Well, the Air Force is back to wanting to kill the A-10, and this time they may succeed.
“The US Air Force is charging ahead with plans to retire the old A-10 Warthog attack jet within the next five years, but there’s only one problem: there’s no dedicated close air support platform to replace it.”
“In the 2023 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, congress approved the Air Force requests to begin divestment of the current A-10 fleet, citing the aircraft is too old, too slow and too expensive to maintain.”
“The Air Force seems to be getting its way this time, with a set timetable to replace the 54 A-10s from Moody Air Force base with F-35a by 2028, and plans to retire the rest of the fleet soon to come.” As Jerry Pournelle once said, “USAF will always retire hundreds of Warthog to buy another F-35. Always, so long as it exists. And it will never give up a mission.” The F-35 is certainly a more modern, capable and flexible aircraft than the A-10, but it also costs about $79 million each, which makes me think that the Air Force is going to be very leery about letting it be used for close air support. By contrast, the lifetime cost of the A-10 is about $14 million per plane.
Back when the A-10 was first proposed, opponents argued that the role of close support could be handled by the F4 Phantom II, which brings home just how old the A-10 is, since the Phantom was retired from combat use in 1996.
Back when the GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun was developed, guided missile technology was new and finicky tech. That’s no longer the case. “When a laser-guided Maverick can hit a tank more accurately from 22km away, the 1.2 km range of the G8 looks a lot less impressive.”
The A-10 is easy to fly but slow, with a max speed of 439MPH.
Thick titanium armor provides solid protection to proximity explosions, less to direct hits. (Remember, in 2003 an A-10 managed to make it back to base even though it was missing most of a wing.)
The A-10 kicked ass in Desert Storm. “Final tally for the A10 in the first Gulf War was an impressive 987 tanks and 1,355 combat vehicles for only 6 planes lost. Another 14 A-10s were damaged but able to fly back to base, suggesting that the A-10 survivability was keeping pilots alive in that conflict.” Caveats: A lot of those kills were with Maverick missiles, and Desert Storm was 32 years ago.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the A-10 was praised for how well it performed close air support, but also criticized for friendly fire and civilian casualties.
“Emphasis on keeping the A-10 and rugged and cheap delayed major upgrades to the plane sensor and fire control systems until the mid-2000s. The $2.2 billion A-10C upgrade program finally updated the
Warthog’s cockpit from the 1970s era tech it had first flown with.”
“The Warthog is almost 50 years old at this point, meaning that aircraft are having to undergo more and more maintenance each year. These costs are adding up, to the point where newer platforms are becoming cheaper to operate per flight hour.”
As new technology enables new means of war-fighting, the Air Force appears to have finally convinced congress that other aircraft can do the same job but better. A big part of the argument for retiring the A-10 is a mirror of the original survivability argument from the 1960s: There doesn’t seem to be much room for a big aircraft that flies low and slow in a near-peer conflict, and likely hasn’t been for some time the A-10 has been effective as long as it has thanks to the low intensity of counterinsurgency warfare that U.S. has been fighting for 20 years. Besides a few man-portable launchers, the Taliban and ISIS didn’t have much air defense that could threaten the A-10, and so the Warthog thrived in the asymmetric warfare conditions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts say that won’t be the case against a potential enemy like China.
“The gun’s tank busting abilities aren’t sufficient against modern tank armor. The 30 mm API rounds used by the cannon can penetrate around 69mm of steel armor at 500 meters, but modern Russian tanks like T72-B3 have 80mm or more on the hull and sides and way more protection on the front.”
As much as I hate to admit it, these arguments are probably correct. The Russo-Ukrainian War has shown that the threat environment is deadlier than ever, with Russia’s air force unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine, and Russia has reportedly limited sorties to it’s own airspace due to Ukrainian air defenses. Ukraine has shot down at least 30 Russian Su-25s, the Soviet close air support plane most broadly comparable in role and age to the A-10, which is more than they’ve shot down of any other aircraft type. And the Su-25 is over 100 MPH faster than the A-10.
Also the rise in combat drone number, capability and variety means that the A-10’s close air support role is increasingly being taken over by cheaper, more flexible unmanned vehicles. A-10s would have been perfect for taking out those long convoys strung out on the road to Kiev, but a small swarm of drones with multiple missiles could have done the same thing if they were available, probably at lower cost and without losing pilots. (Some will point to the B-52 as example of older aircraft that are still useful on the modern battlefield, but their mission (high altitude and/or far away using standoff missiles) is the exact opposite of the A-10’s close air support mission.)
Technology marches on, and there’s no reason you couldn’t have drones half the size and one-tenth the cost of an A-10 armed with 10-12 smart missiles replacing most of the A-10’s mission capabilities. Whether the Air Force will let that happen is another question, as the Sky Warden shows the Air Force never wants to give up a mission, but drones have proven too valuable in Ukraine to shove that genie back inside the bottle.
Austin usually has hot, dry summers with a high pressure system parked over us for months on end, but this year it’s been the worst since The Great Drought of 2011, where something like 98% of the state was in stage four drought conditions.
Thus far this year, the drought hasn’t been as bad (we had a decent amount of rain in spring), but the temperature has been more extreme, as this week saw a break from Austin suffering a record 45 days over 100°.
Remember that favoring trendy green energy sources like solar and wind over natural gas was a big contributing factor to the 2021 ice storm blackouts. Hopefully Texas lawmakers have learned their lesson, and more reliable baseload power has come online since.
As always, it’s best to be prepared with flashlights, batteries and maybe a portable power source to power fans and medical devices. (That’s the one that gets the best reviews on Amazon. I just got another power source, but since it came free as part of one of those “Redeem your company’s award points for merchandise from this catalog” type deals, I don’t have enough experience with it to recommend it yet.) You might also consider a home generator, like this one, but those are pricey, loud, and I have no direct experience with them, so you probably want to do some research if you’re going that route.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers played heavy with the Department of Justice, effectively threatening to force President Joe Biden to testify in any criminal trial against the First Son if a plea agreement wasn’t reached over his multiple alleged crimes.
“President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” wrote Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark in a 32-page letter last fall, Politico reports, calling the news that there was enough evidence to charge Hunter an “illegal” leak.
That letter, along with more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors, sheds new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal. That deal would have resolved Biden’s most pressing legal issues — the gun purchase and his failure to pay taxes for several years — and it also could have helped insulate Biden from future prosecution by a Republican-led Justice Department.
The documents show how the deal collapsed — a sudden turnabout that occurred after Republicans bashed it and a judge raised questions about it. The collapse renewed the prospect that Biden will head to trial as his father ramps up his 2024 reelection bid.
The number of people unaccounted for has stubbornly remained at about 1,000, suggesting that the death toll will almost undoubtedly increase.
As the staggering toll continues to be tallied, it is becoming apparent that the Maui wildfires may reasonably be classified as the first “woke-caused” disaster.
To begin with, the rush to eliminate carbon emissions may have killed the implementation of effective fire prevention policies.
Legal Insurrection readers recall my recent reports that downed power lines were being blamed as the initiating case of the fire. At the end of 2019, Hawaiian Electric issued a press release about wildfire risks assessed after hurricane-based winds contributed to a 2018 blaze.
The Wall Street Journal notes that Hawaiian Electric was well aware of the potential for this situation, but diverted resources away from fire safety support in order to meet state-required green energy mandates.
In 2015, lawmakers passed legislation mandating that the state derive 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, the first such requirement in the U.S.
The company dove into reaching the goals, stating in 2017 that it would reach the benchmark five years ahead of schedule.
In 2019, under pressure to replace the output of two conventional power plants set to retire, the company sought to contract for 900 megawatts of renewable energy, the most it had pursued at any one time.
“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” said Mina Morita, who chaired the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
When you have limited capital, choices have to be made. However, Hawaiian Electric may have made different choices if woke legislators adhering to climate change theology didn’t mandate the drive to renewables.
Equity considerations are apparently another contributing factor in this disaster. A state water official delayed the release of water that landowners wanted to help protect their property from fires, because water is to be revered and not used.
“Charlotte Pride now says no one will be awarded the 2023 Harvey Milk award for exceptional “LGBT+” advocacy after the announced winner’s past as a convicted child sex offender came to light.” What are the odds? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese Files for Bankruptcy amid Hundreds of Outstanding Sexual-Assault Lawsuits.” Huh, if only there were some reason the San Francisco Archdiocese might have more pedophiles than other archdioceses…
The Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood that, depending on the ruling, could reportedly have “devastating consequences” for the abortion-providing organization.
The case, which was heard on August 15 by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, could determine whether Planned Parenthood will have to pay back upwards of $1.8 billion to the state/federal government.
If Kacsmaryk rules in favor of the OAG, the large sum that would need to be paid out is, according to Vox, “more than enough to bankrupt Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”
The Texas OAG filed the lawsuit in 2022 on behalf of Alex Doe, an anonymous realtor, who is alleging that despite the organization being removed from Texas Medicaid it has continued to receive payments from the program.
Amarillo City Council: Hey voters, want to pass this bond to help us rebuild a civic center? Voters: Nah. Amarillo City Council: Well, we’re just going to do it anyway. Judge: REJECTED! AGAIN!.
Three of Andy Ngo’s attackers must pay him $100,000 each. “Defendants Corbyn “Katherine” Belyea, Madison “Denny” Lee Allen, and Sammich Overkill Schott-Deputy were found liable by Judge Sinaplasai for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
I’ve watched the occasional Wranglerstar video for homesteading and prepping information, but never noticed any bomb-throwing proclivities. But the Rolling Stone piece by Miles Klee seems to be a blatant hit piece.
One of the main contentions is Klee’s portrayal of Crone’s comedic or satirical videos as factual and instructional. The blending of satire with fact can often create misleading perceptions. It’s important for journalists to differentiate between the two, rather than painting everything with the same brush.
Moreover, Klee’s article leans heavily on the negative aspects of Crone’s channel, with little consideration of its broader context. For instance, discussions about preparedness or self-defense can be essential for people living in remote areas, where reliance on immediate help might not always be feasible. The article also fails to mention the vast amount of educational content Wranglerstar has provided over the years, focusing solely on the more controversial topics.
The growth of platforms like YouTube and TikTok allows for diverse content and narratives. However, it’s essential for journalism to remain objective and provide a balanced view. Misrepresentation not only undermines the credibility of media outlets but can also unjustly tarnish the reputation of individuals who rely on these platforms to share their voice and experiences.
It is also important to note that Klee recently openly mocked and ridiculed the movie, “Sound of Freedom”. “I watched Jim Caviezel’s QAnon-ish child-trafficking drama “Sound of Freedom” with the kind of muttering, coughing, “Amen!”-bellowing boomers who have made it a right-wing indie hit. Hard to overstate just how disgusting it was!” Klee wrote on his Threads account.
So Klee is evidently someone that hates preppers and movies about people who fight sex trafficking equally.
Here’s Wranglerstar’s own response, how received tons of threats after the Rolling Stone piece, how law enforcement offers reached out to him with credible threats against him and his family, and how he initially took down his videos, then regretted doing so.
The amazing thing to me is how Rolling Stone, a theoretically still-important member of the Fifth Column Fourth Estate, literally went after a random guy on YouTube for daring to suggest prepping for hard times and potential government oppression. So much for those “counterculture” roots, Rolling Stone declares itself firmly in the camp of Team Bootheel and seems very, very concerned that some random guy in Washington state might not knuckle under to The Man…
There are few less surprising stories than when someone who has clashed with Vladimir Putin dies in a mysterious accident. So it is with Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin:
The internet has exploded with an avalanche breaking reports that Wagner chief Yvgeny Prigozhin’s business jet has crashed over Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow.
Unconfirmed reports say anywhere from seven to ten people were on board, all presumed dead – but it was initially unclear if Prigozhin himself was on board at the time. Russian media sources are now confirming that he was on board the downed plane, and is presumed dead.
This has led to immediate speculation that the private plane could have been shot down upon Putin’s orders.
Snip.
A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among the passengers.
Suchomimus has video of the plane going down:
I’m not sure we need any more complex explanation than “Man angers Putin, man dies.” The aborted coup certainly gave Putin enough reason to off Prigozhin.
As far as what effect this has on Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine, who knows? Wagner forces were reportedly the most competent military element in Russia’s forces over the last year, but they lost a lot of troops in the fight for Bakhmut, and it’s unclear just how engaged Wagner was in the war following the abortive coup. But if Wagner were indeed “fiercely loyal” to Prigozhin, his assassination/death could have serious repercussions in various spots around the world where Wagner does heavy lifting for the Russians (like the coup in Niger).
I imagine there will be an effort to incorporate Wagner troops into regular ussian units, but whether they’re willing to do that is anyone’s guess…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Transients from homeless camp break into local businesses. Austin Police clear out camp in February. Homeless creep back in.
Small businesses in South Austin are trying to recover after having their windows smashed. This isn’t the first time the owners have dealt with homeless-related crimes in the area.
The employees in the area said a church nearby feeds the homeless, so they flock there every day, but they also linger and cause destruction at night.
Video shows multiple people walked up to the Headspace Salon in South Austin and threw rocks into the front glass.
In the last probably two months, we’ve had, easily, well over $10-15,000 worth of damages,” Headspace Salon and Co-op Owner Laura North said.
She said, as a small business, it hits hard.
“They’re just coming there and smashing things with rocks and just walking off and not understanding for small business owners that is a huge, huge financial hit for us, and it’s just not sustainable,” North said.
Oh they understand, it’s just not relevant to their need to get high and stay high, so they don’t care.
Other businesses nearby have been dealing with similar issues.
“The guy came around and that’s when we had the rocks, we saw him on camera, we got him right over here. He threw it on the second floor window and busted out the window in the hallway, and then he busted out the window around this corner, and he busted out that window,” said Jason Dawkins, an estimator who works in a building that was vandalized.
“We see a lot of drug use, a lot of open sexual behavior, a lot of defecation and urinating in public areas and a lot of that stuff, and I will say it seems like some of that has gotten better, but it seems like definitely the vandalism and the kind of destruction, especially later in the evening has gotten significantly worse,” North said.
Drug-addicted transients shitting in public: Your number one sign of social justice “compassion” for the homeless.
“‘The city will step in kind of help very briefly, and it does not last long, and then it just goes right back to how it was before,’ North said.”
Why it’s almost like the Social Justice allies of the Austin City Council make money off the homeless and don’t care what you think…
The City of Austin will again be on the search for someone to head its police department after Chief Joseph Chacon announced his intention to retire next month.
Chacon had been in charge of the Austin Police Department (APD) since September 2021, when he was appointed as the permanent chief after serving on an interim basis following Brian Manley’s retirement earlier that year.
“Working at APD has been the privilege of my life,” said Chacon. “Being the Chief of Police is something that I never thought would have been possible, and it has been the pinnacle of my career.”
In a letter to the department, Chacon said he first began considering retirement a few months ago and ultimately decided his 25-year run at APD was nearing its end.
APD Chief of Staff Robin Henderson will be named interim police chief once Chacon’s retirement becomes effective in the first week of September.
Then comes the more interesting part: The stalemate between police who want to do their jobs and the Austin victimhood identity politics establishment who want to prevent them from doing that continues:
During Chacon’s tenure, APD has been marked by staffing hemorrhage; a labor contract dispute with the city council; and a thorny relationship with Travis County District Attorney José Garza, who’s taken an active approach in prosecuting officers for alleged misconduct.
Garza’s uncle, Jesús Garza, is the interim city manager.
As of March APD has seen 89 officer departures, leaving the department 300 positions down from its 2019 staffing level. In 2020, the city council’s $150 million APD budget cut and redirection removed authorization for 150 patrol positions.
Austin’s police and elected officials have spent much of the last 12 months in a prolonged standoff over a new labor contract.
The Austin City Council, led by Mayor Kirk Watson, rejected a four-year agreement with the Austin Police Association in favor of a one-year extension of the now-expired deal. That leaves APD employment to be governed by Chapter 143 of the Local Government Code.
The impasse came largely over how much authority to vest in the Office of Police Oversight (OPO).
The city’s “reimagine policing” activists wanted to make the OPO significantly stronger, including enabling it to conduct investigations into alleged officer misconduct rather than its current role of simply fielding complaints and observing the process.
You remember the “Reimagining Police” initiative, don’t you? If not, this should refresh your memory.
In 2021, the OPO and its former head Farah Muscadin were found by an arbitrator to have violated the police labor agreement — just the latest chapter in a string of actions by the OPO that’s strained a contentious relationship.
The two sides remain at an impasse, and APA has no intention of giving in to the progressive activists’ demands.
Good.
Kirk Watson was elected mayor in large measure due to his promises to get crime under control and cut back on the radical Social Justice agenda driving the city. So far he hasn’t done much to deliver on those promises.
Austin apartment complex gets repeatedly hit by thieves breaking into apartments and cars night after night. Last year they had repeated transient break-ins through a hole in the fence, and this year two individuals seem to be the same ones breaking into cars over and over again.
So a woman gathered video evidence of the twp suspects. Austin police response? “This is not a high priority case.” And they wouldn’t look at her videos.
The apartments appear to be those off Riata Trace Blvd., which is about a mile from my house.
Years of understaffing, coddling crime in the name of “social justice” and luring more drug-addicted transients to Austin have put APD in a bind, as they don’t have enough manpower to protect life, liberty and property.
That won’t change because the Austin City Council doesn’t want it to change.
The FBI is investigating after a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service was killed at a gun range at a correctional facility in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the shooting happened at the firing range at the Federal Correctional Institutional in Phoenix, located near Pioneer Road and Interstate 17 in north Phoenix. Aimee Arthur-Wastell, spokesperson with the FBOP, said the range was being used by multiple federal agencies at the time.
The FBI specified that the agent was there for “routine” training when they were killed, but didn’t offer specifics as to how the agent was killed or if anyone was in custody.
According to Phoenix police, officers who responded to the area found a person shot, later determined to be the IRS agent. The agent was taken to a hospital with serious injuries. It wasn’t immediately clear if the agent died en route or at the hospital.
According to Arthur-Wastell, no FBOP or firing range employees were injured.
“To preserve the integrity and capabilities of the investigation, details of the ongoing process will not be released,” the FBI said in a statement.
Yeah, I bet.
You wonder just how many of Jeff Cooper’s rules were ignored here. Then again, it only takes one.
You’d like to think that federal firearms facilities take at least as much care on observing range safety procedures as the average mom-and-pop shooting range in Texas does, but given how the rest of the federal government is run these days, that’s no sure thing.
It also brings up the question of just why the IRS needs its own armed agents in the first place. Are there not enough armed agents in other branches of the federal government to provide muscle for the IRS on the (theoretically rare) occasions it’s required?
Feel free to share your own “the agent was investigating Hunter Biden and/or Hillary Clinton” jokes in the comments below.
San Diego tries enforcing the law, a sampler of the lies Obama told about his life, Blade-Runners take on Big Brother’s cameras, a nuke rises in Texas, and a Cthuloid horror swims the chilly waters of Antarctica. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
San Diego tries “this one weird trick” to deal with homeless problem: Enforcing the law.
Police began enforcing San Diego’s controversial new camping ban Monday, and although officials said they’ve so far focused only on Balboa Park, the new ordinance combined with other enforcement of laws long on the books has already made notable changes in the encampment landscape.
The “Unsafe Camping Ordinance” allows officers to force people off public land if they’re sleeping within two blocks of a school, shelter, trolley station, waterway or park “where a substantial public health and safety risk is determined.”
Capt. Shawn Takeuchi, head of the city’s neighborhood policing division, said his five-member team did arrest several homeless people Monday by Balboa Park, but only for existing warrants.
Others were given a warning, he said. If any of the same people are found illegally camping a day later, they’ll get a ticket even if they’ve moved locations.
Nobody in Balboa Park accepted offers for shelter Monday, the captain added. Enforcement will continue to focus on schools and parks in the near future, and officials declined to say where the team might move next.
Do you think Austin’s government might start enforcing the city’s camping ban? Of course not. Then how are they supposed to rake off the graft? (Hat tip: Instapundit, who offers some takeaways worth highlighting:
1. The homeless respond to policy and incentives like anyone else. The mere announcement of a future camping ban (plus some enforcement of other existing rules) rapidly cleared out major problem areas.
2. The provision of shelter or housing is neither necessary nor sufficient to accomplish these clear-outs. Of the people asked to leave Balboa Park on the first day of enforcement (issuance of warnings), none accepted offers of shelter.
3. The NGOs that have colonized the homeless problem have neither the incentive nor the knowledge to solve it. The head of one shelter was confused by the magical disappearance of his potential clients. “Where did they go?”
There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.
Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
Snip.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about Jager’s account of her fight with Obama, though, is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her, near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jager is probably the single most informed and credible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America—a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, or perhaps midway through Obama’s second term, as the president focused on the Iran deal while failing to address the concerns about rampant income inequality, racial inequality, and the growth of a monopoly tech complex that happened on his watch.
The idea that the celebrated journalists who wrote popular biographies of Obama and became enthusiastic members of his personal claque couldn’t locate Jager—or never knew who she was—defies belief. It seems more likely that the character Obama fashioned in Dreams had been defined—by Obama—as being beyond the reach of normal reportorial scrutiny. Indeed, Garrow’s biography of Obama’s early years is filled with such corrections of a historical record that Obama more or less invented himself. Based on years of careful record-searching and patient interviewing, Rising Star highlights a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of mainstream reporters and institutions about a man who almost instantaneously was treated less like a politician and more like the idol of an inter-elite cult.
Snip.
Progressive theology is built on a mythic hierarchy of group victimhood which has endured throughout time, up until the present day; the injuries that the victims have suffered are so massive, so shocking, and so manifestly unjust that they dwarf the present. Such injuries must be remedied immediately, at nearly any cost. The people who do the work of remedying these injustices, by whatever means, are the heroes of history. Conversely, the sins of the chief oppressors of history, white men, are so dark that nothing short of abject humiliation and capitulation can begin to approach justice.
It goes to say that nothing about the terms of progressive theology is original. It is the theology of Soviet communism, with class struggle replaced by identity politics. In this system, Jews play a unique, double-edged role: They are both an identity group and a Trojan horse through which history can reenter the gates of utopia.
Read the whole thing to see all those facts about Obama that the media ignored…including his fantasies about having sex with men.
Members of the IPCC, such as Pedro Moura-Costa (above) and Gareth Philips, had major conflicts-of-interest. They owned, created and/or worked for businesses — such as Ecosecurities and SGS Forestry — that would directly profit from the report’s conclusions.
In fact, the IPCC panel members’ companies were positioned to earn millions of dollars from the report. But the mainstream media did not report these conflicts and instead piled on the “global warming” and “carbon offset” bandwagons.
Solar energy portal Ecotopia reported that members of the IPCC “…had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees… [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such ‘offset’ projects.”
According to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially refused West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent fires from spreading to properties managed by the company. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had run its course.
His office has not yet commented on the delay of water resources.
How much damage could have been prevented with the extra water is not yet known. However, the question of “Why?” needs to be addressed in the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii’s history. Though bureaucratic red tape might be the most obvious suggestion, a recent interview with M. Kaleo Manual offers some interesting and disturbing insight. Manuel waxes philosophical on “water equity” (“equity” being a pervasive woke buzzword) and an ancient “reverence” of water as god-like. He uses these beliefs to support his rationale for keeping tight controls over Hawaiian water supplies; not as a resource to be used, but as a holistic privilege offered by the government.
Economist who named BRICS says the idea of a common BRICS currency is “embarrassing.”
“It’s just ridiculous,” [Lord Jim O’Neill] told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “They’re going to create a BRICS central bank? How would you do that? It’s embarrassing almost.”
The economist spoke ahead of the 15th BRICS summit next week, where the nations will meet to decide whether to expand membership to other countries and may also float the idea of the common currency.
The following story was related to me by a former Governor of Minnesota, who was of Norwegian descent. A number of years ago, a Norwegian dignitary (the Prime Minister, I think) visited Minnesota. Talking to our governor, the Prime Minister tut-tutted about Minnesota’s crime rate, saying that there was much less crime in Norway. Minnesota’s governor replied, “We don’t have a crime problem with our Norwegians, either.”
That anecdote came to mind when I read, in the London Times, “Sweden’s slide from peaceful welfare state to Europe’s gun-killings capital.”
Today, Sweden is Europe’s capital of gun homicide. Last year, according to the Swedish national council for crime prevention, 63 people were shot and killed: more than double the European average and, per capita, multitudes higher than London or Paris.
… The effect on Swedish society has been striking. As well as the lives lost, the violence has brought down a government, changed laws and policies, and become the biggest talking point in a country that once prided itself on its reputation as a peaceful welfare state.
Violent crime will do that, although, to be fair, Sweden’s homicide rate is considerably lower than ours. But it is now significantly higher than homicide rates in quite a few other European countries, including Norway. Why is that? Have Swedes suddenly started getting violent? No.
It has also kicked the hornet’s nest of integration. Today, one fifth of all people living in Sweden were born outside the country.
Dow Chemical is planning to build a small nuclear reactor to power their plant in Calhoun County. Good for them. The TRISO-X fuel they’re using sounds like it will be a pebble bed reactor design.
“Target Sales Dipped in Last Quarter Due to Pride Backlash.”
