Archive for 2016

FRACKING, WHICH OBAMA OPPOSED, IS DOING MORE TO CLEAN UP THE ENVIRONMENT THAN ANY GOVERNMENT PROGRAM: This Is The Year That Shale Gas Passes Coal:

2016 is shaping up to be a year for the record books: the Energy Information Administration is anticipating that this year, for the first time ever, natural gas will displace coal as America’s largest source of electricity generation. . . .

Natural gas emits just half as much greenhouse gases as coal, and far fewer of the dangerous local pollutants that can lead to the sorts of toxic smog choking China’s megacities. The fact, then, that natural gas is increasing its market share at the expense of coal is a green triumph.

It’s especially noteworthy because it’s being driven by market forces, not lavish government subsidies. The shale revolution has created a domestic glut of natural gas here in the U.S., and that’s helped depress spot prices here well below $2 per million Btu (among the cheapest prices in the world). Fracking is dethroning Old King Coal, and that controversial drilling practice deserves more credit for the environmental good it’s doing.

Market forces don’t offer the opportunities for graft that “lavish government subsidies” do. Hence the appeal of the latter to our corrupt political class.

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME: American IS fighter: I made a bad decision.

Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 26, from Alexandria, Virginia detailed his weeks-long journey from the United States to London, Amsterdam, Turkey, through Syria and finally to the IS-controlled Iraqi city of Mosul, where he was moved into a house with dozens of other foreign fighters.

Khweis said he met an Iraqi woman with ties to IS in Turkey who arranged his travel into Syria and then across to Mosul. There Khweis said he began more than a month of intensive Islamic studies and it was then he decided to try and flee.

“I didn’t agree with their ideology,” he said, explaining why he decided to escape a few weeks after arriving. “I made a bad decision to go with the girl and go to Mosul.”

Sounds like the worst “Road to…” movie ever.

SORRY, BUT THE ONLY REASON THE OBAMAS HAVE “SMART CULTURAL POWER” IS BECAUSE THE ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA ARE 100% IN THE TANK FOR THEM.

WHY RUBIO FAILED: Immigration Is A Foundational Issue.

When politicians want to import tens of millions of new immigrants it can look like Washington is trying to remake the electorate. This isn’t pure fantasy. In 1996, Bill Clinton’s White House instructed the Immigration and Naturalization Service “to streamline the naturalization process and greatly increase naturalizations during 1996.” Sure enough, Hispanics more than doubled as a portion of the electorate for Clinton’s 1996 reelection, according to exit polls.

Conservatives won’t win any fights — over guns, marriage, taxes, spending, health care, or anything — if the U.S. electorate is remade in the image of California.

Deeper than the issues, and even deeper than the structural political questions, is the nearly existential question that Trump raises. “IF WE DON’T HAVE BORDERS,” Trump tweeted in November, “WE DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!”

This directly attacks the elite worldview. The borderless world John Lennon sang of – “Imagine there’s no countries” – is the dream that inspired the idea of the European Union, and which fills the fantasies of multinational corporations.

Pretty much everything John Lennon imagined in that dumb song was stupid, and would be disastrous if attempted.

SAY, WHERE IS THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN REVOLT AGAINST DEMOCRATS?

A savvy Republican (yes, the phrase isn’t necessarily an oxymoron), could have a lot of fun and make serious inroads into the left’s stronghold on black America by playing jiu-jitsu with Democrats’ obsession post-2008 to cast everything into racial terms, such as their recent blue-on-blue attacks on Hollywood, academia, Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, MSNBC, etc. A party that by its stalwarts’ own admissions has failed so badly on racial issues in its bluest strongholds must be considered a failure on race; therefore it’s time to seek an alternative.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: Republicans Rejected Elite Agenda Along With Rubio: The Florida senator, who tried to re-brand a traditional platform championed by party insiders, found little support from voters. “There’s a huge disconnect between the money in politics and the people going to the primaries to vote. And until that issue is resolved you’ll see millions of dollars continue to fall on consultants and lobby shops without much success.”

ASHE SCHOW ON THE (LATEST) YALE DEBACLE: Jack Montague, free speech and the rush to judgment.

It wasn’t until Montague’s father told the New Haven Register that his son was expelled that the team and school learned the reason for his recent missed practices. It wasn’t until the Yale Women’s Center posted a statement that “speculate[d]” that the expulsion was for sexual misconduct that the school learned what happened for sure.

And that’s where the free speech issues come in. Montague’s teammates held a kind of protest of his expulsion by wearing T-shirts with his nickname on them and “Yale” printed backwards. Activists on campus went ballistic, claiming the team was “supporting a rapist.” The team eventually apologized in a statement that might as well have been written by the activists themselves.

The team had every right to stand by its captain and insist that he’s innocent. They have as much evidence of that as the activists have that he’s guilty.

Also, the activists’ labeling of Montague as a “rapist” shows the extreme circumstances accused students face in campus conduct hearings. The reason schools need this separate judicial system, activists say, is that the actual judicial system is failing accusers. The reason the school doesn’t need to provide due process, we’re told by activists, is that the students aren’t facing jail.

But they are facing the criminal label “rapist” without any due process. The sex may very well have been consensual, but activists, without knowing any of the facts, have labeled him a criminal. It should be noted that as of now, neither the New Haven nor the Yale police departments are investigating Montague. Neither were even informed of an alleged rape. . . .

That means that Yale students want to use free speech to call someone a “rapist” who has not been investigated or charged with a crime, but want to deny free speech to anyone who would suggest he is innocent. The activists say they want free speech but with “sensitivity.” Fine, then they need to apply that same “sensitivity” when calling someone a “rapist” when they are not a criminal.

No male should go to Yale at this point. No male athlete should even consider going to Yale.

WHEN YOU CLEAN UP THE RAMPANT SEXUAL MISCONDUCT AMONG POLICE AND PROSECUTORS, THEN MAYBE WE’LL TALK ABOUT CONSENSUAL SEX-FOR-MONEY AMONG CIVILIANS: ACLU of Rhode Island Slams ‘Sex Trafficking’ Cops for Focusing on Consenting Adults: The chief result of the stings—which involved Homeland Security and the FBI—was the arrest of 14 sex workers and 14 men seeking sex from undercover cops.

And this is what Homeland Security is doing? What a joke.

IT’S HER SUPERB “RAISIN IN THE SUN” FAUX-ACCENT: Clinton Owes Her Commanding Lead to African-American Women.

More than any other demographic group, black women are the reason Hillary Clinton has racked up a 2 million-vote lead on Bernie Sanders and, more important, a 300-point advantage among pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

The bedrock of her winning campaign is African-American women, and, as a group, these women seem pretty damn determined to vote for her.

“They are the absolute heart of the party,” Jaime Harrison, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman said of African-American women in a comment posted on Sidewire (the political communication platform I work for). “Hillary is their BFF.”

The connection isn’t lost on Clintonworld. Her last two major ads featured the “Mothers of the Movement” who lost children in killings involving police and ABC television luminaries Shonda Rhimes, Viola Davis and Kerry Washington, all of whom (in case you’ve been living on a television-free planet) are black.

It is not common for a presidential candidate to run ads that feature an all-African American cast — or, in the case of the ABC stars’ ad, a mostly African-American cast. Ellen Pompeo of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who is white, was also in the spot.

Hmm. What percentage of the electorate are African-American women?

IS THIS A PREDICTION, OR A HOPE? Contested convention is looking more likely, says Speaker Ryan.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday there’s no chance he’ll emerge as the GOP presidential nominee if no candidate captures enough delegates before this summer’s convention.

For the first time, however, Ryan acknowledged the increasing likelihood that the GOP nominee will be decided in Cleveland at what’s known as a contested or open convention.

Donald Trump is the clear front-runner, but whether he can clinch the nomination by winning 1,237 delegates before the party’s July convention remains to be seen.

“Nothing has changed other than the perception that this is more likely to be an open convention than we thought before,” Ryan, the ceremonial chairman of the convention, told reporters. “We’re getting our minds around the idea that this could very well become a reality and that those of us who are involved in the convention need to respect that.”

The Speaker’s comments Thursday suggest party leaders are beginning to prepare for a floor fight at the convention at Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland.

When The Hill asked him in January about a possible contested convention, Ryan dismissed the idea.

“I think it’s ridiculous to talk about it,” he said at the GOP retreat in Baltimore.

What could account for the change?