ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet: Nothing To Worry About

Posted By on August 22nd, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/21/greenlands-melting-ice-sheet-nothing-to-worry-about/

Even with a pandemic to exploit, the political left and its communications department, which most know as the mainstream media, still have time to sow fear about global warming. Now, they tell us, we have to worry about Greenland’s ice sheet because it’s reached the “point of no return.” Which makes a potent fear factor but fails to tell all of the story, which isn’t quite like the one the press wants to sell.

“The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass at accelerated rates in the 21st century,” says a new research paper published in Nature’s Research Communications Earth & Environment, “making it the largest single contributor to rising sea levels.”

In a separate statement, we’re told that “nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.”

The report inspired such headlines as:

“The Greenland ice sheet is melting to a point of no return: study” — The Hill
“Greenland ice sheet lost a record 1m tonnes of ice per minute in 2019” — The Guardian

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Kamalot The nightmarish Biden-Harris ticket is the teachers’ unions’ “dream team.” By Larry Sand

Posted By on August 22nd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/21/kamalot/

“You don’t just have a partner in the White House, you’ll have an NEA member in the White House.” Referring to his wife Jill, presidential hopeful Joe Biden uttered those words at the virtual National Education Association convention in early July. He also expressed dissatisfaction with charter schools and said he wanted to triple funding for Title I schools, higher pay for educators, universal pre-kindergarten, etc.—all music to the ears of the teacher union faithful.

But as we all know, if elected, Biden will not be president for long. The man is firmly entrenched on Senility Street, and his legendary gaffes have turned positively daft. When Biden—willingly or otherwise—steps aside, the reins would then be in the hands of Vice President Kamala Harris.

After Biden announced his choice of running mate, the National Education Association referred to the duo as the “Dream Team” and posted “6 reasons educators are excited about Kamala Harris.” It’s all the usual stuff—increasing K-12 funding, defaming current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, asserting that “vouchers divert public school funding,” etc. Yup, all the gooey twaddle that does nothing at all for kids, but does get the NEA elite and their flock really excited.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Children playing with dynamite By Edward Thal

Posted By on August 22nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/children_playing_with_dynamite.html

These grim children of the Marxist gods do not perceive the danger that lies along the path they have chosen

The Antifa and BLM rioters doing their best to destroy leftist cities ruled by confused idealists are the outward manifestation of a more dangerous impulse threatening to destroy all of America.

It is an impulse to self-deification that motivates the rioters and their enablers to see themselves as righteous crusaders saving the world. They insist that the rest of us conform to their lofty worldview, but they are like children playing with idealistic dynamite, oblivious to its destructive power while they earnestly fumble with matches to light the fuse.

We have seen them at play on a big stage this week where they gathered to applaud candidates for president and vice-president whose ideology will rule us all forever, if they have their way. It has been a theatre of the absurd where crackpot notions and perverse solutions for the real and imagined ills of America are presented in solemn tones by equally crackpot and perverse demigods who are deadly serious in their intentions to bend everything and everyone to their collective will.   

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

PRESIDENT PELOSI?

Posted By on August 22nd, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/president-pelosi/91232/

President Trump’s warning to a conservative gathering that before this election is resolved the person who could next emerge as President is Nancy Pelosi, well, it’s a startling point. It’s not entirely idle, though. The Constitution, and legislation it grants the Congress the power to pass, both envision a situation where the Speaker could automatically become president at 12:01 p.m. o’clock on January 20.

Neither Mr. Trump, as we understand him, nor we are saying such an event is likely. Just possible. Were it to come to pass, though, it would be completely — to the degree that there is such a constitutional concept — kosher. That’s because of the 20th Amendment. It says that the “terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January,” no ifs, ands, or buts.

It also says that the terms of the Senators and Congressmen end at noon on January 3. That means the 116th Congress ends and the 117th begins 17 days before Mr. Trump’s term is up. That gives the Representatives House time to choose its Speaker. It’s likely — not certain, we suppose — to be Mrs. Pelosi, making her next in line for the presidency after Vice President Pence.

The 20th Amendment also particularizes what happens if certain complications arise. If either the President or President-elect shall have died, say, the Vice President elect “shall become President.” Then it says what happens “if a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

SHAY HAWKINS (R) FOR CONGRESS OHIO-DISTRICT 6

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.hawkinsforohio.com/

https://townhall.com/columnists/gabriellahoffman/2020/08/21/entrepreneur-shay-hawkins-hopes-to-take-conservative-message-to-columbus-n2574792

Entrepreneur Shay Hawkins Hopes to Take Conservative Message to Columbus-Gabriella Hoffman

Shafron “Shay” Hawkins is a candidate running to serve in Ohio’s House of Representatives.

As the Republican nominee for Ohio’s 6th House District, a district surrounding Cleveland, Shay hopes to flip it from blue to red this November.

And he could very well pull it off.

After going viral for this tweet, Shay spoke to me about his candidacy and why he’s optimistic about his chances this fall.

A Bona Fide Conservative with an Inspiring Life Story

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

ALEK SKARLATOS (R) FOR CONGRESS OREGON DISTRICT 4

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2020/08/21/alek-skarlatos-campaign-ad-n2574826

https://www.alekfororegon.com/issues/

Alek Skarlatos Campaign Ad Hearkens Back to His Train Heroics Cortney O’Brien

Alek Skarlatos is a hero. He was one of three young men who happened to be on the right train at the right time in Paris in 2015. He and his friends Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler, who all had military experience, managed to subdue a terrorist who had plotted to shoot and kill passengers, saving countless lives.

Now, Skarlatos wants to bring his fighting spirit to Congress. He’s running as a Republican in Oregon’s 4th congressional district against Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio. On Friday the 27-year-old unveiled a new ad and his campaign theme, “Fight for the American Way of Life.”

The ad brilliantly depicts Skarlatos sitting on a train that is en route while his narration plays.

“We can feel it,” Skarlatos begins. “America is in danger.” 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Recap Of The Democratic National Convention’s Most Insane Moments By Tristan Justice

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/21/a-recap-of-the-democratic-national-conventions-most-insane-moments/

Democrats wrapped up their party convention Thursday night having officially coronated former Vice President Joe Biden as their 2020 presidential nominee with California Sen. Kamala Harris riding on the ticket months after she ambushed Biden as a racist.

After nominating the farthest-left presidential ticket in history with a more than $10 trillion platform spearheading the left’s 21st-century woke revolution, Democrats have 74 days to make their case to the nation before judgment day on Nov. 3.

If the last four days featuring eight hours of an “Orange Man Bad” infomercial in prime time were any preview of the campaign ahead, Democrats are pinning their message on pursuing the total transformation of American society into an exhaustively woke socialist utopia with a faux-moderate Biden as their Trojan horse.

The DNC was a circus, but a boring one at that. While the four nights of prime-time coverage featured Bill Clinton as the party’s moral compass, John Kerry as a legendary Middle East peacemaker, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a coronavirus miracle worker, the convention still operated on a full-day calendar streaming live panels of party activists speaking with prominent politicians.

Here’s a rundown of some of this week’s most notable moments that legacy media won’t cover.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale A startling investigation into how a cheap, well-known drug became a political football in the midst of a pandemic by Norman Doidge

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-morality-tal

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of the world’s frontline physicians showed hydroxychloroquine to be the drug they considered the most effective at treating COVID-19 patients. That was in early April, shortly after a French study showed it was safe and effective in lowering the virus count, at times in combination with azithromycin. Next we were told hydroxychloroquine was likely ineffective, and also dangerous, and that that French study was flawed and the scientist behind it worthy of mockery. More studies followed, with contradictory results, and then out came what was hailed by some as a definitive study of 96,000 patients showing the drug was most certainly dangerous and ineffective, and indeed that it killed 30% more people than those who didn’t take it. Within days, that study was retracted, with the editor of one of the two most respected medical journals in the Western world conceding it was “a monumental fraud.” And on it went.     READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Long, Sad Saga of Hydroxychloroquine By Jim Talent

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-long-sad-saga-of-hydroxychloroquine/

The same medical community which is telling us that HCQ is dangerous, may soon be telling us that a vaccine developed in record time is completely safe.

I want to make sure NR readers don’t miss this essay from Norman Doidge. It’s the best thing I’ve read on hydroxychloroquine. But beware: The piece is long and fascinating. Once you start reading, you won’t be able to stop, and it takes a good half hour to finish.

Doidge tells the tale of hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ as he calls it, as if the drug were a character in a story. His main point is that HCQ hasn’t received fair treatment in many quarters, including, unfortunately, some of the health experts advising the government of the United States. The main reasons are the intrusion of politics into medicine, the pitfalls and limitations of big data in medical science, and the over-reliance of many experts on random controlled testing to the exclusion of other kinds of evidence.

Doidge manages to make even a discussion of research methodology interesting. Here is a sample:

We now have studies that show one of the weaknesses of RCTs (random controlled testing) is that in the quest to eliminate confounding factors, they end up, in a majority of cases, excluding patients who are typical of those in the population. The RCT evangelist focuses only on the RCT strengths, and forgets their weaknesses. A typical RCT describes several data points about hundreds of patients. It can be helpful in determining what treatment might work for most people in a large population. A typical case history describes perhaps hundreds of data points about a single patient. Its focus might be on what treatment might work best for this patient. Sometimes we need all that information about a patient, to choose a proper treatment, because individual patients differ, often in decisive ways.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Sleight-of-Hand Convention By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-sleight-of-hand-convention/

Biden’s speech was affecting, but the Democrats were awfully vague about what they plan to do if he wins.

Joe Biden delivered the best speech in a half-century political career on Thursday night. It was interesting to contrast his delivery with Kamala Harris’s 24 hours earlier. Both the presidential and vice-presidential nominees spoke to an empty hall. But Biden was forceful, emotional, emphatic, and clear-sighted as he made the case for an effective federal response to the coronavirus and a bipartisan reconstruction of the American polity after decades of increasing polarization. I couldn’t help thinking what the world would look like if Biden had disobeyed President Obama and run for president in 2016. It would be a very different place, I imagine.

But that’s not where we live. Biden’s impressive oratory capped off a four-day exercise in sleight of hand. The Democrats spent hours reminding Americans that Joe Biden is a decent and empathetic human being and that the current occupant of the White House has, shall we say, other qualities. But that’s about as specific as things got. Address after address, video montage after video montage, mentioned systemic racism and the injustices committed against indigenous people. I watched all of the convention, and the word “China” was not uttered until 10:57 p.m. on Thursday. Nor did any of the Democrats mention the violence that has erupted in America’s cities after the protests against the killing of George Floyd. Biden talked about jobs, but the American worker made only guest appearances in the four days of programming.