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November 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel The only thing worse than not showing up is showing up and making a fool of yourself by Dominic Green

By on November 2nd, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-asleep-wheel-cop26-glasgow/

Did Joe Biden fall asleep during the opening speeches of the COP26 climate jamboree in Glasgow? It’s hard to blame him if he did. A conference dedicated to saving the planet is generating nothing but hot air, some of it carboniferously heavy with the exhaust of the armada of private jets that brought the guests. But it’s Biden’s job to stay awake, look lively and remember his lines.

The footage shows a frail man who’s jetlagged, pushing eighty and trying his best to absorb the torrent of heated eco-bilge that’s being pumped into his ears. But he’s only human. The presidential eyelids start to flutter as a speaker pleads “on behalf of everyone, disabled and non-disabled…to stop the destruction of this magnificent planet.” Biden gives a desperate, hostage-like look at the camera, but there’s no way out. The shutters are coming down. Soon, the president of the United States is heading down, down, down to the Land of Nod.

Yet again, the president’s feebleness is there for the world to see — or not. On Friday, Biden became the first American president in living memory not to go live before the cameras with the Pope. Was it because they’ve fallen out over abortion — or because Biden’s team didn’t want a jetlagged president to embarrass himself and his nation?

Meanwhile, “poopy pants Biden” trended on Twitter after Amy Tarkanian, the former chairwoman of the Republican party of Nevada, suggested that “the word around Rome” was that Biden’s private audience had to be extended because the president had suffered a “bathroom accident” in the pontiff’s presence.

These allegations cannot be substantiated without producing the presidential pants, but their tone shows how close Biden’s public appearances are to low comedy, and how quickly he has soiled his image in the American public’s estimation. He is underwater in the polls, his agenda is stalled in Congress, and when he does eventually appear in public, he blames everyone else.

The putative leader of the West is missing in inaction. On Sunday, after the G20 summit in Rome, the leaders of nineteen G20 states lined up for a photo at the Trevi Fountain. Only Joe Biden wasn’t there.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ballooning Ivy League Endowment Forecasted To Top $1 Trillion By 2048 Adam Andrzejewski

By on November 2nd, 2021

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/10/31/ballooning-ivy-league-endowment-forecasted-to-top-1-trillion-by-2048/?sh=3d82b6263a37

Why are Harvard, Yale, and Princeton charging $80,000 or more for tuition, room, and board?

The Ivies added $44 billion to their endowments this year, and new estimates show their collective endowment could exceed $1 trillion by 2048.

Organized as charitable non-profits, the Ivy League is a cash generation machine. Their collective endowment now stands at approximately $188.2 billion, which is up from $144 billion in 2020.

Now, critics are questioning whether the Ivies have gamed the federal, state, and local tax systems to operate as educational charities. These schools pay little or no taxes on their investments, endowment gains, and property.

Here are the new endowments by school: Harvard ($53.2 billion), Yale ($42.3 billion), Columbia ($13.5 billion), Brown ($6.9 billion), Dartmouth ($8.5 billion), UPENN ($20.5 billion), and Cornell ($10 billion). (Princeton is the only school not yet reported; however, we forecast their endowment at $33.3 billion, up 25 percent from $26.6 billion in 2020.)

Harvard’s endowment now stands at over $10 million per undergraduate student. Yale is just shy of this number at $9 million. Brown, far behind its colleagues, boasts just over $1 million in endowment assets per undergrad student.

However, the Ivies billion-dollar optics problem is soon to become a trillion-dollar optics problem. The size of their endowments is set grow substantially over the next couple of decades.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com forecast that the collective endowment of the Ivy League could surpass $1 trillion by 2049. This buildup of wealth for supposedly charitable educational purposes will trigger a host of public policy, legislative, and legal arguments. For example, Harvard alone could have $300 billion, or nearly $60 million per undergraduate student in endowment assets, by 2049.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords Francis Menton

By on November 2nd, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-31-cop26-and-the-hubris-of-our-political-overlords

So we look upon our world leaders and laugh at their foolishness and hubris. It’s all we can do.

There is a very reasonable argument to be made that the climate-related Conferences of Parties (COPs) that occur annually under UN auspices are terrible things. They cost (i.e., waste) enormous resources, and they have the potential to do great damage to the world economy and the well-being of the people. Fair enough. But on balance, my view is that it’s a good thing we have them. I can think of no other comparable activities that put on such dramatic and widely-viewed display the immeasurable foolishness and hubris of our political overlords.

By the time you read this, COP26 will likely have opened in Glasgow, Scotland. Thousands will be in attendance. Most every country of the world has sent at least some high-level delegation, and the majority are sending the President or Prime Minister. U.S. President Joe Biden will be there in person, along with PM Boris Johnson of the UK, President Emanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and comparable heads of state from across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and North and South America. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry used his usual portentous tone to set the stage (as quoted by the BBC):

America’s climate envoy John Kerry says the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow is the “last best hope for the world to get its act together”.

The idea is that hundreds of global leaders, not a one of whom has much if any idea how the world’s energy systems work, will come together to agree and order that those systems must be completely discarded and replaced. Currently, all the world economies run mostly on fossil fuel energy; but these political leaders are oh so much smarter than that, so they will order that use of such energy must be reduced and then ended, and associated carbon emissions will of course decline commensurately. These people equally have no idea how or whether the newly-ordered alternative energy systems might work, or how much the new systems might cost when fully implemented. Those things, you see, are mere engineering details, too insignificant to warrant the attention of great potentates. What they do know is, as the magnificent Barack Obama put it in 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. . . .”

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