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Move Oregon’s Border, also known as Greater Idaho, confirmed Tuesday that the initiative to move swaths of largely rural eastern and southern Oregon into Idaho qualified for the May 18 special election ballot in five counties: Baker, Grant, Lake, Malheur and Sherman.

In Baker County, organizers far exceeded the 496 signatures required by submitting 746, with the clerk reporting that 630 were accepted. The county population is about 16,000.

Larry Elder.

Last week, I testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties regarding H.R. 40: Examining the Path to Reparative Justice in America. In other words, reparations. This is the first part of the statement I submitted:

“Reparations is the extraction of money from people who were never slave owners to be given to people who were never slaves.”

The risks of communicating extreme climate forecasts

John Kerry: Climate Inaction is a “Mutual Suicide Pact”  Pick Up The Green Man’s Burden….

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The periodic debate regarding raising the minimum wage has resurfaced once again, only this time the argument is connected to the larger discussion surrounding a sprawling, $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill; for some inexplicable reason. In the bill unveiled by House Democrats last Friday, if passed, the minimum wage would increase incrementally from the current $7.25 per hour to $9.50 per hour this year, and eventually escalate to $15 per hour by 2025. Prominent Democrats across the board have supported the idea, including President Joe Biden.

If we deep-dive the issue in trying to understand its full impact, we can learn a great deal about the pros and cons of increasing the minimum wage; particularly with the cons. But there are two pieces of information that are difficult to come by. How, specifically, did we arrive at the number of $15? And, based on the Democrats’ reluctance to acknowledge the negative impacts of a minimum wage increase, why don’t we just add a zero to the number and increase the minimum wage to $150 per hour?

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A Washington appeals court struck down an onerous local gun storage ordinance in a victory for Second Amendment activists, who pushed a state law designed to stop strict gun laws from popping up in liberal localities.

John Kerry Disappointed Australia Wants to Keep Exporting Coal

‘Problem of missing ice’ finally solved by movement of the earth’s crust

Cloud-Making Aerosol Could Devastate Polar Sea Ice

Attenborough twisted the truth about dying walrus: why believe him on climate change?

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Something is amiss with Canadian butter, according to local foodies, who have been arguing for weeks that their blocks are harder to spread than usual.

These so-called “buttergate” anecdotes have been spreading online, with many Canadians complaining that their butter does not soften at room temperature.

Food experts have churned up palm fat in cow feed as a likely culprit.

The dairy industry insists the claims are unfounded, but has created a working group to seek answers.

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A Chambers County resident filed a class-action lawsuit against electricity retailer Griddy on Monday, accusing the provider of price gouging customers during last week’s freeze. She is seeking $1 billion in relief for affected customers.

Attorneys for Lisa Khoury said in the lawsuit that her bill spiked to $9,340 the week of the storm, compared to her average monthly bills that range from $200 to $250. Griddy drafted payments from Khoury’s bank account several times, according to the lawsuit, pulling $1,200 before she blocked further charges from her bank. She still owes thousands.

Steve Sailer.

Raj Chetty ran the numbers.

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The chief of the Cherokee Nation has asked Jeep to stop using the tribe’s name on its SUVs. In a statement to Car and Driver, Chuck Hoskin, Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said it’s about time.

I suspect that this is a ploy to try to squeeze some money out of Jeep for the use of the name. I would be delighted to be wrong, but I doubt it.

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Senate Minority Leader (again) Mitch McConnell and Nikki Haley badly miscalculated the American electorate, unless they are willing servants of Xi and the Thirty American Tyrants, furthering what Time proudly celebrated as a grand and good conspiracy against real, legitimate voters in their several states producing the wrong result again. To the extent the McConnell-Haley contingent succeed in clinging to control of the Republican Party, while the left asserts full control over the Democratic Party and the instruments of national power, they will hasten the end of the Republican Party, like the Whigs before them. President Trump and the portion of the real electorate that does not want a socialist America is signaling clearly that they intend to transform the Republican Party, rather than creating a new party from scratch. We are living in very interesting times.

The Paris Accords Are A Boon For China

Poll: Majority Of Trump Voters Believe In Climate Change But Question The Left’s Extreme Solutions

Solar panels in Sahara could boost renewable energy but damage the global climate – here’s why  So rather than solar panels, use heat exchangers.

What a 1900s Wildlife Survey Reveals About Climate Change

Environmental Justice Risks from Hyper-Local Monitoring are Exaggerated

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The Texas blackouts are shaping up to be the costliest disaster in state history, and the loss of life remains unknown. People are justifiably very angry. And when people are angry, politicians look around for someone to blame. Many have trotted out their favorite villains for the occasion. Many on the right have picked Don Quixote’s old enemy, the windmill, while many on the left jumped at the chance to blame deregulation. Neither explanation really holds up. While it will be some time before all the specifics are known, what we do know doesn’t support any easy political narrative.

The central fact about the chain of events that led to the blackouts is deceptively simple: It got super cold.

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I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

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I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

 Texas freeze shows a chilling truth – how the rich use climate change to divide us  (The Guardian)

NOAA’s Climate Disaster Claims Are A Sham

The Dangers of Climate Change Activists

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If even the Narrative Media are admitting it, it must be a big deal.

Audacious Epigone boils it down.

You are walking through the woods when you come upon a grizzly bear. It sees you and draws near. Whatever you’re able to do in the next few moments constitute the full the extent of your “natural rights” in this world. Everything else is a privilege.

The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power

Fact: polar bears are thriving despite sea ice loss according to the scientific literature

HadCRUT5 shows 14% more global warming since 1850 than HadCRUT4

Munging The Sea Level Data

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Needless to say, they are not happy — they’re losing the Washington Generals and possibly getting a real opponent for the first time in my lifetime.

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Scott Adams refers to Cialdini as “Godzilla” in the field of persuasion.

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The university was once a unity per se that carried its end in its very practices of education and inquiry. It is now a unity per accidens, a contingent conglomeration of means that serve changing extrinsic ends, a knowledge corporation that sells goods of “know-how” in the service of ends determined by advanced techno-capitalist societies. The philosopher Benedict Ashley, educated in the early years of the University of Chicago’s remarkable undergraduate program, writes in his magnum opus, The Way toward Wisdom: “The very term ‘university’ means many-looking-toward-one, and is related to the term ‘universe,’ the whole of reality. Thus, the name no longer seems appropriate to such a fragmented modern institution whose unity is provided only by a financial administration and perhaps a sports team.”

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The reality is that there is little consensus among economists about the effects of the minimum wage on aggregate employment.

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I live in Texas and write about climate science and energy, so I get a lot of questions about the recent problems. My wife and I are OK, we have a natural gas powered generator and did not lose power like most people did earlier this week. We also had a broken pipe, but it was outside the house, and I was eventually able to cap it, with the help of a neighbor, after the normal (for me) three trips to the hardware store and two failed attempts.

I am seriously considering installing a gas-powered emergency generator.

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Has Trump derangement syndrome cost Texan lives? Back in 2017, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed paying Coal and Nuclear Power Stations to keep at least 90 days worth of fuel onsite, for disaster resilience. At the time the resilience proposal was widely criticised as being a thinly disguised Trump scheme to pump government money into the coal and nuclear industries. But in hindsight, a bit more resilience might have saved Texas from days of painful electricity blackouts.

Reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles may have triggered Neanderthal extinction — and it could happen again (CNN) If we say ‘may’ and ‘could’, we can lie like a run and nobody can prove us wrong!

Friday Funny: nature makes a mockery of month-ahead model forecasts.

Let’s Review 50 Years Of Dire Climate Forecasts And What Actually Happened

Eco-friendly golf balls for a greener game  And nothing is more important than sustainable green balls.

Junk Grade Models: Even Short-Term Climate And Weather Modelers Get It All Wrong

Cold Snaps Expose Climate Science Fragility

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As reported here previously, former Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is on trial for “kidnapping” due to his actions as interior minister in closing Italian ports to migrant ferries run by NGOs. The judge in the case is a fellow named Nunzio Sarpietro.

As it happens, Judge Sarpietro was recently discovered dining in a restaurant in Rome, in an “orange zone” where no restaurants are allowed to be open because of the Wuhan Coronavirus. Like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and many other grandees, the esteemed judge is not bound by lockdown rules — when he wants to dine out with his daughter, he dines out with his daughter. Let the peons stay at home and eat gruel!

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The inauguration of President Biden as the 46th US President hasn’t produced quite the catharsis that Democrats (and others) had hoped for. After only a few months of one-party rule in Washington, DC—and the sputtering finale of impeachment—there should be fear among Democrats that attention will return to the signs of real damage done to the progressive/liberal project in the wake of its collision with the Trump train.

The shifting of both American political parties into one another’s former political spaces has been head-spinning. The trend of Republicans turning into the party of labor and Democrats becoming a party of capital looks to continue in the 2020s—something few people outside of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot would have guessed 30 years ago. And it turns out that the promise of a Democrat-voting bloc made up of well-educated whites, blacks, and the growing Hispanic population delivering a decades-long progressive era in American politics is not coming to pass.

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The former defense secretary Robert Gates famously wrote that Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” If the early days of his presidency are any indication, Biden is determined to prove him right.

‘Climate expert’ Bill Gates’ synthetic beef folly

4 sustainability experts on how they’d spend Elon Musk’s $100 million climate commitment  Loving the opportunity to spend Other People’s Money — as experts live to do.

Researchers rethink life in a cold climate after Antarctic find  Turns out that The Science isn’t all that hot, no pun intended.

Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texa

John Kerry Says We Have 9 Years Left Until Climate Catastrophe  Gee, usually the predictions are 10 years out.

Poor Swelter as Urban Areas of U.S. Southwest Get Hotter  Um … not this month.

The Other McCain points out the nude monarch in the room.

Everybody knows this, but you’re not supposed to say it….

A new study from renowned University of Hamburg researcher Roland Wiesendanger concludes the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the “cause” of COVID-19.

Popular ‘Science’.

But it might as well.

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eviewing “Repressive Tolerance” and other works by Herbert Marcuse, the quack who became America’s most influential thinker

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The most frustrating argument is the one you agree with but is made badly. With the death yesterday of Rush Limbaugh, NRO’s Michael Brendan Dougherty reflected on the division between the Rush Limbaugh-wing of conservatism and Roger Scruton-wing; and how they will always have an uneasy alliance. He also laments, “If anything, considering the place of Rush Limbaugh in his nation’s political life is to realize that conservatism has been late to develop a voice that cuts in somewhere between its aloof intellectuals and aggro broadcasters. Conservatism is still searching for a middlebrow voice.” Alas, he fails to see his own role in finding the middlebrow voice, and blames Rush Limbaugh for the failings of institutional conservatism, Michael Brendan Dougherty very much included. Rush Limbaugh fulfilled a specific role in conservatism, and he fulfilled it very well. Scruton, likewise, fulfilled a specific role, and did so very well. Leftists are well aware of the idea of “Diversity of Tactics,” and letting different people use their talents in different ways to get effect. The failure on the right was of those who thought there was only one way to do things -and refused to adapt either to the success of Limbaugh, the critiques of Scruton, or the manifest failures of conservatism.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Blackness, as has been discussed here many times, is a negative identity. Black identity depends entirely on the relationship between blacks and whites, real and imagined. Everything about being black in America revolves around the black relationship with whites. Remove whites from the equation and blackness has no meaning. If whites pack up and leave, blacks will have to follow them, as whites are their reason to exist now.

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In what pundits and pols are beginning to dub “a fight for the soul of the Republican Party,” Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump signaled last week they would be backing disparate candidates for Republican nominations.

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One of the notable features of 21st century life is that America’s blue states are failing and losing population, while red states are thriving and growing. This is blindingly obvious to anyone who travels around the country, or to those who have seen half of their friends move to Nashville. But today Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity sent an email that shows the trend graphically.

John Hinderaker at PowerLine.

I agree. Anyone who sends a kid to a government school these days is committing child abuse.

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

Sen. Ted Cruz is under attack for flying to Mexico while Texas is facing severe winter weather and power outages. Cruz explained why he went there:

With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.

If true (and I’m unaware of any reason to believe it isn’t), this is a complete defense to the attack on Cruz. Those who suggest that he was derelict in his duty as a Senator should explain what Cruz could have done to help his state, beyond having his staff in constant contact with officials, during the brief time he was on this trip.

But they won’t, they’re just grasping at any excuse to trash-talk Cruz.

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Today the French government published its defense in the court case brought by several environmental groups claiming that the French government is not keeping its commitments to the 2015 Paris agreement.

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A conservative women’s group cannot paint its own mural on New York City streets even after Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed a yellow “Black Lives Matter” mural to be painted outside Trump Tower, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield said Women for America First, a supporter of Republican former President Donald Trump, did not show that the city violated its First Amendment rights in rejected its mural “Engaging, Inspiring and Empowering Women to Make a Difference!”

The judge said the city may apply reasonable, viewpoint-neutral restrictions to street surfaces, which are typically reserved for signage to promote traffic safety and are not “message boards for private expression.”

Steve Sailer follows the Science.

Scientific-minded dissidents frequently compare today’s orthodoxy that the cause of whatever ails blacks is—and, indeed, must be—white racism to discarded scientific constructs such as phlogiston in chemistry and aether in physics. But the most informative comparison might be to the long, unfortunate hold of the miasma theory of disease on medical thought.

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One of the things that happened to stories was memetics. Stories proliferate or decline based on their own Darwinian logic. They may reproduce if they are funny, or if they flatter the listener, or if they are set to a catchy tune. Consider my simplified story of history: isn’t it pleasing in its symmetry? Doesn’t “both eras had their benefits and challenges” sound like something a sophisticated person would say? But memetics isn’t inherently hostile to truth and unity. It produces Harambe, not Lysenkoism. Stories, like Soviet agronomists, are corrupted by power.