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October 2020

ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s Energy Plan: Sacrificing Goats to the Sun Gods By Norman Rogers

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/bidens_energy_plan_sacrificing_goats_to_the_sun_gods.html

A number of documents  have been published by the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party: Biden’s energy plan, the Biden-Saunders unity manifesto and the party platform.  A lot of the goals in these documents are generalities, promising everything to everyone, especially to groups that vote Democratic.  One concrete goal is carbon-free electricity generation by 2035.  This is a pointless goal on several fronts.  Reducing U.S. CO2 emissions is a pointless exercise due to the fact that declining U.S. emissions are dwarfed by rapidly increasing emissions in China and India.  U.S. emissions are declining due to increased use of natural gas, a low-carbon source of energy.  The claim that CO2 will create an apocalyptic disaster is overwrought, without sound scientific basis.  The Biden campaign ignores the fantastic benefits for agriculture of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere.  The Biden campaign accepts as fact popular fake claims that not even the most extreme climate scientists would dare to advocate — that CO2 will create forest fires, floods, and sea level rise.

Wind and solar cannot be the instrument to achieve the (unnecessary) goal of 100% zero carbon electricity by 2035.  Wind and solar are erratic and unpredictable sources of electricity.  As long as wind and solar supply less than about 25% of the electricity in a grid, the grid can handle the erratic energy supply by throttling backup plants, usually natural gas plants, up and down to compensate for the ups and downs of wind or solar.  When wind and solar go past the approximate 25% threshold, spells of excess wind and solar power appear.  The problem is that wind and solar power are peaky, with peaks 3 to 5 times the average power.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Winding Constitutional Path From Trump to Pence to Pompeo The president is sick, so here’s a review of the laws governing succession. By John Yoo

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-winding-constitutional-path-from-trump-to-pence-to-pompeo-11601677891?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

What if President Trump becomes seriously ill and unable to do his job? Under the 25th Amendment, the president can report to Congress that “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Vice President Mike Pence would become acting president until Mr. Trump sends a second written declaration that he can perform his duties again.

But suppose he’s unable or unwilling to issue the declaration. The 25th Amendment provides for that too. If the vice president and a majority of “the principal officers of the executive branch”—defined by statute to include the heads of the 15 major executive departments—declare in writing that the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” Mr. Pence becomes acting president “immediately.”

Mr. Trump’s opponents have often mused about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office for behavior they regard as erratic. The idea reflects a misunderstanding of how the amendment works. Even in the unlikely event that Mr. Pence and the cabinet backed such a move, the president could challenge it. The disagreement would be resolved in the president’s favor unless two-thirds of both houses of Congress overrode him—and even then, his removal would be temporary. The 25th Amendment deals with cases of genuine debility, such as might arise if the president became seriously ill.

Mr. Pence has tested negative for the coronavirus. But suppose that changes and both he and Mr. Trump are too sick to perform the presidency’s duties. Article II of the Constitution states that in “the case of removal, death, resignation or inability” of both the president and vice president, Congress has the authority to declare “what officer shall then act as president” until the disability ends or a new president is elected. The term “officer” poses a problem for the current law.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Staying positive The left is in a paroxysm of delight over the President’s diagnosis Roger Kimball

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://spectator.us/testing-positive-coronavirus-donald-trump/

Almost everyone, no matter his political coloration, has been predicting that the presidential election would be close. I was thinking of writing a column in the next few days arguing against this conventional position. I am no Nate Silver, psephologist to the stars, but the more I looked around, the more it seemed to me that President Trump was going to win handsomely. I was thinking he would take all the states he took last time, with the possible exception of Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). Further, it seemed to me that he had a good chance to pick up Nevada (6 votes), Minnesota (10) and New Hampshire (4). I even thought that Colorado (9 votes) and Virginia (13) might be in play.

The President’s announcement earlier today that he and Melania had tested positive for the Chinese flu has made me pause to reconsider that prognostication.

One of the reasons I was so upbeat in my psephological prophecy was the vigor of the President’s campaign. Notwithstanding the restrictions imposed on public gatherings by our latest Chinese import, his team has devised and robust strategy for him to campaign safely and effectively. His rallies are outdoors, usually involve Air Force One as an elegant prop, and the draw large and enthusiastic crowds.

But wait, how can I say that these rallies are safe when the President has just tested positive for COVID? I won’t give you a lecture about the difference between post hoc and propter hoc but will merely observe that we have no idea from where the President was exposed to the virus.

Naturally, the left is having none of. The Los Angeles Times, for example, wheeled into print with an editorial gleefully lambasting the President for his ‘recklessness’ (in fact ‘deadly, foolish recklessness’).

Moreover, we do not know whether he will sicken from the exposure. The vast majority of people who test positive are asymptomatic, many more experience on mild symptoms.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Accidental Defender of the Constitution Andrew McCarthy

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/the-accidental-defender-of-the-constitutio

It is fair to say that Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power is a book Yoo never thought he’d write. Fair because he says so himself, right up front: “If friends had told me on January 21, 2017, that I would write a book on Donald Trump as a defender of the Constitution, I would have questioned their sanity.”
A Review of Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power, by John Yoo, https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250269577.

Decades from now, when historians assess Donald Trump’s presidency with sobriety and dispassion, the ironies are apt to stand out most. Donald Trump is the populist who lost the popular vote, owing his ascendancy to the Electoral College, an institution designed to temper popular excesses and which Trump himself, while pondering a presidential bid in 2012, rebuked as “a disaster for democracy.” Trump has been condemned as the Constitution’s scourge by progressives for whom the Constitution is mostly a nuisance to evolve beyond, framed by white racists in a time before Wokeness. Trump is the president who upheld the rule of law by firing the FBI director. He submitted to investigation by a special counsel whom he reviled but who nevertheless cleared him. Trump was impeached anyway by Democrats who were pushed into the exercise by partisans. But Democratic partisanship proved so devoid of appeal outside the activist Left that impeachment, though it happened just a few months earlier, rated nary a mention in the Democratic National Convention.

Is it any wonder that these four years have aged most of us tenfold?

We’re not through with the ironies, though. For present purposes, here is the most striking one: Through all of this, President Trump’s most compelling defender may be John Yoo, a brilliant conservative thinker who appeared to have both feet firmly planted in Camp Never Trump when the president took office in 2017.

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California’s Berkeley Law School, where it is not easy to be a conservative academic, but anti-Trumpers are welcome. Professor Yoo is a nonpareil scholar of the presidency—in particular, of executive power as conceived in the Constitution and practiced through more than two centuries. He is a prolific author, his grasp of his core concentration immeasurably enhanced by service as a high-ranking Justice Department official. He played a pivotal role in national security policy development in the post-9/11 era, when President George W. Bush grappled with the vexing challenges of international jihadism, often with ferocious partisan opposition in Congress.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Majority of voters think Biden has used his political career to enrich his family and friends

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/majority-voters-believe-biden-has-used-his-political-career-enrich-his

A majority of U.S. voters say former Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has used his decades-long political career to enrich his family and close friends, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

When asked, 57% of voters said it was either “somewhat” or “very” likely that Biden’s inner circle has profited from his nearly 50-years-long career in public office, which includes the elected positions of U.S senator and vice president. Just 28% said they doubted such profiting. 

Noting parallels between Biden and 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Rasmussen said: “In 2016, the Clinton campaign acted as if all they had to do to win was point out the ethical failings of Donald Trump. They failed to see the reality that many voters also saw Clinton as fundamentally corrupt. In fact, the baseline view for many voters is that ALL politicians are corrupt.”

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, MEDIA Comments turned off

America’s Chris Wallace Problem – Is anything more dangerous to our country than media bias? Robert Stacey McCain

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://spectator.org/chris-wallace-debate-bias/

When will Chris Wallace apologize to Katie Pavlich? More than once, Wallace has
insulted his Fox News colleague on the network, as in a January segment about the impeachment of President Trump, when Wallace barked at Pavlich, “Get your facts straight!” As it turned out in that case, Pavlich was right and Wallace was wrong — and not accidentally so. The question at issue was Democrats’ demand that the Senate trial over what was called “Ukrainegate” include testimony from additional witnesses. Pavlich said this was unprecedented, and contended it was not the Senate’s fault that “the House did not come with a complete case.” Wallace began barking about “facts” in an attempt to rescue Democrats from the consequences of their failure.

Wallace’s dismal performance as moderator in Tuesday’s presidential debate reminded many viewers of such previous instances in which the Fox News Sunday host has shown his prejudice against Trump. And this matters, not only because of how that ugly televised carnival might affect the election, but because of what it tells us about the sad state of journalism in America. If Wallace is, Dov Fischer says, “the fairest moderator we can hope for in today’s Left-dominated media,” there is no hope for fairness. But what about those “facts” that Wallace presumed to lecture Katie Pavlich about? Even if we must resign ourselves to partisan prejudice from the media, must we tolerate journalists trafficking in outright lies?

That’s what Wallace did in Tuesday’s debate. Consider this question he aimed at President Trump: “You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, but are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”

Where is the evidence that “white supremacists and militia groups” were to blame for violence in Kenosha or Portland, Oregon? Wallace’s question was not only tendentious, but counterfactual. As regards Portland, Wallace seemed to be echoing Oregon’s woefully misguided Democratic governor. After a man who described himself as “100% Antifa” murdered a Trump supporter on the streets of Portland Aug.29, Gov. Kate Brown issued this rather bizarre statement:

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trivialising Nazism Blind hatred of Trump is sending some American Jews off the moral rails Melanie Phillips

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/trivialising-nazism?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc

There is clearly no limit to the depths of moral perversity that the enemies of President Donald Trump are prepared to plumb, not least within America’s Jewish community.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has released a new campaign ad aimed at Jewish voters in swing states which compares Trump’s presidency to the rise of fascism in Germany.

The ad features parallel images of antisemitism and nationalism in Nazi Germany and today’s America. There are images of antisemitic graffiti from 1930s Germany, along with similar attacks on a modern American synagogue and Jewish cemetery.

The narration states: “History shows us what happens when leaders use hatred and nationalism to divide their people.” The ad ends with a warning: “Hate does not stop itself. It must be stopped. VOTE.”

The council’s executive director, Halie Soifer, said: “A majority of American Jews feel less safe today than they did four years ago due to the rise of white nationalism and antisemitism under Donald Trump.”

“This, coupled with Trump’s assault on our democratic institutions, are [sic] reminiscent of the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany. President Trump’s use of hatred for political purposes has made America less safe for Jews and we are voting accordingly.”

Nor is this the only linkage of Trump with the Nazis. The Democratic presidential contender, Joe Biden, has likened him to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

All of this is appalling for two reasons.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Debate Strengthens The Case For A Libertarian To Vote For Trump Francis Menton

By on October 3rd, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-1-the-debate-strengthens-the-case-for-a-libertarian-to-vote-for-trump

Back on July 22, I participated in a debate hosted by the Soho Forum on the question of which presidential candidate a libertarian should support — Biden, Trump, or Jo Jorgensen (the candidate of the Libertarian Party). I argued the case for Trump. You can watch the July 22 debate, including my presentation, by going to the Soho Forum website.

Later today, at the request of the Soho Forum, I will be recording an update to my July 22 presentation. Not much has happened to move the needle since July 22, particularly given the dearth of public appearances by both Biden and Harris, and the flat refusal of those two to respond to any remotely unfriendly or probing questions from reporters. That leaves mostly just the debate of September 29 in the category of new information. Trying to do my job conscientiously, I watched the whole thing. If you did the same, I pity you, and I also strongly suspect that you found the experience unpleasant, as I did.

As a general matter, I found Trump’s aggressive approach off-putting and unhelpful. On the other hand, Biden’s approach was to make wild and unsupported statements and promises, often inconsistent either with his website or other statements he made in the debate itself, with seeming complete confidence that the moderator would give him a total pass. And on that he was right — time after time, moderator Chris Wallace gave him a total pass. The underlying concept was that in a Biden presidency, the government would provide perfect solutions to all human problems and bring justice and fairness to all through the magic of government spending and programs. Does anybody really buy this? Unfortunately, I think a lot of people do buy it.

I’ll focus on just a few issues that arose in the debate. I have used a version of the transcript found here to try to get as close as I can to the exact words used.

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