Interesting Items 12/18

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

In this issue:

1. Moore
2. MeToo
3. Starving
4. Sea Level
5. IG
6. Prager
7. Ammo

1. Moore. Judge Roy Moore lost his Alabama election by around 20,000 votes with perhaps that many absentee ballots (many military) left to count.  So far, Moore has played the waiting game, expecting the military absentee ballots to get him close enough to force a recount.  I am skeptical of that outcome.  There were also nearly 23,000 write-in votes.  Democrats instantly jumped on this as yet another example of the wave election building for November 2018 when they hope to regain both Houses of Congress and then to immediately start impeachment proceedings.  Democrats dumped millions into Alabama, outspending Moore by 14:1.  Much of the money went into black communities which turned out in droves to vote for democrat Doug Jones.  Anti-Moore ads were wall to wall statewide and the democrats stole a US Senate seat they didn’t bother to even field a candidate for the last time it was open for an election.  Republicans promptly formed up their circular firing squad and started letting it rip against one another.  Few rounds were aimed at the democrats.  What did the democrats do right?  The sexual harassment hit jobs were a winner.  Massive money from the coasts worked well.  Ignoring every single issue also worked (as usual).  Demonizing the Republican candidate also worked.  So did voter suppression of Republicans and vote splitting efforts by democrat third party operatives.  What did the Republicans do that worked?  Not much, as the McConnell controlled money spent during the primary sufficiently damaged challenger Mo Brooks that Moore, who consistently only got around a third of Republican votes had enough to win the initial round of Republican primary voting.  Toward the end of the campaign, Richard Shelby (R, AL) gave his supporters permission to vote write-in rather than for Moore, and may have been one of the important nails in Moore’s electoral coffin.  And a lot of Republicans in Alabama simply stayed home rather than vote for Moore.  In the end, Moore ended up getting pretty close despite the barrels of mud thrown on him by the Washington Post and Gloria Allred and was never able to expand his voting base significantly outside his original base of support.  Total vote for the Moore – Strange Republican runoff was just over 480,000.  Total vote for the Doug Jones democrat primary was 165,000.  Republican votes in the special election were 650,000, up by perhaps 35%.  Democrat votes went from 165,000 to 671,000, a turnout four times that of the primary.  And that took all that spending, the national media, Beltway party, intervention of Alabama’s senior US Senator, and massive get out the vote action in the black neighborhoods to only beat Moore by 1.5%.  Lesson for 2018?  For Trump supporters, TEA Partiers, self-selected swamp drainers:  vote for whomever you want in the primary, but whomever wins MUST be electable statewide.  Expect sexual harassment claims to be made early and often.  Do not expect any issues to be important, not unlike what we saw at the national level with Trump in 2016.  Next year’s campaign just began and we need to be just as fired up as democrats, ready to respond in kind and with joy and glee as they make their fraudulent claims.  Demographically, Republicans need to reach out to the minority communities.  Heaven knows they are ripe for attention that they do not get from democrats.  More troubling is the terrible polling among new voters under age 35.  I think economics are the way to get their attention and support, but it must be done on a persuasion level first.  Hook ‘em with persuasion and reel them in with logic.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_special_election_in_Alabama,_2017

 

2. MeToo. The rolling Salem Witch Trial that is the MeToo movement continued on its misandrist trajectory last week with demands that President Trump resign over decades old claims of sexual harassment.  Over 100 congressional democrats got themselves involved in the festivities, demanding an investigation and subsequent resignation.  Much like the Red Queen, they wanted punishment first and then the trial.  “Trial, what trial?  We don’t need no steenking trial.”  Trump responded by branding Kirstin Gillibrand (D, NY) the blonde who replaced Hillary Clinton when she moved the Clinton pay to play operation to the Department of State.  Gillibrand was all over the sexual harassment jihad, positioning herself nicely for a presidential run in 2020.  Make no mistake, the democrat nominee is going to be a woman, men need not apply.  Trump called her a lightweight in a Tweet, branding her as surely as he did to Jeb!, Little Marco, and Lyin’ Ted.  Al Franken (D, MN) announced his resignation, at an unspecified later date, likely contingent on whether or not Roy Moore won in Alabama.  MN Governor Dayton announced his replacement, his former Chief of Staff and current LtGov who also is female.  Current play of this is that it is no longer a three strikes and you’re out world.  Among the new sexual Puritans, it only takes a single accusation up to a half century after the fact to force a man to resign.  No investigation or trial necessary.  No conviction necessary.  No penalty for false charges, likely due to the logic that if a woman says it, it must be true (yet another example of misandry).  Gloria Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom has been offering money in return for accusations against Trump.  I expect we will see a lot more before the current hysteria runs its course.  http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365068-exclusive-prominent-lawyer-sought-donor-cash-for-two-trump-accusers

 

3. Starving. Latest version of manmade global warming due to CO2 emissions (aka climate change) killing all the polar bears is video and photos from Canada’s Baffin Island of an emaciated polar bear.  The story and video were posted by an outfit that calls itself SeaLegacy.  It was picked up by western media last month as the latest and greatest shot in the mankind is killing all the polar bears argument.  The filmmakers play the climate change card early and often, blaming the starving, emaciated bear’s condition on lack of sea ice, temperature increases, and the lack of seals to eat.  The FakeBook post of the video included verbiage on the filmmaker’s tears and pain as it is forced to make the rounds of human settlements looking for food.  So, what is the real story?  The bear is a young bear.  This sort of claim and video was last made in 2013.  Dr. Susan Crockford refers to it as “tragedy porn.”  The video was made in August, when the bears should be their fattest after a summer of hunting seals on the shrinking ice.  Young independent adults 2 – 5 years old survive at lower rates than adults, mostly because they haven’t yet learned the skills necessary to hunt and survive well enough yet.  They and very old animals account for most of the natural mortality of polar bears.  What the film crew saw was simply nature being nature.  There was a mortality event in 1974 in the eastern Beaufort Sea when females and their cubs were starving due to thick spring ice.  No film crews then.  And to date, there are no starvation events yet documented due to a lack of sea ice.  One starving bear does not prove anything.  Unfortunately, it is a great vehicle to troll for donations and public support for a political agenda.  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/11/starving-polar-bears-are-the-fake-news-face-of-climate-change/

 

4. Sea Level. The problem with the climatistas is not only that they are proselytizing their religion on the public dime, but they are changing the actual data gathered over the last couple centuries so that it supports their current world view.  Latest example of this comes courtesy of JoNova with a post about how sea level data has been adjusted upwards so that the climatistas can demonstrate rising sea levels.  It turns out that data from the Indian Ocean including Aden in Yemen and Mumbai in India shows little to no sea level increase over the last century.  Mumbai has been stable over the 20^th Century.  Aden has not risen at all over the course of the last half century.  Tidal measurements from Mumbai go back to 1878.  The climate research team adjusted the Mumbai data so that it eventually showed a 0.68 – 0.80 mm/year rise in sea levels.  Actual data shows a 0.60 mm/year increase 1878 – 1936 and a 0.72 mm/year decrease 1937 – 1995.  Combine both of these together and you end up with a small negative trend.  The IPCC groupies are today claiming a 3 mm/year rise in ocean levels.  It is difficult to believe what is real when the very people charged with protecting the actual data have been changing it on the fly to support their unscientific conclusions and model results.  http://joannenova.com.au/2017/12/rising-sea-levels-in-the-indian-ocean-due-to-man-made-adjustments-not-co2/

 

5. IG. The Mueller investigation is not the only investigation underway in the swamp.  The (In)Justice Department Inspector General has been investigating both the FBI and Mueller’s work with it.  O’Bama holdovers remaining in the FBI have been stonewalling House and Senate Committees investigating former Director Comey’s handling of investigations into Hilly’s and the DNC’s servers.  The IG, which has been investigating since at least January has the requested information and released it to congressional investigators.  It was apparently the DoJ IG who released the text messages between FBI Investigator Strzok and his girlfriend.  It was apparently the DoJ IG who pressured Mueller to confirm he fired Strzok last summer.  There is growing speculation on the right that it will be the DoJ IG that will release a report blowing the ongoing silent coup and conspiracy between O’Bama intelligence officials, the FBI, and O’Bama holdovers in DoJ to undermine this president and orchestrate an open-ended, illegal investigation of him and his transition team, and the campaign.  Trump knows all of this.  I expect Mueller does also, as do the former intel officials, and there is literally nothing they can do to keep that little basket of sunshine from detonating.  https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/15/fbi-trump-texts-justice-department-ig-299569

 

6. Prager. The college war on WrongThink continued last week, this time at the University of Wyoming.  A conservative student group, Turning Point USA, got itself defunded by the student government partly as punishment for bringing Dennis Prager on campus for a speech.  This visit was deemed unacceptable because in the words of one Hunter McFarland, a graduate assistant who is Wyoming’s Director of Diversity for the student government argued that Prager must not speak because he “… is an anti-academic, rape advocate who spews hate speech against Muslims, Black people, Latinas, and many other groups who deserve to be protected at the University of Wyoming…”  In the lead-up to the speech, she threatened Antifa levels of violent protests.  Although the written description of this mostly has the University administration looking the other way while the student government runs wild, the fact that there is a University employee (female graduate assistant) leading this means that at the very least they are both sympathetic and complicit in this retaliation against WrongThink on campus.  The original defund is only for 2018 to the tune of $10,000.  The carrot is a thinly veiled promise to reinstate funding in 2019 should Turning Point get their minds right in the intervening 12 months.  Free speech for me but not for thee (as usual).  http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/12/13/university-of-wyoming-conservative-group-defunded-after-hosting-dennis-prager/

 

7. Ammo. Latest assault on the Second Amendment by the neo-Confederates running California is legislation that prohibits ownership of bullets purchased out of state.  It goes into effect January 1.  The new law also makes it illegal to transfer or buy ammunition from anyone other than a licensed dealer in California.  While residents can order ammunition from a catalog, that ammo must be shipped to a licensed dealer for pickup.  The dealer will then add a processing fee (tax) to the cost of the ammunition and that fee passed along to the state.  A year later, yet another tax will be levied on gun owners, with a background check required for all ammunition buyers.  Along with the background check comes yet another fee (tax) paid to the state.  The initial tax is only a dollar, ostensibly to help cover the cost of the new point of sale system on ammunition purchases.  Expect that fee to increase significantly once the revenue stream is established.  Our experience with California anti-firearms laws is that once something is passed, the screws are tightened significantly restricting legal ownership and use of firearms.  This is the model other blue states and congressional democrats have been using to undermine the Second Amendment.  It is what they will do should they take control of either House of Congress next November.  http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/12/13/californias-war-on-guns-broadens-to-a-war-on-ammunition-beginning-january-1-2018/

More later –

– AG