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Thursday, October 2, 2025
Dr. Hurd Digest
The Case Of Bolsonaro: What They Had In Mind For Trump
Donald Trump is now President of the United States for a second term, having survived an unprecedented campaign of lawfare that has included no fewer than four criminal prosecutions, two state and two federal, brought during the four years that he was out of office. All were brought by highly partisan Democratic Party prosecutors.
The four prosecutions of Trump are all now essentially dead. However, much of the process of killing off these prosecutions has occurred either since Trump’s re-election, or only because of the fortuity of Trump getting enough appointments to the Supreme Court during his first four years in office to have an effective majority on that Court.
To get an idea of how things might have gone differently for Trump, we need only look to the country of Brazil. There, a couple of weeks ago, on September 11, the prior President and leader of the opposition party, Jair Bolsonaro, just got sentenced to some 27 years in prison. According to the BBC, the charges against Bolsonaro included “armed criminal conspiracy,” “attempted abolition of the democratic rule of law,” and “attempted coup d'état.” In other words, the charges against Bolsonaro sound very similar to the charges against Trump in the Jack Smith Washington DC prosecution.
And yet the BBC also states that the subsequent and current President, known as Lula, “was sworn in without incident on 1 January 2023.” To be fair, there was unrest following the October 2022 election that was ultimately called for Lula, and on January 8, 2023, after Lula took office, Bolsonaro’s supporters staged a large protest in the capital of Brasilia, that turned violent. Bolsonaro himself was out of the country at the time, actually in Orlando, Florida.
The underlying merits of the case against Bolsonaro are almost impossible for an outsider to evaluate. However, the process employed against Bolsonaro is not difficult to evaluate: it had no semblance of fairness. Somehow the tribunal that rendered the verdict on Bolsonaro consisted of five Supreme Court justices, the majority of them closely allied with Lula. The head of the tribunal, one Alexander de Moraes, has made a name for himself taking on what he calls the “digital far right” in Brazil, and for shutting down “misinformation,” otherwise known as speech by political opponents. Among other things, de Moraes personally shut down Twitter/X in Brazil after Elon Musk took it over. Two other judges on the five-judge tribunal are close allies of Lula: a former Justice Minister in a prior Lula presidency, and a former defense lawyer for Lula in a corruption trial that he faced prior to his current term as President. Those three constituted a majority to convict Bolsonaro. One judge, a guy named Luiz Fux, voted to acquit Bolsonaro on grounds of insufficiency of evidence. Fux wrote a lengthy dissent.
Back here in the U.S., Jack Smith was the special prosecutor named by the Merrick Garland Justice Department to go after Trump while he was out of office. Smith brought two criminal cases against Trump — one in DC for conduct related to the January 6 demonstrations, and the other in Florida for alleged mis-handling of classified information. Smith did everything he could to get his cases to trial before Trump could get re-elected. In the DC case, that goal was frustrated by the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States in July 2024, holding that Trump had immunity as President for any official acts he took while in office.
Trump v. United States was a 6-3 decision, along straight party lines. In other words, if Trump had not had his appointments to the Supreme Court, the case would likely have gone the other way, and he would have found himself a defendant before a DC jury in the Jack Smith prosecution. Irrespective of the merits, he could well have found himself in the position of Bolsonaro.
You may think that Jack Smith has completely disappeared since he got fired upon Trump resuming office. However, Mr. Smith re-emerged giving a lecture last week at George Mason University. Here are a few excerpts from a September 22 piece in the New York Sun reporting on Smith’s talk:
The prosecutor declared that “what I see happening at the Department of Justice today saddens me and angers me … the government, using the vast powers of the criminal justice system to target citizens for exercising their constitutional rights.” The special counsel, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, reflected, “My career has also shown me how fragile” the rule of law can be. “As an international prosecutor, I have seen in other countries the rule of law erode. … One of my concerns is that we have had the rule of law function in this country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted.” . . . Mr. Smith insisted until the end of his tenure that he could have convicted Mr. Trump “but for” his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
According to the Sun, Smith got a standing ovation for his speech, which gives you a good indication how a DC-area jury may have viewed the case.
What if We Had a Government Shutdown (Again) and Nobody Noticed or Cared?
October 1, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
In 2013, during a political squabble over a previous government shutdown, here’s some of what I wrote.
…in my libertarian fantasy world, we leave it closed. Or at least we never bother to reopen counterproductive bureaucracies such as the Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Commerce, Department of Transportation, etc.
I still have the same fantasy. Sadly, I’m sure it won’t turn into reality this year, just like it didn’t become reality 12 years ago.
But perhaps I need to lower my expectations.
Maybe, instead of hoping that departments remain shuttered, I should limit my fantasy to something more realistic.
In a column for Reason, J.D. Tuccille explains how this squabble between Trump and congressional Democrats may lead to a decent outcome.
Here we go again. …Democrats and Republicans play chicken over their clashing funding priorities, with a partial suspension of federal activities threatened if they can’t come to a deal. Unfortunately, the government never really shuts down, and the two parties always work out an agreement that involves spending a lot more money. …What might be different this time, though, is that there’s a chance to use the impasse to reduce the federal work force. …
In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is ‘not consistent with the president’s priorities.'” …
Importantly, the memo adds: “Once fiscal year 2026 appropriations are enacted, agencies should revise their RIFs as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions.” …That would, of course, be the best government shutdown ever. …
Following the relative disappointment of the Department of Government Efficiency, we should seize any opportunity to shrink the government that we can.
I give Trump (and especially his OMB Director, Russ Vought) credit for being aggressive.
The Administration has already taken a few whacks at the federal bureaucracy and, as J.D. Tuccille explained, the shutdown is going to give them an excuse to take a few more bites of that bloated and costly apple.
By the way, the main reason for the shutdown fight is that Democrats want more Obamacare funding.
As a long-time critic of the fiscal consequences of that legislation, I very much hope Republicans don’t surrender.
P.S. If you want to enjoy some satire from previous shutdowns, click here, here, here, and here.
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
In Memory of Charlie Kirk
By Twila Le Page-Huges, Author of “Why Your Vote Matters"
Editor's Note: This is a commentary in Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK
What a sad time for all of us and for our country and for the young people Charlie Kirk influenced. I’m sure he was responsible for so many of the youth voting for Donald Trump in 2024.
Charlie was effective and that’s what probably caused his murder. He believed in what he taught and espoused.
About eight or nine years ago when I was program chair for my Republican club, I invited Charlie Kirk to be our speaker. He was just starting his Turning Point USA program. We passed the basket around for him. I marveled that he had the “nerve” to go onto college campuses and start Republican clubs. To speak to the students since most campuses were hotbeds of liberal indoctrination and he was a conservative and a Christian. I believe that the hateful rhetoric from extremist liberals—including some in Congress, on legacy media and social media—were responsible for sowing his shooter’s hatred. Liberal Democrats in Congress have called President Trump and his supporters fascists. This also includes former Vice President Kamala Harris when she was a presidential candidate.
You do NOT hear this hatred venom from the right. It comes from leftist liberal Democrats.
Now we know the shooter was in a relationship with a trans—a man who mistakenly believes he is a woman. We also know that others were aware that this 22-year-old thug planned to murder Charlie Kirk. As surely as the shooter will get the death penalty (fortunately this is Utah and not California), those who knew ahead of time should be held accountable as accessories.
Why do many of these shooters all seem to have something in common? Many are young men in their 20s, smart and from good homes. They have evidently become brainwashed by the venom spewing out from the left.
Congress now has too many Democrats spewing their hatred and venom publicly. Their venom for Trump and those who support him is seen daily. Congress wanted to hold a silent prayer following Charlie Kirk’s murder and many shouted like spoiled children. Where is the respect that we used to see in our Congress? (Remember President Trump’s first speech to Congress following his inauguration where many Democrats showed considerable disrespect.)
Our country is hanging in the balance now and the people who should be concerned as there are too many citizens who are as spiteful and hateful as their Democrat representatives in Congress.
Let’s not allow this young man’s murder be in vain. Let us pledge that we will do whatever it takes to take back our country, to change the course the left is trying to take us. Let’s get boots on the ground and “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Charlie’s beautiful wife Erika gave a moving tribute to him a few days after he died and then during the historic memorial on September 21. What a loss as a husband and father to her two young, adorable children. Now Erika vows to keep Charlie’s memory alive and grow Turning Point stronger and more powerful.
We need to end extreme violence. We demand they introduce sanity on the left. How much decency is on the left? How far will they go to destroy us all? Is far left extremism driving more Americans to the right? You are darn tootin’ it is!
What has been good is the outpouring of solidarity and vigils and parades all over the world to celebrate Charlie Kirk’s life and what he meant to the world. He will soon posthumously receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Charlie, your work will go on but there will always be an empty spot because no one can take your place. You were unique and some say you would have made an excellent president. We miss you Charlie—a beacon of hope in a divided country.
One last thing. Having kept Charlie’s phone number in my contact list, several months ago I invited him to my 95th birthday party on September 19. I knew how busy he was but wanted him to know that I was thinking of him when inviting special family and friends to celebrate my 95th birthday. God Bless Charlie Kirk and his family! God Bless the United States of America!
Two Takes On The Progress Of New York's Energy Transformation
September 27, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian
In the real world, the climate scam is rapidly falling apart, along with the related government-subsidized schemes for worldwide energy transformation. So how should New York react? After all, we claim to have the ultimate program of “climate leadership” for showing everyone else how easy it is to do this energy transformation thing. We’ve started with mandating under our Climate Act an electricity system having 70% of its generation from “renewables” by 2030 (a mandate known as “70 x 30”). The deadline for 70 x 30 is now just over four years away.
So, is this really happening? Fortunately, our Public Service Commission has just come out with a Report with the long title “NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE SECOND CLCPA [Climate Act] INFORMATIONAL REPORT ON OVERALL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CLIMATE LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY PROTECTION ACT, WITH CORRECTIONS,” bearing a date of September 23, 2025. Today, I will take a look at that to see what we can learn about New York’s progress toward its goals.
Separately, a different bureaucracy called the New York State Energy Planning Board a couple of months ago (July 25) issued something called the 2025 Draft Energy Plan for the state. I had a post discussing that document back on August 11 (“New York’s Official Energy Plan Is No Plan”). That Draft Energy Plan then became subject to a period for public comment, so I took the opportunity to submit my Comment on September 25.
Let’s say that the PSC’s Report and my Comment on the Energy Plan are two very different takes on the progress toward New York’s energy transformation.
I’ll start with the PSC’s Report. The Report came with a three-page press release announcing and summarizing it. Oddly, the press release does not contain any link to access the Report itself. Instead, if you want to review the Report, you are instructed to go to the Commission’s page for accessing its case documents, where you must then input the correct case number (22-M-0149) in a box provided, and then scroll through the docket entries until you find the Report. Why would they make finding this so difficult? I’ll bet you can guess.
A summary of both the press release and the Report itself is this: a lot of empty talk about all the wonderful plans, without any quantitative information on whether any progress is being made toward the 70 x 30 mandate, or toward any of the various other mandates (including 100% of electricity from zero-emissions sources by 2040, or “100 x 40.”). From the press release:
The New York State Public Service Commission (Commission) today received an update from Department of Public Service (DPS) staff regarding progress toward the clean energy goals of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act or Climate Act. The report details actions taken in pursuit of these ambitious clean energy goals while working to keep ratepayer costs manageable with benefits that are widely shared. . . . The Climate Act’s directives require the Commission to build on its existing efforts to deploy clean energy resources and energy storage technologies, implement energy efficiency and building electrification measures, and support electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This year’s update included: Progress on achieving the targets mandated within the renewable energy program.
OK, so the press release specifically says that the update includes “progress on achieving the targets mandated,” but what exactly does that progress consist of? There’s nothing about that in the press release, so we must go over to the Report itself. The Report is some 63 pages, including appendices. Most of it is about qualitative descriptions of the various schemes (e.g., “renewable energy and energy storage,” “transmission and distribution investment and development,” etc., etc.). Finally at page 37 we get to a section headed “Progress Toward CLCPA Green Energy Targets.” Surely, this is where we will get the quantitative information we are seeking on the progress toward New York’s plans? Here is the entire text of that section:
The subject of this subsection has been covered in depth in the Draft CES Biennial Review. 109
Wait a minute! I thought the press release had specifically said that the PSC Report itself contained an update on this progress. But in fact the update is completely missing. Following that footnote 109, we find out that this CES Biennial Review came out on July 1, 2024 — over a year ago — and must in turn be hunted down on another PSC docket, this one numbered 15-E-0302. This time the Report is some 98 pages long. If we make it to page 53, we find a section titled “The Path to the 70% Goal.”
This section of some 7 pages entirely discusses how many GWh of demand are in the state’s load forecast for 2030, and how many GWh of generation from renewables it will take to produce 70% of that. Excerpts:
Under the base case load forecast assumption of 164,910 GWh by 2030 as described above, the 70% goal equates to 115,437 GWh.
On page 56 in a Table 8, we find the amount of renewables “operational as of 2022” — 29,289 GWh. That’s barely one-quarter of the 115,437 needed by 2030, and by the way more than half of the 29,289 GWh comes from one source, Niagara Falls, that cannot be replicated. The same table on page 8 indicates that an additional approximately 36,000 GWh of renewable generation, consisting of onshore and offshore wind and solar, has been “contracted” by 2024. After substracting a few small miscellaneous items, they come up with a “gap to 70% (2030)” of 42,145 GWh. Then, after further assuming large additions to offshore wind and rooftop solar will provide about half of that, they get to this bottom line:
To achieve this pathway, just over 3,900 GWh of onshore large-scale renewables resources would need to be procured per year, or approximately 5,600 GWh per year with attrition.
Well, in the time since this CES document was issued in mid-2024, all of the off-shore wind has been shot down by the federal government, and all of the federal subsidies for additional wind and solar developments have disappeared. None of the 5,600 GWh per year of additional renewables procurements is in the works. All of this was known and obvious by the time the most recent PSC Report came out on September 23, and yet they don’t mention any of it. I guess they figure that nobody will take the time and effort to track through their references to figure out the problem.
And one more thing: There is not one word in these reports mentioning that wind and solar do not produce electricity at the same time that consumers use it, meaning that there must be storage or batteries or backup of some kind. The entire approach is to assume that if the amount of electricity generated is equal to the amount consumed, the two can be easily matched up somehow, without any issues or costs worth discussing.
In summary, New York’s PSC is entirely engaged in throwing up a smokescreen to obscure the fact that the state’s energy transformation is dead in the water.
Now let’s turn to my Comment on the Draft “Energy Plan.” Although I submitted it a couple of days ago, I can’t yet find it on the website, so I don’t have a link to provide. As an alternative, I’ll provide some extensive excerpts. The bulk of my Comment focused on a chart, Figure 19, appearing on page 22 of a portion of the Plan called the “Pathway Analysis,” purporting to show how the Climate Act mandates, like 70 x 30 and 100 x 40, would be achieved. Here is that Figure 19:
Here are some portions of my reactions to this chart:
- Installed capacity of natural gas power plants declines from about 25 GW today to about 15 GW in 2035 – and then completely disappears by 2040. What will keep the lights on 24/7/365 when the natural gas generation is gone? There is no answer here.
- In the same Figure, a new generation category called “Zero-Carbon Firm” suddenly appears in 2040, with 17.2 GW of capacity – about three-quarters as much as our entire current fleet of natural gas power plants. They have no idea what this “Zero-Carbon Firm” category might be. Text seems to indicate that they might be thinking about new nuclear or maybe so-called “renewable” gas from landfills. In fact nuclear is completely blocked in this state, although Governor Hochul has supposedly started a process to build one 1 GW nuclear plant starting now. That plant has not even yet gotten to the stage of site selection, and will not possibly be ready by 2040 even if construction started today. And it is also only 1 GW, when the “Energy Plan” is saying that 17.2 GW of “Zero-Carbon Firm” is needed by 2040. And landfills can produce only a tiny fraction of the gas they are talking about here, while meanwhile the Pathway Analysis admits elsewhere (see page 14) that this supposedly “renewable” gas does not count as zero-emissions under the Climate Act.
- Professor Lindsay Anderson of Cornell did an analysis of the New York electricity system, which found that if natural gas generation was eliminated and demand increased as projected, the actual amount of firm emissions-free resources needed to meet the state Climate Act mandates would be about 37 GW of capacity. NYISO analysis of the same issue comes up with a requirement 35 GW of firm emissions-free generation. Where did the Energy Plan come up with the ridiculously low figure of 17.2 GW? I guess it doesn’t really matter, because the “firm emissions-free resource” is just magical thinking anyway, and does not exist in the real world.
- The same Figure shows a massive increase in capacity of solar generation, from about 7 GW today to supposedly 35.4 GW by 2040. That capacity, if built (it won’t be), will be lucky to generate electricity at 15-20% of rated capacity over the course of a year in cloudy and snowy upstate New York, and will be next to useless to provide electric heat in the winter, when we have 15 hours of darkness per day.
My Comment goes on and on from there. Some concluding lines:
[T]he so-called “Energy Plan” is not an energy plan at all. It would more accurately be described as random musings and wishful thinking by some completely incompetent people who have no idea what they are doing. The so-called “Plan” envisions a future of a fully transformed energy system within the next 15-25 years. Yet it contains no meaningful feasibility analysis, nor any meaningful cost analysis. . . . It’s time to start over, with some people in charge who know what they are doing.
So I think the vision of New York’s politicians and bureaucrats is to put their heads in the sand until this all falls apart, and then try to blame somebody else. We are living at peak absurdity.
Mamdani Wants to Free Half of Criminals
There are too many criminals in prison and Mamdani wants to let half of them out.
By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog
There are too many criminals in prison and Mamdani wants to let half of them out.
Mamdani
complained that the Adams administration had increased the number of
criminals in Rikers Island by a thousand and claimed that “we can reduce
that jail population to less than four thousand”. The infamous New
York City prison has around 7,000 criminals on average and Mamdani cited
a pro-crime proposal to reduce the number in there to only 3,700
criminals.
That would mean freeing some 3,300 or 47%, nearly half, of the criminals there.
Pro-crime
policies such as eliminating bail already put most criminals back on
the street almost as soon as they’re arrested. The limited number of
criminals still being remanded are the worst of the worst. After years
of being fed sob stories about shoplifters going to Rikers, Mamdani and
the pro-crime activists trying to free half the criminals from Rikers
aren’t even pretending.
Mamdani cited an article by an activist
from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, once a fine institution
that produced capable people, but that has become an academic hub for
pro-crime activism.
Its proposals for cutting the Rikers
population in half include no bail for first arrests “even in serious
violent felony cases”, freeing three-quarters of criminals “facing
violent felony charges”, exempting from prison those charged with a list
of sentences that covers sexual misconduct, forcible touching, as well
as sexual abuse in the second and third degrees, mandatory pre-trial
release of criminals after a certain period, more early release for a
variety of offenders including those who have committed assault and
sexual abuse, and releasing criminals “who really do pose a flight risk”
but offering them “employment assistance” to keep them from running
away.
What is abundantly clear is that there is no way to
significantly reduce the violent criminal population at Rikers without
freeing violent criminals including some of the worst ones.
46% of the criminals at Rikers Island were charged with a violent felony.
After
a decade of pro-crime policies and the mass jailbreaks of the COVID and
BLM era, the only ones still in Rikers are the truly dangerous. The
prison is full of repeat offenders, criminals who have committed
horrifying acts against the public and the violently disturbed madmen.
And those are the ones whom Mamdani is proposing to set loose.
Past
pro-crime proposals pretended that the only ones who would be released
would be the misleadingly named “non-violent offenders” (in reality, the
so-called non-violent offenders are often violent criminals who are
being ‘charged down’ and have had violent crimes defined down to
manufacture the illusion that crime is lower than it really is), but
that’s no longer on the table.
Mamdani’s cited proposal has two
separate sections that explicitly mention freeing violent criminals and
several others that implicitly require mass releases of dangerous
criminals.
The proposal endorsed by Mamdani as a strategy for
clearing out the prisons complains that judges released only a quarter
of criminals facing violent felony charges (murder, rape, robbery,
aggravated assault) while keeping around half in custody. It sneers at
the “people’s perceived (and often misperceived) risk to public safety”
when it comes to letting violent criminals loose.
What’s the actual risk?
Over the last 28 day period in New York City, murder is up 19%, rape is up 38.9%, the number of shooting victims is up 36%.
Crime, despite all the political pro-crime narratives, is getting worse. And people know it.
A majority of New Yorkers say that crime has gotten worse since 2020 and BLM riots. 70% want more
police officers and most want an end to revolving door arrests and to
see bail come back because “too many people are being arrested and
immediately released into the streets where they commit violent crimes”.
61% oppose the general plan to close Rikers Island that was championed
in the report cited by Mamdani and by the pro-crime lobby in general.
No
polling has been done on the specifics of freeing half the criminals in
Rikers, including many violent felons, but the public is unlikely to be
in favor of such a mass jailbreak.
Even though a majority fear
being the victim of a crime, Mamdani laughs at the idea of restoring
public safety and bringing back a functional criminal justice system to
New York City. “What purpose” does prison serve, Mamdani asked in one
conversation, suggesting that people defend what the pro-crime lobby
calls ‘the carceral state’ or the prison system “because of the way it
makes them feel.”
The purpose served by the prison system is keeping criminals off the street. Earlier this year, a monster with 70 prior arrests,
including smashing a 2-year-old girl in the face with a suitcase,
smashed a woman’s head against a pole in the subway. The NYPD
commissioner revealed that the crime wave was driven by repeat offenders
arrested three or more times for the same crime.
What will those numbers look like if Mamdani frees a prison half full of violent criminals?
Murders
and rapes are already up over the summer. Some lower category offenses
appear to be down, but that’s only because they’re no longer being
reported or charged. But the real crime wave is still coming. Every
previous mass release of criminals has made New York City more dangerous
and less safe. But the release of the worst of the worst may soon be
coming.
And the price will be paid by children playing in parks,
by tourists stopping to see the sights, by random people crossing the
streets and by the most vulnerable, women, children and the elderly,
being terrorized by the worst monsters who used to be kept locked away
in prison.
Closing Rikers Island and freeing violent criminals
will make New York City into Rikers as the city becomes one big prison
in which the criminals are free and everyone else is locked up.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
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Left Loses Narrative Again
By Robin Itzler
Editor's Note: This is a commentary 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
When President Trump repeatedly said he wanted the federal government to help bring law and order to the violent city of Chicago, everyone on the left yelled that he was a dictator by going into a blue state. That narrative fell apart faster than Joe Biden talking about the U.S. Constitution when President Trump announced the federal government would assist Democrat-run Memphis in Republican Tennessee with its lawlessness problem.
Then when Disney owned ABC put unfunny Jimmy Kimmel on “indefinite” suspension for dastardly awful comments following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, leftists screamed that Trump was a dictator getting rid of his critics. Some dictator Trump turned out to be with Kimmel’s four-night suspension.
Disney/ABC gave into the woke hysteria, believing there are more lunatic leftists than there are sane conservatives. As Fox News contributor Kira Davis wrote in “Disney Brings Back Kimmel, But the Damage Is Done” —
Kimmel’s show might pick up a few more sympathy viewers for a few weeks, but the game is over. No one was really watching it before, and the USAID dollars have dried up. The culture shifted last November, and took another giant leap last Sunday (Charlie Kirk’s memorial). Kimmel can do whatever he wants. Disney can do whatever they want. The verdict is in - America is done with their arrogant antics. Let them play their instruments as the Titanic sinks. The rest of us will look on from land, a land called America.
Jimmy Kimmel’s NON-APOLOGY made as much sense as Kamala Harris explaining why she lost the 2024 presidential election. While his ratings jumped when he first returned, they took a massive nosedive just days after returning to befoul the nation's airways.
To share your thoughts with Disney CEO Bob Iger at the Walt Disney Company: Email: Click here, Phone: 818-560-1000, Write: 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, CA 91521
Trump Should Have Spoken at Climate Week NYC 2025
Besides criticizing the UN’s failure to work to end conflicts and properly deal with immigration issues, the president focused on the climate change swindle promoted by the U.N. and nations around the world. He highlighted dire climate predictions made decades ago that have not come to pass, giving an example: “another UN official stated in 1989 that within a decade, entire nations could be wiped off the map by global warming,” adding correctly, “Not happening.” He emphasized how global cooling used to be the concern, then global warming, now “climate change,” creating “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Trump also criticized other countries’ green energy policies, explaining how they are wasting money trying to reduce their “carbon footprint” at the expense of lost jobs and closed factories. “The carbon footprint is a hoax,” he bluntly, and correctly, told the GA.
In stark contrast, 2.5 miles away in Manhattan, Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, the primary UN climate body, told Climate Week NYC 2025:
“The clean energy transition is booming across almost all major economies and hit 2 trillion dollars last year alone…Meanwhile, climate disasters are hitting every economy and society harder every year. So, we need to step it up. And we need to step it up fast [to avoid catastrophe].”
At the Freshfields energy summit, a high-profile event held during this year’s Climate Week NYC, leaders agreed that coal must be “rapidly retired in developed economies” by 2035 to meet pathways aligned with the Paris Agreement. That developing countries account for nearly 80 percent of global coal consumption (as of 2024) didn’t seem to bother them. China, which alone consumes 58 percent of the world’s coal — more than the rest of the world combined, has made it clear they are going to continue to build coal fired power stations no matter what. In the first half of 2025 alone, China commissioned 21 GW of coal power, about 25 new coal-fired power plants — the most for that period since 2016. When it comes to China and developing countries, the tone shifts from rapid retirement of dependable coal plants in the west to respect for “energy sovereignty” and “national priorities” for Asia. If sovereignty is sacred, it should be respected universally, but the fact that it isn’t demonstrates yet another way China is gaming the system.
Tim Lenton, Professor of Earth System Science at University of Exeter and keynote speaker at Climate Week, chimed in,
“We need decisive mandates for the end of fossil fuel technologies that are going to be the crucial thing to stimulate the clean technologies we need.” Specifically, he wants to “Phase out of coal power stations in developed nations by 2035…mandating no petrol and diesel car sales from 2035…all heating appliances for buildings being heat pumps from 2035, and all trucks to be electric powered from 2040.”
If this were to actually happen, it would be an unmitigated disaster for businesses and consumers alike. Trump illustrated this well when he told the GA that European electricity bills are now “two to three times higher than the United States, and our bills are coming way down.” Yet, this is only a preview of massive costs to come if Europe continues to replace inexpensive, dependable conventional power with costly, unreliable wind and solar power.
In his 2021 brief for Canada’s House of Commons, Robert Lyman, economist and Principal of ENTRANS Policy Research Group, and former director general, environmental affairs, at Transport Canada, said, “The cost to electrify the U.S. economy would translate into annual cost increases of at least U.S. $5,000 per household” and that “annual consumer expenditures for energy would roughly double.” That doesn’t even take into account the loss of energy security with increased vulnerability to blackouts and brownouts.
For instance, Texas, the state with the most wind power, also had the greatest number of blackouts between 2000 and 2023. California, the state with the most solar power, had the third most blackouts. Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow on environmental policy for The Heartland Institute, said “wind and solar power are particularly unsuited for a large power grid because they work only when the weather conditions are just right.”
Trump was also right to call out EU politicians for leading their citizens to a health disaster. He pointed out how the U.S. has about 1,300 heat-related deaths annually, while Europe has more than 175,000, caused in large part by the high costs of electricity that prevents people from air-conditioning their homes. The population of Europe is only just over twice that of the U.S., so this means that the chances of a person dying due to the heat in Europe is 62 times that in America.
Over the past week, New York City showcased the stark contrast between a climate realist president and those advocating overhauling our entire energy infrastructure to address a problem that only exists in the imagination of uninformed activists. Bravo President Trump!
Tom Harris is executive director of Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.
Part II: Yes, Taxes Change Behavior
September 30, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
There are several visual ways of helping people understand how fiscal policy (and especially marginal tax rates) can change behavior.
To augment these examples, I’ve started a series that is based on real-world examples.
Part I of the series highlighted how the capital gains tax discourages people from selling their homes.
For the second edition of our series, let’s visit the other side of the world and look at how taxation of pickup trucks has distorted the Australian vehicle market.
Here are some excerpts from a report in the U.K.-based Guardian by Elias Visontay, and keep in mind that pickup trucks are known as “utes” in Australia.
A loophole in Australia’s tax law is in effect subsidising the price of luxury utes such as Ram and Chevrolet SUVs… [T]he Luxury Car Tax…applies to any car that costs more than $80,576. However, the LCT does not apply if a car is “a commercial vehicle designed mainly for carrying goods and not passengers”. This is defined as a car that can carry twice the weight in payload than it can carry in people – a requirement which almost every dual-cab ute on the market in 2024 can meet, according to the Australia Institute. …
The Australia Institute research found this exemption acts as a loophole and that the difference in tax treatment “incentivises people to buy utes” by making them cheaper when compared with sedans and smaller, more fuel efficient cars. …The analysis provided the example of a 2024 Mercedes-Benz EQE 300 electric car, which costs $133,575, compared with the Chevrolet’s price of $138,000.
But after LCT is taken into account, the Chevrolet would be $8,231 cheaper due to the exemption. …The analysis found that the LCT ute exemption led to more than $250m in forgone tax revenue in 2023, “almost three-quarters of which was due to sales of Ram and Chevrolet vehicles”.
By the way, the Guardian is a left-wing newspaper, so parts of the article rubbed me the wrong way. The most obvious example is the title, which states that the tax preference for commercial vehicles “costs Australians $250m a year.”
In reality, it deprives the government of that much money. Taxpayers, by contrast, get to save $250 million.
But I’m digressing. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that people respond to incentives. If a tax causes one type of vehicle to be more expensive than others, people will logically respond by avoiding the tax.
In this case, I don’t care whether readers think Australia’s policy is a good idea or bad idea. Or whether they think the tax should be abolished completely or applied to all vehicles.
I simply want people to understand that taxes change behavior. Simply stated, the more you tax of something, the less you get of it.
And once people understand that basic principle, I want them to contemplate whether it is a good idea to impose high tax rates on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.
The bottom line, as the following quote illustrates, is that incentives matter.
As you can see (and read), President John F. Kennedy understood tax policy.
As did presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge. With a bit of luck, perhaps we can educate some of today’s lawmakers.
P.S. Other folks on the left (see here, here, here, here, and here) share the Guardian‘s view that all income belongs to the government.
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Cartoon Roundup: No One is Above the Law
Democrats New Six Forbidden Words: No one is above the law
By Rich Kozlovich
I keep reading all this analysis over Trump’s demand for justice, many calling it revenge, retribution, etc, but the fact is he was charged with crimes he didn’t commit. Whereas he’s demanding these people face justice for crimes they did commit.
It really is that simple.
If he’s outraged by these corrupt Deep Staters, or weak gutless prosecutors, for not going after them with passionate and dynamic diligence, then that outrage is justified, and they need to be fired.
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If these people aren’t jailed for the crimes they’ve actually committed then this corruption becomes even more cancerous than it already is.
They’ve demonstrated they believe they’re above the law with their smug and arrogant interviews over the last six months, and now they’re whining as they realize the boom really is going to fall, and are discovering ….it really is true…… no one is above the law. Which no Democrat has uttered since Trump was elected, yet words that were boomed across America by the left and their myrmidons in the media for four years.
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But now…. they’re going to find out…. that’s really true. Aw, c'mon man, can't we just get along and move on? Nah, they sowed the wind and now they'll reap the whirlwind.
It's not about revenge, it's about justice, and justice will be served when these people end up in prison. What will be interesting to hear will be the next most important words a Democrat utters.
I will squeal for a deal!
Because we now know Obama was ‘up to his neck’ in the RussiaGate scandal, along with Hillary and the rest. Will Comey and others willingly choose protect the real culprits behind all this corruption? Criminals who will be living the high life while they're languishing in prison? We'll see!
There's corrupt, and then there's just stupid.
UK Law Officers: "Just Following Orders"
By Robin Itzler
Editor's Note: This is a commentary 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
- During COVID law enforcement in blue cities and states were just following orders when they arrested Americans who were out alone walking without a mask, or surfing alone in the ocean by an empty beach, or refusing to walk in a certain direction in the supermarket. Knowing COVID mandates went against the U.S. Constitution, why didn’t these police officers refuse to carry out insane orders against their fellow citizens?
- During the Biden administration Border Patrol Agents were just following orders when they idly stood by as illegal aliens waltzed into the United States. Knowing that illegal invaders entering America unvetted violated the U.S. Constitution, why didn’t border patrol agents refuse to act as illegal alien babysitters?