VIDEO: 5 million years of climate data shows the Sun is the driving factor not CO2

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In this December 15, 2011 video (below) Professor Ian Clark, Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa and director, G.G. Hatch Isotope Laboratories, one of Canada’s leading analytical facilities, testifies before a Canadian Senate hearing on climate change.

Professor Clark presents three important findings on what impacts the earth’s climate:

  1. Earths warming and cooling periods over millions of years has been due to activity on the sun.
  2. H2O (water vapor) is driving green house gas models, not CO2. It is H2O that keeps earth at a livable temperature for mankind.
  3. CO2 has little to do with global warming. CO2 actually helps keep the planet green.

Please take the time to watch this entire video to understand how data and science are used to define green house gases and their effect over time on our climate.

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Medicare for Bernie

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Preview: 

  • ​Bernie Sanders is strongly promoting “Medicare for All,” and claims to be its father (“I wrote the damn bill,” he proclaimed to the nation during the second round of Democratic Presidential debates).
  • His plan does not look like Medicare at all. It appears that he hardly knows anything about Medicare. He probably has no experience with it. Despite his advanced age, he does not need to depend on it.
  • If Bernie himself were stuck on Medicare with no way out, he might think it not so wonderful. Has anyone heard him tell people about these Medicare problems?

Bernie Sanders is strongly promoting “Medicare for All,” and claims to be its father (“I wrote the damn bill,” he proclaimed to the nation during the second round of Democratic Presidential debates).

His plan does not look like Medicare at all. It appears that he hardly knows anything about Medicare. He probably has no experience with it. Despite his advanced age, he does not need to depend on it. Members of Congress are allowed to receive Medicare benefits, but unlike most other Americans, they can receive other benefits in addition.

Sitting members of Congress can get routine examinations and consultations from the attending physician in the U.S. Capitol for an annual fee. And military treatment facilities in the Washington area offer free emergency medical and dental care for outpatient services.

Members are also eligible for the Federal Employees Health Insurance Program, and they won’t be kicked off as soon as they reach Medicare age. They do have to go through an ObamaCare exchange, but it is a small one, the DC Health Link, which reportedly functions well. There are 57 gold-tier plans to choose from, not one or two as in many states. Their portion of the premiums could be as little as 25 percent of the total premiums. Apparently, subsidies for senators don’t run out just because their salary exceeds 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Funding for Medicare for All will apparently be vacuumed up from all other sources of payment for “healthcare,” and will go into the big collective pot. Then people can get everything without premiums, copays, or deductibles—so they say. This is not at all like Medicare.

Medicare Part A, for hospital care, is funded through the Medicare payroll tax: a 2.9% first-dollar tax—no deductions–on all employment income, half of which is paid by the employer. Seniors believe that they have been funding this through their working years, as they are constantly told. They have indeed paid, but their taxes were immediately used to pay for the care of older retirees. So, their hospital bill today will be paid from the wages of about 2.5 workers (say the persons pumping their gas, collecting their trash, and repairing their plumbing). Already that is not enough, so the IOUs in the “trust fund” are being redeemed from general tax revenues. That fund will soon be gone, according to the Medicare trustees, as Baby Boomers are flooding into the system. It would vanish in a nanosecond if we loaded in everybody, with or without illegal immigrants.

Medicare has long been implementing ways to curb runaway expenditures. From the mid 1980s comes the Prospective Payment System, or Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), under which payment has nothing to do with services rendered to a particular patient. According to my 1985 “Ode to DRG Creep”:

“Now the pay’s by the head, if alive or if dead,

Diagnosis determines the money,…

We need costs less than average, and discharges quicker

We will get no advantage — For care of the sicker.”

Since “quicker and sicker” discharges might cause a need for readmission, the government penalizes hospitals for readmission. One way to prevent readmission is to discharge to hospice or directly to the morgue. If Bernie were an anonymous Medicare patient, he’d get a consultation on POLST. That’s Physicians Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, which translates in the Newspeak Dictionary to “Legally Enforceable Orders to Terminate Life-Sustaining Treatment Including Food and Water.”

Bernie might think he had been admitted—say he had an IV in a hospital room. But if he gets discharged before his second midnight, he might be classified as an outpatient, which is covered under Medicare Part B, and get a “surprise” bill for thousands of dollars, because of the “Two-Midnight Rule.”

Or Bernie might expect to have a little rehab after an orthopedic procedure, but if he is in hospital for fewer than three midnights, rehab isn’t covered. He might have the choice of paying out of pocket, or going home where he will be alone, unable to get out of bed.

Yes, Bernie on Medicare will have free choice of doctors—except for the ones who aren’t accepting Medicare patients.

If Bernie himself were stuck on Medicare with no way out, he might think it not so wonderful. Has anyone heard him tell people about these Medicare problems?

Maybe he means the Canadian medicare system. It does have a way out for non-senators—called the United States.

Failing to use required DNA technology to identify criminal aliens

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DHS malfeasance undermines national security and public safety.

The pace at which events occur often makes it all but impossible to keep pace. This is particularly true where the multi-faceted immigration crisis is concerned.

While much attention is paid to the abject lack of security of the U.S./Mexican border, there are many other failings of the immigration system that often go unreported and ignored by the mainstream media and our politicians.  I have repeatedly noted that while I am a firm supporter of the need to construct an effective wall/barrier along the southern border, there are many other elements of the immigration system that are no less important.  I have therefore come to compare the wall along the border with a wing on an airplane.  Without its wing an airplane won’t fly, however, a wing by itself goes nowhere.

On Wednesday August 21,  I was invited by the producers at Fox News’ Fox & Friends First to participate in an interview to discuss a just-posted  Fox News report, Watchdog Alerts President Trump That Border Agency Violated DNA Collection Law For Years, Letting Violent Criminals Walk Free.

That troubling report included the following excerpt:

In a scathing letter to Trump, exclusively obtained by Fox News, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said CBP’s “noncompliance with the law has allowed subjects subsequently accused of violent crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, to elude detection even when detained multiple times by CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

CBP REBUKED FOR FAILURE TO COLLECT DNA FROM MIGRANT DETAINEES

The OSC told the White House that it was taking the “strongest possible step” to “rebuke the agency’s failure to comply with the law,” as well as its “unreasonable” attempts to defend its own conduct.

Under the law, CBP was required to collect DNA from individuals in its custody, to be run against FBI violent-crimes databases. The procedure is separate from DNA collection designed to establish familial relationships among migrants at the border.

Aliens who were released by this demonstration of nonfeasance and, indeed, malfeasance, have committed more violent crimes, thereby claiming more innocent victims.

I accepted the invitation and Fox News has posted my interview under the title, Government watchdog says CBP violated its DNA collection law for years.

As I noted during my interview, bad guys use changes in identity the way a chameleon uses changes in coloration, to hide in plain sight among its intended victims.

Everyone associates the arrest of suspects with the fingerprinting and photographing of those who are arrested as a means of determining their true identities and to make certain that their fingerprints are retained for future reference.  Currently DNA is also used as a means of identifying those who are taken into custody for the same reason.

Fingerprints, photographs and DNA all constitute biometrics.

The law that mandated that ICE and CBP use DNA to properly identify aliens who are taken into custody, was enacted back in 2005.  During the Obama administration, Secretary Janet Napolitano asked the Attorney General to waive this important requirement claiming a lack of resources.  Not surprisingly, the Attorney General complied.

Incredibly, nothing has apparently changed under the Trump administration and, as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of aliens who should have undergone DNA screening did not during the Obama administration and during the current administration.

The issue of the consequence of the failure of immigration law enforcement to effectively use biometrics is not new.  In fact, we can look back to the particularly egregious case of Ángel Maturino Reséndiz-Ramirez  aka the “Railway Killer” as noted in this excerpt in a Wikipedia article about him:

Murders and methodology

By illegally jumping on and off trains within and across Mexico, Canada and the United States, generally crossing borders illegally, Reséndiz was able to evade authorities for a considerable time. United States government records show that he had been deported to Mexico at least four times since first entering the U.S. in 1973.[4]

Reséndiz killed at least 15 people[5] with rocks, a pickaxe, and other blunt objects, mainly in their homes. After each murder, he would linger in the homes for a while, mainly to eat; he took sentimental items and laid out the victims’ driver’s licenses to learn about their lives. He stole jewelry and other items and gave them to his wife and mother, who lived in Rodeo, Durango, Mexico. Much of the jewelry was sold or melted down. Some of the items that were removed from the homes were returned by his wife and mother after his surrender. Money, however, was sometimes left at the scene. He raped some of his female victims; however, rape served as a secondary intent. Most of his victims were found covered with a blanket or otherwise obscured from immediate view.

Reséndiz-Ramirez had been in Border Patrol custody at least four times, was deported back to Mexico, illegally reentered and killed more innocent people.

He was eventually identified as the cold-blooded murderer of at least 15 people, put on trial and found guilty.  He was subsequently executed but his execution did not bring any of his victims back to life.  The families of those victims will never be the same.

Back then immigration law enforcement personnel did not transmit fingerprints electronically but usually by mail!  All too often we would arrest an illegal alien, mail out the fingerprints and then, weeks later, receive a response that the alien was wanted for serious crimes.  Of course, by then he/she had been deported or released.

During my first Congressional hearing, on May 20, 1997 before the House Immigration Subcommittee on the topic of Visa Fraud And Immigration Benefits Application Fraud when I was asked about a common problem I encountered in my positions as Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and Special Agent, I replied that one of the biggest challenges was to uncover the true identities of those whom we interacted with and that imposters were a huge issue.  Within a year the former INS began implementing electronic fingerprinting, but on a limited scale.

Here we are approaching the 18th anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  The 9/11 Commission was clear in its finding that the key method of entry and embedding for terrorists was immigration fraud and identity fraud.

Yet we are now finding out that DNA technology which is a tremendously valuable tool that could enhance national security and public safety has been all but ignored by elements of the Department of Homeland Security or, as I came to refer to it when it was first created, the Department of Homeland Surrender.

It is completely unacceptable that CBP and ICE failed in its most fundamental mission: to protect America and Americans from aliens who pose a threat to national security and/or public safety.

Immigration enforcement personnel should learn from the mistakes of the past.  However, as the famed playwright George Bernard Shaw lamented, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

The Trump administration must act swiftly and decisively to plug this gaping hole in the immigration system.

Failure is not an option!

RELATED ARTICLE: Taxpayer-Funded Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Sending Immigration Lawyers to Border so More Migrants Can Get In!

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

New York Times’ ‘1619 Project,’ the MacArthur Foundation and Eugenics

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

The New York Times “1619 Project” was funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Why is this important?

Because the MacArthur Foundation has also funded population control as a “major objective.”

In the 1998 book “Archons And Acolytes: The New Power Elite” Clarence C. Walton wrote:

Eugenics became a fashionable cause, and courses in the subject were soon introduced by a number of colleges and universities. The Rockefeller Foundation provided ample financial support, generously funding international conferences and research projects, and earning unwanted praise from the Nazis who welcomed the international respectability that their eugenicists needed. Today the Ford and MacArthur Foundations have also made population control a major objective of their funding efforts. In the first phase of the eugenics movement, artificial birth control (with Margaret Sanger identified as its major force) became the preferred method for controlling population growth.” [Emphasis added]

In 2013 the MacArthur Foundation presented their genius award to Angela Duckworth. Duckworth, a Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a book titled “Grit: The Power Of Passion And Perseverance” in which she quoted Francis Gabon, the father of Eugenics. Duckworth wrote:

When I got to graduate school, I learned that psychologists have long wondered why some people succeed and others fail. Among the earliest was Francis Gabon, who debated the topic with his half cousin, Charles Darwin.

[ … ]

In 1869, Galton published his first scientific study [Hereditary Genius] on the origins of high achievement. After assembling lists of well-known figures in science, athletics, music, poetry, and law — among other domains — he gathered whatever biographical information he could. Outliers, Galton concluded, are remarkable in three ways: they demonstrate unusual “ability” in combination with exceptional “zeal” and “the capacity for hard labor.” [Emphasis added

Grit author Duckworth has also written for, or has been written about in, the New York Times here, here and here. SpeEdChange wrote:

The New York Times, have unquestionably accepted the work of a professor who has based her research in the work of a writer whose work brutalized and killed millions during the 19th and 20th Centuries, including the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese assault on China during World War II, and the ethnic cleansing in Europe’s Balkans at the end of last century. There are also stories symbolized by the tale of Carrie Buck, where there’s an unquestionable direct line from Angela Duckworth’s favorite thinker to a deep well of human misery.

So the MacArthur Foundation has funded the New York Times‘ “1619 Project” and promoted population control and presented a genius award to a professor who idolizes the father of Eugenics.

Is there an affinity for racial purity in the form of population control espoused by Francis Gabon?

Is there a connection? We simply report, you will in the end decide.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: The Ford Foundation | Scott Walter – Capital Research Center

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New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’ Has Key Error About Our Founding

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Rain forest fires are not climate

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Some pertinent points:

  1. Rainfall has been ABOVE AVERAGE in much of the Amazon Rain forest unless the rain forest has extended offshore, Panama has been below average something we see during lower than average ACE index hurricane seasons in the Main Development areas, as was forecast by my company in April.  That was well seen.
  1. South America has not been warm in any kind of overpowering fashion. In fact, one can argue that it has been average or below, more than above. It has been warm in the eastern part of the Amazon rain forecast, but there has not been a climate emergency pattern there.
  2. And this may have longer term climate implication given the nature of the oceans and total solar irradiance (both huge drivers in the climate) the southern oceans have cooled quite a bit, most notably around South America.

So here is what some objective journalist might want to do. Bring this up with the people pushing that the rain forecast fires are a part of climate change.  If that’s the case, its because the climate and some large scale indicators around South America are opposite of what is being pushed.

I suspect some people on the other side of the AGW issue are seeing the southern oceans cooling down some and also the major imbalance between the southern oceans and northern oceans, which has to be having an impact on the overall global weather pattern when one considers the southern hemisphere contains 80% of our oceans. Oceans are the greatest storehouse of heat, with low estimates at 80% and the highest at 99.9% . The AGW argument puts all their eggs in the basket that a warming atmosphere is causing the oceans to warm. An interesting example is the analogy of a boiling a pot of water.  The outside of the pot warms first. Unfortunately its an apples and oranges thing, since the pots temperature becomes HIGHER than the water it is heating, so eventually it warms it.  Given the stored nature of heat in the ocean, whether 80% or 99.9%, it is intuitive that an ocean should control the air above it.  The question is why is it warming? I can see the argument that if you warm the atmosphere above, then the oceans cool less quickly, giving them a higher base point to warm from, but that would mean decreased sensitivity to CO2, which is a huge point raised by climate skeptics who question the amount of warming. The IPCC has some scenarios of a 4-5 degree C warming, while people on my side of the issue put it more at 1-2 degrees C.  Given the greening of the planet so far (the greatest in the satellite era) this would be a good thing.

It it is warming a bit, we should adapt to it, and use the benefits to help further the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The straw man argument is that we climate skeptics “deny” climate change. That should raise red flags right off the bat.  Questioning a cause, or even agreeing that it has some impact, yet questioning the amount, gets you branded. Is that how scientific inquiry works now? The skeptic side points to natural cycles inherent in our unbalanced climate system, and how that imbalance is corrected.  You have some brilliant solar scientists, examples in my previous piece, that trace it back to the sun, which I think has merit, but even I question the timing of the response. Remember if one wants to use the solar argument, there were 200 years of high sunspot activity before we started entering this minimum. If the sun is the player, then where is the heat from all those years stored? Should be the oceans.

But if we are going to play the denial game, then perhaps we should note there is a denial of natural climate change as a the MAIN driver, and the blind acceptance of CO2 as the climate control knob from the warming campaign. Lets not though, lets just say that many of us are of the opinion the attribution to CO2 is overdone.

We are approaching 2020 and none of the dreadful forecasts from around the turn of the century have come true. Man is better off now than we were 20, 40, 60, 80 ,100 etc years ago in the good old days without energy and fossil fuels and a slightly cooler planet.

Matt Ridley Points it here and nails it, “There are fewer ongoing wars than ever before in history. Extreme poverty is declining dramatically. Green areas on the planet are expanding. Infant mortality is decreasing. Deaths from storms and other natural disasters have dropped 90% since the 1920s.”

If you are simply agenda driven, you are going to dismiss the cooling of the southern oceans, and point to the warmth of the northern oceans relative to average. But time will tell, it always does.

It seems like there is some degree of denial of Le Chatieiers principle on the other side.  This is a principle stating that if a constraint (such as a change in pressure, temperature, or concentration of a reactant) is applied to a system in equilibrium, the equilibrium will shift so as to tend to counteract the effect of the constraint.

So the deviations from average in the northern hemisphere are likely due to both more land surrounding the northern oceans and hence influencing them, and increased water vapor leading greater warming where it is cold and dry. That can vividly seen here in winter warming, increase in WV 2006-2017.

Increase in winter temperatures.

There is a much stronger increase in water vapor in the low levels over the tropics than in the arctic, yet look who has the lions share of winter warming. And that is seen in no uncertain terms here. Arctic temperatures since 1958.

The red line is the summer where the mean temperature is a bit above freezing. Summer temperagtures have a built in thermostat called melting ice. Melting takes energy which it takes it out of the air.  Warming its capped, again a natural counter to the missive the arctic will melt completely away.  Not with the summer season barely above freezing.

So we have gone from rain forest fires to a brief look at why all we are seeing natural variation inherent to the system, that we have never been able to observe before. Over the years, I have grown more open to the other side of the argument ( though I cant say the same is true from the other side, given the blacklisting that recently occurred), but I see and understand what they are looking at. If I also only looked at that, I would also believe it totally. But I don’t demonize honest, hard-working people that have devoted their careers to it.  They are just as passionate in what they do, as an I.  Beyond that, there is an entire cottage industry and political movement now built around this.  I can see why it would be hard to question that authority if one was all-in on it. In the end I seek to convince no one, I merely raise some questions that many of us have, and some are afraid to ask due to  an issue that is growing larger every day; intimidation. I want people to question what they are being shown. The first place an open minded journalist can start with is the “climate justice” warriors who are weaponizing the weather.  The rain forest fires are only their latest.  The don’t talk about the tropics globally, because it is quiet and the heat has backed down.

BTW we have been forecasting the development off the Carolinas since Tuesday.  This is yet another feature out of the main development region, which is seasonal.  If this starts getting hyped, its been there, done that.

As someone who has watched and loved the weather since my first memory, there is always something happening somewhere that we used to marvel at.  Sadly there is now an agenda leading pressure groups to treat natural weather into as a case for a cause.

Author

Joe Bastardi

Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting. He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore.

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EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

How LGBTQ Groups Are Quietly Dismantling Norms, Changing Education

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Virtually every week, there seems to be another issue that preoccupies the country.

But while our attention is focused on President Donald Trump, Google, Charlottesville, Russia, impeachment, Jeffrey Epstein, the next elections, racism, a trade war with China, the #MeToo movement, or something else, LGBTQ organizations are quietly going about their work dismantling ethical norms, making a mockery of education, ruining innocent people’s lives, and destroying children’s innocence.

If you think this is overstated, here are some examples:

The LGBTQ Dismantling of Women’s Sports

Last month, a transgender weightlifter won multiple gold medals at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa. Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand won two gold medals and a silver in the three heavyweight categories for women weighing more than 87 kilograms, or 192 pounds. Hubbard is physically male.

Last year, two biologically male sophomores at different Connecticut high schools competed in the female division of the state open track and field competition. They came in first and second place in the 100- and 200-meter dashes.

Because the Western world cowers before LGBTQ demands, no matter how unfair they are to women athletes, men who deem themselves female must be allowed to compete against women. They almost always win.

The Dismantling of Male and Female—Even at Birth

As reported by the Associated Press: “Parents also can choose (gender) ‘X’ for newborns. New York City is joining California, Oregon, and Washington state in allowing an undesignated gender option on birth certificates. A similar provision takes effect in New Jersey in February.”

What percentage of Americans believe children are lucky if born to parents who will not identify them at birth as male or female? On the other hand, how many of us think such parents are engaged in a form of child abuse?

The Dismantling of Children’s Innocence and Parental Authority

The Associated Press also recently reported that “California has overhauled its sex education guidance for public school teachers, encouraging them to talk about gender identity with kindergartners.”

Tatyana Dzyubak, an elementary school teacher in the Sacramento area, objected: “I shouldn’t be teaching that stuff. That’s for parents to do.”

But parents and parental authority have always been a thorn in the side of totalitarian movements. Therefore, dismantling parental authority is one of the primary goals of the left, of which LGBTQ organizations are a major component.

Libraries in major urban centers now feature Drag Queen Story Hour—drag queens reading stories to preschool-age children. (Read, for example, the laudatory New York Times article “Drag Queen Story Hour Puts the Rainbow in Reading” from May 19, 2017.)

A few weeks ago, the popular actor and TV host Mario Lopez told Candace Owens (Full disclosure: Her podcast is produced by PragerU):

If you’re 3 years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way or you think you’re a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be, I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination then: ‘OK, well, then you’re going to be a boy or a girl,’ whatever the case may be. … I think parents need to allow their kids to be kids, but at the same time, you gotta be the adult in the situation.

For sensibly and respectfully saying what any loving parent of a 3-year-old should say, he was so forcefully condemned by GLAAD and PFLAG, two of the biggest LGBTQ organizations, that, knowing his livelihood was on the line, he immediately recanted.

In the style of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he “recanted” everything he said and acknowledged how much he still has to learn about parents allowing 3-year-olds to determine their gender.

The Dismantling of Educational Norms

CNN reported last week:

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a bill that ensures the contributions of LGBTQ people are taught in public schools. …

[The bill states] ‘In public schools only, the teaching of history shall include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State.’

Equality Illinois, the state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights advocacy organization, supported the bill and said the curriculum can have a ‘positive effect on students’ self-image and make their peers more accepting.’

Once the purpose of teaching history is changed from teaching what happened to “having a positive effect on students’ self-image,” history is no longer about what happened; it is propaganda. But rewriting history is not a problem for the left.

As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it: “In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing.”

I note almost every day that truth is a liberal value and a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. This is just one more example.

The Dismantling of Reality

David Zirin, sports editor of The Nation: “There is another argument against allowing trans athletes to compete with cis-gender athletes that suggests that their presence hurts cis-women and cis-girls. But this line of thought doesn’t acknowledge that trans women are in fact women” (italics added).

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in a letter to USA Powerlifting: “The myth that trans women have a ‘direct competitive advantage’ is not supported by medical science.”

Sunu Chandy of the National Women’s Law Center: “There’s no research to support the claim that allowing trans athletes to play on teams that fit their gender identity will create a competitive imbalance.”

How can these people say such lies? Because lying is not an issue when truth is not a value.

LGBTQ organizations care about lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders as much as communists cared about workers. They use them as a cover for their real agenda: dismantling civilization as we know it.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. Twitter: .

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Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Nature Communication’s Black List of Climate Change Contrarians

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People with the temerity to correct the record on climate change must be silenced.

That’s the outrageous point of a new study published in the journal Nature Communication.

“The time has arrived for professional journalists and editors to ameliorate the disproportionate attention given to (climate change contrarians) by focusing instead on career experts and relevant calls to action,” the authors said.

While the study’s goal is severely off base, it nonetheless produced two mathematical rankings CFACT is more than a little tickled by.

According to a ranking of how often “contrarians,” as the study labels us, are cited in the media, CFACT’s Marc Morano is far and away the world’s most effective climate communicator.

Marc is number one, with 4,171 media references, nearly double Senator James Inhofe’s 2,628 and Secretary Rick Perry’s 1,903.  Marc appeared in many multiples of media references compared to anyone else as you proceed down the rankings.

Steven Hayward of the Powerline Blog wrote, “Morano is truly the Pete Rose and Hank Aaron of climate contrarians.”

The study also ranks our website, CFACT.org, on its list of the  top 100 “most prolific media sources” for articles skeptical of the global warming narrative and ranks Climate Depot number 1!   See, figure 2b.

The list of 386 people on the climate blacklist reads like an honor roll.  Here’s a sample:

  • Apollo Astronaut Harrison Schmitt – the only scientist to walk on the moon;
  • Apollo Astronaut Walt Cunningham –  from the first crew to ride the Saturn V rocket;
  • Freeman Dyson – The eminent Princeton physicist who postulated the Dyson sphere;
  • Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre – the Canadian researchers whose meticulous mathematical audit debunked Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick graph;
  • Anthony Watts – The prominent meteorologist and creator of Watts Up With That;
  • Rick Perry – The U.S. Secretary of Energy;
  • Judith Curry – A climate scientist with over 130 peer-reviewed papers;
  • Roy Spencer and John Christy – Scientists who manage temperature satellites and developed the first successful satellite temperature record;
  • Fred Singer – The genius scientist who established the weather satellite network;
  • Roger Pielke, Jr. – The professor who showed that extreme weather hasn’t worsened and disaster costs declined;
  • Richard Lindzen – The MIT scientist known for his brilliant work on atmospheric physics and author of over 200 papers;
  • Will Happer – The Princeton atomic physicist and pioneer in optics;
  • Rudy Giuliani – America’s Mayor;
  • Mike Pence – Merely the Vice President of the United States (V.P. Gore’s OK?)

While the rankings appear to be genuine in terms of the amount of media individuals garnered, the study’s black and white, unnuanced choice of whom to include on its contrarian list is bush league.  It actually used DeSmog Blog as a major source!  It’s mathematical comparison showing that people who debate climate policy in the public policy arena have greater media exposure than researchers who are cited in academic journals is an apples and oranges comparison, lacking scientific validity, that yields a no-brainer.  It’s decision to not rank the amount of media garnered by warming campaigners,  which would have yielded a useful comparison, reveals this for a bogus and offensive propaganda hit piece.

We are each exposed to a mountain of media every day.  Peruse the headlines and media coverage of climate for yourself.  Do you need a mathematical analysis to determine which way the coverage is skewed?  Wouldn’t you love to see those hard numbers?

Shame on study authors, Alexander Michael Petersen, Emmanuel M. Vincent, and Anthony LeRoy Westerling.

But, thank you to all our friends and supporters who helped CFACT become the most effective climate communicators in the world.  Facts matter!

RELATED ARTICLE: Climate Change Activists Bring Mayhem To The DNC Summer Meeting 

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Tell Your U.S. Senators and Representative to Oppose Gun Control

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In the wake of two recent criminal mass attacks, a number of gun control proposals have begun to circulate in our nation’s capital. None of these proposals would have prevented either of last weekend’s tragedies, but they all would restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

“Universal” Background Checks Won’t Stop Mass Shootings

Every perpetrator of high-profile mass shootings has either passed a background check or acquired a firearm in a way that would be unaffected by a universal background check (either through theft or the use of a “straw purchaser”).

“Universal” Background Checks Do Not Stop Criminals

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), 75 percent of criminals in state and federal prison who had possessed a firearm during their offense acquired the firearm through theft, “Off the street/underground market,” or “from a family member or friend, or as a gift.” Less than one percent got firearms from dealers or non-dealers at gun shows.

Criminals defeat the background check system by getting guns through straw purchasers. ATF has reported, “[t]he most frequent type of trafficking channel identified in ATF investigations is straw purchasing from federally licensed firearms dealers. Nearly 50 percent….”

In a 2018 study, researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the UC Davis School of Medicine found that comprehensive background checks and prohibitions based on violent misdemeanors “were not associated with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.”

“Universal” Background Checks Are Not as Universally Popular as Advocates Claim

Despite claims of the near universal popularity of “universal” background checks, these proposals have not been nearly as popular as claimed when presented to voters. In 2016, Maine and Nevada both had “universal” background check initiatives on the ballot.

Despite being outspent by Bloomberg-backed gun control groups by $5.3 million to $1.2 million, Mainers defeated the initiative by 3.6 percentage points.

In Nevada, where Bloomberg-backed groups spent almost $19 million in support of the initiative versus less than seven million spent against, the initiative passed by less than one percentage point.

Banning “Assault Weapons” Isn’t the Answer Either

FBI data shows that four times as many individuals are killed with “knives or cutting instruments,” than with rifles of any kind. The data also shows that rifles were listed as being used in fewer homicides than “blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)” or “personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.).”

A 1997 Department of Justice-funded study of the 1994 “assault weapons” ban determined that “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.”

A 2004 follow-up Department of Justice-funded study determined that “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Presented with the overwhelming evidence of the ban’s inefficacy, Congress did not renew it.

In 2018, a RAND Corporation study found no conclusive evidence that such bans have an effect on mass shootings or violent crime.

The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the U.S. The immense popularity of the AR-15 has come about at a time when Americans cite self-defense as their primary reason for owning a gun.

The effectiveness of the commonly-owned semi-automatic rifle in defense of self and others was illustrated in 2017 during an attack on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Upon learning of the attack, resident Stephen Willeford retrieved his AR-15 rifle and shot and wounded the gunman. Since 2017, other Armed Citizens have used commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms to thwart an armed robbery in Texas, stop a trio of home invaders in Oklahoma, and halt a stabbing attack in Illinois.

Now Is the Time To Act

Please contact your Senators and Representative TODAY and urge them to oppose ineffective gun control measures that won’t make us any safer but will infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. You can use this link to send them an email or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Bill Clinton Touts Failed Gun Ban With Bogus Info

“Universal” Background Checks Aren’t as Universally Popular as You’ve Been Led to Believe

Kamala Harris and Her Perplexing Anti-Gun Ideas

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: It’s in writing. Pedophilia is a part of the postmodern agenda…

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Posted by Eeyore

Beyond the main point of the signatures of the founders and main thinkers of the French, postmodern philosophers all demanding that pedophilia be made legal, these guys make a lot of good points.

Also, it is food for thought about how similar the push to make little boys into drag queen strippers for adult men mirrors Afghan Muslim culture.

H/T Xanthippa

The Humanitarian Hoax of the 2019-2020 Equality Act: Killing America With Kindness

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The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The 116th Congress 2019-2020 Equality Act is a Democrat bill prohibiting discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in multiple areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Sounds great – what’s the problem?

The Equality Act “updates” the definitions of three terms: sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and “expands” the categories of public accommodations. On May 17, 2019 H.R. 5: Equality Act passed the Democrat controlled House with unanimous support from Democrats plus eight Republican votes. Next, it goes to the Republican controlled Senate for consideration. Why the partisan split?

The Equality Act seeks to amend and expand the expressly recognized “non-discrimination” categories in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act was designed to provide equal protection under the law to African Americans and to women in 20th century America making it illegal to discriminate against them based on race, ethnicity, or gender. In 1964 the word “gender” was specifically understood to mean male or female in the biological, chromosomal, colloquial sense of the word. In the 21st century the leftist Democrat party is selling sameness as equality and feelings as facts – they are not the same.

Even the name Equality Act is part of the deception. The name evokes compassion in the casual observer, but there is nothing equal about the Equality Act, it is a colossal humanitarian hoax that redefines maleness and femaleness with the words “gender identity.” This is how it works.

No longer satisfied with laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender, the radical left has taken aim at the biological definition of maleness and femaleness making it a subjective matter of opinion rather than an objective matter of chromosomes. Gender identity is not the same as gender. Why is this important?

Facts are not feelings. Facts support the objective reality that is the foundation of biological science, laws, and ordered liberty. Feelings support the subjective reality of political science, the arts, and psychology. We can have feelings about facts, but feelings cannot change facts in a society of ordered liberty. The danger of confusing objective and subjective reality is discussed at length in “The Humanitarian Hoax of Multiple Realities.”

In science, the sex of an individual is determined by a pair of sex chromosomes found in that individual’s DNA. Females have two of the same chromosomes XX, males are identified by having two different chromosomes XY.

Chromosomal sex determination in mammals is a natural function of human development with a primary and secondary component. Primary development is the determination of gonads internal sex glands that make sex hormones and reproductive cells – testes in the male and ovaries in the female. Secondary sex determination are the external expression of maleness and femaleness outside the gonads. This means a male has a penis, seminal vesicles, and prostate glands. The female has a vagina, cervix, uterus, oviducts, and mammary glands.

For the vast majority of the world’s population including, the United States, sexual development is an uncomplicated natural function of human reproduction. Leftist Democrats are exploiting the minuscule portion of the human population that has chromosomal abnormalities and/or ambiguous secondary sex characteristics for political gain.

The leftist Democrat party is attempting to alter the biological science of objective reality, facts, and chromosomes, and replace it with the subjective world of feelings, shattering the foundation of biological sciences and turning it into political science. This is the core of the humanitarian hoax of the Equality Act because it functionally obliterates the differences between maleness and femaleness making them the same rather than equal.

This is extremely important because sameness has serious consequence in society both legally and socially.

Let’s examine the consequences of the Democrat “update” including “gender identity” as it relates to the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, particularly Title II, III, IV and V:

Title II – Public accommodations such as lodging, restaurants and theaters, may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin.

Title III – Explicitly prohibits state and local governments from discrimination based on race, religion, color, or national origin in public facilities.

Title IV – Provides for the federal enforcement of desegregating public schools.

Title V – Empowers the Civil Rights Commission to further investigate and act on allegations of discrimination.

According to Wikipedia, “Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender. Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a person’s social identity in relation to other members of society. In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females, a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.”

The first and most basic human identity is universally announced around the world at the moment of birth. “It’s a boy!” “It’s a girl!”  What this means is that in most societies around the world people accept the binary definitions of maleness and femaleness based on XX and XY chromosomes and their factual physical expression. The leftist Democrat attempt to redefine maleness and femaleness as non-binary and a matter of personal feelings, is a political power grab by the left selling sameness as equality. Why would they do that?

The leftist Democrat motivation is to collapse America from within and replace our democracy with socialism and our capitalism with communism. The left did not originate dirty political tricks, they have just honed them to an art form. Of the 45 Communist Goals read into the Congressional Record-Appendix, pp. A34-A35 on January 10, 1963 items 17 24, 25, 26, 39, 40, and 41 that seek to collapse accepted norms and the authority of the family are of special interest to this discussion.

If the Equality Act passes, schools will be teaching the leftist non-binary definition of maleness and femaleness to America’s children. The biological differences between boys and girls will be denied and the social norms of privacy obliterated. Titles II, III, IV, and V will force the implementation of joint bathrooms, joint locker rooms, joint showering facilities, joint sports teams, etc etc etc. The deceitful Equality Act targets America’s children with Lenin’s prescient warning, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”

Six decades ago when W. Cleon Skousen published The Naked Communist and the Civil Rights Act was passed, it was unimaginable that leftist radicals would attempt to destabilize and transform society by redefining maleness and femaleness. Skousen, an anti-Communist and former FBI special agent and field director for the American Security Council, served President Ronald Reagan on the Council for National Policy. He maintained that Communism was waging a psychological war designed to soften America and change American thinking in preparation for the final Communist takeover.

From “The Naked Communist,” by W. Cleon Skousen 1958 p.224-227 Waking Lion Press

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N.   as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [“]united force[“] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court

It is chilling how much the 2020 Democrat party platform comports to the Communist goals listed in the 1963 Congressional Record-Appendix. The Democrat party has devolved from the America-first voice of JFK to the screeching sounds of leftist radicals who embrace Communism disguised as equality. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new face of the New Democrat party, unapologetically seeks to make America Communist. She and her handlers have usurped the authority of former party leaders and are leading the insurrection against the old guard to establish the subversive new Democrat In Name Only (DINO) party.

Communism has always had world domination as its goal. Joseph Stalin explains how socialism is the stepping stone in his famous quote,

“World dictatorship can be established only when victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries . . . and when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.” Stalin elaborates, “Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.”

Since its inception, Communism has been determined to eliminate all religions and their moral authority. Communism views religions as competing ideologies to the absolute authority of the state. Evangelical leader Franklin Graham reveals how the Equality Act legalizes reverse discrimination against the moral teachings and authority of our American Judeo-Christian tradition. Of special interest to his argument are items 27 and 28 that seek to discredit religion and its moral authority:

“Rather than offering meaningful protections for individuals, the Equality Act would impose sweeping new norms that negatively impact the unborn, health care, charitable services, schools, personal privacy, athletics, free speech, religious liberties, and parental rights,” five chairmen of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) declared in May.

“The Act’s unsound definitions of ‘sex’ and ’gender identity’ would erase women’s distinct, hard-won recognition in federal laws. Its sex-based nondiscrimination terms would end women’s shelters and many single-sex schools. It would close faith-based foster care and adoption agencies that honor children’s rights to a mother and father. The bill would even act as an abortion mandate, the bishops added.”

Beyond its confusing, destabilizing, psychological consequences to children in American schools K-12, the Equality Act would eliminate separate bathrooms, locker rooms, bathing facilities etc for adult men, and women in public spaces nationwide. Our cultural norms and ordered liberty in America have always recognized the biological differences between male and female. Men and women are NOT the same – equal yes, the same NO.

The 2019-2020 Equality Act is part of the sinister attack David Horowitz describes in his new book, Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America.

Horowitz explains how the Culture War against Christianity is a war against America and its founding principles rooted in Judeo-Christian norms and Western civilization. He reveals how after the communist empire fell, progressives did not abandon their fight, they simply re-branded communism as “social justice.”

A 6.10.19 article by Robert Curry titled, “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ Has Got to Go” recalls Jesse Jackson’s 1987 protest march at Stanford University. The protest was against Stanford’s required introductory humanities program “Western Culture” – not enough diversity for the protesters. The aftermath is clear. Radicalized professors abandoned teaching Western civilization in favor of teaching multiculturalism. Protesters led by politicians at Stanford thirty years ago successfully rid the university of a course in Western civilization.

Protesters led by politicians today are targeting Western civilization itself. Skousen’s 45 communist goals are the dark agenda of the current radical leftist Democrat party. If we allow leftist politicians to redefine maleness and femaleness, we will be facilitating their communist goals and promoting the social chaos that seismic social change requires.

The goal of subversion is to shatter the authority of the three pillars of American society – family, god, and government/patriotism – and substitute them with loyalty to the state. The collectivist infrastructure of socialism/communism requires complete centralization of authority so that the exclusive and singular authority is the state. The leftist Democrats imagine that if they succeed, they will be the final authority with complete power for the foreseeable future. Uh-oh!

In a stunning 1984 interview, former Soviet KGB informant and Soviet journalist defector Yuri Bezmenov discusses the Soviet subversion attempts in America after WWII.

Most Americans find it difficult to accept that Soviet attempts to infiltrate and collapse America are ongoing and have found a friend in leftist Democrats. Some of the Democrat collaborators are ideologues, others are corrupt politicians, but all are useful idiots working against the interests of the United States. Useful idiots?

Yes, Bezmenov makes it crystal clear that if the Soviets ever prevail, there will be no place in society for the collaborating leftist useful idiots. They will all be killed. Case closed.

The humanitarian hoax of the leftist Democrat Equality Act attempting to sell sameness as equality must be rejected entirely. If America allows the left to substitute subjective reality for objective reality we will find ourselves living in the communist nightmare that Yuri Bezmenov describes.

I am an American.
I am an American and I reject Russian communism.
I am an American and I reject Russian communism and Marxist socialism.
I am an American and I reject Russian communism, Marxist socialism, and leftist Democrats.
I am an American and I reject Russian communism, Marxist socialism, and leftist Democrats. I support the United States Constitution.
I am an American and I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

I am an American and I entirely reject the humanitarian hoax of the very unequal leftist Equality Act.

Tell your Senators to vote NO on the deceitful H.R. 5: Equality Act while you still can.

RELATED ARTICLE: Polish archbishop vows to resist ‘LGBT ideology’

EDITORS NOTE: This Goudsmit Pundicity column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Google Is Burying Alternative Health Sites to Protect People from ‘Dangerous’ Medical Advice

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For their unorthodox views, some physicians are being treated as medical heretics. Google’s search engine algorithm has essentially ended traffic to their websites.

In Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451, firemen don’t put out fires; they create fires to burn books.

The totalitarians claim noble goals for book burning. They want to spare citizens unhappiness caused by having to sort through conflicting theories.

The real aim of censorship, in Bradbury’s dystopia, is to control the population. Captain Beatty explains to the protagonist fireman Montag, “You can’t build a house without nails and wood. If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.” The “house” Beatty is referring to is opinions in conflict with the “official” one.

If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.

When making decisions, we often face conflicting theories. Daily, we face choices about what to eat. Although the government issues ever-changing dietary guidelines, thankfully, the marketplace supports personal dietary decisions ranging from carnivore to vegan. We are free to choose our diet based on our evaluation of the available evidence and the needs of our bodies.

When we face health issues, decisions become tougher. There is an orthodox opinion, and there are always dissenting opinions. For example, the orthodoxy recommends statins to reduce high cholesterol. Others believe high cholesterol is not a health risk and that statins are harmful.

Nobel laureate in economics Vernon Smith was taking a prescribed statin and recently observed the impact it was having on him:

In the last week I had a very clear (now) experience of temporary memory loss. I did a little searching and found this article summarizing and documenting the evidence over many years.

Smith continues,

Such incidents have been widely reported, but the problem did not arise in any of the clinical trials, but neither were they designed to detect it.

Smith had to weigh the purported benefits against the side effects:

Statin effectiveness in reducing heart/stroke events needs to be weighed against this important negative. Since I am actively writing, this is a primal concern for me, and I have stopped taking it.

A free person understands that there is no one “best” pathway. Although experts have knowledge, a free person takes responsibility, makes a choice, and bears the consequences. We never know what the consequences would have been had we made a different choice.

Some people don’t like to take responsibility for health choices. They prefer to do what they’re told by the doctor.

“Do you understand now why books are hated and feared?” asks Ray Bradbury’s character Professor Faber in Fahrenheit 451. Faber responds to his own rhetorical question:

Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.

Bradbury is reminding us that life is messy. Often there is no comfortable one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges we face.

Despite the evidence against statins, the medical orthodoxy would like you to believe that those who question statins are being hoodwinked by fake news. The orthodoxy wants you to believe there is one size for all.

Duke University’s Dr. Ann Marie Navar is the Associate Editor of JAMA Cardiology. In her article, “Fear-Based Medical Misinformation,” she rails against the “fake medical news and fearmongering [that] plague the cardiovascular world through relentless attacks on statins.”

She writes many patients remain concerned about statin safety. In one study, concerns about statin safety were the leading reason patients reported declining a statin, with more than one in three patients (37 percent) citing fears about adverse effects as their reason for not starting a statin after their physician recommended.

Dr. Navar takes the position that concerns about safety are “fake medical news,” spread in part by ignorant patients via social media. Don’t worry, she counsels, reports are incorrect when they claim “that statins cause memory loss, cataracts, pancreatic dysfunction, Lou Gehrig disease, and cancer.”

Fake news? Dr. David Brownstein (no relation) disagrees:

The Physicians Desk Reference states that adverse reactions associated with Lipitor include cognitive impairment (memory loss, forgetfulness, amnesia, memory impairment, and confusion associated with statin use). Furthermore post-marketing studies have found Lipitor use associated with pancreatitis. Other researchers have reported a relationship between statin use and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Finally, peer-reviewed research has reported a relationship between statin use and cataracts. Statins being associated with serious adverse effects has nothing to do with fake news. These are facts.

To be sure, more physicians would agree with Dr. Navar than Dr. Brownstein, but should treatments be dictated by those on one side of the argument? After all, due to human variability, statins may both save some lives and impair or kill other people.

With some doctors questioning whether to prescribe statins for everyone, there is a large financial incentive to stifle debate.

Can you imagine a future government-controlled health care system, completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry, mandating statins for everyone? I can.

There are good reasons to be concerned that we are losing access to information with which to evaluate opposing sides of health issues, like the statin debate. Already Google is “burning” sites that question the medical orthodoxy about statins.

Mercola.com, operated by Dr. Joseph Mercola, is one of the most trafficked websites providing alternative views to medical orthodoxy. If I were researching statins, I would certainly read several of the numerous essays questioning statin use and the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Essays at Mercola.com usually provide references to medical studies. Personally, since Dr. Mercola sells supplements and I am a supplement skeptic, I read his essays—like I read all medical essays—with a grain of salt.

Dr. Kelly Brogan is a psychiatrist who has helped thousands of women find alternatives to psychotropic drugs prescribed to treat depression and anxiety. In her book, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Brogan reports that one of every seven women and 25 percent of women in their 40s and 50s are on such drugs. She explains,

Although I was trained to think that antidepressants are to the depressed (and to the anxious, panicked, OCD, IBS, PTSD, bulimic, anorexic, and so on) what eyeglasses are to the poor-sighted, I no longer buy into this bill of goods.

For their unorthodox views, Dr. Brogan, Dr. Mercola, and others like them are treated as medical heretics. Dr. Brogan and Dr. Mercola have documented (here and here) how a change in Google’s search engine algorithm has essentially ended traffic to their websites.

From time to time, Google updates algorithms determining how search results are displayed; there is nothing inherently nefarious in such actions. Google has achieved its market position by doing a better job than other search engines.

According to Dr. Mercola, before Google’s most recent June 19 algorithm update,

Google search results were based on crowdsource relevance. An article would ascend in rank based on the number of people who clicked on it.

After their June 19 algorithm update, Google is relying more on human “quality” raters. Google instructs raters that the lowest ratings should go to a “YMYL page with inaccurate potentially dangerous medical advice.” YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” Google says,

We have very high Page Quality rating standards for YMYL pages because low-quality YMYL pages could potentially negatively impact users’ happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

Does that sound reasonable? If a site argues for treatments other than the medical orthodoxy then, by definition, the site can arouse readers’ cause for concern and, for some people, unhappiness. Do we really want Google to assume the role of Bradbury’s firemen?

Google wants to protect you from conflicting opinions. And if you don’t think that’s a problem, imagine sometime in the future when searching for information on monetary policy you only find results for Modern Monetary Theory.

Google thinks its intention to “do the right thing” is enough to prevent abuses; some Google employees would disagree.

Google is not eliminating access to alternative health pages; it is making it harder to find them. Typical health searches will still generate plenty of “facts,” just not conflicting facts. In Fahrenheit 451 Captain Beatty explains the government’s strategy: “Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.”

Instead of “conflicting theory,” Captain Beatty explains the strategy is to “cram” the people “full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.”

Filled with “facts,” Captain Beatty explains, people will “feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.” Beatty assures Montag that his fireman role is noble. Firemen are helping to keep the world happy.

The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now.

The only way Google will maintain its dominance is to continue to meet the needs of consumers. Whether Google continues to “burn” websites is up to us. Google will continue to sort out unorthodox views as long as “we” the consumer continue to rely on Google’s search engine.

COLUMN BY

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership. To receive Barry’s essays subscribe at Mindset Shifts.

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Why Florida’s ‘Red Tide Task Force’ is doomed to fail and waste taxpayer’s money

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When ever there is a naturally occurring problem, like red tide, the first impulse by politicians is to create a task force to look at the naturally occurring problem.

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis announced in a press release on August 2nd, 2019:

[T]he appointments of 11 expert researchers and leading scientists to the recently re-organized Red Tide Task Force. The Governor was joined by Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Noah Valenstein and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Executive Director Eric Sutton. For over 15 years, this Task Force had been inactive and without funding until it’s re-organization by FWC today at the direction of Governor DeSantis. Governor DeSantis originally called for the re-organization of the task force on his second day in office via Executive Order 19-12.

“The Red Tide Task Force will focus on the causes of Red Tide and will be supported by FWC’s Center for Red Tide Research, which received $4.8 million in the budget,” said Governor DeSantis. “My administration will continue to press forward to find solutions and empower our brightest minds to help protect our environment. The issues of Red Tide are complex, but with the appointments of these leading scientists and researchers, we hope to make a difference.” [Emphasis added]

Read the full press release.

How Government Gets Red Tide (Karenia brevis) Wrong

If you go to the Center for Disease Control fact sheet on red tide (Karenia brevis or K-brevis) you will find this information:

Algae are vitally important to marine ecosystems, and most species of algae are not harmful. However, under certain environmental conditions, microscopic marine algae called Karenia brevis (K. brevis) grow
quickly, creating blooms that can make the ocean appear red or brown. People often call these blooms “red tide.”

K. brevis produces powerful toxins called brevetoxins, which have killed millions of fish and other marine organisms. Red tides have damaged the fishing industry, shoreline quality, and local economies in states such as Texas and Florida. Because K. brevis blooms move based on winds and tides, pinpointing a red tide at any given moment is difficult.

Red tides occur throughout the world, affecting marine ecosystems in Scandinavia, Japan, the Caribbean,and the South Pacific. Scientists first documented a red tide along Florida’s Gulf Coast in fall 1947, when residents of Venice, Florida, reported thousands of dead fish and a “stinging gas” in the air, according to Mote Marine Laboratory. However, Florida residents have reported similar events since the mid-1800s. [Emphasis added]

The first report of red tide was by Angelo Heilprin, an American geologist, paleontologist and naturalist in 1886. Heilprin visited the Manatee River and Little Sarasota Bay and found, “thousands upon thousands of carcasses [of dead fish] heaped up in continuous banks” killed by “red tide.” Heilprin wrote about red tide in his May, 1887 book Explorations on the West Coast of Florida.

For 133 years the world, and Florida in particular, has known about red tide and a fix is not in the offing.

“Red Tide Task Force” is Doomed

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission website only shows predictions and areas currently impacted by red tide. The Commission’s website states, “FWC reports on the current status of Karenia brevis blooms using tables, static maps, and interactive Google Earth maps. Archived status maps can be found in our Flickr gallery.”

So does anyone have a solution to red tide?

Surf Rider Foundation’s Mara Dias, Holly Parker note:

Red tides are naturally occurring, but there is ample evidence that shows nutrient pollution can fuel blooms, making them larger and longer lasting. Learn more about this here. Worse still, warming waters associated with climate change appear to be helping these blooms thrive in areas that haven’t been affected by algae blooms historically.

The nutrient pollution that fuels algal blooms comes from many different sources- runoff from agriculture and landscaping fertilizers, leaky septic tanks and aging sewage infrastructure, and stormwater and urban runoff.

Note how Dias and Parker try connecting red tide to “climate change” to create a boogeyman effect. Actually according to NASA the climate is cooling as we are experiencing a solar minimum (few or no sunspots), which makes the oceans cooler.

Conclusion

Sid Perkins of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences of the United States of America reports:

Red tide blooms are natural events, not manmade, notes Robert Weisberg, a physical oceanographer at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, FL, who has been studying red tides in the Gulf of Mexico for decades. The blooms have been known to strike the Florida coasts since the 1500s when Spanish explorers mentioned warnings from Native Americans not to eat fish caught in discolored waters, he adds. [Emphasis added]

So what needs to happen to reduce, but not eliminate the “naturally occurring” red tide blooms is to stop fertilizing, repair leaky septic tanks, fix our sewage systems and stop urban runoff?

But this won’t stop red tide blooms. Why? Because they are naturally occurring.

Florida scientists like Weisberg have been studying red tide for decades to no avail. Spending $4.8 million dollars won’t stop the “naturally occurring” red tide blooms today, tomorrow or in the foreseeable future. Stopping us from fertalizing will only harm Florida’s farming and tourist industries. No one comes to Disney World to see dead plants that have haven’t been properly fertilized, right?

Floridians must understand that like “naturally occurring” hurricanes, red tide blooms are with us forever. We just need to prepare for them both.

© All rights reserved.

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Mario Lopez on the Chopping Block — And What About Us? [Video]

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Just last week, longtime celebrity Mario Lopez went on The Candace Owens show where he made a statement on transgender kids that shouldn’t have been controversial.

Lopez questioned the ability of a three-year-old to make definitive determinations about switching genders. He said it was “dangerous” for parents to support children that young who identify as transgender. Lopez immediately faced a “public” backlash (read: Leftist media) for what was called out as a “controversial” and “insensitive” statement.

His career as a host for the television show “Access Hollywood” now hangs in the balance. Under such pressure, Mario Lopez made an immediate public apology. Apparently, divergence from “groupthink” is not allowed.

Watch the interview with Mario Lopez (the conversation in question begins at 11 minutes):

Conversations around politics and culture have so polarized that, taken together with increased tech censorship and political correctness, American voices are being silenced.

For the political Left, the conversation has shifted from wanting to find real policy solutions to strictly taking an anti-Trump position. The border crisis, for example, is evidence of that.

Serious human rights and security issues surrounding the southern U.S. border are no longer about how we help asylum seekers while maintaining U.S. sovereignty.

Instead, the conversation has become so polarized that, in “resistance against Trump” and “the wall,” members of Congress are actually helping traffic people illegally across the border as a political statement (or stunt) to counter President Trump’s policies.

For example, Senator Cory Booker recently went into Mexico to escort five female asylum seekers into the United States. He’s also a 2020 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

What we don’t hear in these stunts is the voice of the American people. It’s becoming more difficult to isolate authentic opinion versus media hype, especially when people who hold opinions against groupthink are not only harassed but can also lose their livelihood because of them.

Just this week, I was kicked out of a Secular Muslim Women’s Group page on Facebook after one member objected to me for a post I made in support of President Trump.

While I’ve been on that page for years with little ill effect and my political opinions are not secret, the volatility around thinkers who deviate from the approved Leftist script is now swift and evident.

We are not only not being tolerated; we are being silenced. While I’m grateful to have my own platforms which I’ve worked hard to build and are bigger than that Facebook page, not every person who wants to speak out about today’s issues has such a platform.

The more our voices are regulated, the more Americans are inching toward being silenced. Mario Lopez found that out the hard way.

COLUMN BY

Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Clarion Project’s National Correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column with video is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Mine It Here

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A modern economy requires the use of metals and minerals.

Green zealots, because of their intense opposition to mining, are doing all they can to prevent us from getting these important metals here in the United States.

Such strident “keep it in the ground” opposition to mining not only impacts our economy, but our national security to boot.

Thanks to the shale energy revolution, America is finally close to energy independence.  Do we really want to take on a new “mineral dependence” that relies on China and other nations for the crucial rare earths and essential minerals we need?

This is the topic brilliantly unraveled in the captivating new book “Groundbreaking.” Read Duggan Flanakin’s review of it at CFACT.org:

Ned Mamula and Ann Bridges, in their new book Groundbreaking: America’s New Quest for Mineral Independence, demonstrate that these so-called “green” technologies are entirely dependent upon mining and processing of rare-earth minerals, copper, and other minerals. In short, these technologies are not so “green” (that is, clean and renewable) after all.

Nevertheless, the authors agree that, because the emerging economies are entirely dependent upon these “green” technologies, “minerals are the new oil.” Yet the U.S. produces no rare-earth minerals and remains entirely or heavily dependent upon imports for dozens of minerals and metals deemed as “critical” in a brand-new U.S. Geological Survey report.

Overcoming decades of anti-mining indoctrination, mis-education, and near-abandonment of reality depends on convincing users of green technology that they cannot rely on China to prop up the U.S. economy forever.

It requires a massive education campaign to show Americans that the tools of 21st Century technology cannot work without the rare-earth minerals that only China now supplies. Such a campaign will have to overcome the deeply ingrained belief (the result of decades of academic indoctrination) that mining is evil if done by Americans in America.

You can get your copy of this important new book at the CFACT store.

America is blessed with abundant supplies of metals and minerals.

Let’s make darn sure we use them, get the Greens out of the way, and build a brighter future for our nation.

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Tesla: More Than Just A Car Company

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If you know anything about Tesla it’s probably the following two points:

  1. They make electric, semi-autonomous automobiles.
  2. The company is led by controversial billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

A deeper dive, however, reveals some additional information that many individuals may prove interesting, if not surprising, to many.

Humble, Yet Sporty Beginnings

While the South African born Musk (who also co-founded online payment processor PayPal and space technology firm SpaceX, the latter of which he still oversees) has served as the public face of Tesla since 2008, it was actually founded five years earlier by two American engineers – Martin Eberhard and Marc Terpenning.

Tesla’s first electric vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, debuted in 2008 and was far ahead of its time. A prototype of sorts in which Tesla only built 2,450 vehicles, the car achieved performance numbers once exclusively reserved for gasoline-powered sports cars.

0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.

A top speed of 250 mph.

All with a range of 244 miles on a single charge – arguably the most impressive number.

A new version of the Roadster, due in 2020, looks to raise the bar even further on the capabilities of an electric sports car.

Its second vehicle, the Model S sedan, launched in 2012.

Although their main focus is cars, Tesla does have a burgeoning business in solar energy with residential solar roof tiles and panels and their residential home battery the Powerwall.

The company also offers a commercial and utility version of its solar energy and storage solutions.

Although Tesla is first and foremost an automaker, the company, much like its namesake, is just as much an innovator.

To understand where the US’s only fully electric car company has been and their plans for the future, we must answer two initial questions for where the company is staking its biggest claim – what is an electric car and what is automotive autonomy.

What is an Electric Car?

Electric cars come in two varieties – hybrids and battery electric vehicles or EVs. Hybrid electric cars, to varying degrees, utilize both gasoline and electricity to power their engines. EVs are fully electric.

No gas. No combustion engine. Just an electric engine powered by fully rechargeable batteries.

The primary selling point to EVs is zero emissions. It’s an important distinction for the lithium-ion battery-powered Teslas.

Although the company may deal exclusively in high-end, fully electric vehicles, its founding was less as an automaker and more on the principle of creating something that did not consume gasoline.

According to Martin Eberhard:

“I didn’t start as an electric car enthusiast but as a non-fossil fuel enthusiast.” 

In order to realize this early goal, Tesla’s ultimate plan is to control every aspect of production and become a fully vertical electric car company. This includes making its batteries in-house.

What is Automotive (or Vehicle) Autonomy?

Apart from producing wholly electric vehicles, Tesla aims to produce automobiles that one day will be fully autonomous.

What exactly does that mean? Here’s a quick lesson in the six levels of vehicle autonomy:

  • Level 0 – No Automation: Driver controls every aspect of the driving experience.
  • Level 1 – Driver Assistance: Vehicle features one automated system (such as cruise control).
  • Level 2 – Partial Automation: Autonomy includes regulation of speed and lane awareness in optimal conditions (interstate driving, for example), but the driver still monitors and controls vehicle
  • Level 3 – Conditional Automation: Huge leap in technology from level 2 to level 3 with the vehicle able to self-drive in most circumstances, but driver influence is required.
  • Level 4 – High Automation: Vehicle is fully autonomous in most conditions; a driver can still override in certain situations or emergencies.
  • Level 5 – Full Automation: No gas or brake pedals, no steering wheel, no physical driving skills necessary.

Tesla vehicles currently achieve around Level 2 autonomy.

However, the company states that its Tesla Computer chip is already installed on all of their latest car models, and all those due to come after. Significant because, as Elon Musk states:

“All cars being produced all have the hardware necessary – computer and otherwise – for full self-driving. All you need to do is improve the software.”

Translation: The hardware is installed, and the Tesla cars are designed and built to one day drive themselves, but the software, and, really the whole idea of a fully autonomous vehicle remains a work in progress.

Tesla’s First Generation of Automobiles

What isn’t a work in progress are the actual cars that Tesla produces.

We’ve already noted the groundbreaking Roadster, which piqued the curiosity of car enthusiasts everywhere. But the car that grabbed everyone’s attention was the Model S.

After Tesla’s initial public offering in 2010, which generated almost $230 million in capital, the Model S sedan was released in 2012. Running between 235 and 300 miles on a single charge based on the battery options purchased, the Model S represented a leap forward in mass production of electric cars.

In the years following its release, the Model S received accolades from both professionals and car enthusiasts. It was named car of the year by both Motor Trend (2013) and Car and Driver (2015), has been on Consumer Reports Recommended List since 2016.

Produced at an assembly plant in Fremont, California, the car topped the electric car sales charts in both 2015 and 2016. It ranks second only to the Nissan Leaf in total sales (although it’s worth noting the Leaf has been in production longer and is considerably cheaper).

As of today, the Model S has sold over 250,000 units, over half of which are in the US. On its Long Range version, the S can achieve a range of 370 miles on a single charge – the highest level of performance of any current electric car.

In 2015, Tesla launched the Model X crossover SUV. It’s a bit of a misnomer as the X is built on a car chassis, but its styling and function lend itself comparison to SUVs as opposed to sedans.

While not nearly as celebrated as the Model S, Tesla’s crossover still represented a considerable breakthrough for electric vehicles as it was the first commercially available, fully electric SUV on the road.

However, as groundbreaking as they may, both the Model S and the Model X remain out of reach and impractical for most consumers. The Model S ranges in price from $75,000 to near $96,000 and the Model X runs from $81,000 to over $102,000 (not counting electric car incentives or gas savings).

Tesla, though, is looking to expand its customer base.

The Model 3 and Model Y

The entry-level Model 3, which is already in production, and the mid-range Model Y, set to start production in 2020 (although it is available for order), look to bring Tesla into a crowded and highly competitive market segment.

Starting at $35,000, the Model 3 will be in direct competition with the aforementioned Nissan Leaf, as well as the Chevy Bolt, Hyundai Kona, and Kia Niro.

The Model Y will serve as Tesla’s company crossover – an increasingly popular segment within the car industry. The purchase price starts at $48,000.

Compared to the established line of Tesla autos, the Model 3 and Model Y, don’t offer anything remarkably new, except of course for the lower price points.

What they do signal though, is the beginning of a new business model for Tesla, and for the auto industry as a whole – online car purchasing. The move will pit Tesla against the more traditional dealership-driven car buying method, which has been protected by state laws for decades.

Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety president Rosemary Shahan elaborates on what the change would mean for future customers:

“What Tesla is proposing is actually consumer-friendly. It gives you more of an opportunity to take control of the action, and you’re not on the dealer’s turf.” 

Although it does mean lost jobs for some at Tesla, according to a memo Musk sent to employees, the ultimate goal is affordability:

“Unfortunately, this means that some jobs will be impacted or transitioned to other areas of the business. This is a hard decision, but it [store closings] is necessary to make our cars more affordable.”

Tesla’s Future

Much like the transition to online-only vehicle sales and bringing battery production in-house, there is only one word that aptly describes Tesla’s outlook for the future – ambitious.

For starters, Tesla has plans to increase its already expansive network of superchargers, the electric car equivalent of a gas station. In doubling its network, as well as releasing a next-gen version, the plans are to have superchargers close to 95% of the population in “active” markets – read: where a lot Tesla’s have been purchased.

Next up is the bold claim from Musk (which he has a habit of making) is that Tesla plans on having a full network of robotaxis available at some point in 2020. In Musk’s words:

“I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere. From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year, maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we’ll have over a million robotaxis on the road. The fleet wakes up with an over the air update; that’s all it takes.”

Finally, it’s worth noting that Tesla even has plans for its first truck, which would ultimately match its offerings with every other major manufacturer. Musk called the new vehicle a “cyberpunk truck” at a recent shareholders meetings.

From a sports car to a pick-up truck and all-electric points in between, Tesla has indeed made the transition from car maker to innovator.  Not too bad for a company that started merely as a means to save a few fossil fuels.

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EDITORS NOTE: This PartCatalog.com column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.