How is this not colluding with America’s enemies?

By David Harsanyi

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Dianne FeinsteinGetty Images

Imagine, for a moment, what the political reaction would be if a leading Republican senator met with an antagonistic foreign power, say Russia, in the midst of high-tension standoff between President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin?

Such a scenario seems nearly ­inconceivable. Yet, it’s exactly the situation Sen. Dianne Feinstein created when hosting Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif for dinner a few weeks ago.

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Dianne Feinstein had dinner meeting with Iranian minister amid US tensions

Politico reported on the meeting, noting that it was “a bit unusual” for a former chair of the Intelligence Committee and a member of the Senate minority to dine out with the acting foreign minister of an adversary of the United States. And by “unusual,” Politico meant completely unprecedented.

Actually, my imaginary set-up doesn’t really do the Feinstein dinner justice. Iran isn’t merely a rival of the United States — like, say, Russia — but a violent and active enemy. Like Russia, Iran has long been hacking into US institutions. But the Islamic regime, according to the past two administrations, is also responsible for the death of hundreds of American service members in Iraq.

Add to that the fact that the ruling mullahs have not only undermined US interests by attacking and threatening our allies through their proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, but they’ve funded terror groups like Hamas, which is directly responsible for the murder of American citizens.

Feinstein isn’t merely just any senator, either. She is one of the leading proponents of reinstituting the Obama administration’s failed Iran deal. Only recently the California senator blamed the Trump ­administration, rather than Iranian mullahs who’ve spent years taking Americans hostages and threatening our friends, of “increasing the chances of an unnecessary military conflict with Iran.”

Well, President Trump — not to mention nearly every GOP member of the majority in the Senate — has supported withdrawing from (or renegotiating) the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And so he did.

Though Democrats have yet to come to terms with the harsh reality of a President Trump, negotiating deals with foreign powers is his jurisdiction. And, though the Obama administration regularly circumvented this process, the Senate’s job is ratify or reject those deals.

So while it’s one thing to debate the merits of foreign policy domestically — not only acceptable but essential in matters of potential conflict — it’s quite another for an opposition senator to shadow negotiate with a foreign minister who recently “warned” the United States on CNN and demanded our “respect.”

Feinstein’s rendezvous with Zarif comes at a time when the two nations are in a precarious stand-off. The United States, which recently designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization, has deployed bombers and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. US troops are now in a danger’s way. What if Feinstein and the administration are sending conflicting messages?

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Now, the California senator isn’t the only member of the pro-Iran faction in American political life willing to meet with the enemy. Former Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted to repeatedly meeting Zarif and other top Iranian officials in hopes of salvaging the nuclear deal, despite the will of the American people. There is simply no comparable historical example of a former high ranking official going abroad to engage in this kind of effort.

The political media, which act as if every contact the Trump administration has ever had with a Russian-speaking person is potential act of sedition, doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the ­unusual Zarif meeting.

Perhaps when there’s a chance, though, someone with access can ask Feinstein what she told the Iranians. Did she share specifics about her faction’s efforts to undermine the executive branch? Did she tell the Iranians to wait out the Trump administration for a Democratic president who will once again kowtow to them? Did she tell Zarif that Democrats would possess more flexibility once the next election was over?

And, if the Trump administration was OK with the Feinstein meeting, as the senator claims, it, too, should explain why. Otherwise it’s only helping create a precedent that ­undermines every future president in every future negotiation.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/23/how-is-this-not-colluding-with-americas-enemies/

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   (530) 515-2137   Red Bluff Daily News   5/28/2019

They have not sacrificed in vain

The first thoughts about Memorial Day occurred while watching the season-ending episode of “Seal Team,” one of the finest recreations of America’s elite military branches on broadcast television in my memory. It is to the TV series genre what “Saving Private Ryan” was to the big screen and “Band of Brothers” was to cable mini-series. If I haven’t mentioned Seal Team already, I have been remiss; that outstanding CBS show has been well-promoted in its Wednesday time slot. The ending of season 2 last week means that you will have to watch for reruns until the next season begins. Those with streaming access may find it on a CBS source; it’s well worth the effort.

While top-notch writing, acting, excellent sets, locations and storylines recommend it, there is the added advantage of truthful reality (creative liberties aside) in the missions, the families, and interactions with American and foreign partners in the war on terror. So-called “kinetic” (combat) sequences build to an edge-of-seat, heart-stopping peak; elation mixes with frustration, disappointment, stress, anger, revenge and even crushing failure.

When a team member sustains an injury, or even death, the viewer cannot help internalizing the repercussions and loss, or obsession with returning to the fight. Both successes and failures carry forward into subsequent decisions and assignments, as well as the highly-valued reputations of the men and women involved. For Hollywood fair, it rises above all other similar military/clandestine offerings, such as the cancelled “Valor” and “The Brave.”

What came through with deep fulfillment, even heart-wrenching finality, were the successes against the worst of our terrorist and drug cartel enemies, as well as the inevitable deaths and injuries that accompany those we remember on Memorial Day. The phrase “All gave some and some gave all” plays out wherever our soldiers, sailors, flyers and Marines deploy. They risk the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, our Constitution, our way of life, our freedom—but mostly, as is oft-repeated, for their buddy, their team member, their platoon companion.

For every returning, fully-adjusted military veteran, we acknowledge those whose lives were given in the hope of rejoining family and friends, but for whom reality would deliver the alternative: reunion in the afterlife with loved ones past and future, for those with faith. That range of outcomes enveloped the “Seal Team” series, just as for those in real life whose loved ones put on the uniform and selflessly go to their assigned duties and stations. My flag flies for them all.

While watching the always excellent, reliably emotional PBS “National Memorial Day Concert,” I noticed the framing of the wars in which Americans have fought and died. The 2^nd World War section made prominent use of the imagery and visages of the undeniable enemies of America, our allies and those subjugated by Hitler’s Nazi juggernaut. The plain evil of those we fought and defeated could not be missed.

The Korean War was accurately described as an aggression by the Communist north, together with Russia and China, against the relatively free people of the southern half of that nation. The literal North/South Korean division did not exist until after the truce. While described as “the forgotten war” it left no ambiguity that America and the United Nations were on the side of right, the cause of liberation from despotic, communist aggression.

When the Vietnam War segment began, a nearly identical causal setup—aggression by communist North Vietnam with unmasked military support from communist China against a relatively independent, free South Vietnam—could have been easily, plainly presented. It was not; it almost came across that our military sacrifices and efforts served no purpose beyond the valor and sacrifices of the individual men and women who suffered and died.

I call it the “Ken Burns-ification” of that war, involving not only the muddled, jaundiced, half-truths and ignored history in the Burns/Novick mini-series, but also the literal half-century of leftist, communist-sympathizing narrative driven by the “first draft of history,” written by anti-war liberal news media. Vietnam veterans, when polled, have expressed pride in the cause for which they fought and have said they would do it over again.

Yes, the regional political overview and respective worthiness of our South Vietnamese allies could be questioned, but the righteousness of American and allied military defense of the aggressed-on South was not generally in doubt. At least not outside of the same coalition that, to this current time, aligns itself with America’s opponents and enemies: the leftist, progressive Democrat party, news media, and academic elites.

Whether in sympathetic alliance with Russian/Chinese/North Vietnamese communism, communist dictators in Cuba and now Venezuela, or the totalitarian, fundamentalist Islamic Iran—America’s domestic supporters of international despotism and leftism remain unashamed, even anti-American in some cases and groups. This bears mentioning on Memorial Day: We acknowledge the just causes of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice; we deserve a sober assessment of how—notwithstanding the mistakes of policy, tactics or intelligence—America’s enemies (North Vietnam, Iran, etc.) are encouraged to kill our military when they see what could be called “the fifth column” working to undermine our efforts.

Suffice it to point out that we now have a concerted effort to apply well-deserved sanctions and pressure against Iran’s despotic theocracy that has the blood of hundreds of America’s finest soldiers and Marines on its hands. It is America’s, and our ally Israel’s, most diabolical, deadly and determined enemy with a distributed terrorist network and a strategy of delivering attacks while remaining directly blameless.

Leaving personalities aside, we have a pattern of Democrats that conspired with North Vietnam against America, the USSR against Reagan, and now with Iran against American efforts to bring that nation to heel. I don’t hesitate to lay blame where it belongs for encouraging our enemies to kill us when possible.

Why the (Almost) Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier Is Not Obsolete

Why the (Almost) Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier Is Not Obsolete

 

BY STEPHEN GREEN 

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) docked in Hong Kong on Wednesday (21 November 2018), less than two months after China denied a similar visit by a US warship. (Imaginechina via AP Images)

"Where are our carriers?" is, at least apocryphally, the first question any U.S. president asks when a crisis erupts almost anywhere in the world. As tensions mounted with Iran last week as the mullahs' regime upped its attacks around the Middle East, President Trump apparently asked that question and immediately ordered the massive USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and its escort ships to the region. And as the Associated Press correctly noted, the dispatch of the Lincoln is an accurate "barometer of tensions" between Washington and Tehran.

According to some, however, the aircraft carrier is or is about to become obsolete. National Interest felt the need last month to re-publish a lengthy 2015 piece by David W. Wise headlined: "As Obsolete as a Battleship: Why Is the U.S. Navy Still Building Aircraft Carriers?" Back in March, Thomas Knapp advocated that we "Give obsolete aircraft carriers burial at sea." And last fall, D.M. McCauley asked, "Has China Made Aircraft Carriers Obsolete?"

All three articles address a growing danger which didn't exist when the U.S. Navy's Essex-class carriers* ruled the Pacific during the last half of World War II: Land-based anti-ship missiles. If the Navy still believes, the thinking goes, that in a future war they can park an aircraft carrier off the coast of China and fight from there with impunity, then we're going to start losing ships and men in a big, bad way. And ever-more dangerous missiles are proliferating to terror-sponsoring nations like Iran. Surely, then the carrier's days must be numbered.

ASIDE: There's also the threat of submarine-launched anti ship missiles, but until the Russians and Chinese start building much quieter subs, the threat probably remains more theoretical than real.

I'm not convinced. Neither is the Navy. Because the one question all three gentlemen failed to address is the one so obvious I haven't once seen anyone ask it: If China has made the carrier obsolete, then why is China embarked on a huge carrier-building program? Beijing isn't just building smaller helicopter carriers akin to our amphibious assault ships or Japan's "helicopter destroyer" baby carriers, they're also operating two (and building more) 65,000-ton CVs.

It seems not even China is convinced that China has made carriers obsolete.

Loren Thompson wrote earlier this week, although I suspect he might have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole, that a "U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Is One Of The Safest Places To Be In A War." I'd hate to have to put that to the test, but Thompson is spot-on when he notes that knowing there's an aircraft carrier out there somewhere, and actually sinking it, are two entirely different things. He writes:

Deployed carriers are always moving. And they are moving fast—fast enough, in fact, to outrun most submarines. Because they can sustain speeds of 35 miles per hour, the Nimitz-class carriers populating the current fleet can move to anywhere within a 700-square mile area within 30 minutes. After 90 minutes, that area grows to over 6,000 square miles. So finding a carrier isn’t the same thing for enemies as successfully targeting it. By the time their weapons arrive, it will likely be gone.

Thompson also says that "nuclear power enables the carriers to execute deceptive maneuvers in any direction for any duration, far exceeding the range of most hostile forces struggling to find them."

Operationally it would be insane to send carriers close in to shore (and all those missiles) as Wise, Knapp, and McCauley all noted. But why would we do that? As threats change, so do operations -- and maybe we can glean a bit of the future by peering at the past.

In WWII, Japan had a yuge naval fortress on Truk Island, strategically located in the heart of the Pacific. At Truk the Japanese could protect and repair warships, and control the skies with the island's multiple airstrips. Rather than try to take the island, Admiral Raymond Spruance conceived and commanded Operation Hailstone to neutralize it instead. With nine carriers at his service (five fleet-size, four light), Hailstone was, in essence, a drive-by shooting. Task Force 58's ships barely paused while 500+ carrier-based planes put the island fortress out of business for the rest of the war. TF58 was too mobile, too fast for the Japanese forces at Truk to do much more than suffer the blows.

China is building something similar to Truk out in the South China Sea. But instead of fortifying an existing island with big guns and such, China is building its own islands and fortifying them with missiles. But the more I read of China's SCS effort, the more I think of Spruance and Hailstone. Only instead of sending carriers to get sunk by all those deadly missiles, we'd flatten China's bases with submarine-launched missiles. Then, and only then, would our carriers seek to engage in the area.

Why have carriers at all if the subs are there to kick in the door, as it were? Because a 100,000-ton supercarrier can engage in something a submarine never could: Sustained operations. A sub shoots off its missiles, then must return to base for a reload. That can take days or even weeks -- time for the enemy to recover. A carrier replenishes at sea, and its air wings can rotate in and out to give crews and planes a chance to rest and repair.

As noted by the AP above, a carrier also indicates seriousness. Not just because of its inherent combat power, which is unmatched at sea, but because of its nature as a strategic asset. Nobody, not even Iran's mullahs, is crazy enough to seriously try and mess with one of those without risking the wrath of the entire U.S. Navy and whatever else we could throw their way.

Finally, it's just damn useful to have 4.5 acres (times eleven!) of flattop at the nation's disposal. You can do a lot more than just launch and recover fighter jets with all that fast-moving real estate.

Yes, our carriers do face serious new threats. But with the kinks being worked out of the new Ford-class of CVNs (too slowly, but still), and the Navy's F-35C strike fighter becoming combat ready, our carrier force has never been more dangerous. And with the Marines starting to stack the decks of their nine amphibious assault ships with F-35Bs, we're gaining an unprecedented capability, as the Navy calls it, for "distributed lethality." Armed with an ever-growing fleet of stealth fighters and the world's most advanced electronic warfare jets (the EA-18G "Growler"), and partnered with nearly-invisible attack subs able to eliminate land threats, the aircraft carrier has never been more dangerous, and perhaps never more survivable, either.

---

*We built an unprecedented (and to this day unparalleled) 24 Essex-class carriers during WWII. All two dozen fought hard against the Japanese, and not a single one was lost to enemy action. (The Franklin was put out of commission for the rest of the war in March of '45 by kamikaze attack, but would have been repaired and brought back into service had the war lasted into 1946.). To me, those things make the Essex-class the most successful capital ship of all time. Change my mind.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/the-almost-unsinkable-aircraft-carrier/

DISHONEST IMMIGRATION REPORTING SWAYS PUBLIC OPINION

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN IMMIGRATION, MEDIA BIAS

Bill D’Agostino of NewsBusters demonstrates that the mainstream media is hiding the facts about our immigration crisis. He also shows that, by doing so, it is causing the public to underestimate the problem and to oppose President Trump’s policies.

For the first proposition — media slant — D’Agostino cites a study by the Media Research Center (MRC) of every ABC, CBS and NBC evening news broadcast from January 1 through May 15 of this year. It found a total of 234 stories that talked about illegal immigration. Less than one-tenth of them (only 22) informed viewers about the dramatically increased rate of illegal crossings. Apprehensions at the U.S. border have surpassed 100,000 per month, an 11-year high.

Indeed, when network journalists talked about numbers, they frequently hid the ball, comparing illegal entry rates not to recent levels, but to the record-high rate way back in 2000. This enabled them to claim, quite misleadingly, that illegal immigration is “decreasing.” Never mind that the current rate is the highest in 11 years.

For example, ABC’s Matt Gutman asserted during the January 8 edition of World News Tonight that immigration rates had “plummeted over the past two decades.” And CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor said, on February 15, “Here is the reality provided by the U.S. government’s own statistics tonight: Apprehensions are down 76 percent from a record high nineteen years ago.”

The influence this dishonest reporting has on the public is manifest from two polls: one byHarvard/Harris, the other by ABC News/Washington Post. The Harvard/Harris poll shows that Americans wildly underestimate the number of illegal aliens entering the United States each month. D’Agostino informs us:

The Harvard/Harris poll found 87 percent of respondents guessed that the number of border apprehensions was significantly lower [than 100,000 per month]. A majority (52%) estimated the rate was less than 100,000 per year, which would make the problem only one-twelfth as serious as it actually is.

Obviously, one’s understanding of the magnitude of illegal immigration influences how one thinks the government should respond. The ABC News/Washington Post poll did not provide data about the extent of illegal entry. 64 percent of respondents in that survey opposed President Trump’s February 15 emergency declaration in order to free up money for barrier construction.

But the Harvard/Harris poll found that when respondents were told the actual rates of illegal immigration, a majority (52 percent) supported Trump’s declaration. In addition, 47 percent of those polled by Harvard/Harris wanted to see current asylum restrictions tightened, while only 19 percent wanted them loosened.

One cannot expect honest reporting by the mainstream media on any hot button issue. Its coverage will always be agenda-driven.

Therefore, I believe President Trump needs to speak directly to the American people about the border crisis. This would include providing accurate data on illegal entry and calling out the media for misleading the public on the subject.

Another televised address to the nation would be a great way to kick off a sustained effort to inform us about the invasion that’s taking place, and about the efforts of Democrats, judges, and the media to prevent the president from stemming that invasion.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/dishonest-immigration-reporting-sways-public-opinion.php

The Left's Battle Against 'Inequality' Leaves Out One Critical Factor

The Left's Battle Against 'Inequality' Leaves Out One Critical Factor

BY LARRY ELDER 

A Martin Luther King Jr. wall mural in South Central photographed on Monday, October 3, 2016, in Los Angeles, Calif. AP Photo/Kevin Terrell)

In his book Discrimination and Disparities, economist Thomas Sowell notes that a disproportionate percentage of first-born siblings become National Merit scholars compared to siblings born later, presumably because the first-born starts life with no sibling competition for parental attention. This, says Sowell, illustrates the absurdities of expecting equal results when equal results do not even occur within the same family among siblings raised under the same roof with the same parents.

When I was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, one of my closest friends was "Paul." We met in the second grade and attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school. Not only did we take many of the same courses with the same teachers, our houses were identical.

When I first invited Paul to my home, about a half-mile from his, he was astonished. "Whoever built your house," he said, "built mine, too." He was right. When I visited his house, I found that the only difference was that my house had one tiny additional window that his did not. Same schools. Same teachers. Same neighborhood. Same house design.

Paul was a gifted athlete. Name the sport, he excelled. He was a starting pitcher for the baseball team, the starting shooting guard for the basketball team and the starting quarterback for the football team. He picked up a tennis racquet, hit balls against a backboard for a few weeks and then made the tennis team.

His parents were divorced, making Paul was one of the few kids in the neighborhood at that time to come from what my parents called a "broken home." Paul saw his dad infrequently. He rarely spoke about him. When he did, it was not positive.

Paul had a problem with anger. For the smallest offense, he could tell someone off, friend or foe, sometimes even his basketball coach. One time, after Paul came late to practice again, his basketball coach threatened to bench him the following game. Paul barked back, "Either I play or we lose." He played. They won.

When the coaches from major colleges came to see Paul play basketball, his best sport, they were impressed. But then they asked the high school coach about Paul's character, whether he was "coachable." Paul's coach, concerned about maintaining his reputation with college coaches, told the truth. Paul, he said, was a "coach killer." Bye-bye, Notre Dame. Bye-bye, Duke. Bye-bye, UCLA.

Paul ended up going to a small local college, not known for basketball. Did he double down, get better in hopes of transferring to a powerhouse basketball school? Hardly. Paul sulked, blamed racism and spent his first year of college playing basketball halfheartedly -- that is, when he wasn't smoking dope and opining on "the oppression of the black man in America."

I went off to college in the East. When I returned during the summer, I visited Paul, who by then had changed his name to "Jamal" to distance himself from the "slave" religion of Christianity. When I informed him that Arab slavers took more blacks out of Africa and transported them to the Middle East and to South America than Europeans slavers took out of Africa and transported to North America, he told me to stop reading "the white man's history." He insisted "racism" had wrecked his basketball career, a career he argued that, but for the racism he encountered, was destined for the NBA. "Paul," I said, "you and I lived in the same neighborhood, in houses designed by the same builder, went to the same schools, took the same classes, had the same teachers. Why didn't 'racism' stop me?"

When I was in law school in Michigan, I visited my aunt who lived in a suburb of Detroit. During one visit, a friend of hers stopped by. He was a black man, about 40 years old. He sat near my aunt and me as we discussed my law school classes. Suddenly, the man began to cry. I could not imagine what I'd said that could've caused such a reaction. "Sorry," I said, "did I say something to offend you?" He gathered himself. "No," he said. "I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. But I got sidetracked with 'jackassery,' hung around with a bunch of knuckleheads and just wasted my time."

It doesn't have to be like this. My father always told my brothers and me the following: "Hard work wins." "You get out of life what you put into it." "You cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort." And "before you complain about what somebody did to you, go to the nearest mirror and say to yourself, 'What could I have done to change the outcome?'"

And finally, my dad said: "No matter how good you are, bad things will happen. How you respond to those bad things will tell your mother and me whether or not we raised a man."

Larry Elder is a best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an "Elderado," visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @LarryElder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-lefts-battle-against-inequality-leaves-out-one-critical-factor/

Will the Spygate perpetrators ever be held accountable?

That’s the trillion dollar question, isn’t it?

I used to think I was rather cynical. And I was. But in recent years I’ve become more so. I’ve seen people get away with much more than I had thought they’d be able to get away with (Lois Lerner, call your office). And what’s more, I’ve seen more of my friends wink at it because it suits their political ends.

So the question of whether anyone will pay for what we have come to call Spygate is a real one, and how you answer it depends on how cynical you have become:

As a regular aspect of his reportage, Hannity asks of his truth-seekers a question inquiring minds want definitively answered. To paraphrase, “Will Deep State bad actors be held accountable for what they have done?”

The answer, from Fourth Estate constitutionalists like Gregg Jarrett and Sara Carter, is always couched in a context of cautionary advisement: “They should,” or, “If justice still exists in America, yes,” or, the best conditional condemnation of all, “Put it this way, if you or I had done what (Hillary, Comey, Strzok, etc.) had done, yes, we would likely be looking at serious jail time.”

Lying to a FISA court, destroying evidence, leaking classified information. These are but a minimal sampling of the alleged crimes and malefactions committed in the name of electing Clinton and usurping Trump’s ascendancy.

But…[d]ue to the labyrinthine depths, interconnectivity, and power inherent in a Deep State that has shocked a nation aghast at the reach of rogue bureaucracies, no one can say for certain whether any of those who concocted this conspiracy will ever be brought to justice.

…Across the cable news aisle, the partisan “legacy” media are scrambling to maintain on life support a narrative that pragmatic Democrats like Doug Schoen and Mark Penn are imploring them to abandon. CNN’s ratings have officially bottomed out. At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and other conspiracy theorists still talk the talk, but the emptiness behind their rhetoric is apparent to anyone with five minutes of viewing time to waste.

Ah, but although Maddow’s rating have fallen, there is a substantial core still feeding on that sort of rhetoric and don’t find it empty at all. They have come to require it. They have become convinced it’s true, have been waiting for years for the big payoff, and cannot abandon it now because a mind is a difficult thing to change. Trump’s guilt is a given, and the people who tried to get him are heroes whatever method they used to accomplish it.

I don’t know what will happen; no one does. But it’s hard to be too cynical these days.

https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/05/22/will-the-spygate-perpetrators-ever-be-held-accountable/

GLOBAL WARMING: IT CAN DO ANYTHING!

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE

I’m so old, I can remember when global warming caused droughts. Or, put another way, climate change was making the Earth–in particular, the Great Lakes–drier. Thus, as I noted here:

National Geographic: “Climate Change and Variability Drive Low Water Levels on the Great Lakes.”

The National Resources Defense Council: “Climate change is lowering Great Lakes water levels.”

It’s no secret that, partially due to climate change, the water levels in the Great Lakes are getting very low.

The U.N’s IPCC: “[T]he following lake level declines could occur: Lake Superior -0.2 to -0.5 m.”

Dick Durbin: “What we are seeing in global warming is the evaporation of our Great Lakes.”

Minnesota Public Radio:

Scientists at the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [are] studying the interplay between low water levels, shrinking ice cover and warm water temperatures, Gronewold said. They have already concluded that climate change is playing a role in determining Great Lakes water levels.

Those quotes date from 2013, while my post was in 2017, when news reports indicated that Lake Superior was nearing a record high water level. Steve had already pointed out in 2014 that, in “a development that has startled scientists”–notwithstanding, apparently, the claim that the science is settled–Great Lakes water levels were rising rapidly.

What reminds me of this is today’s article in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “High Water Levels on Great Lakes Flood Towns, Shrink Beaches.”

Lakes Erie and Superior are among the Great Lakes expected to reach all-time highs this summer, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And the levels of Lakes Michigan, Huron and Ontario are well above seasonal averages.
***
High water levels across the Great Lakes are being driven primarily by persistently wet conditions for the past five to six years, including heavy rains and a large snowpack…

Snowpack!

…said Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the Army Corps in Detroit.

Anyone who knows anything about nature knows that it is cyclical. The Journal story includes graphics, including this one showing water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron:

It got wetter in the 1990s: climate change! Then it got drier roughly from 2000 to 2013: more climate change! Then it got wetter again starting in 2014, and it continues to be wet: still more climate change! The case for climate change is irresistible, but we always knew that. The Earth’s climate has been changing for millions of years, and it will continue changing until the Earth or its atmosphere disappears.

Meanwhile, a theory that is consistent with everything, and therefore purportedly explains everything, in reality explains nothing.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/global-warming-it-can-do-anything.php

Comey Was a Commie?

Comey Was a Commie?

No wonder he felt right at home with Brennan and Obama.

 

by PAUL KENGOR

“In college, I was left of center,” explained James Comey in an interview with New York magazine, “and through a gradual process I found myself more comfortable with a lot of the ideas and approaches the Republicans were using.” Comey voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980, but says that four years later, in 1984, “I voted for Reagan — I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I’m not even sure how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point, I’ll have to figure it out.”

Comey was once a communist. And look deeper at his statement: “I’d moved from Communist to whatever I am now. I’m not even sure how to characterize myself politically. Maybe at some point, I’ll have to figure it out.”

Which leaves us wondering if James Comey has yet figured it out.

Kudos to Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge for unearthing this gem from an interview Comey gave to New York magazine back in 2003 when he first arrived in Washington.*

This odd blast from Comey’s past explains some things. While somewhat surprising, it actually makes sense, because James Comey is politically puzzling. You can’t quite figure him out, and apparently neither can he. He’s hard to pin down politically, to take seriously. He’s sort of a political-ideological enigma, a jester (clown seems too harsh). This weird communist statement is kind of instructive.

Granted, James Comey did full penance in 1984 by swinging all the way to the other side and voting for Reagan. He was far from alone. I could rattle off names of individuals who were once communists but by 1984 joined the rest of respectable America in voting for Reagan. Sources as diverse of David Horowitz, Marvin Olasky, Ron Radosh, Joseph Farah, even Father Robert Sirico, among others, were far left but eventually became Reagan conservatives.

And yet, as Tyler Durden notes, the same can’t be said of John Brennan, the Obama CIA director who around this same time voted for the Communist Party presidential ticket of Gus Hall and Angela Davis and has remained on the left ever since. Brennan admitted publicly, in September 2016, that when he took his polygraph test for the CIA in 1980, he had already cast a ballot for Gus Hall as president of the United States. Hall was a stooge of the Kremlin, a shameless lackey for Moscow, and he was John Brennan’s choice. Remarkably, Brennan even suggested he had been a member of the Communist Party. He recalled telling the polygrapher: “I said, ‘I’m not a member of the Communist Party,’ so the polygrapher looked at me and said, ‘OK,’ and when I was finished with the polygraph and I left and said, ‘Well, I’m screwed.’”

Busted, right? Apparently not. Jimmy Carter’s CIA let him in, allowing him to rise one day to the heights of head of the agency under Barack Obama.

But the Brennan aspect sheds light on something still more troubling about this scenario. This means that President Barack Obama had not only the first CIA director who had been a communist but, simultaneously, the first FBI director who had been one. Leave it to Obama.

And worse, Barack Obama himself was probably a communist in 1980. I laid this out at length in my book on Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, which was appropriately short-titled, The Communist.

For that book, I interviewed Dr. John Drew, who met Obama at Occidental College, where Drew had run the campus Marxist organization. Drew’s girlfriend introduced the young Obama as “one of us.” Drew told me: “Obama was already an ardent Marxist when I met him in the fall of 1980. I know it’s incendiary to say this, but Obama was basically a Marxist-Leninist.”

You can read Dreams From My Father and catch Obama ruminating about how he “hung out” with Marxist professors and attended “socialist conferences.” John Drew hastens to add that what Obama did not explain in Dreams is that he “was in 100 percent, total agreement with these Marxist professors.” Drew continued:

At the time I met him — this was probably around Christmastime in 1980, because I had flown out during Christmas break from Cornell, where I was doing my graduate work — young Obama was looking forward to an imminent social revolution, literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a kind of socialist utopia in the United States. I mean, that’s how extreme his views were.… I was kind of more [in] the Frankfurt School of Marxism at the time. I felt like I was doing Obama a favor by pointing out that the Marxist revolution that he and [our friends] were hoping for was really kind of a pipedream…. I was still a card-carrying Marxist, but I was kind of a more advanced, East Coast, Cornell University Marxist, I think, at the time. [Obama] kind of thought I was, you know, a little reactionary… like I was kind of insensitive to the needs of the coming revolution. [Obama] was full-bore, 100% into that simpleminded Marxist, revolutionary mental framework.

Of course, to repeat, people do change, often dramatically — though they usually tell us about the change and how and why. Obama, however, never did, not even in two lengthy memoirs published before he set foot in the Oval Office. We have no conversion narrative from Obama — nothing explaining when and where he left all that Marxist junk behind.

Obama certainly didn’t vote for Reagan in 1984. Quite the contrary, in chapter 7 of Dreams, the future apostle of “hope and change” employed the word “change” seven times in the opening paragraphs, including the need in the 1980s for “change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds.”

Reagan and his minions, and their dirty deeds. Obama perceived an America that needed a “change in the mood of the country.” Reagan’s “morning in America,” beloved by millions, to the point where Reagan won 49 of 50 states, needed to be changed in Obama’s America.

Barack Hussein Obama yearned for an America more like him. And like John Brennan, he remained on the far left. One wonders if a young Obama and a young Brennan — and maybe even a young comrade Comey — bumped into one another at one of those socialist conferences.

“I chose my friends carefully,” Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father. “The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz [sic] Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints.”

Well, in 2008, they shook America. They took the White House.

(Mr. Durden, can you find any old photos of John Brennan smoking a cigarette in a leather jacket? Maybe at a Dead Kennedys show?)

Just a handful of years ago, ladies and gentlemen, America had a unique troika running the White House, the FBI, and the CIA. What a fundamental transformation it was.

https://spectator.org/comey-was-a-commie/

Gavin Newsom Blames Entire Country For Homelessness In California

 by Sarah Lee

Homelessness in California is among the worst in the nation, and the Governor of California would like the entire nation to know they have a hand in the problem.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in announcing a new task force to study the homelessness problem in the state, called the problem “a national disgrace” and proposed taking a chunk of the state budget to address the issue.

Newsom has proposed spending about $1 billion in the state budget on programs to tackle homelessness, including providing $650 million to local governments for emergency shelters and other services. He also wants to spend money on programs for homeless college students and legal protections for people facing evictions.

Meanwhile, major housing legislation has faltered in the Legislature in recent weeks.

A measure to expand rent control stalled, and the chairman of a key Senate committee held back a closely watched proposal that would have waived zoning rules in some neighborhoods to allow for more housing, such as around public transportation.

Supporters argue that such measures are key to preventing homelessness and creating more housing.

Newsom choosing to bring the entire nation into the disgrace stemming from California’s poor leadership is an interesting move, likely designed to make the case to federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that allocation of more funding using their McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants (or a similar program) is in the national interest.

And it’s a smart move because housing is one of the driving problems of homelessness in the state.

California does not have enough homes: Homeownership is at its lowest rate since the 1940s. The lack of housing has had serious consequences for California citizens, as downward pressure from affluent renters and homebuyers has pushed low-income residents into precarious economic conditions, one catastrophe away from homelessness. About 554,000 people in the United States were homeless in 2017, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development — and 25% of them lived in California.

In California as a whole, housing production has been declining while the population has grown. About 80,000 homes have been built per year over the last decade, far below the amount needed to keep up with its growing population. Families making less than $118,000 now qualify as “low-income” in San Francisco, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But calling the problem a national problem is as disingenuous as it gets because, as Steven Greenhut, the Western region director for Washington, DC-based R Street Institute tells the National Catholic Register, homelessness is strongly correlated to a lack of homes and is the result of California state leadership’s regulation-happy approach to policy.

The state bears a significant responsibility for the lack of housing, Greenhut said.

“We’ve screwed up the whole housing market through all these regulations,” Greenhut said.

Local fees on building can add an additional 6% to 18% to the cost of a home. Energy-efficiency regulations add to the cost of a home as well: A recently enacted California rule mandating solar panels on nearly all new home construction will add about $10,000 to the total cost. In Los Angeles, energy-efficiency requirements increase building costs by 10%. In areas with particularly severe homelessness crises, land is expensive and construction costs are high, making housing even more expensive.

There are other factors that contribute to homeless in California, of course. But for Newsom to effectively blame the rest of the country for California’s bad policies and willingness to allow homelessness to become the crisis it now is, is purely cynical politics.

https://www.redstate.com/slee/2019/05/22/gavin-newsom-blames-entire-country-homelessness-california/