“$3.8 trillion in dead economic loss!”

OCTOBER 26, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

$3.8 TRILLION, FOR…

…essentially nothing. Jeff Currie, who is Global Head of Commodities Research for Goldman Sachs, describes the utter futility of “green” energy:

Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.

So, in other words, $3.8 trillion in dead economic loss. Currie adds this, which I don’t agree with:

The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.

By progress, he means progress in replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar. But I don’t call that progress, I call it regression, along the lines of: “What did socialists use for light, before candles? Electricity.” Wind and solar have both been obsolete for a long time, and happily, no “transition” to those inadequate energy sources is occurring, nor will it ever.

Finally, given the total absence of the allegedly intended impact of spending on wind and solar, how in the world has $3.8 trillion (and counting) gone up in smoke? Easy: enormous amounts of money have been made by a small number of people, at the expense of the rest of us. And those people have shared a small share of their ill-gotten gains with politicians.

Charming Biden IS DESTROYING OUR AMERICA!

October 26, 2022

Biden Is Destroying Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve

By William Duncan at American Thinker:

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is a national treasure. Frighteningly, Biden is rapidly despoiling this treasure.

The Reserve consists of four sites (Bryan Mound, Big Hill, Bayou Choctaw, and West Hackberry) with a combined storage capacity of 714 million barrels of crude oil. It is the largest strategic oil reserve in the world.

The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the resultant oil crisis contributed to western governments’ recognition of how vulnerable their countries were to disruptions in Middle East oil. As a result, SPR was authorized by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-163), signed into law by President Gerald Ford on December 22, 1975. Construction on the Reserve began in 1977 and was completed in the early 1990s.

The SPR anchors the world’s collective energy security system. By ensuring that the SPR remains a reliable asset within the IEA collective action framework, the United States leads by example, encouraging other countries to maintain their own reserves of crude oil and petroleum products, and to deploy those reserves in a collective manner. This leverages the effectiveness of the United States strategic reserves and benefits the United States to a greater degree than would be possible with only the SPR.¹

SPR crude oil is stored in underground caverns leached in salt domes at the four sites. There are approximately 60 caverns ranging in size from 6 to 37 million barrels in capacity. A typical cavern holds 10 million barrels and is cylindrical in shape with a diameter of 200 feet and a height of 2,500 feet.²

Each SPR cavern contains either sweet or sour crude; there is no comingling of the two streams within individual storage caverns.³ Sweet crude has a maximum of 0.5% sulfur content. Sour crude has a sulfur content in excess of 0.5%. On July 21, 1977, the first shipment of approximately 412,000 bbl of Saudi Arabian light crude was delivered to the SPR.⁴ The Reserve completed filling 32 years later on December 27, 2009.⁵

The SPR was designed for five complete drawdown/refill cycles whereby the caverns are drained and then refilled. Each drawdown/refill cycle expands the storage cavern size because the oil is forced out by injecting fresh water into the cavern causing the oil to flow upwards. The surrounding salt dissolves in the fresh water, expanding the cavern’s size. Without getting too technical, the SPR isn’t draining individual caverns as it sells oil, but instead is only reducing the inventory across many caverns.

Much has been written about the Biden administration’s recent drawdown (180 million barrels) from the SPR, which has reduced the SPR inventory (405 million BBL as of 10/14/22)⁶ to its lowest point since 1984. The Biden Administration announced the final 15 million BBL of the 180 million BBL release on October 18.⁷ When this final 15 million BBL is sold, the SPR inventory will be below 400 million BBL or just over one-half of its storage capacity of 714 million barrels. Based on 2021 imports of 6.1 million barrels per day (BPD), this total represents approximately two months’ imports.⁸

The Reserve’s depletion is a major concern because there is no assurance that it will be refilled despite the Biden administration’s pledge to refill it when crude prices drop to or below the $67-72 per barrel price range.⁹ Biden is prepared to authorize significant additional sales in the coming months if conditions require.¹⁰ With the projections for a bad winter in the northeast, can the Biden administration resist the urge to sell even more SPR oil?

Even if the Administration does commence refill, the process will take years. The highest fill rate the SPR has achieved is 292,000 barrels per day (BPD) in 1981.¹¹ At that rate (assuming it can be achieved) it will take over three years to refill the Reserve to capacity—and that assumes perfect execution and no supply or logistical glitches. Moreover, it is questionable if that rate can be achieved because, in the early years, the SPR was filling empty storage caverns. Now, they’ll be topping off caverns, a process that is logistically more difficult.

Refilling the Reserve will be a political decision. The cost of refilling the Reserve, assuming oil purchases in the $67-$72 per barrel price range will be between $26.1 billion and $27.3 billion. According to the Wall Street Journal, the price of crude could go as high as $120 per BBL.¹² At that price, refilling the Reserve would cost a whopping $47 billion.

In March of 2020, former President Donald Trump wanted to fill up the SPR, and wanted to include in a stimulus package before Congress $3 billion to take advantage of lower oil prices that had fallen earlier that month. Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, removed the $3 billion out of the stimulus package.¹³

If Congress was reluctant to spend $3 billion two years ago, how willing will Congress be to spend eight times that much in 2023? Even if Republicans take control of Congress, will they have enough votes to override a possible presidential veto?

A full SPR acts as a deterrent to oil embargoes since it delays the impact of an embargo by four months. Already, that deterrent has been reduced by half. It could go even lower this winter.

Biden has spoken disparagingly of both the Saudis and the Russians since he was inaugurated. Both recently showed their contempt by reducing OPEC’s output by 200,000 BBL per day despite the Biden administration’s pleas. Will they decide to test him further with an embargo? With the SPR inventory at such a low point, I would bet that the thought has at least crossed their minds.

“Sadly, leftists won’t tolerate diversity!”

October 25, 2022

The left strikes again, trying to shut down a Ball State professor for teaching intelligent design

By Jack Hellner at American Thinker:

There are millions of known and unknown animal and plant species on Earth, yet there are few evolutionary trees to trace how they began.

A Ball State professor was fired for daring to bring up intelligent design along with evolution.  The atheists who abhor the idea got the university to cave.  He eventually got reinstated.

Intelligent Design’ Professor Returns to University That Banned His Class

A physics professor whose intelligent design course, “Boundaries of Science” — a definite no-no in the no-longer-hallowed halls of academia — was dropped in 2013 by Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, after complaints from atheists, is scheduled to return to the BSU campus in late October.

When Professor Eric Hedin returns to his old stomping grounds on October 26, his topic of discussion will again be intelligent design (ID). The theory holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process or natural selection.

Intelligent design is a worthy idea that deserves consideration in the academic realm.  After all, animals and plants clearly evolved, yet the origin of life on Earth cannot be explained by evolution, nor can the infinite universe.  Seems the left can’t handle the concept of intelligent design.

As RedState noted:

[U]nlike Creationism, the belief that God is the “absolute creator of heaven and earth, out of nothing,” intelligent design suggests a higher intelligence, scientific evidence, and physics are not mutually exclusive in discussions about the origin of the universe and subsequent life.

Sadly, leftists won’t tolerate diversity, whether it be about climate change, evolution, COVID, or when talking about biological sex. 

Colleges are supposed to be incubators for teaching and learning.  Sadly, they have essentially become thought police who indoctrinate instead of educate.  They seek to silence those who dare disagree with their leftist agenda.

There are a multitude of things on Earth and throughout the universe that were not created due to evolution.  Here is a sample:

The sun, moon, stars, planets. 

Thunder, lightning, rain, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, El Niño, La Niña, high tide, and low tide. 

There are a huge number of natural elements that allow us to live and thrive that can’t be explained by evolution.

The modern periodic table includes the 92 naturally occurring elements found in earth’s crust and ocean

There are a massive number of natural resources that can’t be explained by evolution. 

Any natural substance that humans use can be considered a natural resource. Oil, coal, natural gas, metals, stone and sand are natural resources. Other natural resources are air, sunlight, soil and water. Animals, birds, fish and plants are natural resources as well  

There’s also the rotation and orbit of the Earth and gravity.

In intelligent design, the Earth was placed over 92 million miles from the Sun, the Earth’s heat source.  The Sun’s temperature is around 27 million degrees at its core.  If the Earth were closer, it would burn up.  If it were farther away, we would freeze. 

Soil contains a lot of natural nutrients and can’t be explained by evolution.

Soil is a major source of nutrients needed by plants for growth. The three main nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). Together they make up the trio known as NPK. Other important nutrients are calcium, magnesium and sulfur. Plants also need small quantities of iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron and molybdenum, known as trace elements because only traces are needed by the plant. The role these nutrients play in plant growth is complex, and this document provides only a brief outline.

Humans breathe out CO2 that makes plants thrive, and plants emit oxygen that allows humans to live.  Neither can be explained by evolution. 

The process where a tiny sperm and tiny egg get together, and within a few months a human is born with all its body parts and organs formed, is an amazing creation that cannot be explained by evolution. 

Women, not men, have the body parts necessary to carry a child from conception to birth.

Women have a womb (uterus), not men.

Women develop an amazing organ, the placenta, not men.

The placenta is an organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy. This structure provides oxygen and nutrients to a growing baby. It also removes waste products from the baby’s blood. The placenta attaches to the wall of the uterus, and the baby’s umbilical cord arises from it. 

Women have all the parts necessary for a birth canal to give birth, not men.

After birth, women can produce milk for the baby, not men.  Breastmilk is an amazing creation, as the composition and nutrients change as the baby grows naturally. 

The composition of your breast milk changes — and continues to change — to meet the unique needs of your baby, even as he or she grows into a toddler!

No matter what the media, educators, entertainers, and other Democrats say, men have not evolved to where they can carry a baby and give birth.  Men are basically the sperm donors because women have not evolved to where they produce sperm, and it takes two to tango.

The older I get, the more amazed I am at how blessed we are on Earth and with nature.  The natural processes and instincts cannot be explained by evolution. 

Here are a few more  tidbits:

Humans have two sets of teeth.  Elephants can have up to six sets in their lifetime. 

Caterpillars eat poisonous milkweed in order to inject Monarch butterflies with a toxin that protects them from predators. 

The mother penguin lays an egg and then hands it to the father for protection, who almost starves himself to death while protecting their baby penguin. 

Male emperor penguins will not eat for up to four months, from the time they arrive at the colony to breed until the egg has hatched and the mother returns to feed. They lose almost half of r body weight during this time.

Isn’t it amazing how much trouble animals will go to to protect their unborn while a significant number of humans consider their unborn a nuisance and no more worthy of care than a clump of dirt?

To determine the sex of animals, all you have to do is examine their body parts.  It doesn’t make any difference how they feel. 

I recently had two knee replacements.  My knee joint was replaced by three natural resources: titanium, cobalt, and plastic (oil).  Thank goodness the human brain was invented that allowed my arthritic knees to be replaced.  My knees didn’t evolve.

We hear a lot about artificial intelligence, but all computers and robots are developed by humans and programmed by humans.  Algorithms at social media outlets, used to silence people, are designed by humans.  The human brain is the source of artificial intelligence.

We should learn to admit that there are many things, especially about the origin of life and the universe, that are unexplainable and stop pretending that the science is settled. 

Why would we trust politicians, bureaucrats, and others to control sea levels, temperatures, and storm activity when there are so many natural variables that we have no control over? 

We should also stop pretending that a party who can’t define a woman and which pretends men can give birth is the party of science. 

“THE PARANOIA IS ON!”

October 25, 2022

Hillary Clinton pops out of the woodwork, warning that Republicans will ‘literally steal’ the coming elections

By Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

As midterms approach, and a shellacking ensues, things are getting mighty paranoid over on the donkey side of the political equation.

This brings us to Hillary Clinton, who’s come out of the woods to make a video to rally the Democrat faithful:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1584734632087474177&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com%2Fblog%2F2022%2F10%2Fhillary_clinton_pops_out_of_the_woodwork_warning_that_republicans_will_literally_steal_the_coming_elections.html&sessionId=62bfb6f9183a981f4bff7e5e204726d6be410f8c&siteScreenName=AmericanThinker&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1c23387b1f70c%3A1664388199485&width=550px

“Right wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election,” she intoned in that flat, hectoring voice of hers, splitting her infinitive.

It’s not an original thought on her.  She’s been making this claim for years, even as her own party steals elections, as a warning to the Democrat faithful that this is an election they are entitled to win.

Not a word about Democrat failures — from inflation to crime to open borders to Critical Race Theory, not a word about the huge swing seen among Latinos, and lesser swings among young people, Blacks, Asians, suburban women, and others who are now casting votes for Republicans for the first time. 

For all her blather about Republicans “literally” stealing elections, she offers not one scintilla of proof that GOP cheating is actually about to go down, based on what’s heard on her video.

None of that matters to Hillary, because in her mind, elections aren’t free, nor fair, unless the Democrat wins.  Democrats alone are entitled to win.

This is what lost her the election to Donald Trump back in 2016, and to her discredit, she didn’t stop plotting.  For someone so imbued with the entitlement mentality, it stung her ego.  So she so badly wanted her loss to Trump to have been a matter of a stolen election and not a problem with her history of corruption, her tendency to fall down, her very bad socialist ideas, her stilted and hectoring delivery, or her insistence that half the electorate are “deplorables.”

A lot of entitled Democrats are going with this argument — MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace has called for foreign election observers to judge our elections, so the talking points have gone out.

The paranoia is on.

The “we was robbed” argument she is making now on behalf of some big-money political organization is the exact same one she made in 2016.  She hasn’t changed a bit.  She’s still stewing after all these years and almost desperately wants the problems in her party to be a matter of theft, not behavior and policy.

Her act is old now, her claims are tired, and she hasn’t learned a thing.

Violent Crime Is Driving a Red Wave

By Charles Lipson – RealClearPolitics Contributor

October 25, 2022

Two weeks before the 2022 midterms, fear of crime is second only to worries over inflation and recession. Both issues – personal security and economic security – affect voters directly. They arise every time voters ride the subway, walk down a dark street, pay the cashier at the grocery, or fill up their truck. That’s why survey after survey says they are the top issues motivating voters this November. That’s bad news for Democrats. Pollsters say Republicans hold huge advantages on the economy, inflation, and crime, the issues that matter most to voters.

Since crime is essentially a local issue, why does it hurt Democrats running for national or statewide office? Because the Democratic Party has associated itself with the notion that “social justice” and “racial equality” require fundamentally changing policing and incarceration. The problem, they say, is police, not criminals. In practice, that means Democrats, especially progressives, favor weaker law enforcement, easier conditions for bail (even for those charged with violent offenses), and less funding for police officers. That message was encapsulated in the slogans “defund the police” and “reimagine policing,” which took hold in 2020 after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis cop.

Not all Democrats embraced this self-defeating fad. Joe Biden, notably, spoke out against it. But progressives marched in lock-step, and their policies became the party’s dominant message on crime. Not just dominant, uncontested. Left-wing prosecutors ran on that message, won in city after city, and implemented it with disastrous effects. They had strong backing from state and local Democratic politicians. Pushback inside the party was tepid, for fear of alienating white progressives as well black leaders and activists.

Now Democrats are stuck with the consequences on the streets and, soon, at the ballot box. The party’s “soft on crime” image has become a political albatross, which candidates cannot readily discard. They are weighed down for two reasons. First, they hold power nationally and in almost every major city, so voters hold them responsible for bad outcomes. The party’s unwillingness to enforce basic laws and protect the public is exemplified by the porous Southern border, a deliberate policy choice by the Biden administration. The result has been an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants (some 2.4 million in the last fiscal year alone), plus a surge of deadly drugs. Mexican cartels have reaped billions in profits, five or six times as much as they made before Biden threw open the border.

Second, when the movement to defund police was at its height, no prominent national Democrats were willing to push back forcefully. That means candidates today cannot appeal to the public on these issues. None chose to follow Bill Clinton’s path during the 1992 presidential campaign, when he denounced Sister Souljah’s openly racist statements. None, including Joe Biden, were willing to become the pro-law enforcement face of the party, to denounce widespread rioting during the summer of 2020, to urge a crackdown on arsonists, looters, muggers, carjackers, and killers. Far from it. When Democrats held their nominating convention in Milwaukee that summer, they remained silent about the violence. Biden chose as his running mate a California senator who personally urged her Twitter followers to send money to a Minnesota nonprofit that helped post bail for protestors accused of breaking the law.

Voters get the point – and they don’t like it. They link the rise in crime to Democratic policies, to their unwillingness to make public safety a high priority, to their refusal to enforce the law. They don’t believe candidates who blame these problems mainly on bad policing or “systemic racism.” Voters do recognize the serious problems plaguing poor, minority communities and, for some six decades, have supported social-welfare programs to address them (with uneven results). But that doesn’t mean they accept crime, especially violent crime, whatever its social roots.

Voters are saying they want more public safety, which means more policing, not less. They don’t think their position is racist because they want fair, unbiased treatment of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians. They don’t want to ignore persistent poverty and crime in inner cities. They want effective programs to deal with them. But they do not believe, as progressives do, that these problems are somehow due mainly to “white supremacy.” On the contrary, voters have witnessed a steep, long-term decline in those noxious attitudes.

On criminal justice issues, Americans see sharp differences between the two major political parties. They know Republicans have long favored more support for law enforcement, more funding, and more policies like “broken windows” policing, which seek to reduce crime by punishing minor offenses before the perpetrators succeed and move on to larger ones. They know Democrats have consistently opposed these policies and dismantled them in cities they govern. They can see the results for themselves.

The Democrats’ message on crime is failing for another reason: They control the cities where crime is rampant. Voters around the country see the connection, and it hurts Democrats everywhere. The pain is compounded because the party has no good answers about what to do next, aside from more spending on social services and mental health (which are badly needed) and controlling guns (which faces formidable constitutional obstacles, as well as practical obstacles since millions of people already own millions of guns).

Voters aren’t inventing their fear of crime. They see it daily on local news, followed by interviews with the victims’ anguished families. They see videos of local stores being ransacked by organized gangs – none ever arrested. They see it firsthand when they walk into Walgreens and have to ask a clerk to unlock the Plexiglas case to get a tube of toothpaste. They see it again when they walk on local streets, trying to avoid homeless camps, open-air drug markets, and discarded needles.

National data tells a similar story. Violent crime, in particular, has reached record levels. The problems are not limited to big cities like Chicago or Philadelphia or progressive bastions like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Small and mid-sized cities face the same problems, without the media spotlight. In 2022, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program lists the ten most dangerous cities as Little Rock, Memphis, Tacoma, Detroit, Pueblo, Cleveland, Springfield, Lansing, Kansas City, and Chattanooga. Democrats govern all of them except Chattanooga, whose mayor does not list a party affiliation. Once again, voters have no trouble making the connection.

The desire for better law enforcement became national news earlier this year when San Francisco voters recalled their uber-progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin. Savvy Democrats saw that as a warning. But by then, it was too late for many of them. They were locked into weak positions on crime. There wasn’t much they could do besides change the subject.

Voters don’t want to change the subject. They want to change policies. They want much better public safety, fairly administered. They are sick of virtue signaling, wishful thinking, and criminals released to repeat their offenses. That’s what they are saying to pollsters. Soon, that’s what they will say at the ballot box.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.