Fake News Enemy of Kids, and Decency

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/whats-news.php

This PL post does a good job of debunking the whole "teens in MAGA hats "mocked" Native American" headline calumny, He came up to them, started beating a drum in their face, and they stood their ground.

I guess a buddy and I "mocked" a bunch of union thugs attempting to block entrance to a Newt Gingerich talk in Rochester in the mid-90's as we walked through their picket line and they decided that avoiding physical contact was the better part of "valor". They had no business blocking the entrance -- protesting, YES!, with my support, but do not seek to intimidate!

The MSM used to be horribly biased in what they picked as stories and how they reported them -- but they used to stick to things that were at least somewhat "news" -- actual leadership/political actors, famous, well known, wealthy were involved ... "public people".  Not a completely NOT NEWS case of demonstrators attempting to intimidate KIDS and the kids doing NOTHING!

Just think if they reported every time some young "psuedo-toughs" of any race walked down sidewalks forcing other people to get out of their way? I imagine that is how I'll first find out I'm old -- when one of them fails to move out of my way (the norm), or one keeps coming at me as I walk on the right side and they eventually don't bounce off.

Perhaps we could just stick to when youth of any race disrespect their elders -- old veterans in uniform, the Flag, etc. -- oh wait, I guess disrespecting the Flag is now "truth to power", my bad.

The MSM used to just be embarrassingly one sided -- now it is the enemy of the people, even the kids.

If those of us who look at this trash and fail to speak up keep doing so, we deserve what we get -- it won't be old indians with drums doing the intimidating then -- it will be the modern version of the Hitler Youth or the Soviet "Young Pioneers" pushing and kicking us when we are too old to do anything about it.

Bad stuff comes on slowly -- day by day, drip by drip. We ignore it at our peril.

Davos World In Crisis?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/19/business/davos-world-economic-forum/index.html

One of the stories I try to follow because the MSM barely takes notice is the yearly meeting at Davos Switzerland of the 3,000 or so wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. Even the MSM admits that it is "more than a thousand" private jets. Naturally, since our true ruling class -- the Davos elite, is under no circumstances going to give up flying, we are regularly told that "flying doesn't matter much" for the supposed scourge of Global Warming -- which is sort of like saying "where you dump sewage doesn't matter much" (if it is YOUR yard, or the intake to YOUR cities water supply, does location matter?).

Apparently, so it is with jet travel ...

... if we focus just on the impact over the next five years, then planes currently account for more global warming than all the cars on the world's roads – a stark reversal of the usual comparison. Per passenger mile, things are even more marked: flying turns out to be on average 50 times worse than driving in terms of a five-year warming impact.

Of course "50x" would be for travelling on commercial jets, where the cost is spread over a couple hundred people. As anyone knows from driving, speed costs a lot -- and the private jets go as fast as they can because their owners are REALLY important! -- just ask them. The best way to go fast is to go high, which is of course a worse place to dump your carbon. let's just say that each of those global elites are doing as much carbon damage as 50x200 driving 20k miles or so (there and back)! So like 10,000 people driving 20k miles x 1,500 or so (jets)  -- eg, the carbon footprint of 150,000 people driving 20k miles a year spent on just one trip for our oh so concerned about the warming "crisis" elites!

But never mind. THEIR world is in CRISIS! The top 8 of them have more wealth than the botton half wealth holders on the planet -- however, the DAVOS people are in CRISIS!

It was a sub zero weekend here in Iowa flyover country USA. We spent a good portion of the weekend taking part in a fishing tournament with 150 other folks, nary a bit of evidence of a "crisis" of any sort in sight. Current outside temp, -9 degrees.

If you want to waste a little time of just how screwed up our "values" are -- remember this.

Russian Botnet Helped Beat Roy Moore

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html

A little comparison of "important" election meddling and "totally innocuous election meddling". This from the NY Times on admitted meddling in the Roy Moore election.

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention. “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.

For comparison, the Russians supposedly spent $46K in FB ads on the 2016 presidential election in which $81 MILLION was spent on FB ads by the campaigns. Naturally that doesn't include the billions of free time given to Hildebeast by NPR, CNN, WaPo, NY Times, NBC, CBS, etc, etc.

We can all be VERY certain at this point that the smear campaign against Roy Moore was completely false -- or else certainly the high minded people of the left (or the easily led of the right for that matter) would be hot on prosecuting this nefarious child molester to keep him from repeating -- which they generally do, thus all the sex offender registries. They aren't ... so "mission accomplished" for a KNOWN smear campaign that included influence spending FAR beyond the supposed "2016 election meddling" smear on social media.

Any with even a tiny bit of perspective know that Russia is an oil producer and they have fought hard against fracking in the US to the tune of tens of MILLIONS of dollars as opposed to "$46K" that they ALLEGEDLY spent on EITHER Trump or much more likely just sowing discord in the US.

It is often both funny and sad to read the left wing media doing "fact checking" -- the biggest thing you have to believe for this "fact check" to not just fully say "you would be better off listening to Trump tweets than us for FACTUAL news" is that THE ENDICTMENT says that the Russians were trying to influence the election! They did however admit that 56% of their "thousands of dollars" was spent AFTER the election! "thousands of dollars" on a presidential election where over a billion is spent! One is reminded of ...

If you believe indictments from the Administrative State are "facts", then you will believe anything -- ever hear of a country where INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty was the standard? Wake up and realize that the prosecution of non-Democrat politicans by the Deep/Administrative State is standard operating procedure for the dominant left in BOistan! MANY of those "prosecuted" turn out to be completely Innocent after the damage is done.

We live "down the rabbit hole" where if one works very hard to keep a diet of widely different media, it is remotely possible to occasionally see something approximating "the real world" vs dueling narratives that are more concerned with creating anti-tribes for profit than in providing information needed by CITIZENS vs consumers!

American Might Returns Under Trump

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/american-might-makes-its-return-in-trump-era/90534/

Do I take this article as gospel? Certainly NOT! However, the general BOistan media is generally the sound of one left hand clapping -- I certainly don't take their daily pronouncements of gloom as even remote truth either! This paragraph is interesting ...

In the eight years of President Obama, the United States lost 219,000 manufacturing jobs; in the two years of Trump, the country has added 477,000 manufacturing jobs. This was not supposed to be possible, and this time, unlike in the great Reagan boom, it cannot be dismissed by the left (and it was false in the eighties) as a profusion of “hamburger flippers, dry cleaners and people delivering pizza,” (all necessary occupations).

The right has been a champion of "free" trade since before Reagan, and "all things being equal", free trade is generally good. Much like a football game however where it is best to "let them play" free of penalties if possible, there MUST be some level of referee involvement or one side would be knifing the opposition before we knew it. This is just human nature.

So too with trade -- it isn't "free" to have China demanding that they can steal US technology in order to allow us to trade with them, it is COERCED! No matter the trading partner, the vase bureaucracies of the left in all countrys and trade groups found willing accomplises in the BOistan Administrative State, and the "conservatives" paid no attention since they were assured that what was happening was "free trade".

The winners on the global stage since the 1990s have been the Davos world bureaucratic elite class -- with everyone else, especially the BOistan average Joe being the losers -- bigtime. 

Well worth the read for a little sound from the right hand.

Alcohol and Coffee Key to Long Life

https://abc11.com/health/alcohol-coffee-could-be-key-to-living-longer-study-finds/4968622/

Perhaps just believing the studies that we like is really the key to not only happiness but a long life? It gets even better!

In addition, people who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than people who were normal or underweight in their 70s.

Do I believe it? No ... but I very much suspect that happiness, friends,  and a positive outlook are WAY more important to longevity than constant attention to the latest set of rules to increase your lifespan!

Clinton Fund Whistleblower Raided By FBI

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/is-it-something-he-said-6.php

There may be some questions remaining in even fairly non-partisan people's minds about potential Trump "collusion" with Russia in the 2016 campaign, but we KNOW that:

1). The Clinton campaign worked with the Russians to create the Steele Dossier to bring down Trump.
2). The Clinton Fund (Funds for Clintons) pulled in 100's of millions of dollars for the Clintons, and now it's donations have all but dried up, ( down 90%) showing that if the Clinton's can't provide "play" (payback), donors do not want to pay! The Clinton Fund was obvious Pay to Play, now it is PROVEN Pay to Play!

The linked article covers the case of a whistleblower who apparently has the legal goods on the Clinton Fund Urainium One deal and shows that Robert Mueller (the current "Special Council") failed to investigage covered in an excellent article here.

The delivered documents also show that then-FBI Director Robert Mueller failed to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct pertaining to Rosatom and to other Russian government entities attached to Uranium One, the document reviewed by TheDCNF alleges. Mueller is now the special counsel investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

Powerline has been doing a great job of covering the FBI raid on the whistleblowers home and other intimidation tactics.

Any rumor or innuendo against a person with an "R" next to their name, even if the allegations are decades old is worthy of heavy duty investigation with the accuser treated as a saint (see Kavenaugh), while documents related to malfeasance in the case of a known questionable matter (Urainium One), are treated as an attack on the state, with state apparatus being used to attack the person presenting actual documentation of the crime.

This is what happens in a totalitarian one-party state people! Trump is fighting the entire US Deep State apparatus, and now he must fight the House of Representatives as well because too many supposed small government supporting people (Rs) deciced they would rather single their "virtue" in being anti-Trump than support the only person with any power in this country standing up to the single party rule of the Deep / Administrative State!

A Great Capitalism Pro-Con Haidt Video