ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden Dept of Energy Continues War on Consumers – New Fridge/Freezer and Fans Regulations Enacted

Posted By on December 31st, 2023

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/12/29/biden-dept-of-energy-continues-war-on-consumers-new-fridge-freezer-and-fans-regulations-enacted/

We all know the routine. Water-saving toilets that don’t flush (flush twice), water/energy-saving dishwashers and clothes washers that don’t clean (run two cycles), lightbulbs that don’t light, dryers that don’t dry (run twice), and all the ancillary nonsense that comes from the intervention of the regulatory state.

What Biden and the progressive movement call the “green new deal” effort toward “sustainability,” including the ban on gas stoves and internal combustion engines, simply results in a diminished quality of life, a loss in lifestyle productivity, and the exact opposite outcome from their expressed/intended purpose.  It’s an abject mess of stupidity, pushed under the guise of environmentalism.

Today the Biden Dept of Energy (DOE) takes it one step further with rules and regulations on fridges, freezers and fans. {DOE LINK}

Residential Refrigerators and Freezers – The efficiency standards being adopted today for residential refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, and freezers, which have not been updated in over a decade, align with recommendations from a diverse set of stakeholders, including manufacturers, the manufacturing trade association, energy, environmental, and consumer advocacy groups, states, and utilities. Compliance will be required either January 31, 2029, or January 31, 2030, depending on the configuration of the refrigerator or freezer. The energy savings over 30 years of shipments is 5.6 quadrillion British thermal units, which represents a savings of 11% relative to the energy use of products currently on the market. DOE estimates that the standards would save consumers $36.4 billion over 30 years of shipments and result in cumulative emission reductions of nearly 101 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—an amount roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions of 12.7 million homes. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Migrant Encounters at the Border Smashes Record in December as Crisis Continues to Worsen By Debra Heine

Posted By on December 31st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/29/migrant-encounters-at-the-border-smashes-record-in-december-as-crisis-continues-to-worsen/

The crisis at the border is getting worse by the day and previous records of migrant encounters are being shattered, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources.

A record number of illegal aliens entered the United States in December, the CBP sources told Fox News’ Bill Melugin Friday.

In a post on X, Melugin reported that there were “over 276,00 migrant encounters at the southern border in December, the highest single month ever recorded, breaking the prior record set in September at 269,735, and there are still 3 days of December left,” according to the CBP sources.

“This new record number includes over 230,000 Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants in December, also the highest single month of apprehensions ever recorded for Border Patrol,” Melugin wrote.

We are now at over 760,000 migrant encounters since October 1st, making the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 also the highest ever recorded. That’s a population size bigger than Seattle in just three months. All records being blown out of the water under the Biden admin as the crisis gets worse—not better.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Hamas weaponises victimhood In 2023, we learned just how deadly identity politics can be. Frank Furedi

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/30/how-hamas-weaponises-victimhood/

After Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on 7 October, the speed with which woke Westerners came out in support of the terrorists remains shocking to recall. Within a matter of hours, pundits, activists and academics flooded social media to claim that this anti-Semitic pogrom was a form of anti-colonial resistance. Within days, they were out on the streets of Western cities staging ‘pro-Palestine’ protests, letting off celebratory flares and chanting the genocidal chant, ‘From the river to the sea’. It showed that identitarian Westerners are willing to justify violence, no matter how brutal, so long as it is perpetrated by certain identity groups.

This embrace of Hamas by these Westerners is not an aberration, however. It follows from the logic of identity politics itself.

There are two main reasons why identity politics and support for Hamas go hand in hand. Firstly, identity politics has sacralised victimhood. That is, it attributes an enormous amount of moral authority to groups and individuals on the basis of their perceived victimisation. As Palestinians have been uniformly framed as victims over several decades, they have a tremendous amount of moral authority in identitarian eyes. Secondly, for the woke, victims are by definition blameless. They can neither be doubted nor held responsible for their actions. In the eyes of Western identitarians, Hamas, as the representative of a blameless victim group, is not to be held responsible for what it did on 7 October.

Strikingly, Hamas and other reactionary Islamist groups have themselves bought into the language of victimisation and identity politics. They increasingly frame their actions in therapeutic terms. They present themselves as the traumatised victims of assorted forms of oppression. As Ghazi Hamad, a leading figure in Hamas, put it last month: ‘We are the victims of the [Israeli] occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On 7 October, 10 October, 1,000,000 October – everything we do is justified.’

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

2023 has exposed the moral depravity of the radical left Jews, women, the working class – leftists have betrayed everyone they once claimed to speak for. Tom Slater

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/30/2023-has-exposed-the-moral-depravity-of-the-radical-left/

What does it mean to be radical, left-wing, progressive? Well, in 2023, it meant making excuses for a genocidal anti-Semitism, refusing to believe evidence of mass rape and naysaying about the terroristic murder of infants. This was the year the ‘right side of history’ brigade exploded their phoney moral superiority for good.

When Hamas sent men on paragliders, motorbikes and in jeeps into southern Israel on 7 October – murdering, raping, mutilating and kidnapping as many Jews as they could find – I thought those on the anti-Israel left would be forced to reassess. Forced to rethink their years of Hamas apologism – their thinly veiled support for these Jew-hating maniacs, who they have long whitewashed as a ‘legitimate resistance movement’ in Palestine.

After all, that dark day these supposed leftists were – or rather should have been – confronted by the barbaric consequences of their own luxury beliefs. They were shown, beyond doubt, that Hamas’s genocidal founding charter was not just talk – that Hamas was not in fact ‘dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and long-term peace and social justice in the whole region’, as one Jeremy Corbyn once put it.

But they didn’t reassess. Many leftists openly celebrated the pogrom, hailing it as a ‘day of celebration’. The Socialist Worker called on its nine readers to ‘rejoice’. Many initially giddy tweets were deleted, as the more savvy left-wingers settled in to blaming Israel for being attacked and refusing to believe women were raped. It was victim-blaming on a geopolitical scale; atrocity denial for the Twitterring, TikToking age.

These supposed anti-racists happily provided cover for the world’s oldest bigotry. Many openly engaged in it themselves. Meanwhile, these supposed anti-fascists turned a blind eye as ‘pro-Palestine’ protests turned our streets into an open sewer of Jew hatred. Genocidal slogans were chanted. Swastikas were brandished. Hate crime soared. And they just didn’t care.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A New Kind of Knothead: Ecosexual Woman Falls in Love With an Oak Tree Milt Harris

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/miltharris/2023/12/27/a-new-kind-of-knot-head-ecosexual-woman-falls-in-love-with-an-oak-tree-n4925056

May–December relationships can be tough. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s a term for a romantic relationship between two people with a considerable age difference. Many experts believe that these types of relationships can be especially difficult. Between societal pressures and different milestones, two individuals from differing decades might just have to try a little harder to make a relationship work for the long haul.

Sonja Semyonova, a 45-year-old woman from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, has found herself in one of these relationships, though hers is slightly more complicated. The one she is attracted to could be up to 55 years older than her. We can’t be sure, of course, because the only way to tell with any degree of accuracy would be to cut the one she loves in half and count the rings. You see, Semyonova identifies as ecosexual, and her beau is an oak tree. 

Isn’t it ironic that the same people who think folks who believe in two sexes are strange condone what people like Semyonova embrace? Rational thought eludes them.

Semyonova describes her relationship as erotic. While she has always felt lonely, the oak tree has filled that void. I should mention that Semyonova claims to be a self-intimacy guide, whatever that is. I shudder to think what she sets her clients up with, especially since she claims that what she feels for the tree is what she has always wanted in a person.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Markets and Miracles John Stossel

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/john-stossel/2023/12/27/markets-and-miracles-n4925036

In this season of giving, I’ll donate to the Doe Fund, a charity that helps drug abusers and ex-cons find purpose in life through work.

Doe’s approach doesn’t include many handouts. It’s mostly about encouraging people to work. “Work works!” they say. 

It does. Most Doe Fund workers don’t go back to jail. 

I’ll also donate to Student Sponsor Partners, a nonprofit that gives scholarships to kids from low-income families so they can escape bad public schools. SSP sends them to Catholic schools. 

I’m not Catholic, but I donate because government-run schools are often so bad that Catholic schools do better at half the cost. Thanks to SSP, thousands of kids escape poverty.

Yet some on the left say giving time and money to charity is a mistake. Their trust in government leads them to think that government programs are much better at lifting people out of poverty. 

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Panders to His Far-Left Base, Hangs Up On Netanyahu Robert Spencer

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2023/12/30/biden-panders-to-his-far-left-base-hangs-up-on-netanyahu-n4925110

As 2024 fast approaches, Old Joe Biden is facing some serious obstacles to keep on pretending to be president until he is older than nearly three-quarters of our presidents were when they died. One of the most serious of these is that his far-left base, having been thoroughly miseducated to hate America and all that it stands for, also hates one of its staunchest allies, Israel, and is outraged that the Biden regime appears to be standing by the Jewish state. But Rashida Tlaib and her pals need not be concerned: in a bid to keep these Marxists in line and pulling the Biden lever, Old Joe just made a big push to keep their support.

The Daily Caller reported Saturday that the addled and aging corruptocrat “reportedly hung up on Prime Minister Netanyahu after a heated phone call about the Palestinian tax revenue dispute.” News of this latest embarrassment comes from “two U.S. and Israeli officials and a source with knowledge of the issue.” No one seems to be saying that Old Joe, in the fog of his galloping dementia, mistook Netanyahu for an annoyingly persistent telemarketer, so apparently the hang-up was entirely intentional.

The dispute revolves around the fact that “amid the Israel-Hamas war, the Israeli government has refused to release some tax revenues it collects for the Palestinian Authority that it says would go to the terrorist group Hamas.”

It’s understandable that such hesitation would anger Old Joe. After all, the Biden regime has never hesitated to shovel money to the Palestinians, without any regard for the possibility that it could end up in the hands of Hamas. The alleged president demonstrated, for anyone who was paying attention, which side he is really on when he went over to Israel in late October and met with Netanyahu. He took the opportunity to announce that he was giving $100 million to Gaza, which meant, regardless of his warnings that Hamas better not grab the money, that it would end up in Hamas’ coffers. There was no entity in Gaza that was not controlled by Hamas and that could both receive this money and keep it out of the hands of the terror group.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Nikki Haley, welcome to the Thunderdome The former South Carolina governor is facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign.By Alex Isenstadt and Natalie Allison

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/30/nikki-haleys-first-real-test-of-2024-00133336

Nikki Haley is finally under the microscope.

After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick.

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.

“This is Haley’s first time under the bright lights, and she must power through this and tackle Trump now,” said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist. “Or else.”

Haley’s rivals treated her Civil War comments as a lifeline for their own dimming prospects in the race. DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quickly condemned her answer at their own campaign events this week. And Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, spent much of Thursday addressing questions about her remarks, putting her in the position of explaining rather than selling her candidacy.

For nearly a year — from her beginning as a long shot to her recent rise in polls — Haley went relatively unscathed. Her opponents have highlighted, with little effect, her evolving answers on issues like abortion and transgender rights. But they spent less money against her, too. As of Wednesday, Haley had $14 million spent against her in negative advertising, compared with nearly $37 million for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and $19 million for Trump, according to Rob Pyers, a nonpartisan data analyst. Trump has focused his hammer-like attacks on DeSantis, not Haley. And much of the media scrutiny over the past year focused on the Florida governor’s campaign missteps and policy proposals

But that changed Wednesday night in Berlin, New Hampshire. Haley’s halting and convoluted response to a town hall questioner — and her ensuing attempts to clarify her comments, later acknowledging slavery as a cause of the Civil War after first declining to do so — put a harsh spotlight on her, arguably for the first time during the primary. Within hours, news outlets had begun digging into her past remarks on the issue, resurfacing an interview she’d given in 2010 in which she offered similar beliefs about the root causes of the Civil War.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Roger Kimball:When will Harvard give Claudine Gay the boot? Gay is bad for Harvard, but Harvard is bad for the country, so her continued presence is a net positive.

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/harvard-claudine-gay-boot-plagiarism/

You are probably almost as sick of hearing about Claudine Gay — as of this writing, still the president of Harvard University — as I am of writing about her. As I pointed out a year ago in this space, Harvard’s appointment of Gay, a black woman, was simply the next chapter in the university’s long-running pursuit of its racial spoils system. Gay’s entire academic career has been a testimony to the power of that enterprise. What a prize Harvard had in Claudine Gay: a black female who was an avid proponent of the whole “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” racket. Could there be any doubt that she was being groomed for the top slot?  

When Gay joined the presidents of MIT and UPenn (also female, but unfashionably pale-faced) before the House Committee on Education, she, like her peers, beclowned herself. “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate you university’s code of conduct?” That was the super-easy-to-answer question that Representative Elise Stefanik posed to the ladies. They tied themselves in knots over that one — it all depends on “context,” don’t you see — and Liz Magill, the (now former) president of Penn sealed her fate by producing a truly cringe-making video a day or two later in which she groveled, apologized  and underscored her moral pygmyhood. 

In short order, Magill was shown the door by Penn’s board. “One down, two to go!” was the chant among many critics. MIT seems to have successfully circled the wagons around its president Sally Kornbluth. But Claudine Gay was more or less in the position of someone who gets stopped for speeding and then is discovered to have been driving on an expired license. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iranian Regime’s Killing Machine by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on December 30th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20262/iran-killing-machine

In addition to increasing the level of enriched uranium to near nuclear-weapons grade; helping to fund and plan a genocidal war against Israel; attacking US troops in Syria and Iraq with its militias more than 100 times in just the last two months to try to force the US out of the region, and incontinently bogus-trialing, torturing (even children) and executing its own citizens, the Iranian regime has also been orchestrating the assassinations of individuals, particularly those considered opponents to the ruling mullahs’ clerical establishment.

With Iran’s nuclear bombs now well on their way, how much more harm does the Iranian regime have to do to finally be stopped? ?

In addition to increasing the level of enriched uranium to near nuclear-weapons grade; helping to fund and plan a genocidal war against Israel; attacking US troops in Syria and Iraq with its militias more than 100 times in just the last two months to try to force the US out of the region, and incontinently bogus-trialing, torturing (even children) and executing its own citizens, the Iranian regime has also been orchestrating the assassinations of individuals, particularly those considered opponents to the ruling mullahs’ clerical establishment.

Authorities in Cyprus recently thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate Israeli businessmen in the country. Cypriot police apprehended two Iranian asylum-seekers who were in communication with another Iranian linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops, as disclosed by a Cypriot official on December 19, 2023. The official conveyed that the arrest of the suspects resulted from a collaborative operation with Israel’s Mossad security service. A statement released by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office on behalf of the Mossad, said that Iran’s utilization of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus for “terrorist purposes” and as an “area of activity and transit to attack Israeli and Jewish targets” is a matter of great concern.

This is not the first time the Iranian regime has plotted to kill Israelis in Cyprus. The attempt marks the third reported instance of an Iranian plot to target Israelis and Jews in Cyprus within the span of roughly a year. In July 2023, Cypriot authorities foiled a terrorist plot involving an Iranian-backed assassination squad targeting Israelis and other members of the Cypriot Jewish community.