Saturday, June 29, 2019

Kamala Harris’ Big ‘I Was That Little Girl’ Moment Attacking Joe Biden Was Far From True






During Part II of the first 2020 Democratic Primary Debate, Kamala Harris went after former Vice President Joe Biden, slamming him on his record on segregation.

Harris, in a planned jab at Biden, said she didn’t think Biden was a racist, but that she had a fundamental problem with him praising two senators who were segregationists. She accused Biden of working with the segregationists to oppose busing in schools.

She then went on to say, "There was a little girl in California who was bused to school…. That little girl was me." She went on to claim that she was a part of the second integrated class in Berkeley, California.

Biden responded by saying that he wasn’t against segregation per se, he was against the federal government’s department of education doing segregation, and then blamed her local school district for decisions made about busing.

Harris then went into tyrant mode, saying, "There are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people." She went on to say that at times when states don’t do what the federal government wants, it’s the duty of the federal government to come down on states and force them to comply.

The audience went nuts, and her campaign almost immediately tweeted out a photo of Harris in pigtails as a little girl, meaning, it was a planned attack. There was nothing natural about it. It was pre-planned.



There’s only one problem for Kamala. The entire thing is far from the truth.

The California senator and 2020 wannabe said she was a Berkeley public school student in the second class to integrate. Sorry, but that’s just not true.

Harris went to school in Berkeley for only two years, then at 7-years-old, moved with her mother to Canada and attended grade school and high school there.

The senator was born in 1964, (and neither of her parents were citizens at the time) and she made the claim that she was in only the second class to integrate at the Berkeley public schools.

Classrooms in Berkeley were already integrated starting in 1963, a year before she was born. Even if she were born in 1963, she wouldn’t have been in Berkeley public schools at a few months old.

From The Gateway Pundit:

 

Here’s a photo from the 1963 Berkeley HS yearbook. Granted, Harris would have only been in elementary school in 1968, the year official busing began, but the yearbook photo clearly shows that integration was already in place in public schools in Berkeley a year before the California senator was born.

 



 

Not to sound like a famous move line, I see black people.

 

And here’s a photo from the Berkeley 1964 HS yearbook —the year Harris was born.

 



Liberal fact checking web sites and Fake News are now arguing that the real lie is that Harris was never bused to school. That’s not what the argument was ever about. The argument is that she claimed she was part of the second integrated class in Berkeley schools, and that statement is clearly not accurate.

This isn’t the first time Harris got in trouble for lying about a timeline in her past. During a radio interview on "The Breakfast Club," the New York City-based nationally syndicated radio program hosted by DJ Envy, Angela Yee and Charlamagne Tha God.

The question came if she ever smoked marijuana, and she answered in the affirmative, admitting that she toked a bit in her college years.

Harris eventually was asked what music she listened to when she smoked a joint. Charlamagne Tha God asked, "What was you listening to when you was high? What was on? What song was on?"

Harris quickly responded, "Definitely Snoop, Tupac for sure."

The problem is, Harris graduated from Howard University in 1986, finished law school in 1989, and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1990.

From Fox News:

 

Snoop Dogg’s debut album "Doggystyle" was released in 1993. Snoop made music prior to his first album, appearing on Dr. Dre’s 1992 album "The Chronic" and the soundtrack of the 1992 film "Deep Cover," but they were both released years after Harris finished school.

As for Tupac, his first album "2Pacalypse Now" was released in 1991. The rap legend also recorded music as part of the group Digital Underground, but it was also released in the early 1990s after Harris finished school.

If Harris lies, even when she doesn’t have to, how does she expect Americans to trust her enough to elect her president? The Democrats love to claim Donald Trump lies all the time, but so far, there’s more credible evidence that Kamala Harris lies than Trump. This is a problem that may come back to haunt her.

SOURCE
https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/kamala-harris-big-i-was-that-little-girl-moment-attacking-joe-biden-was-far-from-true/



 

Sen. M. Rogers Exposes DEM Plot to Turn US Border Operations Over to the UN





He talks at 4:00





The Dems stuck that in the house bill and thought it would slip through! Had it passed (thankfully our guys read that) the UN would have been given complete control over our border.


The Senate bill still has not passed…two years in and we still have no immigration reform.


SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/sen-m-rogers-exposes-dem-plot-to-turn-us-border-operations-over-to-the-un/


Big tech has transitioned from ‘we don’t censor conservatives’ to ‘we do and you can’t stop us’





Project Veritas has been lifting back the veil covering big tech companies and their nefarious activities following the 2016 election. They tried to play left-leaning-but-mostly-fair before the 2016 election, believing in their hearts that Hillary Clinton would be President without their concerted meddling. That didn’t work out for them, so they are trying to prevent "another Trump situation" in 2020 by unabashedly purging, silencing, and censoring conservatives on platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube.

The answers delivered today before Congress in response to questions by Representative Dan Crenshaw weren’t the standard denials. They were politically manipulative answers designed to make it known they’re doing what we’ve said they were doing all along, but they feel justified in doing it because "hate speech" must be stopped at all costs. Of course, what constitutes hate speech to the social justice warriors in big tech invariably circles around conservative thought. There is no form of hate speech short of physical threats that can be attributed to progressives, at least not in the minds of the people who control big tech. If conservatives are aggressive, they’re delivering hate speech. If progressives are aggressive, they’re just being truthful. That’s what big tech thinks.

This is the worst-case scenario for conservatives. Before, we could call them liars and cheats. Now, we have to fight them on an ideological level, and while we have the truth on our side, they have the technology. They have the eyeballs. They control what people see and don’t see. And as such, they can no longer be trusted to deliver anything even remotely close to fair and balanced. They’re unhinged from reality, but instead of coming back to reality once exposed, they’re building a new reality around their ideologies.

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/big-tech-has-transitioned-from-we-dont-censor-conservatives-to-we-do-and-you-cant-stop-us/

Friday, June 28, 2019

COLLUSION: This sure looks like a group boycott, which is prohibited by federal anti-trust laws.






I hope the Antitrust Division will look into this concerted action against competitors. I’ve raised the issue before.

Related:



 


Remember, it was these American companies that helped China set up its infrastructure of tech dictatorship.

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/collusion-this-sure-looks-like-a-group-boycott-which-is-prohibited-by-federal-anti-trust-laws/

NASA to hunt for alien life on Titan with nuclear-powered drone








NASA has revealed plans to return to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, with the nuclear-powered quadcopter drone-lander Dragonfly. The craft could begin its billion-kilometer journey to search for life as soon as 2034.

Dragonfly is the latest venture from NASA’s competitive New Frontiers Program which explores how chemistry gave birth to biology across the universe. The drone will travel to multiple locations on the moon to search for signs of microbial alien life, navigating Titan’s Earth-like gravity and aerodynamics in the process.


SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/nasa-to-hunt-for-alien-life-on-titan-with-nuclear-powered-drone/


 

The 10 Most Memorable Quotes From Thursday Night’s Bizarre Democratic Presidential Debate








Unlike Wednesday night, the mud was definitely flying when 10 more Democratic presidential candidates took the stage for a nationally televised debate on Thursday night. The most frequent target was former Vice President Joe Biden, and it is going to be very interesting to see how he bounces back from this. Senator Kamala Harris attempted to portray Biden as someone that is racially insensitive, and she delivered the remarks that her team had obviously prepared well in advance with brutal efficiency. But the more the Democrats fight with one another, the better it is going to be for President Trump. And without a doubt, President Trump has got to be encouraged by the incredibly weak lineup of candidates that he saw on Thursday night. The truth is that most of them are more qualified for prison than they are for the White House. The Democrats desperately need to find a champion that can inspire the kind of passion on the left that Barack Obama once did, but right now they don’t have one. They may have more than 20 candidates, but all of them are seriously flawed in one way or another.

Of course with so many candidates in the race, at least the debates should be entertaining. The following are the 10 most memorable quotes from Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate…

Senator Kamala Harris to Joe Biden: "And I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden. I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground, but I also believe — and it is personal, and it was actually very hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputation and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me."

Marianne Williamson: "I’ll tell you one thing: it’s really nice that we’ve got all these plans, but if you think we’re gonna beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing coming."

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper: "If we don’t clearly define we are not socialists, the Republicans are going to come at us every way they can and call us socialists."

Rep. Eric Swalwell: "I was 6-years-old when a presidential candidate came to the California Democratic Convention and said it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans," Swalwell said. "That candidate was then-Sen. Joe Biden."

Senator Kamala Harris: "America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table."

Mayor Pete Buttigieg: "Our party doesn’t talk about that as much, largely for very good reasons, we are committed to the separation of church and state … But we should call out hypocrisy when we see it. And for a party that associates itself with Christianity, to say that it’s OK that God would smile at the division of families at the hands of federal agents? That God would condone putting children in cages? (It) has lost all claim to ever use religious language again."

Marianne Williamson: "What Donald Trump has done to these children … is kidnapping, and it is important for us to realize that," she said. "If you forcibly take a child from their parents’ arms, you are kidnapping them. And if you take a lot of children and you put them in a containment center, thus inflicting chronic trauma upon them, that’s called child abuse. This is collective child abuse. And when this is crime, both of those things are a crime, and if your government does it, that doesn’t make it less of a crime. This is state-sponsored crime."

Sen. Michael Bennet: "The president has been right to push back on China, but has done it in completely the wrong way. We should mobilize the entire rest of the world who all have a shared interest in pushing back on China’s mercantilist trade policies and I think we can do that."

Bernie Sanders about his health care plan: "Yes, they will pay more in taxes, but they will pay less for health care than what they get now."

Marianne Williamson: "Mr. President, if you’re listening, I want you to hear me, please. You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out."

But perhaps the most memorable moment from the entire debate didn’t involve any talking at all.

At one point the candidates were asked to "raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants", and every single one of them raised a hand.

What in the world is happening to this country? Virtually all of our politicians want to keep taking us in the exact opposite direction from where we should be headed, and if we don’t change course there isn’t going to be any hope for America.

Before I end this article, I want to mention one more thing.

No matter how horrible some of the candidates on the stage were, at least they should have all been treated fairly.

Instead, Joe Biden was given four times as much talking time as Andrew Yang.





And 27 full minutes went by before Marianne Williamson was even given an opportunity to speak.

In election cycle after election cycle, the mainstream media always finds a way to make sure that their favored candidates are given an edge in these debates, and it is sickening.

Of course our entire political system is quite sickening at this point, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/the-10-most-memorable-quotes-from-thursday-nights-bizarre-democratic-presidential-debate/



 

Blatant Election Rigging: Twitter Wants To Make Sure We NEVER Have Another President Like Trump






Just in time for the 2020 election, Twitter has come up with a new "policy" that is obviously intended to neuter the effectiveness of President Trump’s Twitter account. Right now, Trump has 61.4 million followers on Twitter, and his tweets regularly make headlines all over the world. Trump has been devastatingly effective on Twitter for years, and his social media strategy was one of the keys to his victory in 2016. Needless to say, the radical leftists that run Twitter were absolutely horrified by Trump’s upset victory, and they want to do whatever they can to make sure that such a thing never happens again. They started by deleting, shadowbanning and greatly suppressing the accounts of prominent conservatives. Personally, my own account has been shadowbanned for a very long time. I have over 16,000 followers, but if you check out my account you will notice that I barely get any retweets at all these days. However, a few years ago there was a ton of interaction with my tweets. An expert looked into it and found that just like so many other prominent conservatives, I had been shadowbanned.

But all of the censorship that we have seen so far is apparently not enough for the control freaks at Twitter, and so now they are going after President Trump himself.

On Thursday, Twitter announced a brand new policy which is obviously aimed at the White House. The following comes from Twitter’s official blog post about this new policy…

With this in mind, there are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules. On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice – a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet – to provide additional context and clarity. We’ll also take steps to make sure the Tweet is not algorithmically elevated on our service, to strike the right balance between enabling free expression, fostering accountability, and reducing the potential harm caused by these Tweets.

Who does this apply to?

We will only consider applying this notice on Tweets from accounts that meet the following criteria. The account must:

•Be or represent a government official, be running for public office, or be considered for a government position (i.e., next in line, awaiting confirmation, named successor to an appointed position);

•Have more than 100,000 followers; and

•Be verified.

That said, there are cases, such as direct threats of violence or calls to commit violence against an individual, that are unlikely to be considered in the public interest.

They are trying to make this sound like a "neutral" policy that will apply evenly to all government officials, but if you believe that then there is a bridge not too far from Twitter headquarters that I would like to sell you.

In essence, Twitter is telling us that they are going to start suppressing President Trump’s tweets. And if other conservative government officials get out of line, they will be censored too.

This is happening right out in the open, and Twitter is brazenly admitting that any tweets that they slap with this "notice" will "feature less prominently on Twitter"…

When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently on Twitter, and not appear in:

•Safe search

•Timeline when switched to Top Tweets

•Live events pages

•Recommended Tweet push notifications

•Notifications tab

•Explore

This notice won’t be applied to any Tweets sent before today and, given the conditions outlined above, it’s unlikely you’ll encounter it often. We cannot predict the first time it will be used, but we wanted to give you more information about this new notice before you come across it on Twitter.

And when Twitter decides that something will "feature less prominently", it might as well not even be there at all. I know that very well, because this is what has been happening to my tweets for years.

I might as well be tweeting into a black hole.

And is it just a coincidence that this new "policy" was announced about 24 hours after President Trump publicly accused Twitter of censoring him?…

The move, announced Thursday, came barely 24 hours after President Donald Trump accused the social media platform’s leaders of censoring him in a bid to limit the circulation of his ideas.

Of course Twitter is far from alone.

All over the Internet, social media companies are making an all-out effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 election.

For example, the day before Twitter announced their new policy, Reddit "quarantined" one of the most popular pro-Trump subreddits…

On Wednesday, Reddit "quarantined" a popular pro-Donald Trump forum on its site. Although the move was prompted because the "r/The_Donald" subreddit was hosting violent threats and violating other site policies, it’s likely to add to Republicans’ complaints that social media companies are biased against conservatives.

Reddit put the message board, which is a popular place for Trump fans to gather and stir up support, in a sort of virtual detention due to what the company called "significant issues with reporting and addressing violations" of its content policy.

Could you imagine what would have happened if the big social media companies had blatantly tried to rig elections against Barack Obama?

There would have been rioting in the streets and Democrats would have been steaming mad.

So why are conservatives taking this censorship with so much apathy?

During the last election cycle, a number of candidates that were boldly speaking out against social media censorship ran for Congress, but almost all of them lost.

As a result, right now there are only a few members of Congress that are actively trying to do something about this.

We are literally losing our country, and only a very small minority of the people care enough to get involved.

At this point the major social media companies are not even attempting to hide their blatant election-rigging anymore, and it looks like they may totally get away with it.

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/blatant-election-rigging-twitter-wants-to-make-sure-we-never-have-another-president-like-trump/



 

Thursday, June 27, 2019

BUSTED: Democrats are intentionally withholding assistance and supplies to illegal minors at the border so they can blame Trump for “caging children”






Even as they feign being heartbroken over the plight of illegal alien children being held in detention facilities at America’s southern border, leftist Democrats have kept themselves busy actively blocking aid to these same children as a gesture of hatred towards President Donald Trump.

As you probably know, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and a slew of other mealy-mouthed leftist Democrats love to rile up their cultists by spreading fake news about President Trump detaining illegal alien children in "scary" border "cages." But it’s these same leftist Democrats who refuse to send assistance and supplies to these children, including simple bedding for them to sleep on in comfort as they await processing.

According to Representative Mark Walker, a Republican from North Carolina, Democrats have blocked assistance to border children a whopping 17 times since the issue first starting making the mainstream media rounds, demonstrating that these so-called "progressives" don’t actually care about the plight of society’s most vulnerable.

Rep. Darrell Issa, another Republican, has expressed similar sentiments.

"This is the first time, and I served 18 years in the House, this is the first time that I’ve seen Democrats refuse to provide humanitarian aid because they hate the president more than they are concerned over the welfare of those people at the border," he’s quoted as saying.

But don’t expect the truth from the likes of AOC, who recently took to Twitter in contrived, virtue signaling fashion to lay it on thick about those poor, poor children at the border whom she hypocritically refuses to support due to her hatred for President Trump.

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"Wayfair workers couldn’t stomach they were making beds to cage children," AOC wrote in her tweet, referring to the company that furnishes beds for border facilities. "They asked the company to stop. CEO said now … Tomorrow, they’re walking out," she added, claiming that this act of rebellion represents "solidarity" with illegal border children.

It’s leftist Democrats who are forcing illegal border children to sleep on cold floors instead of in warm beds

Last we checked, purposely not providing beds for children in need and forcing them to sleep on the floor because "Orange Man Bad" is hardly a compassionate position to take. In fact, it’s far worse than anything President Trump has supposedly done by simply enforcing our nation’s immigration laws in congruence with what’s best for society.

But this is the position held by today’s Democrats as they fight tooth and nail to dethrone a legally-elected president they don’t like. Rather than work together with President Trump to get things done for the best interests of our country, these leftist politicians have instead decided that it’s a much bigger priority to divide and conquer the nation because they’re still angry about the 2016 presidential election outcome.

If these cretins truly cared about border children, they would have spoken up during the regime of Barack Hussein Obama, which caged far more illegal children than the Trump administration has. But when it comes to the way liberals "think," feelings always trump facts, so don’t expect any type of great awakening anytime soon.

"I am utterly horrified to think that the American voters would continue to vote these horrible, degenerate, vicious, lying and uncaring people into office," wrote one commenter at The Gateway Pundit about the insanity of these leftist Democrats pretending to care about the illegal border children they’re harming as part of their crusade to destroy President Trump.

"They are without souls. The Democratic Party has become the party of demons."

To keep up with the latest news about President Trump, be sure to check out Trump.news.

SOURCE
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-06-26-democrats-withholding-supplies-for-illegal-minors-at-border-to-blame-trump.html

Vimeo bans Project Veritas, Natural News on the same day as criminal tech giants collude to silence independent journalism






The video platform Vimeo has banned Project Veritas and Natural News on the same day, taking part in the criminal collusion among tech giants who are systematically silencing independent journalism that keeps exposing the criminality of the tech giants themselves.

Two days ago, Project Veritas released a bombshell video showing a Google executive named Gen Jennai who admitted on camera that Google is engaged in a massive criminal scheme to alter election outcomes and silence conservative speech. Google’s video platform YouTube, to the surprise of no one, banned that video in a desperate effort to silence the explosive revelations. (Yes, Google censored a video that exposed Google’s censorship, thus proving the video’s merits yet again.)

Despite being banned by YouTube, the video remained available on Vimeo, Bitchute and Brighteon.com, where it continued to gain huge viewership.

Yesterday, in an act of obvious criminal collusion with Google, Vimeo disabled the Project Veritas account, shutting off all its videos and taking down the particular video that revealed Google’s "massive criminal enterprise" which is now openly admitted to by one of its own executives.

Vimeo bans Natural News on the same day, proving Vimeo is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud and racketeering.

Also yesterday, Vimeo banned Natural News for no reason whatsoever, other than to continue silencing independent journalists who are exposing the massive criminal fraud and racketeering of the tech giants.

It is now abundantly obvious that these tech giants are conspiring and colluding to carry out acts of extreme criminality and fraud against the world.

The tech giants are engaged in a coordinated criminal conspiracy to silence all independent speech

"This action shows that Big Tech corporations are enforcing an agenda of social control, where dissent is to be stomped out by any means necessary," reports Big League Politics. "The Big Tech censorship apparatus seems to be in panic mode, as Project Veritas is urging more whistle-blowers to come forward. The flood gates may be opened on these monolithic corporations who have apparently been lying to the public about what they are plotting behind the scenes."

What has become clear to us at Natural News is that Vimeo, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, MailChimp and a long list of other tech companies are engaged in coordinated criminal racketeering and fraud to silence all independent voices and shore up their monopolies.

Humanity will never be free as long as these tech tyrants are allowed to run roughshod over basic human rights and civil liberties. It’s time for the CEOs of these tech giants to be arrested and criminal prosecuted for their coordinated, criminal collusion and fraud.

SOURCE
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-06-27-vimeo-bans-project-veritas-natural-news-on-the-same-day-as-criminal-tech-giants-accelerate-the-silencing-of-independent-journalism.html

Democrats Fully Embrace Far Left, Extremist Policies… The Winner Of The First Democratic Debate: Donald Trump






YES: The winner of the first Democratic debate: Donald Trump. “The Republican commander in chief emerged from the scrap largely unscathed, while several of his would-be rivals took aim at each other instead.”



www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmhjPSl7BU






IRA STOLL: “Last night’s presidential debate disclosed a Democratic Party with no real consensus on a series of major issues.”


Well they all agree that Orange Man is Bad.
 


Related: Roger Kimball: A pathetic exhibition of virtue-signaling in Miami. “Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has presided over one of the most — I think it is probably the single most — successful opening years of any president ever. That’s a difficult record to run against. So what tonight’s 10 candidates did — and I am certain that tomorrow’s will as well — was to deny reality and pretend that they were running against the Donald Trump of their dreams: a dark figure whose policies hurt instead of helped average Americans, who was anti-black, anti-woman, anti-immigrant.”


TIM RYAN: The Democratic Party Has a ‘Perception Problem’ as ‘Coastal, Elitist.’


Last night might have gone some ways towards curing viewers of any perception that there’s much elite about the candidates.



TAMMY BRUCE: Democrats reinforce the politics of resentment and victimhood.


When gay marriage became the law of the land, that was success from a nation that is constantly working to become more fair and free. Now, we’re being told that’s not enough. There is now a new grievance in the perpetual racist, sexist, homophobic America. We are now to use that as an economic weapon or as another cudgel with which to extort political power and reinforce divisions among us instead of moving forward with our victories.


For the Democratic Party machine, however, there can never be success, there always has to be a new appended wrong or violation, some new campaign to convince you that victimhood will never end, and you must always resent, well, everyone. Including those who may think differently or simply disagree politically. That is the racist, sexist and homophobic position, as they work for their own constituencies believing the lie that they will always be victims and can never become equal willing partners in society. It’s insulting, damaging and limiting.


Americans seeing each other as neighbors, friends and colleagues as opposed to the malicious “other” is to Democrats as water is to the Wicked Witch. The melting of the left is already occurring, and all they have is to appeal to the worst in people.


SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/democrats-fully-embrace-far-left-extremist-policies-the-winner-of-the-first-democratic-debate-donald-trump/


“Boring!!!!” Post-mortem of predictable, pandering platitudes at first Dem debate





Perhaps President Trump said it best, but aside from an awkward hot-mic moment, the first Democratic Party primary debate was "boring!"

As Liberty Nation’s Graham Noble details below, the debate was an exercise in bland posturing with practically no substance.

Perhaps expectations for the first Democratic Party primary debate were too high. That may have been entirely natural among those who are politically aware as well as among those who pontificate about politics for a living. Many of these people hoped for at least a couple of bold soundbites, a clear policy statement or two, or a heated exchange. The June 26 event in Florida – part one of a two-part debate – was almost entirely devoid of any of those things.

The first quarter of the two-hour debate was focused on healthcare. There was little diversity of opinion and no detailed policy proposal, though the debate moderators were fairly rigid on limiting each candidate’s time and so none of the 2020 hopefuls could have really been expected to lay out specific legislative goals. That being said, the debate did absolutely nothing to more fully inform the American people about any candidate’s position.

Platitudes Over Policy

Everyone on the stage expressed the usual platitudes about providing universal access to healthcare. In true Democratic Party fashion, all ten candidates based their ideas on the assumption that government alone can provide the most efficient and cost-effective healthcare system the United States will ever have. This, of course, is entirely at odds with the entire history of human civilization, which teaches us that government is incapable of providing efficient, cost-effective services.

Interestingly, when the ten contenders were asked to raise their hands if they would abolish private health insurance, only New York Mayor Bill DeBlazio and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren did so.

Former Maryland Representative John Delaney was perhaps the most rational person on the stage and also the most ignored – with the exception of Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). On the subject of healthcare reform, Delaney suggested the best way forward was to "keep what’s working and fix what’s broken." Though it will not be well-received by most Democratic politicians or their media lapdogs, Delaney may have uttered the most sensible line of the night when he later said his party should offer "Real solutions, not impossible promises."

The Favored Ones

Warren, who was literally center stage, was given the most time to speak during that first section of the debate. Indeed, there was a definite bias – throughout the event – toward Warren, former Texas congressman Robert O’Rourke, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro. The other candidates had to fight for the opportunity to speak, on many occasions.

Other issues covered included immigration, Iran, gun control, and climate change. No specific policies were offered up by any of the candidates. Gun control was obviously a subject that made all of them uncomfortable. Clearly, not one of these Democrats had the courage to go on the record, in front of a national audience, with their plans for gun confiscation. To their credit, though, none of them professed support for the 2nd Amendment, which so many Democrats do – disingenuously – when pressed on the issue of gun rights.

All but one of the contenders agreed that the United States should sign on, once again, to the Iran nuclear deal. Sen. Booker declined but then, ironically, channeled President Donald Trump by asserting that a better deal should be negotiated.

The Also-Rans

All in all – for almost all ten candidates – it was, at best, a cautious performance and, at worst, a cowardly one. Castro made the biggest impact as one of the lesser-known 2020 contenders. Cory Booker perhaps comes out of the event with a slight boost and Warren, while not especially captivating, certainly retained her position as one of the front-runners.

Robert O’Rourke continued to flail and did nothing, on the stage, to dispel the feeling that he is entirely out of his depth in a presidential race. He was scolded by Castro for his immigration ideas and falsely assumed that his command of the Spanish language would, perhaps, earn him some street cred, but that did not appear to work either.

Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard had a moment to shine when she schooled Washington Governor Jay Inslee on the futility of the Afghan war but was not one of the chosen few who were allowed to hog the limelight. Inslee himself has a very limited future in this race.

Ohio Representative Tim Ryan made little impact, though he was one of only two candidates who acknowledged that his party has lost its way – becoming disconnected from blue-collar America and evolving into the party of the elites. The other candidate who made the same assertion was DeBlazio, who may have an equally limited lifespan in the 2020 race.

The debate may have had some effect on how Democratic voters view the respective candidates but probably did nothing to excite the base: Inslee, Klobuchar (who was the most lackluster figure of the night), Delaney, and Ryan were unable to capture that one, big moment they each needed to give their campaigns some steam. DeBlazio was the most aggressive but continues to be one of the least likable people in America. Castro, Warren and, perhaps, Booker were the winners of the night.

Gabbard and DeBlazio may have done enough to keep their hopes alive a little longer and, if Democratic voters are truly interested in moderation and something more rational, then Delaney may survive for a while longer. The other four are probably as good as done.

In the final analysis, this debate was an exercise in bland posturing with practically no substance. Trump, who tweeted "BORING!" during the debate, has little to worry about if this is the best the Democrats have to offer for 2020.

SOURCE
https://www.intellihub.com/boring-post-mortem-of-predictable-pandering-platitudes-at-first-dem-debate/

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Judicial Watch Sues CIA for Inspector General’s Report on Mena, Arkansas, Airport CIA Drug, Arms Smuggling Allegations during the Reagan administration to smuggle arms to rebels in Nicaragua







(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA seeking the CIA Inspector General’s November 1996 report related to a drug-running, arms smuggling and intelligence operation involving Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport in Arkansas.
 
 
The airfield in Mena was alleged to have been used in the 1980s by the CIA during the Reagan administration to smuggle arms to rebels in Nicaragua. A central figure in the operation was Barry Seal, a pilot and drug smuggler for Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel who became an undercover agent and informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
 
 
In November 1996, then-CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz absolved the CIA of involvement in the operation.
 
 
Hitz at the time said that “no evidence has been found to indicate that the CIA or anyone acting on its behalf participated in, or otherwise had knowledge of, any illegal or improper activities in Mena, Arkansas or the area north of Mena known as Nella, Arkansas.”
 
 
Judicial Watch sued the CIA in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after the agency failed to respond to a June 29, 2018, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:19-cv-00672)). Judicial Watch seeks:
 
 
The CIA Inspector General’s report issued in November 1996 relating to a drug-running, money laundering and intelligence gathering operation involving an airport in Mena, Arkansas.
 
 
Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison has written extensively on the activities surrounding the Mena airport. In an October 18, 1994, editorial feature for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Mena Coverup” Morrison wrote: “What do Bill Clinton and Oliver North have in common, along with the Arkansas State Police and the Central Intelligence Agency? All probably wish they had never heard of Mena.”
 
 
Morrison noted that Seal, who by 1984 was a DEA informant, “flew at least one sting operation to Nicaragua for the CIA.” Seal was murdered in 1986 by Colombian hitmen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
 
 
“The CIA has for over 20 years stonewalled the release of information now sought by Judicial Watch on the Mena Airport controversy,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
 
 
###
 
SOURCE
 
 
 

John Solomon: Damning Samantha Power E-mails to Drop Possibly as Early as Today







BREAKING: VIDEO: John Solomon: Damning Samantha Power E-mails to Drop Possibly as Early as Today (Wednesday)







Related:
Who is Samantha Power?




Samantha Power emphatically denies making any unmasking requests. – 260 of these requests were made in her name during the last year of the Obama







Samantha Power emphatically denies making any unmasking requests. Pretty. damn. huge. 260 of these requests were made in her name during the last year of the Obama administration, mostly to unmask people associated with Trump. If she’s telling the truth, someone else in the Obama administration was doing this in her name to hide their own identity. If we had to guess, it’s someone whose name rhymes with booze ‘n’ ice.


Did the dog really eat Samantha Power’s homework?


 By Monica Showalter


Former United Nations ambassador Samantha Power is denying, emphatically, to Congress, that she ever requested 260 unmaskings of Americans caught up in intelligence surveillance dragnets during President Obama’s last year in office. She says someone else did it.



SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/john-solomon-damning-samantha-power-e-mails-to-drop-possibly-as-early-as-today/



Following in the footsteps of communist China, CANADA begins harvesting organs from euthanized humans






Twenty years ago, I remember telling a physician friend of mine that China was harvesting organs from political prisoners. The doctor — a wine-drinking liberal academic — scoffed at the idea and claimed that if something like that were going on, he would have heard about it by now. (This is how doctors think. If they don’t discover information first, they discount anyone else bringing it to them.)

Now, twenty years later, an independent tribunal has unanimously concluded that organ harvesting in communist China takes place on "a significant scale."

"Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale," said chair of the tribunal, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, as reported by The Epoch Times. "The panel further concluded that adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong have been one of the main sources of organ supply. Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline consisting of meditation exercises and moral teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, has been brutally persecuted by the Chinese regime for the past two decades."

Breitbart.com also reports:

Gutmann’s research and writing, in conjunction with authors David Kilgour and David Matas, exposed a million-dollar Chinese industry centered around the killing of political prisoners – mostly Falun Gong members, but some Christians, Uighur Muslims, and others considered enemies of the state – and extracting of livers, kidneys, hearts, and other vital organs to sell to buyers in need.

I’ve been reporting this for years on Natural News and other sites, but of course we are banned by the communist-linked tech giants like Facebook and Twitter for daring to tell the truth about the organ harvesting factories in China.

Now, organ harvesting is being carried out in Canada, too

Following in the footsteps of the communist Chinese, Canada is now pursuing organ harvesting from euthanized patients. As reported by LifeSiteNews:

[T]he Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has issued guidelines for how the harvesting of organs from people who elect to be killed by medical practitioners should work. Despite some hand-wringing about ethics, the June 3 document allows doctors to canvas their vulnerable, suicidal patients for their organs.

Even worse, it is well known that doctors and hospitals, driven by extreme greed and cruelty, often kill patients through the process of harvesting their organs. In other words, the patients aren’t really dead until the organ harvesting begins. As explained via LifeSiteNews:

Alex Schadenberg of Canada’s Euthansia Prevention Coalition believes that accepting organs from euthanasia victims will indeed lead to death by organ donation.

"The acceptance of organ donation after euthanasia leads to the pressure to do euthanasia by organ donation," he told LifeSiteNews.

"The concept that organ donation and euthanasia can be separated is false. The person will be prepared for the organ donation and the euthanasia simultaneously to make the procedure most effective."

It is in the financial interests of the doctors, organ transplant surgeons and medical facilities, in other words, to not really wait until the patient is dead before harvesting their organs. The more "fresh" the organs are, the more successful the chances of transplant surgery involving a recipient. Yes, the euthanasia in Canada is by consent, which makes it different from China’s forced political prisoner executions and organ harvesting operations, but organ harvesting is a slippery slope, and Canada is now on that slope with apparently nothing stopping doctors from being caught up in conflicts of interest that benefit the medical establishment, not individual patients.

Doctors don’t wait for patients to die before harvesting their organs

As published in a Medicine.news article that I authored, a new science study proves that doctors do not wait for patients to die before harvesting their organs:

…you’re still alive, conscious and aware for several minutes after your heart stops beating. Just because the heart stops doesn’t instantly disconnect the activity of the brain.

"This means you are essentially ‘trapped’ inside your dead body with your brain still working," reports Fox News. If you’re an organ donor, that’s the moment in which doctors slice into your body without using anesthesia (since they assume you’re dead) and start rapidly harvesting your organs. You feel every bit of it, but you’re trapped inside your body and can’t move or even scream.

…organ transplants are a huge profit center for many hospitals, and while hospitals and doctors reap enormous profits on these procedures, they pay no money whatsoever to the family of the deceased person whose organs made the entire thing possible in the first place.

Just because a person’s heart stops beating doesn’t mean they’re dead. They can still feel pain and experience the process of organs being ripped from their living body. But the medical establishment says nothing. In fact, to this day, the World Health Organization still has not condemned China for operating its organ harvesting factories.

Imagine that. The WHO pushes vaccines, claiming it cares about "saving lives," but won’t condemn the forced executions and organ harvesting from political prisoners in China.

The push for euthanasia laws is actually an organ supply initiative to fulfill the profits of the transplant industry while mass murdering targeted political opponents

Euthanasia laws are currently being considered in many U.S. states. They’re being pushed by liberals and progressives who are already on the record calling for the mass killing of Christians, conservatives and Trump supporters.

In exactly the same way the communist Chinese government targets political dissidents — Falun Gong members — for arrests, executions and organ harvesting, left-wing authoritarians in America will sooner or later call for the mass execution and organ harvesting of Christians and political dissidents who do not kowtow to the LGBT agenda of child mass murder and taxpayer-funded mutilations (like what has just been made a matter of law in Vermont).

As has been made abundantly obvious by the mass censorship and de-platforming of conservatives, liberals do not see conservatives or Christians as human beings. Thus, killing them and harvesting their organs is not in any way contradictory to the "values" of Leftists who place literally no value on any human life other than their own. Remember: These are people who murder their own babies after they’re born. Do you really think they won’t murder their political enemies?

We’ve already seen this happen in communist China, and it all started with the collapse of Western values, reports Breitbart News:

The "collapse of Western values," a "massive case of denial" in the free world, and "religious bigotry" towards the Falun Gong spiritual movement have allowed China to potentially expand its industrial-scale harvesting of live organs to Uighur Muslims imprisoned in concentration camps, Ethan Gutmann, author of several seminal reports on the topic, told Breitbart News.

In the update to their research in 2016, Gutmann, Kilgour, and Matas revealed that China was conducting between 50,000 and 90,000 more transplant surgeries than the official government estimates of organ donors, even including death row inmates, could account for. Filling the gap between documented organ donations and actual transplants completed were the bodies of prisoners of conscience, the report concluded. Both Falun Gong survivors and doctors who have testified to engaging in live organ harvesting have corroborated the report.

Does any informed person honestly believe that Leftists in America — filled with rage, hatred and the desire for total destruction of their political enemies — won’t resort to mass murder and mass organ harvesting if no one stops them?

America’s Leftists are rapidly shifting toward the twisted, dangerous political philosophies of communism and authoritarianism. All voices of conservatives, Christians and civil liberties are being crushed. Conservatives are even being de-platformed from banks, jobs and universities just because they believe in principles and ethics. Even the ACLU has become a legal front for Satanism, arguing that Satanists have the right to erect statues in front of government buildings across America.

The abortion (infanticide) industry is rapidly accelerating in Leftist-held states, and the rhetoric of Leftists increasingly demands the mass killing of conservatives. It’s not difficult to see where this is headed if something dramatic doesn’t change soon.

America, 2025 (a dystopian nightmare scenario): A Democrat is sworn into office at the White House. She immediately signs a law criminalizing Christianity and calling for the imprisonment of any adult who doesn’t turn their child over to left-wing indoctrination centers that groom children to be pedophiles and transgenders. All children are required to undergo chemical castration and genital mutilation procedures before being molested and repeatedly raped by top Democrat fundraisers who have the "right" connections. Adults who resist are arrested, charged with sedition and forcibly organs harvested while they are still alive, with organs being sold on the black market in order to further enrich the Democrats in power. Bibles are outlawed and considered contraband. All speech is regulated by the GooglePlex. "Thoughtcrimes" become a reality, and Amazon Alexa devices become mandatory in all U.S. households so that the deep state swamp can actively record all your private conversations. All Americans are required to wear LGBT rainbow pride pins in public, or face arrest. All corporations deny jobs to anyone who doesn’t worship child mutilations and transgenderism. Banks cut off accounts for all conservatives, and credit card companies cancel the accounts of anyone tied to any Christian church. Women’s sports collapses in a biological male freak-fest, and Disney launches movies for six-year-olds that promote same-sex orgies for children. Netflix broadcasts "Hail Satan" messages between every episode, and a new national law criminalizes the private possession of all guns while offering a nationwide "gun buyback free vaccine" program that offers the citizens free vaccinations for every pistol or rifle they turn over to the government.

Or maybe we can stop all this insanity before it goes that far. Maybe we can reclaim our humanity, protect the innocent and stop the mass brainwashing, mutilations and mass murder of children in America.

SOURCE
https://www.intellihub.com/following-in-the-footsteps-of-communist-china-canada-begins-harvesting-organs-from-euthanized-humans/



 

Walmart and Target pull bottled water said to contain arsenic, but WHOLE FOODS keeps selling It






Back in April, we reported that 11 different brands of bottled water were shown to contain arsenic. Consumer Reports said that three brands, in particular, had potentially concerning levels of the toxic element.

And two of those water brands still contain high levels of arsenic.

Now, new independent testing shows that at least two brands if those brands still contain high levels of arsenic. Starkey Water, owned by Whole Foods, and Penafiel, owned by Dr. Pepper and sold at Target and Walmart, are still exposing customers to unsafe levels of arsenic.

Independent testing commissioned by the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) has found high levels of the toxic metal arsenic in Starkey Water, owned by Whole Foods, and Penafiel, owned by Keurig Dr Pepper, bottled in Mexico and sold at Target. CEH has sent legal notices to these bottled water manufacturers and retailers because the amount of arsenic in the water is above the level requiring a health warning under California’s consumer protection law Proposition 65. Prop 65 identifies arsenic as a metal that causes reproductive harm and cancer.

"Consumers are being needlessly exposed to arsenic without their knowledge or consent," said Michael Green, Chief Executive Officer of CEH. "Customers typically purchase bottled water at exorbitantly high costs with the assumption that it is safer and healthier to drink than tap water, unaware that they are ingesting an extremely toxic metal linked to birth defects and cancer."

Children are particularly at risk from arsenic exposure because their bodies are still developing, and direct exposure can affect mental and physical development, including lower IQ test scores and school achievement. Arsenic can even harm an unborn child asa result of exposure to pregnant women or women likely to become pregnant. Arsenic in drinking water can cause an increased risk of heart disease, including high blood pressure and diabetes. The metal is also what is known as an "endocrine disrupting chemical", which means even small doses can wreak havoc on a human’s hormone system. (source)



It’s incredibly concerning that after being exposed several months ago, these companies haven’t made any changes and are still selling these products to the public.

As we reported previously:

We can’t rely on the government to tell us if the water is safe.

"It makes no sense that consumers can purchase bottled water that is less safe than tap water," says James Dickerson, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Consumer Reports. "If anything, bottled water—a product for which people pay a premium, often because they assume it’s safer—should be regulated at least as strictly as tap water."

While drinking a single glass of water with 3 ppb of arsenic probably will not harm you, regular consumption over extended periods increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, can lower IQ scores in children, and can cause certain cancers and other health problems, Dickerson says.

Given the history of contamination in water supplies across the country, trusting officials to keep us safe just isn’t a realistic option. And, because government regulation of bottled water is flawed as well, trusting companies that produce it isn’t a great idea either.

Don’t assume bottled water is safer than tap water.

According to documents obtained by CR, the federal government’s safety inspections of water bottling facilities hit a 15-year low in 2017, the report states:

In 2010, the FDA conducted 371 inspections; by 2017, that number fell to 209. These inspections include verifying that companies have test results on file for their products.

But records show that some companies have been issued violations by the FDA and state agencies for lacking legally required test data. The companies were required to correct the violations by a later date, records show. The FDA doesn’t conduct tests on individualized finished bottled water during these inspections, a spokesperson said, and relies on companies to produce their own results. (Imported water could be tested during routine border testing at ports of entry, however, the spokesperson said.) (source)

Over the last five years, at least 22 voluntary recalls have been initiated by bottled water firms, according to FDA records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, including for mold, pieces of plastic ending up in the finished product, and excessive arsenic. The FDA has never mandated a bottled water recall. However, it "has issued at least three warning letters to bottled water firms for misbranded source water labels, E. coli contamination, and failure to conduct follow-up testing for E. coli contamination when coliforms are detected," according to CR.

"This is a huge, multibillion-dollar industry selling a product that is viewed by many consumers as safer than tap water," says Erik Olson, senior director of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which published a four-year bottled water study in 1999. He says that "meaningful oversight of this extremely profitable business" is needed and that consumers should be able to easily get test results online.

"These companies make a mint on basically something that’s a free resource," says David Carpenter, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York at Albany. "So there’s no reason that they can’t find a water source that is either very, very low in arsenic, or do the treatment themselves."

Some of the allegedly contaminated water is being pulled, but not at Whole Foods.

Fox News reports that Dr. Pepper Keurig is pulling Penafiel from the shelves at Walmart and Target and offering customers a refund.

On Friday, Keurig Dr Pepper announced it will be withdrawing Penafiel products from shelves due to "presence of violative levels of arsenic," a press release from the Food and Drug AdministrationOpens a New Window. stated. The products are sold at Target, Walmart and other vendors, according to USA Today. Consumers can return the products to a retailer for a full refund. (source)

But ironically, Whole Foods, which should be synonymous with…you know…healthy stuff, has refused to stop selling their allegedly tainted water.

A Whole Foods Market spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement, "At Starkey Water, our highest priority is to provide customers with safe, high-quality and refreshing spring water. Beyond the required annual testing by an FDA certified lab, we have an accredited third-party lab test every production run of water before it is sold, and our test results from the same lot analyzed by Consumer Reports show that these products are fully compliant with FDA standards for heavy metals. We would never sell products that do not meet FDA requirements." (source)

If you purchase bottled water, we recommend you go to the company’s website to see if it publishes test results. Or, check the product label for contact information. Look for reports that show nondetectable levels of arsenic. Search the brand’s entire report for other listed contaminants.

Considering that both tap water and bottled water are subject to contamination (and we aren’t always notified) and that we certainly can’t count on government oversight, perhaps the best option is to purify your water yourself. We like the Big Berkey.

SOURCE
https://www.intellihub.com/walmart-and-target-pull-bottled-water-said-to-contain-arsenic-but-whole-foods-keeps-selling-it/

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Listening to climate doomsters makes our situation worse







James Anderson (Prof of Atmospheric Chemistry at Harvard) gave a speech. It fed the daily doomster news from the Left. "There Is No Time Left" by Robert Hunziker at Counterpunch. Journalist Jeff McMahon, presented it at Forbes as yet another in the endless series of deadlines: "We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change." (see lists of such deadlines going back many years: here, here, here). But, as usual, Grist went into deep clickbait.

Professor Anderson believes that we have only 55 months left to "fix climate change" or we will go extinct. Some of the predictions in his speech rely on the work of other scientists (e.g., more and stronger storms in a warmer world, as predicted by Professor Michael Mann). His doomster prediction has little support from the IPCC’s reports.

Anderson’s speech and the resulting stories are is typical of the news today. The campaign to get extreme public policy action to fight climate change has run for 30 years. This year it went full-doomster, doubling down on warnings of nightmarish consequences. There are three oddities to this. The first two are widely recognized; the third is seldom mentioned – and perhaps the most important.

First, ignoring the IPCC and major climate agencies.

The IPCC’s Working Group I reports (the physical sciences) were rightly described by activists as the "gold standard" description of climate research and the most reliable statement of scientists’ consensus. But by 2011 activists were saying they were "too conservative." This became a widespread response by activists to the release of AR5 in 2013 (e.g., Inside Climate News and Yale’s Environment 360). Now activists explicitly attack the IPCC’s integrity, advocating it twist the science to support activists’ agenda. For example, see this March 2019 paper in Bioscience.

Now activists and their journalist supporters focus on individual papers, seldom replicated by other scientists, and increasingly wild statements by scientists. The major climate science institutions are ignored.

Second, what about those confident predictions?

Scientists making confident predictions about climate seldom mention the many false predictions. We have seen false predictions of "the end of winter." False predictions that the California drought (now over) would be permanent (or very long). False predictions of more and stronger hurricanes since Katrina in 2005. False predictions about the melting of the Arctic Ocean. Despite the almost daily hype, most forms of extreme weather have not increased (esp. see Judith Curry’s new essayabout this). See more failed predictions. These have, logically, eroded the public’s confidence so that climate change is ranked low among American’s public policy priorities (e.g., surveys by Gallup and Pew Research).

Some climate scientists have warned about excessive confidence. Such as Judith Curry in her articles and presentations about the need to better appreciate uncertainty (e.g., here, here, and here). They have been ignored.

Third, will climate change go the same way as earlier doomster stories?

Our history for the past few generations has been doomster fears seizing the public’s attention only after solutions have begun.

(1) The Horse Manure Crisis – Experts worried in 1894 that horse manure would stop the growth of cities, and perhaps make them uninhabitable. But the first practical car was built in 1885. The first electrified underground urban railway opened in 1890 in London. These became more useful with the invention of the multiple-unit train control in 1897. In a few decades, cities were far cleaner.

(2) Water and air pollution – In the late 1960s and early 1970s, water and air pollution were considered existential threats to our survival. On 15 January 1971 Americans watched "L.A. 2017", an episode of The Name of the Game by the hot and young new director Steven Spielberg. In it, the hero has a vision of Los Angeles in 2017, after pollution had destroyed the Earth’s ecology and forced the remnants of humanity underground. LA had one cow; its milk was a delicacy for the rich. See more about the plot. Philip Wylie wrote the script. His specialty was science fiction Stories about nuclear war and ecological disaster. Those were as popular then as stories about climate apocalypses are today. He novelized it as Los Angeles: A.D. 2017. See a review here.



Responsible people had acted long before Spielberg produced his first horror film. Progress began with the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 and the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. Small beginnings for decades of incremental change that has reshaped the air and water of America, still continuing.

(3) Overpopulation – Collapse from overpopulation has been a favorite prediction, from Thomas Malthusin An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) to Paul Ehrlich in The population bomb(1968). On 17 January 1969, Americans watched "The Mark of Gideon", as Captain Kirk visited a planet with literally wall-to-wall people (see this excerpt). The goal of ZPG – zero population growth – was seen by many as unrealistic or utopian.

The first safe and effective Intrauterine devices hit the market in the 1950s; the 1960s next-generation devices were even better. Enovid, the first birth control pill, hit the market in 1960. Cheap, easy, and effective contraceptives began the long-decline in fertility that will lead to collapsing populations in some nations during next few years – and probably a falling population in the late 21st century.

But although they are usually wrong, doomstsers are flexible. Now fewer people are disastrous.

(4) The Soviet Union – It was an existential threat to America right until it collapsed. US intelligence agencies consistently overestimated the growth rates and technical progress of the USSR (examples here). Far-right extremists further exaggerated it into a bogeyman. In 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This marked the beginning of the end to the cold war – and a large step towards lifting the threat of global annihilation. Howard Phillips (Chairman of The Conservative Caucus) described it in the NYT as "Treaty: Another Sellout" See more examples of right-wing hysteria.

(5) Resource exhaustion – This has been a favorite of doomsters since the late 1960s. After fifty years we still have not exhausted any resources. Most have declined in price (in real terms). Many resources, especially agricultural and minerals, are subject to boom-bust cycles. Periods of low prices result in capital underinvestment, followed by supply shortages – and doomster stories that they are "running out" (ignoring basic geology). Then prices rise, investment surges, supplies increase – followed by amnesia about the previous false predictions.

A common element to these doomster stories.

A common element in these doomster stories is that the loudest warnings came after solutions were found. In most cases, the doomsters were panicking long after cooler people had seen the threat and begun preventive actions. There are structural reasons for that.

First, doomsters often believe they are smarter and know more than everybody else. Experts, politicians, administrators – none can compare with doomsters’ opinions of themselves. Second, doomsters tend to be attention whores. They play upon the public’s fears, which appear in the late stage of a challenge. By then, experts often have been working on solutions for many years. Or prices have moved to signal the need for action, which impel research and investments. Doomsters seldom see any of this, with their eyes fixed on the one true vision of the future.

What about climate change?

Energy generation is shifting to lower-carbon sources. Cars are shifting from gasoline and diesel to electricity. Electricity generation is shifting from coal to natural gas. And next-gen energy sources are emerging from scientists’ laboratories, such as new nuclear power systems and (more speculatively) the bright light of fusion might burn away climate doomsters’ fears. But these things take time. Fracking to produce natural gas is happening now, spreading around the world. See Stratfor giving us good news about when renewables will replace fossil fuels.

Much depends on how much time climate change gives to the relentless march of technology. We need time. Variables remain uncertain. For example, transient climate response (TCR) was estimated by the Working Group I of IPCC’s AR5 with high confidence "to be likely between 1°C and 2.5°C" (in chapter 10; "likely" means above 66% probability). Theories about key dynamics remain weakly validated, such as the dynamics of clouds and the long-term carbon cycle.

This is the classic form of a doomster nightmare. They exaggerate the threat beyond that described by experts and minimize the significance of counter-measures being developed.

Does this mean we should ignore climate change as a threat? No, no more than we should focus on it to the exclusion of other serious threats, such as the dying oceans (see here, here, and here). A better lesson from this history is that we should ignore doomsters and instead pay attention to experts. This one easy step will make the political debate better informed and less divisive.

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/listening-to-climate-doomsters-makes-our-situation-worse/

Conditions On The Streets Of San Francisco Are Comparable To “The Slums Of Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Jarkarta, And Manila”






Once upon a time, some of the most beautiful cities in the entire world were on the west coast, but now those same cities are degenerating into drug-infested cesspools of filth and garbage right in front of our eyes. San Francisco is known as the epicenter for our tech industry, and Los Angeles produces more entertainment than anyone else in the world, and yet both cities are making headlines all over the world for other reasons these days. Right now, nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless population lives in the state of California, and more are arriving with each passing day. When you walk the streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can’t help but notice the open air drug markets, the giant mountains of trash, and the discarded needles and piles of human feces that are seemingly everywhere. If this is what things look like when the U.S. economy is still relatively stable, how bad are things going to get when the economy tanks?

In San Francisco, the homeless population has grown by 17 percent since 2017, and when a UN official recently walked the streets she was absolutely horrified by what she witnessed…

When Leilani Farha paid a visit to San Francisco in January, she knew the grim reputation of the city’s homeless encampments. In her four years as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, Farha has visited the slums of Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Jarkarta, and Manila. The crisis in San Francisco, she said, is comparable to these conditions.

I have never been to Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Jarkarta or Manila, and so I will just have to take her word for what the conditions are like there.

But how can this be happening in one of the wealthiest cities in the entire country?

Sadly, to a large degree San Francisco has done this to itself. Every single day drugs are openly bought and sold at "an outdoor market of sorts" right in the heart of the city, and authorities know exactly where it is happening…

To drill down on the epicenter of the crisis, a recent New York Times inquiry set out to find the dirtiest block in San Francisco. After asking statisticians to compile a list of streets with the most neighborhood complaints regarding sidewalk cleanliness, the Times landed on a winner: Hyde Street’s 300 block, which received more than 2,200 complaints over the last decade.

A visit to the block yields a harrowing sight of drug addicts and mentally ill residents, many of whom are part of the city’s overwhelmingly large homeless population. During the day, drug users host an outdoor market of sorts, selling heroin, crack cocaine, and amphetamines along the sidewalks.

They could shut down the drug dealing if they really wanted to do so.

And anywhere the illegal drug trade is thriving, you are also going to have a lot of property crime. At this point, no city in America has a higher rate of property crime than San Francisco does…

San Francisco is the nation’s leader in property crime. Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included under this ugly umbrella. The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed, and the current average is 51 per day. Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.

Meanwhile, things are not much better in Los Angeles. In fact, many would argue that L.A. is in even worse condition.

The homeless population in the city has risen 16 percent since last year, and it is taking over neighborhood after neighborhood. Los Angeles was once one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, but now it is rapidly being transformed into a hellhole…

If someone predicted half a century ago that a Los Angeles police station or indeed L.A. City Hall would be in danger of periodic, flea-borne infectious typhus outbreaks, he would have been considered unhinged. After all, the city that gave us the modern freeway system is not supposed to resemble Justinian’s sixth-century Constantinople. Yet typhus, along with outbreaks of infectious hepatitis A, are in the news on California streets. The sidewalks of the state’s major cities are homes to piles of used needles, feces, and refuse. Hygienists warn that permissive municipal governments are setting the stage — through spiking populations of history’s banes of fleas, lice, and rats — for possible dark-age outbreaks of plague or worse.

Skid Row is the epicenter of the homeless problem in L.A., and I highly recommend that you do not go down there to check it out for yourself.

It is hard to believe that people are actually living this way in America in 2019. This is what one reporter witnessed during his visit to the neighborhood…

If you want to know how bad the homelessness crisis has gotten in California, just turn to 4 squares miles east of Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. The area, known as Skid Row, has long been inhabited by the city’s poorest residents. These days it resembles something akin to a nightmare.

Residents sleep in tents surrounded by discarded needles and feces, their belongings tucked into trash bags and shopping carts. Some shade themselves with tarps or use nearby light poles to connect to power. Others have contracted typhus from rats scurrying across the sidewalk. One resident was even found bathing in the water from a broken fire hydrant.

This is where the rest of the country is headed if we are not very careful. Bad policies have bad consequences, and our leaders have been taking us in the wrong direction for a very long time.

And instead of getting to the root of our problems, most of our politicians seem to think that engaging in bizarre social experiments will somehow solve our problems.

For example, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is convinced that we can solve the homeless problem by building tiny housing units in the backyards of private homeowners…

As part of this mission, the city is pursuing a pilot program, made possible by a $1 million Bloomberg Philanthropies grant, that would help homeowners install backyard units on their properties. In exchange for a $10,000 to $30,000 stipend, homeowners would be able to charge a small rent to homeless tenants, who would pay their share through vouchers or their own income. The city also plans to institute a matchmaking process that pairs owners and tenants.

"Our homeless crisis demands that we get creative," the mayor said. If the backyard pilot works, he added, the idea could be adopted anywhere.

So if you live in Los Angeles, soon you will be able to bring the needles and piles of human feces from Skid Row into your own backyard.

Meanwhile, homeless people keep dropping dead night after night in Los Angeles. Just check out these staggering numbers…

A record number of homeless people — 918 last year alone — are dying across Los Angeles County, on bus benches, hillsides, railroad tracks and sidewalks.

Deaths have jumped 76% in the past five years, outpacing the growth of the homeless population, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of the coroner’s data.

Year after year, this homelessness crisis is only getting worse.

The fabric of our society is literally coming apart right in front of our eyes, and we can all see what is happening, and yet our leaders seem absolutely powerless to fix it.

If we continue on this trajectory, what is our nation going to look like in a few years?

Just something to think about…

SOURCE
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/conditions-on-the-streets-of-san-francisco-are-comparable-to-the-slums-of-mumbai-delhi-mexico-city-jarkarta-and-manila/