Pizza

In a recent post, I suggested that climate change hysterics will go to any length to frighten the public, and in so doing, get sheeple to go along with their near-insane ideas for "saving the planet." These hysterics (almost all on the Left) have learned from Covid hysterics (almost all on the Left) that a combination of faux-expert opinion, abuse of scientific data, lack of context, and, the jettisoning of common sense lead to authoritarian dictates that are lauded by a dishonest media and embraced by leftist politicians and bureaucrats. Nothing exemplifies this more than "pizza-gate" in New York City.

The lunatic climate fringe has decided that wood-fired and coal pizza ovens are a threat to the planet and as a consequence, have used their petty dictator credentials (NYC is wholly controlled by the Democrats) to over-regulate these commercial ovens. Mom and Pop pizza places must install scrubbers to reduce emissions from these evil ovens and have yearly inspections by paid "engineers"—all in an effort to save us from climate armageddon.

Steven Kruiser comments:

In a city with rats the size of ponies and crime rates that are surging, the climate change weirdos would have people believe that the aroma from the neighborhood pizza joint is the real problem. Imagine how mentally unbalanced you’d have to be to buy into that without question.

Questioning the wisdom of these regulations makes one a climate "denier." But no matter, saving the planet trumps common sense every time.

The Left is very big on virtue signalling, particularly when it is tied to meaningless gestures that accomplish nothing, but do make the lives of others miserable. The cost of the NYC pizza regulations is about $20,000, enough to create significant financial stress for a small pizza place.

As we see calls for the elimination of gas stoves, farming, power planets, etc., etc., it's almost as if the climate change hysterics want to degrade the quality of living for everyone—except of course those who have the financial wherewithal to circumvent their authoritarian dictates. 

The only response is push back—hard, unrelenting, and immune to the demonization that will surely follow. Let's hope that sanity prevails in NYC and that pizza lovers come together to quash these ridiculous regulations.

 

Hunter's "Justice"

Hunter Biden is a family member at the pinnacle of the Democrat elite. As such, he knows he is protected by the deep state, the DoJ and the law enforcement agencies who work for them. And because he knows this, Hunter has made millions upon millions of dollars from foreign companies that seemed to think he was an expert on things he knows nothing about. In reality, Hunter promised them access to his father and the influence his father wielded. Hunter Biden's connections have enriched not only Hunter, but many other members of the Biden family. It appears that they have also enriched the "big guy"—Joe Biden himself. Even more important than that, it appears that the FBI and the DoJ have slow-walked an investigation of Hunter Biden and limited it so that it would not extend and uncover corruption on the part of Joe Biden himself. Bank records, emails, text messages, whistleblowers, and the personal testimony of people who witness all of this be damned, the deep state had decided that Hunter will skate.

It is true that the DoJ recently announced that Hunter Biden will plea out to tax evasion misdemeanors and one felony charge arising from falsifying a gun permit. He's a crack addict, so we have to be understanding of these minor oversights. 

Meanwhile, the president's many defenders in the propaganda media can now state that he has faced "justice" like any other American. Seriously?

Law Professor Jonathan Turley quipped, "This is gonna look like you ticketed the getaway driver after a bank robbery."

Nah, it more like charging a terrorist bomber with littering the sidewalk outside the bombed building.

Hunter Biden is the bag man, but the real story is Biden family corruption and whether Joe Biden accepted $5 million as a bribe for ... some unknown area of influence. Ukraine? China? The list is long.

Nonetheless, it appears that the FBI under Merrick Garland (you know, the guy who Barack Obama recommended for SCOTUS) has decided that any investigation into Hunter's financial dealing with foreign entities would lead indirectly via shell company after shell company and then to father Joe. And that would be unpleasant. So ... they limit the FBI investigation to Hunter's tax returns and a gun permit and then give him a slap on the wrist when the rest of us would face jail time.

Sanctimonious Democrats argue, "No one is above the law ..." when they talk about the unprecedented prosecution of an ex-President over a document dispute and its aftermath. It's all about obstruction of justice, they solemnly intone. Maybe they should append the following phrase, "... when you're member of the opposition party who represents a threat the Democrat power or narrative, otherwise ... nope."

UPDATE (06-22-2023):

It appears that the Democrats are "very concerned" about fishing trips and jet rides offered 15 years ago to GOP appointed SCOTUS justices, but are totally unconcerned about a major on-going bribery scandal investigation that has been quashed by another SCOTUS nominee who thankfully never made it to the court—Merrick Garland. As AG, Garland misleads the public by telling us that the Biden investigators had free rein to go wherever the facts lead. Heh—reliable whistleblowers within the DoJ and IRS say differently.

Kim Strassel reports:

Mr. Shapley, leader of an elite team of agents specializing in international tax investigations, was brought in as supervisor of the Hunter case in January 2020. He says he quickly was stopped from taking normal investigatory steps. One example: He says his team was told in September 2020 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf that they couldn’t pursue a search warrant of Joe Biden’s guest house (Hunter’s onetime residence) because of the “optics” and because “there is no way we will get that approved.”

In December 2020 the team wanted to search a storage unit in Virginia where Hunter had moved business documents. Ms. Wolf again objected, then tipped off Hunter’s defense counsel, “ruining our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed,” Mr. Shapley said. Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters also tipped Hunter’s Secret Service team to a proposed “day of action” in which members of U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s team intended to conduct surprise interviews of witnesses—including Hunter. This gave a group “close to Hunter” the opportunity to “obstruct the approach,” and of the “12 interviews we hoped to conduct on our day of action, we only got one substantive interview.” Hunter lawyered up.

Along the way, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony, Ms. Wolf told investigators not to ask any questions about “dad” or “the big guy.” They were blocked from pursuing leads about the financial transactions of Hunter’s children, since she said they’d get “into hot water if we interview the president’s grandchildren.” They were ordered not to look into evidence of campaign-finance violations. They were told to take Hunter’s name off official document requests, which Mr. Shapley said was “absolutely absurd.” The second whistleblower told the committee that he became “sick of fighting to do what’s right.”

The IRS team nonetheless prepared a document in late 2021 covering tax years 2014-19, in which it recommended charging Hunter with felony tax evasion, felony false tax returns, and failures to pay tax. Mr. Shapley says this was partially based on Hunter’s “textbook” tax evasion of declaring his income from the Ukrainian firm Burisma as a “loan.” Mr. Shapley says the team was also looking into a Foreign Agents Registration Act case.

According to Mr. Shapley, the Weiss team was prepared to pursue these charges but was blocked by Biden appointees—despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s public claim of Mr. Weiss’s independence. 

You'd think there'd be teams of reporters from the NYT and WaPo, CBS, NBC and others rushing in to investigate this, blowing this scandal wide open (and likely leading to the threat of impeachment of Biden (and maybe Garland), unless Biden withdraws from the 2024 race). You'd think wrong.

The actions of Biden's team are so blatant, it's shocking. Their in-your-face obstruction of justice makes anything that their nemesis, Donald Trump, did in the now infamous "Documents Scandal" look like a speeding ticket. Note that Trump has been accused by Biden's DoJ with 37 counts of felony wrong-doing. There has yet to be any meaningful indictment (a plea deal doesn't count) of anyone associated with the Biden family grift.

Dumb Question

Joe Biden was recently asked about the growing allegations of a $5M bribe by a Ukrainian businessmen while he was VP under Barack Obama. Typical of his extemporaneous "answers" to any question he is asked, Biden laughed manically and then asked why such a "dumb question" was asked.  Imagine the media response if any GOP president responded in that manner.

Yet the propaganda media continues to protect our cognitively disabled and (very likely, corrupt) president—over and over again. The Democrats' trained hamsters in the media are notably incurious about this scandal, so much so that they simply don't investigate or report on it. David Marcus comments:

If they weren’t so deeply troubling, the numbers revealed by Media Research Center on the amount of time major network news spent on the alleged Biden bribery scandal would be laughable. Between June 8th and June 12th, the days following the bombshell breaking of the Biden story as well as the announcement of Donald Trump’s second indictment, ABC, CBS, and NBC spent 291 minutes on Trump, and not a single second on the Biden corruption saga. [emphasis mine]

The Democrat fantasy is that Biden is pure as the wind-driven snow, a little loopy maybe, but still pure. The reality is that Biden has worked with others in his family to enrich himself and all of them by peddling influence in unethical (at best) or criminal (at worst) ways. Entire books (e.g., here) with detailed sourcing have been written on the subject.

So despite Herculean efforts by the propaganda media (NYT, WaPo, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABS, etc.), reality will collide with progressive fantasy and the result will be ugly for Biden and the Dems ... unless ... the Dems do the right thing and move to ensure that a potentially corrupt man with dementia does not run in 2024.

Here are a few more "dumb questions:"  Since multiple polls indicate that the Democrats themselves have grave reservations about Biden, and a significant percentage of Dems (1) don't believe he is up to the job of President and (2) prefer he wouldn't run, why is no one other than RFK, Jr. challenging him in a primary. Are the Dems really so regimented that they want a cognitively disabled man in the Oval Office? Do they think that's good for the country? Are there no younger Dems waiting in the wings?

The GOP have at least four of five legitimate opponents to an ex-presdient. They're not afraid to question his style and his leadership, and state unequivocally that it's time to move on. Are the Democrats really so enamoured of Biden that they remain silent?

Some would argue that the Dems exhibit party disipline, while the GOP does not. They march in lock step, never questioning the narrative (in this case, that Biden's presidency is a resounding success). Only a maverick like RFK, Jr. steps up, and he is ridiculed by many in the party. Or maybe they're pragmatists, recogizing that anyone who can fog a mirror will likely beat Donald Trump and that the GOP will self-immolate.

But still, Joe Biden? The Dems better hope that the GOP does them a favor, and the realty of Biden's bribery scandal prevails. Biden can then be forced not to run in 2024 and that will be good for the Dems and far more important, good for the country.

No Matter

I have been an owner of an electric vehicle (EV) for longer than (guessing here) 99.5% of all automobile owners in the United States. I chose to buy an EV long before it became fashionable because as an engineer, my assessment was that the technology is: (1) simpler (less room for failure), (2) higher performance (the torque curve of an electric motor tells the story), (3) more environmentally friendly ("long tail-pipe" arguments are both dishonest and generally incorrect) than equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, and (4) considerably less expense to maintain and the drive. Sure, there are other parameters that must guide the decision to acquire an EV, including range limitations and initial cost, but for the vast majority of drivers, EVs are simply a better option.

Today, EVs are in fashion for many automotive buyers and the segment is the fastest growing for all cars, and soon, many light trucks. It's ironic, therefore, that climate change advocates are working overtime to limit our supply of electricity. Glen Reynolds writes:

Why is it that greens want everyone to drive electric cars but don’t want people to have electricity? Or, it seems, the cars.

I noted last week in these pages how the people who want everyone to have an electric car in the garage have also been pursuing policies that, per the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s latest report, are likely to result in rolling blackouts this summer.

Fossil and nuclear plants are being taken offline (bye, Indian Point!) while their replacement with “renewables” like wind and solar lags and often fails to produce power when it’s most needed.

In a way, climate alarmists are this era's Luddites. They want all of us to have less—power, food, transportation, variety, farming, etc.—all in the name of "saving the planet" from their apocalyptic fantasies. 

Take the recent Canadian forest fires that blanketed the northeast USA in smoke for a few days last week. According to the alarmists and the propaganda media narrative (e.g., here) that supported them, there's nothing that climate change can't do—including forest fires.

No matter that the same activists who tell us the climate apocalypse is coming are the people who have used lawfare and compliant politicians to block logging that would thin forests and reduce the supply of carbon based-material (i.e., trees) that feed forest fires. No matter that progressive government has failed miserably at overall forest management including the creation of fire breaks, ground cover removal, and tree culling. No matter that forest fires have occurred for millions of years. No matter the the fires that occurred at least in part due to lawfare and mismanagement introduced more pollutants into the atmosphere than human activity introduces during a time period many times longer than the fire season.

No matter that virtually every one of the activists' predictions of catastrophe have failed to materialize. No matter that no one can accurately provide a quantitative indication of the degree to which human activity affects climate. No matter the climate changes has occurred for millions of years and that major climate changes are natural and driven by things others than human activities (there were no humans for 99.999 percent of pre-history. 

No matter!

Indictment

There's no upside to Donald Trump winning the GOP nomination for president in the 2024 elections, and that makes the events of the past few days complicated.

On the one hand, Trump, if nominated, will likely lose the general election, even though he is running against the most incompetent, ineffective, and inexcusably preposterous administration in my lifetime. As a consequence, the nation will (1) continue on a downward path of economic and domestic decline (e.g., inflation, energy scarcity, crime, illegal immigration, the degradation of major cities); (2) struggle under authoritarian mandates that serve to reinforce leftist narratives, and (3) countenance an incompetent foreign policy that weakens our global position and emboldens our adversaries.

On the other hand, Trump may win (Democrat governance is that toxic) and as a consequence, the nation will again be roiled in a never-ending series of indictments, impeachments, hoaxes, fake news, and media hysteria that will do little to improve the lives of average citizens.

So on a theoretical level, any event that causes Trump to NOT be the GOP nominee is a good thing. But that's theoretical only.

In real life, the manner in which the Democrats, the deep state in general, and the DoJ as its representative have chosen to stop Trump is unprecedented in our history, blatantly partisan, and correctly perceived as a Stalinesque example of "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."

It's interesting that the indictments against Donald Trump handed down yesterday have been conveniently timed to smother any news about an alleged case of bribery against Joe Biden (while he was vice president in the Obama administration). Biden has enriched himself and his family over multiple decades, yet the DoJ has slow-walked any investigation into allegations of influence peddling. David Harsanyi comments:

I know, I know, it's getting tedious asking people to imagine the thermonuclear media blast they'd be swept up in if a Republican president had been accused of bribery by an FBI informant. This is the way of the world. To this point, the debate over the proper pronunciation of Ron DeSantis' last name has gotten more coverage than the president possibly pocketing millions of dollars through shell corporations.

Though, I suppose that's not exactly right. Biden's Praetorian Guard have begun to preemptively frame chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, as some devious nut for demanding the FBI hand over documents. This is what they did to Devin Nunes, who turned out to be correct in his assessment of the Russia collusion investigation.

Whatever the case, there isn't a real journalist in the universe -- not a beat reporter or opinion writer or copy editor -- who wouldn't want to read an informant's account of a sitting president taking a bribe. You can debunk it. You can prove it. But you want to see it.

But therein lies the problem. There aren't many journalists left.

True, but there are hundreds of partisan propagandists, who will stop at nothing to protect their chosen party, regardless of the situation.

So for everyone one who sanctimoniously proclaims that "NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW," thereby justifying this politically-motivated indictment of a former president, I would suggest applying the same sentiment to allegations against Biden and ask:

Why has the DoJ investigated Trump, called grand juries in two locations, leaked investigative details to a ravenous media who gladly suggest that Trump is guilty of espionage, built a case against him, and handed down indictments in 11 months total? Yet the same DoJ refused to apply the same zeal to investigate a bona fide allegation of bribery again a now-sitting president. Why after at least 24 months has nothing happened? In fact, why does the DoJ refuse to even provide details of the allegation contained in a public document?

You know why, and so does any observer who has a few more functioning brain cells than the current President of the United States.

UPDATE (6/12/2023):

Eli Lake summarizes nicely when he writes:

The former president's actions were craven, reckless and stupid. So is the decision to prosecute him for violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

If the federal indictment is to be believed (and the actions of the DoJ over the past few years makes that a very BIG "if"), Lake notes:

Reading through the indictment of Donald Trump, one is tempted to ask if the man wanted to be caught. It reads like a bad comic novel.

The former president is the bumbling protagonist, scheming with an underling to hide boxes of documents from the FBI and his lawyers. Trump boasts to a writer and publisher that he is showing them a classified document—on a tape in which he consented to being recorded.

Trump is often "craven, reckless and stupid," but that does not justify the DoJ (and the FBI, intelligence agencies, etc) promoting a Russia hoax that lead to a special prosecutor (who came up empty) or the Democrats impeaching Trump twice on largely baseless charges (that failed in trial), or a local DA who was elected on the promise he'd indict Trump, or a propaganda media (an aggressive arm of the Democrat party that reported false and misleading information for four years). 

The "craven, reckless and stupid" actions of each of these entities from 2016 to the present day have gravely damaged their credibility. They are viewed by many as partisan and dishonest, making their claims that "no one is above the law" absolutely laughable.

Beaches

Where I live, we're very fortunate. People travel from all over the world to visit the ocean beaches that are little more than a few miles from our home. If those beaches were to disappear, it would be a tragedy. In fact, a tragedy that had been predicted by the house organ of the Left, The New York Times. In a typically hysterical article, the NYT claimed that "some experts say that most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States will be gone in 25 years." That prediction was made in 1995 ... 28 years ago!

Heh, last time I checked, the broad white-sand beaches and the tens of thousands of people who visit them daily are doing just fine, thank you very much.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a piece that discussed many of the doomsday predictions made by climate alarmists. Every one was wrong, every one had no basis in science, and every one was made to frighten people and promote an agenda that concentrates regulatory power in the hands of a few true believers.

You'd think that when prediction after prediction doesn't come to pass, people would begin to question those making the predictions and the pseudo-science that supports their claims. But that would require that they question the narrative—and that won't do. So instead, they normalize insanity, replacing reality with fantasy. And once you do that for one thing, you're more prone to do it for others as well.

But maybe, just maybe, things are changing. Richard Fernandez tweets:

I hope he's right. The catastrophic policies implemented by Covid hysterics have caused many to question the guidance of "experts" in a variety of politically charged disciplines (including climate).

The Atlantic beaches in my neighborhood are still there, despite what the NYT experts predicted. They're real ... and sandy ... and not going anywhere any time soon. They're a stark reminder that experts, when driven by a political agenda rather that objective reality, are wrong far more often than they're right.

UPDATE-1:

Climate hysterics are at work across the globe, and like COVID hysterics who dominated the past few years, they have begun to exhibit a level of authoritarianism that is both absurd and dangerous at the same time. Jamie Blackett discusses climate lunacy in the Netherlands:

The Dutch have a particular horror of fascism. They bravely resisted the Nazis during the Second World War, as the German occupation of the Netherlands cut off food and fuel shipments. During the “Hunger Winter,” which lasted from 1944 until the Allied liberation in 1945, at least 22,000 Dutch people died from malnutrition.

That experience branded the national character with a strongly libertarian streak. It also explains why, post-war, the Netherlands created the most successful agricultural economy on the planet out of the ruins.

But wrecking a pivotal element of the Dutch economy, not to mention a source of food that feeds millions is nothing compared to "saving the planet." Climate alarmists within the EU (the Netherlands is a member) have decided (without any meaningful basis in actual science) that "nitrogen emissions" are a threat. Blackett explains:

EU climate laws have led the Dutch government to commit to reducing nitrogen emissions by 50 percent by 2030. To achieve this, the government has threatened to withdraw farmers’ licenses to farm because of their high nitrogen emissions, mainly stemming from cow dung and fertilizers. Without their licenses, farmers won’t be able to borrow money, putting many in financial peril. Farmers feel they are being scapegoated even though they farm efficiently. Nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands have fallen 50 percent since 1990—while airlines and other emitters show little restraint in the face of climate change.

Dutch farmers feel they are being targeted unnecessarily and are pushing back ... hard! Those of us in the USA who are also being affected by absurd climate regulations should do the same. 

Biden's climate tzar, John Kerry—a prominent member of the administration's Team of 1s and a man who wouldn't recognize actual science if he tripped over it on the way to his private jet—suggested that possibly the USA will need to regulate farming to save the planet. The uproar that followed caused the administration to walk back his idiotic comments, but that doesn't mean the topic won't arise again.

UPDATE-2 (06-22-2023):

One of the world's most-recognized climate change advocates, Greta Thunberg, is a young person whose commentary on climate is in many ways representative of the mindless hysteria that pervades the narrative promoted by many climate activists. Oliver Lane writes:

Today is the anniversary of a doomsday prediction made by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg when she was just 15 years old June 21st 2018, stating the human race had five years to end fossil fuels or face certain death. She wrote then:

A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.

While these alarming, but later forgotten warnings with very definite and certain sounding timescales are a major part of green propaganda, this particular instance has taken on a life of its own due to the Streisand Effect, given as the deadline date approached Thunberg was caught having deleted the claim.

It's a day after the apocalypse was supposed to have happened, and ... um ... we're all still here.

The sad thing is that the propaganda media gives Thunberg far more attention than she deserves. Why? Because regardless of the scientific vacuity of her pronouncements and her utter lack of scientific credentials, she promotes the narrative that they emphasize—without context or alternative views—on a daily basis.

UPDATE-3 (06-23-2023):

In celebration of Greta's reference to an apocalyptic climate prediction (see Update-2), we encounter this:

Of course, models are inherently inaccurate, so some variance is to be expected, but if the models represented legitimate science, some would overestimate and others would underestimate temperature trends against actual measured results. Problem is: They all overestimate. That's an indication of narrative bias—the "researchers" want to confirm the narrative, not provide accurate indicators of future climate change.