Category: Essays And Commentaries

Long essays or op-ed length commentaries on the issues of the day or on topics of special interest.

Sunspot update: The Sun in January acted like solar maximum is here

11:11 am

In my monthly sunspot update at the start of January, I asked in the headline “Are we now in the next solar maximum?”

The Sun’s sunspot activity in January since then has apparently answered that question. NOAA this week posted its monthly update of its graph showing solar sunspot activity on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, and as I do every month since 2011, I have posted that graph below, with annotations to provide a larger context.
» Read more

11 comments

The FBI must be wiped clean, or wiped out, on Day One of the next Repubican administration

1:05 pm

Christopher Wray, the world's most powerful mobster

Should Donald Trump become president in 2024 and the acts to make major changes within the federal executive bureaucracy, cleaning house from top to bottom with major firings and layoffs (something he should have done in his first administration and failed to do), without question the first agency he must attack mercilessly is the FBI.

There are numerous documented examples in the past decade where the FBI has been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans, investigating, harassing, and even arresting people because they held beliefs that opposed the agenda of the Democratic Party. In some cases the individuals attacked were simply religious Christians who opposed abortion. In other cases the victims were ordinary Americans who simply made public their support of Trump.

Nor were just everyday Americans attacked. The FBI has arrested Republican candidates for office. Its officials have altered evidence to justify illegal seach warrants against Republicans. Its management also targeted and framed Trump officials it did not like. Officials there also abused the FISA court, submitting error-filled applications that were used to get warrants to spy on Americans. It redacted information to hide its misbehavior, claiming dishonestly that the redactions were for national security reasons.

This list is only a very small selection of the many such stories reported in the past decade. Any one of these corrupt actions would justify firing everyone at the FBI and zeroing out its budget as quickly as possible. Last week however the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals provided us another reason: It ruled that FBI agents literally committed theft in rummaging through hundreds of security deposit boxes at a bank in wealthy Beverly Hills, confiscating millions of dollars it had no right to grab, simply because the cash was there and the agents and the agency wanted that money for their own pockets.
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20 comments

African lawfare to take control of space

12:57 pm

Modern academia: Marching with Lenin!
Modern African academia, proudly marching with Lenin!

It appears that a growing cadre of African lawyers are working within international organizations such as the UN and the International Astronautical Union (IAU) to use the Outer Space Treaty as a wedge to take control of space, wresting it from the hands of private commerical companies.

I make this assessment based upon a long article about this new lawfare published today in Wired, describing the training and political goals of a number of young African layers in the field of international space law.

[S]ome players in the global south are gearing up for the orbital future not just by scrambling to launch satellites, but by building up skills in outer space law—the evolving area of international jurisprudence that introduced the “province of all mankind” concept in the first place.

Though the Outer Space Treaty is still the cornerstone of space law, other international agreements have built up around it over the years—and more still are desperately needed to regulate today’s realities in space. “This is an area of rulemaking where they’re just setting up the rules for the future, so you need to have a perspective now,” explains Timiebi Aganaba, a British-Canadian-Nigerian professor at Arizona State University who has been instrumental in driving African interest in space law. “If the system gets built without you—if you come in later—people will start quoting laws to you.”

In 2011, Aganaba helped organize the first teams of African law students to enter something called the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition. The global tournament, named after an architect of the Outer Space Treaty, uses fictional court cases to train young lawyers how to think through the plausible conflicts that could soon arise beyond the atmosphere—and it is far and away the most important professional conduit into the field of space law. Students who make it to the final round of the competition argue their cases before actual judges from the International Court of Justice—the world’s highest forum for legal disputes between countries. And since 2011, teams from Africa have become a force in the competition. In 2018, South Africa’s University of Pretoria won the international championship.

If Aganaba’s name rings a bell to my readers, it is no surprise. » Read more

9 comments

All climate models continue to be wrong, overstating warming to significant degrees

12:24 pm

Climate models versus data
Click for full resolution graph.

According to a new analysis comparing actual satellite observations of the climate since 1979 with all the climate models used by the IPCC and global warming activitists, it appears that every single climate model continues to overstate significantly their predictions of warming, with that error increasing with time. From the paper’s abstract:

Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy. In the United States during summer, the observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here.

While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural. Contrary to media reports and environmental organizations’ press releases, global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation.

The research was done by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, who has also been the principal investigator on one climate satellite. The graph to the right, chart 2 of his paper, shows the error of every single climate model, with some models so wrong they are essentially useless to predict anything.

What is significant about this research is not that these models are wrong, it is that they are all wrong in the same direction. If the climate science community was approaching this work honestly with an effort to be unbiased, we should should expect some models to predict too little warming, and others too much. That all predict too much warming suggests that every single one of these models is tainted by politics and confirmation bias. The people who write the models want global warming to occur (almost certainly for political reasons), and so their models always lean in that direction.

What is even more disturbing is that Spencer’s work shows that the difference between the models and observations is growing, as indicated by chart 3 from his paper, below.
» Read more

19 comments

Six questions too many Democrats refuse to answer

1:26 pm

The Democratic Party: What does it really believe in?
The Democratic Party: What does it really believe in?

Today at the Washington Examiner journalist Elizabeth Stauffer has written a fine essay describing in general terms the inability of Democrats to discuss the issues today with any rationality.

The Democrats have settled upon their 2024 campaign message: “Former President Donald Trump poses a threat to democracy and must be stopped. He has openly admitted he will become a dictator on day one.”

Liberals make these statements about Trump and so-called MAGA Republican “extremists” because they know if they are repeated enough, they will stick. And they’re right. No evidence is required because the Democrats know they will never be called upon to support their claims by their comrades.

When questioned by conservatives, however, they simply hold fast to their lies.

Democrat Congressman Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) — who is also running for the Democratic Party nonimation for President and got 21% of the vote in New Hampshire yesterday — put it more bluntly on January 22, 2024 on CNN:

“My party is completely delusional right now.”

Stauffer then lists six questions that every Democrat should be repeatedly challenged to answer, as follows:
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21 comments

More evidence that smart phones are destroying minds

12:58 pm

The smart phone: Bad for kids
The smart phone: Proven very bad for kids

Link here. The article is a detailed look at the growing body of evidence that now strongly suggests that the use of smart phones by young children is very bad for the development of their brains, and leads to numerous mental and physical issues later in life.

The article describes numerous studies that have tracked a sudden rise in childhood behavioral problems, beginning in the early 2010s, when smart phones started to be ubiquitous. For example,

In 2008, psychotherapist Tom Kersting, who worked as a school counselor for 25 years, saw a rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children over age 8. ADHD tends to be detected in early childhood after a child starts school. However, he has witnessed increasing diagnoses in teenagers and adults. While it could be possible that some of these teens were missed by clinicians when they were young, Mr. Kersting suspects that some developed symptoms of ADHD due to screen use.

Around 2012, when 30 percent of teenagers had a smartphone, he started to see rebellious behavior and anxiety disorders becoming more common among children. Young adults and teenagers growing up now also tend to be more antisocial and have reduced emotional resilience, which may be related to insufficient in-person socializing due to spending most of their time behind screens. “It’s not just the amount of time spent in the cyber world,” Mr. Kersting told The Epoch Times, “but also what they missed out on: outside play and social learning.”

Other studies have found similar rises during this same time period in childhood depression, anxiety, autism, and an inability to control their emotions.
» Read more

15 comments

The lawless left

1:27 pm

Nazi brown shirts destroying Jewish businesses on Kristallnacht
Nazi brown shirts destroying Jewish businesses on Kristallnacht

While there remains a shrinking percentage of Democrats who strongly believe in the law and the Constitution, the leadership of that political party is largely now controlled by those who believe otherwise.

Two incidents the past week illustrated this fact most starkly.

First a pro-Hamas protest in front of the White House on January 13, 2024 became so violent that many staffers inside the building were evacuated for their safety.

“During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage,” the statement read. “The issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams.”

The U.S. Secret Service told Fox News Digital that some fences were damaged outside the White House, and that staff members and journalists were “relocated” as a result. “As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” the statement continued. “The Secret Service made no arrests associated with the march and there was no property damage to the White House or adjacent buildings.”[emphasis mine]

You can see video of these attempts to break into the White House here. Though the White House grounds were never penetrated, the violent self-righteous attitude of the mob is quite clear: They have the right to break in, because their cause is just. The law does not apply to them.

The highlighted words in the quote above provide a further explanation as to why this violence happened. » Read more

33 comments

Toxic and incompetent academia

2:21 pm

Coca-Cola's bigoted company policy
Examples of the DEI materials from Coca-Cola,
developed in academia and now used in corporate America

The effort nationwide in many legislatures to end the very racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) departments that now poison universities everywhere are not only failing, they are illustrating the emptiness of most of that effort.

In Georgia, for example, political pressure on the state’s university system forced it last year to ban DEI statements from any applicants for teaching positions. The university system was also required to “…eliminate references to ‘diversity’ and ‘diverse’ from the standards and replace them with the terms that are allegedly easier to understand.”

These mere semantic demands were quickly warped by the universities, which instead of eliminating such bigoted programs, which create quota systems that favor the hiring of some races over others, the universities simply renamed the statements and the DEI programs to meet the letter of the ban, but not its spirit.
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1 comment

Can the shift in black vote to Trump overcome the Democratic Party’s vote tampering?

12:50 pm

The Democratic Party: Fostering election tampering everywhere
The Democratic Party

Today JJ Sefton in his daily morning report (also available here) included some excellent commentary about the growing polling evidence showing the black vote shifting rightward to Trump, in numbers that are unprecedented in more than a half century.

Whatever one thinks of polling especially this far out (or near, since elections are either light years away or right around the corner depending upon one’s perspective!) is an eye-opener. In normal, non-rigged elections, if Dem support from blacks drops below 93%, that is a major alarm bell for the former. What this aggregate poll [21.9% of blacks for Trump] shows is a potential disaster. Even if as we can all assume the key swing states which have large urban areas that will be rigged for Biden, the amount of cheating will have to be so massive that it would be even more obvious than what we witnessed four years ago. [emphasis mine]

I want to focus on the highlighted sentence, and try to bring some reality to it. Only by doing so will the Republican Party and Donald Trump have any chance of winning.
» Read more

14 comments

Democrats get a taste their own vicious swatting tactics

2:43 pm

The first amendment: no longer honored
No longer honored.

For more than a decade anonymous leftists have used the ugly tactic of swatting to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who opposes them, with the hope that in some cases it might even cause the attacked person or someone in his or her family to be killed.

For those still unaware of what swatting is, let me explain. The attacker simply calls the police and reports falsely a dangerous gun-related crime in progress at the victim’s home, often suggesting there are hostages involved. The police then respond in full force, guns drawn and in large numbers. The victims, who are often asleep at the time, are suddenly faced with a military style attack by SWAT teams, at their home with their family (including children) present, with the real chance that someone will make a mistake, overreact, and begin firing.

The left has been doing this to conservatives both in and out of the political world for years (for a few specific examples going back to 2012, go here, here, and here). In some cases the perpertrators have been caught (with many being teenage boys reacting to the leftist press and thus acting out stupidly), but usually the evil-doer is not identified or punished.

Without question however this tactic has become increasingly popular on the left, which in itself has become increasingly radicalized and intolerant of any opposition.

It now appears the left is beginning to reap what it has sown. In the past few weeks a number of very prominent Democrats have been swatted themselves.
» Read more

15 comments

Proposed removal of William Penn statue proves the Democrats really are anti-American

12:33 pm

The William Penn statue in Welcome Park
The William Penn statue in the center of
Welcome Park. Note the panels on the wall
behind, describing the achievements of his life.
The park service was also planning to “rehabilitate”
this as well.

Though the Biden administration and the National Park Service immediately backed down from its proposal to remove the statue of William Penn from the Pennsylvania park dedicated in 1982 to honor his memory, the very proposal proved without doubt how much the Democrats who dominate our government truly hate America, its founding, and everything it stands for.

First, let’s review the proposal that has now been dumped. According to the National Park Service press release issued on January 5th,

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. [emphasis mine]

In other words, a park built at the site of William Penn’s pioneer home and designed expressly to honor his achievements as the founder of Pennsylvania as a religious haven for all people was to be redesigned instead as a memorial to the primitive stone-age Indian tribes that once lived there, focusing instead on how Penn and the Quakers oppressed them by coming to America. And to rub salt in the wound, this change was to be done in connection with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

As I said, the Democrats who dominate our federal bureaucracy as well as academia are our enemies. They truly intend to wipe any positive mention of America from every history book or place, and replace it with Marxist icons and false anti-American propaganda.

Very quickly there was an uproar against this plan. » Read more

11 comments

ULA’s Vulcan rocket successfully places payload in orbit on first launch

1:10 am

Vulcan at liftoff.
Vulcan at liftoff.

After four years of delay, mostly caused by delays at Blue Origin in delivering the two BE-4 engines used in the first stage, ULA’s Vulcan rocket finally completed its first launch early on January 8, 2024, lifting off from Cape Canaveral and successfully placing Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander into orbit.

As of posting the upper stage had just deployed Peregrine, which will leave Earth orbit in about four days using its own engines. The upper stage has one more burn to send it into solar orbit, carrying the ashes of numerous people for the company Celestis.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 India
1 China
1 ULA

For ULA, this launch is a very big deal. It is the first of two required in order for the Space Force to certify the rocket for future military launches. It also positions the company to begin the many launches that Amazon has awarded it to place into orbit a large percentage of that company’s Kuiper internet satellite constellation, assuming of course Blue Origin can deliver on schedule the many BE-4 engines that ULA will require.

This launch will also likely lead to the sale of ULA. » Read more

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