Taxes are stealing.
Things that make you go hmmm…
Howard Zinn on obedience…
Bill Hicks on approved drugs…
Kamala Harris ‘Wanted to Be a Prosecutor to Protect’ Victims of Sexual Abuse, Failed to Protect Victims of Priests
During Harris’s tenure as San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, however, she showed no signs of protecting victims of sexual abuse, since she failed to prosecute any of the sexual abuse claims brought against Catholic priests in her city, despite outcries from victim groups.
Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, reported in his book titled Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, that during her 13-year tenure as district attorney and then attorney general, Harris failed to prosecute even one case of priest sexual abuse, even as at least 50 major cities had brought charges against priests during that same period.
While Harris was neglecting pursuing the prosecution of cases of priest sexual abuse, her office “would strangely hide vital records on abuses that had occurred,” Schweizer revealed.
The bombshell details showed that while Harris’s predecessor, former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, had launched an aggressive investigation into priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco accused of sexual abuse, Harris’s campaign to unseat Hallinan showed an unusual influx of unparalleled donations from high-level officials of the Catholic Church.
“Harris had no particular ties to the Catholic Church or Catholic organizations, but the money still came in large, unprecedented sums,” Schweizer wrote.
In addition to campaign donations from multiple law firms defending San Francisco priests against abuse claims, Schweizer observed that “board members of San Francisco Catholic archdiocese-related organizations and their family members donated another $50,950 to Harris’s campaign.”
As Schweizer noted, Harris’s ties to those working to block exposure of the archdiocese’s secret documents containing information about priests accused of sexual abuse were extensive.
U-Haul Seen Distributing Shields, Weapons to Louisville Rioters Rented to Holly Zoller of Soros-Connected Louisville Bail Project
The U-Haul that began distributing riot supplies in Louisville immediately following the announcement that no officers would be charged for Breonna Taylor’s death was rented to Holly Zoller of the Louisville Bail Initiative.
The pre-parked truck was loaded with shields painted with anti-police messages, umbrellas, gas masks, and other riot supplies.
Zoller confirmed it was her in a phone call from a concerned citizen who pretended to work for the rental company. You can listen to it in full at the end of this article.
Senate report links Hunter Biden to ‘prostitution or human trafficking ring’
Hunter Biden sent “thousands of dollars” to people who appear to be involved in the sex industry, according to a report released Wednesday by Republicans in the US Senate.
The report says unspecified records show that Biden “has sent funds to non-resident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine.”
“The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what ‘appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring,’” the report says.
The allegations are contained in a footnote to a section of the report that details potential “criminal concerns and extortion threats” involving the son of Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden and other members of the Biden family.
The report also cites “extensive public reporting concerning Hunter Biden’s alleged involvement with prostitution services.”
There’s a difference…
Carl Sagan on ignorance…
FACT CHECK: Forest Fires Aren’t at Historic Highs in the United States. Not Even Close
California wildfires have been in the news in recent weeks. As I noted Thursday, the Golden State is experiencing one of the worst fire seasons in recent memory.
Newly updated figures from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection show there have been nearly 8,000 wildfires that have burned more than 3.4 million acres in California. Since August 15, when the state’s fire activity elevated sharply, there have been 25 fatalities and some 5,400 structures destroyed.
Despite widespread news coverage, some have argued many do not appreciate the historic severity of the blazes.
“There are two dozen fires burning right now that singularly would have been the top story on the national news 10 or 20 years ago,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Robinson Meyer.
Meyer, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers climate change and technology, says California has already experienced its worst fire season in state history.
In the past few months, one in every 33 acres of California has burned. This year is already the most destructive wildfire season, in terms of acreage affected, in state history. In 2018, during California’s last annus horribilis, I noted that six of the 10 largest wildfires in state history had happened since 2008. That list has since been completely rewritten. Today, six of California’s 10 largest wildfires have happened since 2018—and five of them have happened this year.
Writing at The Week, Damon Linker proclaimed that the fires represent the dawn of an apocalypse. Linker cites Meyers and an unnamed friend in Oregon who said he’s never seen anything like the recent blazes.
“We’ve always had fires in the West, but never like this. We’re choking on smoke and ash. It’s happening this year, it happened two years ago, and it happened two years before that. It never once happened before during my lifetime,” Linker’s middle-aged friend says. “This is definitely a new pattern. And I never heard the phrase ‘fire season’ until a couple of years ago. It certainly wasn’t a thing when I was a kid. I never even saw smoke from a wildfire until I was in my 30s.”
Annie Lowrey, in an article titled “The U.S. Is on the Path to Destruction,” was even more vivid.
“Fires in California and Oregon are incinerating homes, businesses, schools, power lines, and roads,” Lowrey wrote in The Atlantic’s top story on Friday. “Climate hell is here. We cannot stand it. And we cannot afford it either.”
With all due respect to the Cassandras preaching apocalypse and hell on earth, there are two points worth mentioning.
First, as I explained recently, there is widespread agreement that California’s megafires stem largely from decades-long mismanagement of its forests. As The New York Times explainedearlier this month, for more than a century, many firefighting agencies have aggressively focused on extinguishing blazes whenever they occur, a strategy that has often proved counterproductive.
Other parts of the US have shown, the paper said, that less aggressive extinguishing of natural fires and targeted prescribed burning are effective at periodically clearing excess vegetation in forests and grasslands, which essentially serve as the fuel of California’s wildfires.
“The first step is to acknowledge that fire is inevitable, and we have to learn to live with it,” David McWethy, a fire scientist at Montana State University, told the paper.
California has spent decades aggressively preventing fire from doing its natural work, which has made it a virtual tinderbox.
To his credit, Linker at least mentions that “Yes, poor forest management is playing a role” in California’s hot season. But there is a troubling tendency to simply blame the apocalyptic blazes on climate change.
As I pointed out, it’s not unreasonable to assume that both poor land management and California’s high temperatures and arid climate have played a role in the fires. But California is not the only place in America that experiences high temps and dry weather.
Texas actually has more forest and higher temperatures than California, but the Lone Star state rarely struggles with fires, perhaps because 95 percent of its land mass is privately owned and these owners act as responsible stewards of the land.
If climate change was truly the primary culprit of the wildfires, wouldn’t it stand to reason other parts of the US would be suffering similar results? Are there reasons climate change impacts California more than Texas and the Southeast US?This brings me to my second point. There’s a perception that today’s fires are historically unprecedented.
“Even though the U.S. is only halfway through wildfire season, this year is one of the worst in history,” CNBC reported Friday. “Human-caused climate change has made blazes more frequent and intense, especially during extreme heat waves and drought conditions.”
But, the claim that 2020 is one of the worst in US history is simply not true.
A news story making such a claim might start by telling readers how many acres of land have burned in the record-setting year. CNBC doesn’t. One also sees a second problem: most of its charts don’t include information prior to 1990.
Fortunately, data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) offer some answers. So far in 2020, the US has experienced 42,809 total fires that burned a total of 7,015,956. These numbers are indeed above the ten-year average—45,711 fires and 5,963,782 acres. However, 2020 is unlikely to exceed the number of fires or acreage burned just three years ago in 2017.
Many will argue that 2017 was one of the worst fire seasons in US history, a claim that was reported numerous times during the fires season. But Bjorn Lomborg pointed out these claims were also not true.
