Die in a plague, or die in a Socialist Paradise? Tough choice, huh?
It does appear that Coronavirus is going to become a worldwide thing at this point: whatever measures were taken to keep it in the bottle have apparently failed…and if the brutal Chinese government couldn’t contain it, you can rely on it that no free government will be able to. Now it is just a matter of preparation and mitigation.
This does not look like a Black Death sort of plague…we’re not about to lose one third of the human population. But, it will cause a lot of deaths and a lot of dislocation to the economy. But, only temporary…the disease will run its course and die away in a population which builds up immunity to it. We’ll see how Trump does in this – a real crisis.
Meanwhile, Bernie is now the odds-on favorite for the Democrat nomination. Democrats are in a panic and there are plots and plans to undo Bernie…but, all for naught, I think. The Democrats simply can’t afford to lose the Bernie Bros. Knife Bernie and what may be a defeat in November becomes a catastrophic, generational loss.
Can Bernie win? Anything is possible – but I rate his chances of victory at about 1%. Right now, all over the MSM and social media, Democrats are defending Cuba’s government…because Bernie defended it and if he is to be the nominee, he can’t be left alone out there. But this action, right there, likely ensures Trump wins Florida. Meanwhile, the proposed ban on fracking – which Democrats are adopting entirely – likely kills Democrat chances in Pennsylvania and possibly Michigan. Where’s the path to victory? Bernie is talking about campaigning in Texas…in case you want to know where that’s going.
Blogs For Victory 
Meanwhile, Bernie is now the odds-on favorite for the Democrat nomination. Democrats are in a panic and there are plots and plans to undo Bernie…but, all for naught, I think.
We are at the culmination of a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment. For the last 5 decades or so capitalism has been demonized and socialism has been touted, or at least down-played, in our educational system, both primary and secondary — especially secondary. Now they’re about to reap what they’ve sowed, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
The easy thing to say, at this point, is that Conservatives really dropped the ball and allowed the Left to indoctrinate 2 or 3 generations of American youth to be receptive to socialism. There’s some validity to that argument, but I think it goes well beyond that. To a large extent it’s the end game for a Progressive strategy that has operated in the shadows for over a century. In defense of Conservatives, I don’t believe most could bring themselves to think of the leaders of the Progressive movement as evil until just the last decade or so.
There used to be an interview available on YouTube with an aging diplomat whose name I don’t remember. I do recall that he died shortly after the interview, which was recorded in the early 80’s, IIRC. He recalled being recruited by some wealthy Progressives back in the late 20’s or early 30’s to be part of a stealth effort to gradually re-write history to the benefit of the Progressive movement. There have been billions of dollars pumped into that effort over nearly a century. You ask your average 20-30-year-old who Stalin was — or Mao, the vast majority give you a blank stare. Surprisingly most of them know Hitler because they’ve been taught Hitler was RIGHT wing and each of the last two GOP presidents (Bush43 and Trump) were Hitler reincarnated, but they have no idea that socialism has murdered tens of millions of human beings in the last century.
I agree that Bernie is not going to be President of the United States, but a younger, more charismatic version will be someday. It’s just a matter of the right person coupled with the right set of economic and social circumstances. If there’s one thing you can say about Leftists that is close to a universal truth, it’s that they NEVER QUIT!
What we need to keep in mind is that the political structure of socialism is never mentioned, so the support for “socialism” is really just mindless support for an emotion-based wish list, revolving around the two basics of getting stuff without having to work for it and the spiteful aspect of taking away from people who have more. It’s really just a reflection of the toxic melding of greed and envy trying to mask itself as somehow noble by being “for equality”.
A Sanders nomination would be a godsend to the Right—-IF the Right gets its act together and starts a focused, coordinated and coherent attack on real socialism. Not just on the word, but on the structure.
The Left keeps tossing slow balls across the middle of the plate, and we keep not just missing them but not seeing them for what they are.
Case in point: RUSSIA IS TRYING TO ENSURE A TRUMP VICTORY. What do we say to that? We say “Huh-uh, Trump is mean to Russia so they wouldn’t want him to win” and we think that is a decisive response.
What we should be doing is having every single talking head purporting to represent the Right explain that the underlying political structure of the Left is present in every Leftist government, and is the unifying factor between Russia and the Democrat Party. That the consolidation of power in the hands of a few elites, with a top-down imposition of that power, is the definition of the Russian government as well as the system proposed by the Democrat Party for the United States—-therefore, a win for the Democrats in the United States would bring the agenda of world dominance by the Left closer to fruition, while a victory for the Right would set it back. This is a message that could be broken down into a few concise sound bites, each of them presenting an aspect of the deep familial relationship of the American Left and the government and agenda of Russia, illustrating the fact that it would be absolutely insane and stupid for Russia to promote a political system which is dedicated to the opposite of its own goals.
A few on the Right are finally coming out with the obvious—that it is the Democrat Party that is working hand in hand with Putin to destabilize our society by splintering it into conflicting groups and then pitting them against each other. We need to build on that, in every single comment made about the Dems, about Schiff, about Pelosi, about the House efforts to overthrow a presidency. We need to link Putin with the American Left in every way possible, and point out the utter stupidity of claiming that Putin is supporting a man and a system that is antithetical to his own agenda.
And we need to start separating the concept of “socialism” from that of getting stuff without working for it to the reality of it being an oppressive and tyrannical form of government that uses the promise of free stuff and the illusion of fairness to lure people into voting for it.
I just got an email from a good friend with a collections of humorous memes. I tried to figure out a way to copy them but nothing worked. The first one had me rolling on the floor laughing. It was a photo of Bloomberg with the caption, “I wish debating was as easy as farming.”
I miss the days when the ebola virus was going to kill everyone and global cooling was going to bring about a new ice age. Those were the good ol days
Remember Obama’s Ebola Czar? He singlehandedly stopped it in its tracks.
Is there anything the Left can’t do? Stop viruses, stabilize the global climate, create new genders, enact amazing literacy programs, etc.
You forgot pulling money out of thin air, to buy stuff no one will make because why work when you can get everything for free?
Oops—forgot the slave labor camps where conservatives being reeducated for wrongthink will be forced to make what is needed.
It will truly be a brave new world…….
Only Bernie Sanders could describe communist propaganda as a “literacy program.”
Well, it is the American Left that finds nothing bizarre about the term “safe abortion” to describe a procedure with a 50% fatality rate—2 people go in, one person comes out and the other is dead— or “fascist/fascism” for Constitutional governance when fascism is just another form of Leftist political philosophy.
Or Progressive as the name of a thoroughly regressive political model.
It’s all semantic manipulation, and it works on a populace so poorly educated most don’t know the correct definitions for important words.
So I must be one of the few not buying into the hysteria of the coronavirus. From what I can determine, it’s nothing more than a bad cold with a 2% fatality rate and 35 people have been diagnosed in this country. At this point I think hang nails are more of threat.
I think the debate last night had many people wishing they had the coronavirus. MSNBC is really happy with Biden’s performance so I am guessing he spoke somewhat coherently and stayed awake.
It’s all semantic manipulation, and it works on a populace so poorly educated
Most everything the Democrats do is ran through focus groups first. Climate change, gender neutrality, black lives matter, woman’s choice are all focus group tested and approved and are designed to change the way these issues are thought of by an increasingly ignorant population. IIRC it was after Dukakis lost in 1988 that the Democrats began their effort to change and control the “narrative” and by extension their spiral downward into identity politics.
So I must be one of the few not buying into the hysteria of the coronavirus.
I agree. 80,000 people in the U.S. died from the flu in the winter of 2018. Deaths from the coronavirus world wide are under 3,000, and there have been none in the U.S. so far,
Chris Wallace has finally figured it out! He lectures: “Our role is to be observers, umpires, fact-checkers, investigators. It’s not to be advocates. It’s not to be opponents.“
That sounds pretty good, if you didn’t read the sentences leading up to this pronouncement: “… I worry that the president’s ‘attacks’ [on the media] have given too many straight news reporters — not talking about the opinion page or prime time — an excuse or license to cross the line themselves and become players on the field…”
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/02/26/chris-wallace-scolds-jim-acosta-for-rank-disrespect-of-trump-i-was-horrified
So his story is that Big Meanie Trump, by pointing out that most of the media are openly biased and acting as advocates for the Left, is really the reason they are openly biased and acting as advocates for the Left.
Because, as we all so clearly remember, before Trump uttered those fateful words “Fake News” the media had been models of true journalism, professional and respectful and dedicated to objective reporting of events. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Good honest reporting, till….Trump.
The thing is, I think Wallace actually believes this drivel. I think he truly believes that if Trump had been properly respectful of the media talking heads they would have treated him, and his presidency, with equal respect. It is truly sad to see such self-delusion. To put the best face possible on it, I suppose it does indicate that Wallace at least has an inkling of an understanding that the press is SUPPOSED to be objective, unbiased and respectful of the office of the presidency, so has to scramble to find what he thinks is a justification for their failure to even come close to this standard. That alone sets him apart from the Maddows and the Acostas who don’t even acknowledge that this is supposed to be a characteristic of a free press.
But his sad and pathetic effort to both excuse the Complicit Agenda Media for their shameless and unforgivable use of their power to try to promote one political model while destroying the other and simultaneously set himself above those media personalities by lecturing them on their professional duty is just rather disgusting.
As for lack of objectivity in the press, he needs a mirror to see a good example. But, again, we come back to self-delusion. I am sure that when he steps in to try to direct an answer or shape a conversation to promote a Leftist agenda he feels he is just doing his job.
The thing is, I think Wallace actually believes this drivel
He does, and keep in mind, Chris is as establishment as they get. The son of Mike, a long time journalist and 60 Minute contributor, Chris has been running in establishment circles his entire life going to cocktail parties, school plays, etc., etc. with every other national network media member so he is just protecting his own as unsavory as that is. I have lost a lot of respect for Chris … he has shown his true colors in the age of Trump, as many others have too. And yes I am talking about you Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg.
They keep comparing the death rate of the coronavirus in China, essentially, to the death rate of the flu in the US. I would be much more interested if they compared the death rate of the coronavirus in China to the death rate of the flu in China. I imagine the flu death rate in China is much higher than here as well.
While the “experts” on MSNBC this morning are busy lecturing Trump for his response to the coronavirus claiming that he doesn’t have the “proper level of concern” and that he lacks the “right” people to solve the problem, this fact persists:
On average,130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose., according to the US Department of Health & Human Services.
And over 80% of all opioids come into this country thru our porous southern border. Forgive me if I consider this “pandemic” to be a joke.
43% of all 18-29 year olds prefer Socialism according to a recent survey. The Leftist take over of our educational system the last couple of decades is starting to pay off.
I’m not sure which is worse, the fact that we’re rapidly approaching a tipping point where Americans will voluntarily choose Socialism or the fact that a plurality of young people are so fu*king ignorant and mis-informed that they would voice such a preference in spite of overwhelming evidence that Socialism has NEVER worked — anywhere.
See my comment, below. We have never provided that evidence in the only way the younger generations can understand. We use words, and not even enough of them, instead of graphics and videos and drama.
Hollywood surprisingly put out a few movies with the subtext of the horrors of tyranny, and kids just saw the adventure aspect, because the adults didn’t point out the political context. The Hunger Games provided a brilliant expose of the inevitable outcome of top-down government with all power in the hands of the Elites, and I never saw or heard of that series being explained in that context. It was about oppression, about people starving and fighting for food, about the dangers of dissent in a tyrannical nation. But what kids got out of it was very different, more of an adventure story and gee ain’t archery cool.
In a world of sound bites and short attention spans, “free” is going to be a lot more attractive than “Socialism never works, look at Venezuela”. And people who have never experienced the loss of freedom simply cannot imagine what it would be like.
43% of all 18-29 year olds prefer the rainbows and unicorn illusions of Socialism. The Right’s failure to present the realities of Socialism is starting to pay off for the Left.
How, exactly, does the Right explain what it is like to live under Socialism? We say “Look at Venezuela!” and think our job is done.
I hire a couple of young boys, 14 and 16, to do chores for me. One day I was telling them about the Berlin Wall, and they were stunned. Oh, they had heard the phrase, but had never heard word about what it really was or what it really meant.
When I told them that my youth involved watching the news at night and seeing dead bodies hanging off the wall, where people had been shot by the German police for trying to cross into West Berlin, they were horrified.
It didn’t take long to tell them the story: That after the war Berlin was under two governments, one being the East German government that was controlled by Russia and was Socialist and the other being governance by the Western nations which were democratic and free. That one night in 1961 the East Germans had had enough of East Berliners moving to West Berlin and put up a wall, which was expanded over the months and years to make a barrier between the two sides of the city, and that people caught on the East side were trapped and not allowed to leave. That people were so desperate to escape the misery and oppression, the tyranny and constant fear, of living under Socialist rule that they were willing to risk their lives to escape. I told them about the contrasts between the two sides of the city, with one being modern and energetic with new buildings and a good economy, people working and going out to eat and taking vacations, while literally on the other side of the Wall people in the East lined up for whatever food was available. I told them about the East Berlin woman who was telling us about the day the wall was torn down and breaking down in tears because it had been such an emotional experience for her, the most wonderful day of her life aside from her wedding and the birth of her children. I told them about the Stasi, the German secret police, and the prison they built and filled with people who just had different political beliefs, how they spied on the citizens and how the people lived in fear of being turned in for saying anything against the government. I told them about being in Berlin now and seeing the remnants of the Wall and the revival of East Berlin under political freedom.
Venezuela is certainly a good object lesson, but I think the lessons of Berlin are more vivid. I just finished a book that dealt with being trapped on the wrong side of the wall when it went up. I have recommended a powerful movie about life in East Berlin, and I doubt that a single person I have talked to about it has bothered to see it. The RNC should pay to put it in movie theaters all over the country, or at least run it on prime time TV. But that’s so…..different. And what they have been doing now has been so effective, right?
I spent a lot of time on my trip with a woman in our group who had lived in Berlin right at the time the Wall went up. Her husband’s first CIA posting was in Berlin. I had forgotten that Berlin, including West Berlin, was in East Germany, till she talked about what it was like to leave Berlin—-the checkpoints and police checking of papers as they took a train out of Berlin through East Germany to West Germany. They would have to show papers, take one train, disembark, show papers again, get on another train, and have papers checked at least one more time, just to get to West Germany. This was to prove that they had the right, the freedom, to leave East Germany.
Not to sound racist, but to most Americans South America is, well, just South America. Without ever visiting any of the modern and dynamic cities there, there is a vague perception that it is and always has been kind of poor and primitive. But Germany is full of people like us. And there are photos of the divided city, with the Wall and the dreary old run-down buildings on the East side and the modern life going on in the West.
I keep nagging about the need to reach the American public with real information, and am convinced it will take an hour a week on network television to provide the kind of information most Americans have never heard. An hour on East Berlin would be powerful, as would an hour on Venezuela showing it as the vibrant modern country it was before Socialism destroyed it. Even a general intellectual concept of poverty in that country needs the punch of watching the video of people beating a cow to death with rocks to have something to eat.
Every now and then some talking head will mention Cubans risking their lives on inner tubes to escape the tyranny of Castro’s Socialist paradise, but without any detail. I KNOW about this, and it still just sounds like noise. There is no context. Why do they want to leave? What is it about living in Cuba that is so unbearable that days on a raft, knowing you might die, is worth the risk? What about the prisons for political dissidents?
But the Right is just going to keep tossing out cliches and catch phrases—-“small government”, “Venezuela” etc. and then wonder why it isn’t making any difference. Hell, we can’t even muster an explanation that the asserted choice of capitalism vs socialism isn’t accurate, because capitalism is an ECONOMIC model and Socialism is a political structure cloaked in the disguise of free stuff for everyone. We can’t even show video clips of protests and marches and point out that under Socialism these people would be in prison.
It’s all just the same blahblahblah, without any real content or definition. Arrgghhh
Conservatives have abandoned their obligation to be a big influence in academia, particularly at the elementary and high school levels, and reasserting ourselves in that arena is what will be required to turn around perceptions in any meaningful way. In the meantime however, we should be doing a better job of explaining the concepts as you mentioned outside of what Rush and Mark Levin do of course. As for my part, I have always liked the following. Short, concise and to the point:
– Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
– Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then gives you some milk.
– Fascism: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then sells you some milk.
– Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
– Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
The Left should be cheering Trump’s wall-building efforts. After all, after a few years of their beloved Socialism it can be used to keep people from escaping, as the Wall in Berlin did, as the fencing in Finland kept people from escaping from the USSR, as the surrounding ocean kept people from escaping from Cuba. North Korea’s borders are heavily guarded by armed soldiers and police and people caught trying to escape are often beaten and are sentenced to prison camps. As a couple of Bernie Bros have suggested we establish prison camps for forced labor and “reeducation” here in the U.S under Socialist rule, we might look at what such a prison camp is like in NoKo. Remember, they openly advocate for imprisoning American citizens for Wrongthink, just as the Soviets did, just as the Stasi did, just as Cuba does, just as North Korea does.
Five political prison camps hold an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people. Some of them are the size of cities, and they have existed five times as long as the Nazi concentration camps and twice as long as the Soviet Gulags. Many people imprisoned in these camps were not guilty of any crime, but were related to someone who supposedly committed a political crime. Often they have no idea what that crime was, and even children who are born in the camps are raised as prisoners because their ‘blood is guilty’. Forced labor, brutal beatings, and death are commonplace. The regime denies the existence of these camps, but multiple survivor testimonies have been corroborated by former guards as well as satellite images.
https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/learn-nk-challenges/
From the same web site: It is illegal for the North Korean people to leave their country without the regime’s permission, and the regime attempts to restrict the people’s movement even inside their own country. If you wish to travel to another part of the country, you are supposed to have a specific purpose and obtain permission from your work unit. I doubt that today’s spoiled brats would like living like that.
These giddy ignoramuses don’t even understand that those Socialist paradises they yearn to recreate are/were actually prisons.
I agree that an abysmal percentage like socialism … but I’m not going to trust leftist polling on this any more than I am going to trust it on anything else,
Good point, Pke42. We also have to remember that those who DO support what they think is Socialism are really just supporting the idea of everlasting parents who support them indefinitely and give them whatever they want, and not the true nature of Socialism.
Headlines from today because 2800 people have died world wide from a virus:
FEAR IN ITALY
WARNINGS BERLIN
SPY AGENCIES MONITOR INDIA
700 ASKED TO ISOLATE IN NY
CALIFORNIA MONITORING 8400
DOW -1190
BIGGEST DROP IN HISTORY
Now mind you, these are the same establishment people who claim they can save the planet from dying in 12 years. I am thinking they should set more achievable goals.
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom…must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” Thomas Paine
OOPS. Bernie is about to get thrown under the bus again and one insider actually admits it:
“I will say that Bernie is moving the goalpost,” he said. “This is what people need to remember: The Democratic Party has a party. The party decides its nominee. The public doesn’t really decide the nominee. The public gets to vote for president of the United States, but people who are active in the party, who participate in the party, they decide the nominee.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/02/28/former-obama-adviser-democratic-party-elites-decide-the-nominee-not-voters-n2562125
In other words, the primaries are a sham, just a pretend-vote to make people think their opinions matter when in fact they don’t and the Elites behind the curtain will do whatever they want to do.
Kind of like “Democratic Socialism”.
LOL exactly
OK. how’s this for a conspiracy theory?
Polls (both opinion polls and voting polls) in South Carolina and beyond are manipulated by the kingmakers in the Democrat Party to result in a Biden come-from-behind primary victory. He receives the nomination at the convention, nominates Stacey Abrams as his running mate. Biden dies from the Coronavirus in October; Abrams gets a huge sympathy vote and becomes the 46th President of the United States.
I’d just call it a nightmare. Though, without a coherent explanation of what Socialism really is, we could elect a loser like Abrams just due to Identity Politics–she is black, she is a woman, what else do Identity Politics sheeple need?
And your scenario ignores the millions of outraged Bernie supporters ready to riot if he is denied what they believe is his by right. When you upset hard-core Lefties who have already admitted to and exhibited the philosophy that violence is an acceptable way to get what they want and then you piss them off, you are going to get violence.
Good lord Spook that’s a nightmare scenario. And I think Kamala has plans to sleep her way into the VP slut …. or I mean slot lol
FINALLY ,,,
From the first session at CPAC today, the theme of opposing socialism has dominated. Senators Joni Ernst and Marsha Blackburn spent ample time on it, VP Mike Pence made it the thrust of his speech, and Matt Gaetz hit it again in the afternoon. Even Diamond and Silk were riffing on its evils. There’s no question a congruent message has formed on the right.
There’s little doubt that when President Trump takes the stage in two days, he’s going to continue to hammer that theme, and he should.
I haven’t heard what they said about Socialism beyond the message that it is very bad, but at least there is some awareness that the political system of Socialism must be addressed and opposed.
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/02/27/cpac-socialism-becomes-the-dominant-theme/
Fox News Channel’s new streaming service, Fox Nation is getting in on the action as well.
A lot of money changed hands this week. The short sellers had quite a ride.
First it was the swine flu. Then SARS. Afterwards came the bird flu, Ebola and then Zika. Now we have Coronavirus. What do these all have in common? Well for one, they were all predicted by some “experts” to be a major devastation waiting to happen. There was also a common thread where the left actually wished for this to happen so they could place blame. Of course, after blame and pointing out failures both actual and invented, the elites do what they always do. Create victimhood and salvation – thru them. We all know that disease kills and the most susceptible will fall first. This is nothing new. When disease is used for political purposes then those people must be exposed and removed.
100% correct. This is the weaponization of a virus for political purposes and is just the latest in a long series of issues to be weaponized for that purpose. The statements this last week from Schumer and Pelosi along with the repetitious media coverage were designed purely to sow uncertainty and fear into the public and my oh my has that worked, just look at the headlines on Drudge:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
I have never seen this level of unwarranted panic, nor have I ever seen this level of hysteria pandering in the media. We have become a nation of frightened 12 year olds and it’s not a good look. My prediction is that the “experts” will be wrong again and this will latest panic will fade away in a few weeks when the next BOMBSHELL will hit the Trump administration. I have a feeling they are working on that now.
Just some more extreme ignorance and bias on MSNBC this morning … in other words just another day. Ali Velshi was just covering the peace agreement between the US and the Taliban being signed in Qatar today and of course downplaying the significance and questioning Trump’s judgement. According to Ali, the Taliban is a purely “religious” governing authority that can not be trusted to keep their word and the Trump administration is being naive.
Can anyone think of another dishonest “religious governing authority” who we entered into an agreement with just about 5 years ago that was hailed in the media as a “break through” agreement that made the world a much safer place?
And if anyone is actually listening to the Democrats on the campaign trail, you’ll realize that the plan they have for black Americans is to shove them into government “affordable” housing and turn them into drug dealers.
HOLY SMOKES …. I didn’t watch the debate the other night but just read two questions posed and am in disbelief:
“Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist?….Is it too much? Have you earned too much? Has it been an obscene? Should you have earned that much money?”
— NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd to former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg at the NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo Democratic debate in Las Vegas, February 19.
“You have said you want to hold oil and gas executives accountable for their role in harming our planet. You have even suggested that you might put them in jail….What would you do with these companies that are responsible for the destruction of our planet?”
— Telemundo correspondent Vanessa Hauc to former Vice President Joe Biden at the NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo Democratic debate in Las Vegas, February 19.
These questions expose an extreme lack of emotional & intellectual development … I can’t think of any other way to describe it. “Should you exist” ??? Are you fu***king me??? In America, we no longer have a separation of classes or race in as much as we have a separation of intelligence. We have to stop thinking of these people as intelligent or rational or God forbid an “expert”. They are a threat to this country and our way of life. Behold:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2020/02/28/angry-about-trumps-acquittal-redoing-russia-hoax-and-pushing
P.S. I am going to have a shirt made that says:
Trump
Putin
2020
And then just watch
I took those questions as the opposite of your analysis—that they were, in fact, excellent questions designed to illustrate not the ignorance or stupidity of the questioner but of the person being questioned. I took them as a refreshing approach by media personalities, who were suddenly not fawning over a radical Democrat but in fact holding his feet to the fire.
In a field of radicals declaiming that billionaires “should not exist” and proclaiming that some people just earn “too much” and should not be allowed to keep it, I thought it an excellent question to ask the billionaire in the middle of this mob. I thought it a great way to expose the hypocrisy of the Left. It was designed to make him either go against his fellow Dems and say they are wrong or admit that he should get rid of most of his money and he didn’t have a right to it.
And I loved Vanessa Hauc’s question—it’s about time someone in the media followed a sound bite to what would be its logical conclusion. The sound bite of going after oil and gas companies needed the followup of “then what?” So what would you DO with these companies you blame for “destroying the planet”? Shut them down? Put hundreds of thousands of people out of work? Close off vital energy souces? Replace them with ….what?
While I am easily as critical of the media lap dogs and enablers and cheerleaders as you are, I also appreciate the occasional straying into real journalism that occurs every now and then.
The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another.
“That’s the end of it for this winter,” said waste technician Michael Bratvold, watching a bulldozer bury them forever in sand. “We’ll get the rest when the weather breaks this spring.”
Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It’s going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.
….
“The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for the North American unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA, which is searching for better ways to deal with the massive waste. “Most landfills are considered a dry tomb.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
There is a slightly different take by another Veolia spokesman:
Wind turbine blades present a unique materials recovery challenges, a point emphasized by Veolia, a global utilities and waste management company working to develop recycling solutions for them. Veolia noted they can be crushed and burned in cement kilns, offsetting the need for fossil fuels.
(Just curious—are the emissions from burning these materials less toxic than those from those nasty old “fossil fuels”?)
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2019/03/27/company-expands-wind-turbine-recycling-operation/
I’m still moving stuff from The People’s Republic of Colorado to my new place in Wyoming—-a ranch has lots of stuff to move, moves controlled by winter Wyoming weather, so it is taking a while. I have been noticing large numbers of wind turbine parts heading south, a couple dozen blades and several tower components in a two hour period yesterday alone. They have be going to some recycling plant or boneyard, as they are manufactured in Colorado and taken north to be installed.
Contrary to the articles I have read, these components are not cut up to make them fit onto “conventional trucks” but are loaded onto custom trailers that are pretty amazing to see—long Erector-set-like segments bolted together to make a spine connecting the rear axles to the front, with the weight of the cargo resting on cradles at either end so there is basically no weight on the connecting structure. There will be a line of a dozen or more vane trailers, each with pilot cars fore and aft signaling the fact that there is a wide or long load on the highway, and several tower trailers as well, within an hour or so of traveling—-and this has been going on for weeks.
My 14-year-old helper (who had just been complimented on his Trump hat at McDonald’s, which happens a LOT) commented on the fact that the “renewable energy” people never stop to think about the environmental cost of building the blades and towers and turbines and then of replacing them.
In the past two months I’ll bet I have seen more than a million dollars in transportation costs alone, in addition to the cost of the custom trailers, and that does not address the cost of trying to recycle these components or the environmental cost of the building or breaking down. (We did touch on the advantages to the coyotes and other scavengers who feed so well on the birds killed by the Hawk-O-Matics.)
But hey, once we deduct the financial and environmental costs of building these towers and blades and turbines, and transporting them, and assembling them (on massive deep concrete bases) and running transmission lines to carry the electricity they generate and then disassembling them and transporting them back to wherever they can be “recycled” and the impact on the quality of life of people who live in the vicinity of the constantly whining turbines and the death to birds, it’s a pretty amazing source of energy at only several times the cost of coal and natural gas sources.
One of the best examples I’ve seen yet of an unintended consequence unforeseen and ignored by the Left.
It even tops that of replacing the perfectly functional incandescent and innocuous light bulb with a type that contains mercury, meaning it had to be disposed of in select locations and not in land fills (a rule ignored far more than followed) and which, if broken, was supposed to be treated as a hazardous waste spill.
And which, by the way, produced a low quality light that made people look like corpses and wasn’t bright enough to read by. It was such a failure that it had to be replaced by extravagantly expensive LED light bulbs, brighter and less dangerous but not lasting nearly as long as claimed in an effort to justify the price.
#Imissmy100wlightbulbs
It’s Sunday—let’s lighten up a little and have a good laugh. The AOC/Ted Cruz back-and-forth is always entertaining.
The little bartender/world savior “…proclaimed that VP Mike Pence “literally” does not believe in science, apparently not understanding what the word literally means, nor what science actually entails.”
Ted responded with a Tweet: “As you are speaking as the oracle of science, tell us, what exactly is a Y chromosome? “
And she bit at that bait, snarling back:
“Sen. Cruz, while I understand you judge people’s intelligence by the lowest income they’ve had, I hold awards from MIT Lincoln Lab &others for accomplishments in microbiology.
Secondly, I’m surprised you’re asking about chromosomes given that you don’t even believe in evolution.”
(Note: She did not answer his question, nor did she discern among the different approaches to evolution, ranging from “the rocks turned into people” to “the primitive form of this species evolved into the form we see today” the latter of which is pretty well received by people who acknowledge fossil records. Also, he did not reference her qualification to speak for Science, which was serving liquor to people in a bar. Hmmm—responding, with anger, to what was not said. Such a Dem trait…..)
Anyway, it turns out that her “…awards from MIT Lincoln Lab &others for accomplishments in microbiology…” actually referred to a second place award in a high school science fair. That alone is pretty funny. But the real humor comes from Ted:
Btw, congrats on the science fair.
BTW, my response to learning her “award” was at a high school science fair was to wonder if it was a Participation Trophy