law and securities regulation, are bound to prioritize the financial interests of clients, not to champion external political and social causes. NBI's decision to embed ESG into manager compensation and portfolio construction compromises this duty. A fiduciary's primary obligation is to safeguard capital with sound, objective judgment, not to leverage client assets for social experiments.

At its core, NBI's approach reflects a moral inversion: treating human industry and energy abundance as threats, rather than as achievements that have lifted billions out of poverty. As Alex Epstein, founder and director of the Center for Industrial Progress, argues in his book Fossil Future, the environmental and investment success of a project should be measured by how well human flourishing is advanced, not by how minimally it impacts the atmosphere. Energy is not our enemy; it is the enabler of clean water, abundant food, medical care, and global resilience.

If NBI truly wishes to lead, it must reject climate alarmism, scrutinize its assumptions, and re-anchor its investing philosophy around objective inquiry and the advancement of human well-being. That would be leadership worth investing in.

Dave McGruer is an Ottawa-based independent researcher. Tom Harris is Executive Director of International Climate Science Coalition -Canada.