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Norway Lobbies To Persuade EU To Drop Arctic Drilling Ban

Norway, Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer, has intensified lobbying at the European Union to persuade the bloc to remove or tweak its moratorium on Arctic oil and gas drilling.

Norway, which is not a member of the EU but is the biggest gas supplier to European markets, has sent nearly a dozen of its ministers to Brussels so far this year to discuss energy and trade and the state of the Arctic drilling.

The Iran war and the biggest oil and gas supply disruption in history have added to Norway’s arguments that Europe needs reliable supply from places outside of conflict zones.

However, the EU’s moratorium enacted in 2021 due to the bloc’s climate commitments and environmental concerns, does not allow drilling in Norway’s northern parts of the Barents Sea, which is estimated to contain most of the remaining Norwegian oil and gas resources.

“Norway is very active and good at making its voice heard,” the EU’s special envoy for the Arctic, Claude Veron-Reville, told Bloomberg in an interview this week.

“Norway knows very well how to intervene, they are very well organized and very present,” Veron-Reville added.

Norway argues that an arbitrary line defining the Arctic area shouldn’t be viewed as the cut-off line for oil and gas drilling.

“There are no climate arguments for treating oil and gas produced north and south of a certain line differently,” Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Bloomberg.

Norway’s lobbying efforts clash with this week’s call of dozens of Scandinavian financial institutions which urged the European Commission to remain firm in its opposition to Arctic oil drilling even as the bloc could face physical oil shortages in weeks.

The EU could unlock 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of natural gas, or about 22 trillion cubic feet, if it rethinks its Arctic policy, Norway-based consultancy Rystad Energy said early this year.

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BIG WIN IN N CAROLINA: Court Reaffirms “Never Residents” Cannot Vote – While Michigan SOS Benson Continues to Defy Constitution–Allows Individuals To Vote That Never Lived in State

Why are U.S. citizens born overseas to parents eligible to vote in a state where they’ve never lived?

That’s a question every American should be asking their state lawmakers.

Another question Americans should be asking is why would any lawmaker or secretary of state would be in favor of someone voting in their state who’s never lived there? Isn’t voting supposed to be about choosing the candidate who will best represent the US citizen living in their community, state or federal government?

In a significant ruling just days ago, Special Superior Court Judge Hoyt Tessener delivered a major win for election integrity in North Carolina. The court sided with Republican groups who argued that “never resident” voters — individuals born overseas who have never lived in North Carolina — should not be allowed to vote in any elections in the Tar Heel State.

This latest decision builds directly on previous rulings by the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 2025, during the hotly contested Supreme Court race between Democrat Allison Riggs and Republican Jefferson Griffin, the NC Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that “never residents” are not eligible to vote in state and local elections under the North Carolina Constitution. The court made it clear: only actual residents of North Carolina can vote in North Carolina elections.

The new Superior Court ruling goes even further by addressing federal elections, closing the loophole that Benson-style election officials have been exploiting nationwide.

Michigan’s Parallel Fight To Keep Inelligible Voters Allegedly Living in Foreign Countries from Voting In State and Federal Elections

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When The Grid Dies: How A Single Blackout Could Unravel A Modern World

For decades, infrastructure analysts, military planners, and emergency preparedness experts have warned that modern civilization is built upon a dangerously fragile foundation.

Electricity is no longer merely a convenience of industrial society; it is the bloodstream of every institution sustaining modern life. Water purification systems, food distribution chains, hospitals, communication networks, banking systems, fuel pipelines, transportation corridors, satellite infrastructure, and emergency services all depend upon uninterrupted electrical continuity.

What follows is a dramatized reconstruction of a prolonged nationwide blackout and the sequence of societal failures that unfolds afterward.

Though fictionalized for narrative intensity, the mechanisms behind the collapse are rooted in real vulnerabilities documented by energy experts, cybersecurity specialists, and federal emergency studies over the past several decades.

The First Day — The Extinguishing of the Great Machine

At 4:12 in the morning, long before sunrise reached the eastern seaboard, the first disturbances began spreading through the electrical arteries of the United States. Inside regional grid control centers, operators noticed unstable fluctuations racing through transmission frequencies connecting several major sectors of the national power network. Similar anomalies had appeared before during severe storms or regional overload incidents, and at first the event seemed manageable. Automated balancing protocols activated instantly while engineers attempted to isolate unstable sectors before the disturbance propagated farther outward. Yet within minutes the system began behaving in ways that experienced technicians later described as deeply unnatural.

Massive substations disconnected from the network one after another as transformers erupted under abnormal strain. Entire transmission corridors collapsed in rapid succession across multiple states while gas compressor stations abruptly failed after synchronization systems destabilized. Power plants automatically disengaged from the grid to protect turbines from catastrophic overload damage, but the protective measures only accelerated the wider collapse already spreading across the country. Before dawn had fully broken, immense regions of the United States disappeared into darkness.

The first reaction among the public was irritation rather than fear. Alarm clocks failed. Wireless networks vanished. Elevators froze between floors. Morning commuters discovered traffic lights dead at major intersections while gas stations sat powerless beside clogged roads. Millions initially assumed the outage would last only a few hours because modern populations had become psychologically conditioned to believe every disruption was temporary and every institution fundamentally stable. Yet beneath the surface of ordinary frustration, panic had already begun inside the agencies responsible for maintaining national order.

Cellular networks became overloaded almost immediately as millions attempted to contact relatives simultaneously. Emergency dispatch systems collapsed beneath an avalanche of calls reporting fires, traffic collisions, medical emergencies, and electrical accidents. Airports grounded flights across the country while financial institutions struggled to maintain even minimal continuity. Then, shortly before midmorning, another layer of modern civilization began deteriorating as large portions of the internet itself started disappearing region by region. Data centers exhausted backup reserves. Routing infrastructure failed. Communication nodes vanished from the network faster than technicians could stabilize them. Social media descended into chaos before becoming inaccessible entirely across many states.

Inside federal emergency facilities, the atmosphere shifted from concern into dread. Continuity-of-government protocols were activated before sunrise while intelligence analysts attempted to determine whether the catastrophe had been orchestrated deliberately. Preliminary evidence suggested coordinated intrusions may have accompanied the cascading failures, raising the terrifying possibility that the blackout was not an accident at all but the opening phase of a far larger attack against the nation’s infrastructure backbone.

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The Alien Mummy Mystery, Why Won’t Peru Let Its Mummies be Tested?

For decades, stories of extraterrestrial life have lived on the fringe. But what if the strongest evidence yet has been sitting in Peru for nearly 1,700 years?

Today on Stinchfield, we dive into one of the most controversial mysteries on the planet: the so-called Peruvian mummies. These ancient remains, discovered by a grave robber rather than through an official archaeological excavation, possess characteristics unlike any known human population. They have only three fingers on each hand, three toes on each foot, and have undergone extensive CT scans and X-ray analysis that continue to fuel debate among scientists and researchers around the world.

Now the story is entering a critical new chapter. Author and investigative journalist Kent Heckenlively joins us to discuss revelations from his book Catastrophic Disclosure and the effort now underway to conduct a new round of DNA testing on the mysterious remains. According to Heckenlively, his co-author, Michael Mazzola, is working with Colossal Biosciences in hopes of obtaining definitive answers. The challenge? The Peruvian government has not yet approved the study.

Supporters of further testing claim that previous DNA analysis revealed genetic markers that could not be linked to any known species on Earth. Skeptics argue the evidence remains inconclusive and demand more rigorous scientific examination. That’s exactly what this new effort hopes to accomplish.

Are these mummies an elaborate hoax? An unknown branch of human evolution? Or could they represent what Heckenlively calls the best evidence we have that non-human intelligence may have visited Earth long before modern civilization?

The battle over disclosure is no longer limited to UFOs in the sky. It may now involve physical evidence that can be touched, scanned, tested, and perhaps one day proven. We examine the science, the controversy, and the extraordinary implications if these ancient remains turn out to be exactly what some researchers believe they are.

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Repeat Speeders In Washington Could Soon Have Cars Electronically Restricted

Washington state has approved a new law targeting drivers with serious speeding violations by requiring them to use speed-limiting technology before regaining limited driving privileges, according to Slashgear. 

The measure, House Bill 1596 — also called the BEAM Act — was created in response to a fatal 2024 crash that killed Boyd Buster Brown, Eloise Wilcoxson, Andrea Smith Hudson, and Matilda Wilcoxson.

Beginning in January 2029, drivers whose licenses were suspended for reckless driving or excessive speeding will need to install an “intelligent speed assistance” device in their vehicles to qualify for a restricted license. Using GPS tracking, the system monitors a vehicle’s speed and prevents drivers from exceeding a programmed limit. The law allows only three manual overrides each month.

The bill classifies excessive speeding as driving at least 10 mph over the limit in areas posted at 40 mph or below, or 20 mph over the limit on faster roads. Washington is one of several states moving toward stricter enforcement measures for repeat dangerous drivers, following similar efforts in places like New York.

The article notes that the law also carries financial obligations. Unless a driver qualifies for assistance, they must pay for the installation, removal, and leasing of the device, along with a $21 monthly fee. That money will help fund a state program designed to assist lower-income drivers with the costs.

Tampering with the device is treated as a serious offense. Anyone caught removing, disabling, or altering the system without a legitimate repair or safety reason could face a gross misdemeanor charge, which may include up to one year in jail and fines reaching $5,000.

As more states experiment with new traffic enforcement strategies — including variable speed limits and automated monitoring systems — Washington’s approach reflects a growing push to reduce dangerous speeding through technology rather than traditional enforcement alone.

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Toxic Plastics Causing ‘Silent Epidemic Of Kids With Lower IQs,’ Pediatrician Tells RFK Jr.

Dr. Leo Trasande, one of the nation’s leading experts on environmental health and toxic exposures, warned this week that plastics pose “a multidimensional and urgent threat to human health,” with children facing some of the greatest risks.

Speaking on “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” Trasande — a pediatrician, professor at New York University and director of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Division of Environmental Pediatrics — described mounting evidence linking chemicals in plastics to developmental, hormonal, metabolic, reproductive and neurological harm.

“The impacts run from cradle to grave and womb to tomb,” he said.

The discussion comes as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launches STOMP — Systematic Targeting Of MicroPlastics. The $144 million initiative aims to measure, study and eventually remove microplastics and nanoplastics from the human body.

The program will develop standardized testing methods, map how plastics accumulate in organs, rank plastics by biological harm and pursue future removal technologies.

Trasande said the growing concern extends beyond visible plastic waste to microscopic and chemical exposures embedded throughout modern life.

“We know that there are 16,000 chemicals — synthetic chemicals — that are in plastic,” Trasande said. “We don’t know anything about 10,000 of them.”

Among the chemicals with the strongest evidence of harm are bisphenols used in plastics, phthalates found in food packaging and personal care products, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — also known as “forever chemicals” — used in nonstick and stain-resistant products.

Trasande said the evidence is “extremely strong” that many of these chemicals disrupt hormones, which in turn regulate metabolism, reproduction, growth and brain development.

‘A silent epidemic of kids with lower IQs in the U.S.’

As a pediatrician, Trasande repeatedly emphasized that children are uniquely vulnerable.

“Pound for pound, they eat more food, drink more water, breathe more air, so they’re uniquely susceptible,” he said. “Their organ systems are also just being primed. And so if you disrupt that, there are lifelong and permanent consequences.”

He pointed to evidence linking phthalate exposure during pregnancy to roughly 50,000 premature births in the U.S. each year, along with impaired brain development and poorer educational outcomes.

Trasande warned that some of the most damaging effects may be subtle and population-wide, rather than immediately obvious in individual children. Even small disruptions to thyroid hormones during pregnancy are associated with cognitive deficits, autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), he said.

“What you see is a silent epidemic of kids with lower IQs in the U.S.,” Trasande said. “Just to put this in context for the audience, a kid loses an IQ point, mom doesn’t notice, pediatrician doesn’t notice.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compared the issue to the impact of lead exposure on the national average IQ before leaded gasoline was phased out in the 1980s.

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California Democrat Governor Candidate Tom Steyer Just Can’t Stop Focusing on Trans Athletes in Girls’ Sports 

Tom Steyer, the liberal billionaire Democrat who’s running for governor of California, seems to think that trans athletes in girls’ sports is the biggest issue facing the state.

He talked about this during a recent podcast appearance, and now he has released a video of himself talking with a trans athlete and making his support completely clear.

Steyer is obviously trying to signal his wokeness to the far left base of his party, but his relentless focus on this particular issue makes him look completely out of touch with Californians who care very deeply about more pressing matters for their state.

FOX News reports:

California Dem gov candidate Tom Steyer prompts mixed reactions for video with trans athlete AB Hernandez

California Democrat gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted a video with prominent transgender athlete AB Hernandez on social media on Friday, expressing support for the trans teen as Hernandez looks to win another set of state titles in girls’ track and field.

The video went viral across social media, with a mix of praise and criticism across the political spectrum…

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton condemned Steyer for supporting trans athletes in girls’ sports in an interview with Fox News Digital on Friday.

“Tom Steyer has taken a wildly extreme position on this issue that is totally out of touch with most California families and young people,” Hilton told Fox News Digital before the rally,” Hilton said.

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WHEN REALITY BITES: Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Factually Vacant ‘Rich Pay 8%’ Tax Claim

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would likely today be a quarrelsome local education union official somewhere in her native Oklahoma had she not left the Sooner State in search of greener pastures following her father’s death.

She was born in Norman, home of a certain college football team associated with a university that is actually a left-wing troll manufacturer in one of America’s reddest states, and somehow, according to Wikipedia, ended up graduating from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City in 1966.

Having myself grownup on Okie City’s southside — aka the “poor side of town” where we rednecks resided —my classmates and I in Moore High School’s class of 1968 mostly viewed Classen as a school for rich kids because it drew students from some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the state.

Interestingly, Warren’s Classen debate team won a state championship. As it happens, I was on Moore’s debate team with a then-young fellow named Tom Cole, who was a year ahead of me. You may have heard of Tom as he’s now Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, a position from which he wields vastly more influence on the nation than Warren likely ever will have.

Anyway, enough of the Liz Warren, Okie, history lesson. She ended up at Harvard, ran for the Senate and won in 2012, where she has afflicted the national public policy debate with endless streams of the Left’s nonsensical “government-is-our-salvation” rhetoric masquerading as intelligent discussion.

A recent example of which is her April 15 Tax Day “Reminder: The average taxpayer pays 13% of their income in taxes. The wealthiest 400 families in the U.S. pay just 8% of their income in taxes.It’s time to make the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share.It’s time to pass a wealth tax.” 

If you have paid even the scantest attention to American politics since FDR, you have heard millions of variations on Warren’s claim because it’s conventional wisdom on the Left, which has been failing the test of reality since before the New Deal.

As I expected, Just Facts Daily (JFD) addressed Warren’s assertion and found it wanting:

“IN FACT, the wealthy pay about 33% of their income in federal taxes, even after write-offs. Warren’s 8% figure misleadingly counts paper gains as income and excludes massive amounts of taxes paid by wealthy people,” JFD reported.

Here are the specifics (Actually, there are more, but the following seven points ought to be the end of the discussion. For those who want more, however, JFD is happy to oblige with five more points at the link):

  • The U.S. Treasury estimates that the richest 0.1% of families paid an average effective federal tax rate of 33.5% in 2024.
  • The Treasury’s estimates of effective federal tax rates roughly accord with data published by the Congressional Budget Office, which typically lag the Treasury data by several years.
  • Unlike the incomplete and misleading tax rates reported by the media and politicians of both parties, the Treasury’s and CBO’s computations of effective federal tax rates reflect actual taxes paid (not marginal rates) and account for nearly all forms of income and nearly all federal taxes, such as capital gains, pensions, health benefits, payroll taxes, excise taxes, corporate taxes, hidden taxes and write-offs (aka preferences).
  • Warren cites no source for her figure of 8%, but it accords with a 2021 Biden White House analysis that estimated an “average federal individual income tax rate” of 8.2% for “America’s 400 wealthiest families” during 2010–2018.
  • Contrary to Warren, that analysis is not a full measure of “taxes” because it only includes “federal individual income taxes” and excludes all other types of federal taxes, such as social insurance taxes, corporate income taxes, excise taxes, estate taxes, and gift taxes.
  • Contrary to the law and reality, the Biden White House analysis understates the actual income tax rate by counting “unrealized capital gains” as “income.”
  • Per the Supreme Court’s 1920 ruling in Eisner v. Macomber, “increase in value of capital investment is not income in any proper meaning of the term,” and “mere growth or increment of value in a capital investment is not income.”

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MSNOW Host Claims Joe Biden’s Health Was ‘Litigated Exhaustively’ But Trump’s Health is Getting a Pass

MSNOW Host Jonathan Capehart appeared on PBS this weekend and claimed that Joe Biden’s health was examined closely by the media and the public, then suggested that Trump is getting a pass on the same issue.

While this is laughable, it exposes the fact that the liberal media is really angry at Jill Biden for making the public focus on this issue once again through her recent comments about her husband.

It also shows how dishonest they are. Biden’s health issues were denied by the media for years. Anyone on the right who brought it up was labeled as a conspiracy theorist and accused of pushing ‘cheap fakes.’

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

JONATHAN CAPEHART, MS NOW: That’s not what she even said.

The day after, said, you answered every question, Joe.

This is not helpful. This is not helpful, certainly for Democrats, who have a unique ability to circle the wagons and then just fire at each other while Republicans watch with glee. This is a sort of a second self-inflicted wound on the party, the first one being earlier last week with the draft of that autopsy that was released.

To my mind, to your point, Joe Biden’s health has been litigated up and down, even when he was in the White House, which stands in stark contrast to what is happening today with the current sitting president, who went in for yet another physical at Walter Reed. He’s only been in the job for 18 months.

Three visits to Walter Reed? Why are we, as a profession, not talking as extensively and exhaustively and urgently about the health of the sitting president of the United States, when we did that to Joe Biden for four years?

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The Hard Math Of Big Wars

In spite of the rough lessons on the importance of mass in the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the second half of the 20th Century—and even the cold bucket of sand thrown in our face about what is required for even heavy imperial policing like we had in Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of the first decade of this century—a large segment of the national security nomenklatura was content with boutique-levels of warstocks in our relatively shallow magazines.

We’ve discussed this here and at the OG Blog for a long time, as have others, but until recently the need to purchase and stockpile the weapons we know we will need in the big fight—heck, like we’ve seen in Iran recently, even for extended punitive expeditions—simply has not been getting the support it needs.

It is nice to at last see a shift, but let’s not celebrate it until we understand how we got here. If we don’t have a good understanding why we forgot the need for the magazine depth that is inefficient in peacetime but essential in war, then we are condemned to repeat it when the immediacy of the crisis starts to fade and the accountants, backed by hucksters selling sketchy theories, start clawing back supremacy in the argument.

Generations have grown to positions of power in our defense establishment riding on their success of selling the shallowness of our magazines as a reflection of modern natsec theory.

It started before the guns from WWII were even cold.

Most famous was the nuclear club that convinced everyone, because they were the Smartest People in the Room™, that ‘war was new’ and that they knew that the future was nuclear. No need for large navies, armies, or tactical air forces taking up space with ‘old think’. No. Nuclear war will either be the new normal, or would prevent wars from happening at all.

Oops.

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