Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Tax Returns
- Sims
- Floods
- Claremont
- Renewables
- STEM
- Tax Returns. One of the several ways the House majority is abusing its power has been a series of subpoenas aimed at allowing them to get their hot little hands on tax returns for Donald Trump before he became president. This is part of the extended fishing expedition for information that can (in their dreams) end up getting him the same treatment that Al Capone got (Capone was never arrested for being a mobster. He was arrested and convicted for tax evasion). The subpoenas were issued to various banks, IRS, US Department of the Treasury, and members of Trump’s family. So far, the President is fighting the fishing expedition. We saw last week and example of what will happen when the democrats get their hands on the returns, when the NYT published a breathless piece about Trump’s taxes following the 1986 Real Estate market crash. The piece was based on a 3-page summary of his taxes leaked from the IRS. Likewise, nothing about Trump that ends up in the hands of democrats in the House will be held. It will all be leaked to friendly media cronies with breathless stories written for the maximum infliction of personal, professional and political damage to Trump, his family and his businesses just in time for the 2020 election. The problem with the NYT story is that it is old news, recycled from decades ago, when Trump was lauded in the very pages of the NYT for fighting his way out of a billion dollars in real estate debt. He even gave a thumbnail description of how he did it in as an intro to The Apprentice. He also used what he had done as the basis for his The Art of the Deal. So, it is nothing new. Expect this to thrash its way through the courts. And even if Trump loses, he will win. How so? Because he holds the ultimate response, that of releasing tax returns of every single democrat in congress or out campaigning against him, every single O’Bama judge that creates new law against him, and every single media member who writes, authorizes, and leaks stories based on those tax returns. Trump is willing to blow it all up, destroy the decades old Great Game being played in the swamp. He did not start this. But he bloody well will end it. Never forget that Trump is a counterpuncher. He rarely takes the first shot. But he does return fire, often with devastating effect. In the real estate world, his response to those who went after him was to bankrupt them. He will do the same to the democrats coming after him and his family today. It is inevitable. And it is already in motion. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html
- Sims. Brian Sims is a Pennsylvania State Representative. Physically, he is a big guy, being former captain of his football team. He is also the very embodiment of a smirking, in your face gay guy. Last week, he decided he was offended by religious ladies praying outside a local Planned Parenthood abattoir and videoed himself going after them. The first target was a little old lady praying outside. Sims went after he physically, verbally yelling at her and calling her every name in the book. This wasn’t a onetime hit and run. Rather, Sims followed her around for a while verbally berating her. He called for his followers (he was posting the video) to find the homes of two other protesters, girls aged 13 and 15, and show up there, doxing them with the liberal mob. This is not the first time Sims, the first openly gay guy in the PA legislature went after religious people. Last summer he made another video of himself “welcoming” VP Mike Pence to Philly complete with the single finger salute and all the expected demands about diversity and tolerance (which he appears to know nothing about). I’m sure the gay community in Philly is proud of their representative. The abattoir that Sims was defending is not the cleanest operation in the state, having failed 13 of its last 23 inspections. It was also complicit in failing to report multiple instances of unmarried girls under the age of 15 showing up for their services. One of the girls, only 13 at the time filled out a form saying she first had sex at 11. None of these cases of sexual abuse / criminal violations of the law were reported to the state. In this whole event, Sims was the aggressor, a smirking, in-your-face aggressor. He chose an elderly woman and two teens to bully. He badgered them. Repeatedly. Relentlessly. And asked his Twitter followers to identify and expose them for the crime of being anti-abortion. The only shock is that this can occur without a word of protest from half the country (democrats). It is only going to get worse. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/05/06/brian-sims-planned-parenthood-philadelphia/
- Floods. One of the things so-called green policies are really good at doing is screwing up land and forest management policies in place for decades. We first saw it with the devastating Yellowstone forest fires of 1988. This has been followed by massive forest fires in California. It has also led to massive floods in the Midwest. Latest example of this is Nebraska, where historic flooding has been made even worse by a change in Army Corps of Engineers priorities over the last 20 years. Previous priorities were flood control, irrigation and upstream beneficial uses, downstream water supplies, navigation and power, recreation and wildlife in that order. In 2004, under relentless pressure from greens, Congress approved a revision of the manual that no longer specifically prioritizes the uses of the system, leaving that discretion to the Corps. The previous list was upended, with recreation and wildlife now being the most important. The process is called “reconnecting the rivers to the floodplains” and it is being done on behalf of the birds. Essentially the Corps is now allowing flooding and increasing the severity of that flooding. Since 2004, the Corps has been notching levees and dikes, reopening old river chutes, destabilizing once-shored riverbanks, encouraging shallowing and widening of rivers to facilitate creation of “emergent sandbar habitat” for two species of birds and a species of sturgeon in the river. When you forget your basic mission and allow the greens to redefine that mission, the inevitable happens when you have a record flood in the Mississippi, 41 days and counting last week. The malfeasance is bad enough that locals are starting to win lawsuits against the Corps for failing to do their job. https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/05/did-green-justice-polices-cause-the-massive-midwest-floods/
- Claremont. Interesting article out of American Greatness last week describes Goolag’s attempt to censor the Claremont Institute last week as a military operation, specifically a classic reconnaissance sortie: Initiate a small, provocative skirmish with the enemy to probe defenses and see how the enemy responds. Once that information is gathered, pull back, analyze and plan for the next assault. This makes perfect sense if you look at the current cold war with the left as a war that is now heating up. Someone at Goolag is thinking militarily. And that should bother us. Goolag censored Claremont out of the blue, without warning. After a few hours of phone calls, they relented, claiming it was a “mistake”, a blatant lie. It was not a mistake at all. Rather they were testing the perimeter to see who stood their ground and what sort of support their target got from the larger conservative community. They will incorporate whatever they learned last week and be back for another bite at the apple in the not so distant future with a larger assault on another larger target. Anti-trust action by the Trump administration against these clowns can’t happen quick enough. https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/07/understanding-googles-military-mindset/
- Renewables. Fun article out of Forbes last Sept is a reminder that the push for renewable energy is not about clean energy at all. Rather, it is about power, control, and worsening living conditions so that governments can ride in on their collective white horses with collective solutions to the problems they created. This article recounts a study by Environmental Progress that finds that California and Germany really spent their money poorly. Relevant findings from the analysis are:
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- Had Germany spent $580 billion on nuclear instead of renewables, and the fossil plant upgrades and grid expansions they require, it would have had enough energy to both replace all fossil fuels and biomass in its electricity sector and replace all of the petroleum it uses for cars and light trucks.
- Had California spent an estimated $100 billion on nuclear instead of on wind and solar, it would have had enough energy to replace all fossil fuels in its in-state electricity mix.
Nuclear is robust, safe, and most importantly reliable. It is also relatively cheap and integrates well with existing generation, transmission and distribution. Ontario is nearly 90% cleaner than California, almost entirely due to deployment of reactors for electrical generation. California’s power sector emissions are over twice as high today as they would have been had the state kept open and built planned nuclear plants. The forced early closure of San Onofre in 2013 and Diablo Canyon in 2025 will wipe out 15% of all in-state clean electricity. Political leadership in both CA and Germany is pushing for others to follow the path they are so foolishly traveling. Adding solar and wind while refusing to go nuclear always, always requires burning more fossil fuels. California’s abandonment of nuclear generation planned in the 1960s and 1970s has locked in fossil fuel use. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11/had-they-bet-on-nuclear-not-renewables-germany-california-would-already-have-100-clean-power/#282a0a5ae0d4
- STEM. Most recent school shooting was in Highlands Ranch, CO last week, just up the road from Columbine. A pair of vermin killed one and injured 8. The school specialized in STEM curricula. One student charged the shooter and was killed in the process, having saved his classmates. Media dropped coverage of this really quick. Usually there is a reason for that. In this case, the shooters were a gay kid who hated Christians, Trump, and was a registered democrat. The other kid was a girl “transitioning” to a male. The shooters were stopped by an 18-year old Marine recruit, and the second student who was killed. The gay kid was quite vocal in social media about his hatred for Christians and their so-called intolerance. Yet it was not the Christians who opened fire on the gay or LGBTQWXYZ kids. Apparently, intolerance these days is in the eye of the beholder. Local politicians including a CO US Senator running for the presidential nomination as a democrat with the help of the Brady Campaign managed to turn a wake / vigil into a political rally late in the week. This prompted a walkout by students and parents. Media dropped coverage of that also. Final piece of the puzzle was that the gay guy was also a bully at the school, likely using his sexuality as a hammer to go after those who are committing WrongThink on campus. Interesting that this edition of II has two pieces on gay bullies. They are well on their way to becoming that which they claim to hate the most. Congratulations. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/colorado-shooting-suspects-are-gender-confused-girl-and-boy-who-hated-christians-trump
More later –
– AG