Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Go Vote Today UPDATED
Monday, August 1, 2022
Primary Election tomorrow
There is a Primary Election on Tuesday, August 2, 2022. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
website is here. It is not the most
user-friendly site, but you can rummage around to see who is running in your
district(s).
The Ohio Senate district map is here, and the locator function is pretty easy to use. Then you can see if your district will offer candidates for the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) state central committee. For what it may be worth, if you vote in one of the districts below, the Cuyahoga Valley Republicans are endorsing these candidates for the central committee:
- Terri Shawhan - District 18
- Jack Boyle - District 18
- Lucy Stickan - District 21
Turnout is projected to be low, so you are likely to get right in.
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Sunday, July 31, 2022
An alternative to blowing up the sun
Mike Nuen had a stand-up comedy routine back in the
70s; he proposed that in order to solve
a few problems, all we had to do was blow up the sun. Any potential consequences to the Earth’s
climate or weather patterns could be easily handled by the Army Corps of
Engineers. He always got good laughs
during the routine.
Now some group of demented climate change warriors (billed
as the Climate Overshoot Commission) is seriously proposing something pretty
similar. Here’s the headline and sub-head from PostMillenial:
Scientists Consider
Dimming The Sun To Solve Climate Change
The Thomson Reuters Foundation asked
"Could 'dimming the sun' help turn down global heating?"
and said the answer may be stratospheric aerosol injection
So their deliberations include injecting aerosols into the
atmosphere from aircraft -- specifically to interfere with incoming sunlight,
and this presumably could “fix” the climate change “problem.” Read about this insane proposal here.
“Dimming the Sun”? What
are they thinking?
I am not a scientist, just a concerned layperson. But it would seem to be impossible to overstate how dangerous this idea is, and it is frightening to consider that the group is getting enough attention for the report to be linked on a major aggregator, Rantingly. As far as I have read, science is nowhere near to understanding how and why the Earth’s climate cycles function as they do. Scientists know certain contributing factors and variables, such as geothermal activity, the Earth’s axis in relation to the sun, and so on. Anthony Watts has a big page specifying potential variables at his website, WattsUpWithThat; click here.
In the not-too-distant past, Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, conducted experiments at the CERN particle accelerator to attempt to measure the impact of incoming “charged particles from the sun, [how they] interact with cosmic rays as they approach Earth” and how that interaction affects cloud seeding, arguing that “the amount of cloud cover determines how hot or cold the planet is.” His hypothesis remains controversial; many in the science community really did not want to hear about it; see here. That should tell anyone who is interested that the field of climate science remains in a state of uncertainty, with competing working hypotheses. And like most other fields, politics and funding now play large roles in all of this.
As far as I have read, the uncertainties far outweigh any certainties
concerning the multiple variables influencing Earth’s climate, it should be
obvious that deliberate interference with the sun’s many effects on Earth would
be not just foolhardy and reckless, but potentially suicidal.
Earth’s climate has been variable during its 4+ billion year existence. We still don’t understand how it has taken care of itself. Nobody seems to know what optimal temperatures are, much less how they might be sustained or reversed. No idea. Any deliberate interference surely COULD accelerate the next Ice Age. Or worse.
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Saturday, July 30, 2022
Bill Gates: The Great Reset and The Great Refusal
Colin Todhunter specializes in development, food and agriculture and is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. He takes a deep dive into the world of agriculture that Bill Gates envisions for us “eaters.” It is a monstrous vision. Here’s a small extract via Off-Guardian (h/t AmericaFirstReport):
. . . The biggest owner of private
farmland in the US – Bill Gates – has a vision for farming: a
chemical-dependent, corporate-dependent, one-world agriculture (Ag One
initiative) to facilitate the global supply chains of conglomerates. This
initiative is side-lining indigenous knowledge and practices in favour of
corporate knowledge and a further colonisation
of global agriculture.
Gates’s corporatisation of
smallholder agriculture is packaged in philanthropic terms – ‘helping’ farmers
in places like Africa and India. It has not worked out well so far if we turn
to the Gates-backed Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),
established in 2006.
The first major evaluation of
AGRA’s efforts to expand high-input agriculture in Africa found that – after 15
years – it had failed. . . .
With lab-based synthetic meat being
promoted and attracting huge interest from investors, Gates and the agritech
sector also envisage a largely ‘climate-friendly’ animal-free agriculture,
which they claim will result in freeing up vast tracts of farmland (we can only
speculate for what).
It remains to be seen just how
energy-efficient, environment-friendly and health-friendly synthetic meat labs
are once scaled up to industrial levels. . . .
And don't forget the bugs! In the conclusion:
The neoliberal programme that took
root in the 1980s has now reached a debt-bloated, inflationary impasse. In
response, capitalism has embarked on a ‘great reset’ with transformative
technology very much to the fore in the guise of a ‘4th Industrial Revolution’,
promising a brave new tomorrow for all.
However, there are deep-seated
concerns about how this technology could be used to monitor and control entire
populations, especially as we are witnessing a brutal economic restructuring
and increasing clampdowns on personal liberties. If neoliberalism promoted
individualism, the ‘new normal’ demands strict compliance – individual freedom
is said to pose a threat to ‘national security’, ‘public health’ or ‘safety’.
. . .
The controlling nature of
technology pervades all aspects of life today. But whether it involves farmers
protests in Europe and India, the advancement of a political agroecology,
truckers taking to the streets in Canada or ordinary people protesting against
a rapidly advancing authoritarianism in Western societies, many people across
the world know something is seriously amiss.
. . . we are seeing a ‘great
refusal’ – people saying ‘no’ to multiple forms of repression and domination –
tentacles of an economic system in crisis.
Read the full report at Off-Guardian here (it’s long).
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Friday, July 29, 2022
They Can’t Let Him Back In
Michael Anton at CompactMag zeroes in on why we have to
endure the January 6 Committee show trials and Liz Cheney’s Trump Derangement Syndrome.
For me, Anton points out the obvious when he writes:
Love him or hate him, during
Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was
under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime
was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were
stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want
to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it,
strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think
delivered it.
Nor was Trump’s record all that
radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch
funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example.
Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was
quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic
precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much
of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist,
Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and
bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the
oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy
him.
. . .
Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final
analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not
because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers
are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not
be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences,
which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate
standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they
are, but mostly because of what they want.
. . .
People I have known for 30 years,
many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to
me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war,
and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally,
unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many
such cases.” How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and
candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How
are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side
against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ?
Why would we want to?
. . .
The full article is here.
On a personal note, liberal colleagues of mine bemoan the “divisiveness”
in today’s society. How could it be
otherwise? When liberals want to
convert our country to some brand of socialism, how is that compatible with our Founders’ constitutional republic?
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Thursday, July 28, 2022
Monkeypox: is it a real threat?
Mark A. Hewitt summarizes what is known about the dreaded
monkeypox scare:
We live in a time of disinformation
conceived and issued by the Democrat party and the media. The World
Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now want
to leverage their latest midterm virus into another round of pandemic fear
porn. Since you cannot trust the FDA or the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) or their spokespeople today, it might be a good time to review
what the official research conducted for the military indicated before today’s
liars at the CDC and the FDA get crazy again and mandate unwarranted and
ineffective masks and lockdowns for monkeypox.
Mr. Hewitt then presents some tables and charts, before
concluding:
If today’s reporting is accurate,
monkeypox appears to be limited to gay men and those in close contact with gay
men. It is rarely fatal. It is treatable with monkeypox
and smallpox vaccines. Regardless, Democrats, the media, and blue
states will shift into fear porn overdrive. The rest of America will
ignore them.
You can look over the tables and charts here.
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