Who’s More At Fault? Hillary Or Don Jr?

By William Teach July 12, 2017 – 6:56 am

The story so far, as provided by Kayleigh McEnany at The Hill

OPINION | Forget Don Jr.’s email — it’s Hillary Clinton who ‘colluded’ with Russia

The effort to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government has proven to be little more than a conspiracy theory desperately in search of evidence.  With only “rumors… newspapers stories… (but) not necessarily evidence” in the recent words of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (Calif), the left has tried to take down President Donald Trump and ignore the issues the American people care about.

The recent New York Times stories aimed at Donald Trump Jr. are the latest attempt to provide evidence of collusion where none exists. The Times reported Monday that Trump Jr. accepted a meeting with a Russian lawyer after being told that she might provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton that was part of a Russian government effort to aid Trump.

This micro story about a Trump Jr. meeting with a purported Kremlin-related attorney has been opportunistically harnessed by some to prove a broader, evidence-free, macro story of Trump campaign collusion with Russians in hacking the DNC and releasing Hillary Clinton’s emails to the public.  But the micro fails to prove the macro, though the left breathlessly alleges it does.

The article continues on in this vein for a bit, explaining what is going on, what happened, the emails and such. One thing missing is that politics is a dirty, nasty, roll in the mud business. It always has been, always will be. Remember Hillary attempting to do research on Obama all the way back to his kindergarten days? That’s just one example. The media did most of the work for the Obama campaign against McCain and Romney, and Hillary against Trump. But, then, we jump to this

Again, in a move of full transparency, Trump Jr. publicly released the entire email chain on Twitter.  The initial email states that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” offered to provide the Trump campaign with “information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia.”

In other words, the information Trump Jr. initially expressed interest in receiving was not hacked emails or illegally obtained documents but apparently information about Clinton’s official Secretary of State dealings with Russia.  At the time the information was offered on June 3, 2016, there was no information suggesting Russian hackers were responsible for the hacking of the DNC.  Donald Trump Jr., in other words, had no reason to believe that the information he sought was little more than opposition research.

Why would they not want to at least hear them out? The media goes and talks to all sorts of people to gather information all the time. They talk to illegal aliens. They talk to criminals. If someone brings them information, they’re willing to listen.

Trump Jr. did, however, have full reason to suspect Clinton had operated nefariously in her dealings with Russia.  Bill Clinton had given a $500,000 speech in Russia.  Clinton had given her approval in handing one-fifth of U.S. uranium to Russia, after which her foundation received $2.35 million from the Russian-controlled company.  Suspiciously, Clinton did not disclose the transaction.

Likewise, Clinton campaign chief John Podesta sat on the board of a company that received $35 million from the Russian government alongside fellow board members Anatoly Chubais, a senior Russian official, and Ruben Vardanyan, an oligarch.

Given this context, why wouldn’t Trump Jr. be open to taking a meeting that offered evidence of incriminating Clinton dealings with Russia, particularly when most of the media refused to look into Clinton’s question-raising actions?

Why would any political campaign not be willing to at least listen?

Trump Jr.’s interest in attaining opposition research is nothing new.  Where was the outrage when “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump,” according to Politico?  It was non-existent because Clinton is a darling of the media, where the left and the right are held to different standards.

Good point.

No criminality has been proven, nor will it. Where was the outrage when a British spy was providing a completely false report on Donald Trump regarding hookers peeing on a bed to media outlets and the DNC? Are some foreign sources OK and others aren’t? People need to toughen up if they’re going to play in politics. This is the reason I’ve mostly ignored the whole Russia thing. Because it’s people freaking out about nothing by normal politics.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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We’re Not Alarmed Enough About ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach July 11, 2017 – 4:24 pm

The fallout from the scaremongering NY Magazine article on the Earth soon being to hot to support human life continues. Some, like Grist (which usually does a good job with the fear mongering) says the story was too much fearmongering (even though they do some themselves)

The worst-case climate scenario is very bad indeed. The thing is, even the worst-case scenario is not nearly as bad as Wallace-Wells portrays. (snip)

The problem is, if you’re trying to motivate people, scaring the shit out of them is a really bad strategy.

It’s what the Cult of Climastrology has relied on for decades, and has gotten significantly worse with the rise of all the media outlets.

Kevin Drum isn’t so sure that climate change is all that scary, nor is he sure that scary the bejusus out of people is a good idea. What he does think is a good idea

Pour massive amounts of public money into energy R&D and infrastructure buildout.

Um, surprise? Why don’t Warmists ever want to use their own money? They always want to take it from others. Though, in all fairness, I’d rather use what we do spend on R&D first, make sure it works.

There are plenty more opinions from Warmists, but, here’s the topper from Slate’s Susan Matthews

Alarmism Is the Argument We Need to Fight Climate Change
New York magazine’s global-warming horror story isn’t too scary. It’s not scary enough.

New York’s David Wallace-Wells has a formidable cover story in the magazine this week, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” that dryly details just how bad things could get due to climate change. The answer? Very, very bad. The timeline? Sooner than you think. The instantly viral piece might be the Silent Spring of our time, except it doesn’t uncover shocking new information—it just collects all the terrifying things that were already sitting out there into one extremely terrifying list.

I would have skipped past the 1st paragraph except for one thing: the mention of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It was based on junk science, and proved deadly. The ‘climate change’ movement is likewise based on junk science, and we’ll see if implementing it turns deadly. It has for birds, so far.

“No matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough,” Wallace-Wells writes, before running through the known science and stats that explain why rising seas, the focus of most of our climate panic, are just the tip of the iceberg—disease, famine, economic panic, and civil unrest are coming, too. An argument for freaking out, his piece has been decried for being too alarmist. Actually, it is not alarmist enough. As I read it in bed at midnight Sunday night, for the first time I started to realize just exactly why climate change might be a reason not to have children—because if those children have children, this could be their world. That’s how close to the edge we are.

Doomed!

I understand the desire to steer away from hopelessness, doom, and despair, which Mann posits to be antithetical to rational and bold action. Climate change is a uniquely difficult problem specifically because addressing it requires humans to be selflessly interested in the long term, which is neither natural nor easy. But, contrary to the belief perpetuated by a lot of the criticism of this piece, addressing climate change does not rely on people being psychologically self-possessed enough to freely give up meat and airplane rides for the greater good. There is no amount of individual good intention that can solve this massive, structural problem in enough time to have an impact. What we need is leaders who will take this problem seriously. We need it yesterday. And the right way to get there is to tell people the truth about the future and implore them to vote for and insist on a better one.

So, forced compliance via Big Government? Shocking! Then we get some whines about income inequality, Donald Trump, the elites, ending with

We don’t need to guard against alarmism, against depression, against anger, against despair when it comes to climate change. Sure, the hopelessness that accompanies pondering our fate might depress people out of recycling their water bottles or switching their light bulbs. That doesn’t matter. If it also scares people into actually taking this issue seriously at the ballot box, the trade-off will be well worth it. Because the ballot box is where it matters. If we force the issue—if we elect people who care about the survival of all humans rather than just a few—then we might have a shot of preventing the hellscape Wallace-Wells has outlined.

If you don’t want that outcome, we need to start by being more alarmed.

This hasn’t worked for 25+ years, and it will certainly turn more people off. Really, as stated so many times, ‘climate change’ tends to come in last or next to last in polls on the issues that people care about. It’s low hanging fruit. And, as Instapundit likes to write “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” In other words, practice what they preach.

It is interesting how this all comes back to political power and money, isn’t it?

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 11, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible carbon pollution infused beer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Vulgar Curmudgeon, with a post on China saying North Korea is not their responsibility.

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Turkey Reconsiders Paris Climate Agreement

By William Teach July 11, 2017 – 10:24 am

Why? They want all that sweet, sweet, climate cash redistributed from rich nations (via The Last Refuge)

(Reuters)  The U.S. decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement means Turkey is less inclined to ratify the deal because the U.S. move jeopardizes compensation promised to developing countries, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday.

Erdogan was speaking at the G20 summit in Germany where leaders from the world’s leading economies broke with U.S. President Donald Trump over climate policy, following his announcement last month that he was withdrawing from the accord.

Erdogan said that when Turkey signed the accord France had promised that Turkey would be eligible for compensation for some of the financial costs of compliance.

“So we said if this would happen, the agreement would pass through parliament. But otherwise it won’t pass,” Erdogan told a news conference, adding that parliament had not yet approved it.

“Therefore, after this step taken by the United States, our position steers a course towards not passing this from the parliament,” he said.

It’s doubtful that this will cause any sort of domino effect, as there are still plenty of 1st World Nations which are staying in the Paris agreement who will give their own taxpayer money to 3rd world nations, rather than using it for their own citizens. And 3rd world and smaller nations certainly want lost of that sweet, sweet climate cash.

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Senate Is Giving Revised Health Plan A Whirl This Week

By William Teach July 11, 2017 – 7:38 am

It’s not repeal. It’s not replace. It’s dink and dunk, making a few changes. What will the revised plan look like?

(The Hill) Senate Republican leaders are moving forward this week on legislation to repeal and replace major parts of ObamaCare despite divisions within their conference.

Leaders will brief rank-and-file Republican senators Tuesday during their weekly lunch on the revisions they have made to the legislation in an effort to bridge the gap between moderates and conservatives.

They expect to make the revised bill public later in the week and get a score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before bringing it to the floor for a vote. (big snip)

GOP leaders have tried to woo both sides of their conference by promising $45 billion for opioid treatment, a high priority for moderates such as Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and by looking at new regulatory reforms to entice conservative such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

They have also discussed adding tens of billions of dollars to a $62 billion long-term state innovation fund that is designed to help low-income people with high healthcare costs afford insurance.

Let’s be honest: the plan stinks, and all they’re doing is throwing money out there to woo Republicans to support it. If this is what they want to do, they might as well just fix the structural issues with Obamacare.

But those changes might not be enough to save the bill, given how little room they have for error.

One prominent moderate, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), told CNN, “I do need a complete overhaul to get to a yes.”

I agree, as do most people who’ve been voting for Republicans, and gave them back control of the House, then the Senate, then the White House: scrap this garbage plan, go back to the drawing board, fully repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a workable solution that will

  • Make it easier for people to get affordable insurance
  • Give people and their doctors control over their health decisions, not the government
  • Let people choose their level of coverage and what is covered
  • Cross border coverage
  • Keep the government out of decisions of what insurance plans must cover. Let the people choose what works best for them
  • And so much more

Any plan should include a few of the things stuck in Ocare to make it popular, like allowing children to stay on their parents insurance till 26 (puts more young healthies in the pools), insurance companies not being allowed to drop users for, get this, using the insurance they pay for, and a few others. You can even have a mandate, but, it would need to include some provisions so that people who lose their plans because they changed jobs aren’t penalized.

That said, the GOP leaders will still keep pushing this stupid bill.

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Twitter Is A Hotbed Of Inequality and White Male Privilege Or Something

By William Teach July 11, 2017 – 7:22 am

Yet another in a long line of 1st World Problems, namely, there are too many white males on Twitter, which totally means there is an inequality in society

(Daily Caller) The MIT Technology Review is pushing a study that claims Twitter has a white male problem, and that it’s keeping women and ethnic minorities down with what it calls a “glass ceiling.”

In a newly published article, the MIT Technology Review claims that social media plays an important role in “reversing inequality of various kinds.” Fair play to sites like Twitter and Facebook for bridging the class gap by enabling people to openly communicate to each other, but the study claims that a preexisting inequality exists, which works against efforts to end inequality.

The did a ton of research, looking at hundreds of millions of tweets and 50 million users over a 3 month time period, looking a race and sex using an algorithm that detects those from the faces of the user photos (what of those who use something different?), and have determined that 57% of users are males, 43% female (which will probably set the snowflakes off in rants about some being transgender and sexless). 68% are white. Which means

Messias and his group say that of the top percentile of Twitter users with the most followers they collected, 57 percent of them were men and 43 percent were women. The 15 percent swing represents the inequality in society, which they claim exists. “The results reflect the general idea that higher positions are usually taken by males,” Messias said.

White users also come out on top with the most followers “who are overrepresented by 20 percent,” according to the research, which the MIT article claims is evidence of white privilege. White females are similarly overrepresented by 3 percent. The study claims that the most underprivileged groups are Asian and black females, who are underrepresented by 31 percent.

Must be all those white males stopping people from joining Twitter and disallowing minorities from getting as many followers. There’s actually an extra button that white males can press. Whoops, should not have let that secret out.

Messias says that his group traced the way genders and races link to each other and found that people of the same race tend to follow each other more often than they follow people outside their groups. It’s an effect called “homophily.”

The article claims: “But the magnitudes of this effect are interesting. White people tend to follow more white people than expected by a margin of 16 percent. Black people tend to follow more black people than expected by a very significant margin of over 200 percent.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Let’s get real. People can voluntarily join Twitter. No one is stopping them. They can follow whomever they want. That’s up to them. I fail to see the problem with the demographics, but, then, I do not live in a state of perpetual Grievance.

BTW, the article notes that the facial recognition software doesn’t always get the race correct. It determined that an Asian female was white. But, it also said that Shaun King is white. Um, he is.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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When Your Attempt To Scare Everyone With Utter Doom Loses Michael Mann….

By William Teach July 10, 2017 – 4:34 pm

A bit of a follow up to the earlier post on the Earth becoming utterly unable to sustain life, we find

(Esquire) But for every doomsday scenario, there’s a more measured take. Climatologist Michael Mann, who said he was interviewed but not quoted for the New York story, shared why he disagreed with some of its points:

(Facebook post is here)

In all fairness, Mann has been a charlatan, relied upon shoddy and manufacture evidence, but, he hasn’t usually be a big fear-mongerer. Say, a 4 on a scale of 10. That article in question is a 10.

They’re all still wrong, but, that’s besides the point for the sake of this post.

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 10, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooding from Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on a SEAL asking lefties “what are your resisting?”

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Study: Sweden Is The Best Place To Be An Immigrant (no mention of how good it is for actual citizens)

By William Teach July 10, 2017 – 12:39 pm

Now, this is not about illegal immigration. This is primarily about legal immigration, but, to the Leftists who support illegal immigration they are one and the same, so, lots and lots of outlets are touting this study

(Washington Post) A new ranking of the best countries to be an immigrant has placed Sweden in the top spot, closely followed by Canada, Switzerland, Australia and Germany. The United States, a country which was largely founded through mass immigration, came in seventh.

U.S. News and World Report, which compiled the ranking, said it looked at measures such as economic stability, income equality and job markets to create its list, using a special survey of the opinions of more than 21,000 business leaders and other elites, as well as members of the public.

The ranking’s authors say they also used data from the World Bank and the United Nations on migrant populations in different countries, as well as the amount of remittance sent back to their country of birth. The immigration project is part of a broader ranking, launched by U.S. News and World Report last year, that attempts to determine the world’s “best” countries in the same way that the publication also ranks colleges, hospitals and cars.

Hooray, Sweden! Hey, do you like that little shot they took at the United States, which takes in more legal immigrants and refugees than every other nation? And always has?

What’s not noted in the survey is how it works out for the actual citizens of Sweden. Little things like mass rape, gang rapes, no go zones, escalating crime, sexual assaults, pedophilia, riots, assaults on police, all well higher than what would be normal rates, thanks to all the importations of, yes, Muslims. You can caterwaul about “racism”, bigotry, and Islamophobia as much as you want. Facts do not care about your feelings and caterwauling. They aren’t integrating. In fact, they’re demanding that the Swedes accommodate and integrate in the 3rd World radical Islamic viewpoints the immigrants bring. Just 57% are working, compared to the 82% of the native born, and the foreigners are demanding money to do nothing. A whole parallel society is growing. And clashing, violently, with the existing one.

Perhaps this is all why the door in Sweden is swing back closed. Not just for Middle Eastern/Northern Africa refugees, but people from across Europe.

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The State Of Hate: Democrat Run Areas Sure Seem Hateful

By William Teach July 10, 2017 – 9:19 am

According to the USA Today, hate crimes seems to be growing

The state of hate in America

It feels like nearly every week, America is rattled by a new incident of hate.

In June, a white man in a Chicago Starbucks was filmed calling a black man a slave, and a white woman in a New Jersey Sears was videotaped making bigoted comments against a family she believed was Indian (they were not). In May, two men on a Portland train were stabbed to death trying to stop a white supremacist’s anti-Muslim tirade against two teenagers.

Hate symbols are showing up around the country: nooses in the nation’s capital, racist graffiti on the front gate of LeBron James’ Los Angeles home, a banner with an anti-Semitic slur over a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, N.J. On Saturday, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Charlottesville, Va., less than two months after white supremacist Richard Spencer — who coined the term “alt-right” — led a similar protest in the city against the removal of a Confederate monument. Several white nationalist groups are planning another rally for Aug. 12.

In all but one, these incidents occurred in places that vote Democrat. And are run by Democrats. The KKK rally occurred in a state that voted for Hillary, in a county (Albermarle) that went for Hillary 59-34%. Lakewood, NJ, is in Monmouth county, which went for Trump.

Let’s not forget that the KKK was essentially an organ of the Democratic Party. They invented it. They stoked it. They were members. But, then, Democrats decided there was a better way to deal with Blacks, namely, keeping them down and in poverty in urban slums, entirely beholden to government and voting against their best interests.

One has to wonder why so many incidents of hate occur in Democratic Party voting areas.

While the FBI’s data typically show 5,000 to 6,000 hate crimes a year, the Department of Justice’s estimates are much higher. A report out this month from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, show Americans experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004 to 2015. About a quarter of hate crime victims who didn’t report said they feared police wouldn’t be able to help them.

Well, that’s interesting. Two-thirds of that time had Mr. Obama, the Great Healer, the guy who was going to bring us all together, in office. Let’s face it, though: they aren’t crimes. They are simply people being big jerks. You know, like has always happened. I’ve been called many nasty words, both in the real world and on-line, been insulted because I’m white, and I don’t think that’s a crime. Just people being jerks. I move on.

The article offers up two tweets as examples

How is that linked to being victimized? Other than the PT abusing the daughter by making her scared.

Can someone point out that the person who committed the Pulse nightclub massacre was a Muslim going all jihad because gays are icky in Islam? You want hate? How about gays being thrown off buildings in extremist Islam areas?

Of course, this “news” article (it was front page on the Android app, front on Internet, and it is in the news section) attempts to blame Trump and people who voted for him, failing to note how often these incidents occur in Democratic Party areas, and further fails to mention all the hateful rhetoric and actions by Hillary voters.

Nor does it mention that simply being a jerk is not a crime. The disgusting anti-Semetic banner in Lakewood? Total jerks (to put it mildly). But, not a crime.

But, hey, if Democrats are so worried, maybe they should reign themselves in.

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