Odds and ends number 121

Since I'm using the concept from monoblogue, I'm keeping the numbering system, too. Here are thinner slices of bloggy goodness.

In a few weeks we’ll be enjoying the Delaware State Fair. Here’s a pic I took a few years back, even before we moved here.

Back after about a month with some new nuggets as well as good reads from Substack and elsewhere.

The most patriotic liars

Last year at this time I told you about WalletHub and how they were somehow finagling a way to make blue states more patriotic than red ones by twisting the data. Well, they’re back this year and they’ve somehow skewed the data even more. Must be an election year.

But it got me to thinking: what is a patriot? Would I qualify, knowing that I grew up in an era where I didn’t have to fight in the military? (Really, that’s a good thing because I’m a born klutz.) I was never in the Peace Corps and too old for AmeriCorps (yes, they use these as factors) but I do vote in almost every election in which I’m eligible. I have a Gadsden flag adorning my truck and I hold my local politicians accountable - does that count on civic engagement?

Anyway, enough said. Yet something’s not quite right about the fact - you know, some may consider it racist - that the state which spawned the most well-known Confederate of all, Robert E. Lee, was the one WalletHub considered the most patriotic.

Then again, maybe they are on to something.

The heat is on

A few days ago I received an e-mail from LBR’s office with a survey question: “Do you think Congress should pass more laws to combat the climate crisis?” Something tells me that if the majority doesn’t just say no, but “hell no!” like I would have if the option were available, we’d never see the survey again. (It’s actually a backhanded way to get e-mail addresses, but she already has mine.)

But this is the way elected officials think, and a sure sign she’s been in office too long. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with reminding people about dos and don’ts regarding heat when the mercury rises above 95 degrees, but her apparent folly of believing that we can actually do something to change that is yet another issue I have with her. No environmentalist wacko has ever been able to tell me what our climate is supposed to be when the history we have been able to unlock discusses blazing hot summers, such as during the 1930s, and Little Ice Ages like the time of our American Revolution.

Fortunately, we as a society have learned to adapt, in part thanks to a guy named Willis Carrier. I doubt he had a government grant but he filled a need and made living in places like the Deep South and desert Southwest more bearable. If we stop thinking about how to perpetuate bureaucracy and start to solve real problems, we may get somewhere.

Disturbing Mother Earth for “green”

Speaking of people who create problems, a couple weeks ago my local social media environmentalist wacko put up this photo in order to mock those who believe that offshore wind will hurt tourism, a photo which drew my pithy reply:

Must be a strip mine for those rare earths the turbines need.

Of course, Mr. Wacko implied that it was a coal mine (which wouldn’t be obvious from the photo), so I wrote back:

But then again, areas with strip mines seldom depend on tourism.

That thought came to mind when I read this piece by Dr. David R. Legates. Writing at A Better Delaware, he notes:

Clean energy technology requires a wide range of metals and minerals, such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, zinc, as well as rare earth minerals such as Scandium, Yttrium, Lanthanum and a host of others of which you probably have never heard and cannot pronounce.  They are largely obtained from mines in Africa, southeast Asia, and South America.

These mines are not like those for coal, with which you might be familiar.  Open pit mining must be used to extract these metals and minerals.  Such mines are considered very dangerous to both miners’ health as well as to the local ecology and hydrology because of the harmful pollutants that are produced.

I’ve never heard a tourist make a big deal about visiting places like Congo, Rwanda, or Inner Mongolia. (China, South Korea, Chile, and Brazil, maybe a little bit.) The point is: one does not go to a place where there is strip mining unless there’s an intention, such as business. They’re not there to sightsee, so those places are out of the way.

But placing offshore wind in the viewshed of Ocean City or coastal Delaware, a place where people actually go to vacation; well, that can be a dealbreaker for some. And it’s all because insane people have the notion that we can do something about the climate, which is a complete crock.

Deception with gun data

You probably already know this, but the gun grabbers have been lying to you. Receipts? Check out this data drop, and listen when they say:

No, firearms are not the leading cause of death for children. Rather, it is the leading cause of death for adolescents in urban centers with a high prevalence of gang membership.

Does the source have a vested interest? Of course they do, but so do the people who claim that firearms are the leading cause of death for children. One side wants to sell ammo, the other side wants to make you helpless serfs. Look what happens to law-abiding people in “gun-free” areas and tell me what the problem is. I say it’s a lack of respect for life, and it’s going to take the fine kids in Generations Z and Alpha to fix it.

Checking on the facts

We all know that so-called “fact checkers” are there to bolster the Left, but a recent Capital Research Center series by Matt Palumbo delves deeply into the practice.

I’d kept that CRC series around for just this purpose, but it hit home for me when we saw what this “fact checking” led to: censorship. (And here’s a big, if generally known, disclosure: I write for The Patriot Post.)

My colleague there, Mark Alexander, states:

We have written extensively about speech suppression, which the leftist arbiters of truth put into high gear in 2017 after the election of Donald Trump. Since Joe Biden slithered into office, that violation of our fundamental civil rights has accelerated exponentially and unabated.

(…)

To put that into perspective, despite the fact that we have a very high engagement rate among 750,000 Facebook users who have specifically asked to follow our content, our traffic from Facebook has dropped 98% in 26 months. Again, a 98% drop in a little over two years. Of course, some suggest that we “just get off Facebook,” but we have been building readership on that platform for over a decade — at a significant cost of time and creative energy — and are disinclined to retreat and surrender. If not for the suppression and shadow-banning, based on our growth rate five years earlier, we would be reaching four to five million Facebook users by now.

For the record, we are on all the major social media platforms, and those platforms are increasingly where most Americans get their news and express their opinions. Thus, these platforms’ corrupt systemic speech suppression has become the Left’s most effective strategy for controlling public opinion and perpetuating their political agenda.

It’s true that we still have the freedom to read or ignore what news we wish to in this country, but suppression of the government-skeptic viewpoint has placed us in the “banana republic” status we are in. And that’s a direct result of bias: notice the “fact checker” has called a poll that states 17% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had the Hunter Biden story not been suppressed “fishy.” But his paper spiked the initial story - why? They sure ran with every unfounded allegation against Donald Trump. Nor was there a need for 17%: just a 2% shift would have pulled Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin into the Trump column, changing the election results.

Fact check that, you clowns.

Good Substack links to read

I bet I read 15-20 Substacks a day, some with multiple articles per diem. There’s a lot of good writing there, but sometimes I come across things worth re-reading, even a couple weeks later. So I saved a couple to share here.

The first one brings up a point I’ve made before in the fight between those who would litter our viewshed with offshore wind and our agricultural land with solar panels. They often claim we’re being paid off by the oil companies, but

Robert Bryce

shows it’s Radical Green that has all the money and really doesn’t care about the environment so much as they are about control over our way of living.

Environmentalism In America Is Dead

Bryce even gives our end of the nation a shoutout:

Perhaps the most striking example of the environmental betrayal now underway is the climate activists’ support for installing hundreds, or even thousands, of offshore wind platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of the North Atlantic Right Whale’s habitat.

(…)

Among the climate groups shilling for offshore wind is the Center for American Progress (gross receipts: $40 million), founded by John Podesta, who now serves as President Biden’s advisor on “clean energy innovation and implementation.” Last year, Podesta’s group published an article claiming “oil money” was pushing “misinformation” about offshore wind.

Rather than defend whales, the group claimed the offshore wind sector is “a major jobs creator and an important tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Who funds the Center for American Progress? Among its $1 million funders are big foundations, including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Two familiar names, Climate Imperative and ClimateWorks, each gave the group up to $500,000 last year. On the corporate side, the group got up to $500,000 from Amazon.com and Microsoft.

While the American Petroleum Institute is a pretty big fossil fuel supporter ($265 million in gross receipts) the Sierra Club isn’t that small at $184 million. Add in their foundation (another $123 million) and I think it’s my buddies on the green side who are the ones paid off.

Speaking of money, I want to know how these kids are paying for the Halloween costumes they wear daily as a sign of their mental illness?

Beware of the Furries

As

Jim McCraigh

notes:

An increasing percentage of older furries are white males in their teens to mid-twenties. These individuals are seven times more likely to identify as transgender and five times more likely to identify as homosexual than the general population. Furry Fandom has a strong sexual fetish undercurrent, with many participants embracing furry-inspired child pornography. Worse, such furries are now being considered as a gender identity by “advocates” and have been assigned a rainbow flag with paw prints.

I’ve not had a child in public school for decades, but reportedly this is an issue in schools. One rumor I heard was that schools are placing litter boxes in restrooms to accommodate these skulls full of mush.

Even if it’s not true, one has to ask where the parents are? I watched Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner as a kid but I didn’t demand a costume to wear after Halloween was over or adopt a diet of carrots or birdseed.

Some parents have essentially abandoned their kids, allowing them to live in this fantasy world. Aside from the few thousand who may happen to make a living as costumed characters, what are these kids going to do when reality gives them a cold, hard slap in the face?

I’m not saying at all that role-playing is bad: several adults I know have a hobby of dressing up as re-enactors of the War Between the States or medieval characters - actually, in some respects the latter is a thriving business, combining jousting and eating with your fingers. So an adult play-acting as a furry for a weekend isn’t the worst thing in the world.

But when you’re doing it to groom kids, that’s crossing the red line as far as I’m concerned.

And those are the odds and ends for the month.

Until my next edition of odds and ends, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.