Victor Davis Hanson.

Matt Larson (“Hoover has gone too far,” Nov. 19, 2020) cited me among others in his Stanford Daily angry attack on Hoover Institution scholars. He alleges that we at Hoover are purportedly “more interested in making money and promoting right-wing politics than in doing actual academic research.” Larson also charges that “Hoover fellows constitute a veritable wall of shame. They have been involved in just about every type of skeezy behavior imaginable.” These are serious writs against our institution and yet mostly leveled without substantiation.

My colleagues can address these particular loaded charges of “every type of skeezy behavior imaginable” in their own fashion. But to the degree that these unfounded stereotypes pertain to me, and for the record, I have never received any compensation for media appearances. I am not “making money” on corporate boards. Nor have I ever worked in “right wing politics” — or on any campaign of either party. I am a registered independent voter without party affiliation, and the author of over 20 scholarly books on classical, agrarian and military history and culture. Scholarship, and its dissemination among the broader public, are the major criteria by which all Hoover senior fellows are annually reviewed.

Read it.

But of course there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of vote fraud. None. Don’t even think about it.

Read it.

But of course there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of vote fraud. None. Don’t even think about it.

New Paleoclimatology Finding Shows Earth’s Climate Was Typically Warmer than Today

UN Paris Agreement Architect Blasts Australia’s “Lack of Integrity” on Climate Action

The Climate Warriors are Eyeing Your Plate  And not in a kindly way.

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The stunning discoveries recently made in northern Mexico’s Chiquihuite Cave raise more questions than they answer. Even so, they change the conversation: The who arrived 15,000 years ago in the Western Hemisphere were not the first people here as previously believed. The 30,000-year-old tools and animal remains of Chiquihuite Cave belonged to someone else. We have no idea who, but they were gone for thousands of years by the time the Clovis culture began.

“For decades people have passionately debated when the first humans entered the Americas,” says co-study lead DNA scientist Eske Willerslev of St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. “Chiquihuite Cave will create a lot more debate as it is the first site that dates the arrival of people to the continent to around 30,000 years ago — 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.”

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Following an FBI investigation this summer, more than 1,000 researchers who had hidden their affiliation with the Chinese military fled the United States, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

We’re Saved! New Zealand just Declared a Climate Emergency

CBS Goes Full Climate Propaganda: Why Are Humans ‘at War With Nature?’

Severian draws a distinction.

Back at the old Rotten Chestnuts, we discussed the difference between a revolution and a rebellion. Briefly: Revolutions are programmatic, rebellions are pragmatic. A revolution seeks to overturn the existing order of society; a rebellion aims, at most, to churn a society’s leadership. The American and French Revolutions really were revolutions, but so were the American and English Civil Wars. Pretty much all others are mere rebellions, whatever title they might have in the history books.

…

I don’t doubt that Orange Man has a sincere love of his country. He might even, given enough time, be able to articulate it. The problem is, “his country” hasn’t existed since the late 1980s, and even then it was mortally wounded. If “Trumpism” actually existed, it would amount to little more than “Wouldn’t it be nice if it were still 1982?” Alas, demographics is destiny.

UN Climate Agency Slapped With Corruption Allegations 

Climate Emergency! Save the Great British Bakeoff

EXPOSED: Return of Sue-and-Settle: State AGs, DC Swamp Preparing Biggest End-Run in History — “Green New Deal” with No Legislation, No Rulemaking Process, Just a Sweetheart Consent Decree

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But of course there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of vote fraud. None.

The Other McCain sees a glimmer of hope.

People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

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The NFL ran a “We may be filthy rich but we’re nice Democrats, not evil Republicans!” ad during one of their Thanksgiving day games. It featured Michael Thomas, an NFL player who is qualified to speak on the complex social problems which face our nation because he is black, an exceptional athlete, and with a prominent beard.

…

There’s just so much here. But what really struck me was that he wanted to reduce arrests, so he went to the police department. That would be like trying to reduce car crashes by going to the auto body shop.

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From Julia Child to Paul Bocuse to James Beard, some of the biggest names in food history are also people who have professed their love for the same french fry—a french fry that, in no exaggerated manner, birthed an empire. A french fry that no one has eaten in more than 30 years.

McDonald’s original french fries were cooked in beef tallow. For that fact, they were bullied out of production by a well-funded, well-intentioned businessman and self-proclaimed health advocate named Phil Sokolof, who unknowingly dethroned what many fans claim was the greatest french fry to ever meet mass production. “The french fries were very good,” Child said in a 1995 interview, “and then the nutritionists got at them … and they’ve been limp ever since … I’m always very strong about criticizing them, hoping maybe they’ll change.”

Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #433

Slight, beneficial warming from more carbon dioxide!

The Climate Hustle

Claim: Autonomous EVs will Help Solve the Climate Crisis

What A Biden Presidency Means For Cleantech And Energy Startup Funding

Beautiful Yet Unnerving Photos of the Arctic Getting Greener  (Wired ‘Science’)

Polar bear habitat update for late November

Climate change is affecting fall foliage, but not in the way you think  (Popular ‘Science’) Not the way they think, either.

Climategate: Another Anniversary (never forget ….)

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Napoleon Bonaparte was a famous military commander with some interesting information management habits. But he died about 200 years ago (1821), long before computers, the internet, and electronic communication.

So what could we possibly hope to learn from his life about handling email in our digital age?

Turns out, quite a bit.

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One of the recurring questions amid the year’s countless BLM protests and associated riots has been why instead of burning and looting innocent businesses, the angry mob does not target the source of all wealth, income and social inequality – not just in the US but the world – the central bank, i.e. Federal Reserve (located at 2051 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20418 for those unaware).

Yet while US protesters and rioters still need guidance what buildings to burn down, their French peers are finally catching on.

Read it.

I am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen. I came to this country at the age of ten, grew up in a blue-collar immigrant household, was raised around primarily Central-Eastern European and Hispanic working-class immigrants, and ultimately married another immigrant. So, according to the left, I represent a demographic that should support open borders and unchecked mass immigration (both legal and illegal), both out of self-interest and for moral reasons. I see things differently, however, and opt for national sovereignty, secure borders and common-sense immigration policies that benefit the United States and its people.

This stance often elicits shock, anger and sneering from leftists, including pro-illegal alien advocates, cheerleaders for increasing already historically high immigration levels and the radical purveyors of divisive identity politics that attempt to pit immigrants against natives. Many foreign born people who don’t buy into the open borders insanity and believe that rational limits make sense are no doubt eye-rollingly familiar with the hostile reactions.

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In 2020, officeless workers learned to doze off between Zoom calls. Maybe now we can admit that the post-turkey crash is nothing to be ashamed of.

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“Petitioners appear to have established a likelihood to succeed on the merits because petitioners have asserted the Constitution does not provide a mechanism for the legislature to allow for expansion of absentee voting without a constitutional amendment,” McCullough wrote.

She also noted that “petitioners appear to have a viable claim that the mail-in ballot procedures set forth in Act 77 contravene” the state’s constitution.

Read it.

FYI- Our Mandarin speaker confirmed the translation is accurate.

Claim: Climate Change Threatens Sharks

Guardian: Rein in Advertising to Save the World from Climate Change

Internal Multidecadal and Interdecadal Climate Oscillations: Absence of Evidence Is No Evidence of Absence

Scott Johnson at PowerLine.

Spectator USA has posted Patrick Basham’s column “Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling.” Subhead: “If only cranks find the tabulations strange, put me down as a crank.” I’ve asked our friends at Spectator USA to make the column accessible, but at the moment it is behind their (semipermeable) paywall. Basham is not a crank. He is founding director of the Democracy Institute and was an adjunct scholar with Cato’s Center for Representative Government.

In his Spectator column Basham first spells out anomalies in the stated results of the 2020 presidential election. He observes, for example, “President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.”

The anomalies may be just that, but Basham then turns to nine peculiarities that “lack compelling explanations[.]”

Glenn Greenwald.

Whether or not one agrees with these two lawmakers on every issue, having members of Congress questioning and objecting to highly consequential foreign policies is inherently healthier than full-scale agreement or fear-driven acquiescence. Dissent strengthens all democracies. That is why I have relentlessly defended Congresswoman Omar, even in the face of less-than-ideally-phrased proclamations, from what I regard as bad faith accusations of bigotry and a lack of patriotism (just as I denounced moronic claims that Trump was a “traitor”): bad faith accusations of bigotry or treason are often designed to demonize attempts to question pieties and ostracize those who do it.

For that very reason, I was quite surprised to see that late Friday night, Congresswoman Omar, in response to something I wrote, defended not only former CIA Director John Brennan — who as Obama’s CIA Director presided over the bombing of numerous countries including Somalia — but also The Logan Act. The Logan Act is nothing more than an unconstitutional attempt to criminalize foreign policy dissidents, like her, and is so dangerous in the hands of the CIA, FBI and federal prosecutors precisely because it lacks any clear definition or meaning.

Despite this, Congresswoman Omar depicted that ancient statute not as what it is — an impossibly vague and overly broad attempt to criminalize the core Constitutional right to dissent — but instead as some kind of specific, precisely defined, and well-established precedent, the contours of which are clearly established and easily applied. None of that is true.

Books on the ‘Climate Emergency’ – Suggested Christmas Reading for Sceptics

Replacing A Coal Plant Takes An Infinite Number Of Wind Turbines

Ocean Temperature Update

The Guardian: Climate Activists Avoid or Regret Having Children  And I would encourage them to do so.

Read it.

In 1991, a children’s book called The Lovables in the Kingdom of Self-Esteem was published. Written by Diane Loomans and illustrated by Kim Howard, The Lovables imparts a simple, nurturing message: You, the tiny child reading this book or having this book read to you, are very special.

Read it.

The debate seems to pit two mutually exclusive sides against one another. In the red corner are the 70 employees of the company who have sent anonymous messages to their superiors begging that Peterson’s book not be released and denouncing him as a peddler of hateful bombast. And in the blue corner are Peterson and his publishers, who sold over three million copies of 12 Rules for Life worldwide. It would be politically expedient simply to throw in the towel and cancel publication of Beyond Order, but financially disastrous, not least because Penguin Random House know that another publishing house would pick up the book immediately and make a great deal of money out of it.

David Friedman.

Legally speaking, the victim of the crime is not the person who was beaten up, it is the state he lives in. If Mr. Smith assaults me and the case comes to trial, it will be not Friedman vs Smith but State of California vs Smith. Criminal prosecution is controlled by the state, so crimes the state does not want to prosecute don’t get prosecuted. If Mr. Smith happens to be a police officer, the state knows that prosecuting him, convicting him, and locking him up for a year will make it harder to hire police officers, as well as provoking conflict with the police union. So, most of the time, it doesn’t. A civil case is created and controlled by the actual victim, so in practice civil cases are usually the only way of punishing criminal acts by people the state approves of, such as its employees.

Doomsday climate study debunked by researchers

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A Venezuela judge convicted and immediately sentenced six U.S. oil executives who had been charged with corruption and have been detained for more than three years.

The judge sentenced each of the six executives to eight years imprisonment on Thursday evening, The Associated Press reported. The executives, who work for Houston-based and Venezuela state-owned oil company Citgo, had been lured to the South American country in November 2017 for a business meeting, but were jailed instead.

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Biden “pulled so many rabbits out of his hat” to potentially become the oldest elected president in American history, should Trump fail in his legal challenges to the election tallies of several key state.

Highly suspicious, to say the least. These are the sort of thing that UN poll watchers in Turd World countries usually use to conclude that a vote was rigged.

Study: Climate Change Increases the Risk of Global Pandemics

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“The media can talk all day long about Donald Trump and all day long about things that he’s doing wrong,” Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center, said on a call Tuesday unveiling a poll the center commissioned, “Special Report: The Stealing of the Presidency, 2020.”

“It is absolutely unequivocal, the evidence that it was the national news movement that deliberately, and I underscore deliberately, made it a point not to tell the public about these stories that nobody can question,” Bozell said. “And now we’re showing the evidence that it cost Donald Trump the election.”

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Good luck with that.

(Um … They look African to me….)

German Think Tank: Climate Deniers are Holding Back Climate Action

Gutfeld Rips John Kerry: ‘Biden Made Him Climate Czar Because He Mistook Him For A Tree’

Strengthening the climate change scenario framework

Cultural motivations for wind and solar renewables deployment

Glenn Greenwald.

The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

Joe Biden has selected John Kerry — old foghorn himself — to be “climate czar”, as some accounts label the job, or “climate envoy”, as other accounts call it. I don’t think the climate will heed a czar. I’m not sure it will even accept an envoy.

John Kerry Would Return as Climate Czar in Biden Administration  Because of his vast experience with climate science?

The U.S. National Temperature Index, is it based on data? Or corrections?

Drilling the Arctic refuge doesn’t make sense—but Trump wants it to happen anyway (Popular ‘Science’)

WMO: “impact of the COVID-19 confinements [on CO2] cannot be distinguished from natural variability”

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Good to know he hasn’t anything more important to do.