RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Without Pharrell, our planet would not survive.” So says Marquis Jamont, one of 1,200 middle school children who, according to CBS News, trudged through the snow on the first day of spring to see musician Pharrell Williams talk about climate change at the UN. The event kicked off the meeting of the UN’s Open Working Group on new Sustainable Development Goals.

No disrespect to Mr. Williams, but the planet could survive without him and his “Happy” song. Likewise, the world could sustain itself without the goals being cooked up by transnational envirocrats in their endless rounds of meetings.

Pharrell’s appearance at the UN was orchestrated by the UN Foundation and MixRadio to project the message that “the next generation needs to pay attention to climate change.” He needn’t worry about that. From the moment he steps into kindergarten to the hour he graduates from college, Marquis will be trapped in an endlessly repeating loop of “climate change” messages. Pay attention? Try not paying attention. The combination of celebrity endorsements, pop entertainment, and mind-numbing bureaucratic sustaina-babble is part of the surround-sound of sustainability, worldwide. “Climate change education” now begins in kindergarten — and not merely in the form of green happy talk for tykes.

Professor Bob Carter is a former Chair of the Australian Research Council’s Panel on Engineering, Applied and Earth Sciences, and a former Director of the Australian Secretariat of the international Ocean Drilling Program. Townsville, Australia

In perusing the near-daily deluge of articles advancing global warming as an indisputable fact, one is constantly confronted by the lack of balance, commonsense and critical thinking, not to mention an endemic ignorance of elementary science and basic economics. A new book sets the record straight
Given the heavily technical nature of the global warming debate, how is the ordinary citizen to assess whether the balance of truth lies with the specialist minority of scientists who assert climate alarm, or with the wider scientific opinion that (natural) climate change is happening today at about the same rate, and in the same ways, that it always has?

Western nations are fortunate to have inherited from their Enlightenment forbears a system of democratic government that is rooted in the application of empirical science, sound engineering and logical reasoning to address the problems of society. It is no accident, therefore, that many of the majestic engineering projects of the 19th century still stand proudly today, nor that 19th and 20th century science experienced such breathtaking advances in knowledge, which included the discovery of the mechanisms of evolution and genetic inheritance, the explanation of continental drift, the splitting and harnessing of the atom and the development of the transistor and microelectronics – to name just some of the most obvious.

Nonetheless, early in the 21st century we find that some branches of science have become tainted by the nihilistic diseases of post-modern and post-normal thinking, and that even up to the high level at which scientific academies provide policy advice to government. In parallel, our governments have increasingly become divorced from accurate scientific advice. They have also become hostage to divisive party politics, to the incessant use of political spin and above all to capture by special interest groups – of which the radical environmentalist lobby is significantly the most dangerous.

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About Face! Why the World Needs More Carbon Dioxide: The Failed Science of Global Warming.
Arthur Hughes, Madhav Khandekar & Cliff Ollier.
Two Harbors Press, Minneapolis USA, 313 pp.
Paperback available here. Downloadable eBook from Barnes & Noble at US $7.99, here.

Baltimore is in flames after yet another black man died in police custody. The facts remain foggy, but the specific details are, in many ways, beside the point. What matters is the future of a society where welfare dissolves families, thuggish ignorance is celebrated and rioting is the first reaction
The riot by young black men and schoolkids after Freddie Gray died in Baltimore is becoming par for the course in the United States. White men killed by the police (and there are more in absolute numbers) does not cause a stir. It has been assumed that the police were responsible for Gray’s spine and neck injuries which caused his death. However, the evidence is starting to become murky.

Gray has a long rap sheet and was running from police for a mile before he was caught and dragged into a police van. Could he have injured himself during the chase? A fellow prisoner in the van has been reported by The Washington Post as saying that he heard (couldn’t see) Gray attempting self harm by banging himself against the side of the van. Whatever the facts of the case turn out to be, they are incidental. The riots and the rioters have become the story.

Out has come the usual soul-searching about the malaise of black inter-city ghetto communities. President Obama made his usual mindless contribution. Apart from again getting ahead of the investigation and implying some blame on the part of the police, he said this: “What can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity?” Indeed! What can we do? Not, you will notice, what they should do to change their own feckless, fatherless, welfare-dependent lifestyles.

“Exhibiting an unmistakable hallmark of the Obama administration, the EAC was not deterred by its lack of authority to act in this area. The EAC made the unilateral determination that documentary proof of citizenship is not “necessary” to the states’ assessment of voter eligibility. In so doing, the EAC’s acting executive director claimed that the evidence presented by Arizona and Kansas — over 200 specific cases of non-citizen voter registration — “fail[ed] to establish that the registration of noncitizens is a significant problem in either state.”

Kansas and Arizona ask the Supreme Court to ensure that only citizens vote in their states. Approximately 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in the 2008 presidential election, according to a study released last year by professors at Old Dominion University and George Mason University.

The figure for the 2010 midterm elections was 2.2 percent. The Obama administration doesn’t care. In fact, it is trying to stamp out state-led efforts that would help ensure that only American citizens are electing our leaders. The latest bureaucratic roadblocks have been erected in Arizona and Kansas, which simply want people to verify their citizenship before voting.

To implement their commonsense measures, Arizona and Kansas asked the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — a small federal agency that exists primarily to assist the states in creating the federal form citizens use to register to vote by mail — to add the proof-of-citizenship requirement to the registration instructions specific to Arizona and Kansas.

Their request was denied because of the decision of one federal employee in Washington, D.C. You might ask, “Where do Arizona and Kansas get the authority to verify citizenship?” The answer is the Constitution, whose Voter-Qualifications Clause grants the states the power to set qualifications for voting.

The power of the federal government to act in this area is limited. The Constitution’s Election Clause permits Congress to determine only the times, places, and manner of holding elections. As succinctly stated by our Supreme Court, “the Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them” (emphasis in original). Deciding who may vote is the sole prerogative of the states under the Constitution.

The Editors April 30, 2015 4:00 AM

‘Puerto Rican citizens — U.S. citizens — ought to have the right to determine whether they want to be a state,” Jeb Bush said this week.
But they have had the right to determine that several times, and they seem to have determined the answer: No.
The former Florida governor also said he thought statehood was a good idea on the merits, which it plainly is not. The most recent occasion for Puerto Ricans to weigh in was 2012, when they technically did end up voting for statehood — in a ballot process that would make Vladimir Putin blush.

The present four-year California drought is not novel — even if President Barack Obama and California governor Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells — like those of 1929–34, 1976–77, and 1987–92 — are more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures. What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought — well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early 1990s.

Much of the growth is due to massive and recent immigration. A record one in four current Californians was not born in the United States, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Whatever one’s view on immigration, it is ironic to encourage millions of newcomers to settle in the state without first making commensurately liberal investments for them in water supplies and infrastructure. Sharp rises in population still would not have mattered much had state authorities just followed their forbearers’ advice to continually increase water storage.

A group of former Guantanamo Bay prison camp detainees have staked out the U.S. embassy in Uruguay in a demonstration meant to pressure the U.S. government to provide them taxpayer-funded reparations for their time spent in the terrorist prison, according to Uruguayan officials.

Three of the six former detainees sent to Uruguay following their release from Gitmo have spent days camped in front of the U.S. embassy located in Montevideo, according to Uruguayan officials and regional reports.

The three men—two Syrian nationals and a Tunisian—have been sleeping outside the compound on blankets and tents since the weekend, according to regional reports.

The former inmates are demanding the U.S. government provide them with taxpayer-funded financial support and pay for their housing. They have been receiving about $600 a month from the Uruguay government, but claim this is not enough for them to subsist.

Paul’s ‘ambassador to the Jewish community’ throws weight behind Wisconsin gov

Sen. Rand Paul’s (R., Ky.) most prominent pro-Israel backer, who funded the senator’s 2013 visit to Israel, is throwing his support fully behind Gov. Scott Walker’s prospective presidential campaign, he told the Washington Free Beacon.

Rich Roberts, a major Republican donor from New Jersey, has been central to Paul’s Jewish outreach efforts. The former pharmaceutical executive, who has been described in the press as one of Paul’s “ambassadors to the Jewish community,” has hosted private receptions for the senator over the past few years, assisted as an informal adviser, and sponsored his highly-publicized Israel trip.

While Roberts said he likes Paul, he said he is committed to supporting Walker when the Wisconsin Republican enters the presidential race.

“I like Rand Paul a lot, our relationship goes back now about three or four years. I like him as a person, I think he’s very well-intended,” said Roberts. “But I think that Scott Walker is [a greater] likelihood of being the next president. I think Scott Walker is also a tremendous individual.”

Roberts’ relationship with Walker goes back to his recall campaign, when the New Jersey Republican contributed $50,000 to the Wisconsin governor because he admired his strength and resilience on labor unions.

http://geertwilders.nl/index.php/94-english/1921-speech-us-congressman-29042015
“It is an honor to be here, among so many colleagues. Thank you Steve for inviting me here at the Conservative Opportunity Society.

I am a politician under attack. For over ten years now, I have been living under 24 hour police protection. I am on the death list of Al Qaida. The Pakistani Taliban also want me dead and terrorists from the Islamic State in Syria made similar threats. In order to be safe, my wife and live in a safe house and have stayed in army barracks and even in prison cells, actually the same cells and beds where the Lockerbie suspects were held in the Netherlands. I am driven around in armored cars and even during TV debates in election time in my home country I have to wear a bullet proof vest. Leftist and liberal activists call me a xenophobe and a racist and the extreme right calls me a Zionist and Mossad agent because of my love for Israel.

Myths about the Vietnam War persist, weakening America’s role in the world.

our decades ago this week, in what was then Saigon, I was trying to facilitate the evacuation of orphans as North Vietnam’s armed forces approached the city. I had left the U.S. Army after two tours in Vietnam and had returned to do what I could to help as America fled a war—a fight for freedom—that it had shamefully chosen to forfeit.

As the nation marks the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, we would do well to clear away the myths that still adhere to that bloody conflict and understand why America got involved, what went wrong and what the consequences were.

We went to war because by ratifying the United Nations Charter in 1945 and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (Seato) treaty a decade later, the U.S. pledged to oppose armed international aggression. Critics have long claimed that the State Department lied when it said the U.S. was responding to North Vietnamese aggression. That charge is baseless. After the war, Hanoi repeatedly acknowledged—including in its official history, “Victory in Vietnam”—its decision in May 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and send vast numbers of troops, weapons and supplies to overthrow its neighbor by armed force. That was every bit as illegal as when North Korea invaded its southern neighbor in June 1950.