Recently Retired Rugged Individualist who builds unity from diversity because diversity is America's greatest national resource and UNITY IS OUR STRENGTH.
Robert Nozick explains socialism's attraction to intellectuals: they don't care about the "working class". Rather, they resent capitalists for earning more money than them, despite their apparently inferior merit. They're disappointed meritocrats, not suffering laborers.
On this day—October 2, 1947
David Ben-Gurion stood in Jerusalem and asked the Arabs to take a state of their own and meet the Jews as sovereign equals.
Not after the war. Seven months before it. The UN had not yet voted. No Arab army had crossed a border. The British were still the government.
Ben-Gurion admitted the Arabs had refused to even sit at the same table as the Jews. But he made the offer anyway:
“We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.”
Six weeks later, the UN recommended two states. The Arab Higher Committee said no. In May 1948, five Arab armies invaded to kill in the crib the state whose chairman had just asked them to be partners.
The people who left during that war are now described as the victims of a plan drawn up in the Jewish Agency. The plan on the table that October was the opposite: have your own country, and those who stay in ours will become citizens and together we will build our countries as equals.
The Arabs heard him, and then chose war.
But it couldn’t be social contagion, folks. It’s just that young people, especially autistic, gay and mentally ill ones, are finally free to be their authentic selves.
The sudden explosion of young women who want to cut off their healthy breasts and take testosterone? Well, it’s absolutely not the newest form of self-harm, to which troubled adolescent girls are provably prone, ok? It’s not a consequence of the commonplace fear of becoming an adult woman, with all that that entails. No, there’s nothing to worry about there.
The possibility of regret? Naturally, we don’t let minors get tattoos or own guns or vote, because that would be ridiculous, but if they want irreversible surgeries and drug treatments, they must be given them, and everyone around them must immediately agree they are now the opposite sex. That’s called being kind.
And the mounting numbers of detransitioners? They were never trans, obviously, and should be mercilessly attacked, especially if they now say they were vulnerable and in a friendship group, online or off, dominated by trans identities, where transitioning was presented as a way to resolve all their social and emotional difficulties. (I have the emails).
No, there’s nothing whatsoever to see here. Keep justifying it, keep cheering it on, keep insisting that the doctors and drug companies making serious money out of it all are acting with the purest of motives. Answer every reasonable question with an accusation of hatred and bigotry. Dispel every qualm of conscience with an activist-approved talking point. Reassure yourself that everyone on your dinner party circuit agrees with you.
And when, in years to come, we’re all looking back on graphs like this, be proud that you did your bit to monster whistleblowers, parrot unevidenced claims and create the climate of fear that allowed the worst medical scandal in a century to take place.
The Palestinians have rejected a state of their own more times than any national movement in modern history.
1937 — Peel: a Jewish state on a sliver of the coast. Arab leadership said no and turned back to violence.
1947 — UN partition plan: an Arab state beside a Jewish state. The Arab Higher Committee said no, started a civil war, and then five Arab armies invaded.
2000 — Camp David: a Palestinian state with a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Arafat walked, proposed no counteroffer, and launched the Second Intifada.
2001 — Clinton Parameters: a Palestinian state with a capital in eastern Jerusalem, 96% of the "West Bank" plus 4% of Israel, all of Gaza and a connecting corridor. Arafat said no as the Second Intifada raged.
2008 — Olmert: 94% of the “West Bank” plus land swaps to make up for the other 6%, a capital in East Jerusalem, and the Old City under an international committee. The PA, this time under Abbas, never even bothered to answer.
2020 — Trump’s plan: a Palestinian state, a capital in a part of East Jerusalem, and $50 billion in economic aid to build their country. Abbas called it the “slap of the century” in 2018, two years before the text existed. On the day it was released, he said “a thousand times no.” He refused Trump’s call and refused to even take a copy.
They do not keep saying no because the borders were wrong. They keep saying no because the real demand is not a state beside Israel. It is a state instead of Israel.
”Wednesday afternoon I was driving west on I-40 when my blood sugar dropped to a dangerous level. Luckily a Burger King restaurant was at the upcoming exit. As I stumbled through placing my order I mentioned to the voice on the speaker that I was diabetic and in need of food. Low blood sugar makes it difficult to think or act. I pulled up to the first window in order to pay for my food. I was shocked to see Burger King employee Tina Hardy running toward the front of my car. She squeezed between the front of my car and the building just to bring me a small serving of ice cream. Tina later explained that her husband was also diabetic and she could tell that I needed help. After paying I pulled up to Tina’s window where she gave me my food. She instructed me to park across the driveway so that she could keep an eye on me until I felt better. After eating I waited for a break in business so that I could return to Tina’s window. I then took this picture and spoke with Tina’s supervisor, telling him what she did for me. If you appreciate what this special woman did please share this story. Hopefully Tina Hardy will receive the recognition that she truly deserves from the public and from the big bosses at Burger King.”
Credit : Rebecca Boening
My argument that refining constraints are contributing to higher diesel prices was called “silly” and “wrong.” But the International Energy Agency’s September 17 report supports exactly that point:
• Russian diesel production has fallen nearly 30%.
• Lost Russian and Middle Eastern exports have tightened global diesel supplies.
• Higher American shipments only partly filled the gap.
• That shortage has pushed diesel prices higher relative to crude oil.
The IEA also says the OECD refining system is close to its practical limit for diesel and related fuels. And American refineries are running at like 97-98% capacity right now.
That’s why I asked: Who supports building and expanding American refineries?
More capacity here would give us more options when supplies overseas are disrupted. Building takes years—which is precisely why you start BEFORE the emergency, something Democrats have fought tooth and nail over the decades.
The last major greenfield refinery with significant downstream unit capacity built from scratch remains Marathon's facility in Garyville, Louisiana, which came online in 1977.
Read the report for yourself: https://t.co/WG5Xo2vh6q
Better go see the Great Barrier Reef before it disappears!
Actually, you have plenty of time, because coral cover has actually INCREASED in the last 20 years.
More surprising facts here:
We live on a historically cold world, where the average planetary temperature currently sits at a chilly 15°C.
We are rarely reminded that Earth remains far colder in the current age than its long-term average of 22°C–25°C, maintained across the 541 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon. A planetary warming of two or three degrees is unlikely to trigger an existential crisis; historically, it never has under conditions comparable to today.
The blunt reality is that we are still living through the Late Cenozoic Ice Age—the most extensive global cooling event since the Karoo Glaciation, which lasted 105 million years across the Carboniferous and Permian periods. By contrast, our current ice age began 34 million years ago with the initial glaciation of Antarctica.
Humanity and our symbol-driven culture evolved against this cold, drying backdrop. We now inhabit its most intense phase: the Quaternary Glaciation, which has persisted for the last 2.58 million years. At the Last Glacial Maximum, roughly 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, massive continental ice sheets reached depths of 3 to 4 kilometers (10,000 to 13,000 feet).
Modern humanity is fortunate to exist during the Holocene interglacial—a 11,700-year warm period during which virtually every artifact of human civilisation, along with all historical empires, emerged.
This deep timeline reveals that while modern mammals are an ice-age-adapted lineage, human civilisation thrives in the warmth. Yet the present climate narrative relies on an institutional framework that largely disregards Earth's geological history.
Orbital mechanics dictate the macro-climatic epochs of our planet over millennia, yet contemporary debate focuses almost exclusively on micro-trends from recent decades. Earth continuously responds to these orbital variations, first mapped by Milutin Milankovitch.
On shorter timescales, climate behavior is driven by natural variability in solar irradiance, ocean circulation, atmospheric water vapor, and volcanic activity; over deep time, it is anchored by the slow movement of tectonic plates.
The global oceans, atmospheric water vapor, and cloud cover account for the vast majority of the planet's radiative warming. Furthermore, the geological record shows that deep ocean outgassing of dissolved CO₂ typically lags thermal changes by centuries, unfolding over millennia as ocean masses adjust.
To focus entirely on a trace gas is to overlook the scale of these broader planetary systems. It also overlooks the gas's biological utility: NASA satellite records confirm a widespread expansion of global green foliage over recent decades, driven significantly by carbon dioxide acting as a plant nutrient.
Ultimately, the UN inspired climate agenda collides with thermodynamic reality. A modern industrial society requires the continuous high energy density provided only by conventional fuels—a baseload capability that intermittent sources cannot replace.
.@ScottJenningsKY just asked the CNN NewsNight table a simple question:
Does anybody support building a single oil refinery so America can increase diesel supply?
Abby Phillip: “It’s a silly argument.”
Jennings, from the top rope: “Democrats have argued against domestic energy forever. And now you want me to trust them on gas prices?”
It's amazing how many climate alarmists hate this graph. Notice how well the 1000-year Eddy solar cycle coincides with the "warm" periods - including today's Modern Warm Period. Ice core data do not cause solar cycles - but the reverse is obvious.
Woke educators want to control which races are admitted to colleges.
"It's about making these campuses look right," says @jasonrileywsj. "It's not about learning."
Colleges caved. Most stopped requiring SATs.
Fortunately, that’s changing.
Here's why:
The most deserved belt in history was given to Bridger Walker the little boy who saved his little sister from a German shepherd dog. He had 90 stitches all over his body, but saved his three-year-old sister from certain death. And had said "If anyone has to die, it would be me, I am the big brother" ❤️ 👉 The World Boxing Council 94 94 (WBC) has recognized him as a full time world champion. He has the official WBC historical record, for being the best fighter in the world for a day. 👏👏👏👏👏 total respect, 👏👏👏👏👏
In 1949, roughly two million Kuomintang soldiers, officials, and civilians fled to Taiwan carrying almost nothing. Within thirty years, Taiwan posted GDP growth averaging close to 9 percent annually, built one of Asia's most competitive electronics industries, and gave ordinary workers real wage gains that mainland China, sealed under Mao Zedong's collectivism, would not match for decades. This contrast is a controlled experiment in political economy.
The refugees who landed on Taiwan had little choice but to produce. Chiang Kai-shek's government, chastened by losing the mainland, implemented a genuine land reform in 1953 that broke up absentee landlordism and handed title to the farmers who actually worked the soil. Secure property rights created the incentive to invest and improve. Farmers grew more because the harvest belonged to them, not to a committee in Beijing.
From the 1950s onward, Taiwan's planners (and they were imperfect, nobody denies that) kept currency relatively sound, maintained contract enforcement, and allowed private capital to accumulate. Small and medium enterprises multiplied without seeking permission from a central plan. By 1980, Taiwan's per capita income exceeded mainland China's by a factor of roughly fifteen. You cannot attribute that gap to geography, ethnicity, or culture; both populations share the same civilization.
Mainland China, meanwhile, destroyed capital through collectivization, killed somewhere between 15 and 55 million people in the Great Leap Forward famine of 1959 to 1961, and then wrecked whatever remained of voluntary exchange during the Cultural Revolution. Central planning actively consumes the human and physical capital required to produce anything at all.
Taiwan's prosperity emerged from treating property as inviolable, prices as information, and individuals as agents rather than resources to be allocated. The island proved that even desperate, stateless refugees accumulate wealth rapidly when government protects exchange rather than directing it.