Broad Gun Control Restrictions Are Not the Answer. Just Look at These Facts.

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We all know the script by now: A mass public shooting occurs. Grief and anger ensue. Calls for stricter gun laws soon follow.

Given how incredibly upsetting these crimes are, and how deeply they shake their communities—and the nation itself—such calls are perfectly understandable. If we’re truly serious, however, about reducing gun violence rates and increasing personal safety, we must ensure that policy decisions are made with an eye toward facts and reality, not panic and outrage.

The facts tell us that most commonly proposed gun control measures are already ineffective at preventing mass public shootings in states where they are currently implemented, and that they will continue to be ineffective at preventing future tragedies.

Although some gun control advocates claim there have been more than 300 “mass shootings” this year, that number is a product of using deceptive and largely meaningless definitions that include incidents far removed from the context commonly associated with the term.

Since Jan. 1, 2018, there have been 11 mass public shootings in which three or more people other than the shooter were killed, parameters derived from Congress’ definitions of “mass shooting” and “mass killing.”

These 11 mass public shootings occurred across seven different states, but three occurred in California, the only state with an “A” rating from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Two more occurred in Maryland, with an “A-” rating. Another two occurred in Pennsylvania, whose “C” rating still accounts for the 13th strictest gun control framework in the country.

Strict gun control may be the go-to response of many, but it’s simply not the answer to the problem of mass public shootings. In fact, since 2000, 17 percent of mass public shootings have occurred in California, even though the state accounts for only 12 percent of the nation’s population.

Texas, meanwhile, has an “F” gun control rating, yet has seen only 6.6 percent of total mass public shootings since 2000—below its expected share, given that it holds 8.6 percent of the national population. On the other hand, Washington state—with a “B” rating—accounts for 2.2 percent of the population but 8 percent of mass public shootings since 2000.

More importantly, the general availability of guns doesn’t appear to be the problem. Since 1990, the number of firearms per capita in the United States has increased by 50 percent. At the same time, however, the national homicide rate and national gun homicide rate have plummeted by 50 percent, and the number of nonfatal firearm crimes committed in 2011 was one-sixth the number committed in 1993.

On the whole, the increasing availability of firearms has not been related to increases in violent crime.

Mass public shootings rightly terrify us, but they remain statistically very rare. The same is true of firearm deaths related to the use of semi-automatic “assault weapons.” You are, in fact, three times more likely to be beaten to death with hands and feet than you are to be shot to death with a rifle of any kind.

That does not mean we should not continue to find ways to remove firearms from the hands of individuals who show themselves, by their actions, to be a heightened risk of violence to themselves or others.

It does mean, however, that rational gun policies should not demonize particular types of firearms rarely used by criminals but commonly used by millions of law-abiding citizens for a variety of lawful reasons—including self-defense.

We do not effectively combat gun violence by broadly restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens, thereby hindering their ability to defend themselves and others from violence.

Rather, we must focus more intently on the major underlying causes of the gun violence: untreated mental health problems that increase the risk of suicide and interpersonal violence, gang and drug activity that drive illegal black market firearm transfers, and the lack of economic and educational opportunities that lead to cycles of poverty and crime.

We must also increase the ability of law-abiding citizens to choose where and how and with what means to best defend themselves and their families from criminals who do not care to follow laws generally, and gun control laws in particular.

Originally published in ArcaMax

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished. The featured photo is by Quentin Kemmel on Unsplash.

Suspected Terrorist Leading Migrant Group Demanding Entry Into U.S.

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A suspect in a 1987 bombing that wounded six American soldiers in Honduras is leading a group of migrants demanding entry into the United States.

Alfonso Guerrero Ulloa organized a march of approximately 100 migrants to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, Mexico, on Tuesday, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Ulloa delivered a letter to the consulate on behalf of the migrants, asking for either entry into the U.S. or a payment of $50,000 per person.

“It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told the Union-Tribune. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.”

Ulloa has lived in Mexico since 1987 after fleeing Honduras in the wake of a bombing that wounded six soldiers. Ulloa was suspected of planting a bomb in a Chinese restaurant, but received asylum from Mexico, whose government described the suspected terrorist as a “freedom fighter.”

An appropriations bill passed by Congress in December 1987 included Congress’s findings that “the bomb was directed at American soldiers and did in fact wound American soldiers and an American contractor.” The report noted that Ulloa was a suspect in the bombing.

Ulloa has posted on Facebook about his role in organizing the migrants in Mexico, which he is open about, and the accusations against him from 1987, which he denies.

Ulloa posted a video on Tuesday of the migrants marching to the consulate. He described the group as a “caravan” of Honduran migrants.

WATCH:

Ulloa posted a lengthy diatribe about the 1987 bombing to Facebook in June 2017.

In the post, Ulloa again denied any role in the bombing, though he admitted to being a member of Popular Revolutionary Forces-Lorenzo Zelaya — a now-defunct left-wing group whose members claimed responsibility in 1982 for hijacking a plane and taking hostages, including eight Americans.

A report published by the U.S. government in April 1990 described the group as one of several “leftist guerrilla groups [in Honduras] that have resorted to terrorist tactics in the past.”

Ulloa also railed against the presence of American military members in Honduras and called on “gringo trash” to leave the country.

COLUMN BY

Peter Hasson | Reporter

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

For Big Tobacco and Brewers, Grass is Greener

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Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol are investing in pot to make Big Marijuana, the New York Times reports this morning.

  • Altria, the tobacco company that makes Marlboro and other cigarettes, paid $1.8 billion last week to buy nearly half of Cronos Group, a Canadian marijuana company.
  • Constellation Brands, the company that makes Corona and other beers, paid $4 billion last August for a major stake in another Canadian pot company called Canopy Growth.
  • And Molson Coors Canada, the Canadian branch of Molson Coors, bought a controlling interest in a joint venture with The Hydropothecary Corporation, a third Canadian pot company.

All three Canadian marijuana companies got their start producing the drug for medical use and are licensed by Health Canada. Canada’s full legalization of marijuana in October opened the door to the recreational market. US companies want an early entry into a market they believe will open soon in the US.

This morning’s print edition of today’s Times has a different title for this story: “This is the Dawning of the Age of Pot, Inc” the headline claims. Apparently, the Age of Aquarius (“Let the Sun Shine In”) has suffered a premature death. Big Tobacco lied to Americans for nearly a century, claiming nicotine is not addictive and smoking is harmless. Even before it became Big, the marijuana industry began following Big Tobacco’s playbook with the same mantra: Is pot addictive? “No.” “Harmless? Yes. It’s even a medicine.”

Sound familiar?

“The arrival of large multinational corporations portends sweeping changes for an industry that until recently operated in the shadows. As billions of dollars pour into product development, marketing and manufacturing, these companies will be looking to create big brands with the market share to match,” notes the Times.

Earlier this year, Coca-Cola representatives acknowledged their company was looking closely at the CBD industry. For a few days, Target sold CBD products online but abruptly ended the practice. Diageo, a spirits company, was rumored to be close to joining forces with an unnamed  Canadian pot company last summer, but no announcement has been made yet. And Walmart Canada is looking into the industry but currently has no plans to start selling products containing CBD or THC.

Some CEOs like Coca-Cola’s James Quincey are holding back. “It needs to be legal, it needs to be safe, and it needs to be consumable,” he said on CNBC this week. “It’s not there yet.”

Nonetheless, industry spokesmen say as more big companies get involved with marijuana, they’ll likely pressure Congress to legalize the drug in the U.S. nationwide, like Canada.

So, watch out. Those Green Marlboro packs containing pre-rolled joints seen in counterculture publications may not be hippie hallucinations after all.

Read the New York Times article here.

Here’s what happens when marijuana is commercialized

This graph, from a 2018 report by the Colorado Department of Public Safety (state law mandates a comprehensive report every two years), presents the clearest picture yet of what happens when a state commercializes marijuana.

Colorado legalized the drug for medical use in 2000. Patients who obtained a medical marijuana card from the state could access the drug by selecting a caregiver to grow it for them, and caregivers could grow enough marijuana for six patients. The number of patients who obtained cards grew from 94 in 2001 to 4,819 in 2008.

Effective 2009, the Colorado legislature established a system to license people to grow, manufacture, and sell marijuana for medical use. A license meant the holder could start investing in and making profits on these activities. In other words, Colorado created one of the first commercial marijuana businesses in the nation.

In 2008, there were no licensed medical marijuana growers, product manufacturers, or dispensaries in Colorado. By the end of 2012,* there were approximately 1,150 licensed facilities, and the number of patients who obtained medical marijuana cards jumped from 4,819 to 108,526 in four years.

Read more about this on page 157 here.

*Colorado archives licensee data, but they only go back to 2013. These data are taken from January 2013, one month after 2012 ended.

Farm Bill agreement allows nationwide hemp cultivation for any use – including CBD

If the US House passes the Farm Bill this week, hemp will be legal throughout the US. Hemp is defined as containing less that three-tenths of one percent of THC, the cannabinoid in marijuana that makes users high. The Senate passed the bill this week.

CBD products can be made from hemp although, because some patients insist they need THC as well, CBD must be extracted from marijuana to obtain THC.

According to Marijuana Business Daily, the measure would lift restrictions on advertising, marketing, banking, and other financial services on hemp growers and manufacturers. It also would:

  • Allow hemp production in all 50 states, including the production of CBD
  • Producers who raise hemp with a higher THC level than 0.3 percent would not be guilty of a drug crime but would have to submit a plan to correct the problem
  • Allow the sale of hemp and CBD across state lines
  • Make the US Department of Agriculture administrator of the program
  • Legalize production in US territories and on Indian tribal lands
  • Require taxpayers to subsidize the hemp industry by providing access to federal farm support, including crop insurance, federal water access, and low-interest loans to new farmers
  • Allow hemp producers to bring “foreign nationals” to the US to fill “temporary agricultural” jobs
  • Remove barriers to obtaining patents and trademarks
  • Ban state or federal drug felons from participating in the program for 10 years, and
  • Require the agriculture department to work with the Attorney General on hemp rules.

Read Marijuana Business Daily article here.

Maryland marijuana panel approves ban on cannabis advertising on billboards, radio, TV, and other media

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission voted unanimously to ban nearly all advertising of marijuana for medical use. The industry says it will fight the ban when the General Assembly convenes in January 2019. The rules prohibit advertising on or in:

  • Billboards
  • Radio
  • Television
  • Most online outlets
  • Newspapers and magazines that cannot prove 85 percent of their audience is over age 18
  • Leaflets or flyers in most public and private places
  • Internet ads must include an age verification page.

An industry spokesman claimed the ban came about after a billboard showing Adam and Eve smoking a joint upset two legislators. However, a spokeswoman for the commission said the effort was to mirror bans on tobacco advertising.

A deputy attorney general asked the commission to also add specific language prohibiting manufacturers from making any medical claims without scientific evidence.

The new rules state that marijuana companies may not make any claim that is “false or misleading in any material way or is otherwise a violation” of state laws.

Read The Baltimore Sun story here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

Jihad in Strasbourg

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Cherif Chekatt reminds Emmanuel Macron that climate change is not the only threat France faces. My latest in FrontPage:

Emmanuel Macron, France’s youthful wunderkind, Europe’s poster child for globalism and socialism, has been absorbed lately with furious protests and riots over a confiscatory new tax he placed on gasoline in order to fight what he thinks of as the greatest threat France and the world face today: climate change. But on Tuesday in Strasbourg, a Muslim named Cherif Chekatt reminded Macron that France faces another threat, one that could prove to be immensely more serious: jihad. Chekatt opened fire at a Christmas market in his native Strasbourg, murdering four and injuring eleven.

As of this writing, Chekatt is on the run, and in a departure from the recent tendency to wave away all such attacks as manifestations of “mental illness” and insist that they’re not terrorism, much less jihad, French authorities are, according to the Telegraph, “treating the attack as a terrorist act. Anti-terrorist prosecutors have opened an investigation.”

In fact, Chekatt was “on a list of ‘security threats,’” France’s “Fiche S” list of people who pose a serious terror threat. RT reported that the regional prefecture announced: “The author of these acts, listed as a security threat, had been sought by police” on Tuesday, but they hadn’t been able to catch up with him before he opened fire. A former London police inspector, Peter Kirkham, explained to RT: “There are so many people that are involved around the edges of this sort of terrorism if this is what it turns out to be, that you can’t keep any sort of meaningful surveillance on them. Even just monitoring the use of communications and social media would be too much.”

And that’s especially true when, like Macron, you don’t want to admit that there is any significant threat at all. But it is also a situation that the Islamic State (ISIS) has been working actively to bring about. As I explain in detail in my book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS, in 2015 the Islamic State (ISIS) published Black Flags from Rome, detailing its strategy for conquering Europe. It explains how, as the Muslim population of Europe increases, intelligence agencies collect huge amounts of data, “but they will not study it unless you are caught under the radar.” As jihad attacks become more common, law enforcement authorities will not be able to keep up:

As the Western nations get poorer, their intelligence collection agencies will continue to exist, but they simply won’t have enough manpower (less jobs) to analyse it all. With less attacks in the West being group (networked) attacks and an increasing amount of lone-wolf attacks, it will be more difficult for intelligence agencies to stop an increasing amount of violence and chaos from spreading in the West.

As this violence and chaos spreads, Leftist non-Muslim Europeans will help pave the way for the Islamic conquest of Europe, for

a growing population of left-winged [sic] activists (people who are against; human/animal abuses, Zionism, and Austerity measures etc) look upto [sic] the Muslims as a force who are strong enough to fight against the injustices of the world….Many of these people (who are sometimes part of Anonymous and Anarchy movements) will ally with the Muslims to fight against the neo-Nazis’ and rich politicians. They will give intelligence, share weapons and do undercover work for the Muslims to pave the way for the conquest of Rome.

When will this alliance be cemented? When, sooner or later, Leftist protesters realize that taking up arms alongside Muslims is the only viable way of achieving their goals:

If you have ever been at a pro-Palestine / anti-Israel protest, you will see many activists who are not even Muslims who are supportive of what Muslims are calling for (the fall of Zionism). It is most likely here that connections between Muslims and Left-wing activists will be made, and a portion from them will realise that protests are not effective, and that armed combat is the alternative. So they will start to work together in small cells of groups to fight and sabotage against the ‘financial elite’.

Three years later, this plan is working beautifully. And so Cherif Chekatt will fade quickly from the headlines, and the jihad threat will again be downplayed, until the next one. Meanwhile, watch in the coming days for the handwringing establishment media stories about how the local mosque in Strasbourg fears a “backlash,” and that Muslims are the real victims of jihad terror attacks. It always works the same way, like clockwork. That is, until the day that it doesn’t. One day soon the disingenuousness and cynicism of this establishment media propaganda will be obvious to everyone. But by then it will likely be far too late for Emmanuel Macron, and France.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared on Jihad Watch. It is republished with permission. The featured image by cuongdv on Pixabay.

VIDEO: Poll Reveals Majority of Americans Want To Alter the Second Amendment

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President of the Institute for Liberty Andrew Langer joins Dana Loesch to weigh in.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with video and images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Daniel van den Berg on Unsplash.

PODCAST: Tech the Halls with Google Hearings

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House conservatives have been searching for the opportunity to talk to Google CEO Sundar Pichai — and yesterday, in a packed Judiciary Committee, they finally got their chance. Thanks to a string of leaked emails and videos, most Americans already had a pretty good idea where the tech giant stands politically. But on Capitol Hill, 2,800 miles from his Google compound, it was important to be reminded.

Most Americans had probably never heard of Pichai until yesterday — but every one of them has felt his effect. With 90 percent of the world’s online searches at his fingertips, Pichai and his team have more to do with the information people see every day than almost anyone on the planet. That’s what makes his ideology so troubling. In a company so openly disgusted by half of the country, conservatives are right to wonder if they’re getting a fair shake.

Judging by the company Google keeps, they’re not. Back in February, the company finally admitted that one of the groups it trusts to “monitor” internet content is none other than the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a group that’s made a small fortune as political defamation machine. The fact that Google cozied up to Morris Dees’s group was especially surprising since everyone else — from the FBI and U.S. Army to Barack Obama’s Justice Department — backed away from SPLC for either its ties to domestic terrorism or its reckless “hate labeling.” As a growing number of journalists will tell you, the last organization anyone should be relying on for neutrality in the public debate is a group that even Politico called “a problem for the nation.”

Still, Pichai seemed to have no trouble defending the partnership, even when Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) brought up SPLC’s role in inspiring gunman Floyd Corkins to walk in our building armed with enough ammo to kill everyone on staff. Despite that — and the string of scandals from falsely labeling conservatives — Pichai reiterated, “The Southern Poverty Law Center is a trusted flagger.”

Louie couldn’t believe his ears. “The Southern Poverty Law Center,” he argued, “has really stirred up more hate than about any other group I know. They stirred up one guy to the point that he went to the Family Research [Council] — and I know those people and they’re Christians. And they believe — and I believe — that Christianity is really more based on love than about any other religion in history… [a]nd yet they stirred up hate against [FRC] and a guy comes in shooting… Now, you consider them a trusted flagger, yet they keep creating problems for people that are not haters.”

And conservatives aren’t the only ones who think so. SPLC has raised the eyebrows of more than a few major news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Politico, and most recently, the Washington Post — who are all questioning the group’s credibility. “Researchers at the SPLC have set themselves up as the ultimate judges of hate in America,” the Post points out. “But are they judging fairly?” A growing number of people from both sides said no.

On yesterday’s “Washington Watch,” PJ Media’s Alex O’Neil thought Sundar’s answer on SPLC may be the most compelling evidence that Google is targeting conservatives.

“Sundar Pichai kept denying any evidence that Google has been discriminating against conservative and Christian groups… But I think the SPLC bit is very telling. You had the CEO of Google admit that he considers the Southern Poverty Law Center a ‘trusted flagger’ [even though it] lists mainstream conservative and Christian groups as ‘hate groups’ — along with the KKK. [This is who they] rely upon to determine which speech should or should not be allowed on YouTube.”

To O’Neil, who’s followed Google’s money, the company’s bias isn’t really a surprise. “What we’ve seen with a lot of big tech companies if you look at where their employees give money, it’s very firmly on the Democratic side.” If Sundar Pichai wants his company’s objectivity to be taken seriously, then he needs to walk away from politically-charged groups like the SPLC. Conservatives don’t want regulation, but we do want fairness.

For more on Google’s partnership with SPLC, don’t miss my conversation with Rep. Gohmert.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images and podcast is republished with permission.

The Socialist, the Jihadi, and the Tooth Fairy

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What do socialists and jihadis have in common? They both still believe in the tooth fairy. This is not funny.

Like most groups, socialists and jihadis are divided into leaders and followers. First, we will discuss the leaders.

Socialist leaders promise social justice and income equality to their followers in this life. Jihadi leaders promise 72 virgins to their suicide bombers in the next life. Leadership promises specifically address the particular desires of their adherents – the leaders aren’t stupid – they are manipulative and extremely successful at luring their believers with false promises.

The leadership disingenuously focuses on the promised benefits to their followers while the actual benefits to themselves are ignored. Any cursory study of history exposes the deceitfulness of the leadership’s promises and shows how reality benefits the ruling elite at the expense of the people. So, why do socialists and jihadis still believe their leaders? Because like children they still believe in the tooth fairy. I will explain.

The people of Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras believed the promises of social justice and income equality made by their scheming socialist leaders. The people were lied to and are now living the equality of suffering and scarcity that socialism actually provides. Socialism necessarily fails because there is no incentive to be productive and eventually you run out of other people’s money.

The ruling elite in socialist countries suffer no such deprivation and the jihadi leadership worldwide remains alive and well – only their duped sycophants end up dead.

The population invasion at our southern border threatens the economic security and homeland security of the United States. Unregulated unvetted mass immigration will bankrupt our welfare system and simultaneously allow criminals and jihadis to enter the country – both create massive chaos.

The border wall is a defense against illegal entry into the United States. So, why would any politician reject it?

Leftist politicians who support socialism reject the border wall because they want a flood of illegal immigrants in the country to vote Democrat and keep them in power. Leftist politicians reject voter ID and any investigation into voter fraud that could expose illegal voting and/or deny voting rights to their followers – they sacrifice national security for their own job security. Their latest scheme is ballot harvesting.

Ballot harvesting is when organized workers or volunteers pick up absentee ballots and drop them off at a polling place or election office. There is absolutely nothing to safeguard the integrity of the ballots or to insure that all votes are delivered. Ballot harvesting is a powerful election-stealing tool that should be eliminated in favor of mailing in sealed signed ballots. If a voter cannot manage the mailing then that voter’s ballot will not count – period.

Voters are not children and need not be treated like children. Ballot harvesting is equivalent to breaking the chain of evidence in a criminal investigation and is an invitation for ballot tampering which adds to the lack of confidence in the integrity of elections. The left welcomes the chaos that public loss of confidence in elections necessarily brings.

Jihadi leaders promising 72 virgins to their devotees also rely on the chaos that jihadi violence brings. Chaos is the fulcrum of seismic social change. Watching Nancy Pelosi’s laughable performance during her 12.11.18 meeting with President Trump and Chuck Schumer was very enlightening. No wonder Pelosi did not want to have the meeting videotaped live! She was unable to deliver her revisionist version of the meeting to the media for worldwide distribution.

In her own words Pelosi condescendingly describes the meeting, “I was trying to be the Mom, but it goes to show you: You get in a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you.” WOW! A tinkle contest? Trying to be the Mom?

Nancy Pelosi is one of the most vile scheming corrupt career politicians in Washington. Her manipulative and condescending attempt to “teach” the President of the United States and the viewing audience about proper procedure for funding the Wall was grotesque. Pelosi spoke in her bizarre Mommy teaching voice slowly explaining that Republicans must propose legislation in the House. REALLY?

President Donald Trump is an adult not a child. Politely ignoring Pelosi’s patronizing Mommy voice, the President stated clearly that funding the Wall is a national emergency. POTUS exposed Pelosi’s manipulation saying that following Pelosi’s instructions would necessarily defeat the measure. “If we thought we would get it passed in the Senate, Nancy, we would do it immediately,” Trump declared, adding, “It doesn’t matter, though, because you can’t get it passed in the Senate because we need ten Democrats’ vote.”

So, Pelosi is tutoring the President in the Pelosi politics of deceit – pretending that you are actually legislating something the people need when you know it cannot possibly pass. Pelosi’s political artifice only works on her infantilized supporters – they actually believe her just like children believe in the tooth fairy!

The infantilization of American society toward collectivism and away from individualism through leftist educational indoctrination, media propaganda, and political correctness has left a generation of Americans vulnerable to the false promises of their leaders. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer still want you to believe in the tooth fairy.

Socialists and jihadis fervently believe in the righteousness of their cause because, like children, they believe what their leaders tell them. Like children they still believe in the tooth fairy. Here is the problem – President Donald Trump does not believe in the tooth fairy.

President Trump is an unapologetic America-first adult who speaks honestly, plainly, and clearly to the American people about the existential threat at the border. Without a border we have no country. EXACTLY!

Globalists like Nancy Pelosi and her minions including Obama, Clinton, Schumer, Soros, Zuckerberg, and Bezos etc etc actually WANT TO ELIMINATE the borders between countries and create a New World Order. The greedy political globalist leaders want the power to control the world’s population that the New World Order will provide. The greedy corporate globalist leaders want to further enrich themselves with the unrestricted internationalized marketplace that the New World Order will provide.

So, what is in it for their followers?? Absolutely nothing but scarcity and servitude. The socialists and the jihadis are the useful idiots in the globalist grand campaign to internationalize the sovereign countries of the world into their New World Order.

President Donald Trump is telling America it is time to grow up – there is no tooth fairy to GIVE you money or GIVE you 72 virgins. The socialist and jihadi leaders and their followers are being played by the globalist elite to do the dirty work of creating the social chaos necessary to bring down the United States of America and the premier existential enemy of globalism’s New World Order – America first President Donald J. Trump.

Don’t let them get away with it – grow up – there is no tooth fairy.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity. The featured photo is by Anthony Tran on Unsplash.

Our Politics Are About To Get Much, Much Worse

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Last week, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered their sentencing recommendations regarding former counsel for President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen. As previously reported by The Federalist Pages, their memos provided no significant evidence against the President.

Specifically, and to the most direct point, the sentencing recommendations did not add any information regarding claims of Russian collusion on the part of President Trump, which is the original directive to the Mueller investigation, nor do they suggest that there was any sign of obstruction of justice on the part of the President. But they abound in politics.

What the memo did mention for the first time is an allegation of possible campaign finance violations on the part of then-candidate Trump. This focus represents a whole new direction for investigators, one that was not previously contemplated. The charge of campaign financing violations, based on money paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, is based on the claim that Cohen was directed to make the payments that would eventually reach the two women by the President himself.

This renewed investigative direction has sent the pundits of politics ablaze regarding potential prosecutorial scenarios for President Trump. Never mind that the bar for successful prosecution is very high, or that the allegation is presently only based on statements made by Cohen (amongst the most discredited and conflicted witnesses imaginable), or even that then-candidate Trump likely had a legally defensible position for having engaged in the agreements with Daniels and McDougal during his campaign without a requirement that the money be channeled through his campaign accounts.

Those issues are immaterial because what is truly at stake is the opportunity to take down a sitting president hated and feared by Democrats, the press and the establishment.

The Democrats, who are on the eve of taking control of the House of Representatives, have made it their goal to make Trump their greatest nemesis. Like the relentless quest for the Holy Grail, Democrats would take no greater joy during the next two years than to 1) stop every one of Trump’s agenda items; and 2) get him out of power. If they can exploit any opportunity to embarrass the President and demonize him, they will. It’s all pure politics.

As evidence for this point, we have Congressman Adam Schiff, the likely incoming House Intelligence Chairman, who almost giddily said on Face The Nation, there’s a real possibility that “on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him.”

This is more than a mere concern on Schiff’s part; it is an agenda item.

In the face of these developments and associated chants, the road before the nation becomes distinctly clear. First, the Democrats in the House of Representatives will do everything in their power to obstruct anything of importance that President Trump wishes to accomplish. For them, Trump is an illegitimate President, one that had no right to defeat Hillary Clinton in the first place.

Second, to this day, they cannot come to grips with the harsh reality that President Trump won not because of Russian collusion, but rather because he ran a great campaign concentrating on seeking electoral college votes and because Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate the Democrats could have proffered.

Third, and even more demoralizing to Democrats, is that President Trump has accomplished more in two years than Obama accomplish in two terms. From his conservative appointments to the courts, to the scaling down of taxes, to the overt demonstration of the futility and oppressiveness of the Paris Climate Accord, to the takedown of ISIS and the jump start of the economy, Democrats have been unable to deal with Trump’s effectiveness and the furtherance of the national stability his agenda has provided.

These realities coupled with the virtual dissolution of the Russian collusion allegations have left the Democrats desperate for a talking point and no greater talking point exists than the involvement of the President in an extra-marital, immoral sex scandal with legal overtones — whether they are real or not. That’s good politics for Democrats.

All this leaves us with a recipe for a totally fruitless and unproductive two-year cycle save for the promotion of greater discord among Americans and the continuance and amplification of fractioning among countrymen.

And that is going to make for a very long and painful haul to the 2020 elections for everyone.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. The featured photo is by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash.

What the Neo-Socialists in Congress Don’t Understand about Poverty

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In a few short weeks, America will welcome the 116th Congress.

Among the loud and celebrated voices in the new Congress are those who not only accept socialism as a viable option for America but also those who celebrate their ties to organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America. Incoming Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are members of the Democratic Socialists of America who will caucus with the Democrats.

Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib no longer represent a fringe movement on the left. An August 2018 Gallup poll revealed that over the last two years, capitalism has taken a dive, while socialism has soared among 18-to 29-year-olds.

I believe the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., gave socialism a countercultural boost among my generation. Millennials suffer under the weight of crushing student loan debt and a deteriorating safety net from employers who will pay them less than their parents earned. It is within this economic context that a system promising to create parity among citizens looks attractive.

Socialism Never Works

The danger with popularizing socialism is that it sounds reasonable, but it never works. It often comes with the best of intentions: to reduce poverty. But there are simply no examples of it working to reduce poverty long-term.

Baby boomers are far more skeptical of socialism. They have lived long enough to see attempts at socialism fail, while capitalism has opened doors of opportunity.

Even as we look at America’s own dalliance with socialism, we can see little success. In our 50-year war on poverty, well-intentioned efforts have come up short. After spending well over $20 trillion on the War on Poverty, poverty not only persists. It has become a booming business.

What stockholders would allow a CEO to invest $20 trillion into solving a problem without demanding results? I can think of none.

The good news is that after 50 years, we know what does not work to end poverty: redistributing wealth. We also have a pretty good idea of what can end poverty. My friend and mentor Dr. Ben Carson often cites research that says a person can reduce their chances of living in poverty to 2 percent by doing these three things in this order: 1) Graduate from high school, 2) get married, and 3) wait until you are married to have children.

This is sound advice, something that both public and private organizations should advocate to help save future generations from a life of cyclical poverty.

For tens of thousands of Americans, though, the horse has left the barn. White students graduate at a rate of 86 percent. Black students lag behind at a rate of 69 percent.

Over 70 percent of all African-American children born today will be born to single mothers.

The best hope for all Americans who find themselves included in these numbers is a community to help fill the gap.

The Power of Community

After spending time listening to the smart policy wonks at the Heritage Foundation’s annual antipoverty summit, I am excited to see that the research bears out what my life experience has proven to me. It does not take government to end poverty. It takes a committed and empowered community.

I was raised by a strong and wise mother who understood that after she and my father divorced, it was important to make sure I learned from strong, positive male role models, including my dad, uncles, grandfathers, and even coaches.

I am successful today, but not because the government stepped in. I am successful because the government got out of the way and allowed my community to do what community does best.

As the hip, cool socialist wave makes its way to the halls of Congress, I fear we may return to the ill-fated, if altruistic, efforts of LBJ’s Great Society, when throwing money at social programs made us feel good.

A complete shift in thinking must occur. Success must be measured not by the amount of money we throw at poverty solutions, but by the number of people who are exiting poverty.

This article was reprinted from The Daily Signal.

COLUMN BY

Xavier Underwood

Xavier Underwood

Xavier Underwood is head of production for Howard Stirk Holdings, the nation’s largest minority broadcaster.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission.

Media Buries Key Facts to Conceal Migrant Health Threat—TB, Hepatitis, HIV

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Here’s a great example of the mainstream media distorting information to promote a liberal agenda, an act that is especially pervasive when it comes to immigration coverage. A story published by NBC news, and reiterated by various other outlets, claims illegal immigrants don’t bring disease into the United States.

The headline reads: “Migrants don’t bring disease. In fact, they help fight it, report says.” The article focuses on a study commissioned by a medical journal called the Lancet and University College London. The finished product is titled “Global patterns of mortality in international migrants: a systematic review and meta-analysis” and one of the researchers, Dr. Paul Spiegel, proclaims that migrants spreading disease is a “false argument” used to keep them out. The editor of the Lancet said; “In too many countries, the issue of migration is used to divide societies and advance a populist agenda.”

Nevertheless, buried deep in the news article the reporter offers this important nugget from the study, only after writing that migrants are less likely than people in their host countries to die of heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases and other ills: “The exceptions are hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV.”

Last we checked those are deadly diseases and Judicial Watch has interviewed medical experts that confirm illegal immigrants do indeed pose a serious public health threat to the U.S. by bringing dangerous diseases into the country. This includes tuberculosis, dengue and Chikungunya. Just last month a prominent physician in a key border state warned that the caravan streaming north from Honduras will undoubtedly bring infectious diseases into the U.S. Among them are extremely drug resistant strands of tuberculosis and mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya that are widespread in the region.

The same week Judicial Watch published the story about the caravan health threat a major newspaper reported on the health crisis created by the influx of Venezuelans fleeing to neighboring countries. The migrants are spreading malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, dengue, tuberculosis and AIDS throughout South America. Many of the diseases had been considered eradicated in the neighboring Latin American countries, according to government officials cited in the article, which states that “contagion from Venezuela’s economic meltdown is starting to spread to neighboring countries—not financially, but literally, in the form of potentially deadly diseases carried among millions of refugees.”

As an example, the story reveals that “measles reappeared with a vengeance” in a Brazilian city near the Venezuelan border that had declared the highly contagious airborne disease “vanquished” nearly two decades ago. “Measles is already spreading beyond the Brazilian Amazon to other Brazilian states, as well as Colombia, Peru and as far south as Argentina, according to recent Pan American Health Organization reports,” the article states. “Other diseases racing through communities in Venezuela are now crossing borders and raising concerns among health authorities as far away as the U.S.”

Years ago, when Barack Obama let tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors into the country, health experts warned about the serious hazards to the American public. Most of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) came from Central America, like the current caravan, and they crossed into the U.S. through Mexico, in the same way that the caravan expects to.

Swine flu, dengue fever and Ebola were among the diseases that the hordes of UACs brought with them, according to lawmakers and medical experts interviewed by Judicial Watch during the influx. At the time, a U.S. Congressman, who is also a medical doctor, told Judicial Watch about the danger to the American public as well as the Border Patrol agents forced to care for the UACs. The former lawmaker, Phil Gingrey, referred to it as a “severe and dangerous” crisis because the Central American youths were importing infectious diseases considered to be largely eradicated in this country.

Many migrants lack basic vaccinations such as those to prevent chicken pox or measles, leaving America’s young children and the elderly particularly susceptible, Gingrey pointed out then. To handle the escalating health crisis the CDC activated an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) that largely operated in secrecy.

Even the recent study twisted by the mainstream media acknowledges that illegal immigrants are likely to carry hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV. Selectively burying the information doesn’t change the severity of the matter. Though not a mainstream media outlet, a popular leftist news and opinion site went so far as to label those who claim migrants pose a threat to public health racist.

EDITORS NOTE: This column is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Fancycrave on Unsplash.

The Racism the Left Ignores

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How appropriate would it be for a major publicly held American company to hire a person with a history of having publicly made the following statements and many others like them? In the interest of brevity, I shall list only four:

“The world could get by just fine with zero black people.”

“It’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old black men.”

“Dumbass f—ing black people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”

“Are black people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically only being fit to live underground like groveling bilious goblins?”

I think most Americans would find such blatant racism despicable and would condemn any company that knowingly hired such a person. Leftists of every stripe would be in an uproar, demanding the dismissal of such an employee. College students and their professors would picket any company that hired such a person.

I could be wrong about this, so I’d truly like any employer who’d hire such a person to come forward.

Most Americans would see such statements as racist, but consider this: Suppose we slightly changed the wording of each statement, replacing the word “black” with “white.” For example, “The world could get by just fine with zero white people.”

Would you consider that statement to be just as racist? I would hope you’d answer in the affirmative. They’re all racist statements.

The full scoop on those statements can be found in an excellent essay by William Voegeli, “Racism, Revised,” in the fall edition of the Claremont Review of Books.

The racist statements about white people were made by Sarah Jeong, one of the newest members of The New York Times’ editorial board. Jeong attended the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School. She decided to become a journalist specializing in technology and the internet. She has an active Twitter account with over 97,000 followers.

One person excused Jeong’s tweets by saying they “were not racist” but merely “jokes about white people.”

Leftists have been taught utter nonsense by their college professors. The most insidious lesson taught is who can and who cannot be a racist.

Jeong was born in South Korea in 1988 and became a U.S. citizen in 2017, so she is a minority. According to the thinking of academia’s intellectual elite, a minority person cannot be a racist. The reason is that minorities don’t have the political, economic, and institutional power to adversely affect the lives of whites.

Such reasoning is beyond stupid. Here’s a test. Is the following statement racist?

“Jews are money-hungry hustlers.”

Before you answer, must you first find out the race of the person making the statement? Would you suggest that it’s not a racist statement if the speaker is black, but it is if he’s white?

Voegeli says that calling someone “racist” is one of the most severe accusations that can be made against a person, but at the same time, is among the vaguest. Years ago, one had to don a hood and robe to be a certified racist.

Today, it’s much easier. Tucker Carlson of Fox News questioned whether diversity is all that it’s cracked up to be. He asked, “How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Can you think, for example, of other institutions, such as … marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common the more cohesive they are?”

The Washington Post’s media critic declared that it was racist for Carlson to cast doubt on the proposition that diversity is good.

Voegeli’s article is rich with many other examples of how lots of Americans are losing their minds in matters of race. Muhammad Ali had it right when he said, “Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Ugly Racism of Karl Marx

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The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters /Newscom.

Report: Women’s March Full Of Anti-Semites, Has Ties To Nation Of Islam

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Leaders of the left-wing activist group the Women’s March have ties to Nation of Islam and believe in a variety of conspiratorial anti-Semitic tropes, according to a Monday report from Tablet magazine.

The investigation by Tablet alleges that two core members of the group who occupy leadership positions, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory, shared erroneous ideas about the Jewish people in a November 2016 meeting, including that they “bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people,” and “were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.

Conspiracy theories asserting that Jews were central to the slave trade are regularly shared among anti-Semites, despite being repeatedly proven false by experts.

Muslim American activist Linda Sarsour prepares to perform "Maghrib" sunset prayers during an immigration rally and Iftar "breaking fast" during the month of Ramadan outside ICE's New York field office at Foley Square in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 23, 2018. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky - RC18A15B0F00

Muslim American activist Linda Sarsour prepares to perform “Maghrib” sunset prayers during an immigration rally and Iftar “breaking fast” during the month of Ramadan outside ICE’s New York field office at Foley Square in Manhattan, New York, U.S., May 23, 2018. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

Mallory and other women who attended the meeting deny such theories were ever uttered.

Tablet also reports that Mallory, who currently serves as a national co-chair of the Women’s March, attended Nation of Islam events — a radical black nationalist organization led by notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

At one point in the piece, Tablet reports that Nation of Islam members began “acting as security detail and drivers” for the Women’s March co-chairs. A Facebook photo uploaded by founding member Linda Sarsour shows her next to men wearing typical Nation of Islam garb — suits and bowties.

The Women’s March later confirmed that its security firm “does not rule out the possibility — indeed, the likelihood — that the private security firm’s operation in Detroit, where the convention was held, employs some guards who are practicing members of NOI,” according to Tablet.

COLUMN BY

Joe Simonson | Media Reporter

Follow Joe on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Women’s March Leader Linda Sarsour Arrested At Kavanaugh Hearing

Women’s March Leaders Spouted Anti-Semitic Theories at First Meeting

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO: Trump Brawls Face-To-Face With Pelosi, Schumer Over Wall Funding

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President Donald Trump sparred with House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in an extraordinary Oval Office session before TV cameras.

Schumer and Pelosi visited The White House on Tuesday to negotiate with Trump over border wall funding in the next spending bill. The pair offered Trump approximately 1.3 billion dollars in funding for the wall, while the president demanded 5 billion dollars. The impasse could lead to a partial government shutdown.

Pelosi set the tone for the discussion at the beginning of her statement noting that any shutdown would be known as “The Trump Shutdown,” prompting the president to immediately interrupt her. The two continued to spar over whether Trump had the votes for proposed border wall funding in the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate.

“If we thought we would get it passed in the Senate, Nancy, we would do it immediately,” Trump declared, adding, “It doesn’t matter, though, because you can’t get it passed in the Senate because we need ten Democrats’ vote.”

Pelosi then questioned why TV camera’s were present during budget negotiations prompting Trump to declare, “It’s called transparency, Nancy.”

Trump then turned the floor over to Schumer, who also castigated the president for declaring that he would rather shut the government down than accept the Democrats’ proposals. Trump angrily turned to Schumer and said, “you want to know something? Yes, if we don’t get what we want whether its through you, one way or the other, I will shut down the government.”

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck,” he continued. “People in this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I won’t blame you for it. The last time, you shut it down. It didn’t work.”

The pair of lawmakers said after the meeting that they had no intention of meeting Trump’s demands and told him they would only offer him the option of passing existing levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Schumer and Pelosi both said Trump would be to blame for any potential government shutdown.

The deadline for spending occurs Dec. 21, with no current breakthroughs on negotiations.

Transcript: The President’s conversation with Sen. Schumer and Rep. Pelosi

COLUMN BY

Saagar Enjeti

White House Correspondent

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Illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $155 billion per year… building a wall could pay for itself almost immediately – National Sentinel

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‘She’s Scared’ — Ted Cruz Criticizes Pelosi For Wanting To Turn Cameras Off During White House Meeting

Get the facts: Democrat-backed policies have created a border crisis.

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More than 3,000 illegals caught in one day: DHS

The Cost of Illegal Immigration to US Taxpayers | FAIR

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with video and images is republished with permission. Video courtesy of the White House.

Obama and the Perpetual Presidency

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Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump.

Obama’s charges are paradoxical.

On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are pernicious and failing.

Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and blame for everything that happens on their watch, from Day One to the last hour of their tenures—even when wars abroad, technological breakthroughs, natural disasters, and market collapses have nothing to do with their governance.

Trump ran on the promise of a “Make America Great Again” economic renaissance. He pledged massive deregulation, fair rather than free trade, and tax reform and reduction.

Trump jawboned against outsourcing and offshoring, and praised rather than lectured private enterprise. He sought to reindustrialize the Midwest and promised to open new federal land to fossil fuel production, complete proposed pipelines, and lift burdensome restrictions on fracking and horizontal drilling.

In contrast, Obama had argued that the U.S. could never drill itself out of oil shortages. He advocated making the use of coal so expensive that it would disappear as an American energy resource. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar were Obama’s vision of an America energy future.

As late as last year, Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council for two years during the Obama administration, ridiculed Trump’s boasts that he could achieve annualized gross domestic product growth of 3 percent as the stuff of “tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.”

Summers had also predicted that the U.S. economy would be in recession by now. Instead, it is likely to match or exceed Trump’s promise of 3 percent growth over a 12-month period.

After Trump’s victory, economist and Obama supporter Paul Krugman predicted that the stock market would crash and might “never” recover. “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight,” Krugman wrote in November 2016.

In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed about 7,000 points since Trump was elected. Unemployment has hit near-record lows, wage gains are up, and the economy is growing.

Still, after 22 months, no one knows what the final verdict will be on the Trump administration. So it seems wise to wait until Trump’s four-year term is over before weighing in on his legacy, or lack of one.

By the same token, the frenetic Obama should take a deep breath, stop arguing the past, and allow history to adjudicate his own eight-year economic and foreign policy record.

Given that Obama was a strong progressive while Trump surprisingly has proven to be a hard-right conservative, their presidencies offer a sort of laboratory of contrasting worldviews.

History will decide whether a more managed or more deregulated economy works best. We will learn whether a focus on traditional energy sources is preferable to an emphasis on subsidized green energy.

In recent times, Republican ex-presidents—Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush—left the limelight upon the end of their tenures. They kept silent about their successors, and they allowed history to be the judge of their relative successes or failures. Reagan and the younger Bush often were ensconced on their ranches in out-of-the-way places.

Obama would do well to buy a ranch, too.

In contrast, progressive ex-presidents such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama saw the presidency as a sort of never-ending story. Politics were a 24/7, 360-degree, all-encompassing experience. All envisioned their retirements as opportunities to re-litigate their administrations and to politick the present in hopes that future kindred presidencies would be progressive and would continue their own agendas.

Carter frequently warned that the Reagan defense buildup and tough stance toward the Soviet Union were dangerous and would lead to an existential confrontation.

Clinton became a fierce critic of the Iraq War as his wife Hillary prepared to enter the 2008 presidential race as an anti-Bush candidate.

Obama still seeks to convince the country that Trump is “unfit” to be president.

After the recent passing of George H.W. Bush, there are now four living ex-presidents: Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. There are five living former vice presidents: Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden.

If all ex-presidents and ex-vice presidents were to weigh in nonstop on the current president and present-day politics, the result would be as chaotic as it would be boring.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com. Twitter: .

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Photo: Paul E Boucher/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

‘Borderline Impossible’: Noted Scientist Tackles Sea Level Rise Alarmism

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When it comes to alarming projections of global warming-induced sea level rise, veteran climate scientist Judith Curry says people need to cool it.

“Projections of extreme, alarming impacts are very weakly justified to borderline impossible,” Curry told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Curry’s latest research, put together for clients of her consulting company near the end of November, looks in detail at projections of sea level rise. Curry’s ultimate conclusion: “Some of the worst-case scenarios strain credulity.”

“With regards to 21st century climate projections, we are dealing with deep uncertainty, and we should not be basing our policies based on the assumption that the climate will actually evolve as per predicted,” Curry told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Climate variability and change is a lot more complex than ‘CO2 as control knob,’” Curry said. “No one wants to hear this, or actually spend time understanding things,” Curry said.

That’s really the opposite message of what we usually hear from prominent scientists in the media. Much of the worry over sea level rise has centered on the western Antarctic ice melt, which studies say has accelerated in recent years.

The global average sea level has risen about 7 inches since 1900. For perspective, sea level rise has averaged about the thickness of two pennies every year.

But if warmer temperatures substantially increase melt from the world’s glaciers and ice sheets, some scientists and activists say sea level rise could be devastating. Warming also increases thermal expansion of the ocean, scientists warn.

Former NASA head climate scientist James Hansen warned in 1988 that New York City’s West Side Highway would be underwater in 20 to 40 years. More recently, Hansen warned “the planet could become practically ungovernable” from sea level rise due to melting ice forcing millions of people to flee coastal cities.

Pacific islands national leaders went before the United Nations in 2015 to warn that unchecked global warming would overwhelm them, forcing thousands to emigrate to the continents—so far, there’s little evidence of island nations being engulfed by the sea.

“Now if you ask us, we have to say maybe closer to 6 to 8 feet,” Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann warned at a debate in June. Curry also participated in the debate in Charleston, West Virginia.

Mann said that was the “best estimate” of sea level rise by the end of the century, which is considerably higher than he said it was just five years earlier.

“We’re talking about literally giving up on our coastal cities of the world and moving inland,” Mann warned in September 2017.

Curry, however, sees estimates of sea level rise above 2 feet by the end of the century as “weakly justified,” even at high levels of warming. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts the likely range of sea level rise at 10 to 32 inches.

Alarming sea level rise predictions are based on “a cascade of extremely unlikely-to-impossible events using overly simplistic models of poorly understood processes,” Curry wrote in her report.

Current sea level rise is well within natural variability of the past few thousand years, according to Curry. Curry said coastal communities should base their future flood plans on likely scenarios, such as 1 to 2 feet, rather than high-end scenarios.

“There is not yet any convincing evidence of a human fingerprint on global sea level rise, because of the large changes driven by natural variability,” Curry wrote. “An increase in the rate of global sea level rise since 1995 is being caused by ice loss from Greenland.”

However, the “Greenlandic ice loss was larger during the 1930s, which was also associated with the warm phase of the Atlantic Ocean circulation pattern,” Curry wrote.

COLUMN BY

Copyright © 2024 DrRichSwier.com LLC. A Florida Cooperation. All rights reserved. The DrRichSwier.com is a not-for-profit news forum for intelligent Conservative commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. Republishing of columns on this website requires the permission of both the author and editor. For more information contact: drswier@gmail.com.