Reporter asks Trump about plastic straws as Iran seizes two vessels
"President Trump was asked if he was "in favor of banning plastic straws" by a reporter on Friday afternoon, just a short time after an Iranian provocation in the Strait of Hormuz.
"Are you in favor of banning plastic straws?" a reporter asked the president outside the White House.
"I do think we have bigger problems than plastic straws. You know, it’s interesting about plastic straws. So you have a little straw, but what about the plates, the wrappers, and everything else that are much bigger and they’re made of the same material?
So the straws are interesting, everybody focuses on the straws, there’s a lot of other things to focus on. It’s an interesting question."
Monday, July 22, 2019
Obama's Administration Helped With Russian Collusion Hoax
Obama's Administration Helped With Russian Collusion Hoax
"On Thursday, Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation released 84 pages of documents revealing that the Obama State Department was central to advancing the Russian collusion hoax narrative prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Included in the documents is “a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a ‘face-to-face’ meeting on a ‘Russian matter.’”
According to an op-ed Winer wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, also in September 2016, “Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the “dossier… I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.”
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also show that State Department officials continued to use unsecure BlackBerry devices for the transmission of classified material more than a year after Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system was revealed..."
Read all.
"On Thursday, Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation released 84 pages of documents revealing that the Obama State Department was central to advancing the Russian collusion hoax narrative prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Included in the documents is “a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a ‘face-to-face’ meeting on a ‘Russian matter.’”According to an op-ed Winer wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, also in September 2016, “Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the “dossier… I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.”
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also show that State Department officials continued to use unsecure BlackBerry devices for the transmission of classified material more than a year after Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system was revealed..."
Read all.
RNC spokeswoman on why American flags are being sent to Pelosi, Schumer and other Dems | Fox News
RNC spokeswoman on why American flags are being sent to Pelosi, Schumer and other Dems | Fox News:
Republican National Committee spokesperson Liz Harrington said Friday on "Fox & Friends First" that Republicans are not going to apologize for America’s history and the Democrats should condemn anti-American sentiments within their own party.
Harrington spoke about the RNC's decision to mail an American flag alongside a copy of the United States Flag Code and a letter from the Republican Party to dozens of Democratic officials, including presidential candidates and congressional leaders.
“The Democratic Party, unfortunately, seems to have a problem with the flag these days,” said Harrington, as she explained the not-so-subtle message.
Harrington spoke about the RNC's decision to mail an American flag alongside a copy of the United States Flag Code and a letter from the Republican Party to dozens of Democratic officials, including presidential candidates and congressional leaders.
“The Democratic Party, unfortunately, seems to have a problem with the flag these days,” said Harrington, as she explained the not-so-subtle message.
Are Millennials Spending Too Much Money On Coffee? - Slashdot
Are Millennials Spending Too Much Money On Coffee? - Slashdot"An anonymous reader quotes the Atlantic:
Suze Orman wants young people to stop "peeing" away millions of dollars on coffee. Last month, the personal-finance celebrity ignited a controversy on social media when a video she starred in for CNBC targeted a familiar villain: kids these days and their silly $5 lattes. Because brewing coffee at home is less expensive, Orman argued, purchasing it elsewhere is tantamount to flushing money away, which makes it a worthy symbol of Millennials' squandered resources...
In the face of coffee shaming, young people usually point to things like student loans and housing prices as the true source of the generation's instability, not their $100-a-month cold-brew habits... Orman and her compatriots now receive widespread pushback when denigrating coffee aficionados, a change that reflects the shifting intergenerational tensions that are frequently a feature of the post-Great Recession personal-finance genre. The industry posits that many of the sweeping generational trends affecting Americans' personal stability -- student-loan debt, housing insecurity, the precarity of the gig economy -- are actually the fault of modernity's encouragement of undisciplined individual largesse. In reality, those phenomena are largely the province of Baby Boomers, whose policies set future generations on a much tougher road than their own. With every passing year, it becomes harder to sell the idea that the problems are simply with each American as a person, instead of with the system they live in. "There's a reason for this blame-the-victim talk" in personal-finance advice, the journalist Helaine Olen wrote recently. "It lets society off the hook. Instead of getting angry at the economics of our second gilded age, many end up furious with themselves."
History for July 22
History for July 22 - On-This-Day.com
Gregor Mendel 1822, Alexander Calder 1898, Bob Dole 1923
Louise Fletcher 1934, Alex Trebek 1940, Willem Dafoe 1955
1376 - The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading rats out of town is said to have occurred on this date.
2004 - The September 11 commission's final report was released. The 575-page report concluded that hijackers exploited "deep institutional failings within our government." The report was released to White House officials the day before.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Trump Puts Limit on Asylum Claims at Border
Trump Puts Limit on Asylum Claims at Border:
“This rule is a lawful exercise of authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum,” Attorney General William Barr said in a prepared statement. Barr said this would deter phony asylum claims “while ensuring that no one is removed from the United States who is more likely than not to be tortured or persecuted on account of a protected ground.”
“The United States is a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens along the southern border,” the attorney general said.
“The United States is a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens along the southern border,” the attorney general said.
Why Are They All So Angry? — Manhattan Contrarian
Why Are They All So Angry? — Manhattan Contrarian"It’s the defining characteristic of today’s progressive left: Anger.
And it’s not just the rioters like Antifa, or the unspeakably rude people who confront administration figures in restaurants and gratuitously yell at them.
Take a look at any of the new icons of the Democratic Party when they are speaking — for example Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Ilhan Omar — and you see them seething with barely controllable anger, if not outright fury.
Same with essentially every left-wing commenter on CNN or MSNBC.
And I’m just getting to the Democratic presidential candidates.
...My observation is that, at least for those of the progressive mindset, the less they have to be angry about, the angrier they become.
You can’t look at the economic history of the United States over the course of my lifetime without seeing tremendous improvements on essentially every measure.
Here are some statistics that I can easily find, using the mid-60s (when I was in high school) as a baseline:
- Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 70 years in 1965. Today it is 79.
- Real per capita GDP has gone from about $22,000 in 1965 to $58,000. It has grown by a factor of more than 2.5. The change in real per capita GDP shows up in numerous measures of physical well-being throughout the economy.
- One of my favorites is the size of the average new house. In 1973 (earliest year I can find) it was under 1600 square feet, and by 2015 it had reached about 2700 square feet. The neighborhood where I was growing up in the 60s consisted of similar houses of about 1200 square feet, many filled with large families. Ours had 4 kids; a neighbor had 6. When we went to sell that house in 2004, we were told that no large family nowadays would even consider such a place. The house could only be sold to a single person.
- In 1965, legally-enforced Jim Crow was just coming to an end. Today, it is a distant memory..."
Read on!!
Abortion is last straw, conservatives should quit NEA teachers union
Abortion is last straw, conservatives should quit NEA teachers union:
Until recently, the NEA forced teachers to pay agency fees, whether they joined the union or not. The Supreme Court put a stop to that practice with itsJanus v. AFSCME decision. Since then, the NEA has lost 17,000 members and 87,000 non-member agency fee payers. That mass exodus could explain their decision to open membership to non-teachers for the purpose of funding their political action committee.
And if the unions’ adoption of radical left-leaning resolutions were not enough, delegates defeated a resolution to “make student learning the priority of the Association.” With that vote, the mask fell. Left-wing activism rather than student learning is now clearly the union’s top priority.
And if the unions’ adoption of radical left-leaning resolutions were not enough, delegates defeated a resolution to “make student learning the priority of the Association.” With that vote, the mask fell. Left-wing activism rather than student learning is now clearly the union’s top priority.
COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM
Instapundit Blog Archive COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE...
"COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:
Patti LuPone defends violent attack on Rand Paul:
"COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:
Patti LuPone defends violent attack on Rand Paul:
Read all.Sen. Paul suffered six broken ribs and damaged lungs after Rene Boucher, his neighbor, tackled him from behind in 2017. Paul also endured pneumonia following the attack. The Senator successfully sued Boucher, earning more than half million dollars as a result.
Then again, according to LuPone, maybe Boucher had a point..."---Posted by
We Shouldn't Be Surprised Renewables Make Energy Expensive Since That's Always Been The Greens' Goal
We Shouldn't Be Surprised Renewables Make Energy Expensive Since That's Always Been The Greens' Goal
"The Green Party’s success in last (month's) European elections will likely result in demands to expand and extend decades-old subsidies to renewables.
Like a lot of people, I used to think that subsidies to promote the switch from fossil fuels to solar and wind would be a one-time thing.
Once a solar or wind farm was built, I thought, it would produce electricity forever, without further subsidy, because sunlight and wind are free.
Renewables would thus allow a “sustainable” and even “circular” economy without waste or mining because everything would be recycled.
But it turns out that only nuclear can produce sufficient clean energy to power a circular economy.
That’s partly because nuclear plants have seen their efficiency increase dramatically.
Nuclear plants used to operate for just 50% of the year.
Now, thanks to greater experience in operations and maintenance, they operate 93% of the year.
Nuclear plants were expected to run for 40 years, but thanks to greater experience, they’re expected to run for 80.
And simple changes to equipment allowed the amount of power produced by existing nuclear plants in the US to increase the equivalent of adding eight full-sized reactors.
By contrast, the output of solar panels declines one percent every year, for inherently physical reasons, and they as well as wind turbines are replaced roughly every two decades.
As for circularity, solar panels and wind turbines are rarely recycled because the energy and labor required to do so are much more expensive than just buying raw materials.
As a result, the vast majority of solar panels and wind turbines are either sent to landfills or join the global electronic waste stream where they are dumped on poor communities in developing nations..."
It gets worse.
Read all!
"The Green Party’s success in last (month's) European elections will likely result in demands to expand and extend decades-old subsidies to renewables.
Like a lot of people, I used to think that subsidies to promote the switch from fossil fuels to solar and wind would be a one-time thing.Once a solar or wind farm was built, I thought, it would produce electricity forever, without further subsidy, because sunlight and wind are free.
Renewables would thus allow a “sustainable” and even “circular” economy without waste or mining because everything would be recycled.
But it turns out that only nuclear can produce sufficient clean energy to power a circular economy.
That’s partly because nuclear plants have seen their efficiency increase dramatically.
Nuclear plants used to operate for just 50% of the year.
Now, thanks to greater experience in operations and maintenance, they operate 93% of the year.
Nuclear plants were expected to run for 40 years, but thanks to greater experience, they’re expected to run for 80.
And simple changes to equipment allowed the amount of power produced by existing nuclear plants in the US to increase the equivalent of adding eight full-sized reactors.
By contrast, the output of solar panels declines one percent every year, for inherently physical reasons, and they as well as wind turbines are replaced roughly every two decades.
As for circularity, solar panels and wind turbines are rarely recycled because the energy and labor required to do so are much more expensive than just buying raw materials.
As a result, the vast majority of solar panels and wind turbines are either sent to landfills or join the global electronic waste stream where they are dumped on poor communities in developing nations..."
It gets worse.
Read all!
Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Hoping For Gun Control | The Daily Caller
Democratic Presidential Hopefuls Hoping For Gun Control | The Daily Caller:
None of these ideas address criminals, criminal misuse of firearms or initiatives that would make the public safer. Instead, they only look to limit and outright eliminate the ability of law-abiding Americans to purchase the firearms of their choice, which is a right protected by the Second Amendment.
National Shooting Sports Foundation knows blame-shifting and baseless rhetoric to satisfy the most outlandish gun control supporters isn’t what our nation needs. America deserves real solutions for safer communities and the industry has a plan for that.
National Shooting Sports Foundation knows blame-shifting and baseless rhetoric to satisfy the most outlandish gun control supporters isn’t what our nation needs. America deserves real solutions for safer communities and the industry has a plan for that.
Clarice Feldman---Mogadishu Mon Amour
Mogadishu Mon Amour"The French movie Hiroshima Mon Amour is based on human memory and forgetfulness as recounted by two lovers.
The tale of the congresswoman who calls herself Ilhan Omar is a tale of an anti-Semite bred-in-the-bone corruptocrat whose rise in political power rests very largely on complicity by the media’s airbrushing of her history because they thought this physically attractive African Moslem “refugee” was just the ticket to defeat Donald Trump.
The media counts on our forgetfulness and ignorance..."
Read all!
You Don't Need A Science Degree To Know That Global Warming 'Science' Is Fake | PSI Intl
You Don't Need A Science Degree To Know That Global Warming 'Science' Is Fake | PSI Intl
"If you follow the subject of global warming alarm, you will have read many times that there is a “consensus” of “97% of climate scientists” on — well, on something.
I’ve actually never been able to find a precise statement of the proposition on which the 97% supposedly agree.
...Really, what choice do you have other than to trust the people who have done the work, and who call themselves the scientists and the experts on this subject?
This approach apparently seems reasonable to a lot of people, including many, many seemingly intelligent people.
But not to me.
The approach does not seem reasonable to me because the scientific method provides a very simple check for testing whether scientific claims are valid, and you don’t need to be a scientist to apply this check.
(Another way of looking at it is that the people who apply this check are actually the real scientists, because they are the ones using the scientific method; and the people who call themselves “scientists” and work in “scientific” fields of endeavor and publish in scientific journals and wear scientist outfits, but don’t apply the actual scientific method, are not really scientists. But at this point in time the label “scientist” has been so captured by those who apply it to themselves whether or not they follow the scientific method that I think it is hopeless to get it back.)
Here is the very simple check.
When confronted with a claim that a scientific proposition has been definitively proven, ask the question:
What was the null hypothesis and on what basis has it been rejected?
Consider first a simple example, the question of whether aspirin cures headaches.
Make that our scientific proposition: aspirin cures headaches.
How would this proposition be established?
Read all to find out!
"If you follow the subject of global warming alarm, you will have read many times that there is a “consensus” of “97% of climate scientists” on — well, on something.
I’ve actually never been able to find a precise statement of the proposition on which the 97% supposedly agree.
...Really, what choice do you have other than to trust the people who have done the work, and who call themselves the scientists and the experts on this subject?
This approach apparently seems reasonable to a lot of people, including many, many seemingly intelligent people.But not to me.
The approach does not seem reasonable to me because the scientific method provides a very simple check for testing whether scientific claims are valid, and you don’t need to be a scientist to apply this check.
(Another way of looking at it is that the people who apply this check are actually the real scientists, because they are the ones using the scientific method; and the people who call themselves “scientists” and work in “scientific” fields of endeavor and publish in scientific journals and wear scientist outfits, but don’t apply the actual scientific method, are not really scientists. But at this point in time the label “scientist” has been so captured by those who apply it to themselves whether or not they follow the scientific method that I think it is hopeless to get it back.)
Here is the very simple check.
When confronted with a claim that a scientific proposition has been definitively proven, ask the question:
What was the null hypothesis and on what basis has it been rejected?
Consider first a simple example, the question of whether aspirin cures headaches.
Make that our scientific proposition: aspirin cures headaches.
How would this proposition be established?
Read all to find out!
Here's What We Know About The Missing Tanker Iran Now Says It Has Seized - The Drive
Here's What We Know About The Missing Tanker Iran Now Says It Has Seized - The Drive"Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, says it seized...the Panama-flagged Riah, which turned off its transponder and effectively went missing on Saturday.
This also follows Iran's harassment of a British oil tanker, British Heritage, as it passed through the Strait last week and comes amid growing tensions between Iran and the international community, in general.
...It is possible that the tanker was actually involved in illicit activity, but Iran has yet to present any hard evidence of this.
...The Iranian government heavily subsidizes gasoline, in particular, which has created a significant incentive for individuals to buy it at low prices in Iran and then smuggle it elsewhere to then sell it at a profit.
This has created an odd situation where Iran, which routinely experiences shortages of gasoline due to limited domestic refining capacity and international sanctions, has to further contend with smugglers shipping what is available out of the country.
...The detention of Riah also comes as tensions between Iran and the international community are steadily growing, in general.
Beyond the matter of Grace 1, Iranian authorities have been increasingly critical of the United Kingdom, as well as France and Germany, accusing them of failing to abide by the terms of the controversial agreement over Iran's nuclear program..."
Heatin' up.
Read all!
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