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Gone with the Wind: Inefficiency and Hazardous Nature of Wind Energy Impedes Renewable Crusade

Wind energy is infinite, clean, a friend of climate, and the future of our energy sector.  That is the green gospel we hear from renewable-obsessed environmentalists and politicians every day.

If wind energy is what they claim it is, why are the economic powerhouses of the world increasingly turning toward fossil fuels and nuclear, not toward wind?  If wind is affordable and efficient, as they claim, why does it need subsidies to flourish?

The answers to these questions reveal that wind energy is not what it is portrayed to be.

Intermittent Generation and Hyper-Sensitiveness to Weather

It is a well known fact that wind energy is intermittent — i.e., it can generate stable electricity only when the wind speed is at an optimum level.  This is known as rated wind speed, which is around 26–30 miles per hour, or 12–14 meters per second.  A little slower, and the generation is inefficient.  A little faster, and turbines risk getting damaged.

Unfortunately, average wind speeds are not stable, so neither is the energy generated.  Wind changes direction and speed minute by minute for various reasons.  Furthermore, geographical regions have different wind-generating capabilities during different seasons.  Some turbines remain non-operational for months when average wind speeds are lower than 10 miles per hour.

Energy generation can also be affected by cold weather and storms.  This was the case earlier this year when the cold weather from a polar vortex affected wind operation in America’s Midwest, impacting the only season when wind energy generation is optimum there.  Besides rendering them incapable of generating electricity, the cold weather also damages the turbines and other parts.

Canada, a country familiar with cold weather limitations of wind, estimates that cold weather accounts for a loss of $85 million USD annually.  The loss is attributed to three main factors: accumulation of ice on wind turbine blades, resulting in reduced power output and increased rotor loads; cold weather shutdown to prevent equipment failure; and limited or reduced access for maintenance activities.

The Cost: Loss of Money, Increased Power Prices, and Blackouts

Despite the seasonal variation and no assurance of a stable wind speed, the wind industry has managed to grow rapidly, thanks to the restrictive climate change policies that favor renewables against fossil fuels.

As a result of this blind love for wind energy, countries have lost a lot of money invested into the wind sector.  The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s annual energy outlook states that wind (and solar) energy contributed a mere 3 percent of total energy consumption in the U.S. last year, despite consuming a cumulative $50 billion in subsidizes. 

Moreover, some territories like Scotland compensate wind energy companies if electricity generated exceeds the demand.  The government makes up for the financial loss by increasing the electricity bills of consumers.

Furthermore, the increased cost of generation and transmission has resulted in increased power prices.  Environmental commentator Michael Shellenberger noticed that electricity prices have risen dramatically in countries that rely heavily on wind: “Electricity prices increased by 51 percent in Germany between 2006 and 2016 (wind and solar) and over 100 percent in Denmark since 1995 (mostly wind).”

This renewable-driven sharp rise in electricity prices is also observed in numerous states in the U.S. (especially California) that made heavy investments in wind and solar.

The highly seasonal and intermittent nature of renewable electricity means that some countries also run the risk of a complete energy blackout when wind fails.  The 2016 blackout in Australia caused by wind energy failure is a classic example.

Hazardous to Birds, Humans, and the Environment

Besides being inefficient and expensive, wind energy has also been found to be hazardous during its manufacturing phase and operational phase.

A generator for a high-end wind turbine requires as much as 4,400 pounds of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.  When neodymium is produced, the carcinogenic and radioactive waste is dumped into lakes, making both the water and the surrounding air toxic.  It is estimated that seven million tons of waste a year are dumped into a single lake in China, which is the largest producer of neodymium.

Wind turbines are the largest killers of birdlife globally.  They have a special liking for raptors and are infamous for adversely affecting many endangered species.  An operational wind turbine is a certified bird-killer.

Wind turbine accidents are also becoming increasingly common.  In the U.K. alone, hundreds of accidents are reported every year.  Globally, thousands of wind structural collapses and related accidents occur annually.

All these factors make wind energy untenable.  Even in the best operating seasons, wind has no competitive edge over conventional energy sources.

Some countries are already moving away from wind.  Poland aims to scrap all its operational wind factories by 2035.  (They’re not farms, by the way.  Farms grow plants and animals.)  China has refused to approve further wind projects due to their inefficiency and higher costs.

Aside from isolated local applications not yet served by major electric grids, wind has little future in a world moving toward technological finesse in energy generation technologies.  Wind makes us rely on a resource that is highly volatile and not under our control, thereby making it unsustainable no matter our advances in turbine technology.

Any hopes of a wind energy–powered utopian future are gone with the wind, literally.  The wind sector functions solely to feed the pride of renewable crusaders, at taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ expense, and has been a burden to the world that is pushing toward energy development.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., environmental science, University of East Anglia, England), research associate for developing countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Bangalore, India.

Wind energy is infinite, clean, a friend of climate, and the future of our energy sector.  That is the green gospel we hear from renewable-obsessed environmentalists and politicians every day.

If wind energy is what they claim it is, why are the economic powerhouses of the world increasingly turning toward fossil fuels and nuclear, not toward wind?  If wind is affordable and efficient, as they claim, why does it need subsidies to flourish?

The answers to these questions reveal that wind energy is not what it is portrayed to be.

Intermittent Generation and Hyper-Sensitiveness to Weather

It is a well known fact that wind energy is intermittent — i.e., it can generate stable electricity only when the wind speed is at an optimum level.  This is known as rated wind speed, which is around 26–30 miles per hour, or 12–14 meters per second.  A little slower, and the generation is inefficient.  A little faster, and turbines risk getting damaged.

Unfortunately, average wind speeds are not stable, so neither is the energy generated.  Wind changes direction and speed minute by minute for various reasons.  Furthermore, geographical regions have different wind-generating capabilities during different seasons.  Some turbines remain non-operational for months when average wind speeds are lower than 10 miles per hour.

Energy generation can also be affected by cold weather and storms.  This was the case earlier this year when the cold weather from a polar vortex affected wind operation in America’s Midwest, impacting the only season when wind energy generation is optimum there.  Besides rendering them incapable of generating electricity, the cold weather also damages the turbines and other parts.

Canada, a country familiar with cold weather limitations of wind, estimates that cold weather accounts for a loss of $85 million USD annually.  The loss is attributed to three main factors: accumulation of ice on wind turbine blades, resulting in reduced power output and increased rotor loads; cold weather shutdown to prevent equipment failure; and limited or reduced access for maintenance activities.

The Cost: Loss of Money, Increased Power Prices, and Blackouts

Despite the seasonal variation and no assurance of a stable wind speed, the wind industry has managed to grow rapidly, thanks to the restrictive climate change policies that favor renewables against fossil fuels.

As a result of this blind love for wind energy, countries have lost a lot of money invested into the wind sector.  The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s annual energy outlook states that wind (and solar) energy contributed a mere 3 percent of total energy consumption in the U.S. last year, despite consuming a cumulative $50 billion in subsidizes. 

Moreover, some territories like Scotland compensate wind energy companies if electricity generated exceeds the demand.  The government makes up for the financial loss by increasing the electricity bills of consumers.

Furthermore, the increased cost of generation and transmission has resulted in increased power prices.  Environmental commentator Michael Shellenberger noticed that electricity prices have risen dramatically in countries that rely heavily on wind: “Electricity prices increased by 51 percent in Germany between 2006 and 2016 (wind and solar) and over 100 percent in Denmark since 1995 (mostly wind).”

This renewable-driven sharp rise in electricity prices is also observed in numerous states in the U.S. (especially California) that made heavy investments in wind and solar.

The highly seasonal and intermittent nature of renewable electricity means that some countries also run the risk of a complete energy blackout when wind fails.  The 2016 blackout in Australia caused by wind energy failure is a classic example.

Hazardous to Birds, Humans, and the Environment

Besides being inefficient and expensive, wind energy has also been found to be hazardous during its manufacturing phase and operational phase.

A generator for a high-end wind turbine requires as much as 4,400 pounds of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.  When neodymium is produced, the carcinogenic and radioactive waste is dumped into lakes, making both the water and the surrounding air toxic.  It is estimated that seven million tons of waste a year are dumped into a single lake in China, which is the largest producer of neodymium.

Wind turbines are the largest killers of birdlife globally.  They have a special liking for raptors and are infamous for adversely affecting many endangered species.  An operational wind turbine is a certified bird-killer.

Wind turbine accidents are also becoming increasingly common.  In the U.K. alone, hundreds of accidents are reported every year.  Globally, thousands of wind structural collapses and related accidents occur annually.

All these factors make wind energy untenable.  Even in the best operating seasons, wind has no competitive edge over conventional energy sources.

Some countries are already moving away from wind.  Poland aims to scrap all its operational wind factories by 2035.  (They’re not farms, by the way.  Farms grow plants and animals.)  China has refused to approve further wind projects due to their inefficiency and higher costs.

Aside from isolated local applications not yet served by major electric grids, wind has little future in a world moving toward technological finesse in energy generation technologies.  Wind makes us rely on a resource that is highly volatile and not under our control, thereby making it unsustainable no matter our advances in turbine technology.

Any hopes of a wind energy–powered utopian future are gone with the wind, literally.  The wind sector functions solely to feed the pride of renewable crusaders, at taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ expense, and has been a burden to the world that is pushing toward energy development.

Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., environmental science, University of East Anglia, England), research associate for developing countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Bangalore, India.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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Democrat 2020 illegal immigration hysteria reaches new heights

The purpose of a primary debate used to be an informed discussion of the issues affecting Americans.  At the second debate debacle, Democrats felt the need to pledge their allegiance to citizens of other countries, as was on gregarious display last night.  Fifteen million viewers were subjected to the most ridiculous of lies and outlandish hysteria concerning illegal aliens — otherwise known by P.C. terminology as immigrants — and their plight.

The madness kicked off with the question of what should be done to the thousands of people converging daily at the southern border.  Kamala Harris announced that she “will release children from cages.”  John Hickenlooper expressed his utmost disbelief “that this country would sanction federal agents to take children from the arms of their parents, put them in cages, actually put them up for adoption[.]”  ”This president, though, for immigrants, there is nothing he will not do to separate a family, cage a child,” Eric Swalwell chimed in.

To anyone affected by amnesia, let it be known that the president signed an executive order last year that directed the Department of Homeland Security to keep families together after they were detained crossing the border illegally.  ”We are going to keep the families together.  I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” Trump admitted before ordering the defense secretary to provide additional facilities to the DHS for the housing and care of “alien families.”

On children in detention centers, Marianne Williamson bellowed: “This is collective child abuse.”  She’s right.  There is child abuse emanating from the border.  It involves massive human-trafficking operations run by Central American organizations.  There is no one more disturbed by this than President Trump himself.  ”This is an urgent humanitarian issue.  My Administration is committed to leveraging every resource we have to confront this threat, to support the victims and survivors, and to hold traffickers accountable for their heinous crimes.”  In 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made 1,588 human-trafficking arrests and identified 308 victims.

As reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Mark Morgan, “[t]he majority of individuals that ICE apprehends and arrest are criminals[.] … [W]e’re not ripping up families.  We’re enforcing the rule of law, maintaining integrity of the system.”  Section 1325 of U.S. Immigration Law calls for the imprisonment of illegals who attempt improper entry.  Morgan attests that the facilities are overcrowded as more and more foreigners flout the immigration laws of our land.  ICE is “actually begging” Congress to pass a supplement to give the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funding for more bed space for children.

According to the way things usually work, when a father commits an illegal act, his children don’t come along with him to prison.  According to the way the bleeding hearts of 2020 candidates work, criminals deserve not only protection, but free food, clothing, and access to medical care.

Total obliviousness to the reality of certain people referred to as “legal immigrants” may be the problem here.  Surprisingly enough, there are actual rules to the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States.  Some of these include applying for a Green Card (Permanent Resident Card), which garners the following:

There are an estimated 11.3 million illegal aliens living in the United States.  As the country that absorbs the most immigrants in the world, the U.S. government ought to have a say on how and where people can arrive.

Kamala Harris renounced Trump’s perverted, xenophobic worldview amid great applause: “He says go back to where you came from.  That is not reflective of our America and our values and it has got to end.”

It looks as though everyone is conveniently forgetting about the way Obama handled this.  Just a short while ago, in 2014, Obama appeared on ABC news and spouted the most unconscionable of blasphemies.  ”That is our direct message to the families in Central America: Do not send your children to the borders.”  Worst of all, he continued that the U.S. Border Patrol should be allowed to “stem the flow of illegal crossings and speed the return of those who do cross over[.] … Undocumented workers [sic] broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable.”

In the words of Ronald Reagan, “a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”  At one point, the Democrats correctly concurred with this aphorism.  In the current crazed race to overthrow Trump, the law is suspended, criminality is absolved, and mendacious accusations are meted out.  Far from genuinely caring about foreigners, these candidates will use them as ideological human shields to create an apocalyptic image of Republican rule.  Who needs tangible solutions when warped thinking and panic-inducing narratives are the name of the general election game?

Image: Mobilus In Mobili via Wikimedia Commons.

The purpose of a primary debate used to be an informed discussion of the issues affecting Americans.  At the second debate debacle, Democrats felt the need to pledge their allegiance to citizens of other countries, as was on gregarious display last night.  Fifteen million viewers were subjected to the most ridiculous of lies and outlandish hysteria concerning illegal aliens — otherwise known by P.C. terminology as immigrants — and their plight.

The madness kicked off with the question of what should be done to the thousands of people converging daily at the southern border.  Kamala Harris announced that she “will release children from cages.”  John Hickenlooper expressed his utmost disbelief “that this country would sanction federal agents to take children from the arms of their parents, put them in cages, actually put them up for adoption[.]”  ”This president, though, for immigrants, there is nothing he will not do to separate a family, cage a child,” Eric Swalwell chimed in.

To anyone affected by amnesia, let it be known that the president signed an executive order last year that directed the Department of Homeland Security to keep families together after they were detained crossing the border illegally.  ”We are going to keep the families together.  I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” Trump admitted before ordering the defense secretary to provide additional facilities to the DHS for the housing and care of “alien families.”

On children in detention centers, Marianne Williamson bellowed: “This is collective child abuse.”  She’s right.  There is child abuse emanating from the border.  It involves massive human-trafficking operations run by Central American organizations.  There is no one more disturbed by this than President Trump himself.  ”This is an urgent humanitarian issue.  My Administration is committed to leveraging every resource we have to confront this threat, to support the victims and survivors, and to hold traffickers accountable for their heinous crimes.”  In 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) made 1,588 human-trafficking arrests and identified 308 victims.

As reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Mark Morgan, “[t]he majority of individuals that ICE apprehends and arrest are criminals[.] … [W]e’re not ripping up families.  We’re enforcing the rule of law, maintaining integrity of the system.”  Section 1325 of U.S. Immigration Law calls for the imprisonment of illegals who attempt improper entry.  Morgan attests that the facilities are overcrowded as more and more foreigners flout the immigration laws of our land.  ICE is “actually begging” Congress to pass a supplement to give the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funding for more bed space for children.

According to the way things usually work, when a father commits an illegal act, his children don’t come along with him to prison.  According to the way the bleeding hearts of 2020 candidates work, criminals deserve not only protection, but free food, clothing, and access to medical care.

Total obliviousness to the reality of certain people referred to as “legal immigrants” may be the problem here.  Surprisingly enough, there are actual rules to the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States.  Some of these include applying for a Green Card (Permanent Resident Card), which garners the following:

There are an estimated 11.3 million illegal aliens living in the United States.  As the country that absorbs the most immigrants in the world, the U.S. government ought to have a say on how and where people can arrive.

Kamala Harris renounced Trump’s perverted, xenophobic worldview amid great applause: “He says go back to where you came from.  That is not reflective of our America and our values and it has got to end.”

It looks as though everyone is conveniently forgetting about the way Obama handled this.  Just a short while ago, in 2014, Obama appeared on ABC news and spouted the most unconscionable of blasphemies.  ”That is our direct message to the families in Central America: Do not send your children to the borders.”  Worst of all, he continued that the U.S. Border Patrol should be allowed to “stem the flow of illegal crossings and speed the return of those who do cross over[.] … Undocumented workers [sic] broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable.”

In the words of Ronald Reagan, “a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”  At one point, the Democrats correctly concurred with this aphorism.  In the current crazed race to overthrow Trump, the law is suspended, criminality is absolved, and mendacious accusations are meted out.  Far from genuinely caring about foreigners, these candidates will use them as ideological human shields to create an apocalyptic image of Republican rule.  Who needs tangible solutions when warped thinking and panic-inducing narratives are the name of the general election game?

Image: Mobilus In Mobili via Wikimedia Commons.

via American Thinker Blog

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Reason Without Faith Is Dead

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth," Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio.

Samuel Gregg wishes to see the human spirit soar, and his new book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason.

In his analysis of this relationship, Gregg identifies several "pathologies" that emerged from the weakening of the bond of faith and reason in the 17th and 18th centuries. Gregg points to John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which articulated the view that humans are born with no "innate ideas," but rather the mind is shaped by sensory experiences and "ideas are formed by reflecting on these experiences." This conclusion gave rise to two post-Enlightenment trends, which Gregg calls "pathologies of reason."

The first pathology was Prometheanism: If all knowledge comes from sensory experiences, "then society could be improved by changing man’s environment. Human beings, in other words, could be ‘remade.’"

The second pathology is "scientism," the notion that the scientific method is "the only way of knowing anything and everything." The effects of scientism are to reduce the idea of God to, at most, "knowledge of the mathematical structures that undergird nature" and to encourage "imperialist tendencies in the natural sciences."

Gregg observes that these pathologies are evident in Marxism.

Concluding that man draws all knowledge from the sensory experience, Marx and Engels argued the "empirical world" needed to be arranged so that "man experiences and gets used to what is really human." Claiming their arguments were scientific, the two men determined economic relations had to be transformed to change society and individuals. In brief, Marxism was a Promethean ideology that sought to remake man according to a supposedly scientific analysis of history and social relations.

Marxism can be understood as one possible outgrowth of the breakdown in the relationship between reason and faith. Marx embraced a scientistic understanding of reason to construct an ideology with quasi-religious ends: a world remade, a Communist "New Jerusalem," as Gregg writes.

Nietzsche went further, for rather than embracing reason at the expense of faith he rejected any confidence in reason and truth. Moral values, in his view, "derived not from faith or reason but from a will to power." Morality was the "self-created life, free from any constraints of truth."

Gregg draws a line from Nietzschean thought to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing a sentence from the Court’s opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

This idea of freedom, Gregg argues, "fences off liberty from man’s capacity to know truth." By defining liberty as the "right to define one’s own concept," the Court suggested freedom is secure only when society "officially endorses relativism."

Relativism, however, has authoritarian potential. In a relativist society, anyone who holds to a truth-claim risks being seen as a threat to those who do not. Tolerance can be used to argue "no one may claim that his philosophical or theological positions are true," and questioning the correctness of others’ actions is also impermissible. Rather than being neutral, relativism is a commitment to oppose the notion of, and discussion about, truth.

Marxism and authoritarian relativism are just two of the possible consequences of the breakdown of the relationship between reason and faith highlighted by Gregg in his book. Both reject faith; one also rejects reason’s ability to grasp truth.

Without discounting the risks of the casual embrace of socialism in the United States in recent decades, authoritarian relativism seems to present particular challenges for a diverse, pluralistic political sphere. Whereas Marxism functions as an alternative, quasi-religious system of truth, relativism challenges truth itself.

What, then, is the point of a pluralistic society if relativism is ascendant? Is it to seek truth—and order society toward truth—through reasoned discourse and debate of competing truth claims? Or must all ideas and values be accepted as equally correct? If so, does that mean one must be content to hold to their views privately while publicly setting aside the notion of truth?

Denying fides and ratio would seem to force the public square into a nihilism in which the only value is the individual pursuit to "define one’s own concept of existence." Is this a recipe for civic virtue or fragmentation?

Gregg’s book raises more questions than it answers—and that’s a good thing. His history of the West offers a cautionary tale for what happens when the proper balance between reason and faith goes by the wayside.

The post Reason Without Faith Is Dead appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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The dystopian Democrat debates

The interaction among 20 Oval Office wannabes who took the stage Wednesday and Thursday in the first live televised Democrat debates provided the first opportunity to take the measure of our opponents. A total of 12 debates among the leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are scheduled to take place through next April.

I say “our opponents” because these people are not only President Donald Trump’s opponents, they are my opponents, as well. I suspect that most of the people reading this article also consider these Democrat socialists their adversaries, too. The reality is that one of these individuals will get the Democratic Party’s nomination next year and if he or she is elected, our lives will change forever, even more profoundly and irreparably than when Barack Obama was elected almost 13 years ago and undertook his toxic measures to “transform” America.

After closely watching the two debates last Wednesday and Thursday nights, which aired live on NBC and MSNBC – and in Spanish on Telemundo – (video debate 1 here, video debate 2 here) and reading the 42,000 words of the debate transcripts (part one here and part two here), it is easy to conclude that these candidates seem to represent the living embodiment of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Lies, lies, and more lies were the order of the day – just as in 1984. The events’ success was palpable, however – Thursday’s debate drew more viewers (over 18 million) than any other primary election debate among Democrats in the history of American television.

In my opinion, all of the Democratic candidates – either wittingly or unwittingly – essentially want to ethnically cleanse us traditional conservative English-speaking Americans who are mostly of European origin – ethnically cleanse us and our entire history, achievements, and culture and relegate us and much of what our civilization has achieved to the “dustbin of history.” (That term was reportedly first used by Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky.)

Consider:

Over the decades, the Democrats and their minions – teachers unions, school administrators, local governments, and school boards – have turned our schools into indoctrination camps for the left.

Our colleges and universities, with the connivance and approval of Democrats, are now largely free of anything resembling freedom of speech. They are group think places where conservatives and their ideas have become almost extinct, while the lives of the occasional conservative speakers who venture into the campuses are in danger.

The Democrat-dominated popular culture and the mass media, instead of celebrating Western culture as they did during the height of the American Century, have been twisted into depraved cesspools of dark, violent and pornographic entertainment, further brainwashing many of our citizens and addicting them to distracting and destructive trash.

The political party of President John F. Kennedy now enthusiastically supports unrestricted illegal invasion and Open Borders. It also endorses abortion on demand – instead of “safe, legal and rare” –  virtually unrestricted up to and even after the moment of birth. Meanwhile, all of the candidates insist that the once-bipartisan Hyde Amendment be damned and the government be required to pay for all abortions.

The Democrats are anti-religion –  or more accurately, anti-Christian – and they label us, who they mock as clinging to our Bibles and our 2nd Amendment rights, as “deplorables.”

The law itself has been twisted so that an increasing number of laws go completely unenforced, and major crimes from the streets to the suites go unpunished, with the result that some of our largest cities, almost all of them Democrat-controlled for many decades, have come to resemble Third World hell holes.

The tyrannical Big Tech matrix within which we conduct much of the business and interactions of our lives today is run by Democrats and is well along the way towards totally monitoring, censoring, manipulating, and controlling our communications, our thoughts, and our activities.

The last nail in the coffin of our most cherished expression of personal privacy, freedom, and choice – our own health care – is in danger of being taken over and controlled by the proposals of outright socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or one of their younger acolytes, as they force us into Medicare for All single payer health care.

And these people – these Democrat communists and their tens of millions of followers – see the Constitution and our Founding Fathers as enemies of their Godless but Gaia-worshiping techno state who need to be targeted and banished. Among other things, they want to abolish the Electoral College and continue to flood the country with illegal aliens – more than 4,500 a day are arriving currently – to ensure that they will win major elections in the future and maintain total one-party political power in perpetuity.

This, then, is a capsule summary of the Democratic Party today, as expressed by its leading national political candidates. It’s not “democratic” at all. That’s a total misnomer. It’s a statist, authoritarian, metastasizing mob of Maoists who want to transform this country so it’s no longer even recognizable – except to someone who rhapsodizes the good old days of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They have said as much: Their hero – their Messiah – of the last decade, Barack Hussein Obama, promised on October 30, 2008 that we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming” the United States into something totally different. Having achieved a critical mass of numbers now and able to smell final victory, the heirs of Obama are ready to finish the task of amassing total power.

The Democrats are our enemy and, as Sun Tzu recommended in The Art of War, we must get to know and understand the enemy as a first step to defeating them – or we will be toast.

 

Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  Peter’s new website is http://peter.media.  Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.

The interaction among 20 Oval Office wannabes who took the stage Wednesday and Thursday in the first live televised Democrat debates provided the first opportunity to take the measure of our opponents. A total of 12 debates among the leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are scheduled to take place through next April.

I say “our opponents” because these people are not only President Donald Trump’s opponents, they are my opponents, as well. I suspect that most of the people reading this article also consider these Democrat socialists their adversaries, too. The reality is that one of these individuals will get the Democratic Party’s nomination next year and if he or she is elected, our lives will change forever, even more profoundly and irreparably than when Barack Obama was elected almost 13 years ago and undertook his toxic measures to “transform” America.

Second debate, 6 27 19

Photo credit: MSNBC screen grab via YouTube

 

After closely watching the two debates last Wednesday and Thursday nights, which aired live on NBC and MSNBC – and in Spanish on Telemundo – (video debate 1 here, video debate 2 here) and reading the 42,000 words of the debate transcripts (part one here and part two here), it is easy to conclude that these candidates seem to represent the living embodiment of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Lies, lies, and more lies were the order of the day – just as in 1984. The events’ success was palpable, however – Thursday’s debate drew more viewers (over 18 million) than any other primary election debate among Democrats in the history of American television.

In my opinion, all of the Democratic candidates – either wittingly or unwittingly – essentially want to ethnically cleanse us traditional conservative English-speaking Americans who are mostly of European origin – ethnically cleanse us and our entire history, achievements, and culture and relegate us and much of what our civilization has achieved to the “dustbin of history.” (That term was reportedly first used by Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky.)

Consider:

Over the decades, the Democrats and their minions – teachers unions, school administrators, local governments, and school boards – have turned our schools into indoctrination camps for the left.

Our colleges and universities, with the connivance and approval of Democrats, are now largely free of anything resembling freedom of speech. They are group think places where conservatives and their ideas have become almost extinct, while the lives of the occasional conservative speakers who venture into the campuses are in danger.

The Democrat-dominated popular culture and the mass media, instead of celebrating Western culture as they did during the height of the American Century, have been twisted into depraved cesspools of dark, violent and pornographic entertainment, further brainwashing many of our citizens and addicting them to distracting and destructive trash.

The political party of President John F. Kennedy now enthusiastically supports unrestricted illegal invasion and Open Borders. It also endorses abortion on demand – instead of “safe, legal and rare” –  virtually unrestricted up to and even after the moment of birth. Meanwhile, all of the candidates insist that the once-bipartisan Hyde Amendment be damned and the government be required to pay for all abortions.

The Democrats are anti-religion –  or more accurately, anti-Christian – and they label us, who they mock as clinging to our Bibles and our 2nd Amendment rights, as “deplorables.”

The law itself has been twisted so that an increasing number of laws go completely unenforced, and major crimes from the streets to the suites go unpunished, with the result that some of our largest cities, almost all of them Democrat-controlled for many decades, have come to resemble Third World hell holes.

The tyrannical Big Tech matrix within which we conduct much of the business and interactions of our lives today is run by Democrats and is well along the way towards totally monitoring, censoring, manipulating, and controlling our communications, our thoughts, and our activities.

The last nail in the coffin of our most cherished expression of personal privacy, freedom, and choice – our own health care – is in danger of being taken over and controlled by the proposals of outright socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or one of their younger acolytes, as they force us into Medicare for All single payer health care.

And these people – these Democrat communists and their tens of millions of followers – see the Constitution and our Founding Fathers as enemies of their Godless but Gaia-worshiping techno state who need to be targeted and banished. Among other things, they want to abolish the Electoral College and continue to flood the country with illegal aliens – more than 4,500 a day are arriving currently – to ensure that they will win major elections in the future and maintain total one-party political power in perpetuity.

This, then, is a capsule summary of the Democratic Party today, as expressed by its leading national political candidates. It’s not “democratic” at all. That’s a total misnomer. It’s a statist, authoritarian, metastasizing mob of Maoists who want to transform this country so it’s no longer even recognizable – except to someone who rhapsodizes the good old days of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They have said as much: Their hero – their Messiah – of the last decade, Barack Hussein Obama, promised on October 30, 2008 that we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming” the United States into something totally different. Having achieved a critical mass of numbers now and able to smell final victory, the heirs of Obama are ready to finish the task of amassing total power.

The Democrats are our enemy and, as Sun Tzu recommended in The Art of War, we must get to know and understand the enemy as a first step to defeating them – or we will be toast.

 

Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications.  Peter’s new website is http://peter.media.  Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.

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BETRAYED! Socialist Dems Stab Pelosi AGAIN

The mutiny continues

Speaker Nancy Pelosi once again has egg dripping off of her face thanks to her vaunted freshman four who despite her high praise, have continued to embarrass and undermine their boss by going rogue which they did on a border bill that she had changed in order to appease them.

Pelosi has a real hot mess on her hands thanks to the quartet led by Twitter diva Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whose comparison of border detention facilities to Nazi concentration camps resulted in a firestorm of criticism over what many have suggested is thinly-veiled Holocaust denial.

With AOC and her “posse” of Reps Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley all but officially calling the shots, the beleaguered septuagenarian made significant changes “for the children” but was still crapped on by the young upstarts who thanks to their social media followings and the backing of the extreme-left powerhouse Justice Democrats are growing more powerful with every news cycle.

Democrats and especially the young socialists have used the children of migrants as human shields which they cower behind in their war on President Trump and truthfully, Pelosi herself bears a large share of the responsibility for her own problems for her appeasement of the fab four who continue to stab her in the back as they did when despite alterations to her centerpiece border funding bill, they publicly snubbed her anyway.

The bill was to provide $4.5 billion in emergency border funding as it becomes increasingly apparent that there is a full-blown crisis at the border that Pelosi can no longer simply ignore out of spite for Trump.

Via  The Hill, “The four House Democrats who voted against the border funding bill”:

Four House Democrats on Tuesday evening bucked party leadership and voted against a bill to provide $4.5 billion in emergency border funding.

The Democrats who voted against the bill were Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.)

The handful of defections come in the wake of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meeting on Monday evening with progressive and Latino lawmakers who were hesitant to support the measure.

The Speaker urged members of her party to support the legislation earlier in the day, arguing that defecting would be a win for President Trump.

“Understand what we’re up against in the White House. The president would love for this bill to go down today,” Pelosi said during a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday, according to a senior Democratic aide.

“A vote against this bill is a vote for Donald Trump and his inhumane, outside-the-circle of civilized attitude toward the children.”

Pelosi’s bill eventually made it through but without the support of the insurgency that has become the tail that wags the dog.

To think that it was only a few short months ago when Nervous Nancy and her young charges were all on the cover of Rolling Stone but that was before she got steamrolled and was forced to dilute a resolution condemning Omars anti-Semitism and has been continually upstaged by AOC who Pelosi is petrified of.

With our without the freshman firebrands, Pelosi’s bill as deader than a doornail and will be vetoed by Trump as her power continues to be stolen away from those who had originally enchanted her.

via Downtrend.com

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Big tech test-marketing censorship of Trump

It looks like the nation’s largest news gathering organization, the Associated Press, is test marketing the public’s reaction to Big Tech actively suppressing President Trump’s ability to reach voters directly. Given the shocking revelations of the Project Veritas recordings of Google executives and their memos, and Twitter’s banning of conservative, it is not paranoid to worry about Big Tech trying to define Trump and conservatives as “hate speech”… “because that’s how Trump won,” and limiting his ability to be heard.  

Photo credit: author

AP’s toe-in-the-water, written by Barbara Ortutay is datelined San Francisco and titled, “Politicians’ tweets could get slapped with warning labels.” It begins:

Presidents and other world leaders and political figures who use Twitter to threaten or abuse others could find their tweets slapped with warning labels.

The new policy , announced by the company on Thursday, comes amid complaints from activists and others that President Donald Trump has gotten a free pass from Twitter to post hateful messages and attack his enemies in ways they say could lead to violence.

From now on, a tweet that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violates the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation.

We’re already in Orwell territory here, describing outright censorship (something that is “obscured” cannot be seen and is therefore “censored” despite AP’s avoidance of that ugly reality) is called a “warning label.”

The entire article is biased, quoting the far left smear group SPLC (“It’s a step in the right direction”), but this passage takes the cake for pure denial of reality:

“The new stance could fuel additional Trumpian ire toward social media. The president routinely complains, without evidence, that social media sites are biased against him and other conservatives.”

Hat tip: David Paulin

It looks like the nation’s largest news gathering organization, the Associated Press, is test marketing the public’s reaction to Big Tech actively suppressing President Trump’s ability to reach voters directly. Given the shocking revelations of the Project Veritas recordings of Google executives and their memos, and Twitter’s banning of conservative, it is not paranoid to worry about Big Tech trying to define Trump and conservatives as “hate speech”… “because that’s how Trump won,” and limiting his ability to be heard.  

Photo credit: author

AP’s toe-in-the-water, written by Barbara Ortutay is datelined San Francisco and titled, “Politicians’ tweets could get slapped with warning labels.” It begins:

Presidents and other world leaders and political figures who use Twitter to threaten or abuse others could find their tweets slapped with warning labels.

The new policy , announced by the company on Thursday, comes amid complaints from activists and others that President Donald Trump has gotten a free pass from Twitter to post hateful messages and attack his enemies in ways they say could lead to violence.

From now on, a tweet that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violates the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation.

We’re already in Orwell territory here, describing outright censorship (something that is “obscured” cannot be seen and is therefore “censored” despite AP’s avoidance of that ugly reality) is called a “warning label.”

The entire article is biased, quoting the far left smear group SPLC (“It’s a step in the right direction”), but this passage takes the cake for pure denial of reality:

“The new stance could fuel additional Trumpian ire toward social media. The president routinely complains, without evidence, that social media sites are biased against him and other conservatives.”

Hat tip: David Paulin

via American Thinker Blog

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Judicial Watch’s Weekly Update: Judicial Harassment of President Trump on Census

Tom Fitton, Judicial WatchThrough the years, we have been vigilant defenders of integrity in our elections and that has included exposing efforts to dilute the will of U.S. citizens at the polls. So of course, we are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s ruling that delays, perhaps permanently, the Trump administration’s plan to include a question on the 2020 census inquiring about a respondent’s citizenship status.

via CanadaFreePress.Com

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GOP Congressman Smacks Down Annoying Nuisance Rashida Tlaib

In another disgusting abuse of power that is less about oversight than it is about the ritual humiliation of a successful conservative female, House Democrats followed through on their threats and on Wednesday, issued a subpoena to force Kellyanne Conway to appear before their tribunal.

Conway is the target of an archaic and seldom-enforced 1939 law that largely serves as a political bludgeon when the DOJ’s Office Of Special Counsel demanded that President Trump fire her for violations of the Hatch Act.

Not only did the president refuse but defended his loyal adviser while blasting the blatant attempt to stifle her free speech because she said mean things about several 2020 Democrat candidates. The White House also made it clear that Conway would not be complying with the demands of House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings that she show up on Wednesday for another one of the disgusting spectacles that Dems have staged since winning the midterm elections.

On Wednesday, Cummings pulled the trigger on the subpoena for Conway and there were fireworks in the committee between radical freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Republican Mark Meadows who slammed the lid on the Motown motormouth who was trying to disrupt his questioning of a witness.

Details via Mediaite:

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) caused a stir at a congressional hearing when he snapped at Democratic colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and challenged the integrity of the witness.

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on White House counselor Kellyanne Conway’s repeated violations of the Hatch Act, at which the Office of Special Counsel’s Henry Kerner faced questions about his agency’s investigation.

Democrats on the committee had Mr. Kerner establish, repeatedly, that he is a “conservative Republican” who was appointed by President Donald Trump, and who “voted for Ronald Reagan,” in an effort to refute the notion that the OSC’s recommendation for Conway to be fired was motivated by partisanship.

Meadows began his questioning by suggesting that Kerner’s actions were personal, saying, “Mr. Kerner, she made you mad, didn’t she? Kellyanne Conway made you mad.”

AND

Meadows then began questioning Kerner about which senator was presiding the last time the Hatch Act was amended, for some reason, and when Rep. Tlaib tried to speak while Kerner consulted his staff, Meadows snapped, “It’s MY time, Tlaib!”

Congressman Meadows also called out Cummings and Democrats for their ongoing efforts to criminalize their political adversaries and suggested that the abuse of subpoenas for malarkey like Hatch Act violations is setting a dangerous precedent.

It wasn’t the first time that the fur flew between the two, back during the lowlights of the Michael Cohen hearings, Meadows was accused of being a racist by Tlaib who like her fellow freshman firebrands AOC, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley has been a toxic and poisonous influence on civil discourse and have cast a blight on the legitimacy of Congress itself.

Tlaib’s fellow Michigander and turncoat Justin Amash joined with his Democrat friends to approve the subpoeana.

It’s a lame answer but Amash is an ambitious man with a likely eye on a third party run against Trump in 2020.

via Downtrend.com

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Exclusive–Marsha Blackburn: English Represents Freedom, Should Be America’s Official Language

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Breitbart News Friday that, as America approaches Independence Day, she is calling for English, as the language of freedom, to be America’s official language.

On Thursday, Sen. Blackburn became the latest sponsor for S. 678, the English Language Unity Act, written by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). The bill would establish English as the national language and would establish a uniform language requirement for the citizen naturalization process.

Blackburn’s backing of the English Language Unity Act arises as former Rep. Beto O’ Rourke (D-TX), former Obama official Julian Castro, and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) spoke Spanish during the 2020 Democrat national debate on Wednesday night. A poll found that a majority of independent swing voters found that speaking Spanish during the debate was “pandering.”

Inhofe’s legislation garnered seven Senate cosponsors in the last congressional term, and with Blackburn’s backing, the bill has three cosponsors this term.

Sen. Blackburn said that as Americans prepare to celebrate America’s Independence Day, English should become the national language and that proficiency in English should become an integral part of the country’s naturalization process.

“As we near Independence Day, it’s important to recognize that English represents the language of freedom and should be our country’s official language. After all, our Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution in English,” Blackburn told Breitbart News. “Learning English is a rite of passage for all new American citizens. One part of that process should be learning and understanding these founding documents in the language it was written.”

Americans overwhelmingly favor legislation to make English the national language.

A 2018 Rasmussen poll found that 81 percent of Americans believe that English should become the official language of the United States, while only 12 percent said disagreed that English should be the national language, and six percent said they were not sure. Ninety-five percent of Republicans agreed that English should be the national language, and 75 percent of Democrats agreed that the country should adopt English as its language.

Fifty percent of Americans also said that election ballots and other official government documents should be printed in English, while 44 percent said they should also be written in other languages.

Congressman Steve King (R-IA) sponsored the House companion legislation to the bill, and the bill has 23 cosponsors, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Mo Brooks (R-AL).

ProEnglish, one of the nation’s leading advocates for the English language, contended that the legislation will save Americans billions of dollars in government-mandated translation and interpretation costs and will encourage cultural and linguistic assimilation by new immigrants to the country.

Inhofe and King’s legislation arises as a Pew Research study found that many illegal and legal immigrants lacked proficiency with the English language. The study found that only 34 percent of illegal immigrants said they were proficient in English, and only 57 percent of legal immigrants said that they were skilled with the English language.

A 2018 Center for Immigration Studies poll found that 67 million people in the United States do not speak English at home, nor do nearly half the residents speak English in America’s five largest cities.

Proficiency in English will serve as a centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s proposed immigration reforms.

President Trump said in May that “to promote integration, assimilation, and national unity, future immigrants will be required to learn English and to pass a civics exam prior to admission.”

Trump added, “Through these steps, we will deliver an immigration system that respects, and even strengthens, our culture, our traditions, and our values.”

via Breitbart News

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President Trump Is Right – STOCK MARKETS WENT WILD AFTER TRUMP WON 2016 ELECTION – DOW UP 45% Since Hillary Lost!

President Trump is right – After he won the 2016 Presidential election the markets went absolutely wild!

President Trump tweeted from Japan overnight that the markets ‘went up massively’ after he won the election –

Far left intellectuals and Nobel Prizing winning economists like Paul Krugman from the far left liberal New York Times warned that the sky was falling after the Trump win.  He claimed the markets would collapse with a Trump Presidency.  He could not be more wrong.  He wrote that day after the Trump win that the markets will never recover –

It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

The far left biased Krugman went on to make two more shocking claims – one true and one utterly false and ignorant.  He stated that under Obama America has “been doing O.K. only thanks to extremely low interest rates.”  This was true.  Next Krugman made a horrible prediction stating “we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”  What a dopey and horrible prediction.

The stock markets are major indications of an economy’s strength.  They include valuations based on past and current financial data and company and market data.  The markets also include expectations for the future.

The US Markets have been on fire since the 2016 election because President Trump won –

On November 8th, 2016, the markets closed at 18,333.  Yesterday the markets closed at 26,600.  That’s a 45% increase in the DOW since the 2016 election!

* President Trump is the only President in US history to oversee two stock market rallies of nine days or more where the DOW set new highs each and every day.

* On February 28th, 2018, President Trump matched President Reagan’s 1987 record for most continuous closing high trading days when the DOW reached a new high for its 12th day in a row!

* Then in early August of 2018 President Trump reigned over a 9 day stock market rally with each day reaching record highs.

* The DOW daily closing stock market average has risen more than 40% since the election on November 8th, 2016. (On November 9th, 2016, the DOW closed at 18,332 – yesterday the DOW closed at 26,600).

Since the 2016 Presidential election, the DOW reached record highs an amazing 103 times. There were more stock market highs (71) in 2017, Trump’s first year as President, than any year in history.

The fastest 500 point increase between major milestones in the DOW (i.e. between 25,500 and 26,000) occurred on January 17, 2018.  The DOW increased 500 points and surpassed 26,000 for the first time ever six days after the DOW surpassed 25,500 on January 11th, 2018 for the first time. 

The fastest 1000 point increase, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000 point increases in the DOW in major milestones have all occurred since President Trump became President as well.

The DOW had its best day in history under President Trump.  On December 26th, 2018 the DOW was up more than 1,000 points (1,086) in one day for the first time ever!

The DOW increased the most points in a single year under President Trump when it grew 4,956 points in 2017.

So how does this compare with President Obama’s first few years in office?

* The DOW daily closing stock market average tanked (went down) (-31% ) between Obama’s election win on November 4th, 2008 and March 5th, 2009. (On November 4th the DOW closed at 9,625 – on March 5th the DOW closed at 6,594. Overall it decreased more than 3,000 points during this time). The markets had no way to go but up after this time and they did increase but at a sluggish rate.

Obama never saw a new stock market high his entire first term (his first 4 years in office). This was in spite of Obama receiving beneficial treatment from the Fed who kept rates at near 0% for most of Obama’s eight years in office.

No doubt the markets would be much higher for President Trump if the Fed hadn’t increased rates multiple times whenever a new market milestone was reached.

The Fed kept rates at zero percent for most of Obama’s time in office.  One thing Krugman was right about above was that the only thing that kept the economy going under Obama were the low interest rates.  Obama’s recovery was the worst since the Great Depression.

As soon as President Trump won the 2016 election, the Fed began to increase rates radically.

Each time there were new stock market highs due to Trump’s policies of lower taxes and a massive decrease in regulations, the Fed stepped in to kill the rally.  The Fed’s insane policies at a time of no inflation have slowed the stock market rally, impacted hard working American’s 401k’s and increased the US debt by a couple trillion dollars!

President Trump knows this too –

Trump is right.  The Fed is a horrible idea gone wrong!  In spite of the Fed’s left leaning political actions to stop the great Trump economy, the economy is on fire.  Trump economic team leader Larry Kudlow knows it –

Trump is right.  The economy and the markets are on fire.  Let’s hope and pray for a Fed realization that it works for the American people and not globalist bankers.  The Trump economy has no where to go but up!

The post President Trump Is Right – STOCK MARKETS WENT WILD AFTER TRUMP WON 2016 ELECTION – DOW UP 45% Since Hillary Lost! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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