53percenter's Blog

JERUSALEM (AP) — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said Sunday that the U.S. military withdrawal from northeastern Syria is conditioned on defeating the remnants of the Islamic State group, and on Turkey assuring the safety of Kurdish fighters allied with the United States.

Bolton, who traveled to Israel to reassure the U.S. ally of the Trump-ordered withdrawal, said there is no timetable for the pullout of American forces in northeastern Syria, but insisted it’s not an unlimited commitment.

“There are objectives that we want to accomplish that condition the withdrawal,” Bolton told reporters in Jerusalem. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.”

Those conditions, he said, included the defeat of remnants of IS in Syria, and protections for Kurdish militias who have fought alongside U.S. troops against the extremist group.

Bolton’s comments mark the first public confirmation that the drawdown has been slowed, as Trump faced widespread criticism from allies and the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for a policy that was to have been conducted within weeks.

Trump announced in mid-December that the U.S. will withdraw all of its 2,000 forces in Syria. Trump’s move has raised fears over clearing the way for a Turkish assault on Kurdish fighters in Syria who fought alongside American troops against IS extremists. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a terrorist group linked to an insurgency within its own borders.

Bolton, who is to travel on to Turkey on Monday, said the U.S. is insisting that its Kurdish allies in the fight against the Islamic State group are protected from any planned Turkish offensive. He is to deliver a warning to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week.

“We don’t think the Turks ought to undertake military action that’s not fully coordinated with and agreed to by the United States,” Bolton said. He said in meetings with Turkish counterparts, he will seek “to find out what their objectives and capabilities are and that remains uncertain.”

Trump has stated that he would not allow Turkey to kill the Kurds, Bolton said. “That’s what the president said, the ones that fought with us.”

Bolton said the U.S. has asked its Kurdish allies to “stand fast now” and refrain from seeking protection from Russia or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government. “I think they know who their friends are,” he added, speaking of the Kurds.

He said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford would continue negotiations with his Turkish counterparts this week to seek protection for America’s Kurdish allies in Syria.

Additionally, Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, who has been serving since August as the special representative for Syrian engagement and was named last week as the American special envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to travel to Syria this week in an effort to reassure the U.S.’s Kurdish allies that they are not being abandoned, Bolton said.

Bolton said U.S. troops would remain at the critical area of al-Tanf, in southern Syria, to counter growing Iranian activity in the region. He defended the legal basis for the deployment, saying it’s justified by the president’s Constitutional authority, adding “I’m a strong believer in Article II.”

The U.S. is also seeking a “satisfactory disposition” for roughly 800 Islamic State prisoners held by the U.S.-backed Syrian opposition, Bolton said, adding talks were ongoing with European and regional partners about the issue.

Bolton is to have dinner Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Sunday evening to discuss the pace of the U.S. drawdown, American troop levels in the region, and the U.S. commitment to push back on Iranian regional expansionism. Bolton was expected to explain that some U.S. troops based in Syria to fight IS will shift to Iraq with the same mission and that the al-Tanf base would remain.

Bolton also was to convey the message that the United States is “very supportive” of Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in Syria, according to a senior administration official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss Bolton’s plans before the meetings and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bolton on Sunday also toured the ancient tunnels beneath the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. He watched a virtual reality tour of the historic site and dined there with his Israeli equivalent, as well as U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer.

Visiting American officials typically avoid holding official meetings in parts of east Jerusalem, which is contested between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump himself, however, also toured the area in a previous visit.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 war, a move not recognized by most of the international community. Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

This is an issue that may be taken up by the Supreme Court that hasn’t gotten a lot of national attention. It involves an Indiana law, referred to as the “Eguenics Statute,” passed in 2016 that makes it  illegal for women to have an abortion on the basis of race or sex or because they learn they will otherwise give birth to a baby with Down syndrome.

The law was declared unconstitutional in the lower courts, but Indiana has appealed to the Supreme Court. The court privately reviewed the case this past Friday and will decide as early as next week whether to hear arguments.

What makes this particular case so significant is that it will be the first major abortion case to come before the court since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed.

Washington Examiner:

State lawmakers in Indiana appealed the case about a week after Kavanaugh was sworn in, arguing that “technological advances have improved … prenatal testing that screens for Down syndrome and other fetal abnormalities,” which results in most women choosing abortion when they receive a diagnosis.

The latest available data, from 1995-2011, show that 67 percent of pregnancies that test positive for Down syndrome end in abortion. Pregnant women can screen for Trisomy 21, a chromosomal abnormality, through a blood sample.

The Indiana abortion ban was signed by Vice President Mike Pence, who was governor of the state at the time. It contains exemptions for conditions that “with reasonable certainty result in the death of the child not more than three months after the child’s birth.”

In 2016, a federal judge blocked the Indiana law from going into effect, and a 3-0 ruling in the 7th Circuit Court in Chicago ruled it unconstitutional. They pointed to the Supreme Court’s Roedecision, saying the choice to have an abortion was not up to the government but was to be a decision between a woman and her doctor. In June, a dissenting opinion urged the appeals court to reconsider its ruling, with one of the judges saying that the Supreme Court had not ruled on what he termed a “eugenics statute.”

Kavanaugh gave little clue during his Senate testimony as to where he might stand on challenging Roe v Wade:

The question over whether Kavanaugh would cast a deciding vote to overrule or weaken Roe featured prominently in Democratic attacks early during his confirmation hearings. Later, the messaging centered primarily on sexual assault allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, who said he touched her inappropriately and covered her mouth while he was drunk and they were both in high school.

When asked by senators about abortion, Kavanaugh cited Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decisions that legalized the procedure nationwide up until fetal viability, generally understood as up to 24 weeks. Casey allowed states to regulate abortion but prohibited them from placing an “undue burden” on women who seek an abortion.

Kavanaugh did not say during the hearings how he would rule on abortion or whether he believed women had a right to abortion, stressing instead that Casey created a “ precedent on precedent.”

If the court took the case, they may be inclined to rule narrowly on the issue, confirming or striking down the law, without really dealing with the underlying problem of abortion on demand.

An elective abortion cannot be justified as medically necessary, meaning that other reasons not related to the health of the woman are used to justify it. If you can abort a child based on the fact that it will be a burden to its parents because of some condition they are born with, why not have the right to abort a girl baby because you wanted a boy? It’s a slippery slope that the Indiana law seeks to address. If confirmed by the high court, the law could become the basis for severely restricting the reasons a woman can have a legal abortion.

Activists know this, of course, which is why they are fighting the law tooth and nail. While no one can guess where Justice Kavanaugh might stand on the issue, he could support a ruling that would keep Roe intact, but make it much harder to get an abortion. That would maintain both the Roe and Casey precedents while carving out new restrictions on abortion.

This is an issue that may be taken up by the Supreme Court that hasn’t gotten a lot of national attention. It involves an Indiana law, referred to as the “Eguenics Statute,” passed in 2016 that makes it  illegal for women to have an abortion on the basis of race or sex or because they learn they will otherwise give birth to a baby with Down syndrome.

The law was declared unconstitutional in the lower courts, but Indiana has appealed to the Supreme Court. The court privately reviewed the case this past Friday and will decide as early as next week whether to hear arguments.

What makes this particular case so significant is that it will be the first major abortion case to come before the court since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed.

Washington Examiner:

State lawmakers in Indiana appealed the case about a week after Kavanaugh was sworn in, arguing that “technological advances have improved … prenatal testing that screens for Down syndrome and other fetal abnormalities,” which results in most women choosing abortion when they receive a diagnosis.

The latest available data, from 1995-2011, show that 67 percent of pregnancies that test positive for Down syndrome end in abortion. Pregnant women can screen for Trisomy 21, a chromosomal abnormality, through a blood sample.

The Indiana abortion ban was signed by Vice President Mike Pence, who was governor of the state at the time. It contains exemptions for conditions that “with reasonable certainty result in the death of the child not more than three months after the child’s birth.”

In 2016, a federal judge blocked the Indiana law from going into effect, and a 3-0 ruling in the 7th Circuit Court in Chicago ruled it unconstitutional. They pointed to the Supreme Court’s Roedecision, saying the choice to have an abortion was not up to the government but was to be a decision between a woman and her doctor. In June, a dissenting opinion urged the appeals court to reconsider its ruling, with one of the judges saying that the Supreme Court had not ruled on what he termed a “eugenics statute.”

Kavanaugh gave little clue during his Senate testimony as to where he might stand on challenging Roe v Wade:

The question over whether Kavanaugh would cast a deciding vote to overrule or weaken Roe featured prominently in Democratic attacks early during his confirmation hearings. Later, the messaging centered primarily on sexual assault allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, who said he touched her inappropriately and covered her mouth while he was drunk and they were both in high school.

When asked by senators about abortion, Kavanaugh cited Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decisions that legalized the procedure nationwide up until fetal viability, generally understood as up to 24 weeks. Casey allowed states to regulate abortion but prohibited them from placing an “undue burden” on women who seek an abortion.

Kavanaugh did not say during the hearings how he would rule on abortion or whether he believed women had a right to abortion, stressing instead that Casey created a “ precedent on precedent.”

If the court took the case, they may be inclined to rule narrowly on the issue, confirming or striking down the law, without really dealing with the underlying problem of abortion on demand.

An elective abortion cannot be justified as medically necessary, meaning that other reasons not related to the health of the woman are used to justify it. If you can abort a child based on the fact that it will be a burden to its parents because of some condition they are born with, why not have the right to abort a girl baby because you wanted a boy? It’s a slippery slope that the Indiana law seeks to address. If confirmed by the high court, the law could become the basis for severely restricting the reasons a woman can have a legal abortion.

Activists know this, of course, which is why they are fighting the law tooth and nail. While no one can guess where Justice Kavanaugh might stand on the issue, he could support a ruling that would keep Roe intact, but make it much harder to get an abortion. That would maintain both the Roe and Casey precedents while carving out new restrictions on abortion.

I admit that I already despise Rep. Ilhan Omar for multiple reasons. Her apparent marriage to her brother, evidently to accomplish visa fraud, her friendships with anti-Semites, and her views on Israel, for example.

But this much less consequential fraud really bothers me:

The #116thCongress has SO much to be proud of:



✅1st Somali-American + Refugee

✅1st Muslim women (@RashidaTlaib & I)

✅1st Indigenous women

✅1st Palestinian-American

✅Youngest (28) @AOC

✅Record 100+ women

✅Largest ever Black (55), Hispanic (37), & Progressive (98) caucuses

Her first item contains the claim to be both the first Somali-American (which is true) and the first refugee. That latter claim is utterly false, and disregards two Jews who survived and fled the Holocaust, the historic abomination that her Muslim Brotherhood friends would like to carry out to the ultimate solution end, and a third Jew, whose family fled Castro.

It’s always about her.

Her Twitter Picture

Ron Kampeas writes in The Jerusalem Post:

Seffi Kogen, the Global Director of Young Leadership for the American Jewish Committee, counts at least four other lawmakers who in their lifetimes had refugee status, and two of them are Jewish:



* The late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who made human rights a hallmark of his leadership on the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.



* Former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., who as a toddler fled Nazi Germany with his family for the United States and who also has played a prominent role in human rights advocacy.

* Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., just retired, who is of Jewish descent, arrived in Florida as a child of a family fleeing Cuba.



* Rep. Joseph Cao, R-La., the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress, served one term (2009-2011).



I’d add former Republican Florida Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, also born in Cuba to a family who fled after Fidel Castro seized power.

My guess is that it never occurred to her that anyone else could have been a refugee who entered Congress. Like so many on the Left, she probably has no interest in any history but her own story of Victimhood.

She owes a few more apologies, but that list is already long.

I admit that I already despise Rep. Ilhan Omar for multiple reasons. Her apparent marriage to her brother, evidently to accomplish visa fraud, her friendships with anti-Semites, and her views on Israel, for example.

But this much less consequential fraud really bothers me:

The #116thCongress has SO much to be proud of:



✅1st Somali-American + Refugee

✅1st Muslim women (@RashidaTlaib & I)

✅1st Indigenous women

✅1st Palestinian-American

✅Youngest (28) @AOC

✅Record 100+ women

✅Largest ever Black (55), Hispanic (37), & Progressive (98) caucuses

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 3, 2019

Her first item contains the claim to be both the first Somali-American (which is true) and the first refugee. That latter claim is utterly false, and disregards two Jews who survived and fled the Holocaust, the historic abomination that her Muslim Brotherhood friends would like to carry out to the ultimate solution end, and a third Jew, whose family fled Castro.

It’s always about her.

Her Twitter Picture

Ron Kampeas writes in The Jerusalem Post:

Seffi Kogen, the Global Director of Young Leadership for the American Jewish Committee, counts at least four other lawmakers who in their lifetimes had refugee status, and two of them are Jewish:



* The late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who made human rights a hallmark of his leadership on the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.



* Former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, R-Minn., who as a toddler fled Nazi Germany with his family for the United States and who also has played a prominent role in human rights advocacy.

* Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., just retired, who is of Jewish descent, arrived in Florida as a child of a family fleeing Cuba.



* Rep. Joseph Cao, R-La., the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress, served one term (2009-2011).



I’d add former Republican Florida Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, also born in Cuba to a family who fled after Fidel Castro seized power.

My guess is that it never occurred to her that anyone else could have been a refugee who entered Congress. Like so many on the Left, she probably has no interest in any history but her own story of Victimhood.

She owes a few more apologies, but that list is already long.

Judicial Watch has forced the state of California and Los Angeles county to end its practice of keeping ‘inactive’ voters on the voter rolls as is required by federal law. Here’s the news from the legal watchdog:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it signed a settlement agreement with the State of California and County of Los Angeles under which they will begin the process of removing from their voter registration rolls as many as 1.5 million inactive registered names that may be invalid. These removals are required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The NVRA is a federal law requiring the removal of inactive registrations from the voter rolls after two general federal elections (encompassing from 2 to 4 years). Inactive voter registrations belong, for the most part, to voters who have moved to another county or state or have passed away.

Los Angeles County has over 10 million residents, more than the populations of 41 of the 50 United States. California is America’s largest state, with almost 40 million residents.

The state of California, run completely by Democrats, of course, resisted this (at least until the midterm was over). They decided that cleaning up inactive voters from the rolls wasn’t in their interest and federal laws were for other states, little states. And as a result, nearly a quarter of California’s counties had more voters registered than actual eligible voters. And surprise, surprise, the state has suddenly turned solid blue.

L.A. county’s approximately 1.5 million inactive voters on those rolls (112% of age-eligible citizens alone) had been perfect fodder for ballot-harvestors, not this last time at midterms (all of the Democratic ballots harvested in the last midterm have made their voters active voters), but for upcoming elections. That rich bank of potential Democratic votes from ballot-harvesting is now gone with this Judicial Watch agreement.

Ballot-harvesting is a disturbing phenomenon so prone to abuse it’s illegal in most states. In California, where it’s not, Democratic operatives selectively pay visits to the homes of indifferent voters who don’t want to go to the polls or mail in their ballots, engage those voters, and then ”help” them fill out their ballots in the way Democrats want. That’s why conservative areas such as Orange County were suddenly flipped blue and popular candidates such as Young Kim, who had been winning by large margins on election night – suddenly saw their results flipped. Democrats learned that by extending the election count for weeks, turning in harvested ballot after harvested ballot, they could win any election. 

But the harvest had been incomplete, and with many inactive voters, Democrats would need that bank of more potential votes, which likely explains why California’s Democrats resisted any cleanup of voter rolls. California may have mailed these people ballots whether they liked it or not or asked for it or not, as they did with all of us, and well, Democratic ballot-harvestors could have easily gotten hold of those unasked for ballots in the mailboxes of dead, moved-away, or incapacitated voters and saw to it that they somehow got cast.

(Judicial Watch is investigating that one, too.)

The state’s chief vote counter, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, insists that not a single voter will be disenfranchised, given all his ‘safeguards.’ His official plan is to mail in a confirmation form to inactive voters and strike their names if they don’t respond, but somehow, I suspect the ballot-harvestors will be paying visits to these inactive residents, who may be indifferent and incapacitated voters, and somehow will get them to mail those forms in, too, thereby subverting the process.

That said, Judicial Watch’s victory is a great one and frees them up to focus on other areas of abuse that are rife in California, such as non-citizen registrations (the state still says it has no idea how many there are), illegal immigrant votes already cast, ballot harvestors using coercion, foreign ballot-harvestors, gerrymandering, straight out fraud, and the whole cavalcade of Democrat tricks that have disenfranchised conservative voters in the state.

It’s a welcome glimmer of light from a one-party state.

 

 

 

Judicial Watch has forced the state of California and Los Angeles county to end its practice of keeping ‘inactive’ voters on the voter rolls as is required by federal law. Here’s the news from the legal watchdog:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it signed a settlement agreement with the State of California and County of Los Angeles under which they will begin the process of removing from their voter registration rolls as many as 1.5 million inactive registered names that may be invalid. These removals are required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The NVRA is a federal law requiring the removal of inactive registrations from the voter rolls after two general federal elections (encompassing from 2 to 4 years). Inactive voter registrations belong, for the most part, to voters who have moved to another county or state or have passed away.

Los Angeles County has over 10 million residents, more than the populations of 41 of the 50 United States. California is America’s largest state, with almost 40 million residents.

The state of California, run completely by Democrats, of course, resisted this (at least until the midterm was over). They decided that cleaning up inactive voters from the rolls wasn’t in their interest and federal laws were for other states, little states. And as a result, nearly a quarter of California’s counties had more voters registered than actual eligible voters. And surprise, surprise, the state has suddenly turned solid blue.

L.A. county’s approximately 1.5 million inactive voters on those rolls (112% of age-eligible citizens alone) had been perfect fodder for ballot-harvestors, not this last time at midterms (all of the Democratic ballots harvested in the last midterm have made their voters active voters), but for upcoming elections. That rich bank of potential Democratic votes from ballot-harvesting is now gone with this Judicial Watch agreement.

Ballot-harvesting is a disturbing phenomenon so prone to abuse it’s illegal in most states. In California, where it’s not, Democratic operatives selectively pay visits to the homes of indifferent voters who don’t want to go to the polls or mail in their ballots, engage those voters, and then ”help” them fill out their ballots in the way Democrats want. That’s why conservative areas such as Orange County were suddenly flipped blue and popular candidates such as Young Kim, who had been winning by large margins on election night – suddenly saw their results flipped. Democrats learned that by extending the election count for weeks, turning in harvested ballot after harvested ballot, they could win any election. 

But the harvest had been incomplete, and with many inactive voters, Democrats would need that bank of more potential votes, which likely explains why California’s Democrats resisted any cleanup of voter rolls. California may have mailed these people ballots whether they liked it or not or asked for it or not, as they did with all of us, and well, Democratic ballot-harvestors could have easily gotten hold of those unasked for ballots in the mailboxes of dead, moved-away, or incapacitated voters and saw to it that they somehow got cast.

(Judicial Watch is investigating that one, too.)

The state’s chief vote counter, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, insists that not a single voter will be disenfranchised, given all his ‘safeguards.’ His official plan is to mail in a confirmation form to inactive voters and strike their names if they don’t respond, but somehow, I suspect the ballot-harvestors will be paying visits to these inactive residents, who may be indifferent and incapacitated voters, and somehow will get them to mail those forms in, too, thereby subverting the process.

That said, Judicial Watch’s victory is a great one and frees them up to focus on other areas of abuse that are rife in California, such as non-citizen registrations (the state still says it has no idea how many there are), illegal immigrant votes already cast, ballot harvestors using coercion, foreign ballot-harvestors, gerrymandering, straight out fraud, and the whole cavalcade of Democrat tricks that have disenfranchised conservative voters in the state.

It’s a welcome glimmer of light from a one-party state.

 

 

 

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation on Friday that would require the president and vice president and candidates for the presidency and vice presidency to release their tax returns.

The bill, however, would not require members of Congress or candidates for Congress to release their tax returns.

The provision is part of H.R. 1—the “For the People Act”—which Pelosi introduced Friday.

A summary of the bill says that it includes a section titled “Presidential Tax Transparency.” This section, says the summary: “Requires sitting presidents and vice presidents, as well as candidates for the presidency and vice presidency, to release their tax returns.”

In 2017, when members of Congress were calling on President Donald Trump to release his tax returns, Roll Call asked all 535 members of the House and Senate to release theirs. As Roll Call reported at the time, 6 members did release their tax returns as requested by the publication. Another 6 had already released theirs elsewhere. Another 45 members, Roll Call reported, had previously and partially released their tax returns. But 473 members had not released their tax returns and did not respond to Roll Call’s request that they do so.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi was one of the members, Roll Call reported, who had not released her tax returns.

At an April 2017 press briefing promoting similar legislation that would have required the president—but not members of Congress—to release their tax returns, Pelosi said that president’s do not have a “right to privacy” when it comes to their tax returns.

““It’s not a right to privacy that the President has,” Pelosi said. “He’s the president of the United States. There is a question about a Russian connection, politically, personally, financially, to the president; there’s concerns about recent actions by the Chinese government in relation to the Trump Organization.”

“There’s plenty reasons why we need this key to open the door to the information we need to connect the dots,” Pelosi said. “And if they have nothing to fear, then what are they afraid of.”

The earth is about 4.6 billion years old (with apologies to young earthers). During that time, the climate has changed numerous times, including several episodes of freezing that put the earth into virtual hibernation.

The processes that led to “Snowball Earth,” where miles of ice have entirely covered the planet have only been dimly understood. But scientists have found an important clue; there’s a lot less rock on the surface than there should be. Simple erosion cannot account for the missing miles of crust.

Los Angeles Times:

“There must have been some sort of special event in Earth’s history that led to widespread erosion,” said Steve Marshak, a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies what has come to be known as the Great Unconformity.

New research suggests it was something special indeed. Scientists propose that several freak episodes of global glaciation scoured away miles of continental crust, obliterating a billion years of geologic history in the process.

Scientists call it “The Great Unconformity” and it throws conventional theories about climate change for a loop.

Today, however, researchers have come to accept the outlandish notion that, a few times in its 4.6-billion-year history, the planet froze over and became a “Snowball Earth.” Now Keller and his colleagues hope to convince their peers that the glaciers that crawled across the continents between 720 million and 580 million years ago were responsible for the Great Unconformity.

Since there are so few rocks from that period, the researchers had to look for other kinds of clues to figure out what happened. They reasoned that the missing layers probably went through the full geologic spin cycle: They would have been broken down into sediment and washed out to sea, then deposited on the ocean floor and recycled into the mantle during subduction before finally melting into the magma that feeds volcanoes.

If so, a record of this activity should hide in tiny time capsules called zircons. These indestructible crystals grow in magma, and they contain the elements oxygen and hafnium. Oceanic and continental crust have distinct signatures of these elements. Therefore, a huge spike in the amount of recycled continental material should have left a clear chemical signal in zircons that formed at that time — and it did.

During these episodes of global glaciation, almost all life is snuffed out. So the question of what has been causing global climate change for the last half billion years becomes relevant to us.

What we know is that it almost certainly wasn’t carbon dioxide or any other trace gas in the atmosphere that was responsible. It appears that levels of CO2 have fluctuated modestly over that period of time and would have little or nothing to do with creating a “snowball earth” or any other radical alteration of the climate.

The question then becomes, why would greenhouse gases have much to do with climate change today? There is no doubt that there is a correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature, but no supercomputer in the world could predict any kind of radical alteration of the climate because X amount of CO2 was spewed into the atmosphere. There are many other factors at work in climate change – none of them man made – that to assign CO2 as a culprit for global warming is absurd.

A lack of CO2 in the atmosphere did not lead to “snowball earth.” Why should an overabundance of CO2 lead to catastrophic global warming?

The earth is about 4.6 billion years old (with apologies to young earthers). During that time, the climate has changed numerous times, including several episodes of freezing that put the earth into virtual hibernation.

The processes that led to “Snowball Earth,” where miles of ice have entirely covered the planet have only been dimly understood. But scientists have found an important clue; there’s a lot less rock on the surface than there should be. Simple erosion cannot account for the missing miles of crust.

Los Angeles Times:

“There must have been some sort of special event in Earth’s history that led to widespread erosion,” said Steve Marshak, a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies what has come to be known as the Great Unconformity.

New research suggests it was something special indeed. Scientists propose that several freak episodes of global glaciation scoured away miles of continental crust, obliterating a billion years of geologic history in the process.

Scientists call it “The Great Unconformity” and it throws conventional theories about climate change for a loop.

Today, however, researchers have come to accept the outlandish notion that, a few times in its 4.6-billion-year history, the planet froze over and became a “Snowball Earth.” Now Keller and his colleagues hope to convince their peers that the glaciers that crawled across the continents between 720 million and 580 million years ago were responsible for the Great Unconformity.

Since there are so few rocks from that period, the researchers had to look for other kinds of clues to figure out what happened. They reasoned that the missing layers probably went through the full geologic spin cycle: They would have been broken down into sediment and washed out to sea, then deposited on the ocean floor and recycled into the mantle during subduction before finally melting into the magma that feeds volcanoes.

If so, a record of this activity should hide in tiny time capsules called zircons. These indestructible crystals grow in magma, and they contain the elements oxygen and hafnium. Oceanic and continental crust have distinct signatures of these elements. Therefore, a huge spike in the amount of recycled continental material should have left a clear chemical signal in zircons that formed at that time — and it did.

During these episodes of global glaciation, almost all life is snuffed out. So the question of what has been causing global climate change for the last half billion years becomes relevant to us.

What we know is that it almost certainly wasn’t carbon dioxide or any other trace gas in the atmosphere that was responsible. It appears that levels of CO2 have fluctuated modestly over that period of time and would have little or nothing to do with creating a “snowball earth” or any other radical alteration of the climate.

The question then becomes, why would greenhouse gases have much to do with climate change today? There is no doubt that there is a correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature, but no supercomputer in the world could predict any kind of radical alteration of the climate because X amount of CO2 was spewed into the atmosphere. There are many other factors at work in climate change – none of them man made – that to assign CO2 as a culprit for global warming is absurd.

A lack of CO2 in the atmosphere did not lead to “snowball earth.” Why should an overabundance of CO2 lead to catastrophic global warming?

After a hard-fought battle to obtain records by the Sacramento Bee, we now learn that California’s electoral officials are admitting that they have no idea how many illegals and other non-citizens voted in the last primary, based on the state’s motor-voter registration, which has been shown to have registered thousands of non-citizen voters. The Bee reports:

California officials still can’t say whether non-citizens voted in the June 2018 primary because a confusing government questionnaire about eligibility was created in a way that prevents a direct answer on citizenship.

Apparently, tens of thousands of foreign nationals and other ineligible voters, maybe 16 year olds, got registered to vote at the DMV when they applied for their drivers licenses whether they asked for it or not.

Investigators can see that people marked themselves as ineligible to vote or declined to answer eligibility questions, but they can’t tell why. 

“We can’t assume why they declined to answer eligibility questions or why they said they were not eligible,” the Secretary of State’s Office wrote in an internal memo on Oct. 8, 2018.

That email and other documents The Sacramento Bee obtained through the Public Records Act shed light on why the Secretary of State has been unable to say clearly whether non-citizens voted last year. The Bee filed a legal complaint for the records when the Secretary of State initially withheld most of them.

The email shows that, for months, California officials have been examining whether non-citizens voted last year. On Thursday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla confirmed for the first time that his office has an active internal investigation into the matter.

“The Secretary of State’s office does not comment on the details of ongoing investigations,” the office said in a statement. “Determining whether ineligible individuals who were erroneously registered to vote by the DMV cast ballots requires a complete review. The Secretary of State’s office is doing its due diligence by conducting a thorough investigation.”

Spokesmen for the office declined to say how the department could otherwise determine citizenship of those registered.

This doesn’t even include the undoubtedly significant numbers of voters who answered that they were eligible to vote when they were not. Could that have happened when the ballot-harvestors were out patrolling illegal immigrant neighborhoods in search of votes? At a minimum, it most certainly was possible, especially, since claims to voter-eligibility on drivers license forms are never checked in California (it’s the honor system), according to voter-integrity activists. It also doesn’t help that California sneakily had residents sign to certify on their yellow mail-in ballots that they were California residents (rather than voting-eligible citizens) so as to prevent for illegals any potential perjury charges in addition to vote-fraud charges.

If California has no idea who’s a citizen, and has resisted every effort out there to get that information (it has defied cooperation with President Trump’s electoral integrity commission), well, then what we can conclude is that they don’t want to know if a non-citizen is voting and now the word is out that they don’t. Apparently, Democratic interests in ‘counting all the ballots’ as they say, means counting illegal ones, too.

They don’t know, they don’t want to know, and they aren’t about to clean this up. Keep after them, Sacramento Bee. In this case, the Bee is a newspaper that’s doing its actual job.

After a hard-fought battle to obtain records by the Sacramento Bee, we now learn that California’s electoral officials are admitting that they have no idea how many illegals and other non-citizens voted in the last primary, based on the state’s motor-voter registration, which has been shown to have registered thousands of non-citizen voters. The Bee reports:

California officials still can’t say whether non-citizens voted in the June 2018 primary because a confusing government questionnaire about eligibility was created in a way that prevents a direct answer on citizenship.

Apparently, tens of thousands of foreign nationals and other ineligible voters, maybe 16 year olds, got registered to vote at the DMV when they applied for their drivers licenses whether they asked for it or not.

Investigators can see that people marked themselves as ineligible to vote or declined to answer eligibility questions, but they can’t tell why. 

“We can’t assume why they declined to answer eligibility questions or why they said they were not eligible,” the Secretary of State’s Office wrote in an internal memo on Oct. 8, 2018.

That email and other documents The Sacramento Bee obtained through the Public Records Act shed light on why the Secretary of State has been unable to say clearly whether non-citizens voted last year. The Bee filed a legal complaint for the records when the Secretary of State initially withheld most of them.

The email shows that, for months, California officials have been examining whether non-citizens voted last year. On Thursday, Secretary of State Alex Padilla confirmed for the first time that his office has an active internal investigation into the matter.

“The Secretary of State’s office does not comment on the details of ongoing investigations,” the office said in a statement. “Determining whether ineligible individuals who were erroneously registered to vote by the DMV cast ballots requires a complete review. The Secretary of State’s office is doing its due diligence by conducting a thorough investigation.”

Spokesmen for the office declined to say how the department could otherwise determine citizenship of those registered.

This doesn’t even include the undoubtedly significant numbers of voters who answered that they were eligible to vote when they were not. Could that have happened when the ballot-harvestors were out patrolling illegal immigrant neighborhoods in search of votes? At a minimum, it most certainly was possible, especially, since claims to voter-eligibility on drivers license forms are never checked in California (it’s the honor system), according to voter-integrity activists. It also doesn’t help that California sneakily had residents sign to certify on their yellow mail-in ballots that they were California residents (rather than voting-eligible citizens) so as to prevent for illegals any potential perjury charges in addition to vote-fraud charges.

If California has no idea who’s a citizen, and has resisted every effort out there to get that information (it has defied cooperation with President Trump’s electoral integrity commission), well, then what we can conclude is that they don’t want to know if a non-citizen is voting and now the word is out that they don’t. Apparently, Democratic interests in ‘counting all the ballots’ as they say, means counting illegal ones, too.

They don’t know, they don’t want to know, and they aren’t about to clean this up. Keep after them, Sacramento Bee. In this case, the Bee is a newspaper that’s doing its actual job.