Of Masks and Queues

Our governor here in Indiana has lifted the mask mandate. It is about time. We, Hoosiers, have been asked to wear a mask for about a year now and if there ever was any legitimate health reason to require citizens to wear masks in their daily lives, it has long since passed. The Chinese COVID-19 epidemic is receding. Vaccines are now available and probably the entire population has been exposed to the virus. There really is no reason to continue the mask mandates and lockdowns.

Yet, the order to lift the mandates has been surprisingly controversial. Those governors which have lifted their states’ mask mandates have been derided as science-denying Neanderthals even as COVID vaccines have become available and cases have been dropping. There is clearly no current justification for continued mask mandates and lockdowns if indeed there ever were. Why is there this insistence on compelling people to wear masks? I have a sort of a theory based on Chinese history. 

In 1644 the Manchus invaded and conquered China. Who are the Manchus, you might be asking? Well if you look at a map of China, the north-eastern part of China, north of Korea used to be called Manchuria.

These days it is called other names for various historical and political reasons, but never mind. The Manchus are the people who live in Manchuria.

The Manchus were a semi-nomadic steppe people much like the Mongolians. As is often the case when a less sophisticated people live alongside a more advanced nation, the Manchus came to admire the Chinese and began to adopt Chinese culture, settling down into cities and farms and importing Chinese artisans. Eventually the Manchu royal family, the Aisin-Gioro clan decided that they admired China so much that they should be the Emperors of China. They began to call themselves the Qing Dynasty and their king proclaimed himself Emperor

So, as I mentioned, in 1644, the Manchus invaded China. At the time China was beset with the usual political unrest, rebellions, and natural disasters which signified the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven from one dynasty, the Ming in this case, to the Qing so the Manchus were able to conquer China.

After they had consolidated their control, the Shunzhi Emperor decreed that every Chinese male must show his loyalty to the Manchus by wearing his hair in the Manchu fashion; his head shaved in the front and long in the back, gathered into a braid or queue. This decree was not popular, except among the toadies and collaborators among the Chinese. The Chinese viewed the Manchu as barbarians and had no desire to emulate them in any way. Moreover, Confucius had taught that as a person’s hair came from his parents, it was an act of disrespect to one’s ancestors to shave to cut one’s hair or beard.

After some initial resistance, the Chinese complied with this decree for the next two and a half centuries, as long as the Qing remained in power. For Westerners, the queue was the stereotypical Chinese hairstyle. Why was this? The Chinese outnumbered the Manchus by more than ten thousand to one. Why did Chinese men continue to wear their hair in a fashion they despised as a mark of their subjugation to a hated occupier? Well, for one thing, the Manchus were fierce steppe warriors, and the Chinese weren’t. Any man who refused to wear the queue was likely to be summarily beheaded as a traitor. A village where the men stopped complying could be destroyed.

Aside from that, China has never been a country that prizes individual liberty or great initiative from the masses. China has been a culture in which the common people were expected to obey their betters and let the Emperor and his Mandarin scholar-officials do the thinking for them. Obedience to their superiors had been pounded into the heads of the Chinese for two thousand years. And yet, the Chinese did resist. As the dynastic cycle progressed and the Qing began to decline, rebellions against the Manchus become increasingly common. The first thing the Chinese did when rebelling was to cut off their queues or let the hair in the front of their heads grow out. 

It seems to me that this insistence on continuing to mandate masks is less about controlling the COVID pandemic at this point and more about compelling a visible sign of submission to the regime, just like the Manchus required Chinese men to wear their hair in a queue. Why else should there be this insistence that everyone wear a mask, regardless of whether they have been infected? It seems to me that in a free country, the decision to wear a mask ought to be up to the individual. If you feel it is necessary to wear a mask to avoid contracting the coronavirus, by all means, wear one. If I believe that having had the coronavirus and been vaccinated believe that I am in no danger and therefore do not believe that wearing a mask is necessary, I shouldn’t be made to wear one. Why the name-calling and mask shaming? 

Maybe you think this is going a bit far. Well, consider this:

Wearing a mask is presented more as a gesture of loyalty to “President” Biden and his agenda than an actual health measure. 

The Chinese wore their hated queues under the threat of superior force and lived in a culture that emphasized conformity. We Americans allegedly have a culture that emphasizes freedom and individualism and no one is threatening to chop off our heads for not wearing a mask, at least not yet. So what is our excuse? Why are we being intimidated into continuing to wear masks even as the pandemic ebbs? Are we really that easily frightened? What happened to the people who wear willing to fight for their freedom?

If you want to wear a mask go ahead. If you don’t want to wear one, don’t. That is what people do in a free country. We don’t let our betters tell us whether to wear a mask. We decide for ourselves. Let’s take off the masks and be free. 

Statistical Anomalies

Suppose there was an election, it doesn’t matter what the election is for; president, senator, mayor, city dogcatcher, whatever, and suppose that on the night of the election one candidate, let’s call him Bob, was a thousand votes ahead of the other candidate, Jim. Now suppose there is a pause in the vote-counting and then when the counting resumes it turns out that during the pause there was an influx of 1500 votes, which when counted turn out to be 1400 for Jim and only 100 for Bob, enough for Jim to win the election. Wouldn’t you think there was something strange going on?

What if Bob were comfortably ahead in every precinct in the city except one, but that one precinct was so overwhelmingly for Jim (99%) that it was enough to win the election for Jim. Wouldn’t you suspect that there was something a little suspicious going on in that one precinct?

What if the local newspaper, which had only run positive stories about Jim, portraying him as a saint who spends his spare time feeding the homeless while writing news stories reporting that “unnamed sources state” that Bob regularly beat his wife and children, foreclosed on widows and orphans, and had a serious problem with body odor, announced Jim’s victory in the election before the counting was even completed. and treated Bob’s demands for an audit and a recount with contempt, labeling him a sore loser and advising his supporters to accept the fact that they lost and to move on? Wouldn’t you think that that newspaper was not really a very reliable source of news about the elections and probably shouldn’t be trusted to be objective or honest?

All of this is precisely what we are being asked to believe about the election of 2020. In this election, we saw Donald Trump begin with a lead in several swing states the evening of the election, only for his rival, Joe Biden to receive mysterious influxes of votes, enough to put him over the top to victory. In an honest count, you would expect the ratio of votes for the candidates to be approximately the same from the beginning of the count to the conclusion. This is in fact, what allows for winners of elections to be projected even before the counting is finished. There would be variations, of course. One candidate might have more support in a certain precinct, while the other might have more support elsewhere. Sometimes you might encounter strings of votes for one candidate, however, the voting might fall out. What you would not expect would be to see a series of hundreds or even thousands of votes for Biden with no votes for Trump, no votes for third party candidates, not even some joker writing in Micky Mouse. This is simply not a probable outcome in an honest election. It is like flipping a coin fifty times and coming up heads forty-eight times.

Now, improbable does not mean impossible and improbable outcomes do not necessarily indicate that there was anything amiss in the election. Yet if I flip a coin and it comes up heads forty-eight times out of fifty you would have just cause to suspect that I might be using some sort of trick coin, weighted to come up heads. If we were playing poker and a player got an improbable hand, such as a royal flush, three times in a row, that would not necessarily mean the player was cheating, yet we might be advised to check if he has any cards up his sleeves.

The suspicion that something is wrong is only increased when no examination is permitted. If I refused to allow you to examine my coin; if the player refused to consent to have his sleeves searched, we would be all the more justified in assuming that some sort of trickery is going on. Yet, again, this is precisely what is happening with the election. First, Biden was proclaimed the winner, even when the outcome was uncertain. Ever since we have been told, over and over that Biden is the President-elect before anything was certified. Any questions about the statistical irregularities or accounts of illicit behavior on the part of poll workers have been dismissed as baseless claims on the part of a sore loser. Investigations into irregularities are denounced as assaults against democracy. Social media has been busily censoring any accusations of fraud or really any attempt to question whether Joe Biden really won the election.

The attempt, coming from many directions, to present the alleged results of the election of 2020 as beyond any serious question only serves to make the whole business even more suspicious. If this were an honest election, what harm would it do to investigate even seemingly baseless claims of fraud. Why are so many people so nervous about people expressing the opinion that is was not honest. When someone assures us that he is an honest man, that is a good sign that he is not, in fact, honest. When Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the entire mainstream media are taking such pains to assure us that there was no fraud in the election while censoring anyone who dares to assert there was, should we not conclude that the election was indeed fraudulent.

I am not a person given to conspiracy theories. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy without any help from the government. I believe that we really did go to the Moon and that 9/11 was not an inside job. I am not a person who would ordinarily subscribe to the idea that there has been a conspiracy to rig the election unless there was good reason to believe so. I believe that the preponderance of evidence indicates that there was a conspiracy to use fraud to ensure that Donald Trump was defeated in his bid for reelection. I believe, without any doubt, that the results of the election that have been released are fraudulent and that Joe Biden is neither the legitimate winner of the election or the legitimate President of the United States.

Why I Don’t Vote for the Libertarian Party

Some time ago, perhaps twenty-five years ago, I happened to be listening to some late-night radio talk show. The host was sort of a conservative Rush Limbaugh clone, so popular on talk radio at the time and he was interviewing a Libertarian candidate for some position. At one point during the interview, the host pointed out that while Libertarian ideas about small, limited government were popular with many Americans their position on legalizing drugs was not. The Libertarians might, he said, get more votes and actually win elections. The Libertarian explained in detail how legalizing drugs was consistent with the general Liberation philosophy on minimalist government and dropping the drug legalization plank from their platform would be inconsistent with that minimalist philosophy. The host replied that he understood their reasoning and even agreed with it, but that many Americans did not, therefore as long as the Libertarians insisted on advocating drug legalization, the appeal of the Libertarian Partry would be somewhat limited. That might be, the Libertarian said, but they weren’t going to compromise their principles.

That is one of the reasons I don’t vote for the Libertarian Party enough though I agree with most of what they have to say. To put it simply, what good is all their fine principles if they cannot get elected to enact them? If The Libertarians will not adapt their message to win over a majority of the voters, they cannot be elected into a position to make any of their ideas into reality. Even if a Libertarian does manage to be elected into some position such as a legislator, he will be ineffective at getting anything done if he will not compromise and form some sort of coalition with non-Libertarians.  So, what good is the Libertarian Party?

The problem with the Libertarians is that they know perfectly well that they have no chance of actually winning any elections and therefore have no reason to make the sort of compromises and concessions that the major parties have to make to win elections. The Libertarians are free to prize ideological purity over electability. They can propose policy ideas that are completely logical and consistent with their philosophy but that are not necessarily related to actual experience. They can imagine life in a small government utopia without worrying too much about how to bring it about, how it might actually work, or whether that is what people actually want. Because the Libertarians, and really any minor party in our political system, don’t have any reason to adapt their message to make themselves more electable, they don’t bother and end up making themselves even less electable over time.

This leads to the other reason I don’t vote for the Libertarian Party. They cannot win. No third party has any chance in our first past the post, winner takes all elections. Proportional voting and runoffs are uncommon in the United States and usually the candidate with the most votes, even if he does not get a majority. This makes any vote for a third-party candidate a wasted vote, and often effectively a vote for the candidate the voter is ideologically opposed to. Consider this example. Suppose there are three candidates running for Congress, a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian. Now suppose around 3% of the more conservative voters decide that the Republican is just not conservative enough for them. She supports various big government programs that small-government conservatives oppose. On election night the results are 49% for the Democrat, 48% for the Republican, and 3% for the Libertarian. The Democrat wins the election and goes on to Congress where he supports even bigger government than the Republican candidate would have. Those voters who stuck to their principles and voted for the Libertarian ended up, in effect, voting for the big-government candidate. A similar scenario might have progressives deciding that the Democratic Party is too capitalist and voting for the Green Party, only to see the even more capitalist Republican winning.

The point of this discussion is that what is very likely the most important election of our lifetimes is rapidly approaching. I know they say that about every election, but it is really true this time. Donald Trump, for all of his faults, has been a monumental, history-changing president. His wrecking ball approach to governance has helped to demolish stale orthodoxies and shaken the grip of a stagnant elite.  Trump has taken US policy in a new direction and has helped to resolve issues that have been stalemated for decades. He needs to have another term to complete his work. Meanwhile, the Democrats have moved so far to the left that they are openly embracing socialism. This new Democratic party is not the party of FDR or JFK anymore. The contemporary Democratic Party derives its ideology more from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin than from Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the founders of the Democratic Party they now despise as racists and slave owners. It is increasingly evident that the Democrats despise America and all the institutions that make America great and free. They cannot be allowed to wield power until the moderates are back in control of their party.

This means that those of us who still love our country and wish to be free do not have the luxury of standing on ideological purity. Casting a protest vote for a third party or abstaining from voting altogether is the same as voting for the Democrat’s extreme socialist agenda. It is better to vote for an imperfect Republican like Donald Trump than waste your vote on a Libertarian and see Joe Biden and his puppetmasters in office.

Biden His Time

Now that Bernie Sanders has dropped out, Joe Biden is the last man standing. I hardly expected that to be the outcome. I thought that Bernie would stay in longer. Actually, I was hoping that Bernie Sanders would stay in longer, at least long enough that we would have an actual choice here in Indiana. One of the disadvantages of living in Indiana is that our primary comes so late that the contest has already all but been decided before we vote. I don’t think it is fair that the people in Iowa and New Hampshire and the states that have their primaries on Super Tuesday get to pick the party nominees, while other states get no choice at all. Maybe state primaries should be on some sort of rotating schedule so that other states can get the first choice.

Joe Biden

My guess would be that Bernie Sanders was not really running to be president but to move the Democratic Party further to the left. He must believe that either Biden has moved far enough to the left to suit him, and is unlikely to move to the center as president, or that it does not matter much what Biden says or does since he won’t be the one making the decisions. He may be right. Joe Biden has never been know to be particularly smart, and it seems that he is suffering from some sort of dementia. Perhaps, Joe Biden is meant to be a figurehead. Those Democrats who have dropped out and endorsed Biden may be hoping for cabinet positions or be the real power in a Biden administration. If so, many of them, especially Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, are surely extreme enough to suit Bernie.

If this is the case, then the Democratic Party has completed the transition from a center-left party made up of a coalition of the White working class and various racial and ethnic minorities to a hard-left, Socialist Party dedicated to fundamentally transforming the United States from a constitutional republic based on individual freedom and the rule of law to a socialist utopia based on the preeminence of the state above all else. This transition, begun with the McGovern campaign back in 1972 has proceeded slowly as the radicals have climbed their way into the Democratic Party power structure and was somewhat delayed by the relatively moderate New Democrats such as Bill Clinton, but greatly accelerated by the rise of the radical Barack Obama has transformed the Democratic into a totalitarian party with no place for dissenting moderates. Even such past luminaries as Roosevelt or Johnson might find it difficult to fit into the contemporary Democratic party. John F Kenedy might be more comfortable as a Republican today. Even George McGovern, who was not, in fact,

These old Democrats, whatever their faults were patriots who loved their country and respected the institutions that made it great and free. They may have been liberals, but they were not radical enough to want to destroy those institutions, just reform them to make them better. Even though many of their policies were wrong-headed, they were sincerely interested in expanding opportunities to the disadvantaged. The contemporary Democratic Party seems to be led by virtue-signaling coastal elites and tech moguls, environmentalist wackos, and the genderqueer obsessed. They seem to be more about restricting opportunities rather than expanding them, keeping the disadvantaged down in their place rather than lifting them up. They seem to hate America and want nothing more than to tear down every institution and constitutional check as merely in the way of their goal of obtaining absolute power to remake the country as they see fit.

It is all a shame, really. The was some good in the Democratic party of old. There is nothing good in this new, neo-Bolshevik party, no matter who is the nominee. The Democrats need to be defeated this November. A Democratic president with a Democratic Congress would be a disaster for the country and for the cause of freedom in the world It is not going to be enough for Trump to win, the Democrats need to face a shellacking big enough to make them reconsider their leftward drift into Socialism. It won’t happen. I’m afraid that the days of 49 state landslides are over and even if the Democrats face a defeat on the scale of McGovern’s or Mondale’s, they will likely simply blame Biden for being too moderate and double down on the crazy.

Can Biden win? As the presumptive Democratic nominee, he certainly has some chance of being the next president. Biden is not a very impressive candidate, even when he was younger, and as I’ve mentioned, he seems to be deteriorating fast. There are a lot of people on the left who really hate Trump, though, and many of them would vote for a head of lettuce if that is what it takes to deny Trump a second term. On the other hand, there were a lot of people on the right who really hated Clinton and Obama and who voted for the uninspiring Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, yet Clinton and Obama both won reelection. Joe Biden is a good deal weaker as a candidate than either Dole or Romney. I suppose much will depend on who is selected to be Biden’s running mate. Whoever it is might be seen as the real candidate who might be expected to take over if Biden is obliged to resign.

There has been some speculation that Biden will be replaced by a more suitable candidate at the Democratic National Convention, perhaps Hilary Clinton or New York governor Andrew Cuomo. I don’t see how the Democrats are going to be able able to pull that off. Joe Biden has the most delegates pledged to him and as the only candidate still in the race, will have a majority by the time the primaries are over. It seems to me that the Democrats would have to discard their own rules for nominating a candidate to ditch Biden. Maybe they will, but I wonder if a candidate nominated under such unusual circumstances would really be a stronger candidate than Joe Biden. I guess we are just going to have to bide our time and see what happens.

Bernie Could Win

It may be too early to make predictions, but it looks like Bernie Sanders will end up being the Democratic nominee for president in the upcoming election in November. This prospect has Republicans giddy with glee and establishment Democrats dismayed, as they foresee a result similar to the election of 1972. In that election, the Democrats nominated the very left-wing George McGovern who then went on to lose to Nixon in one of the most lopsided defeats (520-17 electoral votes) in the history of American presidential elections. It is easy to imagine that the openly “democratic socialist” aka Communist, Sanders will suffer a similar humiliation.

I am not so sure. This is not the same country as it was in 1972 or 1984 when Reagan won by an even more lopsided 525-13 electoral votes. We are more evenly polarized these days and people seem to be more loyal to their political tribes and less willing to vote for the other side’s candidate. Elections seem to be won more at the margins and there is less likelihood of the kind of massive landslide that occurred in those two elections. I cannot imagine California going red and voting for Trump, no matter how insane the Democratic candidate might be. I doubt if Sanders will make much headway in the deep red south. I do not think Trump is going to carry forty-nine states no matter what happens in the campaign. I am also not so sure that Sanders is doomed to be defeated. I do believe that Trump is likely to be reelected. He has the advantages of the incumbent and the economy is doing well, but nothing is absolutely certain. Bernie Sanders could win. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Bernie Sanders is actually the Democratic candidate most likely to defeat Trump.

The next President?

Donald Trump’s main advantage has been the enthusiasm of his supporters, and detractors. No one seems to be neutral or apathetic in their opinion about Trump. The people who do like like Trump, really hate him, and the people who support Trump really, really love him. It is this enthusiasm that won him the presidency in the previous election. Hilary Clinton had many advantages and ought to have won the election, but no one really liked her all that much. Her support among Democrats was lukewarm. She was too much a part of an increasingly unpopular establishment. People voted for her as the least bad option, not because they were excited about another Clinton presidency. In contrast, the people who voted for Trump were excited about his promise to Make America Great Again. They voted for him because they wanted him to be president.

Of all the Democratic candidates this year, only Bernie Sanders really generates the same kind of excitement that Donald Trump does. No one really likes Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, or Pete Buttigieg. Their supporters are not excited in the same way that Bernie’s are. If any of the other candidates become the nominee, Democratic voters will be voting against Trump. If Bernie Sanders is the nominee, they will be voting for Sanders. Voting for a candidate generates more excitement than voting against a candidate. Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who generates the kind of enthusiasm that Trump gets from his supporters. I think that Sanders is the only candidate who might be a  threat to Trump.

It is disturbing that Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner and has at least some chance of being the next president. Judging by his campaign promises, a Sanders presidency would have the most extremist left-wing agenda in the history of the United States. He will ban fracking and the export of American oil, remove any limits on accepting refugees and leave the borders wide open. He wants Medicare for all to be paid for with massive tax increases on the wealthy and deep cuts to military spending. Because of the urgent climate emergency (and the fact that even a Democratic Congressional majority might balk at some of his more extreme plans), Bernie won’t have time to enact his proposals by legislation or permit the usual democratic give and take. He plans to act by executive orders, bypassing Congress and the constitution. In effect, Bernie Sanders plans to govern as an autocrat, ruling by decree. Bernie Sanders has never met an enemy of the United States he didn’t like and has expressed his admiration for some of the worst tyrants in the world. A Sanders presidency would be a gift to our enemies, especially Putin who would benefit greatly from the increase in the price of oil from an American ban on fracking.

It is even more disturbing that almost the entire field of Democratic candidates are competing to see who can out-Bernie Bernie and move furthest to the left. There don’t seem to be any moderates in the race, except for Michael Bloomberg, who has authoritarian issues of his own. Maybe some of them, perhaps Joe Biden for one, are not being entirely sincere and plan to pivot to the center, but the fact that they feel the need to even pretend to be so extreme is worrisome. As it is, the only difference between Bernie Sanders and the rest is that he is honest enough to openly run as a socialist.

The election of any of the current field of Democrats would be a disaster for our country and the cause of freedom. The danger is not just that we would have a socialist president, but that the Democrats will continue their movement to the extreme left. Trump and the Republicans in down-ticket races need to win by a large enough margin to thrash the Democrats and move them back towards the center.

To make that happen, the Republicans cannot be overconfident or think that running against Bernie Sanders will be an easy victory. The adage, “Be careful what you wish for” applies here. Bernie Sanders probably has as good as, if not better chance of winning as any other Democratic candidate. Don’t get cocky.

Undoing the Industrial Revolution

CTV News reports that former Vice-President Joe Biden has promised to end fossil fuel use.

Joe Biden is looking voters in the eye and promising to “end fossil fuel.”

The former vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate made the comment Friday after a New Hampshire environmental activist challenged him for accepting donations from the co-founder of liquified natural gas firm.

Biden denied the donor’s association to the fossil fuel industry before calling the young woman “kiddo” and taking her hand. He said, “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”

The activist, 24-year-old Rebecca Beaulieu, later said she appreciated that Biden took her question seriously, but that he was not satisfied with Biden’s plan to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050.

Essentially, Joe Biden and the other Democratic presidential candidates are promising to undo the Industrial Revolution. Our economy and civilization depend on the use of fossil fuels. There is simply no alternative to their use, except for nuclear power, which they’re also against if we want to maintain our current level of prosperity.

For most of history, the only available sources of power were human and animal muscles. These sources, supplemented by water and wind beginning in the Medieval Period do not provide much power. The amount of work that can be done with muscles, human and animal, is sharply limited. As a result, the great masses of people, in any society, lived in poverty, with barely enough to survive. Only a very tiny elite could live in any degree of comfort.

This situation only changed when humans learned to harness the power of fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels could unleash far more energy than could be obtained through the power of muscles, energy to power machines that could do more work and produce more wealth than would have been conceivable before. Unlike wind and water mills, which were only usable at particular times and places, factories powered by fossil fuels could be placed anywhere convenient. The resulting industrial and technological revolution, along with the development of free-market capitalism, something else the current crop of candidates is campaigning against, allowed a higher standard of living than could ever be possible previously. For the first time in history, ordinary people could live lives of comfort. The difference between rich and poor in the developed world is no longer one of kind, whether a person has enough to eat or sufficient shelter from the elements, but of degree, how nice that house, car or food. At the present time, we are living in a world in which the greatest health problems of the poor stem from having too much unhealthy food to eat. We may be within a generation of eliminating poverty worldwide, thanks to fossil fuels.

What if Joe Biden and the other Democrats have their way? What if the use of fossil fuels is severely curtailed here in the United States, and elsewhere in other to combat climate change? Could renewable sources of energy make up the difference? No, they could not. Renewable sources of energy; wind, water, and the rest simply do not provide enough energy to maintain our current use of power, not by orders of magnitude. Nonrenewable sources are only available in limited times and places, necessitating the storage or long-distance transmission of energy, which can be difficult and expensive. Nuclear power could make up the gap, but the people who want us to stop using fossil fuels also dislike nuclear power.

A world in which fossil fuel use was eliminated would be a world in which energy was much more expensive than it is at present. As a result, all the necessities of life would be much more expensive. It would be a poorer world, a world in which a small elite could live comfortably while the majority of the population would be struggling to survive. It would be a step back to the bad old days. Even if it were conceded that man-made climate change was the dire threat to humanity’s continued survival and well-being, a concession I am not willing to make, surely the cures proposed by the Democratic candidates are far worse than the problem. I do not believe that any crisis can be resolved by crippling the most productive and innovative economy in the world. It may not be the intention of those proposing such radical solutions to global warming to create a neo-feudal world of impoverished masses lorded over by a tiny elite, but that would be the inevitable result.

There will come a time when advancing technology will make the use of fossil fuels obsolete. This time will come only if people are free to innovate in a prosperous economy. It will not come by stifling innovation with overbearing government fiats in a crippled and impoverished economy. That is just what the Democratic candidates are proposing.

BFD

Jim Messina is imitating Joe Biden now. As well he might. After all, it is not every day that the President takes steps to destroy the national economy and raises energy prices for everybody.

David —

This is a BFD:

The New York Times is calling President Obama’s plan “the strongest action ever taken by an American president to tackle climate change” — he’s proposing new EPA standards to limit carbon pollution from existing power plants, the single biggest source of the pollution in the United States that causes climate change.

David, it should come as no surprise that polluters and groups that like things the way they are have already started fighting this with everything they’ve got. The best thing we can do is show just how many Americans believe this is the right thing to do.

Add your name right now — stand with President Obama and support aggressive action to fight climate change.

Announcements like this are why we all do this work. It’s proof that grassroots organizing really does pay off. Climate change activists have fought for years for EPA standards on carbon pollution — and this week President Obama is making it a reality.

This fight is about our future, but the effects of climate change are being felt right now — it’s linked to stronger weather, from more frequent and severe droughts to floods, storms, and wildfires.

It’s affecting public health, too. Over the past three decades, the percentage of Americans with asthma has more than doubled, and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital. Over half of all Americans live in an area where air pollution levels are too often unhealthy to breathe.

But while we place limits on dangerous air pollution like mercury, arsenic, and lead, existing power plants have had no national restrictions on the amount of carbon pollution they can emit.

None at all — until now.

The President’s plan promises to cut carbon pollution from power plants for the first time, setting a new standard for action on climate change.

As I write this, powerful interests on the other side are lining up their dirty budgets to try to tear this down. They have plenty of allies in Congress that will try to stop us.

I’m asking everyone who cares about this fight to stand up and say so today — stand with President Obama and new carbon pollution standards:

http://my.barackobama.com/Support-Carbon-Pollution-Standards

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Chair
Organizing for Action

P.S. — We’ve all been fighting for big action to fight climate change — something that will really make a difference. This is it — add your name today and let’s fight for it.

I have said it before and I guess I will have to say it again and again. Mercury, arsenic and lead are pollutants that are hazardous to human health. Various industrial processes can greatly increase the amounts of these substances in the environment to concentrations far greater than they are normally found in nature.It makes sense to regulate the emissions of substances like mercury, lead or arsenic. Carbon dioxide is a compound that is a naturally occurring component of the Earth’s atmosphere. It is harmless to human health and indeed is necessary for life to exist on this planet. Since virtually every industrial process produces some carbon dioxide as does animal respiration, trying to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is pointless, unless you want to establish some sort of totalitarian control over every part of the economy or you want to reverse the industrial revolution.

Notice just how dishonest Jim Messina is being in this e-mail. He states that half of all Americans live in areas where the air is too unhealthy to breathe, never mind that our air has been getting cleaner, and cites increasing numbers of Americans with asthma. He is conflating actual air pollution with increasing levels of carbon dioxide. As I said, carbon dioxide is harmless, unless you are in an enclosed space without ventilation, or are unfortunate enough to encounter a large cloud of carbon dioxide that has been released by a volcano or stagnant lake. Either he is ignorant or he hopes you aren’t paying attention.

This is certainly a fight about our future. These new restrictions on power plants will almost certainly make many power plants more expensive to operate, if they are not shut down altogether which will translate into higher prices for electricity for all of us, which means higher prices for just about everything, and fewer jobs for everyone to pay the higher prices.

There’s that hope and change we were promised!

 

 

 

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• This is huge (according to Organizing for Action) (ncrenegade.com)
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• Ahead of power plant push, Obama ties climate change to health hazards (reuters.com)
• Biggest coal battle could be in Texas as EPA cracks down on carbon (urlinkedup.wordpress.com)
• Myths and Facts: Cutting Carbon Pollution (whitehouse.gov) The biggest myths are coming out of this White House.

White House Misfire?

Lexington Will history repeat itself?

I found this editorial by Michael Graham in the Boston Herald courtesy of Instapundit.

The position of pro-Second Amendment Americans is that gun ownership is part of the fundamental human right to self-defense, explicitly stated in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers due to an overarching political philosophy regarding the balance of power between the individual and the state.

The position of the anti-gun activists in the Obama administration is “guns are icky.”

The media consider them the intellectuals in this debate.

And so Fox News reports “White House In Gun Control Sprint.” President Obama wants to fast-track a stack of new gun laws before the lingering pain and horror of the Newtown, Conn., massacre fades.

According to the Washington Post, Obama’s task force has already blown past the return of the so-called “assault weapons” ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines. They’ve moved on to “regulations that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors.”

I thought the point of this White House task force was to “prevent more tragedies” like Newtown, as the president said when he announced it. If so, please re-read the last paragraph. Am I missing something?

“Universal background checks” — whatever that means — might or might not be a good thing. They certainly sound reasonable to me. But how would they have prevented Adam Lanza from shooting up that elementary school? He took a rifle that belonged to his mother.

The same with “tracking the sale and movement” of guns. I’m not sure about the constitutionality of forcing me to report to the government when I pass down my father’s shotgun to my son one day, but once again — this prevents another Newtown … how?

And sure, I’m all for “strengthening mental health checks,” but unless you’re going to make your local gun store owner a licensed therapist, how does he stop a guy like Lanza — with no diagnosis of mental illness — from buying a gun?

Most laughable (and this is no laughing matter, which makes the White House’s position even more angering) is the “stiffened penalties for carrying guns near schools.”

So Joe Biden’s telling me that Lanza, overcome by his mental condition to the point that he’s murdered his mother and is headed to an elementary school on a killing spree, is going to stop 1,000 yards from the playground and think, “Hey — I don’t want Obama to take away my student loan subsidy. I better keep these guns away from school!”

These are the thoughtful, well-reasoned ideas from the Obama brain trust?

And we haven’t even mentioned the fact that gun laws are utterly meaningless to criminals, anyway. Don’t believe me? Ask the families of the 506 people fatally shot in Obama’s “gun-controlled” hometown of Chicago last year.

I’m not one of the knee-jerk pro-gun types who oppose all laws. I don’t think of gun ownership as the highest form of patriotism. Show me a law on law-abiding gun owners that will have a meaningful impact on gun violence, and I’m all ears.

But that’s not what the White House is offering. In the face of undeniable evidence that, for 20 years, gun ownership rates have gone up while gun deaths have plunged (the lowest since at least 1981, according to FactCheck.org), Obama’s pushing for a large-scale “punish-all-gun-owners” approach.

So much so that some Senate Democrats are already backing away from the task force’s work.

If the White House would stop playing on emotions for the sake of far-left politics, we could actually get something done about gun crime in the U.S.

I don’t quite agree with Mr. Graham. I do not think that the Obama administration has misfired at all.They know exactly what they are doing.

The long term goal of the Democrats has been to disarm the American people. I do not know whether this is because they consider guns to be icky or whether the conspiracy theorists are right and they want to inaugurate a one-world Socialist dictatorship and really it doesn’t matter. With that in mind and considering Obama’s ambition to be a transformative President who brings fundamental change to this country, it is unlikely that Obama is interested in compromising with anyone or in introducing the sort of do-nothing but pretend to do something policies like an assault rifle or high capacity magazine ban. Obama can take pride in the fact that he achieved the long standing Democratic goal of socializing health care in his first term and I don’t doubt that he would like to be the one who achieved comprehensive gun control in his second term.

What this means is that that President Obama is going to try to enact the most sweeping and draconian gun control measures that he can get away with. If he cannot get what he wants through legislative action, he is perfectly prepared to issue executive orders. Nor is Obama reluctant to get into a confrontation with gun rights groups such as the NRA. Indeed, he seems to be deliberately provoking gun owners. Obama has shown a preference for attacking and demonizing people who oppose his policies, rather than working with them in the past. Since he can count on the support of the main stream media in labeling his opponents as unreasonable extremists, he has a record of winning these confrontations and forcing his opponents to back down. In this way, Obama has often got everything he has wanted rather than having to settle for only a portion. Of course, this has embittered his opponents and cause more division and polarization in the country, but I don’t think Obama minds that at all.

I think, then, that we can expect sweeping and unprecedented gun control proposals to come out of Biden’s task force. We can expect continuing demonization of gun owners as crazed extremists in the media and the NRA getting the full Alinsky treatment. Don’t be too surprised if major retailers such as WalMart “voluntarily” remove objectionable firearms from their shelves. We are in for some interesting times ahead.

Related articles

• Biden Confirms Use of ‘Executive Action’ for Gun Control; NRA to Meet with White House (VIDEO) (guns.com)
• Obama Administration Summons NRA to White House (conservativeread.com)
• White House Misfires On Gun Control (Obama’s Theory: “Guns Are Icky.”) (tarpon.wordpress.com)
• Biden prepares to meet with NRA after suggestion White House could act without Congress as part of gun control plan (foxnews.com)
• Expectations low for Biden, NRA talks – The Star-Ledger – NJ.com (nj.com)
• Moving on Gun Control (davidscommonplacebook.wordpress.com)
• MICHAEL GRAHAM: White House Misfires On Gun Debate: The position of the anti-gun activists in th… (pjmedia.com)
• White House squares up for fight with NRA over sweeping gun reforms (guardian.co.uk)
• White House weighs broad gun-control agenda in wake of Newtown shootings (amresolution.com)

Pay Raise for Biden and Congress

He got a raise.

It’s nice to know that Vice-President Joe Biden and Congress will be receiving well deserved pay raises for all the hard work they have been doing for us. I read about this in the Weekly Standard.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden.

According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he’ll now make $231,900 per year.

Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.

Here’s the list of new wages, as attached to President Obama’s executive order:

I don’t now. Personally, I think that at some point you have made enough money and when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody. Maybe the president will spread some of his wealth around to me.

By the way, have you ever noticed that the people who rail about the wealthy the most seem to be among the wealthiest themselves?

Related articles

• Obama Orders Pay Raise for Biden, Members of Congress, Federal Workers (weeklystandard.com)
• Obama Orders Pay Raise for Biden, Members of Congress, Federal Workers (redalertpolitics.com)
• While the Rest of the Country Suffers… Obama Gives Joe Biden and Congress a Raise (thegatewaypundit.com)
• Obama orders end to FED pay freeze (jbsanctuary.wordpress.com) Because they are all so underpaid.

Laughing at the Issues

It didn’t take long for the RNC to come up with a ad showcasing Joe Biden’s inappropriate laughter during the the debate.

I wonder what drugs Biden was taking before the debate. I could use a good laugh myself.

If there are any undecideds reading this, ask yourself, do you really want to take the risk of having this clown becoming President?

I love the twitter reactions. Here is my favorite comment.

I’m not a gambler, but I would play poker with Biden. In the mean time, he should get that smirk off his face, bc he’s not winning.

 

Related articles

• Twitter frowns on Joe Biden’s laugh (politico.com)
• When He Wasn’t Yelling at Everybody, Joe Biden Laughed His Way Through the Issues (pjmedia.com)
• Why so serious? Biden’s debate grimace creeps out, angers viewers (twitchy.com)
• New Republican National Committee Ad Attacks Joe Biden as he Laughs at the Issues (VIDEO) (americanlivewire.com)
• Brit Hume: Joe Biden ‘Looked Like a Cranky Old Man Debating a Polite Young Man’ (foxnewsinsider.com)