Tamny Wins

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/08/15/dear_catherine_rampell_the_former_soviet_union_had_many_experts_too_103850.html

A frequent theme in this column is one about the fallability of the brilliant. Jeff Bezos regularly acknowledges how often his experiments prove much less than great, the best venture capitalists admit that more than nine out of ten capital commitments result in bankruptcy, and then the world's best traders note that they're wrong almost as often as they're right. It's incredibly difficult to predict the future, and that's an understatement.

"The DOJ’s silence on the road that the FBI willfully chose not to take is all the more deafening given what we already know about the Clinton email case.

As I previously wrote, then-FBI Director Comey’s original draft findings in the Clinton case concluded her transmission of classified emails through an unsecure server was “grossly negligent,” the legal standard supporting a felony charge under the Espionage Act.

But the findings were edited and the term changed to “extremely careless,” and Comey chose on his own to announce on July 5, 2016, that he would not seek criminal charges, a decision that the DOJ's IG concluded had wrongly usurped prosecutors’ authority to make charging decisions.

In addition, as I have written, FBI general counsel James Baker believed — almost until the last minute before Comey’s announcement — that Clinton should, in fact, face criminal prosecution, but he was talked out of it."

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/458478-the-road-not-taken-another-fbi-failure-involving-the-clintons

We just have to imagine what would have happened if she got what she deserved for the arrogance she lives by.

John Lott: Myths of American gun violence - NY Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/john-lott-myth-american-gun-violence-article-1.2268490

"In his address to the nation, Obama claimed that, "We as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."

But Obama overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated. Three of the six worst K-12 school shootings ever have occurred in Europe. Germany saw two of these — one in 2002 at Erfurt and another in 2009 at Winnenden. The combined death toll was 34. France and Belgium have both faced multiple terrorist attacks over the past year. After adjusting for America's much larger population, we see that many European countries actually have higher rates of death in mass public shootings."

The Frailty of Human Nature

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/the-failure-to-see-what-jeffrey-epstein-was-doing

No one would say "the emperor has no clothes"? Epstein provided a product that was worth the risk? People in those circles don't rock the boat for fear someone will come for their boat? 

Why was anyone willing to tolerate Clinton palling around with this perve, given Clinton's proclivities? #metoo is a joke compared to the tolerance for this person and his accomplices.

"Money offers one explanation for why people seemed to ignore what was plain to see. But money, here, is really shorthand for a range of ways to exert influence. Epstein used it to buy prestige, donating millions to Harvard and hosting dinners for scientists and scholars; and to buy protection, hiring ruthless legal representation. Even now, though, it’s not clear what his business was. Some of the people who dealt with him were wealthier than he was and, one would think, at least as financially adept."

Algore - Does He Feel Berra's Pain?

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/12/gore-says-his-global-warming-predictions-have-come-true-can-he-prove-it/

"Predictions are hard, especially about the future."

Wonderful Wacky World of Foreign Affairs

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/08/14/venezuela_china_russia__oh_my_110466.html

Meddling? Or saving the Venezuelans from the oppressive Russians/Chinese?

Permit holders or the Popo - who's more dangerous?

https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/08/09/these-gun-owners-are-least-likely-criminals-report-finds/

“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers,” the report reads. “For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.”

The study refers to Texas and Florida, which it says mirror most other states, to compare permit holders with police and the overall population. It used data from 1987 through 2015.

“We find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” the report says. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.10. That is just one-seventh of the rate for police officers.”

Murder and concealed carry - what's your bet?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/murder-rates-drop-as-concealed-carry-permits-soar-/

The number of concealed carry handgun permits has skyrocketed since President Obama was first elected, while murder rates have fallen, according to a new report released Wednesday.

Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to over 12.8 million, and murder rates have fallen from 5.6 killings per 100,000 people to just 4.2, about a 25 percent drop, according to the report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Predictions Are Hard, Especially About the Future

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra

Neils Bohr, Yogi Berra, the quote is as funny from either source. The linked article is about the many and desperate predictions of the alarmists. It reminds me of all of the doomsday cults who talked themselves into thinking that the creator was ready to end the world and bring us all home to him or her, on some specific day or other. They were convinced! Certain! And they are all still here.

It would be foolish not to worry about humanity's impact on the climate we need for survival. However, equally foolish would be to believe all the belief about how much humanity could know about what has causes the world's climate to change over the many years.

"Correlation is not the same as causation. And any gap between the two grows wider with each additional component that affects climate. A non-exhaustive list of climate inputs includes the sun, the moon, Earth’s rotation, Earth’s orbit, ocean currents, volcanic activity, and clouds, all of which are beyond man’s control."  https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/29/will-the-global-warming-hysterics-never-tire-of-being-wrong/

My point is there's no reason to kill today out fear that we may be killing tomorrow. The alarmists believe that "saving the earth (for human use)" is worth massively increasing the power of governments, making massive reductions in human wealth and more or less giving those oh so enlightened beings, politicians, the chance to say what is good and what is bad in human behavior.

I'm not real keen on that. In fact, that anyone would be willing to do so is hard to believe.

Lastly, since AGW concerns are mostly an example of the "emperor's clothes" phenomenon, and therefore a matter of marketing (often called making people want what they don't need and can't afford) we find that we are extolled to hate big oil companies and all the evil "science deniers" they spawn. The "real" enemy then, is those few organizations that deliver the most useful product of all time at an absurdly low price every free citizen and therefore keeps more humans alive and living with more ease and choice than at any time in human history. Hmmm.

I'll know they are serious about their dire predictions when they sell all their coastal property and move to Colorado.

I'll know they are serious when they advocate killing and eating all pets as one of the desperate measures needed to save the planet (for the use of people), because there would be nothing that would stop unneeded carbon emissions faster than the cessation of feeding pets and no human rights would necessarily be violated.

I'll know they seriously believe that catastrophe approaches when they advocate the termination of all humans past a certain age, or past a functional capacity of health, or beyond the ability to produce more value than they consume - because certainly if the entire planet (specifically, the use of the planet by humans) is at stake we have to make some "hard choices".

I'll know they are more serious when US politicians simply admit that, even given the fact that the US is reducing emissions more than rejected world standards would have required, it will amount to nothing given the growing power generation of the Chinese and a similar boom in other nations just growing into industrial capacity. Why do they still guilt trip you and me when we can literally do nothing to solve the global issues?

The easy and obvious answer - fear gives them a path to power, and power is their aim anyway, AGW is the means to the end.