Read it.

And the hits just keep on comin’.

I’m getting the impression that Hunter Biden was a one-stop shop for bribing Democrats in the Obama administration.

Read it.

I bought a pulse oximeter when the Pandemic Panic first started trending on Twitter arrived in the news, since a decrease in blood oxygen level is a good indicator of possible coronavirus infection, and I check it every day with my weight and blood pressure. If they keep adding useful medical stuff to the Apple Watch, I may need to get one.

Read it.

During the speech, a group of protesters can be heard and seen making noise to overpower Schumer’s voice, many screaming at him and Senate Democrats for allowing Barrett to make it this far in the confirmation process. Air horns can be heard along with chants of “no KKK, no fascist USA”.

Woker-than-thou is the name of the game.

Read it.

Time to panic?

Read it.

And the hits just keep on comin’….

Sea-Level Rise Takes Business Toll in North Carolina’s Outer Banks  (EcoWatch) Still waiting for NYC to be under water.

King tides, boosted by sea-level rise, are flooding communities along the East Coast (Washington Post) Still waiting for NYC to be under water.

Crisis looms in alarmist climate science  What, another one?

Measuring Climate Intentions, Not Results

It’s about time adults start rising up against climate change (Popular ‘Science’) Or climate change hysteria….

UN Climate Disaster Doubling Revisited

Steve Sailer.

Utra-wealthy, ultra-liberal San Francisco has strikingly bad public schools. I don’t mean “bad” in the usual sense of “infelicitous demographics” but in the sense of poor scores for most ethnic groups relative to their national norms. Now, its one good public high school, exam-using Lowell (the SF equivalent of NYC’s Stuyvesant and suburban DC’s Thomas Jefferson), is going to lottery admissions, perhaps permanently.

Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine.

In November 2011, an elite group of Chinese Communist Party members and cronies of the Chinese regime secured a meeting in the White House thanks to the efforts of Hunter Biden’s associates. The meeting is said to have been with Vice President Biden and other Obama administration officials.

Reports of the meeting come from Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner. Andy McCarthy summarizes their findings here.

Schweizer and Bruner were able to break this story thanks to the cooperation of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Bevan Cooney, who is serving a federal prison sentence for a fraud scheme. Cooney gave them access to his email account, which contains years of correspondence with Hunter Biden and his former associates.

Read it.

Purists love to talk about what is and is not a science. Clearly, for example, physics is a science, because it allows us to offer theories, and test them against data. And we learn from the results.

By way of contrast, economics or sociology or psychology are not sciences. Of course not! Those soft squishy subjects have no real predictive power after all, right?

Not so fast. Sure, physics will tell you, with impressive accuracy, what happens when a billiard ball hits another one. But if you replace the target billiard ball with a kitten, physics is not so helpful. And if we replace the kitten with a person, then physics has nothing at all useful to tell us.

On the other hand, some of those squishier subjects, albeit with large error bars, do have some predictive powers when it comes to people. When we scare people in a pandemic, we know some of the likely outcomes. We know how people tend to react to scarcity and plenty, how they change as a result of marriage or divorce. We don’t learn these things from physics, but we can learn them from the study of mankind through these softer “sciences.”

Read it.

Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were widely condemned for putting up a warning and attempting to limit access to several New York Post articles written about the subject. Twitter claimed the articles violated policy regarding “hacked” material — even though there is no evidence that the material was hacked. At the time of this writing, the New York Post’s Twitter account remains locked.

Democrat politicians and pundits have also rushed to the Biden team’s defense, stating that the material is obvious Russian disinformation. Several federal sources with direct knowledge of the situation, however, have confirmed that the photos and texts printed by the New York Post are in fact genuine and corroborated. They have also confirmed the existence of federal investigations into a number of subjects related to the reports.

Additionally, the Director of National Intelligence has now revealed that there is no evidence or intelligence that Hunter Biden’s laptop or its contents are part of a Russian disinformation campaign. It should also be noted that neither Joe nor Hunter Biden have thus far issued an explicit denial of the reported contents of the laptop.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine creates a useful new word.

Lee Smith places the disgrace of Jeffrey Toobin into the context of the New Yorker’s political project in the Spectator USA column “Jeffrey Toobin’s stroke of misfortune” (“He is not the first journalist to get overexcited about ‘coup porn’”). Lee painted the big media picture out of which it emerged in the Tablet column “Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes—or Joe Biden’s Big Mouth.”

Lee’s Spectator column made me think back to the New Yorker’s role in promoting the Steele Dossier back in 2018. I devoted five posts to what I called “Jane Mayer’s Dossiad” (all of them and more related items accessible at the link). Mayer is the star New Yorker staff writer who gave Christopher Steele the Tiger Beat treatment.

As Lee suggests, Jeffrey Toobin represents a larger phenomenon. I would describe the phenomenon as repetitive conduct performed disgracefully in public with a compulsive element. Let us give make it a verb and call it Toobin in his honor. Used in a sentence, for example, we may ask: Is the New Yorker Toobin again?

Freeberg lays it out.

Let’s discuss this with honesty: #MAGA stands for Make America Great Again. This is offensive to many.

They are not offended because they think America was already great, although many of them have said so. They are not offended because America has never been great; many have said that. These would be two irreconcilable factions, fighting with each other, if they meant what they had been saying. They never did. We never saw them fight with each other and there’s a resaon for that. These were dishonest cosmetic statements lacking any matching underlying sentiment.

It’s offensive because greatness is decision-based. If you’re some slacker living in your mom’s basement with no job, and you wake up this morning and say “This stops now” and you mean it, you’re already great. The resulting education, job, saving, marriage, house etc. are merely following through on the awakening, like the position of a boat following a new bearing. If the boat is following a bearing of greatness, the boat is great already. That’s how people are. That’s how communities are. That’s how societies are.

Read it. (CNN)

Proglodytes have this perennial fantasy that they’re on the verge of turning Texas into a Blue state.

Dream on, fellas.

Read it.

I guess it’s the season to hate on the rich, even rich Democrats.

Iconic Food Web Threatened by Climate Change

Michael Mann: Whether or not Trump gets re-elected … could determine the fate of our planet

What Will Northwest Weather and Climate Be Like in 2050?

Climate experts fly more often than other scientists  Just trying to help bring on the Apocalypse, I guess.

CNN: Climate Change is Driving Fatal Shark Attacks  Global Warming – Is there anything it can’t do?

Read it.

In 1973, Graham Greene wrote an introduction to a bookselling friend’s memoir. As Greene was one of the most respected writers of his day, this was no small gesture, but the author was also a committed bibliophile. The book dealer and biographer John Baxter’s memoir A Pound of Paper contains treasurable glimpses of Greene deliberately signing obscure copies of his works in far-off locations, in the certain knowledge that these items would become hugely sought-after rarities, and he remains one of the few serious literary figures who also understood the glamour and romance of the bookselling trade. In his introduction, he openly acknowledged this, writing ‘Secondhand booksellers are the most friendly and most eccentric of all the characters I have known. If I had not been a writer, theirs would have been the profession I would most happily have chosen.’

The author is using ‘demise’ in its slovenly modern usage as a synonym for ‘death’. It actually means ‘convey by death’, as in ‘demise of the crown’. I hate sloppy writers. Hate ’em hate ’em hate ’em.

But the article itself is interesting, though written by a nitwit.

John C. Wright.

Is it time to reconsider the 19th Amendment?

The argument for female suffrage is that women are not more prone to bouts of emotionalism than men, and hence is it equally worthwhile, as the whole, to consult with them over the conduct and control of public business.

Unfortunately, it is evident that there are but rare and few men in the current generation show any particular manly or masculine virtues which would entitle them to a say in the public business, if stoicism, reason, and virtue were preconditions for the franchise.

Read it.

The San Francisco Police Department arrested Adora Anderson, 35, Sunday and charged him with mayhem and a hate crime enhancement, according to the statement.

I actually thought that was impossible.

Steve has voted.

I voted at a public library. A northerner was standing out front with a Biden sign, yelling, “Thank you for voting.” I don’t know if he lives here or what. His accent and his sign made him stand out like a bar of soap at an Antifa rally.

We had one of those, too.

We hear a lot about Trump signs being stolen, but nothing about anyone stealing Biden signs.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds (Instapundit).

SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK. My regular editor is on vacation, and I guess everyone else was afraid to touch it. So I’m sending them another column next week, and just publishing this one here. Enjoy! This is as filed, with no editing from USAT.

Paul Graham.

One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame. And this fear is not an irrational one. Many great projects go through a stage early on where they don’t seem very impressive, even to their creators. You have to push through this stage to reach the great work that lies beyond. But many people don’t. Most people don’t even reach the stage of making something they’re embarrassed by, let alone continue past it. They’re too frightened even to start.

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The Other McCain is on the case.

Here’s some cold facts for you: Most black people live in communities (of which Atlanta is certainly one) where Democrats control local government. So the Democrat officials in charge of their local precincts are the ones responsible for the long voting lines. This is not a right-wing conspiracy, it’s just Democrat incompetence in operation.

Newsweek.

Which isn’t going to happen. What Democrats really want is to lock in their votes before the Hunter Biden debacle gets any traction.

CNN.

With Joe Biden holding his lead over President Trump in most battleground state polls, CNN’s John King breaks down the latest Electoral College projections and compares it to the 2016 election.

Human-driven climate change is changing the colors of fall foliage, scientists say (Washington Post)

Weekly Climate and Energy News Round Up #427

The Real Toll of Oregon Forest Losses.

Read it.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggested Monday potential lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook were pending over the Internet media outlets’ blocking of distribution of a New York Post story claiming the son of Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden introduced a Ukrainian petroleum executive to his father.

In more a than 10-minute appearance on the Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Meadows claimed the two platforms used dubious and specious justifications for prohibiting the story last week being linked on users’ personal accounts, with Facebook saying the information needed to be fact-checked and Twitter saying it violated its policy on distributing “hacked” material.

Read it.

Dozens of protesters in New York City filled a casket outside a Brooklyn nursing home with 6,500 copies of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new book cover to commemorate the 6,500 who have died in nursing homes from COVID-19 over the last nine months.

Unless they stole the covers, which I doubt, they actually bought 6,500 copies of his book — so Cuomo is smiling all the way to the bank.

Read it.

Have you ever noticed that nobody tries to grow meat that tastes like plants?

Read it.

Narco-subs have ferried cocaine from Colombia to Central America since the 1990s and recently proliferated. Rarely true submarines, they are generally semisubmersibles that float mostly but not completely below the waterline and are nearly undetectable. Most are built out of sight in South American jungles for around $1 million apiece.

Read it.

Reporter Adam Housley has evidently been talking with John Paul Isaac, the owner of the repair shop where Hunter Biden brought three devices in 2019, one of which is his now-infamous laptop. According to Housley, Biden’s lawyer called Isaac the day before the New York Post broke its first story.

Guess it’s all true, then.

How green hydrogen can become cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels

China as Climate Change Saviour: The Triumph of Hope Over Experience?

Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’

Some surprises in polar bear sea ice habitat at mid-October 2020

Read it.

The person currently in charge of Facebook’s election integrity program is Anna Makanju. That name probably doesn’t mean a lot to you, but it should mean a lot – and in a comforting way — to Joe Biden.

Before ending up at Facebook, Makanju was a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council is an ostensibly non-partisan think tank that deals with international affairs. In fact, it’s a decidedly partisan organization.

In 2009, James L. Jones, the Atlantic Council’s chairman left the organization to be President Obama’s National Security Advisor. Susan Rice, Richard Holbrooke, Eric Shinseki, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chuck Hagel, and Brent Scowcroft also were all affiliated with the Atlantic Council before they ended up in the Obama administration.

The Atlantic Council has received massive amounts of foreign funding over the years. Here’s one that should interest everyone: Burisma Holdings donated $300,000 dollars to the Atlantic Council, over the course of three consecutive years, beginning in 2016. The information below may explain why it began paying that money to the Council.

Read it.

Clarity allows you to see the distinct differences between things you may not have noticed before. Winemakers (before fine filtration) used to use clarifying agents to clear up their wine. Some homemade winemakers do so now.

In my lifetime I have been blessed to witness two spectacular Republican Presidents, Ronald Reagan (The Great Communicator) and Donald Trump (The Great Clarifier).

…

The news media, “we are not biased” and this past Thursday we have Savannah Guthrie doing a lion taming routine with President Trump while George Snuffelupagus acted as Joe Biden’s masseuse and nanny at the same time. George only forgot to give Joe a glass of warm milk and a blankie before he sent him home.

As President Trump says, “Fake news is the enemy of the people” – Clarity.

Read it.

Janine Benyus is co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute. “I think people are going to biomimicry for the ‘sustainability win’ but they stay because of the novelty, because what they’ve found is category-disrupting platform technologies,” she told CNBC’s Sustainable Energy.

Read it.

The Make It Right Foundation is a nonprofit that was created by Pitt to provide affordable housing for displaced residents after Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005. However, many of the houses built by the Make It Right Foundation experienced construction problems that later made them uninhabitable, including leaks and rotting wood.

Homebuyers in 2018 filed a class-action lawsuit against foundation, which has sued at least one of the construction companies and others for defective work. The nonprofit has since closed its New Orleans office and shuttered its website.

Early Human Species Likely Driven to Extinction by Climate Change  Likely!

Climate Change Likely Drove Our Ancestors to Extinction, Study Finds  Likely!

What’s causing climate change, in 10 charts

Naomi Oreskes: Exxon Misled the Public about Climate Change

Climate science and the Supreme Court

Read it.

Variety magazine was in a state of full gush on Wednesday over the “flood” of liberal movies that are being released in the weeks just before the election. Of course, no discussion about any profits that will be earned by these films since it is all too obvious that the main goal is not to earn money but to try to influence the outcome of the election.

That might be a threat if people were still allowed to go to movies.

Read it.

How historian Fred Siegel came to appreciate the president’s defense of ‘bourgeois values’ against the ‘clerisy.’

Canada invests in small modular nuclear technology, eyes net-zero future

The Hydrogen Boom Will Provide A $200B Boost To Wind And Solar Energy

James Murdoch Opens Up on The Family Rift Over Climate Change, Politics

Climate change likely drove early human species to extinction, modeling study suggests  Gotta love those doomsday models.

Japan to release Fukushima’s contaminated water into sea: reports OH NO WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! Cue Godzilla.

Read it.

You’ve probably noticed things no longer work as well as they once did. For example, the store’s online inventory says something is in stock and when you get to the store, it’s not on the shelf. A small issue, but telling nonetheless.

Or you might call a local government agency to get an explanation of how a new fee is calculated, and nobody’s ever available to explain it–or sort out your punitive late fee even though you paid on time.

Read it.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, co-host Mika Brzezinski dug up a clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strategizing her next move should President Trump refuse to acknowledge the loss she and her henchmen have planned for him on Election Day. The clip of Pelosi was from September 30th, but Brzezinski decided to revisit the idea and have some guests on the show to discuss their plan of attack.

‘Scientific’ American, so take it with a grain of salt.

How would you feel about a new therapy for your chronic pain, which—although far more effective than any available alternative—might also change your religious beliefs? Or a treatment for lymphoma that brings one in three patients into remission, but also made them more likely to vote for your least preferred political party?

These seem like idle hypothetical questions about impossible side effects. After all, this is not how medicine works. But a new mental health treatment, set to be licensed next year, poses just this sort of problem. Psychotherapy assisted by psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in “magic mushrooms,” seems to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychopathologies, but also causes a raft of unusual nonclinical changes not seen elsewhere in medicine.

Read it.

Between 2008 and 2019, total newsroom employment in the United States declined by 23 percent. At newspapers, the drop has been more than 50 percent. Journalists are hardly to blame for the underlying causes of this contraction (which include the long-term shift from physical to digital media, and the growing ad-market share controlled by Google and Facebook). But they can be blamed for the gratuitous acts of self-sabotage that are exacerbating the industry’s woes. Many journalists—and even their unions—now seem more preoccupied with denouncing heresies among colleagues than with maintaining their audience and livelihoods.