In a study published in Science, the team reports that each of the last three major ice ages were preceded by tropical “arc-continent collisions” — tectonic pileups that occurred near the Earth’s equator, in which oceanic plates rode up over continental plates, exposing tens of thousands of kilometers of oceanic rock to a tropical environment.
The scientists say that the heat and humidity of the tropics likely triggered a chemical reaction between the rocks and the atmosphere. Specifically, the rocks’ calcium and magnesium reacted with atmospheric carbon dioxide, pulling the gas out of the atmosphere and permanently sequestering it in the form of carbonates such as limestone.
So it wasn’t AlGore after all? I’m disappointed.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Weird Science: Tectonics in the Tropics Trigger Earth’s Ice Ages, Study Finds
Poland’s push to house a major permanent US military base dubbed last year by Polish President Andrzej Duda as “Fort Trump” is a big step closer to becoming a reality this week after top US defense officials met with Polish counterparts in Warsaw to negotiate an offer. US Defense Undersecretary for Policy John Rood led a delegation to the former Soviet satellite country and longtime east European defense ally on Wednesday to discuss the US “robust offer” to establish a permanent facility on Polish soil.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Poland’s “Fort Trump” a Reality: “Serious Offer” for “Permanent” US Base Negotiated
China Strongly Implies Muslim Internment Camps Will Never Go Away And why would they? Muslims are an existential threat to any non-Muslim polity (and many Muslim ones), and China is a Communist dictatorship that deals very swiftly and very definitively to existential threats.
Michelle Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Tina Tchen, attempted to have the Jussie Smollett case transferred from the Chicago Police Department to the FBI, according to texts and emails released by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Ex-Obama Official Tried Pulling Strings T]to Have Smollett Case Transferred to FBI; Told to Pound Sand
The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913. It was intended to be a formalization of the interbank clearing system that then existed in the National Banking System. It was not intended to be a central bank. Even in the early 20th century, economists and politicians had some idea of what central banks did and how they behaved, and the existence of such an institution was widely regarded as inherently un-American, in the sense that it could not be reconciled with a self-governing society. That’s why so many proponents of the Federal Reserve System bent over backward to insist they were not advocating the creation of a central bank. And at the time, their repudiations were reasonable; there was no reason the Federal Reserve System had to acquire the powers it did.
But then the US entered the First World War. Wars have a way of eroding society’s long-established institutions. And the political process has a logic of its own. These forces combined to transform the Fed into what its critics feared it might become: a genuine central bank.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Federal Reserve: A Failure Of The Rule Of Law
Dozens of people died after getting lost in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument because federal regulations prohibited officials from putting directional signs in place, a Utah county commissioner said.
My teen comedy movie pitch: An entire college team made up of uncoordinated sports-hating rich dorks, whose parents had rigged their admissions into college by catfishing that their kids were super jocks, find out they have to actually play ball to stay out of jail.
Ben Thompson, a widely-respected tech journalist, looks at the Pocahontas Plan.
Unfortunately, Senator Warren’s proposal helps highlight why I have not gone further with my own: hers would create massive new problems, have significant unintended consequences, and worst of all, not even address the issues Senator Warren is concerned about (with one possible exception I will get to in a moment). Worst, it would do so by running roughshod over the idea of judicial independence, invite endless lawsuits and bureaucratic meddling around subjective definitions, and effectively punish consumers for choosing the best option for them.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Where Warren’s Wrong
Boy, the left’s (including Bill Kristol’s) plan of replacing Noncompliant Americans with more compliant foreign replacements will happen at an even faster tempo if the replacements also murder us.
Your tax dollars at work.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on San Jose Police Chief: The Suspected Murderer of an American Woman Was Shielded From Deportation by Sanctuary Policies Six Times
But not, apparently, for people who lied to get into a college faculty.
Actually, I suspect that Elizabeth Warren just has zero sympathy, period. She always reminds me of that woman, I forget her name, that the Ministry of Magic put in charge of Hogwarts — and we all know how well that worked out.
Say, anyone remember when Loretta Lynch claimed she was recusing herself from this case due to her speaking with Bill Clinton furtively on an airport tarmac?
Well actually she didn’t recuse herself — she said she would do as the FBI recommended. But she intended the media to sell that as a recusal, and the media so sold it.
Turns out, the DOJ did not defer to the FBI at all.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
The Deep State takes care of its own.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Lisa Page: The DOJ Forbade Us From Bringing a Negligent Release of Classified Information Charge Against Hillary Clinton
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Tucker Carlson Makes Sexually Explicit Jokes About Miss Teen USA Contestant in Newly Unearthed Recording as Advertisers Flee
A Florida father has been arrested after allegedly bringing a loaded AK-47 to a school because his son FaceTimed him crying and claiming that a teacher had pushed him.
A Person of Color behaving badly! What are the odds?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Father Turns Up at School With Loaded AK-47 After His Son FaceTimed Him in Tears
Newly obtained public records reveal that the recent wave of private “climate” litigation and state attorneys general (AGs) investigations was not only laid out behind closed doors seven years ago at an infamous 2012 meeting in La Jolla, California. It turns out the attendees also got very early word about the frenzied street theater of children’s marches and school kids’ strikes now filling the streets, including this week in the U.S.
The reason? These demonstrations are a long-planned component of the climate industry’s litigation campaign, including particularly Juliana v. United States, the “Climate Kids” suit that is a radical example of the extreme climate activism flooding the courts.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Genesis of a Shakedown: New Records Expose Children’s Marches as Long-Planned Component of Litigation Campaign
In Egypt the government has completed the first phase of building the new town of Rafah. The original Rafah was torn down starting in 2015 because it was on the Gaza border and a popular place for smuggling tunnels into Gaza because there were nearly 2,000 buildings and structures there that could serve as the Egyptian end of a smuggling tunnel. Over 1,500 structures were torn down to create a buffer zone of cleared land over 1,000 meters wide. The new Rafah is two kilometers from the border and apparently too far to build smuggling tunnels. Moving Rafah caused a lot of anger among the thousands of people living there. Although they received new homes and assistance in moving the Rafah population had their lives disrupted and were forced to accept new homes in high rise apartment buildings. Using the apartment buildings made it easier to check basements for any smuggling tunnel activity.
Transportation policy debates are often characterized as highways vs. transit or automobiles vs. alternatives. But they are more fundamental than that. The real debate is between the engineering view and the planning view.
Engineers ask, “how are people going to get around and how can we make their travel safer and more efficient?” Planners ask, “how should people get around and how can we manipulate them into making what we think are the right choices instead of the wrong choices?”
A classic proglodyte piece of ‘journalism’. (Actually, it doesn’t go into motivation, so the headline probably ought to read ‘HOW you’re recycling wrong’.) But it assumes that you are stupid and Doing It Wrong, while the author is Smart and With It and is therefore entitled to wag a finger or two our way. Mission accomplished! Calling it Problems Some People Have With Recycling would let you off the hook, and our sense of moral superiority won’t let us do that.
I suspect that the ‘why’ is that we just don’t give a shit about being careful to follow collectivist programs like recycling, and I’m okay with that.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Georgia Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Regulate Men’s Balls in Response to Heartbeat Abortion Bill
This is what happens when you elect Democrats — they ‘tax your asses off’, in Walter Mondull’s famous phrase.
If this thing passes, watch affluent people flee Chicago for neighboring lower-tax states, like Indiana and Wisconsin, both of which are within easy commuting distance — the North Shore and South Shore commuter trains are already in place.
The new helmet, manufactured by Ceradyne Inc., utilizes advanced thermoplastic aramid and glass fabric composites, which provides better protection against a 7.62 Russian rifle round than legacy helmets and increases the amount of protection against high impact or trauma to a soldier’s head, according to Alex DeGroot, lead engineer for head protection.
I don’t see as much protection of the back of the head and neck as I would like.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Army’s Next-Generation Combat Helmet Has Arrived
A who’s who of famous names, from actresses to CEOs, have been arrested as part of a national college admissions cheating scam, according to court records unsealed in Boston Tuesday.
Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among the more than 40 people arrested for paying bribes to get their children into elite schools, including Georgetown, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale.
The scam, said prosecutors, arranged for children to be recruited as athletes, regardless of their athletic abilities. Academic officials, including the former women’s soccer coach at Yale University are also facing charges.
Prediction: All of the kids are white or Asian, and would have gotten in had it not been for the various preferences give to black, Latino, and other Fashionable Minority kids.
The number of American leftists who believe in conspiracy theories is close to 100% when you remember that Marxism is a conspiracy theory (in the villain’s role that was historically meant for Jews, Marx expanded the bad-guy tent and said it was a larger class, not just a race, that was out to get you). Likewise, Christians who believe Satan and devils to be personal beings, and not airy metaphors, have a built-in explanation for evil’s seemingly intelligent design throughout the ages. As Eric Hoffer said: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”
The Birchers understood a deep truth that explained their twin interest in fighting communism and secret societies: The Communist Party was essentially a secret society. Historically, CPs have always obtained power in darkness or deceit, never through democratic mandate or with any transparency. In some communist countries, to know just who were members and party leaders, what the connections were and where key decisions went down, remains, to this day, a riddle for historians (especially in the history of the Chinese Communist Party).
…
In 2019, there is an entire cable network, apparently called MSNBC, that is dedicated to 24/7 Russian-infiltration conspiracies of this ilk.
