Recently Pardoned Turkey Found Dead After Claiming To Have Dirt On Hillary Clinton From the Vince Foster Files!
Comments
After Putin's Ukraine aggression, time for Trump to strongman Russia with new sanctions
Trump will need to push back forcefully. We need to address Putin's force with an equal counterforce; sanctions will work, especially targeted sanctions which include potential secondary sanctions. Parisians are now rioting against the Paris climate accords
The US is beating its Kyoto accord goals even though we never signed the agreement. We will meet our Paris Accord goals although never signing that agreement. We do not need to sign an agreement to meet our goals. On the other hand, Europe is a failure when it comes to meeting the climate accord goals the Europeans have signed. They rarely meet these goals while often failing them. The entire reason for these goals is not to stop climate change; even the "experts" agree that these agreements will do nothing of substance to slow or stop climate change. The goals are to bind the United States, so our economy does not surge forward for a decade or two leaving the "wealthy West" behind. It would be unpleasant should the US surge to 3 times or 4 times the average income per capita of the European nations, well, for the European politicians! What we saw during the first two years of the Trump Presidency was just that, a surge in US economic activity which is likely to leave the Europeans, the Chinese, the Japanese and most of the rest of the world behind. These climate accords are designed to slow US economic growth to a crawl keeping the US from economically surging away from the rest of the world. It would be uncomfortable for the European politicians when their people begin to ask why the people of the US are so wealthy while they stagnate. Parisians should revolt only this time they need to change the French motto from Liberté, égalité, fraternité to Liberté, fraternité. The problem is égalité. It sounds wonderful but ends up being a mechanism for national economic stagnation. Fight the climate accords, understand that they will do nothing. But beyond that, you also need to fight the labor unions, and the government regulations and the other "protections" which do nothing but mire businesses in a regulatory morass which limits the prosperity of the nation. Lindsey Graham and the Senate aren't afraid to do the right thing on Saudi Arabia
Trump sweet talks the House of Saud as the good cop, while Graham hammers the House as the bad! This is a very well done version of the old technique. Thank God Graham has awoken from his long McCain induced somnolescence! Sadly, it took McCain's death to trigger the awakening. The House of Saud is in a difficult place. It must act soon, or the winds of history will simply take control of the fortunes and do with the House as it will. I continue to lobby Trump to pressure the House of formally begin the process of democratization and reduction of the royalty from absolute to constitutionally bound. The creation of a republican constitutional monarchy in the Middle East would be a welcomed shift from the stultifying absolute monarchies which now fill the space. Bernie Sanders says he's considering another presidential run Bernie wants the US to become more like Sweden, but he is clueless about how Sweden taxes the people. Sweden taxes the poor, working, and middle classes about the same as it taxes the wealthy. In the US, we have the most progressive tax code in the world, with our wealthy paying far more in taxes as a percentage of taxes paid than any other nation. For Bernie's vision to become fact, he will need to tax the poor, the working and middle classes to the same levels we already tax the wealthy. The Millennials do not understand that fact. They foolishly believe that Bernie wants to tax them less and the wealthy more. Whatever dunderhead Bernie wants he will not be able to tax the wealthy more, they will find ways of paying less or simply earn less income. The wealthy have reached tax saturation; they will not pay more. The poor, working and middle classes, including the idiot Millennials, however, are nowhere near tax saturation. Bernie will be forced to tax the fools who thing he is bringing a free lunch. Sure, Bernie will make the new taxes seem like they are hitting the wealthy more, but reality will be contrary. We live in dire times, vast swaths of the poor, working and middle classes believe lies spewed by the progressive left and intend to give the progressives political power in exchange for a wonderful free buffet lunch. Sadly, the lunch will be paid for by the buffoons who give the progressives power. Worse yet, liberty once given up is only recovered through hard effort, and frequently only through violent action to recover those liberties. Or, to put it another way, once the freeman gives up his freedom and becomes a serf, he will need to fight to the death to get his freedom back. What will it take for the Millennials to mature up and begin to look at the world as it is and not through rose-colored communalist glasses? Don't want your kids to get tear-gassed? Leave them at home when you riot
Seems like a simple idea but ... The Camp Fire
"When the Antiplanner looks at before-and-after aerial photos of the fire in Paradise, California that killed at least 84 people, the first thing I think is that, like last year’s Santa Rosa fire, the houses were built too closely together. This made it impossible, short of building a home exclusively of concrete, to defend homes from fire. Once one house caught on fire, its neighbors would be ignited by the radiant heat of the first. As described in a Los Angeles Time article, the best way to prevent such “structure to structure ignition” is to build homes at least 100 feet apart. California law in fact requires that homeowners provide a 100-foot perimeter of “defensible space,” but the law doesn’t require that homes be built 100 feet apart. As the Times notes, the “100-foot requirement stops at the property line.” Unfortunately, urban planners’ mania for density makes it difficult, if not impossible, for California developers to lay out homesites on one-acre lots, which would insure at least 100 feet between homes. While I don’t know the situation in Paradise, population data indicate that much of the growth of the city has been since 1970, when many California cities and counties began limiting low-density development." The mantra of the looney left is we cannot build on any land, we must have high density everywhere. The result too often is misery and death. "The problems with structures were compounded by the city’s decision to put one of the main evacuation routes from the town on a “road diet,” reducing the number of lanes from four to two, sometimes with a center left-turn lane. Parking strips that could have been used to evacuate vehicles were also sabotaged by adding concrete bumpouts to encourage pedestrian crossings. At least some of the dead are people who died in their cars while stuck in traffic trying to escape the fire. The mayor who supported road diets on this and other roads in the city claimed that nothing could have been done to allow orderly evacuation of the 27,000 people who tried to flee the fire at once. This is cruel. The city knew in advance that fire was a major danger. Instead of preparing for it with a workable evacuation plan, it deliberately made the problem worse. One person noted that the road diet came about because the state offered to repave the road if the city reduced the number of lanes. Local officials agreed, despite opposition from residents, so they could get “free” state dollars. Government planners claim to be able to do comprehensive planning. But the reality is that cities are too complicated to plan, so they often focus on the wrong things. In California, that usually means on anti-automobile programs, including dense housing and road diets, to the exclusion of all else. In Paradise, that mentality probably contributed to the deaths of many people." Brilliant, so the urban planning created the opportunity for fire to cause a deadly firestorm and then the transportation planners doubled down by bottlenecking the escape routes. Perhaps we should criminalize such behavior? This is obviously negligent manslaughter or worse. Kritocracy Then Chaos
The US does not follow any understandable rule of law any longer. This is a tragedy but one foisted upon us by the progressives. "That’s what we have happening in the Federal court system. The system is riddled with judges who belong to a bizarre political cult. They are members of a legal sub-cult that does not accept the rule of law. Instead, they think the law and the enforcement of the law should always be in support of their cult’s radical agenda. As such, they no longer abide by the law as written and refuse to obey the authority that issues the law. That is what we are seeing on a daily basis, as Federal judges revolt against the legal system." The rule of law in America is dead. "Getting back to where we started, the remedy for that courthouse overrun by perverts is to clear out the perverts. That’s a simple answer to a small, isolated problem. What American faces is the near total takeover of the institutions by a secular cult that is evolving into a suicidal mystery cult. Removing the believers from positions of authority will not be peaceful. Allowing their madness to run its course will not be peaceful either, as the overthrow of order can only lead to anarchy. Either way, what comes next is chaos." Ready yourself for chaos. The progressives will not stop short of totalitarian control. We will not allow totalitarian control. This will not end well. Self Driving Reality: It's Here, In Snow, In Unexpected Conditions, Now - Mish Talk I keep hearing about impediments to adoption, but those are unlikely to stop this juggernaut. The cost savings alone are too great and will cause a revolution in automobile use. Liability insurance will all but disappear, and it is likely that we will see the auto liability system replaced with a Worker's Compensation like system for human injuries. It will be a low cost primarily medical system with little or no "lottery winner" payouts. To the extent that individuals do suffer permanent injuries, they will receive reasonable permanent injury awards. They will also receive time loss if they cannot work. Engine size will be reduced to the amount necessary to propel the auto and will be tuned for fuel efficiency and ride comfort, not speed or power. An entirely new market will arise which will be Nürburgring like multi-course tracks surrounded by auto hangers. If you want to drive like a race driver, you will be able to. If you would rather drive a 50-mile course through the country, you will be able to, on Sundays, it will be Sunday drives in the country. Perhaps Wednesdays or Fridays will be "open hanger," and the car owners will roll out their autos so we can all come to ogle them. I expect these to spring up around major cities and in some out of the way areas where the driving is particularly good. Trips will be combined so grocery stores will be further from you than they are now, but you will order online and the groceries delivered in refer trucks when you want to within a few minutes. The combining of many trips will lower the costs to below what it would cost you to drive to the store today. Transit will die a quick death. So, the transit planners need to stop wasting money on transit solutions like light rail which will become valueless within the next decade. This is just a start; this technology will change everything we do and nearly every aspect of how we live. We forget how much the automobile changed our lives. The self-drive car will cause even greater changes. "Tech Emergence provides Predictions from the Top 11 Global Automakers
|
AuthorMaddog Categories
All
|