NY Times: North Korean Meeting Is A Test Of Trump’s Dealmaking Swagger

This is actually a rather even handed, positive look at the situation by writer Mark Landler

(NY Times) When President Trump declared that he did not really need to prepare for his legacy-defining meeting with North Korea’s leader, he drew sighs or snickers from veterans of past negotiations. But he had a point: In his own unorthodox way, Mr. Trump has been preparing for this encounter his entire adult life.

For an American leader who came of age in the early 1960s, when the United States and the Soviet Union stepped to the brink of nuclear annihilation, the meeting with Kim Jong-un strikes a personal chord, offering Mr. Trump a historic chance to rid the world, and his own presidency, of the greatest threat from atomic weapons.

For a property developer-turned-president, the tête-à-tête, scheduled for Tuesday in Singapore, is a long-anticipated test of Mr. Trump’s conviction that he can slice through decades of diplomatic orthodoxy and strike a grand bargain with North Korea, a feat that eluded his three immediate predecessors.

Mr. Trump, current and former aides said, has been preoccupied with North Korea since his predecessor, Barack Obama, warned him in a closed-door meeting two days after he was elected that the reclusive state would be his No. 1 foreign policy challenge. But he has been tantalized by the idea of solving the North Korea problem since long before that.

Nineteen years ago, when the threat from Pyongyang was a fraction of what it is today, Mr. Trump said he would “negotiate like crazy” with North Korea’s leaders before considering a military strike. In May 2016, while running for president, he said he would sit down with Mr. Kim — an offer he repeated even when threatening to rain “fire and fury” on him if North Korea targeted America.

This continues on for a bit, and it is a good read. Landler hits on one important point

That does not mean that Mr. Trump intends to dive into the details. But in that, he may not be alone: The summit meeting, should Mr. Kim choose to follow in the tradition of his father and grandfather, could turn out to be primarily the get-to-know-you session that many expect.

And that is really the biggest point of this meeting. Not to put together any sort of deal on nuclear disarmament, but to do a meet and greet and see if something can happen, if they can move towards a deal, something that often happens in the business world. Almost a Nixon going to China moment.

And now we wait to see what happens. While so many Democrats hope for failure.

Read: NY Times: North Korean Meeting Is A Test Of Trump’s Dealmaking Swagger »

If All You See…

…is horrible, evil, totally no good fossil fuels causing the seas to approach homes, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bunkerville, with a post on Europe and Iranian oil.

Read: If All You See… »

Hot Take: Laws Barring Felons From Voting Is Raaaaacist

It’s a cute rationale to attempt to get a client off the hook for voting illegally

Charged with voting illegally, she’s challenging an NC law for its ‘racist origins’

The law preventing some people with felony convictions from voting has “toxic racist origins” and is unconstitutional, says an attorney for an Alamance County woman charged with voting illegally.

State law bars people who are on probation or parole for felonies from voting. An audit last year of votes cast in 2016 found 441 suspected felon voters. The state elections office began referring cases to local district attorneys, and prosecutors in Alamance County have brought charges against a dozen people.

A lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice argued in a court filing that the charge against Whitney Brown for voting while she was on probation should be dismissed.

“We hope that the court recognizes the unconstitutionality of this law,” said John F. Carella, the lawyer representing Brown and four other Alamance voters.

The law prohibiting people who are on probation or parole after having been convicted of felonies falls disproportionally on African-Americans, Carella said in the court document, and has origins in the state’s history of voter suppression.

So, it happens to whites, Asians, Latinos, etc. too? Huh. 68% of those the state identified as voting illegally while a felon were black, 31% were white. So, obviously, raaaaacism.

The state passed a law in 1901 to prevent people with criminal convictions from voting . It was aimed at keeping African-Americans from casting ballots and has gone largely unchanged, Carella’s court motion sa

It’s not that pretty much every state has the same type of laws. Or that the law applies equally to all felons. If some are dumb enough to get caught, that’s not raaaaacist.

Read: Hot Take: Laws Barring Felons From Voting Is Raaaaacist »

New Warmist Claim: Hurricanes Are Slowing Down Because Of ‘Climate Change’ (scam)

This is how science works in Warmist World: something happens a little bit so it’s blamed/linked to Mankind’s output of greenhouse gases and Doom is proclaimed (via Watts Up With That?, which forgot to add a link to their excerpt, so, I’m using a different one)

Hurricanes Are Moving More Slowly, Which Means More Damage

Hurricanes are moving more slowly over both land and water, and that’s bad news for communities in their path.

In the past 70 years, tropical cyclones around the world have slowed down 10 percent, and in some regions of the world, the change has been even more significant, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

That means storms are spending more time hanging out, battering buildings with wind and dropping more rain.

“The slowdown over land is what’s really going to affect people,” says James Kossin, the author of the study and a tropical cyclone specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He points to Hurricane Harvey’s effect on Houston as an example of what slower storms can mean for cities.

This is basically repeated in the NY Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, and so forth. And they all yammer about Harvey, because, since it was such a slow moving storm (due to actual weather events, not climate), we’re all doomed.

The new research suggests slow-moving tropical storms such as Harvey are becoming more common because of global climate change. Climate change is causing the poles to become warmer, which in turn affects the atmospheric pressure. There is less and less difference in pressure between the poles and the tropics, and that causes the big currents of wind between the two areas to slow down.

It’s all your fault for driving a fossil fueled vehicle, using a clothes dryer, and not buying fairtrade lattes.

“This paper is very timely,” says Christina Patricola, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was not involved in the research. She says people who study hurricanes have traditionally focused on storm frequency and wind speed — but that rainfall is an increasingly important piece of the puzzle.

In other words, it’s released just in time to blame last season’s storms on Hotcoldwetdry. It’s always something with these people afterwards. First it was that big seasons like 2005 would be the new normal. Then, when major hurricane activity dried up almost immediately, we were told that they’d be less frequent but more powerful. When that didn’t happen, and even minor hurricane activity dried up, they blamed wind sheer caused by mankind’s carbon pollution. Then it was “superstorms like Sandy will be the new normal,” but, we haven’t had one since. Then it was claiming that hurricane activity will ramp up, knowing full well that there’s a cycle of storms. And then, after last years big season, they’ve forgotten the long dearth of landfalling major and minor hurricanes, and blamed Mankind, with this silliness following up.

And, even if true about speed reduction, they still can’t prove that you’re to blame for eating a delicious steak.

Read: New Warmist Claim: Hurricanes Are Slowing Down Because Of ‘Climate Change’ (scam) »

Good Grief: Democrats Want Insider Trading Probe On Trump Jobs Report Tweet

This is the kind of thing that got Trump elected in the first place and will get him re-elected in 2020

(The Hill) Three Senate Democrats on Friday called for a broad probe into whether President Trump broke federal trading laws and executive branch protocol before the release of the May jobs report last week

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Michael Bennet (Colo.) sent letters to the chiefs of three federal agencies and the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) regarding Trump’s knowledge of the May jobs report released on June 1.

The senators also asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to investigate whether Trump or any White House staffer revealed information that led to insider trading.

“President Trump recklessly violated federal rules and years of precedent by telegraphing financial data that has the power to move our markets,” said Warren, who is seen as a likely 2020 presidential candidate.

“The [Bureau of Labor Statistics] and the CEA should examine what went wrong here — and the SEC and CFTC should investigate to make sure that no one obtained and used non-public information to feather their own nest,” she said.

Trump last Friday touted the monthly federal jobs report roughly an hour before the data was released later that day, a breach with decades of protocol on how to handle market-moving information.

His tweet was literally just

Hey, Liz, were where you in 2009?

A Reuters report from February 2009 revealed that Obama had spoken out a full day in advance of a “dismal jobs report” for January, which showed some 525,000 jobs had been cut following the loss of 524,000 jobs in December 2008.

Really, this is so much ado over nothing, so, of course Democrats will have to chase the rabbit down the hole. It’s what they do. Now, if it was something like an administration running thousands of guns into Mexico and losing track of them, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, including children and two U.S. federal agents, or, say, someone flouting actual laws about handing national security material by using a home brew server in a bathroom, well, Democrats look away.

Read: Good Grief: Democrats Want Insider Trading Probe On Trump Jobs Report Tweet »

Concerned Climahysterics Plan To Sue British Government Or Something

They’re “concerned.” Not enough to give up their own use of fossil fuels and make their lives carbon neutral, nor recommend that all other Warmists do the same. But, enough to sue and demand that Other People pay the price (this is a press release)

(Renewable Energy Mag) A group of UK citizens concerned about climate change, calling themselves ‘Plan B Earth’, have announced they are going to sue the British Government over what they see as its poor response to climate change.

Climate change is already causing hundreds of thousands of deaths per year across the globe and is a major factor in provoking the mass migration of people to other countries. It is also a contributory factor to destabilisation of international politics and security, with some observers arguing, for example, that climate change was a contributory factor to the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War.

Plan B Earth believes that the 2°C global average temperature limit committed to within the Paris Agreement represents a ‘cliff edge’ of catastrophic climate change and that exceeding this level would present a possible danger of annihilation for certain countries, particularly small island states. Furthermore, they claim exceeding 2°C would incur a high likelihood of hitting ‘tipping points’, leading to runaway climate change in excess of 4˚C. The Government’s own advisory committee, the Committee on Climate Change, have described 4˚C warming as extremely dangerous, almost certainly meaning the deaths of billions of people and a devastated world for survivors. Plan B believes that the probability of hitting 4˚C this century is high.

The first duty of Government is to protect its people. Plan B believes that this begins by being honest about the nature of the threat. However, the British Government, Plan B believes, does not want to upset powerful vested interests. They say the government’s current emission reductions do not even aim at limiting warming to Paris Agreement the Government has ratified.

Plan B Earth argues that the Government’s lack of action demonstrates a serious failure to fulfil its fiduciary duty to uphold intergenerational equity and fundamental human rights. The group’s intention to take the British Government to court for a safe climate target follows the successful deployment of such action in the Netherlands, where the court ruled that:…

Blah blah blah. Someone wants some money. And to force their beliefs on other people.

Read: Concerned Climahysterics Plan To Sue British Government Or Something »

If All You See…

…is an evil gas grill cooking evil meat, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on solar overload in Australia.

Read: If All You See… »

Question For Y’all On Commenting

So, playing with texting capabilities, and I can make it so you can login with WordPress, Google, Twitter, or Facebook (or not login if you don’t want to) to comment, and the comments will appear without having to refresh or seeing the page reload, much like with Disqus (something I’m considering, as well).

However, the Monalisa emoticons you see below the commenting form would be gone. Cannot get them to work. Also, comment quick tags, things like bold, blockquote, italic, etc, would not show as buttons. You could manually use scripts.

If you want to see how it works, go here to my development site. I’ve turn on ability to comment temporarily.

Would you prefer with the emoticons and quicktags, or ability to use other logins? I can’t implement a plugin for logins, because that requires allowing new registrations to be on, and there are tons of spammers who take advantage of this. I had it open for a brief time yesterday and got three spammers.

Read: Question For Y’all On Commenting »

Democrats Are Being Advised To Avoid Discussing Single Payer

Don’t want the citizens to know that Democrats stand for government 100% controlling your health care, eh?

The 2 words you can’t say in a Democratic ad

Democratic voters want single payer health care. But don’t expect to hear Democratic candidates talk about it — at least not in those words.

To avoid divisive intraparty fights that drive candidates left — only to be attacked by Republicans for favoring socialized medicine — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warned aspirants last year about the political liabilities of endorsing “single payer,” according to sources familiar with the advice. An influential progressive group even urged candidates to discard the often-misunderstood phrase and embrace “Medicare for all” to draw strong connections with the popular seniors’ health program.

In other words, the DCCC wants candidates to lie.

Some Democrats argue that instead of focusing on the potentially divisive idea of single payer, the party should defend the Affordable Care Act against “sabotage” from Trump and congressional Republicans, who combined to repeal the individual mandate and scrap a key subsidy program that helps cover low-income people. That message is more compelling this year, argues Brad Woodhouse, campaign director of pro-Obamacare group Protect Our Care.

“We’re out of power right now, we can’t make any of that happen,” he said of single payer health care. The vast majority “of what you do when you’re out of power is prosecute the case against what they’ve done — otherwise there is no reason to make a change.”

They lost that power specifically because of Obamacare.

Early last year, the DCCC shared verbal guidance with candidates and political consultants about the liabilities of supporting single payer, including polls that showed support for the idea declined once voters heard that it would likely come with significant tax increases and the potential loss of private health coverage many Americans have today, according to sources who saw the guidance.

Yeah, it seems great right up to the point where people realize that government is going to be taking lots of their hard earned money to pay for it, and that they will have lost lots of control on their own medical decisions.

Oh, don’t forget that elected Republicans are complete weenies for not getting rid of Ocare like they promised. Trotting out plans that are Ocare Lite did not help.

Read: Democrats Are Being Advised To Avoid Discussing Single Payer »

Bummer: Expensive Efforts To Mobilize Youths On ‘Climate Change’ (scam) Hasn’t Worked

What happens when you spend millions and millions of dollars on spreading awareness in an attempt to get mushy young minds to buy into your cult’s beliefs?

(Daily Caller) New research suggests Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer’s multi-million dollar effort to mobilize young voters around the issue of global warming hasn’t been very successful.

“Based upon this analysis of recent global warming public opinion data, little has changed generationally in the intervening years,” Johns Hopkins University researcher Shruti Kuppa wrote in her analysis of polling on global warming beliefs done seven years apart.

Kuppa compared polling from 2017 to polling of millennials and other generational groups’ attitudes on global warming conducted in 2010. Researchers with Yale University and George Mason University conducted both polls.

Steyer founded his political group, NextGen Climate Action, in 2013 with the goal of mobilizing the youth vote behind candidates backing global warming policies, including a $25-million effort to get millennials to back pro-climate policy Democrats in the 2016 election.

How’d it all work out?

Not much has changed in the last seven years despite Steyer, and other like-minded groups, spending millions of dollars trying to mobilize young voters around global warming.

“Overall, Millennials demonstrate similar or less engagement on global warming than older generations,” Kuppa wrote. “Millennials are less likely to discuss global warming with their friends and family than the older generations.”

They’re probably more worried about making sure they take the perfect selfie and other vapid things.

A recent study found liberal foundations spent nearly $567 million on global warming-related funding between 2011 to 2015, including $92.4 million for “climate change-related communication, media, and public mobilization.”

Another $46.6 million was spent on “renewable energy-related communication, media, and public mobilization efforts,” the study found.

Polling in recent years suggests that while Americans worry about global warming in the abstract, few rank it among the top priorities elected officials should address — even among Democrats.

Only 6 percent of likely voters think Democrats should focus on fighting global warming if they take back Congress in 2019, according to a March poll by Civis Analytics, which is made up of former Obama campaign staffers.

It really comes down to the notion that many people want to Do Something, but, they do not want it to impact themselves negatively, and most do not bother to do something themselves. I would bet that Millennials are hammered with so many different things that they are Supposed To Care About that the climate change scam is just one more thing that they know a few talking points phrases, but, do not really have any sort of true belief. Seriously, how many things are being pushed by the Social Justice Warriors that Millennials are supposed to care about? There’s always something that they are meant to be Outraged over.

Anyhow, good job, Tom Steyer and other leading climahypocrite leaders: you’ve pissed away a lot of money to find that Millennials “demonstrate similar or less engagement on global warming than older generations” and “are less likely to discuss global warming.”

Read: Bummer: Expensive Efforts To Mobilize Youths On ‘Climate Change’ (scam) Hasn’t Worked »

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