Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- WOTUS
- Planet 10
- Hacking
- King Cove
- Kamala
- Riot
- Title IX
- Hazmat
- WOTUS. The Trump EPA is moving to repeal the obnoxious Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule which gives itself the ability to regulate every single puddle or rivulet in the nation. The rule was written in response to the EPA getting slapped down by the SCOTUS in two opinions for regulator overreach. The WOTUS was crafted in essentially the same way as the previous rules, as the EPA plays the game by ignoring the courts and daring its targets to take it to court. This time around EPA Administrator Pruitt is directing the agency to base its definition of the term “navigable waters” using the suggested definition by Justice Scalia. 32 states sued the O’Bama regime to overturn the rule as a federal land grab. The GAO found the EPA had conducted a massive social media campaign with greens to promote the WOTUS. The EPA will rewrite and issue the revised rule with the new language. This is what happens with you govern by the stroke of a pen. It can be unwound just as quickly. http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/27/trumps-epa-to-repeal-obamas-waters-of-the-us-rule/
- Planet 10. Something is going on in the outer solar system. Not only do we have a population of perhaps thousands to hundreds of thousands of small, cold bodies 50 – 200 km in diameter, grouped in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, it appears something large, a couple somethigns, may have scattered orbits of those bodies over time. Today there is a search underway for a large Neptune-sized body called Planet 9, in a highly elliptical orbit that appears to have created odd groupings of orbits of outer Kuiper Belt objects. Last week, an analysis of other Kuiper Belt orbits finds the outer disk of those orbits also appear to be disturbed leading to the suggestion that there is a Mar-sized body doing the orbital modifications over time. The other thing that happens from time to time is that other stars approach and recede over time. If you assume they are also carrying with them populations of large, loosely held icy objects in their versions of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, those bodies get close enough to interact with solar system. In other words, the clouds mesh for a while, meaning the objects will have a possibility of gravitationally interacting as this process has been going on since the formation of the solar system. The last time we had a close approach of a star happened was some 70,000 years ago. The next one we know about is a few hundred thousand of years in the future. The more we look at the outer solar system, the stranger and more dynamic it becomes. We need to keep on looking. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622104052.htm
- Hacking. Fun article out of Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds last week calling for a return to paper ballots to combat election hacking and reestablish trust in the election process. The move away from paper ballots came because of the Florida 2000 recount during which algore (ManBearPig himself) and his democrat lawyers tried to steal the 2000 election via election fraud during a recount in four heavily democrat counties. A decade ago critics of paperless voting were being called paranoid. Today apparently both parties are worried, though for different reasons. Those of us on the right want to make it as difficult as possible to commit election fraud and have long looked at the move away from paper ballots as a vehicle for bigger, better, more industrial strength election fraud. Democrats, having overplayed their Russian election hacking story, now have to actually do something about it if for no other reason than they have raised an issue that they can’t allow to fester without a solution. While paper ballots aren’t fraud-proof as a century of Chicago elections and other democrat election thefts (Al Franken, Christine Gregior) demonstrate, they are at least reproducible and available for a recount. Counting electronically is not reproducible at all. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/06/27/paper-ballots-hack-proof-its-time-bring-them-back/431466001/
- King Cove. Few things drove home the condescending view our Federal Masters have of us who live and work in Alaska than the decades old fight for a road from King Cove around Cold Bay to a 10,000’ strip of concrete (fifth longest airport in the state) called the Cold Bay Airport. The road would go through a few miles of something called the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and connect the town to emergency airlift in all weather and times of the year. The state has long offered to trade over 43,000 acres of state land adjoining the refuge for the 206 acres necessary to build the road. Personally I oppose the trade, as the feds own over 60% of all lands in Alaska. Why do they need more? Greens fought this with every single tool in their kit, with the fight getting particularly nasty during the O’Bama years as Interior Secretary Sally Jewell carried the flag for the opposition. The feds offered a hovercraft ride across the bay as an alternative. Problem is that alternative transportation is not all weather or even nasty weather, and is a pretty rough ride for medivac people, kind of a let them eat cake world view. Legislation approving the swap made it out of the House Resources Committee by a 23 – 14 vote last week on its way to the floor of the House. This has been a long time coming and it will be President Donald Trump who forced the hands of the green opposition. http://mustreadalaska.com/king-cove-road-legislation-clears-committee/
- Kamala. US Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) was elected in November to replace the retiring Barbara Boxer. She is not an improvement. Harris was most recently California’s Attorney General. Before that, she was one of O’Bama’s fundraising bundlers as a SF District Attorney reportedly funneling cartel dollars into the 2012 campaign. She is also mixed race and will run as a black, reprising O’Bama’s campaign playbook in 2020. She is a very nasty piece of work who regularly went after basic constitutional rights of her political targets while CA Attorney General. The week of June 22, Harris attended a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing where she badgered and interrupted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, not allowing him to complete an answer to the point she was told to sit down and shut up by the Committee Chairman. The next day she attended a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Two of the witnesses were Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani asked to testify on the ideology of political Islam, Islamism. After not being able to keep her mouth shut the day before, Harris along with the other female democrats Senators McCaskill (D, MO), Heitkamp (D, ND), and Hassan (D, NH) did not ask either of the witnesses a single question. They carped that the hearing was focusing on religion rather than terrorism, completely and intentionally ignoring the ideological foundation of Islamist terrorism. Like O’Bama, it appears that Harris is completely on board being an Islamist apologist, something that will help fuel her presidential bid in a couple of years. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/opinion/kamala-harris-islamism-senate-hearing.html
- Riot. I’ve been waiting a long time for this sort of story to be reported. Dozens of Baltimore business owners are suing city officials including the Police Department and the former Mayor saying the mishandled the city’s response to the Freddie Gray riots in April 2015. After his death, the black mobs turned out in part of the city, looting, burning, assaulting, and destroying everything they could get their hands on. The Mayor gave a stand down order to the city police who in turn complied, allowing the animals to run wild. The former mayor was quoted ordering the police to stand down in their response to the rioters to allow rioters “space to destroy.” And destroy they did, damaging over 380 businesses, causing nearly $13 million in property damage. In addition to the former mayor and Chief of Police, current mayor who was on the assembly at the time, the police, and the State of Maryland. Rioting went on for nearly two weeks, meaning that not only did the businesses lose property, but they were effectively shut down. For far too long, democrat politicians have given the black mob a pass. The lawsuit was filed in federal court. While it ought to be a RICO lawsuit, it is not but that option still exists. We will see what the Fourth Circus does with this one. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/06/baltimore-businesses-destroyed-during-riots-sue-city-officials-for-failing-to-prevent-damage/
- Title IX. When Title IX was passed in 1972, only 42% of college enrollees were women. 45 years later, that number has flip-flopped, with men making up only 42% of college students. Given the feminist takeover of campuses, and the hostile, anti-male environment they have turned it into, who can blame men for not attending any more? Today women get 52% of doctorates, 57% of master’s, 57% of bachelor’s, and 61% of associate degrees. Who is discriminated against whom these days? Among blacks, the percentages are even worse, with male students making up 38% of all black students, 38% of PhD’s, 29% of master’s, and 36% of bachelor’s. Yet we still have Title IX being deployed against man’s collegiate sports teams as if there has been no progress made in the last half century. Today, more women play sports than they did in 1972, which is a good thing. But at what cost? Why are any men being turned away from athletic pursuits? Today we see a lot of effort to equalize the numbers of girls and boys that pursue STEM education which is still dominated by men. But nothing is done about fields where women predominate (education, nursing, social work, etc). Boys underperform girls in nearly every academic measure. For instance, 84% of girls graduate high school in four years. For boys, that number is 77%. And that pathology shows up elsewhere, with boys outnumbering girls diagnosed with emotional disturbances by 3:1, the same 3:1 ratio applies to expulsions from secondary and elementary schools. The ratio of boy to girl suicides is 5.5:1. And there are over 8 boys in correctional facilities for every girl. We don’t have a war on women. Unfortunately, we have a war on boys. Perhaps it is time to repeal Title IX and quit fighting a war won decades ago and start taking care of our sons and future fathers, not feminist or leftist style where everything is a fixed pie, but in a way to lift everyone up as individuals, valuable in their own right. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/45-years-after-title-ix-americas-boys-need-equal-protection/article/2626734
- Hazmat. Anybody else think of disposal of solar panels as a hazmat operation? Either did I, but the panels are manufactured with small quantities of rare earth elements which are classified as hazardous waste. And as we ramp up government mandated renewable energy goals, someone will have to deal with that waste. The Japanese Environment Ministry last November issued a warning that solar panel wasted in Japan will ramp up from 10,000 – 800,000 tons by 2040 and Japan has no plan to dispose of it. To put this into perspective, Environmental Progress found that solar panels create 300 times more hazardous waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants. Further, in many countries, e-waste is simply stored in dumps and landfills. Enterprising recycling fans will often burn the debris so as to salvage copper wiring for resale. The burning releases toxic smoke that is both carcinogenic and capable of causing birth defects when inhaled. We are playing with fire embracing this renewable future, which as it stands today is not only more expensive, less reliable, less stable, but now has the added benefits of being carcinogenic and teratogenic when fumes are inhaled. Nothing like top-down mandated energy choices for us mere plebes. Hug a coal miner next time you see him, apparently coal is cleaner than solar. Imagine that. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/29/toxic-waste-from-solar-panels-300-times-that-of-nuclear-power/
More later –
– AG