Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Adjustments
- BART
- Oilies
- Collusion
- MFR’s
- Swamp
- Adjustments. A Daily Caller article a week ago discusses a study that finds that adjustments made to global surface temperature data by government paid scientists are “… totally inconsistent with published and credible US and other temperature data.” In other words, NASA and NOAA scientists and their grant recipients are busily cooking the books. “Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published (global average surface temperature (GAST) data sets that in recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming.” The peer reviewed study tried to validate current surface data sets used by NASA, NOAA and the UK Met office. They all make after the fact adjustments to rat thermometer readings. The adjustments uniformly make past temperatures cooler while making current temps warmer. The study finds that current temperature datasets not only do not reflect reality, but further invalidate the science underlying the EPA’s authority to regulate so-called greenhouse gasses is invalidated. This study will be used as a tool to reopen the fraudulent Lisa Jackson endangerment finding made in 2009. The EPA relied on three lines of evidence for their endangerment finding, one of which simply does not exist in the real world. The study found that there was no statistically significant impact of rising CO2 levels with any of the 13 temperature time series datasets analyzed. As a result, the EPA’s finding is invalid and should be reconsidered. Government funded scientists, the so-called keeper of the data, have been cooking the books retroactively for decades. It is how they erased the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period. It is how they boinked one of the satellite data sets to get rid of the 19+ year long hiatus, pause in the global temperature record. It is how they created the foundation for the 2009 endangerment finding. It is the technique they are going to strung up with along with their short and formerly well-paid careers. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/06/bombshell-study-temperature-adjustments-account-for-nearly-all-of-the-warming-in-government-climate-data/
- BART. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system suffered a couple nasty mob attacks the last couple months. In them, groups of 40 – 60 “youths” (read black mobs) coordinated a flash mob attack on the trains, during which they beat, robbed and looted passengers of what they were carrying. The most recent attack had the mob hurdle the turnstiles about the time a train pulled into a station. They busted into one of the cars and carried out their mayhem. The mayhem forced the train to delay in the station a bit. It left just after they did. As all the BART trains and busses have onboard recorded video, the obvious question is where are the videos of the attack? What are the police doing with them? Why haven’t they been released to the media, parents, and lawyers for those attacked? The answer with most things PC in SF is that they don’t want to call the black mob the black mob. Shoot, they won’t even call it a mob attack, much less blaming the perps for being perps. Usually, if you can’t even name a problem (Islamist terror, black mob violence), you are going to have a heck of a time fighting it. For its part, BART did not even tell other riders on the same train that a couple cars were attacked. This is not the first time BART has protected the identities of perps. In Jan 2016, BART circulated clear surveillance photos of a suspect in a shooting of a 19-year old but waited 4 days to release them to the public. The then police chief defended the delay claiming he didn’t want to influence witness descriptions of the suspect who fled a station afterwards. Turns out that the pair had a previous encounter nine days earlier also recorded on video on a BART bus ride. It took BART 9 additional days to reveal video of that encounter to the public. Of course, the killer remains at large as do members of the black flash mob. The leftists allow this to keep going in the Bay Area, it will not be too long before we see the action of another Bernard Goetz who famously defended himself from a mugger on a NYC subway decades ago. http://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/BART-s-decision-not-to-publicize-takeover-11098643.php
- Oilies. The legislative special session was extended last week, this time to work on oil tax credits. They finally agreed to an operating budget last week. Scott Hawkins writing in Must Read Alaska called the House leadership (democrats, RINOs and so-called independents) the worst negotiators ever. The current call from the governor was to discuss cash payments to small producers, something all three sides – Republican senate, democrat-led house, and the Governor – agree upon. The problem is that the House wants to re-broaden the bill to allow them to jack up taxes on the oil industry. The senate proposal is to convert the cash payments into tax deductions for the producers. While the senate is not all that keen on eliminating the cash payments as they have been very successful bringing new finds close to production, it is a pill they are willing to swallow. Fortunately, the producers agree, as one way or another, they get their money. The House does not, and is flopping around like a well-hooked salmon. To date, the House has not come to the negotiating table, dragging the negotiations on indefinitely. They appear to be willing to let the whole thing die. This is where it gets interesting, as failure to end the program lets cash payment liabilities continue to accumulate to the tune of $300 – 400 million /year. Alaska currently owes over $700 million that governor Walker vetoed. The cynical ploy by the House majority and their union, Backbone, green, Alaska First backers appears to be to set the stage to float a ballot initiative to pass the House version of the legislation in the 2018 election. The last time they tried this, they lost. While Hawkins believes they will get their back sides handed to them by voters, I am not so sanguine, as oil patch bashing does turn out democrats to the polls, which is what this cynical little ploy is all about. http://mustreadalaska.com/worst-negotiators-in-alaska-history/
- Collusion. Before I begin, collusion with the Russians during a presidential election is not illegal. Had it been, Senator Ted Kennedy would have ended his life in Leavenworth after offering to work with the Soviets to defeat Reagan in 1984. It would have gotten O’Bama impeached after promising the Russian President that he would have a lot more flexibility should he be reelected in 2012. But these days, collusion only applies to Republicans in general and anyone and anything connected to Donald Trump. But there is real collusion with the Russians going on, and it has been going on for decades. It is Russian funding of environmental, anti-conventional energy groups, as a vehicle to keep the US from developing its own oil, natural gas, and coal resources. A pair of Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee sent a letter to Treasury asking them to investigate millions of foreign dollars funneled through various non-profit entities to influence the American energy market. The Sea Change Foundation took $23 million from a Bermuda-based shell company with ties to Russian oligarchs in 2010 – 2011. That same year, Sea Change gave millions to US-based NGOs including the NRDC, Sierra Club, and League of Conservation Voters. These groups opposed hydraulic fracturing. Even Hillary as Secretary of State accused Russian oligarchs of propping up phone enviro groups opposed to pipelines and fracking. Hilly’s comments were tied to opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Want collusion? Want large dollar amounts spent to influence US policy? You have to look nowhere further than Russian support of anti-fracking green NGOs in an attempt to keep US energy production from destroying their ability to sell Gazprom product to Europe. http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/07/treasury-dept-asked-to-investigate-reports-that-russia-funneled-millions-to-us-environmental-groups/
- MFR’s. MFR is an old military term meaning Memo for Record. The term essentially describes the memos that former FBI Director James Comey wrote and gave to a law school buddy with orders to leak them to the media. The leaks were designed to force the appointment of a Special Prosecutor who happened to be another of Comey’s old buds to investigate Trump campaign ties with the Russians (the endless collusion nothing burger). As it turns out, the FBI (or FIB depending on how many O’Bama deep cover operatives you are talking about), looked at the Comey memos they had on hand and determined perhaps half of them contained classified material that Comey gave to a friend and in turn to the NYT. The media immediately got itself into the act, flying top cover for Comey’s illegal acts (felonies if any of my readers committed them), comparing them to Hilly’s server, which they, Lynch, O’Bama, Comey et al all covered up. As it turns out, the memos were not private documents at all. Rather, they were government documents, with classified information, produced on government time and government equipment. Now it will be a lot of fun to see what Comey’s good friend Robert Mueller does with this information as part of his investigation. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/10/trump-calls-out-comeys-classified-info-leaks-so-illegal/
- Swamp. One of the things that happens when you invest so much power, authority, and lawmaking power in the Executive Branch, is that turning that ship around does not involve congress. For nearly a century, except for Reagan, the bureaucracy has gone its own way, increasingly removing power from the rest of the country and placing it in Washington DC. The O’Bama regime was perhaps the worst at doing this. But when you elect a businessman president, someone who expects those who work for him to be accountable, you see substantial changes in short order. And we have been seeing those changes since his inauguration last January. While the Amen caucus in congress of anti-Trumpers, democrats, and those on both sides who pander to the media, dither on nominations, budgets, repeal of O’Bama Care, tax reform, Trump’s political appointees are busily draining the swamp in their assigned parts of the swamp. The new VA Secretary has fired hundreds of criminally incompetent schlubs. Secretary Pruitt is busily rolling back climate change foolishness in the EPA, as is Rick Perry in Energy. SECSTATE Tillerson is firing a lot of people at State, which is long past time for a house cleaning. One of the things Tillerson has done is cancel incoming classes of foreign service officers. That along with forcing career civil service members into retirement is hollowing out the workforce, something that should make all of us smile. I expect Tillerson is not the only one doing this. At State, office managers are being told they need to clear out three employees before they can hire a new one. http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2017/07/01/could-trump-really-be-draining-the-swamp/
More later –
– AG