“Democrats will not go gently into that good night.”

August 24, 2022

Stopping Biden After November

By Rick Fuentes at American Thinker:

As November looms, Republicans remain giddy about the probability of victory in both chambers of Congress.  Unfortunately, without a two-thirds majority needed to overturn regular and pocket vetoes by the president, a politically divisive America is likely to gridlock until the 2024 presidential election.  A modest Republican House majority could pull back hard on the reins, shaving or cutting off the lifeline to Democrat spendthrifts, but Biden will continue to rule unconstitutionally by pen and phone as his critics seek relief through court challenges that lack momentum.  Meanwhile, the border will remain open, every attempt to innervate the energy sector will be shot down, and we’ll continue along the course of a recession reinvented by the White House as normal and permanent.

Given the past inclination of Republicans to fight amongst themselves on the sidelines, it is an inconvenient truth that a slim congressional majority would not be enough to save them from their own party intrigues and petty rivalries.  Former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who held himself up as the morally superior conscience of the Republican Party, saw Donald Trump as more an intruder than a president. He tolerated the White House agenda and held his nose as he gave them legislative victories — rewriting the tax code and rebuilding the military — before retiring with a smile and surrendering the gavel to Nancy Pelosi.

Then there are the blue-stained Republicans:  Mitt Romney, who voted to impeach Trump in 2020 but not to re-elect him as president, as well as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, both moderates given to head fakes when it comes to party loyalty.  There would be no tolerance for such infidelity in the Democrat enclave, where unanimity, vis-à-vis antagonists Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, is enforced through donor class pressures and backroom deals.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all but put his chips down on the Democrats in taking an offhand shot at Trump and blaming a prospective midterm loss in the Senate on the quality of Republican candidates.  That begs curiosity over why hopefuls Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in North Carolina, and Blake Masters in Arizona, are all trailing in the polls before a visibly impaired stroke victim who thinks hoodies are business casual, a military-hater who has talked up Louis Farrakhan and played paddy fingers with campaign funds, and a former astronaut who retreats to inner space between elections, respectively.

Democrats always believe they have the upper hand in elections because they are running against Republicans.  They understand that the GOP lacks the type of cohesiveness and lockstep discipline that has become the trademark of the Democrat caucus.  If they can keep the party vote disparity to a minimum in the House, they retain the ability to draw away the more cantankerous members of the Republican party.  To neutralize the apostates within their own ranks, Republicans need more than an arm’s length victory in November.

Even before Joe Biden had a chance to change the knick-knacks in the Oval Office, Democrats of the newly-minted 117^th Congress charged the Republican trenches with a call for an ethics investigation of any member who questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, the second impeachment of Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, creation of a January 6^th Commission,  and a federal takeover of state elections. That was the opening engagement of a progressive broadside on the GOP and America writ large.

Few Republican legislative proposals have made it past the will of Nancy Pelosi, and the well of the House of Representatives that better serves as a graveyard for the bills and amendments submitted by the minority.  The House speaker trampled on the authority of the minority leader by repudiating his recommendations and cherry-picking the only two Republican representatives who voted for the January 6th committee to be rewarded with seats upon it.  For all her blustering about reaching across the aisle, bipartisanship in the 117^th Congress has been little more than a gimmick wherein the lioness of the House separates one or two sheep from the Republican herd as window dressing on the title pages of Democrat legislation. 

A Republican midterm victory will cause an adversarial media to shore up the battle lines.  There is a strong belief on the Left, obediently pushed by media propaganda, that the ill-defined MAGA, now advertised as a mass movement without a colorful chapeau, comprises the entire Republican base of Trump voters.  They are branded as white, blue-collar males with ideologies similar to the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society, hopelessly irredeemable racists, sexists, and nativists who can barely conceal their biases against blacks, immigrants, and women.  We know this because the Washington Post said as much two months after the Biden inauguration, using a fishy survey of purported MAGA followers to set the stage for the progressive Left to initiate an economic and social fatwa to disarm and destroy the middle class.

Heir apparent House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has already promised investigations and hearings on Hunter Biden, the Trump-Russia hoax, the Afghan retreat, FBI abuses, and getting the backstory of January 6^th.  There will be efforts to impeach Biden cabinet officials for malfeasance in their duties.  The Democrats will do everything in their power to obstruct these proceedings through social media censorship, a blitzkrieg of misinformation, and false allegations.

Cracks are already appearing in the Republican strategy.  McCarthy has already dropped a well-earned Biden impeachment from the 2023 to-do list and cautions against committee vendettas for political purposes, apparently abdicating those hijinks to the Democrats.  Generic congressional ballots are now slowly swinging back in the Democrats favor, going as far as to give them a four-point edge to hold onto power in the House.

As Democrats continue to hawk snake oil over Republican threats to democracy, the GOP leadership continues to pull their punches by not continually harping upon the obvious policy missteps and flagrant felonies of the ruling party.  Nor are they using the summer doldrums to put forth a plan that would anchor a Republican pledge of a better life for all Americans.  You cannot find a more troubled political landscape in which to offer such an alternative: Biden’s polling is the worst of any president in modern history, only Harris’s numbers are worse, and with few exceptions every congressional Democrat has voted in lockstep to advance partisan legislation clearly at odds with the economic well-being of the citizenry and their protection from harm both here and abroad.

Republicans need not build castles in the air or keep their powder dry until the next presidential election.  There is considerable prima facie evidence to convene proceedings against the Biden administration’s policies, departments, agencies, cabinet heads, and West Wing babysitters of Joe Biden.  As Chuck Schumer and Pelosi have done on so many occasions, McCarthy and McConnell need to ascend the pulpit in partnership to unveil a New Contract with America.  From bow to stern and athwartship, the ship of the republic needs to be brought to drydock for an overhaul.  The GOP will not be forgiven for missed opportunities.

Democrats will not go gently into that good night.  Dark Brandon will follow the script and frustrate all attempts by a Republican majority to secure the border, regain energy independence, improve the supply chain, stop the academic brainwashing of our children, or curb inflation.  Their agenda can be slowly rolled back so long as we can keep a new Republican majority from doing unto itself and their voters that which they consider too punitive to do to the other side of the aisle.

“a one-time write-off of $300 billion in student loans”.

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

MORE ON STUDENT DEBT, AND OUR DECREPIT PRESIDENT

Scott wrote about the Biden administration’s massive cancellation of student debt here and here. On its face, the administrative action appears to be illegal. In January 2021, a memorandum by the Principal Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Education concluded that the “HEROES Act” did not confer authority for such a mass loan forgiveness. That memorandum was repudiated and revoked yesterday by the Department of Education’s General Counsel. Nancy Pelosi is on record, saying that the Biden administration cannot lawfully forgive student debt. Today she changed her mind.

The theory underlying the administration’s mass cancellation is that it is “directed at addressing the financial harms of the COVID-19 pandemic.” How the obligation to repay debt on the part of millions of borrowers, or any incremental difficulty in repaying debt on the part of some of those millions, can be chalked up en masse as a “financial harm of the COVID-19 pandemic,” is beyond me.

At Liberty Unyielding, Hans Bader argues that the various price tags the press has attached to Biden’s mass forgiveness are much too low. The original includes copious links:

News articles have estimated the cost of Biden’s plan at around $300 billion. But that’s an underestimate. Earlier estimates of the cost of student loan forgiveness pegged its cost at $330 billion ($2,100 per taxpayer). But that was based on the assumption that a maximum of $10,000 would be written off, not the higher amount of $20,000, as Biden has now made clear will be written off for millions of student loan borrowers with Pell Grants. Increasing the write-off to $20,000 will cost billions and billions of dollars. Moreover, Biden also announced an extension of the student loan repayment moratorium for even those loans he didn’t write off. That will cost billions of dollars more, because the suspension of student loan repayments costs taxpayers over $52 billion per year.

Moreover, Biden did something far more momentous today than just a one-time write-off of $300 billion in student loans. He announced the Education Department’s intent to revise income-driven repayment plans in a way that would allow students who foolishly attend expensive colleges to largely avoid repaying their loans, by cutting their payments by well over half. As a result, many borrowers will pay only a trivial amount each month, and can stop paying anything at all after 10 or 20 years, no matter how much of their student loan balance remains. The remaining student loan balance will be written off, at taxpayer expense. That could eventually cost over a trillion dollars.

Hans also notes that the Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated the cost of the debt forgiveness plan at $600 billion, which is still too low because the use of income-based repayment plans will rise in response to the prospective changes in the student loan program that the Biden administration announced today.

Hans writes:

The changes to income-driven repayment plans will prop up America’s most worthless and overpriced private liberal arts colleges. Which is probably the point — to enable them to keep raising tuition (by shifting the cost to taxpayers), rather than closing due to students fleeing them.

Sounds right. Many have questioned the political wisdom of a debt forgiveness program that benefits the most prosperous at the expense of those who didn’t go to college, and those who repaid their college loans. But I guess it shows who the Democrats consider to be their core constituency.

Today a reporter asked Joe Biden about the fairness of the debt forgiveness plan. Biden turned and tried to respond. To me, Biden has appeared pathetically frail and long gone in dementia for a while now. But this is perhaps the saddest performance I have seen from him. His response has something to do with multi-billionaires, but I can’t make it out. In any event it was not responsive to the reporter’s question, which Biden was entirely incapable of engaging. The man is on his last legs.

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Trump IS NOT A MITCH MCCONNELL CREEP WHO LIKES TO HIDE!

Trump Is Right. Mitch McConnell And Elaine Chao Spent Decades Getting ‘Rich On China’

BY: JORDAN BOYD at the Federalist:

AUGUST 24, 2022

For years, the McConnell and Chao families have cultivated a relationship that enriches the couple and grants status to the Chaos’ shipping company.

JORDAN BOYD

For decades, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao have maintained a glaring conflict of interest, conducting extensive government business despite the Chao family’s deep ties to China through a maritime shipping company. Now, former President Donald Trump is calling attention to the top Republican’s problematic China ties, while most of Washington remains silent.

“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate[?]” Trump asked in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”

It didn’t take long for the corporate media to mock Trump’s assertion, framing his legitimate criticism of McConnell and Chao as unfair and unjust. Some outlets such as Vanity Fair even hinted that Trump’s comments were revenge against Chao for resigning from the Trump administration following the 2021 Capitol riot and subsequently cooperating with the illegitimate Jan. 6 Committee.

Trump’s criticism of McConnell and Chao, however, is not something to be taken lightly. For years, the McConnell and Chao families have maintained a symbiotic relationship that grants opportunities to the Chaos’ shipping company, Foremost Group, which largely operates in and on behalf of communist China.

This reciprocity is well documented, but unlike with Hunter Biden, there is less scrutiny from observers, including those on the right, for this “corruption by proxy,” as author and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer calls it.

Blood Runs Thicker than Water

As Schweizer documented in his 2018 book “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” McConnell took a strong stance against China before his marriage into the Chao family. According to Schweizer, it was a 1994 trip arranged by James Chao, McConnell’s father-in-law, and sponsored by China State Shipbuilding Corp. (CSSP), one of the CCP’s largest military contractors and reportedly an unofficial arm of the CCP navy, to meet the Chinese president that pushed McConnell to “increasingly avoid public criticism of China.”

That’s likely because Chao and her family are well-connected in communist China thanks to her father’s company. Foremost is technically based out of New York but largely operates out of China, where at least 70 percent of its freight, mostly industrial, is delivered. Not only are a majority of Foremost’s ships built in state-owned shipyards, but some are even financed by the Chinese Communist Party. They are then used to deliver cargo outlined in contracts with the communist government, which has clearly stated goals to rapidly expand its industries to compete with the U.S.

Foremost and the Chao family have benefitted from loans estimated to be between $350,000 and $1 million from the U.S. government and loans from Chinese banks known by the Trump administration as threats. Again, this is a company owned by the father-in-law of America’s top congressional Republican and the father of the former transportation secretary. Not only do Chao’s father and sister Angela Chao still share leadership over Foremost, but the pair also once sat on the board of an offshoot of the CSSP together.

This trend of the Chao family expanding their influence in China only continued as McConnell and his wife burrowed deeper into the American political system. When Trump named Chao head of the Department of Transportation in January of 2017, her family publicly rejoiced — likely at the opportunity to further their business interests. That same month, Chao’s sister Angela was named independent non-executive director of the CCP-affiliated Bank of China.

Even though the Trump administration took a hardline stance against China and its intent to compete with the U.S., the Chao family company proceeded with the purchase of 10 new ships from the Chinese government. That strategic buy expanded the Foremost fleet capacity by more than 40 percent, enabling the company to do even more business with the CCP. It also came shortly after Chao secured a spot in the Trump Cabinet overseeing an industry in steep decline thanks to competition with China.

While China sought to expand its maritime endeavors, it was under Chao’s leadership that the Department of Transportation proposed budget cuts for programs meant to stimulate American shipping and mariners.

How to ‘Get Rich on China’ 101

McConnell still expresses some support for curbing China’s ascent, but whether his concern is sincere or political is difficult to say.

Not only do McConnell and Chao’s family members financially benefit from doing business with communist China, but so have McConnell and Chao. The political duo may not have a formal stake in the Chao shipping empire, but they have certainly amassed wealth from the business.

The biggest evidence for this came in 2008. Just one year after James Chao joined CSSC Holdings, in addition to running Foremost, McConnell received a “gift” of $5 to $25 million from his father-in-law. As Politico reported, that payment significantly bumped McConnell’s net worth, which was measured at around $3.1 million in 2004, to between $9.2 million and $36.5 million in 2014.

Several members of Chao’s family, including Angela and James, also contributed more than $1 million to McConnell’s re-election campaigns. In other words, the founder of an unofficial arm of our top adversary’s navy is helping keep McConnell in U.S. leadership. According to Schweizer, these kinds of payments could have been money designed to keep a favorable relationship between McConnell and the Chao family.

“Foreign governments and oligarchs like this form of corruption because it gives them private and unfettered gateways to the corridors of Washington power,” Schweizer wrote in his book “Empires.” “Foreign entities cannot legally make campaign contributions, so using this approach creates an alternative way to curry favor and influence America’s political leaders. Simply camouflaging these transactions as business agreements provides another shield of plausible deniability.”

Status and Power

The Chao family has also amassed wealth by trading on their ties to McConnell.

While public officials — such as Chao from 2017-2021 — are barred from using their status to grant favors to friends and family, Chao publicly supported her family’s financial endeavors onscreen. Despite avoiding U.S. press appearances in her capacity as transportation secretary, Chao joined her father for dozens of appearances on Chinese and Chinese-American television where she regularly boosted Foremost and the work her family does out of China.

One interview was seemingly hosted at the DOT office with the agency’s flags displayed in the background.

“In at least one other interview appearance, the Transportation Department flag and the state flag of Kentucky, the state Chao’s husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) represents, both appear in the background,” the Hill reported.

Chao also granted her China-sympathetic family access to the president of the United States, a political connection that her father coveted and later boasted about in interviews, sometimes with communist state-owned media.

“The president spent several minutes with me,” James recounted in one interview after talking with Trump aboard Air Force One. “We were talking about business.”

That comes as no surprise considering that, ahead of her first scheduled visit to China as a member of the Trump administration, Chao requested that accommodations be made for at least one family member to join her trip. She also asked for her shipping industry relatives in China to be included in transportation-themed meetings with government officials. Her trip was quickly canceled once the press raised ethical concerns.

Consequences?

It wasn’t until 2017, decades after McConnell and Chao began to benefit from their family’s ties to China, that the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a letter to Chao demanding that she explain her public elevation of her family’s maritime company.

In 2021, months after she resigned from the Trump administration, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Transportation released a report confirming that Chao “used her official position and taxpayer resources for the benefit of herself and her family.”

Evidence of wrongdoing in the OIG report was communicated in a criminal referral to the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the DOJ Public Integrity Section, but none of the agencies decided to open an investigation.

Chao may no longer hold an official place in the federal government, but she remains a large player in Washington, D.C., through her new role as a board member for the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center. McConnell, on the other hand, is still the highest-ranking Republican in Congress, who could reassume leadership if the GOP takes back the Senate. Whether voters like it or not, McConnell will likely determine the steps Congress takes to keep communist China’s hands out of the U.S. government.

Given this track record, the likelihood that McConnell will support policies that curb his family’s fortunes is questionable at best. That’s why Trump’s criticism of the McConnells’ close personal and professional relationship with China is long overdue. At a time when Republicans are questioning McConnell’s ability to advance the new GOP’s agenda, raising these connections is nothing short of necessary.

That Loony Tune Of Today’s White House!

Biden’s indefensible bribe

ALLAHPUNDIT Aug 24, 2022 at HotAir. 

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

If not for the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, the policy he’s announcing today would be the lowest moment of his presidency.

It’s so unjust that it would have locked down my midterm vote for the GOP had Republicans proved themselves fit to govern by dispensing with Trump after January 6, as they should have.

We’ve written many times about the moral hazards of student loan forgiveness but never as economically as Mitt Romney did in this tweet:

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Correct on all counts. This is in fact a bribe to Democratic-leaning voters, especially younger Democratic-leaning voters, to turn out this fall. Dems have increasingly become the party of educated professionals; a debt forgiveness plan that benefits only the highly educated isn’t far in spirit from a debt forgiveness plan that benefits only registered Democrats. It’s not as generous as progressives wanted but it’s plenty generous, with taxpayers who earn less than $125,000 or households that earn less than $250,000(!) eligible for $10,000 in debt relief.

And although details are scant at the moment, a reporter at WaPo says he’s heard that graduate debt is also eligible:

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https://068cd86da833256851c84810ed38a554.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Romney’s also correct that the plan will fuel inflation. Putting ten thousand bucks back in the pockets of millions of American consumers is tantamount to injecting billions of dollars of new consumer spending into the economy. Biden and Joe Manchin spent the better part of the past month high-fiving each other for having passed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act; ironically, today’s bill is a de facto Inflation Expansion Act. And not only is it inflationary, it will undercut the gains made by the Inflation Reduction Act in reducing the deficit. That bill is projected to shrink the deficit by around $300 billion over 10 years. Student loan forgiveness is expected to cost around $300 billion *this year*.

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In other words, they took the long-term “savings” from Joe Manchin’s climate change bill and immediately used it to bail out their college-educated base, most of whom are at no risk of being sunk financially by having to pay back their student loans.

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Inasmuch as the savings from the Manchin bill don’t completely cover the cost of Biden’s new plan, Romney is right again that you and I and other taxpayers will be responsible for picking up the rest of the tab. And that means more than just loan forgiveness, as there are other planks to the program designed to make life easier for the college-educated.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, Biden said the amount of forgiveness will be higher for low-income borrowers who went to college on Pell Grants. Those who went to college on Pell Grants will receive $20,000 in student loan forgiveness.

Biden added that those with undergraduate federal loans can also cap their payment at 5% of their monthly income.

Years ago I was fortunate enough to find myself in a position to pay off the balance of my student loans, which, as I recall, amounted to something like $25,000. I could have used that money for a car, a downpayment on a home, or any number of other vital life necessities. Instead I foolishly fulfilled my obligation to Uncle Sam, a burden from which the beneficiaries of today’s policy are being relieved for no discernible reason whatsoever apart from the fact that Democrats are worried about the midterms and hope that $10,000 will convince college-educated voters to turn out and say thanks. I hope the party is prepared to have this scene play out again many, many, many times at Democratic townhall events in the months to come:

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Finally, Romney is of course right that the new policy will create unrealistic expectations. Because there’s no reason to forgive the loans of current debtors but not past or future ones, college students in years to come will demand equal treatment by having part of their debt liquidated too. Universities will doubtless anticipate that and raise tuition, expecting that kids and their families will be more willing to absorb higher education expenses in the belief that some of those expenses will eventually be forgiven. In fact, per CNN, the mountain of debt that already exists is so enormous that Biden’s allegedly one-time-only forgiveness plan will barely make a dent in it long-term: “There is currently $1.6 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt. The amount of outstanding debt would return to that level in just four years after $10,000 per borrower was canceled, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”

You know what the strangest part is? Given how Democrats’ political fortunes have improved over the past two months, this bribe has never been less necessary than it is right now. Roe was overturned; gas prices have dropped; the last jobs report was stellar; and the party just delivered on a climate-change bill that its base desperately wanted. Inflation has momentarily stalled out and could be in decline by next month. Add all of that up and it was enough to turn a swing district blue in New York last night that practically everyone thought would go red. So now here comes Joe Biden to extend not one but two middle fingers to America’s working class by deciding that college loans uniquely warrant special generosity from the U.S. government.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, the new policy is very likely illegal.

The whole scheme is genuinely outrageous. The GOP should make it a staple of their ads this fall, assuming they’re not going with a “wall-to-wall inflation” strategy. Democrats have traditionally been the party of class warfare but Republicans would be nuts to pass up an opportunity like this, especially in light of the gains they’ve made with blue-collar voters in the Trump era. Charles Cooke:

It seems so arbitrary. Why does Biden not want to do the same thing for loans on trucks owned by plumbers? Why not for mortgages — which, given how heavily it subsidizes them, the federal government clearly thinks are worthwhile? Why not for credit cards or auto payments or mom-and-pop credit lines? The answer, I’m afraid to say, is disgustingly classist: Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are better than everyone else. Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are of a finer cut. Because Joe Biden and his party prefer college students to you, and they think that those students ought to be rewarded for that by being handed enormous gobs of your money.

Electricians, store managers, deli workers, landscapers, waitresses, mechanics, entrepreneurs? Screw ’em. Sure, college graduates make more money than non-graduates, and their unemployment rate is lower, too. But non-graduates don’t have access to the president, so they don’t matter. They’re tradesmen, the riff-raff, the great unwashed. They’re background noise, dirty-handed types, second-classers. They don’t deserve $10,000 in debt reduction. What would they even do with it? Go hunting? Give it to their church? Their role is to subsidize the superior people, and the superior people go to college.

A party that can’t win with a message like that when it already has high inflation as wind in its sails is completely hopeless. Maybe this is the moment the red wave, which looks for the moment to have slowed, starts to gather again.

Update: Ah, and here’s the cherry on top of this sh*t sundae.

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Update: Tribe teaches at Harvard. He’s celebrating a bailout of Harvard Law students, among the most elite professionals on planet Earth, any one of whom could land a high-paying job virtually at will.

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(Clintel for Short!)

AUGUST 23, 2022 BY STEVEN HAYWARD at PowerLine:

WHAT CLIMATE CRISIS?

A new group called Climate Intelligence (Clintel for short) has been founded in the Netherlands with the express purpose of combating the extremism of the climate change campaigners. One of their early efforts is a statement, signed by 1,100 scientists and policy experts from around the world, that argues “There Is No Climate Emergency.”

This link goes to the complete PDF, but the summary of their case is worth noting here in full:

Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming

The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted

The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models

Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial. CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters

There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.

Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities

There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.

OUR ADVICE TO THE EUROPEAN LEADERS IS THAT SCIENCE SHOULD STRIVE FOR A SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE CLIMATE SYSTEM, WHILE POLITICS SHOULD FOCUS ON MINIMIZING POTENTIAL CLIMATE DAMAGE BY PRIORITIZING ADAPTATION STRATEGIES BASED ON PROVEN AND AFFORDABLE TECHNOLOGIES.

“NO!”

Nobody seems to miss KJP’s press briefings

by JAZZ SHAW Aug 24, 2022 at HotAir:

Did you notice any unusually provocative questions during the White House press briefing this week? Your answer is almost certainly “no,” because there was no briefing for the White House Press Corps yesterday. And there wasn’t one all of last week. In fact, there hasn’t been a press briefing since August 9th, more than two weeks ago. Has anyone even noticed the complete absence of Karine Jean-Pierre (whose name you should always say in an exaggerated French accent) from the lectern where she is supposed to keep the media up-to-date on what Joe Biden is up to? As Jim Geraghty points out at National Review, nobody seems to be complaining. In fact, the silence from nearly all of the mainstream media is rather jarring. If there can be such a complete vacuum in terms of media correspondence from the Biden administration and all we hear is the sound of crickets, are these briefings really worth the time we invest in them?

An observation: White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has not held an on-the-record press briefing since August 9 . . . and nobody in the White House press corps or general public seems to be all that bothered by that. (Apparently democracy dies in darkness, unless it’s August vacation season.) The lack of complaints probably says something about the news value of these briefings, where Jean-Pierre contends the U.S. economy is stronger than ever, that the U.S. Supreme Court took an “unconstitutional action” by overturning Roe v. Wade, and that she has a hard time keeping up with Biden’s boundless energy level and stamina.

Jean-Pierre’s briefings are not all that useful for getting new information out of the White House, beyond basic information like updates to the president’s schedule, etc. They are somewhat useful for getting the administration’s off-the-cuff response and spin to the occasional challenging question, a response that is usually unpersuasive and often factually challenged.

Yes, part of what we’re seeing here – or more correctly, not seeing – may simply be a silent admission that the White House press briefings under the tenure of KJP simply aren’t worth very much. After all, the most common answer that reporters receive includes the phrase “I don’t have anything for you.” It’s as if people inside the Biden administration don’t really bother telling her much about what’s going on. (This should not come as a surprise during the least transparent administration in living memory.)

It was being reported early in the summer that much of the press corps was unhappy with KJP’s briefings and many felt that she has turned out to be “a flop.” But how long can this situation hold?

After all, it’s not as if there isn’t important news to be addressed. We’re hearing that the White House may be on the verge of announcing an agreement to resume the Iran nuclear deal after seemingly endless delays. Keep in mind that the Biden administration has never released a single detail of what’s been going on in those talks or what sorts of gifts have been put on the table for the Iranians. The public has been kept entirely in the dark on what could be one of the most impactful stories of the year. Shouldn’t the press corps be demanding that KJP at least show up for work and try to answer a couple of questions about that?

Perhaps the lack of interest in anything KJP might have to say is tied to the absence of the President himself. Joe Biden has now extended what appears to be his summer vacation to the better part of three weeks, with sightings of him being rarer than the Tasmanian tiger. And he has pulled this disappearing act in the middle of not only the Iran nuclear deal talks but the war in Ukraine, a potential war with China, and a full-blown energy crisis largely of his own making. And through it all, now we’re not even getting a chance to see if the Press Secretary can at least fake her way through a couple of questions? What happened to the press corps? Shouldn’t this be a big deal?

https://9cb4b23638357624f1ed087fe560d0b8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

This seems like an appropriate time to close with this classic clip of KJP saying “I don’t have anything for you” a staggering number of times in barely two minutes.

 

Does Pence Spend His Time IN A CLOSET?

Pence Is All Wrong About the FBI

The former vice president equates critics of the FBI with those who seek defunding of the police. 

By Lloyd Billingsley at American Greatness:

August 23, 2022

The FBI raid on the residence of former President Donald Trump drew fire from liberals such as Alan Dershowitz, who called out the “weaponizing of the justice system.” By contrast, former Vice President Mike Pence reserved his wrath for those who criticize the FBI. 

“These attacks on the FBI must stop,” Pence said on August 17. “Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.” That equation invites a review of FBI performance at its duly appointed tasks. 

“We protect the American people and uphold the U.S. Constitution,” proclaims the FBI website. On the protection side, the American people might look back at September 11, 2001. 

In May 2001, according to “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,” FBI counterterrorism boss Dale Watson had only two people looking at threats from Osama bin Laden and his organization. FBI assessments of the potential use of flight training by terrorists and warnings of “radical Middle Easterners attending flight school,” were never passed along to the Federal Aviation Administration. 

The FBI did not produce the kind of intelligence reports other agencies disseminated, and its usual practice was to withhold the information and say little about investigations. FBI field offices “never used the information to gain a systematic or strategic understanding of the nature and extent of al-Qaeda fundraising.”

Terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was prevented from further training on Pan Am’s Boeing 747 simulators but FBI headquarters believed there was “insufficient cause” to search his laptop computer. An FBI agent in Minneapolis said he was “trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing it into the World Trade Center.” Officials at FBI headquarters said that was not going to happen, and they did not know if Moussaoui was a terrorist.

“The FBI has proven for the past decade it cannot identify and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States and its citizens at home and abroad,” wrote FBI whistleblower Robert Wright in the summer of 2001. “Even worse, there is virtually no effort on the part of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit to neutralize known and suspected terrorists residing within the United States.” 

Wright headed an operation that shut down terrorist funding but claimed that FBI management “intentionally and repeatedly thwarted and obstructed” his attempts to expand the investigation and to arrest other terrorists and seize their assets. 

In 2009, American-born Muslim Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was communicating with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans. As Lessons from Fort Hood explains, the FBI was monitoring Hasan’s communications, but the bureau’s Washington office did not “assess Hasan to be involved in terrorist activities.” On November 5, 2009, Hasan murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Private Francheska Velez, who was pregnant, and wounded more than 30 others. 

In 2011, Russian intelligence warned the FBI about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But in 2013, the FBI failed to stop the brothers from bombing the Boston Marathon. The attack killed three people and wounded more than 250. Local police, not the FBI, took out Tamerlan and captured Dzhokhar. 

The FBI failed to stop Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik from murdering 14 people and wounding more than 20 others in San Bernardino, California, on December 2, 2015. As in Boston, the FBI played no role in the takedown of the terrorists. San Bernardino police shot dead the heavily armed Farook and Malik, with no further loss of innocent life. 

In 2016, the FBI failed to protect the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida from Omar Mateen. The Islamic State supporter killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others. The FBI had questioned Mateen in 2013 but closed the inquiry, leaving the terrorist free to plan his attack. 

In 2020, Antifa and Black Lives Matter launched riots that claimed 35 lives, injured hundreds of police officers, and caused $2 billion in property damage in the course of 100 days. The FBI did nothing to prevent the “peaceful protesters” from taking over part of central Seattle. 

As these cases confirm, the FBI does a poor job of protecting the American people. It’s unclear if any FBI bosses were disciplined, suspended or dismissed for the failures that left thousands of Americans dead and wounded. The failure of the FBI and CIA against Islamic jihadists led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security which is now, like the FBI, deployed against the American people. 

It’s hard to find statements from Mike Pence contending that FBI failure “must stop,” or that it should have any effect on the bureau’s budget. According to Christopher Wray, that budget now tops $10.8 billion, including “a total of $10.7 billion for salaries and expenses, which will support 36,945 positions.”

More recent episodes call into question FBI dedication to the Constitution and the rule of law. According to former FBI director Louis Freeh, the rule of law is the “only beacon” for the FBI. That is hard to square with FBI election interference under James Comey. 

With her unsecured homebrew server and destruction of subpoenaed emails, Hillary Clinton violated federal law. But Comey said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue the case, and the FBI launched the Midyear Exam operation to keep Clinton in the presidential race. FBI-favored candidates Clinton and Tim Kaine lost to Donald Trump and Mike Pence, but there was more to the FBI’s meddling. 

The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation targeted candidate and President Trump. As Julie Kelly recalls, the FBI framed General Michael Flynn, misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, doctored correspondence, and used a fake dossier against Trump and his allies. In the style of the Soviet KGB, politicians pointed out the man and the FBI created the crime.

FBI boss Christopher Wray is all-in with the idea that anyone less than worshipful of Joe Biden is a violent extremist and domestic terrorist. The bureau raids the home of Donald Trump, ripping off his passports and rummaging through Melania’s clothes, yet Mike Pence has a beef with those who “attack” the FBI by lawful budgetary means? Embattled Americans may be forgiven for thinking that Pence is just as wrong as those who remain uncritical of the FBI.

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The former vice president, a devout Christian, did not publicly cite Bible verses against the FBI critics. The targets of current FBI operations, on the other hand, have grounds to ponder Matthew 10:36: “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” 

A former president’s foes include the man who ran who ran at his side, and prominent members of his own party. The most formidable foes of the American people are the agencies of their own government. None is a more clear and present danger than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The President’s AN IDIOT, DEMS ARE FASCISTS, And GOP’S DO NOTHING!

August 23, 2022

Do you really think our DC overlords will change?

By Brian Parsons at American Thinker:

“I’ll change, baby!”  Those are the famous last words of every spousal abuser in the history of failed relationships.  If you ever hear them, run!  He (or she) won’t change; they never do.  People and systems change when there is no other option.  They change not only when complicit parties take ownership of their actions, but when their actions have consequences.

The last few weeks saw a continuation of the past six years of governmental abuse.  An entrenched permanent regime in Washington, D.C. sent their goons to south Florida to invade the home of their mortal enemy, who also happens to be the former president of the United States.  Their stated reason is based on some flimsy nonsense about classified documents, which really shows the hand of the permanent regime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are creations of the Executive Branch.  They are subservient to the Executive and derive their authority from the Executive.  It is the Executive that determines what is and what is not classified material.  It really goes to show who these people think they are: government arbiters.

How is it that the regime is brazen enough to pull these shenanigans?  The answer is that nobody has ever been held to account, and as a result, the regime will continue to protect itself and further itself with impunity.

When Hillary Clinton destroyed subpoenaed emails and the FBI unilaterally determined that there was no reason to prosecute based on intent, did she get her door kicked in?

When the Clinton campaign, in conjunction with the FBI and the State Department, fabricated evidence and presented it to the courts as verifiable proof of a Russian-compromised Executive, was anyone held to account?

When the Democrats’ first and second Trump impeachment committees openly doctored video and photographic evidence to sell their impeachment schemes to the public, did the press call them on it?

When it became public knowledge that the very man who was the face of global pandemic management was also the likely sponsor of the frankenvirus that brought the world to halt, was his role ever called into question?

When more than eleven hundred affidavits, video evidence, photographic evidence, data abnormalities, and procedural violations regarding the validity of our electoral system were presented to the courts in 2020, was there ever a good-faith review of the evidence?

When the FBI concocted a phony kidnapping of the governor of Michigan and stuffed more than a dozen federal agents around a few indigent and mentally deficient patsies, did the “mostly good agents” crowd defend their actions?

When Democrats broke the House rules on committees and stuffed a bunch of partisan Democrats into their January 6 show trial, denying the accused a defense, did anyone speak for them?

We’re promised that as soon as the limp noodles in the Republican Party finally take back power, the investigations will come fast and heavy.  When did the legislative body become an investigative body primarily?  Is nobody, not even the Democrats, tired of the unending kabuki theater?

If Republicans take back the seat of government, what will happen is that a uniparty bigwig like Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy will send out a bunch of stern tweets and do the television circuit on Hannity.  Then, two years later, they will sing the praises of the rank-and-file door-kickers in the Department of Justice and lament the same bad apples that continue to spoil everything they come in contact with.  The guilty will get a cushy gig on MSNBC or CNN as intelligence analysts, peddling their twisted ideas of protecting democracy until the public has once again forgotten their indiscretions.

Like children testing the limits of their parents’ discipline, actors in government will not listen until there are understood consequences.  That requires the public to demand accountability.  It starts with not voting for the same milquetoast politicians for some antiquated strategy of electability.  If you want bold and responsive leadership, you must vote for bold and responsive politicians.

Accountability also demands that bad actors get perp-walked into the public square, and our corrupted bureaucracy will need a ground-up cleansing.  As they like to exclaim, nobody is above the law.

Churches Have Closed….Schools No Longer Teach…Neighbors Don’t Have Neighbors! Savages, After All, Are Savages In Mpls!

AUGUST 23, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

HOW A CITY DIES

Over the last several years, Scott and I have chronicled the sad decline of the city of Minneapolis. The city’s collapse has several causes, starting with inadequate policies at the local, county and state levels. Over the last two years, of course, crime has become the biggest driver of decline, with covid lockdowns contributing. But it didn’t start with George Floyd, or with covid. Before covid and well before George Floyd, the most popular upscale lunch restaurant in Minneapolis closed suddenly, despite being crowded daily. The owners put a hand-made sign on the door saying that the cost structure in Minneapolis was such that it was not possible to operate profitably in the city.

And those were the good old days. Yesterday one of the city’s most popular bars announced that it was closing its doors. Its statement needs to be read and absorbed not just by all officials in Minneapolis, Hennepin County and the State of Minnesota, but by such officeholders nationwide:

For 2 and a half years we have fought through endless mandates and lockdowns issued by Governor Tim Walz…

This was a huge problem for many thousands of businesses, not just in Minnesota but across the country. Will there ever be a reckoning?

…as well as riots and rampant unchecked crime.

A young man celebrating his college graduation, scheduled for the next day, was shot and killed across the street from Wild Greg’s Saloon, apparently by a stray bullet. That is not good for business. But “unchecked” is a key word. City and state officials, including Governor Tim Walz, sympathized with rioters and criminals and actively worked to undermine law enforcement. Their recent backtracking in the face of hostile public opinion is much too little and, for this business anyway, comes too late.

We would like to thank Minneapolis City Councilmember Michael Rainville…

The city council member, perhaps the only one, who ran on an anti-crime platform. But, as I wrote here, the Minneapolis Star Tribune is trying to drive Rainville off the council because he committed the sin of noticing that many of the youths who terrorized the city last Fourth of July were Somalis.

…and the members of the Minneapolis Police Department…

The MPD has been under siege for years. Its recruitment is in the basement, for obvious reasons, and it is well below the force mandated by the Minneapolis City Charter. We can only applaud the dedication of the MPD members who have stayed on the job and tried to maintain order in a city that has mostly abandoned them and sided with rioters and criminals.

Minneapolis is not unique. Its story is being replicated in a number of other blue cities, from San Francisco to New York. Blue governance is a catastrophe, always and everywhere. It is worth noting that Wild Greg’s Saloon, having closed its Minneapolis bar, continues to operate in Austin, Texas, Lakeland, Florida, and Pensacola, Florida. Unlike Minneapolis, those cities are thriving, not dying.

None of this will change unless voters hold liberal politicians accountable in November.