Interesting Items 08/20

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

In this issue:

  1. Cakeshop
  2. Brennan
  3. Roundup
  4. Assault
  5. Camp
  6. Greening
  7. Donlin

  1. Cakeshop. Not being content with being slapped down for their public hostility to Christians, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is going after Masterpiece Cakeshop once again for refusing to bake another cake.  This one is a celebration of a “transition” from one sex to another.  The request was made telephonically the same day the SCOTUS opinion in support of Masterpiece was handed down.  It also appears to have been recorded.  In response, the Alliance Defending Freedom that represented the owner before the SCOTUS filed suit in federal court requesting an injunction against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission against further harassment of the owner.  Nothing like demonstrating that you are not anti-Christian bigots by once again exercising your anti-Christian bigotry in defiance of a 7 – 2 slap-down by the highest court in the land.  In a related story, the Masters of the Universe (Silicon Valley billionaires) who are busily censoring conservatives at the behest of democrat operatives working for them, on their boards, and in congress have been trying to use the excuse that privately held businesses ought to be treated like Christian bake shops and not be forced to carry content that they choose not to carry.  This is a remarkably flaccid argument.  A Breitbart article sliced and diced this argument nine ways from Sunday with the following rationale:
  • Christian bakeries can’t kill your business. Social media companies have grown to the extent that a simple algorithm tweak (intentional) can shut down significant traffic flow to business web sites.  A non-political, viral website LittleThings suffered this in January and had to shut down after losing 75% of its daily traffic.
  • Christian bakeries can’t swing an election. FakeBook claims to have boosted voter turnout by 3% by tweaking its algorithm in 2016.  Goolag manipulates search results to favor selected democrat candidates.  Some studies estimate this can swing up to 40% of undecided voters.  Another author estimates this swung 2 – 3 million votes toward Hillary in 2016.
  • Christian bakeries don’t birth and grow grassroots movements. Successful grassroots movements require some sort of social media for organization and fundraising.  When Big Tech actively suppresses right wing comments, members, posts, and other forms of communications, they grow only the groups that support their worldview.
  • Christian bakeries aren’t public squares. A 2017 unanimous SCOTUS opinion ruled it was illegal for North Carolina to prohibit registered sex offenders from using social media.  Rationale was that he social media platforms had become “modern public squares.”
  • Christian bakeries aren’t utilities. Public utilities and airways are not allowed to deny service because of your political views.  This is what social media is actively doing.
  • Finally, Christian bakeries are not monopolies, duopolies or oligopolies. The active collaboration of social media platforms to shut down Alex Jones took only 12 hours.  There was coordination.  Social media has turned into a cartel.  For example, Gab, a free speech alternative competitor to Twitter has been locked out of Google Play and the Apple App store who control 99% of the market for smartphone operating systems.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/14/bokhari-why-tech-giants-arent-like-christian-bakeries/

  1. Brennan. For pure comedy gold, we have the defenestration of former CIA Chief John Brennan under O’Bama by the Trump WH.  Brennan is one of the ringleaders of the attempted anti-Trump coup via corruption of the intelligence community, FIB and DoJ.  He has been publicly running his mouth on any cable network that will give him air time.  And he got a lot of air time.  When he ratcheted up the invective to the point where he accused President Trump of treason, Trump began preparing return fire.  The first round move was to pull his security clearance.  For most people with clearances, they are only granted when you have a need to know.  Some of the real high rollers, former CIA Chief would be one of those, they are allowed to maintain their clearance after leaving office as a gesture of respect / gratitude for the job and position they used to hold.  That clearance is parlayed into very high paying jobs at defense and intelligence contractors, the revolving door in the swamp that allows everyone to get rich as they bounce from job to job.  Trump just removed Brennan from that world.  And given the hysterical media and democrat reaction to doing it, they have just identified yet another tool he can use to drive them stark, raving mad.  Operating in the contractor world was where former FIB Directors Comey and Mueller made all their personal money.  Pull the clearances, and those jobs disappear instantly.  Brennan, ever the brilliant (/sarc) political player, promised to sue and get a court to reinstate his clearance.  I do expect an O’Bama DC Circuit court judge to order this done.  OTOH, I don’t expect Brennan to ever see a clearance again.  As to Brennan’s co-conspirators in the attempted coup, I expect they will be losing their clearances in short order.  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/15/trump-pulls-security-clearance-of-ex-cia-director-brennan-778791

 

  1. Roundup. A California jury awarded $289 in damages from Monsanto to a plaintiff who claimed he got cancer from the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.  $39 million were compensatory and $250 million were punitive damages.  This is only the first of what promises to be thousands of class action lawsuits aimed at destroying Monsanto.  Here’s the funny part:  glyphosate may not be carcinogenic.  Years of testing by the EPA have found no data supporting the notion that glyphosate is clearly carcinogenic.  The World Health Organization found that it was carcinogenic in 2015 after removing findings from studies that concluded glyphosate was noncarcinogenic before publishing their conclusions.  A long-term observational study of 89,000 farmers and families in North Carolina consistently failed to find any link with exposure to the active ingredient and any increase in cancer.  California piled on and accepted the WHO designation, imposing a statewide designation of the chemical as a carcinogen, which was the foundation for the jury’s conclusions.  Science loses when its pursuit is turned into a money grab by the trial lawyers.  https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/years-of-testing-shows-glyphosate-isnt-carcinogenic.html

 

  1. Assault. DNC Vice-Chairman, Muslim, former congress critter from Minnesota Keith Ellison is leaving congress to run for state attorney general.  Allegations surfaced last week toward the end of the campaign that Ellison had emotionally and physically abused his former girlfriend.  The DNC, which has been in the fat middle of the #MeToo movement has been not unexpectedly silent about the allegations.  The timing of the charges conveniently a week before the state primary is more than a little suspicious.  In response, Minnesota democrats nominated Ellison for Attorney General, a race he is expected to easily win.  This campaign will be interesting to watch, as Minnesota democrats are still fairly upset at the gratuitous cashiering of Al Franken in sexual harassment charges, something that probably led to Ellison’s easy primary win.  Remember that senate democrats forced Franken out as because they knew MN Governor Mark Dayton would appoint another democrat to replace him.  They wanted Franken gone as moral positioning to defeat Roy Moore for US Senate in Alabama.  We will see is #MeToo is still important to the democrats in the runup to the 2018 elections or if they haven’t simply moved on to all racism all the time in their get out the vote efforts.  https://hotair.com/archives/2018/08/14/free-beacon-dnc-suuuure-seems-quiet-deputy-chairs-domestic-violence-allegations/

 

  1. Camp. NM law enforcement took down a terrorist training camp in the desert.  The camp was led by five adults, one of whom is related to the Blind Cleric who led the initial attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.  He is a 1993 unindicted co-conspirator and Linda Sarsour’s mentor.  The five were training children in the use of firearms and tactics intended to be used to kill teachers, law enforcement and other targets of their fundamentalist ire.  The compound was essentially a school shooter training ground.  The 11 children were starving and maltreated.  The NM judge let the five out of court on $20,000 bonds apiece.  There was at least one death of children in the compound following some sort of Islamic cleansing.  Terrorist training camp in NM?  Child abuse?  No problem.  Let ‘em out.  We don’t want to appear judgmental.  http://victorygirlsblog.com/siraj-ibn-wahhaj-son-of-nyc-iman-tied-to-93-wtc-bombing-was-running-terrorist-training-camp-video/

 

  1. Greening. WUWT is running a series of articles on Global Greening.  Kip Hansen described an April 2017 article by a journalist named Zimmer who reported that plants today are growing at a faster rate than any other time in the last 54,000 years (the middle of the last great ice age).  Additionally, plants are converting 31% more CO2 into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution (end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th Century).  The article went on to conclude that global greening has mitigated global warming following the end of the Little Ice Age in 1880, limiting that warming to only 2 degrees F.  All in all, a pretty balanced article.  That didn’t last long, as the journalist came back a year later with completely different conclusions, that global greening is bad.  Rationale?  More photosynthesis doesn’t necessarily mean more food.  Extra CO2 can somehow make plants less nutritious.  More plants won’t prevent climate change.  And global greening won’t last forever.  The article goes on to take a look at the notion that more photosynthesis doesn’t mean more food.  CO2 is even better, as it enhances both crop water usage (plants use water more efficiently) and yields.  Of course, some plant types do better than others, but general improvement is measurable across the entire spectrum of plant growth.  More CO2?  Great for plants.  Great for us.  Especially great for people trying to farm in marginal soil and water conditions.  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/14/the-fight-against-global-greening-part-1/

 

  1. Donlin. The Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Land management issued major permits for development of the Donlin Creek Mine 275 miles west of Anchorage.  The agencies selected Donlin’s proposed development scenario, rejecting opposition proposals including not building the mine at all.  Infrastructure associated with the mine will include a 316-mile-long natural gas pipeline from Cook Inlet, and a 30-mile long access road to a port along the Kuskokwim.  The mine should create up to 3,000 new jobs during construction and up to 1,200 new jobs during 30 years of planned operations.  The mine went through over 400 meetings over the years, most of them in rural Alaska communities.  Opposition has grown in recent months, most of it fanned by the Usual Suspects in the environmental community.  Most interesting part of this project is the support by the usually anti-development Walker – Mallott administration, which vociferously opposes the Pebble Mine in the neighboring watershed to the east, mining much the same material for sale.  Difference between Donlin and Pebble?  Donlin is native owned and operated.  Pebble is not.  Donlin is perhaps a fifth the size of the revised Pebble.  Congratulations to everyone involved in this.  Get it right, guys.  https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2018/08/13/federal-government-advances-donlin-gold-project-issuing-major-permit/

More later –

– AG

 

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