Sunday, July 31, 2022
Friday, July 29, 2022
New Study Examines Petroleum Product Export Ban
Hey, checkout this web page: - https://accf.org/2022/07/21/new-study-examines-petroleum-product-export-ban/
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Timothy Van Eck invites you to read the WSJ article: Export Ban Would Mean Higher Gas Prices for Americans
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Thursday, July 28, 2022
The Quietly Changing Consensus on Neutering Dogs
A growing body of research has documented the health risks of getting certain breeds fixed early—so why aren't shelters changing their policies? https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/dog-neutering-health-risks-for-certain-breeds/594355/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
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Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Check out this great article on https://libertyunyielding.com
Hi, I thought you might enjoy reading this article I just came across: "FDA warns of brain swelling and permanent vision loss in kids taking puberty blockers"
This is the link: https://libertyunyielding.com/2022/07/26/fda-warns-of-brain-swelling-and-permanent-vision-loss-in-kids-taking-puberty-blockers/
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Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Don Surber:Dred Scott was popular, Justice Kagan
Blog: Don Surber
Post: Dred Scott was popular, Justice Kagan
Link: https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/07/dred-scott-was-popular-justice-kagan.html
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Sunday, July 24, 2022
Saturday, July 23, 2022
The Wall Street Journal Digital Replica Article
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| The Upside-Down Logic of Electric SUVs If consumers and businesses cared about the CO2 they emit, the last cars they might buy are hot-selling EVs like Ford's Mustang Mach-E or GM's Hummer EV. These large-battery, long-range vehicles would have to be driven many tens of thousands of miles before they rack up enough mileage and save enough gasoline to compensate for the emissions created to produce their batteries. And that's according to their fans, whose calculations often smell of friendly assumptions about the source of the electricity consumed, whether gasoline driving is really being displaced mile for mile, and a presumed lack of progress in reducing the carbon intensity of conventional motor fuels. Most problematic of all is the assumption that EV use causes oil to stay in the ground. If a real incentive to reduce CO2 were in place, namely a carbon tax, buyers would gravitate to the smallest- battery vehicles and hybrids, suitable for running about town but not highway trips. These cars stand a better chance of offsetting their lifecycle emissions. OK. Buyers aren't drawn to the electric Mustang or Ford's new F-150 Lightning pickup to solve climate change. These are exciting, high-tech gadgets in their own right. And that's fine. Even so, customers' appetite might slacken if they were told the truth. Ford leaked this week for the benefit of the investment community plans to lay off thousands of workers to fatten the profits of its conventional vehicles. This extra cash is needed to support electric vehicles that lose money despite taxpayer rebates plus hidden subsidies via our convoluted fuel-economy and trade regulations. Ford's leak may be a turning point. Conventional vehicles will be starved for investment from here on out, even as auto makers throw money at big-battery EVs for luxury buyers. This trade-off could even lead to worse emissions than otherwise (though still a rounding error in total global emissions) considering that most nonrich consumers will likely opt for gasoline-powered cars for decades to come. It also represents a gamble with the industry's finances, which depend on large, government-protected profits from standard SUVs and pickups. If these vehicles start looking shabby and out of date due to lack of investment, the industry is in deep straits. As Ford CEO Jim Farley said in March, "we need them to be more profitable to fund" Ford's $50 billion in spending on mostly high-end EVs, which have the least chance of being net reducers of CO2. These outcomes make no sense in climate terms, naturally. Nissan is giving up its pioneering electric Leaf in favor of a big electric SUV aimed at affluent shoppers. One manufacturer that speaks confidently of profits in the near term from electric vehicles is Porsche—whose cars don't rack up Camry-like mileages, don't displace gasoline-powered trips to the Shop-Rite, and don't stand a snowball's chance of offsetting the emissions involved in producing their powerful batteries. Our EV policies are mainly a testament to modern society's ability to create complexity when it starts trying to hit multiple political bogies even if it means ignoring the bogey that originally set off the policy quest—in this case, carbon reduction. Youngish voters in particular say climate is their first concern and yet a nil percentage bother to dig any deeper. Voilà, the budding audience for ludicrously subsidized products (if the goal is reducing CO2 emissions) like today's plus-sized electric vehicles. Their dreamland is Norway, where hybrid and electric-vehicle miles now exceed conventional-vehicle miles, thanks to generous subsidies to EV buyers. Paid for how? With 0.07% of the world's people, Norway exports 2% of the world's oil and gas, 30 times its share of global population. The auto industry gambles its finances on big EVs for the rich and second-rate cars for everybody else.  Regulators everywhere are structuring their electric-vehicle industries on the Norway model, based on subsidies from less-affluent people who continue to buy gas-powered cars. A zombie business or industry, in today's parlance, is one sustained less by creative destruction than by a combination of government bailout, regulation and hidden subsidies. This is what the global auto sector is becoming. Germany, having saddled its domestic makers with mandates for diesel and then electric vehicles, has repeatedly had to scarf together hidden rescues when the mandated investments didn't pay off. Don't think it can't happen here. In fact, the history of the U.S. auto sector since the Chrysler bailout of 1980 has been of more or less continuous open and crypto-bailouts. According to the consultancy AlixPartners, some $526 billion is currently being invested to create dozens of mostly high-end electric vehicles aimed at the 17% of buyers who constitute the luxury market. The impact on climate of these cars will be zero. Let's hope the impact on taxpayers will be zero when the bills come due. BUSINESS WORLD By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. |
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Thursday, July 21, 2022
Federal Early Childhood Education, Care Don’t Benefit Kids. Here Are the Facts.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/19/federal-early-childhood-education-care-doesnt-benefit-kids-here-are-the-facts/
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Saturday, July 16, 2022
Church: Where Are The Men?
Christian churches in the West don't attract males -- and are failing their mission - https://www.theamericanconservative.com/church-where-are-the-men/
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Ivana Trump and Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi
How the NAACP Lets Down American Blacks
Let's Teach Joe Biden Why the Palestinians Are Not like the Irish
Friday, July 15, 2022
Englewood Sun eEdition Article
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Friday, July 15, 2022| Byrne video disassociates Trump from Jan. 6 Area man recorded blog; to testify before committee By BOB MUDGE SENIOR WRITER VENICE ? The Donald Trump rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol wasn't supposed to be a Trump rally, according to Patrick Byrne. Byrne, who formerly owned Overstock.com, has a local connection as a property owner in Sarasota County, including Venice, Osprey and Wellen Park. In a video blog, he states he was scheduled to be a speaker at the event originally planned for Jan. 6. The purpose of it, he says in a March 15 Rumble.com video, was to explain why the certification of state electoral votes was going to be put off for a week by Vice President Mike Pence. Byrne is set to meet behind closed doors with the House Jan. 6 committee Friday to talk about his involvement with the events leading up to that day, as well as in a Dec. 18 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office at which his options to challenge the election results were discussed. The Rumble video is titled "Patrick Byrne Statement to J6 Committee Regarding December 18 Oval Office and January 4-6 Events." Byrne says that he; Englewood resident Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser; attorney Sydney Powell; and another lawyer "I call Alyssa," for whom he never provides a last name, were let into the Oval Office on Dec. 18 to provide Trump with the basis for investigating the election. They showed Trump an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 and one Trump signed in 2018, both dealing with the president's authority in the event a foreign government interferes in a U.S. election. If that happens, Byrne says, "the president can pretty much do anything he wants," including canceling or rerunning the election. Against that backdrop, the group also shared three letters from the FBI ? one on attempts by the Iranian government to gain access to U.S. voter databases; one saying it had gained access; and one about the hack into government systems through software from Texas-based SolarWinds. The initial discussion, Byrne says, was about whether the three letters triggered the executive orders. "I don't mean to suggest, by any means, was it an obvious call," he says. "It was not an obvious call ? and none of us saw it as an obvious question." Once there was a consensus that the orders applied, there  BYRNE were three questions to be answered, Byrne says: where to investigate, what to investigate and who to do the investigation. Trump wanted to go with the "lightest footprint," Byrne says: look only at the six "original" suspect counties, which he doesn't name; have the hard drives and routers there copied; and have the investigation done by people who don't wear uniforms. "Here is the only time I pushed for the heavy footprint," Byrne said. He advocated for teams of U.S. marshals and National Guard members with computer expertise to do the work because the courts and the military still had the public trust. "Let me point out what's happened is a total loss of confidence in the public in the election system," he says he told Trump. The teams he recommended would have a definite answer about election fraud by New Year's Eve, he said, and probably a "quick read" within two or three days. But he says he also told Trump, "if we don't find the kinds of things we think we're going to find," he would need to concede. He recalls Trump leaning over, "almost like he's talking CEO to CEO," and saying, "'Pat, you have no idea how easy it will be for me to concede if you don't find what you're talking about. ? My life's going to get a lot better, Pat. ? But how can I do that if I think this election's been rigged?' "He was 75," Byrne says. "He was tired. He didn't know who to believe. He was surrounded by a bunch of liars." Byrne also says he was "given to believe" that there had been personal threats against Trump, and cabinet members were talking about the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him. "There were a whole bunch of reasons he was afraid to act," he says. There were three strategies to bring challenges to the election results, Byrne says. Powell wanted to take all the election disputes into court, while Rudy Giuliani preferred a more limited approach. Then there was the "Green Bay sweep," named after a play the NFL team is famous for: persuade members of Congress to return the states' elector certifications to their legislatures for a week for reconsideration. Byrne says he had "cyber guys" digging up data to support all of the plans. By Jan. 4, court decisions left only the Green Bay Sweep as an option. A meeting was held that day at Trump's D.C. hotel to lay out the argument and get members of Congress on board, Byrne says. There were no commitments at the meeting but by that evening, he says, at least 12 had agreed and "we heard that (Vice President Mike) Pence was going for it." Under a federal statute, Pence would declare a week's delay. The votes would then be opened on Jan. 13 instead of Jan. 6 and "however they assign the electoral votes is how they assign the electoral votes," Byrne says. He says the idea "didn't strike him as offensive to the Constitution." "People might say there's a hickey on the constitutional process, but there'a a hickey on the constitutional process and there's paving over an election that now 60% of Americans think was illegal," he says. The event on Jan. 6 was supposed to consist of Flynn giving a speech on the historical significance of the election and the delay; two scientists laying out data supporting suspicions in the results; and Byrne talking about the need to keep any demonstrations peaceful. He says he was visited earlier in the week by an unidentified "militia guy" who told him thousands of people with "long guns" were coming on Jan. 6 and "we'll do whatever you say." "We're ready to take this place over," he says the man told him. "To which I said, 'please don't do that. On the morning of Jan. 6, he thought there was better than a 50% chance of delaying the count. But that morning he and Flynn learned they had been "disinvited" as speakers. People from the White House he associates with Pence had taken over the event, he says, and it became a pep rally for Trump, "which was exactly the wrong thing to do." Then the Capitol was invaded, which was the worst thing that could happen for Trump, as it cost him the support of almost everyone planning to back the delay. That's why he's convinced Trump had nothing to do with it. "But I'm not saying there was no orchestration," he says, laying the blame on 600 or so "MAGA people" who let themselves be tricked into violence by 50-100 former federal agent or antifa instigators acting for the "deep state." There is no evidence of such an action. So far, much of what Byrne states in the video blog has led to testimony that discusses loud, nearly violent meetings in the White House. On Friday, he is set to testsify under oath about the events before and of Jan. 6, 2021. Byrne says he didn't make the video as a Trump voter, because he didn't vote for him. He says he's speaking as an "I don't want to see an election stolen voter." |
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Thursday, July 14, 2022
‘Christian Nationalism’ is woven deep into America’s fabric
Biden's mind-blowing Holocaust blunders recall a history of dumb remarks about Israel
Englewood Sun eEdition Article
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Thursday, July 14, 2022| Biden's gas-station attack was embarrassing For Joe Biden, the buck stops with small independent business owners trying to make ends meet. Over the holiday weekend, the president slammed gas stations for the purported sin of not passing along declining oil prices to motorists. Biden took to Twitter to urge "the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump" to heed his message: "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product." Yes, sir, whatever you say, Mr. President! The United States Oil and Gas Association mockingly recommended that the intern who posted the tweet should sign up for Econ 101, but it's worse than that. Biden has hit the gas stations before on the same grounds. It's hard to know where the economic illiteracy ends and the shameless demagoguery begins. Regardless, it's another indication that the president's approach to inflation is to cast about for scapegoats and villains, no matter how implausible. So-called jawboning, or stern rhetoric directed at industries to get them to bend to the presidential will is nothing new. The most famous example is from John F. Kennedy, who blasted U.S. Steel for raising prices in 1962. JFK's tack was questionable, but at least he was targeting an enormously influential industry that had breached an agreement to hold the line on prices brokered by his administration. Biden, by contrast, is going after the proverbial Liberty Gas Station and Uni-Mart down on Route 134 started by an immigrant couple hoping to send their children to college for the first time. These small-time entrepreneurs have done nothing wrong, except remain in business at a time when the president's anti-oiland- gas policy has backfired spectacularly. As the business newsletter The Hustle explains, the majority of owners operate a single gas station, either as a branded location of a big famous company or on their own. Given that there are more than 100,000 gas stations in the United States, many clustered at the same busy intersections in direct competition with one another, a proprietor hardly has monopoly power to determine prices. Indeed, when Biden says gas stations set prices, he's technically correct in the sense that they post the prices on their iconic signs down to the tenth of a cent. They aren't doing it arbitrarily, though. They all know that if they set a price not justified by broader market forces, customers will simply drive down the street to a more reasonably priced station. Selling gas usually isn't the most lucrative part of the business, either. Gas stations make a very small margin on fuel, with the cost of crude and refining, along with transport and taxes, accounting for almost all of the price at the pump. Stations earn a much higher margin on their sales of drinks and foodstuffs. Biden would be on more solid ground urging gas stations to cut consumers a break on the price of soda and Doritos. Biden maintains that the stations should reduce gas prices since it's a time of "war and global peril." This appeal might make sense if Biden were browbeating gas stations located in Ukraine or Russia. But the U.S. is not at war, and business owners are under no obligation to sell their product at cost or below because Vladimir Putin is trying to dismember Ukraine. Counterintuitively, gas stations tend to be more profitable when prices are declining rather than rising, so they are unlikely simply as a business matter to be engaged in the pricing conspiracy that Biden alleges. Although President Biden considers them worthy of a good kicking, gas stations aren't a growth proposition. The number of stations has markedly declined in recent decades, and the rise of electric cars is putting more pressure on the business model. At least they are actually doing their job in difficult circumstances. The same can't be said of the president. Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry.  RICH LOWRY National Review |
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Tuesday, July 5, 2022
The Wall Street Journal Digital Replica Article
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| REVIEW & OUTLOOK Bidenomics 101 Business leaders have chalked up President Biden's attacks on oil companies to political cynicism, but maybe they're too generous. His tweet over the weekend ordering gas stations to lower prices betrayed a willful ignorance about the private economy. " My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril," Mr. Biden tweeted Saturday. "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now." Had Donald Trump issued such a command as President, the left would have cried "authoritarian." It's embarrassing for the leader of the free world to sound like he's channeling Hugo Chávez. A Chinese state media flack praised Mr. Biden's tweet: "Now US President finally realized that capitalism is all about exploitation. He didn't believe this before." Or maybe he did, and nobody wanted to believe it. You'd think that the President's Ivy League-educated economic advisers would have informed him that large refiners own fewer than 5% of all gas stations in America. More than 60% are operated by an individual or family that owns a single store, and the rest are independently owned chains or grocery stores that sell fuel. Many license brands from refiners. Refiners largely exited the retail business in the 2000s because of thin profit margins. The Energy Information Administration says distribution and marketing made up about 5% of the price of gasoline in May, or about 22 cents a gallon. This covers the cost of freight, labor, utilities, real estate and credit-card fees (which can average more than 10 cents a gallon). Most gas stations make a few cents a gallon in profit and stay in business mainly by selling food and cigarettes. The National Association of Convenience Stores says its members are struggling amid high gas prices because customers are making fewer stops and buying less. More than a quarter of gas stations have closed since the 1990s because they couldn't make the economics work. If retailers were to sell fuel at cost, most would go out of business. Perhaps those owned by large refiners would survive, but they'd be accused of predatory pricing by Mr. Biden's antitrust cops. The President's economic ignorance isn't a one-off. In recent months he has accused oil and gas companies of price gouging and demanded The President doesn't seem to know anything about markets. that they increase production even while his Administration threatens to put them out of business. Mr. Biden doesn't understand that businesses make long-term decisions based on demand expectations and policy signals. Jeff Bezos called the President's weekend tweet "either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics." They aren't mutually exclusive. Asked about the tweet on Fox News Sunday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that "anybody that knows President Biden knows he's plain spoken and he tells exactly what he's thinking in terms that everybody can understand," adding that "we obviously take great exception of the idea that this is somehow misdirection." That isn't reassuring. |
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