Interesting Items 08/14

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

In this issue:

  1. Girlfriends
  2. Cabot
  3. Recess
  4. Google
  5. Clean Air
  6. Frankenfish

  1. Girlfriends. We have a pair of examples out of the NFL of the importance of selecting the right girlfriend.  Most of us learn that little lesson early on, most certainly after the first divorce.  Some don’t and things get real expensive in a hurry.  One is soon to be suspended Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliot and the other is the self-immolating Colin Kaepernick who decided to dabble in the social justice warrior world.  The NFL handed down a 6-game suspension to Elliot last week for violations of its personal conduct policy.  The violations had to do with accusations of domestic violence between Elliot and the girlfriend.  The NFL spent 13 months looking at all the evidence and determined that there was sufficient evidence to believe Elliot did what the girlfriend accused him of doing, although the prosecutor in Columbus OH did not find sufficient evidence to indict, much less to bring the case to trial.  The left-wing sports media was pleased as punch at the notion that another man was going to be hammered for beating up his girlfriend.  Cowboys fans, not so much.  Elliot is expected to appeal the suspension based on interesting (at least to me) text messages and actions of the girlfriend.  Appears they were well on their way to breaking up and the girlfriend was not happy about it, threatening Elliot with actions to damage his career if he did.  One noted that she was a white chick and he was a black man, asking who would be believed.  She lied at least once during the investigation.  She tried to get her friends to lie about the event.  She sent photos of bruises to friends and family afterwards, conveniently forgetting to mention that she had been in at least one bar fight around that same time. A set of texts after the claimed domestic violence was a conversation between her and a friend about using a video of her having sex with Elliot as a vehicle to extort up to $20,000 out of him.  Note to self:  stay away from chicks who get themselves into bar fights.  Elliot will likely stand the entire suspension, as the NFL covered its backside nicely crafting the suspension around the League’s personal conduct policy.  Hopefully he will choose a better class of girlfriend next time around.  The crux of the appeal will be a credible explanation of the bruising.  If there end up being multiple bar fights around the time of the claimed abuse, and there are witnesses, I think Elliot will win the appeal.  If I come to believe he actually beat her up, I will post a correction.  As of this writing, I am not convinced, and it will cost him a couple million dollars to learn the very basic lesson of selecting the right girlfriend.  Second girlfriend story comes associated with Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers starting quarterback who decided to make political statements during the playing of the National Anthem.  Fans didn’t like that a lot and took it out on the league and sports media by doing other things than watching NFL games.  As a result, he is out of a job.  One of the explanations I ran across last year for his behavior was a new girlfriend, a BLM-friendly activist / radio hostess in SF.  Don’t think it is just the sex, as an NFL guy can get that anywhere.  I think identity politics is incredibly seductive, especially if it is the first time you are exposed to it, sort of a tender trap.  A week or two ago, the Baltimore Ravens took an extended look at Kaepernick as a backup as their starter is down with an injury for an extended time.  During the look, the girlfriend tweeted that the Baltimore owner is a racist and its most famous player, Ray Lewis is an Uncle Tom.  Needless to say, Kaepernick didn’t get the gig.  Like I said earlier, pick your girlfriends wisely.  https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/colin-kaepernicks-girlfriend-calls-ravens-owner-racist-ray-lewis-uncle-tom/

 

  1. Cabot. Gasland was an anti-fracking, anti-drilling, anti-natural gas polemic (movie) intended to blame fracking, drilling, and natural gas production for all manner of dirty water issues.  While it hasn’t stopped fracking of shale, it most certainly fueled ongoing lawfare against oil and natural gas companies.  One such event took place in PA, where a number of families sued a producer.  Some of them were awarded $4.2 million in 2016.  A judge overturned that verdict in March.  In April, another resident filed a lawsuit against Cabot.  They withdrew it a couple months later.  Last week, Cabot, apparently tired of being screwed around with in court, filed a $5 million lawsuit against the resident, one Ray Kemble claiming his lawsuit was frivolous and an attempt to extort money from them.  Additionally, the claims against Cabot were the subject of a 2012 settlement between Cabot and dozens of local residents – including Kemble – and were barred by the statute of limitations.  Cabot also claims that Kemble breached the 2012 settlement by publicly talking about the company.  Looks like the producers have about had it with lawfare.  And it is long past time to respond in kind.  http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/08/gasland-cabot-oil-sues-anti-fracking-resident-dimock-pa-5-milliion/

 

  1. Recess. One of the tricks the new Republican majority in the US senate played on O’Bama was the use of a pro-forma session in order to block his recess appointments.  Imagine my surprise when Mitch McConnell decided to do the same thing during their August recess to block Trump from appointing a large number of nominees currently blocked by democrats and unresponsive Republican senators.  The ostensible reason was to keep Trump from firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions whom Trump was blasting for being weak on investigating democrat collusion with Ukraine and Russians during the campaign.  Wouldn’t it be easier if McConnell simply announced he was going to oppose everything Trump was trying to do because he was Trump?  http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/345261-senate-blocks-trump-from-making-recess-appointments-over-break

 

  1. Google. Google fired one of their engineers after he sent around a 10-page note taking exception with the way that Google was pursuing its diversity goals.  The excuse was the standard claptrap about “… perpetuating gender stereotypes”, essentially having the temerity to notice that men and women are different, interested in different things, do things in different ways, and approach work in different ways.  The fired engineer, one James Damore, committed all sorts of anti-PC sins in the piece, noting that on average women and men tend to be interested in different things – women more people-oriented and men more thing-oriented.  His most pointed criticism was aimed at regimented affirmative action style diversity programs being perpetrated by Google management on its employees.  He suggested that Google rethink some of its assumptions about why there might continue to be gaps between the numbers of women and men interested in and qualified for tech jobs at the company.  Instead of highlighting and fighting the gaps as the result of discriminatory systems, perhaps they should consider the possibility that divergent choices made by members of different sexes are the results of actual existing diversity.  Google’s reaction, first condemning the engineer and then firing him reinforce exterior views and Damore’s fears about Google’s ideologically rigid echo chamber.  And Google, who gathers data on everything and everyone continuously, is in a position to enforce its ideological views on the rest of us who do business with it.  Consider if you will, riding in a Google driverless vehicle that suddenly decides that you have posted one too many hostile views to the corporate ideology.  And if the fawning relationship between Silicon Valley and the O’Bama administration is any indication, Google (being called Goolag by any number of right wing trolls) is not the only offender. http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/08/google-fires-engineer-noticing-men-women-different/

 

  1. Clean Air. The Daily Caller has been doing Yeoman’s work on the EPA for years.  Last week, a toxicologist reports that he found evidence that the 1989 EPA study used as a foundation of CO (carbon monoxide) regulations fabricated data and results.  They even fabricated methods used to get their results, a trifecta of government fraud.  The 1989 study was used as the foundation of increasingly stringent regulations on CO emissions and cost tens of billions of dollars on catalytic converters for vehicles.  The 1989 study was rushed through the system to replace a 1981 study that relied on fabricated data.  As the toxicologist noted, “If you commission someone to replicate a fraud, you have to commit fraud to do it.”  The EPA realized in 1983 that the CO research in 1981 was conducted by a Dr. Wilbert Aronow who had been falsifying drug trial evidence for patients at a VA hospital in LA so they took another look at it.  The replacement study reported that low CO levels in the bloodstream exacerbated angina during graded exercise in subjects with coronary artery disease, essentially a finding that low levels of CO in the bloodstream caused heart attacks.  The toxicologist tried to extract the raw data behind the replacement study from HEI, the EPA-funded organization that put together the 1989 report.  HEI told him that the data no longer existed.  So, he went digging for other published versions of the original data, and put it together based on extracts from published journals and an HEI annual report from 1985.  The analysis found three different summary reports of HEI’s work.  None of the summaries in these reports matched.  No methods were published either.  At this point, the toxicologist continues to explore the problems presented in the report.  For its part, HEI reportedly destroyed the original study records in 2008 and has so far been unwilling or unable to respond to or address his specifics.  The EPA is a lot like the ancient view of the world as an endless stack of turtles standing on one another’s backs, only with the EPA it’s not turtles all the way down. Rather, it is fraud.  http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/07/exclusive-researcher-claims-to-have-evidence-one-of-epas-most-successful-clean-air-rules-is-based-on-fabricated-data/

 

  1. Frankenfish. The first batch of genetically modified (GM) salmon, aka “Frankenfish” hit the marketplace last week as AquaBounty Technologies announced the sale of its first batch of salmon at market prices to customers in Canada.  The Alaska congressional delegation unsuccessfully fought a rather foolish rear guard action to block these fish from entering the North American market.  About 5 tons were sold.  GM salmon are genetically altered Atlantic salmon, sterile, raised in tanks, and so far unable to make it into the wild.  While as a fan of Jurassic Park, and fully aware that life will always, always find a way, tank-reared sterile salmon don’t have a high chance to make it into the wild.  The genetic modification allows the salmon to grow to size in half to 2/3 of the time it would take a wild salmon to grow to the same size.  This would cut 12 – 18 months off the growing time for a 2 – 3 kg fish.  The fish are grown near to population centers, harvested year round and delivered fresh.  The size and quality are equivalent with that of wild salmon.  The new entrant into the worldwide salon market reprises the crushing economic disaster passage of protectionist anti-fish farming legislation here in Alaska.  Protectionist measures never, ever work.  And as more businesses enter the salmon marketplace, the worse Alaskan commercial fishermen are going to do.  The 1990 legislation was passed when 271,000 metric tons of salmon were produced by the farms.  Today that number is upwards of 2.4 million metric tons with new entrants into the marketplace daily.  And Alaskan commercial fishermen simply cannot keep up in that marketplace which demands fresh fish on a 12-month basis.  Wild fish are available for only a couple months during the year.  If your product isn’t meeting what the marketplace is demanding, you are about to get left in the dust.  https://craigmedred.news/2017/08/07/bad-news-salmon/

More later –

– AG

 

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