Midweek Unthreaded

Forgot these lately… sorry.

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78 comments to Midweek Unthreaded

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    Of interest to some here my recent post
    Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus demonstrates that pursuing climate mitigation will make a nation worse off
    Prof Nordhaus re-ran his model based on the standard UN assumptions and published in the American Economic Review last August. Using near universal optimal policies, warming should only be constrained to 3.5C by 2100, against non-policy 4.1C. The combined costs of policy and climate change of 3.5C would 2.3% of GDP against 3.0% for no policy and 4.0% of GDP for controlling warming 2.5C. Pursuing the Paris Agreement aims of controlling warming to 2.0C or 1.5C will make the world much worse off than doing nothing.
    But Nordhaus does not look at the implication of this statement

    Countries have agreed on a target temperature limit of 2°C, but this is far removed from actual policies, ….
    The reality is that most countries are on a business-as-usual (BAU) trajectory of minimal policies to reduce their emissions; they are taking noncooperative policies that are in their national interest, but far from ones which would represent a global cooperative policy.

    By implication, any country that tries to actual reduce its emissions is making it citizens worse off, as climate mitigation is far from universal and policies are far from the optimal (but deeply unpopular) single carbon tax. The optimal policy for countries that believe in the UN’s prophesies is to do as little as possible, but ensure that others do as much as possible.

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      Kinky Keith

      Hi Kevin, an interesting find.

      People discussing and pontificating over a make believe issue to give it the appearance of credibility or reality.

      The whole Man Made Global Warming thing is a myth and has no scientific basis at all.

      Human Origin CO2 does Not “Heat” the Earth’s atmosphere but any scientist or engineer who states that knows full well that they will be made an example of.

      Peter Ridd is only the third high profile victim in Australia and there are no doubt other situations that have seen the victims “go quietly”.

      The social repression attached to the Global Warming Monster is unbelievable in an age where humanity has the potential to know and understand almost everything.

      It seems that there’s one big item left for humanity to understand: That is Itself.

      It’s amazing that we are simultaneously the best and worst species on the Planet when we can burden ourselves with Global Warming Penance.

      KK

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        Roy Hogue

        KK,

        I would give you 1,000 green thumbs for bringing that up. We have no idea what to do day by day except for each person to pursue individual wants as fanatically as possible. If it happens any better than that it’s because parents teach and insist on better from their children. And not nearly enough parents do that.

        We follow leaders who have no interest in us except that they need the constituency to satisfy some need of theirs that they probably don’t understand.

        We are a mess.

        To be fair, we don’t come with an instruction manual. But you would think that after all the years we’ve been around we could do better than we have done since Donald Trump became a candidate for president.

        My way for a long time when I see a problem has been to try and figure out why it’s the way it is, not complain or invent a solution. And since I’ve been doing that my conclusion has been, things are the way they are because that’s the way they must be. Human nature is what it is and you can’t change it. That we get a lot of things right is the result of trial and error, just good luck.

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          Roy Hogue

          And then at the drop of a hat we throw away our gains when Donald Trump comes along and upsets the apple cart.

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          Kinky Keith

          Roy, an interesting comment.

          Human nature is certainly a puzzle and perhaps I need to consider the idea that it’s just going to be what it is.

          At the moment it’s mind boggling to get glimpses of TV social commentary that’s all too often delivered in an urgent hyperventilating style.

          The effect this has on us and our neighbours is there and damages our thinking. Mostly people can’t think.

          All we can do is work with those around us and hope for the best.

          KK

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        Keith,

        I look at the issue from a politicians perspective. There are very few who would want to make the world a worse place. But if they accept the IPCCs assumptions about AND accept that policy is costly, then on the basis of the INDC submissions as part of the Paris Agreement they will make people of their country worse off by pursuing climate mitigation policies compared to doing nothing. This is tautologically true given the assumptions.
        There are a number of advantages with this approach, which I have yet to fully develop.

        First, the climate consensus is excluded. The IPCC has presented their case. If they want to say the IPCC was wrong then they need to present an alternative case that overcomes the faults of the IPCC.

        Second, there is also the question of why other countries are not cut their emissions. The Rio Declaration 1992 recognized that climate mitigation would be far more costly for developing countries than developed. But not recognized is the impact on countries where sale of fossil fuels constitute a large part of GDP. At $50 a barrel, oil production is roughly 1.2% of US GDP, 13% of Russia’s 21% of Iran’s, 31% of Saudi and 46% of Kuwait’s.

        Third, politician’s need to recognize the difference between total collective impacts of policy and the marginal impact. It is tautologically true that if money spent on something that produces zero benefits then it should not have been done. Also true, is that if something was justified on the basis of faulty assumptions concluded benefits exceeding costs, whilst simple checking reveals it to be other other way round, then politicians are morally responsible for making people worse off.

        The thrust of this is that the default position of enacting costly policies will make people worse off. There is a moral responsibility on politicians to drive through the benefits. What I have totally disregarded is the benefits of appearing to be virtuous, and the real impact on a politician’s career in standing up to the climate consensus.

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      Roy Hogue

      It looks like we’e the first and only two here Kevin. Where is everyone?

      The weekend and mid week opportunities are usually roaring with robust debate by the time I see them.

      We could play chess or maybe dance but dancing might raise too many eyebrows so we may just have to suffer our loneliness in silence. 😉

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      Analitik

      The optimal policy for countries that believe in the UN’s prophesies is to do as little as possible, but ensure that others do as much as possible.

      I would extend this to be the optimal policy for ALL countries, whether they believe in the IPCC or not.

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    Roy Hogue

    It’s another overcast dreary looking morning here. It looks like more rain may come before spring finally arrives. Whatever happened to the drought Jerry Brown said would be the new normal we better get used too.

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      Annie

      Been raining and thundering in Dubai Roy. Not much help to the cricket but standard weather for this time of the year. It’s good to have some of the dust washed down for a while as it’s been a gusty, dusty period.
      We’ve just repeated the bizarre experience of eating in a Gulf shopping mall restaurant at the foot of Ski Dubai!

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    Reed Coray

    A few days ago while reading one of the skeptical blogs, I came across the phrase “Schiff-for-Brains” that, in my opinion, hits the nail on the head when characterizing leaders of the AGW movement and socialists wherever they can be found. I searched a subset of the blogs I read looking for the author, but I couldn’t find the source of the phrase. I do remember that the blog source indicated that the phrase wasn’t his, but he thought it was funny–to which I wholeheartedly agree. The phrase spans our two countries: Australia because Crocodile Dundee was the originator of a similar phrase; and the U.S. because “pencil neck” Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is a poster-boy example of the current level of democrat party intelligence. I plan to use the phrase whenever appropriate (which is often), and I hope others will too.

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      Another Ian

      More on that

      “Report: Green Energy Economy Is Simply ‘Impossible’ ”

      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/report-green-energy-economy-is-simply-impossible/

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        David Wojick

        Very good work by Mark Mills. I am doing something along these lines too. Specifically what it would cost a certain US State to go 100% wind + batteries. At today’s prices the batteries would cost about 10 times the State’s entire GDP. Clearly impossible.

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          Last night on ABC TV, they had Part 3 of their Energy beat up Series.

          This is the link to that nine minute segment, and just press play.

          Blah blah blah ….. so scroll forwards to the 6.44 mark and listen to the ‘narrator’, the ABC’s Liz Hobday, where she says the following:

          So how are we going to stabilise the grid and keep the lights on?

          After South Australia’s state-wide blackouts in 2016, the company, Tesla installed a massive battery system north of Adelaide.

          It stabilised supply and brought prices down by dispatching electricity quickly just when it’s needed.

          Later, right near the end, (the 8.55 mark) Matthew Warren the author of the book Blackout says this:

          We’re really at the point now where the idea that we can replace coal with coal is over – that’s gone.

          When we have misinformation like this being put forward, we might just be in a spot of bother.

          Tony.

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            Analitik

            Indeed, Tony. Which is why I feel our only hope is for another high demand day (hot and still) in South Eastern Australia to totally take down the SA grid to show up the emperor’s nudity for what it is.

            Sadly, the grid operators continue to perform sterling duties in demand reduction (aka rolling blackouts) in Victoria and South Australia to keep the majority of those states’ grids up, which allows for the sort of “analysis” that you have presented to be accepted by the majority of the electorate. We may have to wait until late 2022 after the closure of Liddell to fully strand Victoria and have both states’ grids collapse before we get that signal event which wakes up the masses. The damage and pain will be truly immense given the relative population and industry sizes if it comes to this.

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            Serp

            Misinformation, nah, what we have here is downright mulish ignorance. The ABC crew despises information which does not align with its green agenda and exercises considerable vigilance to ensure it is kept well out of sight.

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    Another Ian

    “Facebook, Axios And NBC Paid This Guy To Whitewash Wikipedia Pages”

    https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-facebook-nbc-axios_n_5c63321be4b03de942967225

    Via Tip of the Spear

    Did Connolly have a nice little earner going?

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    Another Ian

    “The WMO World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases begins provision of data from the GOSAT”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/the-wmo-world-data-centre-for-greenhouse-gases-begins-provision-of-data-from-the-gosat/

    A fair few questions in the comments though

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    robert rosicka

    Just flicked over to ABC to hear the greens leader say it would cost one billion to go 100% renewable by 2030 .

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      I hope I see that clip later, perhaps on tonight’s news hopefully.

      One Billion.

      Just shows how hopelessly out of touch he is.

      Tony.

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        robert rosicka

        I only caught a bit of it but they think they can pay for the rest of it by slugging the big polluters billions of dollars and the only money it will cost government was a billion .
        Hospitals were big polluters under Gillards carbon tax so god knows what these monkeys are planning .
        One thing we can be sure of is no one could afford to live in this country anymore .

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      Robert Swan

      Was it one billion lives? The Greens seem to think that’d be a good start.

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        Analitik

        One billion wind turbines

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        One sixth of an Adelaide sub (more if it actually has to exist). Or maintenance on an unused desal plant for two years (but more if you use it, lots more).

        I can’t give you a figure in Clinton donations, monorails or stadiums, but one billion for 100% renewable is the deal of the century. It totally is the deal of the century.

        Trouble is, it’s the deal of the 14th century.

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          One billion dollars would not even be enough tp construct a wind plant the size of Macarthur, the largest wind plant in Australia, with a Nameplate of 420MW.

          The actual generated power delivered from a wind plant of this size is 1.8% of Australia’s total power generarion.

          Add that 1.8% to the existing 19.8% for ALL renewables, (Hydro, wind, solar and rooftop solar) and it is not even close to 100%

          Good luck with that.

          Tony.

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            Greg in NZ

            https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/business/385688/mercury-to-spend-256m-on-new-wind-farm

            State-owned power company “Mercury has announced it would spend $256 million to erect 33 wind turbines… The wind farm would be the country’s third largest and would generate 470 gigawatt hours a year on average, enough to power 210,000 electric cars… the wind farm was 15 years in the making and would contribute to regional economic growth… Mercury is contracting a local subsidiary of Danish wind turbine supplier Vestas Wind Systems to construct and maintain the turbines.”

            Same old schiff.

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      Dennis

      “This week Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott played the reality card on Labor’s 45-50 per cent targets for emissions and renewables: “We don’t have a plan to do this.
      How are we going to do this? If it’s economy wide, what is the mechanism by which we (Labor) are going to do this? Is it a cap and trade system? Is it the national energy guarantee? Is it a base-loading credit system? Are we going to exempt the trade-exposed sector?
      Are we going to allow the ‘carry over’ for Kyoto?
      I think the Australian people are entitled to understand how these things will be achieved. This is the history of the problem – people say stuff, then they try to implement it and everyone goes ‘Oh, hang on, we didn’t mean for those jobs to be gone’ – now we’ll have to have a compensation scheme. Then we stop and then we go backwards and then we make no progress. This is the history.”
      Yet nothing Westacott said – policy realities that must be faced by any Shorten government – impinge on the current climate change mantras that dominate our public debate. Just listen to the independent progressives crusading on climate change in leafy Liberal seats to grasp how much this debate has regressed over the past 15 years.
      They talk endlessly about saving the planet and the urgency for Australia to do more, as though the policy and political obstacles of the past 15 years never happened….”
      The Weekend Australian
      Paul Kelly

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    Hanrahan

    Anyone who thinks they are going to get $20 mill out of the NRA is badly informed. In spite of accusations made against them they are not generous political donors.

    But ON is being called treasonous for trying to get money from overseas. How about Shorten’s close ties to getup, funded for millions by Soros?

    I hate hypocrisy.

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    pat

    27 Mar: Chicago Tribune: Kim Foxx cleans Jussie Smollett up, the Chicago Way
    By John Kass
    Kim Foxx’s office didn’t merely drop all the charges against Smollett, not long after Foxx began playing “Obama Celebrity Friends” with former first lady Michelle Obama’s onetime chief of staff.
    Foxx’s office dropped the charges, yes. But also as part of the deal, he will be wiped clean. His lawyers want his record expunged. That could happen as soon as today.
    The stain of the 16 counts in the indictment will be scrubbed right off him.

    You might say Foxx is bathing him in the waters of the Chicago Way, cleansing him, and making a new man out of him.
    And now he’s smirking at the city, the mayor, the cops, everyone. Can’t wait until he files that multimillion-dollar lawsuit.
    “Foxx(‘s deal) expunged it all,” said a top Chicago police official. “The media’s really not focusing on that. What does it mean? It means you’ll never see the (police) interviews or read the notes.
    “The case (will be) expunged. I can’t even tell you if Jussie Smollett was ever arrested or charged,” the official said. “Charged with what? Faking hate crimes? Indictments, what indictments?”

    Foxx isn’t saying much. She hasn’t said much at all since it was learned that she’d been contacted about Smollett by lawyer Tina Tchen, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff…
    Now that Robert Mueller is free, I wonder if he could subpoena Foxx to ask if Michelle and Barack like to watch “Empire,” the TV show that made Smollett famous…
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-jussie-smollett-rahm-emanuel-kass20190326-story.html

    27 Mar: Breitbart: Kim Foxx Never ‘Formally’ Recused Herself from Jussie Smollett Case
    by Joshua Caplan; The Associated Press contributed to this report
    Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx never “formally” recused herself from the Jussie Smollett case ― contrary to the Chicago prosecutor’s public announcement that she had done so ― a spokesperson for the prosecutor confirms.

    In a statement (LINK) Wednesday, Cook County State’s Attorney spox Kiera Ellis said Foxx “did not formally recuse herself or the [State’s Attorney] Office based on any actual conflict of interest. As a result, she did not have to seek the appointment of a special prosecutor.”
    According to Ellis, Foxx’s announcement that she had recused herself “was a colloquial use of the term rather than in its legal sense.”
    https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/03/27/kim-foxx-never-formally-recused-herself-from-jussie-smollett-case/

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      Another Ian

      Pat

      More Interesting happenings

      “This is getting interesting Chicago PD obviously wants this case dissected and pushed to the major media’s attention.

      Tim Young
      ‏Verified account
      @TimRunsHisMouth
      27 minutes ago

      Jussie Smollett Update: The Chicago Police Department has released their complete investigative file on the Smollett case in the FASTEST RESPONSE to a FOIA request in all of history.
      See it here:

      https://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/03/exclusive-chicago-police-departments.html

      And

      ““Smollett Drama – Cook County State Attorney Now Says Sealing Case Was Done Accidentally…”

      https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/03/27/smollett-drama-cook-county-state-attorney-now-says-sealing-case-was-done-accidentally/

      Via Chiefio

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      Another Ian

      IMO explaining that will take more mental gymnastics than explaining how global warming causes all those feet of “solid global warming”

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        pat

        and more:

        27 Mar: CBS Chicago: Jussie Smollett Case: Internal Email Has Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Scrambling To Find Similar Dropped Cases
        CBS 2 has obtained an internal email from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office regarding a search for felony cases dropped under similar circumstances to the Jussie Smollett case.
        “We are looking for examples of cases, felony preferable, where we, in excersing [sic] our discretion, have entered into verbal agreements with defense attorneys to dismiss charges against an offender if certain conditions were met, such as the payment of restitution, completion of community service, completion of class, etc., but the defendant was not placed in a formal diversion program,” the email states…

        “Please ask your ASAs if they have examples of these types of dispositions and we will work with them further to figure out on what case it was done. Nobody is in trouble, we are just looking for further examples of how we, as prosecutors, use our discretion in a way that restores the victim, but causes minimal harm to the defendant in the long term,” the internal email stated.

        CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller does not believe similar cases to that of Smollett will be found.
        “They may find some cases that are similar that may match the issues here, but the vast majority of cases would never ever be handled in this manner,” Miller said…
        https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/03/27/jussie-smollett-cook-county-states-attorney-kim-foxx/amp/

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    pat

    on a more serious note:

    27 Mar: Judicial Watch: Judicial Watch Sues for Records of Communication Between James Clapper, John Brennan and CNN
    Dossier-Related Communications Between Clapper and ex-CIA Director John Brennan also Sought
    Judicial Watch announced today it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking records of communications between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN around the time the Clinton-Democrat National Committee Trump dossier was being pitched to key media outlets…

    A House report detailed that Clapper leaked information regarding the dossier to CNN in January 2017. The former ODNI chief signed on as an analyst for CNN in August 2017…READ ALL
    https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-records-of-communication-between-james-clapper-john-brennan-and-cnn/

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      pat

      23 Jul 2018: Investor’s Business Daily: Editorial: Did Obama, Brennan And Clinton Illegally Collude To Take Trump Down?
      Here’s what Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, the nation’s former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
      “If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.”

      Why didn’t this get more attention in the media? Obama and Brennan not only knew the dubious nature of the allegations against Trump, but pushed them anyway…
      https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/russia-trump-collusion-investigation/

      this has been put up recently, but has the Clapper/Anderson CNN exchange:

      Youtube: James Clapper reacts to call he should be investigated
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnKK5NnPJcQ

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    pat

    I’ve been waiting for someone to post this.
    Greenwald explains how the FakeNewsMSM silences voices that don’t follow their agenda:

    Youtube: 2min25sec: 27 Mar: Ingraham Angle/Fox: Glenn Greenwald UNLOADS on Jeff Zucker & CNN (& MSNBC): “They are Fraudsters”
    posted by Edriss
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn7iFYm1JAs

    27 Mar: The Hill: Dershowitz: CNN banned me ‘because they want a one-sided presentation’
    By Joe Concha
    Attorney Alan Dershowitz on Monday asserted on Fox News that he thought he had been banned from appearing on CNN “because they want a one-sided presentation” in analyzing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
    “I have been right from day one, and almost all the other pundits and professors have just been dead wrong,” Dershowitz told “The Story” anchor Martha MacCallum.
    “CNN banned me from their air because I was being too fair. I was trying to assess what the essential issue was, and I wasn’t being partisan. They didn’t want that. They didn’t want that.”
    “CNN wouldn’t have me on the air because they want a one-sided presentation, and everybody who watches CNN was shocked by the conclusions,” Dershowitz, who is an opinion contributor for The Hill, added…

    Dershowitz used to regularly appear on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to talk about the Mueller investigation, but has only appeared on Fox News for the past several months…
    “They misinformed the American public and they have to have some public accountability,” he added…
    https://thehill.com/homenews/media/435783-dershowitz-cnn-banned-me-because-they-want-a-one-sided-presentation

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    pat

    27 Mar: Chicago Tribune Editorial: The Jussie Smollett Fiasco: Kim Foxx digs a deeper hole
    On Wednesday, Foxx tried to explain the indefensible, and failed. Instead she dug herself a deeper hole.
    In essence, she said there’s public confusion about all this because the public just doesn’t understand the intricacies of the legal system.
    “Every single day,” Foxx told WBEZ, “… there are people who get similar arrangements … people who get sentences that are probably not what some people would want. Every single day.” As if to say: Trust us. You critics don’t understand.

    That doesn’t come close to explaining why Foxx’s office brought the case this far, then let a celebrity walk, even though his alleged crimes consumed thousands of police man-hours in a city pummeled by violent crime. Foxx may think she has calmed the storm, but she hasn’t.
    Three urgent questions remain for the state’s attorney…ETC

    On Wednesday, the Chicago Police Department released its investigative file (LINK) in the Smollett case. We appreciate that transparency, and if police have records of all their contacts with prosecutors in the early days of this case — including any efforts by Foxx or her prosecutors to influence the trajectory of the investigation — we hope CPD will release those records too.
    Ms. Foxx, CPD’s actions should inspire you to be just as transparent — now
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-jussie-smollett-kim-foxx-20190327-story.html

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      robert rosicka

      There are claims that Michelle Obama made a direct plea to those responsible for letting him off .

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    Hanrahan

    Why do they persist with the narrative that the Russians hacked the DNC? The transfer rate was far higher than that which can be achieved over the web. It was an inside job.

    Why was Seth Rich murdered? Do you believe in coincidences?

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    pat

    a MUST-READ:

    27 Mar: WashingtonFreeBeacon: Soros Bankrolled Unverified ‘Hate Crime’ Database Used by Major Media Outlets
    ‘Documenting Hate’ receives data from SPLC, CAIR, and partners with more than 100 outlets
    By Joe Schoffstall
    The database, launched following the election of President Donald Trump, is “unverified” and receives stories of alleged “hate” from the likes of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization currently in upheaval over charges of institutional racism perpetrated by its recently fired co-founder, Morris Dees, and the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group that was previously listed as an unindicted co-conspirator of terrorism.

    Media partners involved in the initiative have access to the unverified database, and use it to report stories of hate in the Trump era.
    ProPublica, an investigative reporting nonprofit based in New York City, launched the project, known as “Documenting Hate,” in 2017. The New York Times backed the project in January 2017 editorial, “Why We Need a Project to Document Hate Crimes.”…

    ABC News later ran a piece titled, “Help ABC News, ProPublica and other newsrooms across America track hate crimes across the US” that also cites the SPLC as to why it is needed. The announcement urges the public to share their stories if they have been a victim of a hate crime.

    The project received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from George Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society, according to the group’s most recent tax forms…
    Soros vowed to put $10 million into combating hate crimes following Trump’s election…
    While “Documenting Hate” is not specifically mentioned by name on the tax forms, the Soros donations were, in fact, for the project, which made it possible for the initiative to launch and maintain itself, according to a phone interview with Richard Tofel, the president of ProPublica…

    Other media partners involved in “Documenting Hate” include Google News Labs, BuzzFeed News, Huffington Post, the Guardian, the Boston Globe, NBC News, and Fusion. Seventeen university newspapers and six colleges are also involved with the initiative.

    The project does not contain any right-leaning publications or organizations…
    “The partners include organizations you’d think of as legitimate-but-liberal news outlets—the Los Angeles Times, PBS and ABC News. But they partner with blatantly left-wing outlets with little credibility like The Root, TPM and Vox,” said Dan Gainor, the vice president for Business and Culture at the Media Research Center…

    Jonathan Kaplan, spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations, said that the grants were made out of concern over a “national wave” of incidents following the 2016 presidential elections…

    ***UPDATE: Following publication, Tofel specified that the $375,000 grant from Soros was used in 2017 while the $200,000 grant was used in 2018, adding that they had expired in December. ***Google is now funding the project, according to Tofel. This post has been updated to reflect this information.
    https://freebeacon.com/issues/soros-bankrolls-unverified-hate-crime-database-used-by-major-media-outlets/

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    pat

    novel length, EXCELLENT:

    25 Mar: BigLeaguePolitics: Here’s The Full Story of How Obama, Hillary and Brennan Carried Out The Crime of the Century
    by Patrick Howley
    We have explosive information about this scheme, including the involvement of former president Barack Obama, Obama intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper, failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, the Fusion GPS set-up agent Natalia Veselnitskaya, and even foreign leaders including Angela Merkel.
    This article will firmly demonstrate the following…READ ALL
    https://bigleaguepolitics.com/howley-heres-the-full-story-of-how-obama-hillary-and-brennan-carried-out-the-crime-of-the-century/

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    Serp

    How is it that nobody understands banks will continue to cheat us until such time as we start gaoling their chief executives for the misfeasance of those who report to them?

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    pat

    27 Mar: Breitbart: Exclusive — Rand Paul: ‘Absolutely’ James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Others Should Testify on Spygate Role, Be Subpoenaed if Necessary
    by Matthew Boyle
    “The president was at lunch today and he voiced his support for investigating the people who concocted this hoax,” Paul told Breitbart News. “He didn’t use the word hoax, those are my words, but I think we should get to the bottom of this and he believes we should get to the bottom of this because this should never happen to another president. He feels that it’s damaging to the country, damaging to the ability to lead the country, that we basically—somebody within the Obama administration, within the DOJ and the FBI, basically concocted an investigation, trumped it up to be something that it wasn’t and then we’ve gone through two years of the country being stalled because of this fake investigation.”

    When asked specifically if former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice should be called to testify about their role in the matter—and be subpoenaed to force their testimony if they refuse to voluntarily comply—Paul said: “Absolutely.”

“We have John Brennan, who lied to us, who spied on the Senate and tapped into Senate computers,” Paul said. “We have James Clapper who came before the Intelligence Committee and said they weren’t collecting all of our phone data. So both Brennan and Clapper have been known to lie in official testimony. They should be brought forward and asked what was their part? What was their role in ginning up this dossier? Amazingly, most media outlets wouldn’t even print the dossier because they thought it was so unsubstantiated. And then all of a sudden, the FBI gives it credence. There’s one interesting story out today that says still no one would print it, so then Comey gives it to President Trump and that’s when it’s been leaked and then we have a news story saying that this dossier had been given to the president and that became the hook or the story.”…

    “I think it’s a terrible tragedy,” Paul said of the investigation. “It cost us $30 million, two years to go through all of this, the media has been so consumed by all of this that they have barely had time to report on any of the real news of the day. I think we shouldn’t allow this to happen again to a Republican or a Democrat.”

    For now, the full Mueller report is not yet public—and Paul said he intends to object to its full release until such time as all the documents regarding the Obama administration’s abuse of power to start this “hoax” investigation are also released.

    “My plan is to object to the release of the Mueller report and/or all of the Mueller information until they also release the complete information from the White House, DOJ, FBI, on why they chose to credit the dossier,” Paul said. “What were the discussions? And who was it who was promoting that the dossier was real? How did it come about? How were all these judgments made? So, the other side wants to read a million pages of Mueller report. We’re going to want to read a million pages of how this whole Russian hoax got started.”

    This is the first part of a lengthy interview with Sen. Paul on Spygate in the wake of the Mueller probe clearing President Trump on all matters. More is forthcoming soon.
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/26/exclusive-rand-paul-absolutely-james-clapper-john-brennan-susan-rice-others-should-testify-spygate-role-subpoenaed-necessary/

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    el gordo

    BoM failed to capture all the recent rain.

    http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=6144

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    pat

    27 Mar: Townhall: Michelle Malkin: Crony State: Obamas’ Chicago Fixer Tina Tchen
    –Tchen and Smollett’s sister, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, joined together in March 2018 at South by Southwest in Austin to proclaim that “There Is No Time’s Up Without Women Of Color.”…
    –In May 2018, Tchen and Smollett-Bell took the stage together again — hand-in-hand, glued at the hip — at the United State of Women Summit in Los Angeles (where Tchen’s former boss and gal pal, Michelle Obama, also appeared).
    –Smollett-Bell and another sister, Jazz Smollett-Warwell, worked for the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and volunteered as tireless surrogates.
    –My search of White House visitor logs shows Jurnee Smollett-Bell paying at least one personal visit to “POTUS/FLOTUS” at their residence in March 2013 while Tchen was serving as a top strategist to both Obamas…

    –Tchen personally shoveled more than $200,000 into the 2008 Obama presidential campaign coffers while a high-powered lawyer at white-shoe Skadden Arps.
    –Tchen served as special assistant to President Obama, and then took over as chief of staff in the East Wing for Mrs. Obama.
    –Tchen headed up the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, spearheaded by longtime Chicago pal and fellow corporate lawyer/bundler Valerie Jarrett.
    –Tchen coordinated Hollywood celebrities to promote Obama’s domestic policy agenda through the taxpayer-subsidized National Endowment for the Arts.
    –Tchen was listed in 2009 White House visitor logs I reviewed as having met there with radical left-wing billionaire George Soros.
    –As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak noted, Soros donated a total of $408,000 to super PACs supporting Foxx’s successful primary and general campaigns for Cook County state attorney.

    Given Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s hand-holding friendship with Tchen, Tchen’s intimacy with the Obamas, and Michelle Obama’s chumminess with Jussie Smollett (she hosted him at a musical event at the White House in 2016 and danced with him on stage at a College Signing Day Event in 2018), it is not unreasonable to wonder how much direct knowledge the Obamas themselves may have had about Tchen’s role as Smollett’s fixer.

    Tchen has made quite the career out of exploiting her Obama connections, including cushy spots on VICE’s Diversity and Inclusion Board, Uber’s #MeToo advisory board, and the Grammys’ task force for inclusion and diversity. But those plum jobs and her role in Smollett’s Folly all pale in comparison to her newest gig: playing watchdog over the crumbling Southern Poverty Law Center…ETC
    https://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2019/03/27/crony-state-obamas-chicago-fixer-tina-tchen-n2543804

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      Hanrahan

      We know that a President can be impeached so I would assume Attorneys General and judges making decisions in flagrant disregard of the law can be too.

      The shackles are off Mr President, time to get serious.

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    Another Ian

    “If Solar And Wind Are So Cheap, Why Are They Making Electricity So Expensive?”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/27/if-solar-and-wind-are-so-cheap-why-are-they-making-electricity-so-expensive/

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    Another Ian

    Nice distinction there IMO

    ““Using an extended semiempirical modeling approach, we show that these sea-level changes are consistent with global temperature for at least the past millennium.”

    No. Using an extended semiempirical modeling approach, you demonstrate that these sea-level changes can be modeled to be consistent with global temperature for at least the past millennium.”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/03/27/y2kyoto-this-was-the-moment-the-rise-of-the-oceans-began-to-slow/#comment-1194521

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    Antoine D'Arche

    a really funny 4 mins or so
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cVsmuxOj28

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    James

    https://www.eternitynews.com.au/australia/religious-leaders-stage-funeral-for-coal/

    Churches are endorsing this nonsense as well. No wonder no one wants to attend anymore. Probably too busy working second jobs to afford electricity!

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      Annie

      Oh, for heaven’s sake! What a load of unmitigated rubbish. I despair of the gormless, unthinking virtue-signalling stance of so many religious ‘leaders’. Well, they don’t lead me! We are criticised for daring to think for ourselves about this MM-supposed-catastrophe for which ‘they’ try to make us feel guilty.
      As a complete aside, the late March weather in Dubai was wondrous wet and thundery last night and this morning (seen in previous years btw). I saw an amazing sight this morning watching the A380 before ours take off with an absolutely massive spray of water as it gathered speed. I guess we did the same!

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        James

        They have some of the longest runways in the world there. In the heat of the summer it takes a lot of runway to get one of those planes airborne. I suspect they alter their schedules to take off during the cooler hours, as there is a limit on the speed that the tires can handle.

        I have been to UAE before, this time last year. An interesting place to visit, but I could not live there. I flew in there on a 737 Max 8, before they started to have problems with them.

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          Annie

          Actually they fly all day, every day, including high summer! Astonishing as that is. Last year, on one visit, we had to land in very gusty, dusty, sandy conditions and then fly on to UK. That time the aircraft taking off before us disappeared into the gloom before rotation…phew!
          The storms did delay some of the movements last night and this morning and that was slowing down the departures. I felt for one couple rushing for the gate…they had decamped from the non-stop from AKL only 10 mins previously…poor things.

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        James

        https://youtu.be/GW3v4xsrWsU

        A very good talk by Lord Monckton. He discusses amongst other things the need for morality through religion for science to function properly. Also has a good jab at religious leaders mentioned above.

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    el gordo

    New World Order

    ‘Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte received warm praise in Chinese state media when he hosted President Xi Jinping in Rome and formally endorsed China’s contentious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    ‘Italy is the first G-7 nation to officially join the BRI, which aims to revive ancient trade routes between East and West. China has promised to reward its supporter with new business opportunities and generous investment in its infrastructure.’

    The Diplomat

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    Douglas Cotton, B.Sc(physics) etc.

    Back in the 1990’s NASA and climatologists produced diagrams purporting to explain the energy flows into and out of the Earth’s surface. The only input was direct radiation impinging on the surface. They correctly calculated that as having a global mean of about 168 watts per square meter (W/m^2). This is the equivalent of radiation striking orthogonally (perpendicular) to a flat surface: in other words, it does take into account the fact that the Earth is a sphere. The radiation passing through a circle with the radius of the Earth then has to be spread out over the surface of a sphere which has four times that area. Furthermore, about 20% of the solar radiation is reflected back to Space and about 30% is absorbed by water vapor, carbon dioxide etc in the atmosphere before it gets to the surface. So the 168 figure is about one-eighth of the solar flux reaching the top of the atmosphere when the Sun is directly overhead at certain times and only in the tropics.

    Now at some stage it was realized that there was a major problem with that 168 figure, because there is a law in physics (the Stefan-Boltzmann Law) which allows us to deduce that this 168W/m^2 is far too little to explain the global mean surface temperature. In fact it does not get within 54 degrees of that temperature.

    And so, this is where climatologists got it all horribly wrong and guessed that it must be radiation from the atmosphere that made up the difference. They thought that the only non-radiative processes between the warmer surface and the cooler atmosphere were such things as conduction, convection and evaporative cooling. They estimated the sum of these non-radiative processes to be about 102W/m^2. Then, because the radiation from the surface can be estimated as about 390W/m^2 they then deduced the flux of this downwelling “back radiation” from the atmosphere to be 324W/m^2 by difference – that is, so that the inward and outward totals matched: 168+324=390+102.

    But, and it’s a big “but” physicists know that you can’t just add radiative fluxes from different sources (like the Sun and the atmosphere) and use the total in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations. And yet that is precisely what is implied in the newer energy diagrams from NASA that show this back radiation. From this they deduce (and use it in their computer models) that extra radiation from carbon dioxide raises the surface temperature even more. I know some of you think from your teenage education years that carbon dioxide “traps” energy, but even the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) realized last century that there was no evidence supporting the conjecture that one molecule of carbon dioxide in 2,500 other air molecules could have its temperature (below zero C) raised a fraction and somehow warm all the other 2,500 molecules (all below zero C) and then that warming somehow gets back to the surface (which is far warmer) and raises its temperature, there being thus a heat transfer from cold to hot via radiation – an impossibility.

    So we are left with a big mystery because there does indeed have to be additional thermal energy getting into the surface. This is even more obvious on Venus where the solar radiation reaching its surface is only about one-eighth of what we receive, and yet it is about 460C there.

    That mystery was solved and explained for the first time anywhere in world literature in my 2013 paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures” at https://ssrn.com/author=2627605. You can learn about it in 15 minutes by watching https://youtu.be/bT1iFhGKOI8.

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