{"id":484,"date":"2019-09-23T17:09:24","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T01:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/?p=484"},"modified":"2019-09-23T17:09:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T01:09:24","slug":"interesting-items-09-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/2019\/09\/23\/interesting-items-09-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting Items 09\/23"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information.\u00a0 Enjoy \u2013<\/p>\n

In this issue:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Kavanaugh<\/li>\n
  2. Guns<\/li>\n
  3. Regulations<\/li>\n
  4. Donley<\/li>\n
  5. Pebble<\/li>\n
  6. Renewables<\/li>\n
  7. Iran<\/li>\n
  8. Warren<\/li>\n
  9. Oligarchy<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Kavanaugh. Latest pot shot at SCOTUS Justice Kavanaugh was a breathless piece out of the hyper-partisan NYT accusing the Judge of exposing himself to one of his accusers as a drunken teen<\/a>.\u00a0 The piece excerpted a soon to be published book on the confirmation festivities and intentionally left out all exculpatory the piece\u2019s original authors claimed to have included.\u00a0 Apparently, the editors \u201caccidently\u201d removed that part on purpose.\u00a0 There were two bombshells in the story, neither of them was the ones the NYT wanted to explode and damage Kavanaugh.\u00a0 The first is that the actual victim, Deborah Ramirez, who chose never to go on record during the hearings, did not remember the event.\u00a0 The guy who made the report was an acquaintance of Kavanaugh at the time who \u201cremembered\u201d the incident decades later after working for the Clintons, making this a Clinton hit.\u00a0 The second and most important bombshell in the piece was confirmation of attempted witness tampering by Blasey-Ford\u2019s allies, which pressured her friend Leyland Keyser to change her story so as to better support Blasey-Ford\u2019s account.\u00a0 And who figured this out?\u00a0 FNC?\u00a0 Breitbart?\u00a0 Not hardly.\u00a0 How about CBS?\u00a0 Keyser told the FIB that Blasey-Ford\u2019s allies pressured and threatened her with a public smear campaign if she didn\u2019t change her story.\u00a0 Details of Keyser\u2019s story started coming out a year ago.\u00a0 Only in the book does she completely dismiss Blasey-Ford\u2019s claims as not believable.\u00a0 With Keyser, we now have all four people Ford identified as being at the summer 1982 HS party saying that no such party occurred.\u00a0 The only remaining piece of this will be any recommended action by the Senate Judiciary Committee to indict Blasey-Ford and her lawyers for lying to the committee.\u00a0 I don\u2019t expect democrats to do this.\u00a0 But I most certainly do expect Republican members to get off the dime and get this done.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Guns. Democrat Presidential candidate Robert Francis \u201cBeto\u201d O\u2019Rourke committed Truth in public during last week\u2019s presidential debate when he promised \u201cHell yes.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to take your AR-15\u2019s<\/a>\u201d giving the NRA and gun owners the best Christmas present they\u2019ve had in years from democrats.\u00a0 AR-15s are the new target for the gun grabbers.\u00a0 Good luck getting them, as Americans don\u2019t have a real high level of tolerance for gun grabbing.\u00a0 Kurt Schlichter<\/a> reminded that actual shooting started in the American Revolution when British troops tried to seize armories in Concord and Lexington.\u00a0 More recent attempts were Ruby Ridge and Waco, neither of which turned out all that well for the feds.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Regulations. President Trump may go down in history as the Great Deregulator. \u00a0He has had a real good summer, rolling back a number of onerous regulations.\u00a0 For example, it looks like they are about to get out of the way of dishwasher manufacturers\u2019<\/a> ability to produce a product that won\u2019t take more than an hour for a cycle.\u00a0 Of course, they are going to have to do something about the regulations on dishwasher soap that make it so ineffective.\u00a0 They are also targeting O\u2019Bama regulations requiring an increased number of compliant energy efficient light bulbs by Jan 1, 2020<\/a>.\u00a0 Not unexpectedly, all the usual suspects are incensed with the new regulations.\u00a0 So much winning.\u00a0 So much winning.\u00a0 And no, I\u2019m not tired of it yet.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Donley. One of the great things about the MAGA years is Republicans have finally decided to start fighting back.\u00a0 One small example here in Anchorage when School Board member Dave Donley, the only conservative on the Board pushed a proposal to get the National Anthem and State Song sung at public school at least once a month<\/a>.\u00a0 The proposal had been languishing in committee until Donley forced it out. \u00a0They held an evening\u2019s worth of hearings and decided by a 4-3 vote not to approve the change in school schedule.\u00a0 Public testimony was generally supportive though teachers and their union leadership suggested that the ugly rise of nationalism was afoot.\u00a0 But look what Donley did.\u00a0 He got 4 current ASD members to vote against both the National Anthem and the Alaska Flag Song, an act which they will hear about next April when they are up for reelection.\u00a0 Nicely done.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Pebble. Alaska Governor Dunleavy sent a letter to the CEO of Wheaton Precious Metals Corporation last month stating that the State of Alaska would defend the proposed mine from unfair interference and \u201cfrivolous and scurrilous attacks.\u201d\u00a0 The letter was more of a defense of due process in permitting than anything else.\u00a0 Last week, 19 democrats and one Republican responded with their own letter<\/a>, blasting Pebble, the Governor and most importantly, the process.\u00a0 20 legislators, 95% of them democrats just signed up against new jobs in one of the most poverty-stricken part of the state.\u00a0 Not being able to even remotely describe the proposed mine accurately, their letter described the mine, a mere 230 miles upriver from Bristol Bay as on the \u201cedge of Bristol Bay\u201d and therefore a mortal threat to The Salmon and all jobs in the region.\u00a0 This means there are 40 legislators who are potential supporters of the mine, including even some democrats.\u00a0 This is not a bad sign for future progress.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

               <\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Renewables. Three minor stories about renewables last week.\u00a0 The first from the Foundation for Economic Education<\/a> discussed the environmental costs of renewable energy, up to the point where renewables are just as environmentally devastating as fossil fuels are claimed to be.\u00a0 What happens if we replace fossil fuel generation with wind and solar (other than making energy less reliable and far more expensive)?\u00a0 One thing would be a dramatic increase in the extraction of metals and rare earth minerals, mining.\u00a0 As Thomas Sowell notes, there are no solutions.\u00a0 There are only tradeoffs.\u00a0 Second story comes out of Carpe Diem at AEI.\u00a0 This one was entitled The environmental fiasco of wind energy\u2026<\/a>\u00a0 One thing never mentioned about wind is the very large chunks of concrete and pieces of the windmills themselves when they are retired after 20 years of operation.\u00a0 Did anyone know that concrete is a net CO2 emitter?\u00a0 When the turbines are removed, what happens to the millions of tons of concrete poured for their pads?\u00a0 Better yet, the blades are not recyclable, and are huge, often over 100\u2019 long.\u00a0 There is an Iowa landfill that will no longer take the defunct blades because they are simply too big.\u00a0 Every windmill has at least three of them and they need to be replaced every 10 \u2013 20 years.\u00a0 Where do these go?\u00a0 Final story is more of a \u201cno good deed goes unpunished<\/a>\u201d story than anything else and describes states hitting electrical vehicle owners with high fees, in many cases higher than fees paid by owners of gasoline or diesel vehicles.\u00a0 The rationale is that these vehicles are not paying gasoline taxes and the states (always needing the appropriate excuse to gouge the taxpayer) has to recoup the loss in road maintenance and use fees (or so they say).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                 <\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. Iran. At least 17 cruise missiles \/ drones struck the two largest oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia last week<\/a>, destroying at least for a while, Saudi\u2019s ability to export oil.\u00a0 The attack was initially blamed on Iranian-backed (and armed) Houthi rebels in Yemen that the Saudis have been fighting in a proxy war against Iran for a few years.\u00a0 Both sides went into immediate finger pointing and the war drums started beating loudly.\u00a0 Scott Adams noted that while the attack was pretty serious, it looked to be sufficiently calculated so as not to trigger an immediate and devastating response on Iran like an attack on Mecca, Riyadh or any Saudi water desalinization facility would have done.\u00a0 There will be a response.\u00a0 It will be military, though in response President Trump did crank down Iranian sanctions another notch, and it will come at a time and place most damaging to Iran.\u00a0 There was a time when the halt of oil shipments out of the Arabian Gulf would have sent shockwaves through the global economy, though this one certainly did to those who depend on Saudi oil.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t depend on that oil any more as the US is now self-sufficient when it comes to oil and natural gas thanks to the frackers who took Palin\u2019s \u201cdrill, baby drill\u201d call to heart.\u00a0 These are the same frackers that democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to put out of business.\u00a0 If we produce our own, there is far less reason to go to war in the Middle East, a minor detail they seem to not recognize.\u00a0 Perhaps one day they will.\u00a0 Nah.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                   <\/p>\n

                    \n
                  1. Warren. As of the last debate, it looks like Elizabeth Warren is solidifying her early lead as the presidential candidate of choice for the democrats.\u00a0 The latest attack on Trump (the Ukrainian phone call whistleblower) looks to be nicely boomeranging on Joe Biden.\u00a0 It is not beyond the realm of possibility this was dropped by the Clintons to remove Biden early from the race as Warren has sidled up closely to Hillary<\/a> and seems to be the Chosen candidate by the Clintons.\u00a0 Kamala Harris es to drop in the polls like a stone and Bernie Sanders support looks to be capped and he is starting to fade.\u00a0 Mayor Pete, our favorite Vicar, has both a color problem in South Bend and an abortion problem, as an aborto-doc whose business South Bend allowed to continue passed away and the family found at least 2,000 body parts from aborted kids preserved in his garage.\u00a0 Warren will be a formidable candidate as she does learn and has lots of energy.\u00a0 Her problem is that clanging so hard left really undermines her ability to reclaim any of the rust belt states Hillary lost in 2016.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                     <\/p>\n

                      \n
                    1. Oligarchy. The Daily Caller last week ran a piece entitled American Renewal:\u00a0 The Real Conflict Is Not Racial Or Sexual, It\u2019s Between The Ascendant Rich Elites And The Rest Of Us<\/a>.\u00a0 The piece notes that the real cultural problem in the US today has absolutely nothing to do with race, sexual orientation or any of the Usual Suspects trotted out by the media and democrats.\u00a0 Rather, the problem is entire class, pitting an ascendant upper class with the increasingly embattled middle- and working-class Americans.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen this fight before, though no on this continent and in this nation.\u00a0 It essentially reprises the end of the French feudal era where the Third Estate made up of commoners, revolted against the First and Second Estates, church and aristocracy.\u00a0 Today, the middle class worldwide is under attack, shrinking in most places, while prospects for upper mobility for them and the working-class declines.\u00a0 The anger is fueling populist movements in Europe and the US.\u00a0 Today\u2019s neo-feudalism is attacking property rights, with the best examples in California and the blue cities.\u00a0 In the US today, the ascendant First Estate (clerisy) is media, universities, cultural leaders, and upper echelons of the bureaucracy.\u00a0 The Second Estate is a rising oligarchy in tech and Wall Street, busily consolidating control of the economy.\u00a0 This is a devastating view of what is coming and the new First and Second Estates in the US need to be very careful, as the TEA Party was one attempt to solve this growing problem.\u00a0 The First and Second Estates successfully fended it off and delegitimized it and its members.\u00a0 The election of Donald Trump was a second, and far more blunt reaction.\u00a0 And if the new clerisy and oligarchy successfully take him down, the next round will involve tar, feathers, rope and trees.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                      More later –<\/p>\n

                      – AG<\/p>\n

                       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                      Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information.\u00a0 Enjoy \u2013 In this issue: Kavanaugh Guns Regulations Donley Pebble Renewables Iran Warren Oligarchy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interestingitems.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}