Just as Obama owned Democrats in 2008, so "Donald Trump is hypnotizing the GOP. Literally."

"America has become an idiocracy."

James Pethokoukis

. . . "These and other of Trump’s “master persuader” tricks and techniques — including engineeredinsults like calling Jeb Bush “low energy” — have been outlined and explained since last summer in a series of prescient blog posts by cartoonist Scott Adams. Best known as creator of the Dilbert comic strip, Adams is also a Berkeley MBA and trained hypnotist. While many analysts dismiss Trump as an idiot clown benefiting from America’s anxious id, Adams sees Trump as a savvy communicator “highly trained in the art of persuasion [who] literally wrote the book on it …There is a reason Trump’s message penetrates the crowd noise” while the other candidates flounder." . . .

"I don't get this Trump phenomenon"  On the contrary, I always enjoyed him on TV and agree with him on some things.  However, we are talking about the presidency, and I don't see Mr. Trump as the right man for that job.

National Review is Against Trump  . . . "Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky outer-borough accents.) Since declaring his candidacy he has taken a more conservative line, yet there are great gaping holes in it." . . .

"Since 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president with no credential other than a great flow of words, both parties have been infested by candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level position. They are the excrescences of instant-hit media culture. The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable. That is why all American presidents have been politicians, or generals."

 Much more of NR's case against Donald Trump here.

Co-founder of Greenpeace: "Why I am a Climate Change Skeptic"

There was a time centuries ago when it was "settled science" that the earth was flat. In 1988 Ted Danson predicted  "the oceans would be "dead", in 10 years,".  Here we are three decades later.  TD

Dr. Patrick Moore  . . . "My skepticism begins with the believers’ certainty they can predict the global climate with a computer model. The entire basis for the doomsday climate change scenario is the hypothesis increased atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel emissions will heat the Earth to unlivable temperatures.

"In fact, the Earth has been warming very gradually for 300 years, since the Little Ice Age ended, long before heavy use of fossil fuels. Prior to the Little Ice Age, during the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings colonized Greenland and Newfoundland, when it was warmer there than today. And during Roman times, it was warmer, long before fossil fuels revolutionized civilization.

"The idea it would be catastrophic if carbon dioxide were to increase and average global temperature were to rise a few degrees is preposterous.

"Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced for the umpteenth time we are doomed unless we reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to zero. Effectively this means either reducing the population to zero, or going back 10,000 years before humans began clearing forests for agriculture. This proposed cure is far worse than adapting to a warmer world, if it actually comes about." . . .

[Editor’s Note: Patrick Moore, Ph.D., has been a leader in international environmentalism for more than 40 years. He cofounded Greenpeace and currently serves as chair of Allow Golden Rice. Moore received the 2014 Speaks Truth to Power Award at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, July 8, in Las Vegas. 

Medieval Science and Philosophy  "The web site for the book The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution."

Hat tip to Don Cohee, Oregon 

Obama's legacy in the making; UPDATED

If the EPA “did their job” in Flint, why did their regional administrator just resign?  . . . "The first question which should come to everyone’s minds is, why was this woman allowed to just resign? Why wasn’t she fired? I understand that sounds like a silly question since nobody at the EPA has been held accountable for anything since McCarthy has been in charge, but surely this is different. It’s true that somebody made the decision to switch the city’s water supply from Detroit to the Flint River and the damage was accelerated by their failure to anticipate the water treatment required to prevent the pipes from rotting out. Those involved with that decision need to be held accountable. But the EPA knew (or strongly suspected) that the people of Flint were drinking what is essentially toxic waste for six months and they said nothing. They suppressed a report which could have gotten safety protocols in motion while they argued internally over petty bureaucratic concerns and allowed the citizens to continue ingesting lead for months on end."  And Obama extolled the virtue of government over this.
EPA did it's job well!

Losing What Reagan Won   . . "Moreover, we are building our battle plans upon lies, because the religions of Jews and Christians are, quite clearly, better than Marxism and better than radical Islam. 

"Instead, we watch while Israel is driven into increasingly desperate straits and while Christians are driven from their historic homeland in Asia and Africa.

thefederalistpapers

Obama releases inventor of the "shoe bomb" from Gitmo 

. . . Al Suadi has been described as an explosives trainer for Al Qaeda who in 2008 was still considered a potential high risk to the U.S., but also with high intelligence value. He was recommended for release by prison officials less than two years later. He has been at Gitmo since 2002, and is being transferred to the government of Montenegro.
"A third detainee, Muhammad Bawazir, a 35-year-old also from Yemen, refused to board a plane as the others were being flown out for resettlement in the Balkans. Transfer to Yemen is not an option, as the nation is in the midst of a bloody civil war, and Bawazir’s lawyer, John Chandler, said he prefers to stay in the military prison for now." . . .

 

Rich Terrell. Also posted here: The fruits of the Obama presidency

Bernie Sanders and the Realists. And, well, the Soviets too

The New Yorker  . . . "With polls showing Sanders leading, or challenging Hillary Clinton for the lead, in Iowa and New Hampshire, his proposals demand inspection. Until recently, there hadn’t been very much of this."

Linden doesn’t question the attractiveness of the vision Sanders is promoting—an America with a universal public health-care system, universal paid leave, free college tuition at state colleges, and a huge infrastructure program. Ultimately, a single-payer health-care system “could offer us enormous benefits,” Linden writes. But he also points out that Sanders, in order to finance such a system, would have to raise taxes sharply. “There’s no realistic chance of getting even a decent fraction of what Sanders has asked for. And if that’s the case, then Sanders has clearly not done the hard work of figuring out priorities, of operating within constraints, of balancing trade-offs,” he writes.

Where did Sanders' spending ideas come from? This may be a clue:  Fun Fact Of The Day: Bernie Sanders Honeymooned In The Soviet Union…  . . . "Sanders married his current wife, Jane, in May of 1988 and the next day left for their “romantic honeymoon” to Yaroslavl, in the then-Soviet Union. The trip was an official delegation from Burlington to cement the two cities’ sister-city relationship. “Trust me. It was a very strange honeymoon,” Sanders writes.

"He also visited Cuba with Jane in 1989 and tried to meet with Fidel Castro, but it didn’t work out and he met with the mayor of Havana and other officials instead." . . .

Bernie Sanders’s Soviet Honeymoon  "What is it about worn-out socialist “worker paradises” like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians?" . . .

Did Sanders ACTUALLY Honeymoon In The Soviet Union? Da, Comrade [VIDEO]

“Did you go on your honeymoon to the Soviet Union?” Roberts asked.“The fact is that I went to establish a sister city program with Yaroslavl, then in the Soviet Union, now an important city in Russia which is still in existence today,” Sanders replied. “The purpose of that trip was a sister city. Did it take place after my marriage? It did.”

"The No. 2 guy [running for the Democratic nomination] went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon, and I don't think he ever came back," Lindsey Graham

Five Ways We Know Al Gore’s Been Running A Global Warming Racket

Investor's Business Daily  . . . "The terrible truth for Gore is that there is no planetary emergency. Not one of the dire predictions he and the rest of the alarmist community made has come to pass. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that they have been running a racket. Here’s how we know:

"One, Earth hasn’t warmed in nearly 20 years. Yes, 2015 supposedly “smashed” the previous temperature record. But actually it was the third-warmest year on record — or maybe “not even close to the hottest year on record,” says James Taylor of the Heartland Institute.

"The global average temperature, a devilish thing to determine anyway, depends on what temperature readings are being used and who is “adjusting” the data to fit their political purposes. The scientific community cannot be trusted to provide honest numbers. And 2015 was, after all, an El Nino year. Higher temperatures, with no link to man’s activities, were expected." . . .