Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Cohen
- Takedown
- 20,000 Dead
- Child Care
- Wolves
- Logging
- NO2
- FakeBook
- Cohen. Special Counsel Robert Mueller outsourced his investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia to the US Attorney in NY. The prosecutor opened a second front of the investigation with a raid on Trump’s personal attorney. The excuse given was in investigation into bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations with that attorney’s $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels. The news blew up the notion of attorney – client privilege as FIB raided Cohen’s office and apartment, seizing e-mails, tax and business records. Like the raid into Paul Manafort, Cohen had been cooperating with both the Mueller and congressional investigations having already turned over thousands of documents along with testifying under oath. This raid smells like a Weinstein attempt to pressure / rattle Cohen and in tur Trump himself in order to trigger an overreaction from Trump himself. Interesting article on this in the American Thinker Wednesday suggests that Mueller is conducting a bait and switch operation, an attempt to keep Trump so busy that the statute of limitations clock will run out on Clinton campaign finance violations. As proof the writer notes that it took the Mueller team two solid weeks to line up the outsourcing pieces for the raid including the Magistrate who signed off on it, and the US Attorney of NY who conducted the raid. Trump, Sessions and his team are focused on the DoJ IG investigation and the investigator appointed by Sessions who has been working for at least six months. They need to stay the course and make sure this distraction does not work. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/04/the_raid_on_trumps_lawyer_why_and_why_now.html
- Takedown. On April 3 one Nasin Aghdam, a self-described “vegan bodybuilder and animal rights activist promoting healthy and humane lifestyle” shot up the headquarters of YouTube. Lefties instantly blamed the shooting on NRA members, gun-toting right wingers. But as it turned out, the shooter was anything but. Instead of the prototypical angry white male, it was a female, from Iran, vegan, and PETA True Believer (not the People Eating Tasty Animals version) who shot up the place. Gun free zone signs in YouTube headquarters didn’t do much to protect the employees. “Her pages were littered with strange workout videos vegan cooking tutorials and graphic animal abuse videos.” Her beef against YouTube was that they were screwing around with the ability of others to view her videos and recommend them to others, many of the same complaints as conservatives have about YouTube these days. By Wednesday following the shooting, her FakeBook, Instagram, YouTube and other profiles had all been taken down, hiding her political viewpoint and leftist affiliations from public view. Had she been NRA, I guarantee those pages would be top of every single search list, held up as examples of who is evil here in the new United States and who is not. This is media bias along with collusion by Silicon Valley, hiding the facts about this shooter because those facts do not support the anti-right narrative. And Donald Trump, Jr. was the guy who pointed it out. Looks like Junior has learned his political and persuasion skills well. The left is into group responsibility for criminal activity, which is why they blame the NRA for the actions of a young male shooter on anti-depressants. Those of us on the right blame the shooter, the individual for the crime committed by the individual. When that individual is a vegan Iranian PETA activist, they cover it up as quickly as humanly possible. Move along. Nothing to see here. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/04/donald-trump-jr-tweets-after-youtube-shooting-stirs-gun-debate.html
- 20,000 Dead. Interesting story out of Jo Nova on Monday, noting that 48,000 Brits died after the worst winter in years. This is 20,075 more than average during the months of Dec – March. British citizens were told to heat one room as well as they can and live in that room until it warms up. This is progress in the former British Empire. Of those 20,075 dead were nearly 5,000 under the age of 65. Under the age of 75, one in 10 deaths are due to cold weather. Over 75, that number spikes to eight out of 10. This is what happens when you try to keep the light on and homes heated with moonbeams, pixie dust, and unicorn flatulence. Not only do more people die in the winter than in the summer, but cold kills 20 times more than heat does. http://joannenova.com.au/2018/04/deadly-winter-kills-20000-more-british-than-usual-if-only-co2-caused-more-warming/
- Child Care. It didn’t take members of the Anchorage Assembly long to go into OPM mode following approval of all bonds and reelection of our liberal mayor last week. First out of the barrel is a proposal to fund up to $5,000 / year for child care for Assembly members with children under 6 and for the Muni department that supports the Assembly. The excuse given was mumble mumble …. diversity. There was also expressed interest in making it easier for young single moms to serve on the Assembly. There is so much wrong with this I barely know where to start. It is backed by two of the young, liberal rising stars on the Assembly, Forest Dunbar and Suzanne LaFrance. Dunbar was featured in a Politico piece several months ago about how to turn a red state blue. La France was elected a year ago following a smarmy little whispering campaign by her democrat supporters and local unions that her opponent was a stealth gay rights advocate (yes, he was a gay conservative). Dunbar in up for reelection next year. LaFrance the year after that. Nice to see they both have learned basic democrat politics: buy people’s future votes with OPM and always, always hide behind The Children. Final thought is why they would possibly want to support single moms. Every single social pathology these days is connected to children raised in single parent homes, and with the family courts system nationwide wildly skewed against men these days, this means government at all levels replaces men in the relationship, children be damned. Want to improve the lot of single moms? Make it far more difficult to be a single parent. Make the preferred mode of child rearing the prototypical two parent (man and woman) home. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/anchorage/2018/04/08/proposal-calls-for-city-to-subsidize-child-care-bills-for-anchorage-assembly-members/
- Wolf. Wildlife management in Denali has long been a bone of contention between Alaskans and our Federal Masters. The problem is the wildlife does not really care about, know about, or respect artificial lines on maps. As nobody can hunt in Denali, federal game mismanagement has allowed predator population to decimate the non-predator population, all of which upsets the visitors greatly as their animal viewing opportunities decrease. One of the games played by the NPS and its local supporters has been to shut down hunting and trapping outside the park boundaries, essentially growing the park without an act of congress. Governor Walker, up for reelection and in full pander to the green mode, shut down trapping in a large area next to the part after a collared wolf died in February. Appears that kill was by another pack, but this did not bother the governor’s political appointee at ADFD&G. NPS research has wolves dying all year long, with 75% killed by other wolves. Humans outside the park kill 25%. The population according to the NPS is healthy in no need of human intervention. Wolf packs are dynamic beasts, whose membership changes daily with members leaving, joining, and travelling great distances. We have a bunch of so-called wolf advocates in this state who believe human hunting and killing is unacceptable and have been using elections and the courts to shut that down. They believe wolves are house pets rather than apex predators. Wolves are born and die all the time, the weak being killed, and life continues to go on. https://craigmedred.news/2018/04/04/a-wolf-dies/
- Logging. The latest attempt to bring real live honest to God jobs to the MatSu was announced last week. This one would be to log a tract of beetle-killed trees in the NW part of the valley (fairly remote) before they were turned into fuel for the next wild fire. The project will log the trees, truck them down to Port MacKenzie where the logs would be exported. The project could raise as much as $900,000 / year for a port that is losing $800,000 – $1,500,000 / year. The logs would be shipped by a NZ company to China in about 6 boatloads / year. The companies involved are asking for a pair of ordinances to allow 15,000 acres to be logged over the next 5 years, and an exclusive port lease allowing the company to ship to Pacific Rim countries for the next three years. During the hearings on the ordinance, one member asked why this didn’t go out for competitive bid. As usual, this green delaying tactic would only serve to delay the sale for a year, obligating the Borough to yet another million-dollar port fee. More worrisome, the companies involved previously tried to log beetle killed spruce in the MatSu in 1998, but that deal was cancelled by the Borough and the state for leaving too much wood trash in the logged area, spreading beetles. After dueling lawsuits, everyone agreed to settlements. Now that they know how not to do it, perhaps this time around, they will be more successful. https://www.matsugov.us/news/chijuk-timber-contract-port-lease-discussed
- NO2. From the land of settled science comes news that up to 26% of all nitrogen (Nitrogen dioxide NO2) used in the ecosystem comes from weathering of bedrock and other rocks. For centuries, scientists believed that all nitrogen used by living things came from the atmosphere which is 78% NO2. The UC Davis study was intended to answer a question about a mysterious gap where more nitrogen accumulates in soil than can be supplied by the actions of plants and fungus. Adding nitrogen from weathered rocks seems to solve that problem. The results are significant enough that textbooks will need to be rewritten. I think this is a very cool new thing that demonstrates yet again the great sadness of politicized climate science. Imagine what they could be discovering if their time and energy were aimed at actually figuring out how this planet works rather than delivering results demanded by government grant issuers. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/09/a-surprising-finding-about-nitrogen-in-our-atmosphere/
- Diamond. Mark Zuckerberg’s FakeBook took down a wildly popular pair of Trump supporters who call themselves Diamond and Silk. They’ve been doing what they have been doing since 2014. Reason given by FB for the takedown was that they were “unsafe to the community.” FB has been in the process of ethnic cleansing their so-called “community” of conservative voices. D&S have been in a running gun battle with FB since last September. FB finally lowered the boom April 5, saying the decision was irrevocable and unappealable. In response, the duo sent six pointed questions to Zuckerberg asking details of their banning. As of this writing, they have been reinstated, also without explanation. They are having a bit of fun with this, claiming the ban is racially motivated and blasting away at Zuckerberg for dodging questions on FB bias during congressional hearings midweek. This is not the first time they have run afoul of the speech police, being demonized by YouTube in August 2017. That time they threatened lawsuits. The Masters of the Universe need to be careful as they are up against a pair that will ridicule them and what they are doing to conservatives mercilessly. Make popcorn, as this one is going to be fun. http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/04/10/diamond-and-silk-accuse-facebook-discrimination-censorship-over-unsafe-label.html
More later –
– AG