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74 questions from the Trump transition team which are bothering the Department of Energy

December 10, 2016

Whatever one may think of Trump, his transition team’s questions for the Department of Energy are penetrating. They are causing some little worry among the adherents of the man-made global warming religion.

Willis Eschenbach has the list of questions and his comments over at WUWT.

doe-vs-ugly-reality

Man-made climate change (actually the lack of such), vast grants to companies which go bankrupt in the night, jaunts to resorts for climate meetings, prolonging nuclear power …. are all apparently within the sights of the transition team.

The questions and Willis Eschenbach’s comments are reproduced below

Questions for DOE

This memo, as you might expect, is replete with acronyms. “DOE” is the Department of Energy. Here are the memo questions and my comments.

1. Can you provide a list of all boards, councils, commissions, working groups, and FACAs [Federal Advisory Committees] currently active at the Department? For each, can you please provide members, meeting schedules, and authority (statutory or otherwise) under which they were created? 

If I were at DOE, this first question would indeed set MY hair on fire. The easiest way to get rid of something is to show that it was not properly established … boom, it’s gone. As a businessman myself, this question shows me that the incoming people know their business, and that the first order of business is to jettison the useless lumber.

(more…)

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“Dalai Lama to meet with Donald Trump”

December 3, 2016

That headline hasn’t been written yet but don’t be surprised if it happens,  and soon, sometime before Trump’s inauguration.

Trump needs to rile China as much as possible while minimising any real retaliatory actions. What he does now, before his inauguration, can only lead to threats of retaliation but not any real actions. His mere acceptance of a call from Taiwan’s President has caused large waves. Something the US administration for 40 years has not had the courage to do. Maybe I attribute too much sense to Trump’s team, but I suspect that they have calculated quite well. They have thrown the current Obama administration into a bit of a spin and rendered them effectively impotent in their China posture.

The time before his inauguration is is a unique opportunity for Trump to make statements, meet people and indicate actions which he can later walk away from. It is the time for outrageous trial balloons. Few President-elects have had the nerve to do this before. I note his skillful, and almost Machiavellian, use of the selection process of “possible” members of his administration to confuse and mislead a hostile press.

The liberal/left press still don’t get it. Democracy is all about populism. It may be a trifle stupid but that is what democracy is about. The liberal “elite” – or any elite – cannot prevail in a democracy. They can no longer expect to be blindly followed by the unthinking plebs. They need to court popularity. I suspect there has been a lot more real thinking (whether by heart or by brain) by the Trump voters in deciding to vote for him than those who blindly followed their “elite” leaders in voting for Clinton.

Trump needs, while minimising the consequences, to rile China, India, France, Germany, Mexico, Canada and a few other “socialist” countries. He did Mexico during the campaign. He continued with India with his apparently effusive telephone conversation with Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. Now he’s done China. The French/German/British investment in – and creation of  – some of the rebel groups now losing in Aleppo has been part of the US strategy disaster in Syria. A losing strategy that Trump will want to move away from. And that he will do by means of contacts with Putin.

It is more unlikely but I would not put it past him to make contact with Iran.

But meeting with the Dalai Lama is an easy decision to take.

Dalai Lama impersonating Trump (Good Morning Britain)

Dalai Lama impersonating Trump (Good Morning Britain)

 

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The media’s sanctimonious self-righteousness contributed to Trump’s victory

November 11, 2016

It should be fairly obvious that I am not overly impressed by the main-stream (mainly liberal) media in the US. It is my contention that their blindness to the anti-establishment wave that was abroad, and then their sanctimonious stupidity, was no small contributor to the anger against the perceived establishment.

Now the analysis starts.

But some few liberals do see – at least in hindsight – what I thought I saw back in May.

Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

This is Thomas Frank in The Guardian: (my bold)

Clinton’s supporters among the media didn’t help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted of:

  • Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
  • Her scandals weren’t real.
  • The economy was doing well / America was already great.
  • Working-class people weren’t supporting Trump.
  • And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.

How did the journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach?

 

Image from Truth Feed

Image from Truth Feed

 

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Part 2 of “Why Trump couldn’t win but did”

November 9, 2016

It is deja vu.

It is not that I am expert enough to have predicted a Trump victory. But in May this year when Trump won the Republican nomination I posted:

May 6th 2016:

I have made this point before. Attacking Trump head on only fuels his anti-establishment support. It is only by occupying the ground he occupies that some of his support can be captured.

Attacking Trump – from any direction – only seems to strengthen his support. That suggests that his support is coming from those who feel that their fears are completely unrepresented by any of the other candidates. The 2016 election is dominated, I think,  by the avoidance of worst fears and not by the meeting of aspirations.  It could well be that nobody will be able to take away from Trump’s support unless they can articulate the same disdain for establishment politics and political correctness that he does and address the worst fears that exist.

The current headlines in the US media are now about how and why Clinton will trounce Trump. It all sounds exactly like the reasons given over the last year for why Trump couldn’t win the Republican nomination. Some of it – especially in the left leaning media – HuffingtonPost, Slate, Politico and Washington Post – are more like wishful thinking rather than analysis. They have not learned from their past mistakes and still haven’t understood the strength of the anti-establishment wave. Bernie Sanders is the only other candidate from either party who has begun to understand the mood abroad. To take away the “politically incorrect” territory from Donald Trump may be beyond Hillary Clinton.

My prediction for November is that Clinton support is more likely to collapse than that Trump’s campaign will implode. And therefore I will not be at all surprised at a very close run election and even if Trump wins.

And from the results it is pretty clear that the entire main stream media missed it and are still missing it. They are also still missing the point that they have themselves contributed to the resentment and anger that the Trump voters have now demonstrated with stunning effect. They (WaPo, HuffPo, LATimes, BostonGlobe, Politico, CNN and even the NYT) have been living in their own little bubble of virtuosity and sanctimonious blather that their vituperative attacks on Trump have been entirely counter-productive and have only cemented his support. Looking at the editorials today, they are still living in their bubble. They are still in denial about their own role in their own defeat. They have imbued political correctness with such a halo that Trump supporters have been invisible to the pollsters. Election models have been discredited soundly.

(As I have written elsewhere, election models are like climate models. They

  1. have pre-determined outcomes,
  2. are based on data manipulation,
  3. are biased to protect the “establishment”, and
  4. just plain wrong.)

I don’t expect even Trump the buffoon to be all bad. There are many silver linings to his dark cloud. But one thing is sure. President Trump is, at least partly, a reaction to Obama’s failures. His failure to let the US economy to be the engine for global growth, his failure to curb profligacy in government, his failure with Obamacare and his many failures with foreign policy. To that extent it is Obama’s fears of action which have enabled Donald Trump.

 

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Media and establishment thrashed by the “people” as Clinton concedes

November 9, 2016

A different world?

Only one US newspaper endorsed Trump.

And it certainly wasn’t the Washington Post or the New York Times (and in this case it was the NYT which copied the WaPo headline).

trump-triumphs

trump-triumphs-2

The polls and the models — not much good that can be said about them.

 

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The world looks on amazed as the US picks a Witch or a Buffoon

November 6, 2016

I wonder how November the 8th, 2016 will be recorded in history.

It seems – in our time – to be an epic – and fateful – battle with consequences beyond just the US. Populism versus establishment. The “people” versus the party system. The “people” versus the media. The “people” versus the “elite”. Institutions versus individuals. Liberalism or conservatism. Decadence opposed by decency. Depravity set against prudishness. Open borders versus protectionism. Big government against small. Profligacy opposed by austerity. White trash versus black trash. Muslims versus Christians. Mordor versus Gondor.

It is “the poor” against “the rich” but both Clinton and Trump are extraordinarily rich. It is “good” versus “evil” with both claiming to be the “good”. It is integrity against corruption where it is difficult to see who is less corrupt. It is a choice between evils but the lesser evil may not win. It is a race to see who is perceived worse.

But whether Donald Trump is a white rider from Rohan or the Black Lord of Mordor is uncertain. Or is he just Coco the clown brought on for light relief? Hillary Clinton is certainly no Galadriel but whether she is an Evil Witch or just a Red Queen is open to question.

If Hillary Clinton wins it will either be remembered as the day the Red Queen triumphed or the day when Witch Hillary of Little Rock prevailed. If Donald Trump wins it will either be the day a Great Buffoon came to power or the dawn of a Return to Greatness.

Either way the world is amazed it has come to this. That 325 million people gave themselves no option but the choice of a Witch or a Buffoon.

Lewis Carroll is needed to bring some sense into this.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

That it has come to this is also part of Barack Obama’s legacy.

 

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How Clinton/Abedin “laundered” and leaked confidential information?

October 30, 2016

The Hillary Clinton/Huma Abedin relationship may have hidden depths beyond just the great tolerance shown to perverted and erring partners. However the combination was a very badly leaking sieve. I don’t doubt that the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis and the Japanese and maybe even the Saudis (but probably not the British) have copies of everything Hillary and Huma sent to each other and themselves. It seems the main reason that Huma Abedin sent encrypted, unprintable messages to herself on 3rd party email addresses was essentially for “confidentiality laundering” so that they could be printed (and passed on in unencrypted form).

NY Post:

On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.

“She (Abedin) routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office.

Even if without any malign purposes (which itself is not very credible) it is remarkably irresponsible for a Secretary of State and almost certainly a felony. The convolutions involved in laundering away the confidentiality suggest that the intentions were not entirely benign.

Hillary leaking

Hillary leaking

 

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Humagate: As with Nixon, FBI comes too late and Hillary Clinton could be next “criminal” US President

October 29, 2016

Deja Vu.

Huma Mahmood Abedin is to Hillary Clinton as H R “Bob” Haldeman was to Richard Nixon. Part Svengali and part monster. Humagate now and Watergate then. Huma Abedin was not even born then. The Hillary Clinton connections with Saudi Arabian money facilitated by Huma Abedin are probably the skeleton in the closet being inadvertently exposed by the “careless” use of a personal server.

Wa Po October 10th 1972

Wa Po October 10th 1972

On October 10th 1972, the Washington Post ran with the story of the conspiracy – established by the FBI – behind the Watergate cover up. Yet Richard Nixon won reelection – by a landslide – on 11th November 1972.

Now on October 28th 2016 it seems that the FBI have found enough to have to announce that the investigation of Clinton’s emails has been reopened. The announcement is so unusual, with just 10 days left before the election, that criminal activity by Clinton is almost certain. Yet it comes too late, I think, to bring Clinton down. The world is much more “instant” now than it was in 1972. But the astounding reopening of Hillary Clinton’s (and of Huma Abedin’s) emails may take some time to penetrate the US electoral psyche. The alternative being a buffoon increases the resistance to the absorption of the revelations.

It took almost 2 years till August 1974 for Nixon to finally bite the bullet and resign.

Watergate timeline

  • October 10, 1972: FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, The Post reports.
  • November 11, 1972: Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
  • ………
  • August 8, 1974: Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to resign. Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumes the country’s highest office. He will later pardon Nixon of all charges related to the Watergate case.

My expectation now is that Hillary Clinton will win and become the next President of the United States. And some two years hence she will probably be impeached and resign for her past criminal activities.

 

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Is the US election all over?

October 26, 2016

Some of the polls are now predicting a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton.  The media are overwhelmingly convinced that Trump has shot his bolt (though I still question why – if the result is so certain – they take such a vituperative tone in their Trump coverage and don such rose-coloured glasses to view Hillary’s shortcomings and transgressions).

It does seem that even with the now expected Clinton win, the US political divide is going to be wider and more clearly delineated than it has been for a long time. A sharply divided US probably means that the muddle in the Middle East will be compounded rather than eased. Hillary’s track record as Secretary of State does not hold out much hope for any great improvement in foreign policy and strategies. Four years of increasing Russian influence can be expected.

On domestic policy, I suspect a Hillary Clinton term will be much of the same slow, gradual decline under Barack Obama. I am not sure which hole Obamacare will end up in but whichever road Clinton chooses is filled with pot-holes.

I suppose election night still contains some suspense and there is still a chance that the polls are wrong again (a la Brexit). Probably Clinton wins but with a result much closer than is being predicted by some.

 

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As costs go up in flames, time to pull Obamacare off the market?

October 24, 2016

Obamacare costs are no longer affordable. So even Barack Obama is comparing his Affordable Care Act with Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7.

“When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone… [and] it has a few bugs, what do they do, — they fix it, [they] upgrade it. Unless it catches fire – then they pull it off the market”.

And Obamacare is clearly on fire.

obamacare-premiums-2017-graphic-zerohedge

obamacare-premiums-2017-graphic-zerohedge

Dailywire: 

Obamacare’s Collapsing. That Was Always The Plan.

On Thursday, President Obama attempted to defend the skyrocketing costs of Obamacare by comparing them to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, a smartphone that was banned on airplanes because it had a nasty habit of spontaneously combusting. …. Obama put the responsibility on the states for not expanding Medicaid, thereby avoiding picking up the costs of Obamacare. The vast majority of people who have enrolled in Obamacare have done so at point of government gun, and have done so as part of the Medicaid expansions Obamacare attempted to incentivize; as of October 2015, nearly all of the “newly insured” enrollees were Medicaid enrollees. Obama tried to claim that the federal government would pick up the tab for expanded Medicaid, but that neglects that over time, the states pick up more and more of the tab – and that the federal government is $20 trillion in debt.

Now, Obama’s pushing the public option, using George W. Bush’s egregiously awful Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit expansion. Part D has led to massive increases in healthcare costs, as well as to rejection of Medicare itself by health providers thanks to government restrictions on costs. As Mark Levin writes in Plunder and Deceit, “the impracticability of Medicare’s centralized management and archaic decision-making practices…significantly impairs the broader private sector.” …

….. I told Fox News back in August 2013 that Obamacare was designed to fail, thereby necessitating a government option. That option would bankrupt insurance companies – the government doesn’t have a necessity for profit margin, and therefore, for decent service – and lead to the complete government takeover of healthcare Obama has always sought. In other words, Obamacare was created with designed obsolescence – it’s as though Samsung had designed their phones to melt down so that they could then market the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Government Edition.

Obamacare is not the shining example some people would like to pretend it is.

 

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