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September 2020

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Unhappy Returns We advised in 2016 that he release his taxes. Now others will do it for him.

By on September 29th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-unhappy-returns-11601333853?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The New York Times has spun out 10,000 words claiming that Donald Trump paid little or no income tax for many years. The Times says it can’t release the actual tax documents lest this compromise its sources, and Mr. Trump denies paying so little but won’t release his returns.

Voters can decide whom to believe, but one fact to note is that the story doesn’t assert illegal behavior. The IRS presumably signed off on the Trump returns, except in one case in which it is disputing a $72.9 million deduction claimed by Mr. Trump. This is a fight rich people have with the IRS all the time, often ending in Tax Court.

The report makes much of a deduction Mr. Trump took for business consulting fees that match payments his daughter Ivanka reported in separate filings. There may be legitimate reasons for those fee payments, and Ms. Trump ought to clear the matter up.

Is it a scandal if Mr. Trump legally exploited the tax code’s treatment of chronic business losses to pay little tax? Hardly. Mr. Trump admitted this himself in a 2016 debate. Congress littered the code with loopholes aimed at assisting real-estate businesses, among others. Democrats write a tax code to please their corporate donors and then selectively attack CEOs or businesses that use the loopholes.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Real Cost of Wind and Solar By Norman Rogers

By on September 29th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/the_real_cost_of_wind_and_solar.html

The entire renewable electricity industry is actually a government boondoggle

The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine. In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request. Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. The electrical grid should have spare capacity sufficient to meet the largest demand peaks even when some plants are out of commission.  Plants in spinning reserve status stand by ready to take over if a plant trips (breaks down). Injecting erratic electricity into the grid means that other plants have to seesaw output to balance the ups and downs of wind or solar.

Adding wind or solar to a grid does not mean that existing fossil fuel plants can be retired. Often, neither wind nor solar is working and at those times a full complement of fossil fuel plants, or sometimes nuclear or hydro plants, must be available. Both wind and solar have pronounced seasonality. During low output times, as for summer wind, the fossil-fuel plants are carrying more of the load. Of course, solar stops working as the sun sets.

Wind behaves erratically hour to hour. Even though the Texas 18,000-megawatt system has thousands of turbines spread over a wide area, the net output is erratic changing by thousands of megawatts in a single hour. These shifts must be balanced by fossil-fuel plants slewing their output up and down to compensate and keep load matched to generation.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

There’s a game-changer out there that should end the Wuhan virus paranoia By Andrea Widburg

By on September 29th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/theres_a_gamechanger_out_there_that_should_end_the_wuhan_virus_paranoia.html

The 15-day lockdown that Americans agreed to in March to prepare hospitals for a possible influx of Wuhan virus patients has lasted for over half a year in some places. It’s disrupted businesses, education, and family life while harming people’s mental and physical well-being. On Monday, though, a game-changer hit the scene when President Trump announced an affordable rapid test for the Wuhan virus. The new test can be self-administered and will produce a result in around 15 minutes.

The Epoch Times reports:

President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 28 that the U.S. government will start distributing 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests to states this week in a bid to help governors safely reopen K–12 schools and economies.

Of the total, the administration is dedicating 100 million tests for schools and measures to help reopen economies. An additional 50 million tests will target the most vulnerable elderly population in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health and hospice sites.

[snip]

There are no restrictions on how the 100 million tests meant for schools and economies can be used, but the Trump administration will urge governors to prioritize for settings that need rapid, low-tech methods of testing, such as schools, first-responder facilities, and areas where outbreaks are detected, [Admiral Brett] Giroir [M.D., assistant secretary for Health, in the HHS] said. The administration plans to ship 6.5 million tests from the school allotment this week.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why There’s No Peace With the Palestinians A sobering look at the Palestinians’ ultimatum on the “Right of Return.” Joseph Puder

By on September 29th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/why-theres-no-peace-palestinians-joseph-puder/

In the recent historic Abrahamic Peace Accords (August 13, 2020), which established full peace and diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain, signed at the White House by U.S. President Donald Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain, Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, and Minister of Foreign Affairs for the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyani, the issue of “Right of Return” was not brought up.

One of the principle issues that prevents peace between Israel and the Palestinian-Arabs is the “Right of Return to Israel” of Palestinian refugees. The visionless Mahmoud Abbas, and his cohorts in the Palestinian Authority (PA), lack the vision and humanity to end the plight of the descendants of Palestinian refugees, by ending the illusion of the “Right of Return.” Now more than 72 years following the 1948 War of Independence for Israel, and “Nakba” for the Palestinians, most all of the original refugees have died. Still, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is demanding the return of their third or even fourth generation descendants to Israel. However, the refugees were not only on the Arab side. More Jews became refugees than Arab-Palestinians as a result of being kicked out of the Arab states, where they resided long before the Islamic invasion. Conversely, many of the Palestinian refugees were relative newcomers to Mandatory Palestine.  They migrated to Palestine for jobs Palestinian-Jews created during the Mandatory period. While the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries were fully assimilated into Israeli life, Arab refugees were deliberately relegated to refugee camps and left in miserable conditions. If Israel would agree to the “Right of Return,” Israeli Jews would become a minority in the Jewish state, defeating the very purpose of Israel, namely, a home for the Jewish people in their historic homeland. It would simply be a suicide pact for the Jewish state.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

An Antiterror Opportunity in Sudan The country deserves to be delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism.

By on September 29th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-antiterror-opportunity-in-sudan-11601333982?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The fact that Sudan’s leaders are openly discussing the normalization of relations with Israel shows how much the northeast African nation has changed since the downfall of dictator Omar al-Bashir. The Trump Administration’s diplomacy is pulling Khartoum closer to the West, but it needs help from Congress.

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok took office last year after widespread protests brought about the old regime’s end. He shares power with unsavory figures but has managed to repeal draconian Islamic laws and give civil society some breathing room. The government has promised elections in 2022, and Mr. Hamdok wants to improve ties with the U.S. before his term ends.

The prime minister’s position is fragile. Many Islamists want him gone—he survived an assassination attempt this year—and the generals who toppled Mr. Bashir aren’t excited about democracy in Khartoum. But Congress can improve Mr. Hamdok’s standing, and give the country’s struggling economy a boost, by removing Sudan from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

The U.S. made the designation in 1993. Mr. Bashir hosted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden at the time and gave them a free hand to plot mayhem around the region. After decades of isolation, the country has turned around and already qualifies for removal. Washington has tied the change to a $335 million compensation package for victims of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Seth Rich: The Murder Washington Doesn’t Want Solved Jack Cashill

By on September 29th, 2020

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/seth_rich_the_murder_washington_doesnt_want_solved.html

On the face of things, the July 2016 murder of Seth Rich had intrigue enough for a full season of House of Cards.

Unknown assailants gun down the young DNC data analyst at 4 A.M. on a Washington, D.C., street and take nothing.  Two weeks later, international man of mystery Julian Assange strongly suggests on Dutch TV that Rich was his source for the purloined DNC emails then roiling the Democratic Party and offers a $20,000 reward to find the killer.

Three days before the November election, Assange reportedly tells liberal media analyst Ellen Ratner that Rich was indeed his source.  Days after Trump’s inauguration, legendary investigative journalist Sy Hersh cites an FBI report confirming Assange’s claim.  Later that year, DNC honcho Donna Brazile dedicates her book Hacks to Rich and wonders out loud whether the Russians had “played some part in his unsolved murder.”

Despite the stakes — the Trump presidency hinged on the investigation’s outcome — there was to be no TV series about Rich’s life and death, no movie, no serious books, not even a single episode of Unsolved Mysteries or 48 Hours.  Incredibly, no major publication or network save for Fox News has even attempted to resolve the still unsolved murder, and Fox execs rather wish they hadn’t.

To understand how a story this potentially explosive could be suppressed for so long, it is necessary to understand one basic fact of Washington life: Donald Trump received just 4.1 percent of the District’s vote in the 2016 election.  Trump’s election disrupted short-term strategies and long-term expectations in every one of the capital’s major institutions, local and federal, public and private, the legal community among them.

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