Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on Roe v. Wade and the doctrine of stare decisis (or the respect and preservation of precedent). One of the most notable moments in the hearing came when Judge Barrett suggested that Roe was not “super precedent.” Indeed, she noted that the concept of “super precedent” is the work of others in academic publications. However, on Roe, Judge Barrett had an interesting exchange with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. in which she identified Brown v. Board of Education as such super precedent. However, when pushed on Roe, she noted “I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall into that category.”
This issue was addressed in the column:
The story broke that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett did not disclose that she spoke to antiabortion student groups in 2013. The only thing less surprising than a former academic not remembering two talks with student groups is that Barrett spoke to prolife groups. The news was about as earth shaking as discovering that Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke to prochoice groups in 1973. Both jurists started their careers by writing and advocating on procreational issues from opposite sides. Yet this is all part of the theater of the absurd Senate confirmation process.
It is no secret that Barrett is prolife and a critic of Roe v. Wade. Much like Ginsburg, Barrett would come to the Supreme Court with defined and deeply considered views of jurisprudence. Unlike some former nominees, she is no work in progress. She comes fully formed as a legal intellectual. When Clarence Thomas was asked about Roe in his confirmation hearing, he said he really had not thought much about it. It was unclear whether it was worse that a nominee had not thought about a defining issue for the Constitution or was lying to avoid talking about his view.
Barrett has thought a great deal about Roe. She has written sophisticated articles on her objections to the ruling. The Supreme Court rejected much of the original rationale for Roe while still backing the protected right. But Barrett will likely decline to discuss it despite her view which is known and obvious. The reason is the justice she seeks to replace. Ginsburg declined to discuss her view of Roe in her confirmation hearing in terms of future decisions despite her written record supporting the case and the right to choose. It has become known as the Ginsburg rule. Now her likely successor will be asked to discuss the very same issue despite her own clear intellectual record.
What is frustrating about the Ginsburg rule is that it is only respected by the party supporting the nominee. Those in opposition will simply ask if Barrett will respect the precedent of Roe on the doctrine of stare decisis, under which the Supreme Court seeks to avoid overturning former cases. It is a curious demand if a nominee believes a case was wrongly decided and therefore violates the Constitution. A nominee takes the oath for the Constitution but then has to promise to ignore its meaning in preserving erroneous rulings. If Barrett believes Roe was wrongly decided, then she should vote with her conviction and with the Constitution.
Stare decisis is at times an absurd application in confirmation fights. After all, few people regret that the Supreme Court overturned cases like Plessy versus Ferguson that ended segregation, or Bowers versus Hardwick that ended criminalization of homosexuality. Those cases were rightly viewed by the overturning justices as wrongly decided under the Constitution. It is not to denote that stare decisis is invalid. It is valuable for the Supreme Court to maintain consistency and continuity in precedent.
This is notable in the interpretation of statutes, where Congress has the power to amend the law. The interpretation of the Constitution, however, is not subject to such legislative correction. This defines the fixed rights within our system, ensuring promises for citizens and states alike. With a significant issue like the existence of an individual right or state power, a justice must be guided by the meaning of the Constitution, regardless of how many justices had wrongly interpreted the issue before.
Stare decisis often seems honored more in the breach by justices in the majority and most often cited by justices in dissent. When they secure a fifth vote, justices often lose their adherence to precedent. Senators are also hypocritical with the doctrine. In the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse demanded that he promise to respect stare decisis on cases like Roe, then called for overturning cases such as Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission.
Some insist their favored precedents be treated like “super precedents” that could never be overturned. While Barrett has noted the existence of such precedents, scholars disagree on which cases render such special consideration, and some disagree with the idea of inviolate cases if they are based on invalid interpretations. Would the same senators have told Ginsburg to ignore her view of the right to choose simply to preserve the precedent denying its existence? As a justice, you have a duty to respect the rights given for individuals or the states and not conveniently ignore the Constitution in the interests of the Supreme Court itself.
It is possible to support the right to choose and not Roe. Ruling that the Constitution does not create a protected right to an abortion would not mean that abortion would be illegal in the United States. It would be the matter of statutory law. The vast majority of states will likely protect the right to an abortion. Joe Biden made this point in a recent event. Asked what he would do if Barrett helped to reverse Roe, Biden said he would enact legislation that would make Roe “the law of the land.”
It is not clear how Congress would order states to allow abortions if the Supreme Court ruled it is not a right protected by the Constitution. That could force an administration under Biden on a collision course with the 10th Amendment and our federalism guarantees. But most states would reaffirm that, as a matter of the law, abortions are protected.
That is why we have to end the sham of stare decisis politics. A nominee should confirm that she will interpret the Constitution faithfully, even if it means overturning a historic case. To do otherwise sets an interest of the Supreme Court above that of the Constitution itself. While Barrett should refuse to answer on how she would rule on specific cases, she can affirm that she will faithfully interpret the Constitution. That is the principle she embraced in a former article where she wrote that a justice must decide “whether it is better for the law to be settled or settled right.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley.
ACB’s use of the term super-precedent refers to the dying out of legal controversy over time when a policy or Court precedent has been accepted by the people. It is the lack of active challenges to laws in that area of policy. Liberal progressives, unable to place their own tribe’s opinion on a level plateau next to a competing tribe’s opinion, and constantly mixing up personal preference with Law, simply cannot understand the term as ACB is using it. Are there a slew of challenges to Roe in the Federal Courts?…you bet! Are there a slew of cases seeking to reinstate racial segregation as government policy?….no. That makes Brown a super-precedent and Roe not a super-precedent.
The liberals are not accepting this meaning of the term, but rather insist that it signifies their hoped-for amount of “finality”. ACB’s definition is objective and something people can agree on. The liberals’ definition is subjective and highly opinionated.
He didn’t save 2,000,000 lives. That was a worst case estimate if no one did anything at all.
C-SPAN’s Steve Scully Suspended Indefinitely after Admitting to Lying about Twitter ‘Hack’
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/c-spans-steve-scully-suspended-indefinitely-after-admitting-to-lying-about-twitter-hack/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=21802961
The hits just keep on coming.
Trump tells the crowd he’s doing his NBC town hall tonight. He says NBC is “the worst” and repeatedly insults them and host Savannah Guthrie. “I figured, what the hell, we get a free hour on television,” Trump says.
Why is NBC letting itself be used by him? It’s like someone who puts up with an abusive partner.
Hillary, is that you?
No, it’s Melania.
Klobacher turned out to be intellecturally Not Much. and as such is a fit candidate for a party who had NO candidateds but one.
Abortion Restrictions Struck Down In Both Tennessee And Texas
A federal judge on Wednesday struck down a Tennessee law that required women to wait 48 hours after visiting a clinic to have an abortion, finding that it placed an undue burden on women, particularly low-income women, by requiring them to travel to a health center twice for the procedure.
The judge, Bernard A. Friedman, also said the waiting period was “gratuitously demeaning to women who have decided to have an abortion.”
“Defendants’ suggestion that women are overly emotional and must be required to cool off or calm down before having a medical procedure they have decided they want to have, and that they are constitutionally entitled to have, is highly insulting and paternalistic — and all the more so given that no such waiting periods apply to men,” he wrote.
The ruling was significant, as it was the first by a federal court to strike down a waiting period since a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld a 24-hour waiting period in Pennsylvania, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the Tennessee clinics that sued to stop the law. And although it is unlikely to have an immediate effect in other states, it sets a precedent for other federal courts to cite when reviewing similar laws.
Waiting periods are one of a number of abortion restrictions that could ultimately be ruled upon by the Supreme Court, which could tip further to the right if President Trump’s latest nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, is confirmed, as expected, by the U.S. Senate.
Currently, about half of the states in the country have waiting periods on the books. The center said it was also challenging waiting periods in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and North Carolina.
Waiting periods have been struck down before but in state courts. A state court in Iowa struck down a waiting period in 2018, as did the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2000, according to Elizabeth Nash, an expert at the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion statistics.
The decision striking down Tennessee’s law was the second victory for abortion-rights advocates this week. It came one day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down a Texas measure that would have banned the most common abortion procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law had not gone into effect and it was not clear yet if Texas planned to appeal the ruling.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas said the office was “analyzing the Fifth Circuit’s decision and evaluating all options for further review.” The spokeswoman added that Mr. Paxton “will continue to defend the Legislature’s decision.”
Edited From: “Federal Judge Strikes Down Waiting Period For Abortion In Tennessee”
The New York Times, 10/14/20
REGARDING ABOVE:
This passage stands out:
The judge, Bernard A. Friedman, also said the waiting period was “gratuitously demeaning to women who have decided to have an abortion.”
………………………………………………….
The waiting period assumes that women are child-like and incapable of knowing their own minds. Therefore they should have to wait 48 hours so that they might ‘come to their senses’.
The real purpose of these waiting periods, however, is to simply drive up the costs of obtaining an abortion. If the woman has to travel from a small town to a larger city, the waiting period forces her to either make two trips or find lodging for a two night stay. It might also force her to take off an extra day of work; which could burden women in lower paid positions.
In short the waiting period is a TRAP law designed to make women ‘jump through hoops’. One should note that Federal Judge Bernard Friedman is a Reagan appointee.
The waiting period assumes that women are child-like and incapable of knowing their own minds.
Minds? Just ask them if they intended to get pregnant. If they acted impulsively, then send them home with the ultrasound image. Wouldn’t want them trading one impulsive problem with another. If they didn’t bother with protection knowing an abortion would take care of the problem, then they willfully accepted whatever the process was that they were choosing.
Can you think of any non-emergency (elective) medical procedure this invasive, that the patient receives the consult and procedure in one appointment?
“Can you think of any non-emergency (elective) medical procedure this invasive, that the patient receives the consult and procedure in one appointment?”
Excellent point Olly.
You don’t have to have a separate consult to have a diagnostic colonoscopy.
You don’t have to have a separate consult to have a routine D&C.
Can you think of any other medical procedure, invasive or not, where the legislature tries to regulate the timing instead of leaving it to the doctors and patients?
In both of those procedures life and death are involved where death is the outcome. In other situations where life and death might be the outcome there is thought involved and sometimes that thought involves some type of waiting period and sometimes more than one physician to be involved.
“You don’t have to have a separate consult to have a diagnostic colonoscopy.”
It’s nice to know that Anonymous views the intentional killing of a baby in utero with no more thought than the removal of a colonic polyp.
There is no life and death involved in either one. You don’t have to be diagnosed with anything for a screening colonoscopy, jackass.
You again resort to one of your go-to strategies where you pretend to read someone’s mind and then attack them for your sick projection.
You should reread your comment and then reread mine: It’s nice to know that Anonymous views the intentional killing of a baby in utero with no more thought than the removal of a colonic polyp.
Do you know what you are talking about? Assisted suicide deals with life and death. Anyone can have a screening colonoscopy. In fact in some places it isn’t even always done by a physician. But you should recognize a polyp is not the same as a child in utero. The only similarity is sometimes a polyp is removed piece by piece and sometimes people of your nature advocate removing the child in utero piece by piece.
But you should recognize a polyp is not the same as a child in utero.
Unfortunately Allan, we have a subset of people in our culture that value a human fetus as no more than a potential cancer on their own lives and it must be removed by any means necessary.
The only similarity is sometimes a polyp is removed piece by piece and sometimes people of your nature advocate removing the child in utero piece by piece.
Good point.
You should read Olly’s question and then mine. He asked whether we could “think of any non-emergency (elective) medical procedure this invasive, that the patient receives the consult and procedure in one appointment?”
A screening colonoscopy is more invasive than a typical abortion, and so is a D&C.
Anonymous believes that pulling the near term baby out piece by piece from the mother is less invasive than a screening colonoscope.
You are free to believe whatever crosses your mind.
I posted a response earlier, but I don’t see where it went.
Physician-assisted suicide
That’s not legal at all in most states, Olly, and they’re hardly comparable. If that’s all you can come up with, you’re only underscoring why legislators shouldn’t intervene here either.
That’s not legal at all in most states, Olly, and they’re hardly comparable. If that’s all you can come up with, you’re only underscoring why legislators shouldn’t intervene here either.
So there are some issues that should be resolved at the state level? Welcome to the Republican party.
if only Legislatures removed themselves from health care. A health system free of government involvement would be a beautiful thing
That would be a good start.
Then you favor having no legal restrictions on abortion.
Nope. Just that it should be decided at the state level.
Read it again. Estovir said “if only Legislatures removed themselves from health care. A health system free of government involvement would be a beautiful thing” and you agreed “That would be a good start”
He was very clearly including state legislatures.
I’m still good with that. It’s a process.
Thanks, but the Democrats also favor states’ rights, and only a partisan shill would suggest they don’t.
Anonymous, If you think Democrats favor states rights then I think most of us have given you more credit than we should have. It seems you know less than zero.
oh it’s happening all over the US in hospice now. lethal doses of narcotics are getting taken routinely.
the reasoning is a bizarre twist on the old Catholic moral theology which relates to an abortion in a situation which threatens the health of the mother gravely,like ectopic pregnancy, the intention is not to kill the fetus, it’s to help the mother, etc. you can look up the nuances, Im no theologian
essentially, they are just allowing patients to “try and remove the pain” even though they’ve got it set up so a lethal dose of morphine can come through the tube
I remember 20 years ago when people used to hang on in hospice a lot longer than they do now. now it’s a heck of a lot faster.
doesnt take much brains to figure out why
I find it hard however to compare removing ectopic pregnancies, which does not bother me, to helping terminal patients off themselves
I have a lot of problems with that one
the families rarely complain however. i’m not judging them i just have to judge a system that ever makes it easier to die. should it be easy to die? I think not
Biden Son-In-Law Advising Campaign While Investing In Firms That Could Profit Off New Covid Policies
According to a new report from Politico, ethics experts are raising eyebrows at Biden son-in-law’s health-care start-ups capitalizing on the pandemic.
The growing web of conflicts of interest surrounding the Biden family stretches far beyond the potentially criminal overseas business activity conducted by the former vice president’s son and brother.
According to a new report from Politico published Tuesday, ethics experts are raising eyebrows at Biden son-in-law’s health care start ups capitalizing on the coronavirus pandemic while Joe Biden remains within a three-week striking distance of capturing the White House.
Howard Krein, the paper reported, who married Biden’s daughter, Ashley, in 2012, is advising the Democratic nominee’s presidential campaign while simultaneously investing in health care start-ups that could be on the other end of receiving billions in government pandemic spending.
In April, Krein’s investment firm, StartUP Health, announced it would be sending $1 million to 10 startups working on the coronavirus pandemic after Krein was reported by Bloomberg and the New York Times to be participating in daily calls with the Democratic candidate advising him on public health. …
The long-anticipated Senate report last month also expanded the Biden family’s conflicts of interest to Joe Biden’s brother, James. According to the report, Chinese businessmen engaged with the Biden family’s overseas ventures provided Hunter, James, and James’ wife Sara Biden with a line of credit where the family went on a more than $100,000 shopping spree to purchase extravagant items from airplane tickets to Apple products.
Senate investigators have flagged the transaction as potential financial criminal activity.
Continue: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/13/biden-familys-conflicts-of-interest-stretch-to-son-in-law-involved-in-covid-start-ups/
Gleaning the “Manifest Tenor” From the Constitution – For Dummies
______________________________________________________
On Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
Idiot Q: So you think it’s OK to just ignore her dying wish?
Ann Couter A: Touche! But you’ve forgotten that the Dying Wish clause of the Constitution is trumped by the Retire When a Democrat Is President clause. RBG was fully entitled to have a Democrat choose her replacement by retiring in 2014 when Obama was president and she was 81 years old, had already survived two bouts of cancer, two falls that broke her ribs and a heart operation. She chose not to.
– Ann Coulter
Barrett Declines To Share Her Views On Climate Change
But According To NASA, 97% Of The Science Community Accepts Climate Change As Verifiable Science
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/
Ian Hutchinson physics professor at MIT is worried.
He says that the West would need to cut its fossil fuel consumption by a factor of 100 (99%) to get to a “steady state of co2 emissions” —
if world population remains at 8 billion.
Hey Americans, ready to get thrown back to Stone age by the Greens?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzT4EwaHl0w
Either that or world population needs to take like a 50% haircut. That’s gonna be ugly.
Faced with the Stone Age or a preemptively orchestrated global dieoff of billions of useless human co2 emitters, one wonders if perhaps global warming is a lesser evil>?
Don’t give the Left any ideas. They’ll be introducing a one child policy to curb global warming.
Climate change has always occurred cooling and warming trends are the norm. What is news about that?
well, if they are right then their precious cities like london, shanghai, new york city, and LA and SF will be underwater in a decade or two.
right now i think that would be an improvement in the situation perhaps
Obama told us rising seas were going to destroy coastal communities.
Then he spent several million on beachfront property.
Lake Michigan is at its highest level on record. unfortunately it has not swallowed up certain neighborhoods in chicago which just keep on producing record level homicides same way
https://abc7chicago.com/lake-michigan-climate-change-water-levels-erosion/6246342/#:~:text=Lake%20Michigan%20is%20nearing%20its,for%20the%20month%20of%20May.
Yes, I read about those ‘hoods. They say they have a gun problem but can’t say why states with easier access to guns don’t have the same gun problem.
They have a savage, black male problem and if they can’t kill one way they will kill another.
it’s black crime problem true but here’s a more interesting observation along the lines of what you said
Indiana has two large pockets of “ghetto” in Indianapolis and Gary regions– typical higher crime rates, but nowhere near Chicago’s this year.
And a lot easier gun laws too. oh they whine about that in Illinois a lot.
but we have to ask– maybe it’s because Democratic Mayor Lightfoot is basically an anarchist who told the police to quit doing their jobs this year at all?
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-homicides-rose-by-139-percent-from-last-july-officials-say/2315318/
and because… drum roll here…. Indiana has a Republican governor and the state would never countenance a complete and utter total failure like Chicago, like the Democrat governor of Illinois would, the fat man Pritzker, of Illinois, the richest politician in the USA!
Kurtz– Good information. I wasn’t aware that Indiana had a similar demographic, easier guns, but less crime than Chicago. I assume nobody wants to talk about that. Political leadership–or the absence of it–surely makes an enormous difference.
https://reason.com/2020/10/14/does-owning-a-gun-make-a-judges-second-amendment-rulings-suspect-2/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Jacob Sullum (Reason) writes about this question, beginning with:
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) was trying to help out Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett when he asked her whether she owns a gun during her confirmation hearing yesterday. But the premise of his question—that gun ownership might be viewed as disqualifying a judge from dealing fairly with cases involving the Second Amendment—could not be more absurd. Here is the relevant exchange:
Graham: When it comes to your personal views about this topic, do you own a gun?
Barrett: We do own a gun.
Graham: OK. All right. Do you think you could fairly decide a [Second Amendment] case even though you own a gun?
Barrett: Yes.
CNN highlighted that exchange in a headline and tweet, noting that “Barrett says she owns a gun, but could fairly judge a case on gun rights.” The Independent also considered the point noteworthy: “Nominee owns a gun, but says she would rule ‘fairly’ on gun control cases.” So did Fox News: “Barrett admits to owning a gun, says she can set aside beliefs to rule on 2nd Amendment fairly.”
Sullum’s analysis strikes me as quite right; a bit obvious, to be sure, but the sort of obvious that people (or at least headline writers) apparently need to be reminded about.
Apparently the shop owner who discovered the Hunter/Joe Biden scandals on the abandoned laptop left for repair notified the FBI in December. They have done nothing.
Luckily copies were made before the American Stasi got their hands on the evidence or we would know nothing.
How much other criminal activity has that infected agency concealed?
See Something, Say Something. But be sure to say it to someone else and keep copies.
Young, feel free to post sources. Those of us outside the rightwing bubble have no idea ‘what’ you’re talking about.
cuz you’re in the Twitter left wing bubble?
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1316462662742503424/photo/1
TWITTER CENSORS STORY ABOUT SCANDALOUS BIDEN EMAILS
Kurtz, I just read this story is possibly the work of Russian trolls. There’s no verifiable proof of any truth.
Really, what, like the pee pee dossier?
Facebook, Twitter Put Restrictions on New York Post’s Hunter Biden ‘Smoking Gun’ Story
Facebook and Twitter put measures in place Wednesday to limit distribution of a New York Post story based on emails — which the paper claimed were supplied by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani — purportedly revealing evidence of influence-peddling by Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
According to the Post’s story, Hunter Biden in 2015 introduced his father, then VP in the Obama administration, to a top exec at Ukrainian energy company Burisma after Hunter joined the company’s board. The insinuation is that Hunter successfully influenced his father to pressure Ukraine government officials “into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company,” per the Post.
The Biden campaign said in a statement that after reviewing the then-VP’s official schedules from the time no such meeting ever took place and reiterated its assertions that Biden engaged in no wrongdoing in carrying out U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.
Facebook on Wednesday identified the Post story as potential misinformation and said it was limiting distribution of the article on its platform. Facebook policy communications director Andy Stone said on Twitter the Post story was “eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners” and that “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.” Stone later tweeted that the review was “part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation.”
Full Story, same headline
Today’s Variety
It’s ok guys. we can see now how useless the First Amendment has become. Silicon Valley is a thousand thousands times more powerful than King George ever was
Soon, time to settle political disputes in the time tested way? i merely ask
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/
The First Amendment will never be useless.
And, no, let’s NOT follow Schmitt:
“Though Schmitt had not been a supporter of National Socialism before Hitler came to power, he sided with the Nazis after 1933. Schmitt quickly obtained an influential position in the legal profession and came to be perceived as the ‘Crown Jurist’ of National Socialism. (Rüthers 1990; Mehring 2009, 304–436) He devoted himself, with undue enthusiasm, to such tasks as the defence of Hitler’s extra-judicial killings of political opponents (PB 227–32) and the purging of German jurisprudence of Jewish influence (Gross 2007; Mehring 2009, 358–80).”
From the GOP led Senate IC Report:
“The Committee observed numerous Russian-government actors from late 2016 until at least January 2020 consistently spreading overlapping false narratives which sought to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and spread false information about the events of 2016.”
From David Corn (co-author with Michael Isikoff of Russian Roulette)today:
“Last month, the US Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach—the son of a former KGB official—and called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and declared he was one of a group of “Russia-linked election interference actors.The Treasury said he has maintained “close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” and “has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 US presidential election.” Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, declared, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.” Previously, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told Congress that Derkach is “spreading claims about corruption” as part of the Kremlin’s effort to undermine Biden’s campaign. And he worked with Guliani to do so.
Giuliani has a starring role in the Post‘s story. The Delaware computer repair store owner gave a copy of the laptop’s hard drive to Giuliani (sometime after last December), and this past weekend Giuliani shared a copy with the Post. (In late September, former Trump adviser and recently indicted Steve Bannon informed the newspaper of the existence of the hard drive.) As part of his smear-Biden campaign, Giuliani late last year traveled to Ukraine and met with Derkach and other Ukrainians who have been pushing the fake Shokin story.
This summer, Giuliani told the Washington Post that he remained in contact with Derkach after his trip, calling the Ukrainian “very helpful.” He said that he and Derkach have spoken about Ukraine many times, according to the Post. Meanwhile, starting in May, Derkach staged press conferences in Kiev and played secretly recorded tapes of Biden speaking by phone with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Derkach claimed the recordings backed up Trump’s and Giuliani’s allegations about Biden. Yet the tapes revealed no wrongdoing. This appeared to be a disinformation stunt, and Ukrainians critical of Russia speculated that the tapes originated with Russian intelligence.
None of this is in the Post’s story. In the penultimate paragraph, the paper quotes a lawyer for Hunter Biden accusing Giuliani of “openly relying on actors tied to Russian intelligence.” But Giuliani’s connection to Derkach is not mentioned in the article. Nor does Derkach’s name appear anywhere in the piece. The Murdoch outlet ignores the elemental—and crucial—information that Russia has been mounting an information warfare operation against the 2020 election to harm Biden and that this plot has included Derkach’s efforts to taint Biden. Leaving out the documented link between Giuliani and a Russian agent involved in a disinformation scheme is gross journalistic malpractice.
It’s no surprise that the Murdochites would engage in such Trumpy reporting. The article was co-written by Emma-Jo Morris, a former segment producer at Fox News for host Sean Hannity and a former communications staffer for the Conservative Political Action Conference. An accompanying Post article asserts that Hunter Biden tried to exploit his father’s visit to Ukraine, but a memo written by Hunter that the story cites shows Hunter telling his business partner that “what [Biden] will say and do is out of our hands” and that they should “temper expectations” about the visit—which undercuts the claim that Biden used his office to help or protect his son. In that memo, Hunter also states that his Ukrainian associates “need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot intervene directly with domestic policy makers”—in other words, he won’t use his influence with dad. The Post‘s story does not report that….”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/giuliani-and-the-new-york-post-are-pushing-russian-disinformation-its-a-big-test-for-the-media/
PS Sen. Ron Johnson (R, Wisconsin) also wrote a letter encouraging the firing of Shokin, so maybe’s he’s in on it too.
The Steele dossier wasn’t published before the election, Kurtz, and Steele never claimed that it was all accurate.
and yet look how far they ran with it. now ask me who i will believe after the fake news has discredited itself so nakedly and twitter become such a shameless swamp of censorship
Again: it’s 3 weeks before the election.
Private companies have no reason to support the distribution of unsubstantiated claims before the election. No MSM published the Steele Dossier before the 2016 election.
These publicly traded companies hate Trump because they are CCP bootlickers and they want the CCP lackey Biden to let them get back to business with the PRC.
They crave to dip their beaks in the Chinese markets even though they never will. Only google is allowed and MSFT because they cooperate with CCP censorship. And they barely keep up with Baidu anyways, Twitter and Facebook are blocked and always will be. and yet still they suck up to them
Bezos – Amazon wants the cheap imports. They know they will never be allowed to rival Alibaba and couldn’t outcompete them anyways, not that the CCP would let them try much. But he wants the cheap imports and hates Trump for other reasons too
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/amazon-china-marketplace-closing-down-heres-why.html#:~:text=Amazon%20is%20shutting%20down%20its%20domestic%20e%2Dcommerce%20marketplace%20business,giants%20Alibaba%20and%20JD.com.
that’s what a lot of the past 4 years is all about. trade. not racism or any of your other bromides, just money. and the big socalled American companies are a bunch of soulless behemoths in need of antitrust surgery. well, that’s probably coming for them now anyways, regardless of who wins. that’s the least they should suffer. but they will have a talk with their mercenary Kamala and see if they can get rid of Joe and then maybe she can stop it. Liz Warren’s got the plans, she knows what’s up
I would put a confiscatory ecommerce tax on them that would make the most daring pinkos blush with envy. These scoundrels need to be curtailed or America will never recover.
If Red State Americans had a thorough comprehension of how our nation has been strip mined by big business and particularly big tech, they would be praying night and day to Teddy Roosevelt to send us strength until we gave them a whipping they would never forget.
No nation-state will ever keep its sovereignty if the biggest would be plutocrats are allowed free reign. This is the massive mistake of Republican party since the Chicago boys infested the think tanks under Reagan. it’s high time to banish the naievete and get on with exercising what powers may yet be “conserved” before we are all serfs on the globalist plantation.
BIG TECH is the TARGET NOW. HIGH TIME!
Kurtz ignores Trump going down in Xi regularly while begging for surrender in his “trade war”, ceding the field to Chinese leadership all over the world, and pulling out of the TPP which includes 40% of world trade and was designed to encircle China in the Pacific rim. He probably believes the nonsense he regularly posts, given that he believes Trump, the lying con man, tax cheat, and business failure who has produced victories for his rich buddies while cutting safety nets and programs for working people and aiming at SS and Medicare. He’s an easy mark for this BS.
he genius Joe. don’t worry about what I believe. you already told me I am a mark and so forth. but maybe you’re a mark for somebody else?
Feel free to answer my questions about achieving a one half reduction in global population to achieve a “co2 steady state of emissionis” economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzT4EwaHl0w
or maybe we can cut the energy consumption of “the West” by 99% like the professor says? not sure how we would do that without cutting “the West’s” population too
So tell us, who dies to achieve the climate advocate’s utopian fantasy of a “steady state co2 emissions economy?” and how will you choose us?
one of these days I will also have a chat here about “Green’s paradox” too
Your member name is the opposite of your conversation. The Russia story and impeachment against Trump was projection by Hillary onto Trump for all her own sins and crimes against Trump and the US Constitution.
Turley had at least one article a few months back where he proved that Schiff, Pelosi, Swalwell all knowingly lied every time they brought up the Russia hoax. We know they lied because the FBI released sworn testimony by Obama’s admin that the above politicians all knew that the first hand witnesses working for Obama swore there was no known Trump Russia conspiracy.
Instead of admitting the Russia hoax, instead you state that MSM should not spread unsubstantiated rumors that help Trump. Bad for Trump: rumors and known lies good. Bad for Dems: unconfirmed reports never.
I don’t think you’d know honesty if it dropped on your head.
LOL that you believe the story, Kurtz. The store owner doesn’t even know who dropped it off and hasn’t provided any verification that it ever belonged to Hunter Biden, and Giuliani (a non-neutral nut) is the one who passed this info to the NY Post.
How depressing that so many people are this gullible.
Daily Beast:
“On Wednesday morning, the New York Post published a story alleging that Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop at a Delaware computer store for repair and that the device contained nefarious emails and photos.
“The item was immediately viewed with suspicion, both for the timing of it—coming less than three weeks before the elections—and the path the laptop supposedly took. The Post said that “before turning over the gear,” the owner of the computer repair shop, “made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.” …
“On Wednesday afternoon, a group of reporters, among them a journalist for The Daily Beast, spoke with the owner of the shop, a man named John Paul Mac Isaac who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. The audio of that nearly hour-long question and answer session is below. …
“Mac Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.” Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah shit.” So, Rudy was your lifeguard, the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview
There are photos and videos with those files. Your desperate attempt to step on this only confirms how bad it is. I think the Daily Mail has the story now too.
the truth is I could care less about the stupid story. I just resent Twitter for again censoring voices they don’t like.
They are scum. I favor immediate antitrust action against Twitter from weak man AG Barr who was talking about it two years ago and has produced even less than the Durham probe
failing that how about a hackathon to disrupt every major censorship platform ie twitter youtube google apple and facebook, knock them all off the internet see if i care
yes, maybe illegal activities. i am getting to where i begin to think like BLM perhaps? just peaceful protests, such hacking would be, however illegal, dont worry, insurance will pay
How depressing that so many people are this gullible.
Seek therapy. Once again you get a news report that actually has a foundation to make it worthy for an investigation and you get depressed that anyone would take it seriously. Yet you pump conspiracy theories that have actual facts and evidence to refute them. Of course you’re depressed. It’s because people are not as gullible as you presume. At least not the roughly 50% of Americans (those not on the extremes) that see right through the BS you and your ilk have propagated for 4 years.
And before you drop your standard, prove where I blah, blah, blah… retort. Nothing you say would change my mind that you lie by omission.
RME. By your standards, you also lie by omission, and so does everyone else here.
The guy turned the hard drive over to the FBI last December, and I assume that it **has been** investigated. You seem to be the one assuming that it hasn’t been.
“you pump conspiracy theories that have actual facts and evidence to refute them.”
Such as ___? Quote whatever you’re referring to. Piss or get off the pot.
Facebook says it is limiting distribution of bombshell Hunter Biden story prior to fact-check
Move is “part of [the company’s] standard process,” spokesman says.
Facebook on Wednesday took the preemptive step of “reducing the distribution” of an exposé on Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with a spokesman claiming that the site was doing so even prior to a fact-check on the story.
A New York Post report on Wednesday revealed that, according to emails obtained by the paper, Hunter Biden in 2015 introduced his then-vice president father to Vadym Pozharskyi, a chief executive for Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian firm at the center of a years-long corruption scandal. Hunter Biden himself sat on the board of Burisma for several years.
“Dear Hunter,” the email from Pozharskyi reads, “thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
The report made waves on social media early on Wednesday, yet late Wednesday morning, Facebook announced that it would be limiting the reach of the article on its servers, even before a fact-check on it had been conducted.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone wrote on Twitter.
“In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform,” he added.
Stone later followed up by claiming that the decision was “part of [Facebook’s] standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review.”
The spokesman linked to a Facebook policy outlining its rules for limiting the reach of content. “[I]f we have signals that a piece of content is false,” the policy reads in part, “we temporarily reduce its distribution pending review by a third-party fact-checker.”
It is unclear what information in the Post’s report may have been judged “false” prior to the upcoming fact-check.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, on Wednesday denied that any such meeting ever occurred. “We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” the campaign said in a statement.
https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/facebook-says-it-limiting-distribution-bombshell-hunter-biden-story-prior-fact
Here’s what we would be doing if we were bold
*attacking all major Silicon Valley news censors ie twitter, facebook, apple and google, relentlessly on all their own platforms
*staging “peaceable protests” in Cupertino and elsewhere demand executive scalps
*attacking them with antitrust instead of talking about it for 2 years and doing nothing like AG Barr
*attacking their retail shops with looting etc. oh wait, ANTIFA and BLM have that covered for us. funny though how Big Tech keeps giving the riot squad organizers money!
*organizing hackathons to disrupt their platforms massively by the sort of lawless means they use on us
there’s a few ideas for starters.
time to start getting active on this was like a few years ago when they were “deplatforming” and cutting off alex jones and every racist they supposedly could find and pulling the plug on tens of thousands of accounts that were just offending them with mere words. this is way past words now. this is a vise of information control squeezing our skulls into mush like the scene in casino
And the meeting on the tarmac was just about golf and grandkids.
That’s all Trump and Barr talk about too.
Another lame comment. You should have used one of your pretend friends for this reply.
It had to be that or nookie.It couldn’t possibly be political.
Meanwhile the same FB and Google allow members to repost uncensored articles from the Iranian Government and Chinese PRC. IOW Google and FB make more money off China and would rather promote Iranian propaganda than post a news article possibly bad for Biden.
Voters know for certain now that a vote for Biden is a vote for China.
Have you noticed? Obama seems to be in hiding. Do you think Obama is distancing himself from Biden? Our IC is totally corrupt and the tech monopolies are intent on sharing power in D.C.
Barrett Blows Off Questions About Climate Change. She Was A Lawyer For Shell Oil
Barrett told senators her views on climate change are not relevant to the work she would do if confirmed to the Supreme Court.
“I do not think my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough, and I haven’t studied scientific data,” she said in response to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who asked her whether she believes humans cause global warming.
“I do not think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not,” Barrett said.
A climate change case, however, is already on the Supreme Court’s docket. The high court will hear a case involving several oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, being sued by the city of Baltimore, which is seeking to hold them financially responsible for their greenhouse gas contributions. Barrett’s father spent much of his career as a lawyer for Shell.
Edited From: “Barrett Says Her Views On Climate Change Are Irrelevant To The Vourt’s Work”
Today’s Washington Post
REGARDING ABOVE:
Barrett’s ‘father’ was a lawyer for Shell Oil.
Paint Chips did you forget to fill up?
Allan again resorts to his go-to strategy of insulting people.
That does not mean she rejects climate science. CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions have been on the radar at Big Oil since the 60s. Whether they “steered” it one way or not.
Lincoln was a railroad lawyer
She’s repeatedly refused to say that she accepts the scientific consensus on climate change.
Why should she? The ‘consensus’ is not nearly as broad as claimed and the science is very far from settled.
The consensus once was that the sun went round the earth.
By the way, she is a judge, not a climate scientist. Her views on climate one way or the other or not worth hearing. But her views on law and the judicial process….
https://qrius.com/litmus-test-political-correctness/
By Raman [from 2016]
What are the similarities between British biochemist Sir Tim Hunt and American biologist James Watson? Both have made great contributions to their respective fields and both are victims of political correctness – both paid a heavy price for holding and expressing views in areas that are considered sacrosanct by society and in which a different opinion or questioning of the commonly held, politically correct beliefs will not be tolerated. Both had their career ended disgracefully for speaking their minds in an age in which free speech is celebrated as a fundamental right.
Sir Tim Hunt was in the news earlier this week for the comment he made at a conference in South Korea. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”, he had said. Clearly, he had only stated his personal opinion. He notes the difficulty he has had with female colleagues and terms it as “his trouble”. It is understandable that many would not agree with his comments and might record their objection to it. But what is painful is that this man has been removed from almost all of his official positions without as much as giving him a chance to explain himself – as if this one comment has erased all the great work he has done and all the contribution he has made towards growth and promotion of science. As if by speaking his mind with absolutely no malice, he had lost the inalienable right to be heard – a right that even felons of the highest degree are entitled to in a civilized society.
I live in a country where there are many single-sex schools and colleges and many parents want to send their wards to such institutions because they think it will help reduce distractions and allow students to focus on education. If this is acceptable, I think we should also allow a person’s opinion that having single-sex labs and research centers would help scientists focus more on their work. The important question here, in my opinion, is not the merit (or lack of it) of a particular point of view, but a person’s right to hold that point of view.
ONE MAY AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH A POINT OF VIEW, BUT I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY WE SHOULDN’T BE OPEN TO ACCEPTING THAT A PERSON WHO HOLDS A DIFFERENT OPINION IS NOT NECESSARILY EVIL?
To understand this, it is worthwhile to look a little closer at the life of this gentleman and to listen to what women who have known him have to say. If the opinion of his wife, who is also a professor (and former dean) at University College London from where Hunt had to make a rather unceremonious exit after this incident, that her husband is not a misogynist is not sufficient, one can check with female colleagues and students of Hunt before judging him unfit for positions in which he will have a say in selection and funding of students. There are many such women who have come to his defense and have vouched for the support he has given to young scientists of both genders. That his career in science was still brought to an end for no greater crime than going public with his unconventional views is a grim pointer to the intolerance in scientific community (and society at large).
Comments by scientists on issues considered sacrosanct by society should not erase all the great work done by the scientist towards growth and promotion of science.
Comments by scientists on issues considered sacrosanct by society should not erase all the great work done by the scientists towards growth and promotion of science. | Photo Courtesy: Pexels
[su_pullquote align=”right”]THAT CAREERS IN SCIENCE WERE BROUGHT TO AN END FOR NO GREATER CRIME THAN GOING PUBLIC WITH HIS UNCONVENTIONAL VIEWS IS A GRIM POINTER TO THE INTOLERANCE IN SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY (AND SOCIETY AT LARGE).[/su_pullquote]
Another victim of such misplaced sense of justice is James Watson who is a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and a Nobel laureate. In 2007, in an interview to Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, on being asked on the subject of race and intelligence, Watson said that while social policies are framed on the assumption that all races have same intelligence, this is not the case. Though he maintained that his call was to understand the differences and evolve more effective policies, his comment led to much criticism and he was labelled a racist. This incident brought his distinguished career to an abrupt end, but the work that he had done continued to serve as a foundation for important research in molecular biology and genetics (among other fields) that continue to this day. In 2014, Watson was once again the center of media attention when he put his Nobel prize medal on auction citing his dwindling income and to contribute a part of the fund thus raised to support scientific research.
Lawrence Summers, American economist who had to resign as the president of Harvard University, partly due to his observation that differences in intrinsic aptitude could be a reason for the higher representation of men in high-end science and engineering positions, is yet another example. Sheryl Sandberg, who is now the COO of Facebook, had defended Summers noting that he had been a “true advocate for women throughout his career”. However, that is immaterial and insignificant considering that he had dared to question the unquestionable notion of equality among the genders. After all, it is more important to have faith in equality and silence any who dare to doubt it, than to analyse or understand the differences.
DRAWING OBNOXIOUS POSTERS OR CARTOONS INTENDED TO OFFEND MILLIONS OF BELIEVERS OF A PARTICULAR RELIGION IS AN ACTS OF HEROISM AND LIBERATION, BUT AIRING SINCERE THOUGHTS WITH A GOOD INTENTION WILL BE CONSIDERED BLASPHEMOUS IF THEY ARE EVEN SLIGHTLY “POLITICALLY INCORRECT”.
Ostracizing or hunting down people who are different, or hold views that challenge the commonly accepted notions which form the very foundation of society is not unique to our age or the modern society. Many great men of art and science have paid with their lives, their contributions to humanity nullified, because they could not conform to the social norms of their day. Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing, having lived in different ages and made timeless contribution to their own fields, met similar ends because they were social misfits in their age. Many societies have murdered thinkers who planted the seeds of ideas that were totally unacceptable at that time, but have later found acceptance. It might have been the flatness of earth that had to be defended then, equality of all humans now; religious dogma might have given way to political correctness. But beyond that how much change do we really see?
THE HYPOCRISY AND STUPIDITY OF OUR MODERN THINKERS WHO CELEBRATE THE VICTIMS OF NONCONFORMITY FROM A DIFFERENT AGE AS HEROES AND AT THE SAME TIME PERSECUTE NONCONFORMISTS OF TODAY AS EVIL INCARNATE SHOULD BRING A SAD SMILE TO THE FACE OF THOSE WHO CARE TO LOOK.
Raman is a mechanical engineer by training, software architect by profession, martial artist by passion, and philosopher by nature. He believes in spirituality as the panacea for all of the world’s problems.
Thanks, Kurtz, great article.
Of course the climate science nonsense is just to get the judge to stumble on a shibboleth so she can be condemned.
The only thing that makes it tolerable is reading how some Progressives have been eaten by one of the monsters let loose by them.
I’m just wondering how we are gonna get to a carbon neutral steady state of emissions, to repeat a question asked on Lex Fridman’s podcast by Ian Hutschinson
because according to him there is a finite carrying capacity of our planet. I can agree with that and in fact I buy it that anthropogenic co2 emissions cause some global warming
but who cares about me. for Ian, the 8 billion population is a big worry for him. “ultimately people not dying is more of a problem than people dying” he said. hmmm
moreover to paraphrase, if you keep that number constant, then to get to the steady state of emissions, then the energy consumption of the West would have to be reduced by a factor of 100. a 99% reduction in fossil fuel use. now stop and ask, would we be able to reduce our energy use that much without reducing our population?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzT4EwaHl0w
lex is an MIT AI professor and Ian is a physics professor. these are smart and serious. they are not ideologues.
so let me ask our progressive friends. what they have in mind, if they agree with Ian. are we gonna let the climate heat up or go all out for that steady state?
If so, then according to Ian a physics professor, who although he is a fusion researcher he says no technological fix is presenlty in reach– so will it be what means of reducing?.
a. reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in the West by 99% throwing us into a level of civilization like maybe the Bushmen have in Australian outback? and let us dieoff?
b. reduce the third world population by a few billion?
c. reduce the WEST’s population and so kill off all us CO2 emitters?
Or some combination of the above?
See we are not asking the right questions about climate science. Let’s concede those arguments for now and ask, so what’s the plan?
Young, I think these people are serious and I think we should be asking the “climate advocates” what their plan is to kill off half the world’s population which appears to be a necessary ingredient to achieve their aims.
But I will not wait for an honest answer.
Meanwhile I am guessing that if we thought covid-19 was bad,
COVID 20 IS GONNA BE WAAAAAAY WORSE
Just imagine, if they resynthesized and had an “accidental lab release” of smallpox virus, that might shave off 1/3 of all infected. CRISPR meets ecoterrorism: the future?
They are serious about making people miserable. If they were serious about pollution they would be promoting nuclear power and going after China. But they won’t.
right young., i wont wait for them to answer the questions posed by ian hutchinson. they think they have the truth>? apparently– they cant handle the truth
either we go back to the stone age or a billion or more useless mouth breathers have to go. why don’t they just get up there and say it?
if they were serious…….. well, when we get to covid 20 we will find out if they were
I have noticed a universal truth about over population zealots, and dare anyone reading to contradict this: Every single over population zealot thinks their theory/doctrine what ever it is, DOES NOT APPLY TO THEMSELVES.
IOW, whoever is supposed to die, it never applies to the face in the mirror. I have never seen anything more hypocritical.
If what those physics genius PhDs. say is true, they need to line up first and kill themselves now.
Little bipolar victim Greta Thornbiatch in Europe is another good example of such hypocrisy: she sails from Europe to the US in a green-powered ship with a crew of 5 or 7 men, to save the jet fuel for her space on a plane. Followed immediately by all crew members (whom each weigh close to twice her weight) flying via jet back to Europe.
Kurtz, your reply has nothing to do with Barrett’s willingness to say that COVID-19 is infectious and that smoking causes cancer and her unwillingness to say that “climate change is happening” or that “voter suppression or discrimination in voting currently exists.”
She called the existence of climate change “a very contentious matter.” It’s not a contentious matter in the scientific community. There’s a scientific consensus on this. It’s a fact that the global temperature has been increasing, and ~97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is contributing to that warming.
A small minority of climate scientists contest it. You can also find a small minority of scientists with expertise who contest that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. But she didn’t challenge the latter.
She won’t make a statement on climate change. bad bad thing.
Joe Biden won’t make a statement on court packing. good good thing.
Apparently you don’t know where the “97% consensus came from”. You should find out.
Here is one argument, but there are many more authoritative: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#2c31f3613f9f
If Obama really believed his comments about rising seas would he have spent millions on a beachfront home?
ah well Young that article goes back to my unanswered queston of what the precise causal factor is if we concede that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a climate warming agent. Ok well what is the number? is it the predominant cause among how many other contributing causes? how many causes? 10, 20, 100? 5? and what’s the factor? is it a plurality factor like 15%and all the other causes are less ? or a “main” cause as your article asks??
the answer is we have a lot of different climate models that each have different causes and different factors. and different records at predictive accuracy!
we can’t even backtest them thoroughly because meteorology is such a complex and chaotic system not even the best computers can give perfectly reliable models
Old Benson here gave me a thick book to read, a good book, one I do not “question,” but the deeper I got into it, the more I could see that the consensus is not quite so clear as it is sometimes represented!!
And yet for all that– i do think anthropogenic co2 emissions are a big cause of warming trend, not sure how much.
Im no denier I just want to know since it mostly all comes from growing and distributing food to 8 billions of people– who do the “climate advocates” suggest have to die in order to achieve their dream of the “steady state carbon emissions” utopia?
Young, this simple logic question separates the intellectual pigmies from the rest of the folk.
Idiot.
Well footnoted and with sections on the position of each relevant scientific organization which supports the IPCC.
“There is currently a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists’ opinions and by position statements of scientific organizations, many of which explicitly agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports.
Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists (97–98%[1]) support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change,[2][3] and the remaining 2% of contrarian studies either cannot be replicated or contain errors.[4]….
National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on global warming. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some scientific bodies have recommended specific policies to governments, and science can play a role in informing an effective response to climate change. Policy decisions, however, may require value judgements and so are not included in the scientific opinion.[26][27]
No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points. The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[28] which in 2007[29] updated its statement to its current non-committal position.[30] …”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
If we must use force in the U.S to combat climate change it should follow that we should use force on the other nations of the world to achieve the same goal. Why should we sacrifice while the rest of the world pays no price. An immediate military mobilization should be begun to show our intent if compliance preperations are not immediately started by the other nations. Our very existence is being threatened. Decisive action is required. No half measures should be allowed. THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW!!!
Al Goreanonymous
Think, take a pill. In fact this is a global problem and the Paris Accord was signed by every nation in the world. That included a non-binding pledge to establish national goals and other countries – including China and India – take this seriously (they’d be idiotic not to) and have made beginning strides in reducing emissions. So have we. Turning this into a fight between nations is a sure way that we all lose and one wonders what you are buying or selling that leads you to approach it that way. If you think we’re being taken for a ride somehow, consider that we still emit much more CO2 on a per capita basis than China and developing countries and that since CO2 is stored, our industrial revolution made huge deposits that we can only hope the rest of the world does not equal, If you want to wax competitive on this, the rest of the world could have a bad attitude about us and with justification.
Joe Friday, after reading Young’s article https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#2c31f3613f9f surely you have a comment to tell us where that writer is mistaken or are you only able to copy and paste?
So many words and yet you don’t reply to Kurtz points. Do you deny what Ian states, that we have to either reduce carbon production by 100% or kill 2B humans? If yes on what basis? Why?
If you agree with Ian, which method to you promote?
You must not have been listening. Im no climate science denier.
I just want to know how you people think you can get to a steady state of carbon emissions in time to forestall cascading greenhouse effects without one or both of the following
a reducing the energy consumption of the West by about 99%
or
b. reducing the world population by a few billions of post natal “people”
I AM WAITING FOR AN HONEST ANSWER. i NEVER HEAR ONE FROM CLIMATE ADVOCATES.
ps my numbers are not made up. they come from here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzT4EwaHl0w
Ian Hutchinson MIT physics professor is obviously no “climate denier” but as a fusion researcher he is here to burst your bubble that any technical innovations are on their way soon enough. I should think he knows since he is personally on the cutting edge.
You people need to own up to the implications of what you are constantly advancing.
The reality is that global warming and oceans rising and all that is probably a lesser evil than snuffing out a few billion souls, or, reducing the West to the Stone age–
which would snuff us out in the process
Of course since the Left hates “the West” so much, maybe that’s the objective?> Come on now, don’t be shy.
Paris accords? Ha. They wont cut it even if they were met! Get real now, tell us, who will die to “save the planet” and how will we picked?
Kurtz, I don’t “think [we] can get to a steady state of carbon emissions in time to forestall cascading greenhouse effects.” I only think we can slow anthropogenic warming and work on diverse tech solutions (e.g., shifting the electric grid to 100% renewable energy, shifting everything that consumes fossil fuels to run on electricity instead, carbon sequestration) in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects, and then adjust to what we can’t mitigate.
CTHD the problem with what you said there which is reasonable, is that it depends on hope. perhaps a vain hope,.
Professor Hutchinson said there are no such realistic tech solutions coming in the relevant time frame.
He is a tenured professor of Physics at MIT and a prolific nuclear fusion researcher. He is qualified to make that statement
Now what he also explains in that over an hour long interview and what you will encounter if you delve into the climate science, is that there is a danger of cascading effects which trigger exponential change. Some claim we have already gone past certain “tipping points” already. I am not sure but they often seem credible.
If so then it gets back to the question of how dramatic changes could be made in time and dramatic changes necessarily would mean the two ugly alternatives I posed.
Now if you really don’t think that the warming can be slowed then it throws the whole conversation into a different angle that I previously challenged months ago, that is to say, why do we not spend our efforts on adaptation rather than a vain attempt at mitigation?
I always get the same answer here, because we should try. No, if there is such a consensus that the warming is proceeding at such and such a rate given the existing modalities of food production which are almost entirely based on fossil fuels, then the real problem is a massive global population. Realistically no fiddling about like the Climate Accords would be sufficient if the situation is as dire as we are told.
it seems to me if you have no program to wipe out a few billions of population, and that nuclear fusion is a decade or more out from commercial implementation, at best, then the only reasonable approach is to throw everything into adaptation.
And yet what we have seen from the Democrat party the big advocates of climate science consensus etc, is that they seem to think there is plenty of time to keep on blathering about mitigation after the cows have left the barn. And in the meantime they neglected the infrastructure bill right along with the Republicans. Which could have been jam packed with useful adaptation, in fact, improving infrastructure is the essence of adaptation.
which rather takes me back to Young’s point. If Obamas think that the seas are rising, why buy an expensive home on the beach? Well, maybe it was a steal like the one Tony Rezko gave him back in Chicago many years ago and they’re going to “flip” it soon. Or maybe they just dont take the “climate science” as seriously as the Great Greta and her fans do?
I didn’t say that it can’t be slowed. I said I don’t think it can be arrested in time to forestall all effects. I think the smartest approach is a combination of mitigation and adaptation, just like the response to COVID is a combination of suppression and treatment.
As for “the real problem is a massive global population,” carbon emissions vary widely per capita. Look at a per capita cartogram: https://worldmapper.org/maps/emissions-co2-relative-2016/
The countries that are producing the most should shoulder the reduction.
Kurtz, your response is completely lacking in logic. Climate change is not a wall we will hit, it’s a process which will be more or less severe – in the sense of the degree of change – depending on our response. No response – your position – will bring not the same result, but the worst result. So, we should act to mitigate while planning for the worst (and your boy Ian may not be the most accurate – how you adopted him as the perfect seer is an interesting question). It is equally illogical to say no plan (the GOP) is the best plan while those who at least get the problem (democrats) are the ones to be avoided and denigrated. BUt then one gets you are not serious about the issue, or much of anything it seems, except blood and soil.
No response is not my position at all. I never said that. I have been clear for months
a. government leadership to massively build out nuclear which is a low carbon emission source of electricity. subtopic, develop thorium reactors which would be even cheaper in the long run and potentially safer. that’s the only realistic thing that could be done in the US for mitigation besides whatever is already happening in other alternative energy development. and it could have bipartisan support.
b. massive infrastructure improvements with necessary spending on adaptation. dams bridges levees roads you name it. updated drainage and water sourcing. also updated federal regulation of coastal development rules. that could all be negotiated within existing partisan differences. everybody could dip their beaks.
light rail can be tossed in too but even california can’t seem to get that done can they.
as to your contention “it is not a wall we hit” I am not sure you understand the contentions about “cascading effects”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/tca-hgr020520.php
so actually yes they are implying that insufficient responses will lead to accelerating change which may go exponential. so there is a wall at least according to the climate activists. you are a gradualist but if what they are saying is true then it is not I who am in denial at asking fierce questions, perhaps
Joe also said:
“It is equally illogical to say no plan (the GOP) is the best plan”
where did I say that? i did not. i only said I understand why Republicans are skeptical. for various reasons
“while those who at least get the problem (democrats) are the ones to be avoided and denigrated.”
I didnt say that. I but I denigrate the Democratic leadership which is clearly not serious about it or else they would have taken a real stab at negotiating a compromise legislation about these subjects with Republicans instead of just antagonzing ceaselessly with the 4 years long Russia hoax.
” one gets you are not serious about the issue, or much of anything it seems, except blood and soil.”
ha there you have both understanding and misunderstanding. I am absolutely concerned about my kind which is why I take the subject seriously. I have heirs and kin and would like them to survive and my answer is not reducing them to the level of the stone age. I reject the suicide of the West as an alternative. As do most everybody who lives here. Most. Not all obviously.
moreover I think dithering with petty “social engineering” topics that only antagonize the Republican voters is an incomprehensible choice for those who take global warming seriously. If you think that we are all going to be up against major climactic disaster in 20 years then whether or not somebody uses “gender neutral” language or some other triviality of “political correctness” is of no significance whatsoever. why not put more effort into education that does not antagonize?
Finally. With the remark that suggests I am a racist, you are evading the racial implications of the whole “global population problem” as it has been called for decades now.
The obvious implication is the desperate need to reduce family size in the third world, which is precisely where populations is growing fastest.
Now we can see that fancy talking people who verbally evade that question do not always intellectually evade it. One might say nobody is doing now to slow down the declining representation of the European descended peoples as a percent of world population on Earth, than the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
https:// http://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/global-development/family-planning
and guess who’s doing his part in America
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/how-reproductive-justice-serves-model-progressive-organizing
life is strange is it not?
Please supply some details about renewable energy. How many windmills will be required at what cost and how would their presence effect the enviroment. Solar panels for a home cost $15,000 to $20,000. How many homes would be required to have them to reach your goal? Who would pay for solar panels for those of low income? How much will it cost to retrofit our housing? How will renewable energy be applied in apartment and office buildings and how much will the retrofit cost? The U.S. uses 25% of the worlds energy. We would still have to deal with applying renewable energy for the other 75%? This begs the question, what percentage of the world is underdeveloped and who would pay for renewable systems in those areas? Even when considering that the U.S. accounts for a third of the greenhouse gases on earth the other two thirds would somehow have to be delt with. Then there is the problem of how would we get the other nations to get on board. Countries with low average income could not raise enough tax revenue to implement the changes and many higher income nations already have very high taxes on their citizens. How do you mine enough battery components to provide for all the millions of motor vehicles in our nation and what will be the damage of such minning to the environment? Keep in mind that new damns and new nuclear power plants are not allowed to be built. Either there are some serious answers to these questions or the issue is just being used as political propaganda. There are people with an agenda in this nation who will not and don’t want to answer these questions.
think it through has perceived some of the relevant questions which belie the oversimplifications of plans like “Green New Deal.” the problems are myriad. most of all when it comes to renewable energies like wind and solar, they require battery storage capacity which does not exist now nor could it be brought online in the relevant time period. even with some impressive gains in storage technology, the numbers do not add up at the present rate of change versus global energy use.
in short this is why the problem was reduced as it was by “my man Ian” the physics professor as Joe mockingly refers to him.
at 8 billions of population, transfer away from fossil fuels, in the next decade, is not feasible to support this level of global population
the only way to do it would be to cut the energy consumption of the West by 99%. That is basically asking us to go back to pre Columbian stone age level of existence. It would not be feasible to do that and sustain the population of the West. We would quite simply starve to death en masse.
Nor can we expect that the third world populations will stop growing suddenly, nor will they collapse so long as they are able to use fossil fuel produced food. They can not all live on yams and rice grown in backyards of villages. They too use fossil fuel created fertilizers not merely dung. They too use trucks not merely donkeys. They too use modern electric power driven market systems of information to allocate food fertilizer and fuel resources. They are far enough along into development using fossil fuels which is part of the reason their populations have grown so much the past century in the first place. To deprive them of fossil fuels would be also catastrophe.
And hence if the climate science projections are correct, we are in for climate change like it or not. It is irreversible. Mitigation might help but the only clean technology that can be implemented at scale on time is nuclear. and only in the PRC do they have both the technological know how and political structure to allow that to happen and indeed they brought on over 20 nuclear power plants online when Obama brought on two.
Now there are other potentially frustrating problems think refers to. Solar requires silver and silver is mined with fossil fuel power.
Wind components are made out of steel which is made with iron ore extracted and refined and alloyed again using fossil fuels, literally carbon in pure form as coal. Steel MUST be made with coking coal.
https:// http://www.letstalkaboutcoal.co.nz/future-of-coal/making-steel-without-coal/
A deeper problem relates to global fuel and energy markets .Green’s paradox states that as the move to alternative energy accelerates, extraction and use of fossil fuels will also accelerate. In the way described before but due to other economic factors as well.
In effect we are in a jam if what they say is true. A real jam.
Either we get lucky and the predictive models turn out wrong, and perhaps climate change is slow enough for the world to adapt at current consumption and population levels.
Or, if they are right, there will be massive sea rise, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and potentially unpredictable ensuing cascading effects which unfold into assorted catastrophes.
if they are right in their predictions, the difficulty is no population is going to choose to either impoverish itself or die off on purpose. And so the effects are coming like it or not. The only sane thing a government could do, is bring nuclear online, and throw the rest of the efforts into adaptation. This is a complex problem but the problem solving matrix if it takes into account what is possible under existing social and political constraints, the implications are narrow. 1. massive nuclear development and 2. adaptation
All the other changes which are possible like voluntary population reductions via birth control, or reduced consumption by changes in tastes like vegetarianism, are too small and too slow if what climate change scientific consensus we are harangued about proves accurate. So, They are not really telling the truth about the implications.
This leads me to the final thought. There are two awful disasters that could be triggered by human actions which could reduce global popuation. One is nuclear war and even a small exchange of a few hundred hiroshima bombs like Pakistan and Indian have would throw up a huge dust cloud and certainly lower surface temperatures. in fact so much that a global crop failure and massive dieoff would ensue. second possibility is the “emergence” one way or another of a lethal global pandemic, not like COVID 19 that maybe kills 1-3% of those who get it, but like smallpox that kills 33% who get it. Now smallpox is eradicated but the DNA is known and can be replicated now with CRISPR.
So folks if you ever see these last two happen, if you survive, well, then you can be happy that the “steady state of co2 emissions” utopia may be achieved.
A dismal thought but one worthe pondering
and i leave you with this https://time.com/5864374/coronavirus-carbon-emissions/
Kurtz, I listened to Ian and yes we have serious looming problems, though he is not the only voice on them, nor are there not some hopeful trends. We shouldn’t be lulled by them, but hope may be our last weapon and we have to use it.. Among those trends are the fact that population is predicted to peak by about 2100 and some studies show development is now more efficient than our industrial revolution. Of course new technologies are part of that though Ian doesn’t think that will cut it. Maybe he’s right.
In any case, it makes no sense at all in America to stick with the political party that won’t acknowledge the problem exists and – by the way – is against encouraging birth control in the the 3rd or any world. Give me a f..ing break. Small ball and wrong grudges about infrastructure bills don’t add up to a serious response to Armageddon. Let us know when you have one.
Kurtz, like wearing masks with social distancing is a requirement for opening up society, not it’s opposite, not countering global warming goes with more deaths and social.political upheaval. These are not either/or choices.
PS The Paris Accord is a beginning point for world cooperation, not it’s end or middle. You must begin a journey with only steps and this one uniquely included the entire world of nations. We’ll be back in it again soon and trying to face the future, not deny it.
maybe you should watch that nine minute clip from the two MIT guys Joe and roll those numbers around in your head a little. He was talking about a 99% reduction in fossil fuel consumption in the West as a necessary change in a short time frame. Otherwise cut the global population by billions. Because there is no technological fix coming in the relevant time frame. he knows he is a physics professor and a fusion researcher you can bet he is up on all the ”alternative energy” possibilities.
I think there is an implicit factor that goes unsaid by the professor however, The climate models may not be predictively accurate. IE yes the predictions could be wrong,. The future is possible and not entirely certain. And yet the matter is serious enough for him to stake out some very dire concerns.
But considering the “climate” of political correctness around these questions, and considering the reluctance of people in “climate activism” to reckon with the projections with grave seriousness, it seems to me that the whole matter is taken with a big grain of salt and not just by Republicans but Democrats who mouth approval too.
but go back and watch the Professor, please, I think it’s worth 9 minutes of your time. . you’ve wasted far more than that talking to me and I am an expert in almost nothing
There is only one outcome to world cooperation. Just like NATO it is a code word for the United States will pay for the bulk of the expenses or it will never happen.
Many conclusions are made bases upon the assumption that we will remain static. The onset of new invention has always been a great asset of our nation. Our great wealth has allowed amazing innovation that has made our nation and the rest of the world a much better place. Poor nations are not able to contribute to innovation. NATO , NAFTA, and the Paris Climate Accord have proven themselves to be instruments of redistribution of wealth. Fusion energy is a possibility as a source for new energy, but not one of the climate change afficianodos in these comments has mentioned it. Just as in our past our present day problems will be solved by new innovation and science in the future. Vaccines against terrible deseases, restoration of eyesight, longer length of life, heart valves, harvesting combines instead of horse drawn plows and on and on. We did not let the chicken littles of the world tell us it could not be solved. We will look back and say we solved the climate issue and we didn’t destroy ourselves in doing it.
“~97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is contributing to that warming.”
I took some coal out of the ground and used it to cook my meal. In that way I contributed to warming whether or not the earth’s temperature rises or falls. I think 97% of scientists will agree to that. That type of silliness underlies what CTDHD said whether one agrees with her or not. Her statement was downright silly.
Climate is extremely complex and the nature of warming or cooling is quite controversial. The simplest example: increased CO2 increases plant life which increase oxygen and decrease CO2. Trees and plants are good. When one gets into the real science there is loads of disagreement. But, there is another way to look at this, but leftists don’t like going down that road. Is what we are doing or even can do going to prevent a predicted global climate catastrophe? We have already passed some of these predictions so one would think that the hysterics would learn to calm down a bit.
oh allan. either they are fake or they do not understand the implications of their own claims.
for those who are not fake and do understand, they will have to answer the questions implied by professor hutchinson
a. is it possible for the West to reduce c02 emissions by 99%
or
b. a few billions of humans must go away
To get to the desired ‘steady state of co2 emissions economy”
or maybe a lot of both?
an economy iin which we in the West are either decimated, reduced to the stone age, or both; or a few spare billions elsewhere go away too
See I think we have been approaching this all wrong. let’s take the climate claims seriously. let’s stop arguing and get to the point– who dies and how?
See as much as they hate “The West” i got a pretty good idea these suicidal nutters have an answer for that. one sane people here will not like!
If we have that conversation “honestly” then maybe we could say– maybe it would be ok if the climate warms up some anyhow?
I mean their implied cures sound worse than the disease, really!
Once again, Allan resorts to some of his go-to strategies: insults and straw man arguments.
Who do you think you are, Pathetic Anonymous? Mazzie Hirono creating new meanings for words? You have some silly ideas and sometimes act in an hysteric fashion.
But her views on law and the judicial process….
And for that Democrats and the Left believe she is wholly unqualified to become an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. This forces the legislative branch to not write sketchy laws that will be challenged, in the hope SCOTUS (Roberts) will once again don his legislative hat to amend it and rule it constitutional.
Do scientists that disagree with the consensus on climate change cease being scientists? Should they loose their credentials?
Barrett’s ‘father’ was a lawyer for Shell Oil.
So what? And what’s with the scare quotes? You think her mother’s a paternity fraudster?
Tabby, what’s the secret here?? Why can’t Barrett share her views on Climate Change?? If she’s a mainstream court pick, that shouldn’t be a problem.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1316462662742503424/photo/1
TWITTER CENSORS NY POST ARTICLE ABOUT BIDEN EMAIL SCANDAL
“free speech” is in the garbage can so long as Big Tech plays news cop on massive platforms like twitter
Democrats dont care so long as they get an advantage
Understand they would play this way in any venue if they could
Why won’t Biden share his views on packing the court.
Why won’t Trump share all the things he’s hiding?
Now that we know how Biden splits up the money I think he might as well come clean and tell everything.
Trump’s been investigated for 4 years. Every last cockroach is out of his closet and most of them have nothing truthful to say.