America is so divided in 2016 that one half of the electorate can barely understand the other. Comprehending the Donald Trump phenomenon has become the dominant theme of US election coverage…
Dear BBC et al, half the electorate is mocked, reviled, and otherwise ignored. No wonder the other half are clueless… The divided electorates throughout the West don’t understand each other because there is no national conversation to understand. When was the last time the BBC (or ABC) employed a show host that was a skeptic, Brexit-fan, or UKIP voter? Count the years. How about a whole panel? A series? A doco? When was the last government grant awarded to someone to explain the dangers of big-creeping-government?
A better question would be why the old media are wall-to-wall fans of Big-Gov?
In the US a smashing 96 percent of campaign donations by the media industry went to Clinton. Only 7% of journalists identify as Republicans. How many journalists have ever run a business or lived off investments (as in a real business that sells to consumers, not to the government?) Their wet-left academic training didn’t teach them how to investigate, or the discipline to study the ideas of their opponents. Nor is there training on the ethics of shamelessly pushing their own personal political preference. Only 20% of US people think the media even try to be unbiased. The public know there is a problem — but that doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t generate a national conversation — not one with manners and genuine curiosity instead of namecalling bun-fests.
The BBC crew realize something is missing. Someone wondered on Oct 12th why hatred for Hillary Clinton runs so deep. By Oct 31, they were still asking Why are the candidates so unpopular. Flummoxed, I tell you! By golly, however did the US end up with a choice of two such unpopular candidates? Could it be because one appears to be running a crime syndicate (which nobody likes), but the old media ignores that and mocks the other candidate relentlessly.
Half the US reads the alt-media, and knows about the corruption, which makes them feel betrayed, sold out, and madder than hell. But the other half think the peak issue of the campaign is one guy’s crass bragging to another guy on a bus eleven years ago, not the $50 million dubious dollars the Secretary of State’s family made on-the-side, or the 30,000 emails she bleached after they were subpoenaed.
They’ve spent a year demonising one candidate, and twenty years lauding the other. They sold a message that dumb, old, selfish people vote for a smaller government, while smart young clever things know that the answer to everything is to ask Big-Santa to solve it with the magic money made by the elves at the Treasury. They bought their own advertising.
Look at the “Loyal Army” story. To set the scene the BBC recite the litany of Donald Trump’s flaws for the 4000th time then wonder why some people aren’t convinced:
What has puzzled people who won’t be voting for him, is how tens of millions of their fellow citizens could still be willing to support him. Who are they?
Wait til you hear the genius flash:
The answer is to be found in understanding what I call “The Bloc”.
(Otherwise known as the Middle Class Worker.)
“The Bloc, roughly 40% of the electorate, doesn’t represent a majority in the US but it is the country’s largest unified group of voters. It has lost four of the last six presidential elections but has mostly remained in control of one or both houses of Congress, and many state legislatures, making it almost impossible for Democratic administrations to govern the country.”
Hmm. How to understand the right-wing – Use standard left-voting-journalistic trick — ask another left-voter:
“One Clinton supporter I met … did understand. Bonnie Cordova, a retired schoolteacher, and I were both watching the second presidential debate at the Bohemian Beer Garden in the New York borough of Queens. I asked her afterwards if she understood why people might vote for Trump.
She did. “I taught in inner city schools for 30 years,” Cordova explained. “I was passed over a few times for promotion for a really good job because I wasn’t a minority and I was working at a school where the kids got free dental and optical treatment because they were immigrant children and I was having trouble affording it for my kids.” She acknowledged that made her resentful. “That’s a flame that can be fanned into hatred. You have to rise above it.”
The innumerate argument is that everyone should feel good about paying money to strangers to support their kids
So “The bloc” (sounds so attractive) are morally inferior people who can’t “rise above” petty jealousy. If Michael Goldfarb actually went so far as to interview a Trump supporter in depth, and tried to understand their struggles and concerns, instead of the superficial platitudes, he might find that there were numbers that don’t add up. Like bills and taxes. Mortgages. (Michael Moore gets it).
The innumerate argument is that everyone should feel good about paying money to strangers to support their kids. But how much money? The BBC never asks. Santa will provide. That’s the more advanced conversation the country (all of the Western ones) needs to have.
Why is the campaign full of hate? Blame the media. They demonize Trump, and if they’d done a tenth of a percent of real job of investigating Clinton, the Democrats would never have selected her. The media are destroying the Democrats by not asking hard questions.
Some of the media are, err, waking up “just in time”?
What a week — even the Washington Post (Clinton cheer squad) suddenly finds that Trump can give a good speech. Journo Chris Cillizza says Trump has a great message, “perfect” and marvels that Trump could have used this message for the whole campaign (as if he hasn’t been doing that all along). Could this be the first time Cillizza has watched a Trump speech direct rather than through the CNN filter?
“I am not a politician,” Trump said. “My only special interest is you, the American people. The guiding rule of the political class in Washington, D.C., is that they are looking out only for themselves. They will say anything, and do anything, to cling to their power and prestige at your expense. I’m running to change and reverse decades of failure, and to work with the American people to create generations of success.”
That is an absolutely perfect message for this I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore electorate. People want change desperately. And almost no one believes Clinton represents that radical change — or anything close to it. Trump, in that passage above, puts his life outside of politics forward as incontrovertible evidence that he will walk the walk when it comes to bringing real change to the nation’s capitol.
What struck me most about the speech — aside from how well written and delivered it was — was that it laid bare how simply Trump could have constructed a winning message in this campaign. Cast Clinton as the status quo. Make her own every policy and every controversy of the previous Clinton and Obama administrations.
Oh for the luxury of an election about policies! But when corruption rules, it gazumps the rest — no point in discussing the policies (whatever they are) if they might be managed by friends for the benefit of donors instead of the needy. All hail the slush fund.
Indeed why even discuss candidates if your vote might be flipped? Things are suddenly silly-electric. Last week Hillary mocked Trump for his talk of vote rigging, and contesting the election, but this week her team is assembling a voter protection program with thousands of lawyers. (And all the Dems had to do to avoid this was to approve voter ID checks.)
As the last week of the endless election begins Trump is jumping in the polls as the media churns with stories about the FBI investigating practically everyone, and voter volunteer watchdog teams are springing up.
The scale of the FBI’s interest in some of America’s most powerful political fixers – one of them a sitting governor – underlines just how difficult it will be for Clinton to shake off the taint of scandal if she enters the White House.
There are, in fact, not one but five separate FBI investigations which involve members of Clinton’s inner circle or their closest relatives – the people at the center of what has come to be known as Clintonworld.
The five known investigations are into: Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin’s estranged husband sexting a 15-year-old; the handling of classified material by Clinton and her staff on her private email server; questions over whether the Clinton Foundation was used as a front for influence-peddling; whether the Virginia governor broke laws about foreign donations; and whether Hillary’s campaign chairman’s brother did the same.
Imagine Clinton wins — somewhere out there are the receivers of 30,000 missing emails.
Assuming some of those emails contain things a President would not want seen, especially if the FBI is investigating her, that hands rather lot of negotiating power to the people who hold copies of those emails.
It’s a pretty weak president who may have to please so many masters.
Though, there is a chance all the emails will be released before the election…
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are arming up for a possible post-Election Day battle.
Clinton is assembling a voter protection program that has drawn thousands of lawyers agreeing to lend their time and expertise in battleground states, though the campaign isn’t saying exactly how many or where. It is readying election observers in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and Arizona to assess any concerns — including the potential for voter intimidation — and to verify normal procedures.
The Republican National Lawyers Association, which trains attorneys in battleground states and in local jurisdictions where races are expected to be close, aims to assemble 1,000 lawyers ready to monitor polls and possibly challenge election results across the country. Hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, one of Trump’s biggest backers, has sunk$500,000 into the group, its biggest donation in at least four presidential elections, Internal Revenue Service filings show.
“We are fighting for open, fair and honest elections,” the association’s executive director, Michael Thielen, said in an e-mail.
The state of Virginia has five million voters, but they printed six million ballots. Sites that needed an extra 700 ballots in 2012 (provisional ones) have been sent 84,000. Other sites are crazier:
“In 2012, Fairfax used 2,500 provisional ballots. In 2016, they received over 265,000. This is ridiculous.”
Still, a thousand illegal voters were registered to vote in Virginia in one sample of eight localities. Perhaps they’ll need the extra ballots?
1. Perjury: Did she turn over ALL the work related emails on orders of a federal judge?
2. Obstruction of Justice: Did she destroy evidence?
3. Bribery: Among others, there is the donations from Clinton friends to the wife of the number 3 at the FBI…
4. Pay for Play: Selling favors from the US for donations to the Clinton Foundation.
5. Illegal Use of a Nonprofit Organization: The Clinton Foundation violates the laws for charitable organizations.
6. Racketeering: Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy observed that Hillary Clinton’s abuse of the State Department looks an awful lot like a “racketeering enterprise”.
7. Fraud: Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel has been building a case that the “Clinton Charity Network,” as he calls the complete system of Clinton operations, has committed “charity fraud of epic proportions.” In part, he refers to discrepancies between donor accounts and the Clinton Foundation’s books.
A video titled “The Dark Art of Political Intimidation” was posted last week by WSJ columnist Kimberly Strassel as a PragerU lecture. “Within several hours of PragerU posting the video,” said a WSJ editorial, YouTube placed it in ‘restricted mode,’ making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young Americans whose parents have enabled YouTube technology filters.”
The stakes are do or die, especially for Clinton.
Thanks to Pat and other commenters for all the great links and discussion.
US Flag photo adapted from Wikimedia: Image Clément Bardot
Excuses are flowing but the Clinton campaign has only itself to thank for this PR disaster
Count the ways the Clinton’s could have prevented this trainwreck. 1,2,3…
The Clinton’s raised the stakes from the start — earning something like $57 million on-the-side during the four years that Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. This is not illegal, but it raises red flag questions of “conflict of interest”. Anyone playing this game while in charge of trade deals for the largest economy on Earth had better play straight, be careful, and be totally transparent. Hillary apparently did none of the above. The combination of an incoming river of money, with the mysterious disappearance of 30,000 emails added a radioactive glow to what was just a red flag. Those emails were under subpoena. If only she hadn’t deleted the emails…
“The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.” — New York Post
UPDATE: Is that 5.7%, 15%, or 88%? The Clinton Foundation supporters claim the charity employs people directly to help, so the IRS tally of grants underestimates the amount used to help people. (Though I wonder if people in Haiti or what not would prefer they got the money direct rather than have Clinton Foundation employees “help facilitate partnerships” (whatever that is). Charity Watch, gave the Clinton Foundation an A rating and says it spends only 12 percent of the money it raises on “overhead.”
The Federalist documents the Clinton IRS forms and information and points out that while technically more than 6% goes to charity, a lot of money is paid to hold large dinner parties and to preserve the legend of Bill.
The Clinton Foundation’s three largest charitable “program service accomplishments,” according to its tax reports, are the Clinton Global Initiative ($23.2 million), the Clinton Presidential Library ($12.3 million), and the Clinton Climate Initiative ($8.3 million). The Clinton Global Initiative, which exists to organize and produce a lavish annual meeting headlined by former president Bill Clinton, was characterized by the New York Times as a “glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities,” hardly a portrait of the kind of charitable work that directly impacts the lives of the needy.
Ira Magaziner, a top former Clinton Foundation executive, also explicitly rejected that the group’s climate change activities were charitable in nature. “This is not charity,” Magaziner told The Atlanticin 2007. “The whole thing is bankable. It’s a commercial proposition.”
Meanwhile, ‘Charles Ortel, the investigator who uncovered the financial discrepancies at General Motors before its stock crashed, says the Clinton Foundation is “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud ever.”’
More than half the people outside government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave to the Clinton Foundation, the Associated Press reported Aug. 23. At least 85 of 154 from private interests donated as much as $156 million to the foundation, AP said. — Post-Gazette
The Clinton’s unconventional method of running a charity meant “Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, recently refused to rate the Clinton Foundation because its “atypical business model . . . doesn’t meet our criteria.”
Apparently Charity Navigator and other assessors which didn’t like the Foundation have seen the light in an election year and reassessed the Foundation and given it four stars. Who knows? Other non profit experts have been pretty vocal: “It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group.”
——————–
Really she’s a nice person married to a great man and they get paid a lot to speak because they’re inspiring, visionary, inventive,… have lots of friends in high places. They raise millions for charity and lots-more-millions to fly themselves first class while she keeps forgetting things she’s supposed to remember, and loses emails she is supposed to keep.
The Democrats didn’t have to get themselves into this mess
It was never a good idea for a political party to nominate someone facing an FBI investigation and for most of the Democrat primaries, it was a possibility. Harry Reid claims the FBI are breaking the law and may affect the election. But no matter what the FBI does, it will be accused of “affecting the election”. Revealing stuff and hiding stuff can both swing elections. The FBI’s only real defense is transparency.
Let’s not forget that 24 years ago Bill Clinton cheered on an FBI probe that was announced against George Bush Snr a mere weekend before the 1992 election and which some Republicans blamed for costing Bush the election.
Why now when the timing is so tight? — There was a revolt at the FBI
There have been reports for weeks that a revolt was building at the FBI. Agents who put their lives on the line for their nation were fed up that James Comey, their Director had said charges shouldn’t be laid even as he admitted Hillary was as good as guilty. He said she was “extremely careless” with the “very sensitive” and “highly classified” national secrets, and “any reasonable person” should have known to do better. Isn’t that exactly what the law was supposed to prevent?
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
Even his wife wanted him to press charges:
[talking to his]…wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state.
‘He talks about the damage that he’s done to himself and the institution [of the FBI], and how he’s been shunned by the men and women who he admires and work for him. It’s taken a tremendous toll on him.
‘It shattered his ego. He looks like he’s aged 10 years in the past four months.’
In the long run, perhaps, the FBI is one of the only institutions that no one can buy off and intimidate. Though there are suspicions that it was attempted. A political action group tied to the Clintons had donated half a million dollars to the wife of Andrew McCabe, at the time, the number three at the FBI. His wife Jill McCabe was a political novice with little history of party activism and yet with just two donations she raised twice the money of the previous candidate. Later he was promoted to number 2, and “started overseeing the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server.” All parties involved deny any wrong-doing. (Of course…) Ten days to go, thousands of emails to read. The FBI say they “don’t know what they have”.
The derision and mockery used so heavily by the Democrat camp and their media supporters means there is a potential “shy vote”. Polling is hopelessly compromised by the uncertainty of whether voters will turn up to vote. Will some voters stay away because they are certain their candidate will romp it in? Will passionate Trump fans bring five friends to the booths? Will that passion be enough to outdo the hire-cars and buses the Democrat operatives brag they are organizing?
Australian taxpayers are funding the Clinton slush fund
At least 88 million dollars from Australian taxpayers went directly to the Clinton Foundation, but nearly half a billion went to “Clinton affiliated” groups. What did we get for that money — a job for an ex-PM?
Miranda Devine: Foreign-funded green groups could take whole swathes of Australia out of the productive economy
Gillard also donated $300 million of our money to the Clinton-affiliated Global Partnership for Education.
Lo and behold, she became chairman in 2014 and has been actively promoting Clinton as president ever since — in a campaign video last December slamming Trump, in opeds trumpeting the next woman president and in appearances with Clinton spruiking girls’ education.
The Abbott government topped up the left-wing organisation’s coffers with another $140 million in 2014, bringing total Australian largesse to $460 million, according to a press release from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
How much did Tony Abbott know — was this donation really a Julie Bishop gift done without Abbott involvement?
The consequences are going to flow for years: jail anyone?
Huma Abedin, Clinton’s right-hand-woman, testified earlier this year that she had handed over all her devices that had relevant emails to the Clinton investigators. She doesn’t know how they ended up on her estranged husbands lap top, but if she is found to have lied she faces up to five years.
Ten days to go, thousands of emails to read. The FBI say they “don’t know what they have”.
We do know that they have a monster-load of emails of Hillary’s right hand woman, vice chair of Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the FBI think they can’t afford not to let the world know. For those who don’t know who Huma Abedin is: Vanity Fairpretty much describes her as the “key glue” for Hillary, around her all the time, the inner-inner circle:
… along with Chelsea, Abedin is “the third rail” of the Clinton political world.
Bob Barnett, the lawyer who brokered the Clintons’ multi-million-dollar book deals, says Huma is “now one of the key glues that holds Clintonworld together…. She knows everyone and everyone knows her.
For those wondering why the FBI would make this “blockbuster” announcement now, read the National Review to get an idea of the potential. (Noting that the FBI have released almost no details on what they have found):
Mrs. Clinton appears to have converted the office of secretary of state into a racketeering enterprise.
Andrew C. McCarthy
She appears to have used her official powers to do favors for major Clinton Foundation donors. Felony mishandling of classified information, including our nation’s most closely guarded intelligence secrets; the misappropriation and destruction of tens of thousands of government records — these are serious criminal offenses. To this point, the Justice Department and FBI have found creative ways not to charge Hillary Clinton for them. Whether this will remain the case has yet to be seen. As we go to press, the stunning news has broken that the FBI’s investigation is being reopened.
Mrs. Clinton appears to have converted the office of secretary of state into a racketeering enterprise.
Hillary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, operated the Clinton Foundation. Ostensibly a charity, the foundation was a de facto fraud scheme to monetize Hillary’s power as secretary of state (among other aspects of the Clintons’ political influence). The scheme involved (a) the exchange of political favors, access, and influence for millions of dollars in donations; (b) the circumvention of campaign-finance laws that prohibit political donations by foreign sources; (c) a vehicle for Mrs. Clinton to shield her State Department e-mail communications from public and congressional scrutiny while she and her husband exploited the fundraising potential of her position; and (d) a means for Clinton insiders to receive private-sector compensation and explore lucrative employment opportunities while drawing taxpayer-funded government salaries.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441573/hillary-clinton-corruption-foundation
The piquant irony is that for all the Russian hacking these emails were tripped over by the FBI during an investigation of Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who accidentally tweeted a selfie-of-the-worst-kind to 45,000 people. He, it turns out, is married to Hillary’s right hand woman — Huma Abedin, who has been working for Hillary for most of the last 20 years. Ouch.
For those who want the general moving picture news (but without the juicy Nat Review depth) see ABC news. (US).
With every baseless scare come the inevitable victims: those who are gullible, through no fault of their own, like children, graduates of eco-science degrees, and people who think the ABC gives them impartial information.
Psychoterratica: or earth related (terra) mental health (psyche) states or conditions.
GlennAlbrect did a Ted talk, if you can bear to watch it, tell us the best quotes: I spot a “Tipping point of the brain”. He’s a philosopher. If only he understood the philosophy called science, he might be useful.
We live in the richest, safest era of human life on Earth. For a hundred thousand years everyone was afraid of dysentry, snakes, and the marauding tribe next door. They all starved periodically and buried their children often. They said prayers to pagan gods they hoped would save them. Now 1 – 2 billion lucky sods have escaped that dreadful fear, and live a life rich beyond the wildest dreams of the neolithic grinder. Some that won the lottery worry instead that burning coal in Queensland will melt arctic ice and create homeless polar bears. Or they think there are climate death squads.
Apparently the ABC is funded to make Psychoterratica worse, and they are doing the best they can.
Kirsty Melville will present a radio program on Monday.
Though I think there is a secret honesty to this program — look at this sentence in the advertising blurb:
If you don’t fully grasp the wide ranging and complex facts, it can feel like ‘too much’.
So if you do grasp the facts, it’s all cool. Is this Freudian, or just bad English?
One day perhaps people will be able to sue those who caused unnecessary psychoterratica. At least the citizens should get their tax back from the ABC / BBC/ CBC / NPR reporters who do absolutely no cross checking, ever, of anything issued by the IPCC or Greenpeace et al. Will the psychoterrorised get compensation for the superannuation funds that bombed after being disinvested in coal, or for the healthcare we can’t afford because the government frittered away the research funds on windmills?
The US election continues to surprise. It breaks all the rules. Who stands up for the workers now, for the disaffected middle class — Donald Trump, and that’s according to Michael Moore, dedicated progressive. He gave a speech that is going viral with conservatives and has even been used to make an advert for Trump. Moore is telling the world that Trump will win (which he fears). Perhaps Moore was trying to get complacent Clinton fans worried and and get them out to vote. It may have the opposite effect. Even Moore sounds like he admires Trump. Perhaps he is hoping the left will pick up the same memes — even as he calls Trump voters “legal terrorists”.
Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said: if you close these factories, as you are planning to do in Detroit, and rebuild them in Mexico, I am going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s going to buy them.
It was an amazing thing to see.
No politician — Republican or Democrat — had ever said anything like that to these executives. It was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Brexit states. You live here in Ohio. You know what I am talking about.
He is the human molotov cocktail that they have been waiting for. The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them. And on November 8th — election day — although they have lost their jobs. Although they’ve been foreclosed on by the bank. Next came the divorce and now the wife and kids are gone. The car’s been repossessed. They haven’t had a real vacation in years. They’re stuck with the shitty Obamacare bronze plan. They can’t even get a fucking percocet.
(Yells) They have essentially lost everything they had…except one thing. The one thing that doesn’t cost them a cent and is guaranteed to them by the American Constitution: the right to vote.
Trump’s election is going to be the biggest FUCK YOU ever recorded in human history.
At a recent promotional event for his new film “Michael Moore in TrumpLand,” Moore told audience members that he thinks the loudmouthed GOP nominee is going to win, largely because American elites are so cut off from regular people that they don’t realize just how much the middle class has been harmed in recent years.
“I know a lot of people in Michigan that are planning to vote for Trump, and they don’t necessarily agree with him,” the left-leaning documentarian said.
Did Moore imagine he would be featured in an advert for Trump?
The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner was a few days ago. The traditional charity event is the last time both candidates will probably speak at the same place before the election. They were roasting each other. The jokes get sharpened to bleeding point. I love the idea of this charity bash as a quasi fourth debate. The two candidates are jousting with satirical jabs, able to say things that they may not have been allowed to say in any other context. It is a high and difficult art.
I’d like to see it in Australia (though I fear the laughs would be few and far between). Both US candidates are high caliber performers, both can deliver a line with the right timing. Both were composed. Both probably had good speech writers.
Some would say that Trump crossed the “line” with his pointed barbs, where the jab is a little too sharp, and too thinly disguised. (There’s a certain ratio of joke to message that carries the meme to the most people.) I would say satire is meant to make to make a point, otherwise it’s just stand up comedy.
In terms of the psychology of speeches, for this 15 minutes, Trump is the alpha-male commanding the room.
UPDATE: Definition of alpha male: a billionaire at the most expensive gig in the world, on a first name basis with half the audience, scores laughs by tossing insults at the most powerful media heads and political players in the US.
Watch Clinton’s roast of Trump. She is a master politician. Smooth, with good delivery. Clinton took most of the roasting with admirable grace. It would not have been fun.
Lo and Behold — climate change “may” help feed the starving Ethiopians and turn the nation into a “food exporting country”.
( That sounds pretty serious. Pay billions — Stop That Now!)
With so many climate models, sooner or later one was going to turn up something good — in much the same way that Lotto somehow “finds” the winner. Incredibly the happy possibility even made it into a press release.
Perhaps it is safe to admit that climate change may help people in a country where the UN is not wanting to scare the voters into buying carbon credits?
Where are the headlines “Burn Oil and help feed Ethiopia?”
Where are the Green NGOs who see an opportunity here to get Ethiopia on its feet? Don’t they believe the climate models — Or is it that they don’t really give a toss about hungry black kids?
A team of researchers from Virginia Tech have predicted that water availability in the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia may increase in coming decades due to global climate change. It could also lead to increased crop production, spur massive hydroelectric power projects, and foster irrigation development in the region.
“For all the catastrophic impacts of climate change, there are some silver linings,” said Zach Easton, associate professor of biological systems engineering. “The sad irony is that climate change may be the catalyst Ethiopia needs to become a food-exporting country.”
What if a climate model found that a wealthy developed nation (aka “a UN cash cow”) would be better off …
REFERENCE
Moges B. Wagena, Andrew Sommerlot, Anteneh Z. Abiy, Amy S. Collick, Simon Langan, Daniel R. Fuka, Zachary M. Easton. Climate change in the Blue Nile Basin Ethiopia: implications for water resources and sediment transport.Climatic Change, 2016; DOI: 10.1007/s10584-016-1785-z
Restrictions needed on overseas charities funding legal battles
The US money was designed to bankroll a strategy developed five years ago by green activists to “stop Australia’s coal export boom”.
The focus of these efforts was to “run legal challenges that delay, limit or stop all of the major infrastructure projects (mines, rail and ports)”.
A particular priority was to stop the Adani coalmine in central Queensland that would employ up to 10,000 Australians and provide high energy, low impurity coal to India, where 300 million people still do not have access to electricity.
And Hillary wants us to believe that Trump is “risky” and “unpredictable” for foreign relations? This kind of industrial sabotage is a good way to hobble the competition — though playing mean and deceitful with your dedicated allies usually works better if done from secure computers, eh? For Hillary it’s such cosmic bad luck that she keeps employing people who brag about deplorable, dishonorable and even criminal actions in emails and on video. A pack of cheats. Naturally she’ll sack the lot of them, and make it clear to US donors that this sort of thing is never to happen again: “Think of the children in India”.
The emails show that the funders included the Sandler Foundation, the Sea Change Foundation, the Tilia Fund, the Growald Family Fund and the Flora Family Foundation.
In other words, the legal challenges have not come from Mackay, Bowen or Townsville or from local landholders.
Instead they have come from Boston, Boulder and Berkeley from vanity pose foundations uninterested in the double digit unemployment rates in northern Queensland towns or energy access in India.
Green activists keep looking more and more like useful idiots for big money, and in this case, for foreign interests. These are true international grade suckers who help to keep people unemployed in Australia, and keep millions of children in poverty in India while they try to stop the sea rising with windmills.
Brendan Pearson notes:
A legitimate question is this: Did Podesta actively support, co-ordinate, condone or encourage this effort while in the White House?
We give him the benefit of the doubt.
The Adani mine is hoping to be a 40 year project. If Australia doesn’t dig up this coal, India will have to buy lower quality coal from elsewhere, or dig up their own, and that will produce up to 30% more CO2 (as well as increasing real pollution).
The Australian Editorial: Australia’s reputation as a reliable source for investment is on the line. For that reason, but also in the interests of our balance of trade, federal and state budgets and 200 million poor people in remote Indian villages in urgent need of power, Australian governments must not allow their authority to be abrogated by green activists across the Pacific, in inner-urban areas of Australia or elsewhere. As Tony Abbott said before he lost the prime ministership, the rules covering environmental groups delaying major mining projects through the courts should be tightened. The Turnbull government needs to act sooner rather than later to prevent vexatious litigation holding up vital projects.
In their quasi-religious zeal to rid the world of fossil fuels, green activists have elevated themselves, in their own narrow minds and those of their followers, to infallibility status (egged on, ironically, by Pope Francis’s flawed climate change encyclical, Laudato Si). But their arguments against the Adani project are morally and economically bankrupt and would confine millions of people to poverty and filth.
A highly orchestrated, secretly foreign-funded group of Australian environmental activists opposing the $16 billion Adani coalmine in Queensland has “dampened” Indian investment interest in Australia and received heated criticism from the federal Coalition and Queensland Labor governments.
Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal told The Australian yesterday the years of legal challenges to the vast Carmichael coal project, now revealed to have been funded by multi-million-dollar foundations in the US, “will certainly dampen future investments” from India.
The Australian has several articles (probably paywalled).
The warmists who love to play Green, Are on fuels from fossils most keen, As they happily get, On board any jet, Which for them, just like us, is routine.
“That’s 4 straight debates without a single question on climate change.”
Oh no?! Humanity is about to destroy civilization and Brad Plumer wants to know why ” the most powerful nation on Earth can’t set aside five minutes to discuss.”
Poll after poll shows that the public are happy to say they “believe in climate change”, and don’t mind if “the government” wants to give their grandchildren nice weather. But don’t ask them personally to pay: when their money is on the table, the awful truth is they don’t believe the experts, and they don’t want to spend their own money. The poll results are devastating:
So bring it on, say we skeptics, get that climate talk out into the election campaign, put it front and centre and watch the voters run away from anyone who wants to force them to pay to slow the storms.
Carbon schemes have to be hidden to get past the voters
Rarely have voters had a real choice on the climate policies — but they did in Australia in 2013, and they voted for the skeptic in a landslide. Since then, the smarter climate lobbyists know that they can only get “carbon trading” legislation if the public don’t know its coming. The dead dog that is climate action must be hidden under some other meaningless title like the “Safeguard” mechanism. That’s how it happened in Australia. Australians voted for “no carbon tax” two times in a row, then the party threw out the PM, and the carbon tax was quietly snuck in as a subclause, a spare mechanism, that could be sold as “nothing much” if anyone discovered it, but had the potential to be amped up as needed after the legislation was passed by a House and Senate that probably didn’t even know what they were signing.
[T]he media’s entire campaign against Trump is to prevent him from talking about policy. They would rather talk about fat-shaming than trade, immigration and jobs.
Sometimes, it seems like Trump is cheating by taking the vastly more popular side of every issue. The official GOP used to send its candidates out with ankle weights, a 75-pound backpack and blinders. But Trump didn’t agree to take any staggeringly unpopular positions, however much the Business Roundtable loved them.
He’s against amnesty, for building a wall, against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for Social Security, against the Iraq War and for extreme vetting of Muslim immigrants.
That’s why the media have to change the subject to something flashy that will capture the attention of the most down-market, easily fooled voters. Trump is a groper!
Trump has been a rich celebrity for 40 years, employing thousands of women, but this is the first time he has been seriously accused of any sexual impropriety. You will recall that, just this May, The New York Times conducted a major investigation into Trump’s treatment of women — and came up empty-handed. …
Add climate scares to the list of topics the Dems would rather weren’t an election topic.
Other ways to stop people talking about the issues: block, censor, ban
Candians Ezra Levant and Rebel Media have been banned by the U.N. Media Censor from attending the U.N. Marrakech Climate Change Conference as accredited journalists.
The three banned journalists are full-time professionals: Sheila Gunn Reid, the Rebel’s Alberta bureau chief and bestselling author; Meaghan MacSween, a producer, formerly with Global News and Sun News Network; and Alex Jones, a cameraman and editor, also formerly of Sun News Network.
The one-line excuse offered by the UN is that we are “advocacy journalists”…
Most voters still disagree with the FBI’s decision not to seek a criminal indictment of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information when she was secretary of State, and even more rate the issue as important to their vote.
Trump would have been crazy to sign a blank cheque on election results when high ranking Democrat operatives admit on video that they cheat the system as much as they can. Scott Foval bragged they have been busing people in to key seats ” to deal with you fuckin assholes for fifty years, and we’re not going to stop now”. Who plays nice in the face of that rank hostility?
Hillary said Trump’s response was horrible, but the real horror is that it’s so easy to vote early and often and in the wrong place. If Hillary is so concerned about people having faith in the system, she could fix the system. Instead, as George Will points out, the Democrats are doing everything they can to stop voters being asked for ID.
It is hard to think of an innocent reason why Democrats spend so much time, energy and money, scarce resources all, resisting attempts to purge the voter rolls, that is to remove people who are dead or otherwise have left the jurisdiction. It’s hard to think of an innocent reason why they fight so tremendously against Voter I.D. laws. They say, well that burdens the exercise of a fundamental right. The Supreme Court has said that travel is a fundamental right and no one thinks that showing an I.D. at the airport burdens that fundamental right.
It’s not Donald who has contempt for Democracy, it’s the Democrats.
If it can be done, why wouldn’t a means-to-an-ends team do it?
Some newspapers have declared Trump to be Hitler (Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Sydney Morning Herald, though sometimes he’s just Mossolini . So in the face of a genocidal maniac, maybe vote rigging feels like “saving the country” instead of cheating, lying, and trashing a democracy.
If you want a reason to be worried, ask yourself why the mainstream media is so keen on framing the election as “not rigged.” The message I’m getting from them, collectively, is that they think it will be. (Because it will be.) We just don’t know how much the rigging will matter.
Why do I say it will be rigged?
Because whenever humans have motive, opportunity, a high upside gain, and low odds of detection, shenanigans happen 100% of the time. Our vote-counting systems have plenty of weak spots. Rigging (to some degree) is a near guarantee.
So there will be rigging. There already has been rigging (see the paper below). But is it enough to change the outcome? The political researchers think so. In a 2014 study Richman et al found that vote rigging was already happening, and it “likely” did matter.
Non-citizens can vote themselves healthcare (which is a pretty sensible scam if a nation will let you get away with it)
“We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”
Debate Highlights
…
Amazing, Pat found this in the Washington Post: Trump won the third debate. OK, just one among many in the same paper that said the opposite.
See the Clinton Cash movie if there is any one out there who still thinks Ms Hillary has US best interests at heart.
Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?
a b s t r a c t
In spite of substantial public controversy, very little reliable data exists concerning the
frequency with which non-citizen immigrants participate in United States elections.
Although such participation is a violation of election laws in most parts of the United
States, enforcement depends principally on disclosure of citizenship status at the time of
voter registration. This study examines participation rates by non-citizens using a nationally
representative sample that includes non-citizen immigrants. We find that some
non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough
to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional
elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote
needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama
administration priorities in the 111th Congress.
h/t to a friend in the EU
REFERENCE
Richman (2014) Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections?, Electoral Studies 36, 149 — 157
Allegedly, these schemes to illegally bus in false voters and to disrupt Trump rallies with deliberate violence, were approved “at the highest level” of the DNC. The second scalp claimed here (Bob Creamer) admitted on video that Clinton is aware of “all” of his work.
“Conflict engagement” means paying leftist agitators, the homeless and the mentally ill, to cause melees at Trump rallies.
Why isn’t the mainstream media apart from Fox News covering this new scandal? …
In terms of dollars donated to the Clinton and Trump campaigns, journalists favor Clinton by a factor of 27 to 1…
This newly revealed Reichstag fire of a plot by Democrats at the highest levels is “a direct assault on democracy and the rule of law,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel last night. “This is a hundred times bigger than Watergate.” …
Steyn points out that some Australians think that there are higher priorities than removing 18C, but I’m with him, all freedoms start with free speech. Until we get rid of 18C we can’t even discuss other problems.
The Human Rights Commission (HRC) takes $25 million dollars a year from Australians to stop people talking.
I hope The Australian won’t compound that mistake by vigorously defending the cartoon on its merits. When Maclean’s and I ran afoul of the equivalent Canadian law – Section 13 – over a book excerpt from America Alone, the most important decision we made was not to defend the content of the piece: the facts, the quotes, the statistics, the conclusions, etc. Our opponents were not disputing our position; they were disputing our right to have a position.
Likewise, Mr Leak’s opponents are not attempting to engage him in debate; they’re attempting to close down the debate. And there’s no point getting in a debate with someone whose only argument is “Shut up – or else.”
In that sense, the Australian “human rights” regime and the Charlie Hebdo killers are merely different points on the same continuum: They’re both in the shut-up business, and they shut you up pour encourager les autres. They know that, for every cartoonist they silence, a thousand more will never peep up in the first place.
So this isn’t a debate about aboriginal policy or Islamic imperialism or anything else. It’s a debate about whether we’re free to debate. I take the view that the Australian state, like the Canadian state, should not be in the shut-up business. And, when they are, it’s they who are the issue, not you. When it’s a contest between a book or cartoon, on the one hand, and, on the other, a guy who says, “You can’t say that!”, it’s the latter who’s on trial. If you’re on the side that’s saying “Shut up!”, you’re on the wrong side.
Cartoons will be subject to all matter of public debate. It’s a healthy part of our democracy that we have that debate.
Sorry. A legal action is not a “debate”. Mr Leak is being “subject to” not debate but state thought-policing. Because ideological enforcers like Soutphommasane find debate too tiresome and its results too unpredictable. Which is why he gets a third of a million a year from Australian taxpayers to prevent debate.]
The likes of Commissar Soutphommasane are not interested in a debate with you; they’re interested in eliminating you from the debate…
I am, unfortunately, not being satirical when I say we can’t discuss the deadly and dismal problems affecting certain ethnic groups. Please in comments, be mindful, that this post is about Section 18C.
The law reads:
Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin
(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another personor a group of people; and
(b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.
The Human Rights Commission helpful explains here with examples just how vague, arbitrary, and subjective this law is. No Australian can know in advance if they are acting illegally unless they say nothing about anything, and that’s the point. No matter how honest you are and despite your good intentions or even if you speak the truth someone else gets paid to decide if a phrase is “likely” to offend, and to judge whether the same words might be legal or illegal if they are art, or you are trying to be funny. Are you a licensed artist? Is your intent “comedic”. The HRC will whip out the Funny-0-meter, the Mind-reader, and Their Lens of Artisticiness.
The IPA wants to repeal 18C. It should take five minutes in parliament to get rid of the words “insult” and “offend”.
Some thoughts that are used in debate,
May fall foul of an arm of the state,
And one can’t, by the way,
Suggest thoughts we can’t say,
As to do so invites a court date.
Tragic news about moose today — the climate used to be the same for 65 million years, so moose are unprepared to deal with the sudden extra degree on the modern Earth-Perfect-Thermostat.
The reason for the decline is complicated. Wolves have taken moose, and grizzly bears have been expanding their presence.
But climate could be the biggest challenge. Part of the problem is ticks. A moose with too many of the parasites during the winter can lose its hair and freeze to death.
We all know, before Columbus there was one perfect quota of moose, bear, wolf. The numbers didn’t vary from the sacred Gaia Triangle Ratio (whatever it was). There were no cycles. Moose never declined. Then man came, used air conditioners in Florida, caused tick outbreaks in Saskatoon, and da fur fell off doz’ mooses. Cold moose!
In general, moose are simply better adapted to colder temperatures. When it’s too warm, they spend more time in the shade trying to cool down and less time feeding, Courtemanch said.
You might have thought fur-free moose might like warmer weather. They just can’t win eh?
“The warmer winters and warmer summers are incredibly stressful to them,” she said. “They’re so heat-stressed all the time. It cascades into poor body condition for females, and that impacts their ability to have a calf. They are so stressed they can’t put on enough weight every year.”
Sounds like da stressed mooses need psychotherapy. If we stopped trying to buy nice weather with solar and wind we could afford a psychotherapist for every mother moose. Stop a windfarm, save a moose!
/sarc
——————————————————————-
What are these people on? Moose survived 60,000 years of climate change
Moose struggled through ice-ages and a holocene optimum when the arctic was so warm there was no sea-ice for thousands of years. I did a long 0.89 second search for “evolution of the moose” and the first paper that turns up tells us that moose have been squeezed through population bottlenecks many times and are noted for their ability to adapt to a changing environment.
One day, news outlets may teach writers to use google.
How’s that ground breaking, world leading Paris agreement going?
…
Australia is the worlds largest coal exporter but our total exports of coal in 2014/15 were a tiny 393Mt (of both thermal and metallurgical coal). I’ve marked that in blue on the graph. We are only a large exporter because everyone else keeps the coal for their own use.
More mining of India’s coal,
Fills another significant role,
That of plant-food increase,
By CO2 release,
Which should really be all mankind’s goal.
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Assuming some of those emails contain things a President would not want seen, especially if the FBI is investigating her, that hands rather lot of negotiating power to the people who hold copies of those emails.
The Blockbuster rolls on. Books will be written about this week in politics. The FBI have apparently 
Ten days to go, thousands of emails to read. The FBI say they “don’t know what they have”.
Hillary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, operated the Clinton Foundation. Ostensibly a charity, the foundation was a de facto fraud scheme to monetize Hillary’s power as secretary of state (among other aspects of the Clintons’ political influence). The scheme involved (a) the exchange of political favors, access, and influence for millions of dollars in donations; (b) the circumvention of campaign-finance laws that prohibit political donations by foreign sources; (c) a vehicle for Mrs. Clinton to shield her State Department e-mail communications from public and congressional scrutiny while she and her husband exploited the fundraising potential of her position; and (d) a means for Clinton insiders to receive private-sector compensation and explore lucrative employment opportunities while drawing taxpayer-funded government salaries.
GlennAlbrect did a Ted talk,
One day perhaps people will be able to sue those who caused unnecessary psychoterratica. At least the citizens should get their tax back from the 
Perplexed! Vox and others just can’t figure out 
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