Anybody who spoke at Sharpton's National Action Network conference is immediately disqualified from ever being president

And there was a slew of them: Robert O'Rourke, Corey Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris. Those are the current presidential candidates. Several other Democrats also spoke, and while they currently aren't pursuing the top executive-branch position, they may harbor such aspirations and they certainly occupy positions of maximum party influence: Tom Perez, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Eric Holder.

This is an appropriate moment for reviewing just what their host at the recently concluded conference  is all about, as David Harsanyi has done at The Federalist:

[He's] a guy who once said, “We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”

Sharpton most famously threw an entire city into turmoil in 1987 when he cynically exploited the hoax of a black teen named Tawana Brawley—who claimed to have been raped, kidnapped, smeared with feces, and left wrapped in a plastic bag by a group of white men in Dutchess County, New York—for attention. To the surprise of absolutely no one, a state grand jury would find that her claims had been fabricated, perhaps as a way of avoiding punishment from her dad for staying out late.

When Sharpton and Brawley lost their defamation suits, it would not be the founder and president of the National Action Network Convention who would struggle. After 26 years, Brawley was the one who couldn’t pay her debt.

Then again, ruined lives are strewn across Sharpton’s career. Maybe Democrats need to be reminded that Sharpton used a tragic 1991 car accident to incite a four-day race riot in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Or maybe they just don’t care. It was Sharpton who stoked anger over the imaginary nexus between “Tel Aviv” and “South Africa” and the “diamond merchants right here.” After the Jewish community protested, Sharpton said, “Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

But, of course, Sharpton’s bejeweled and rotund frame was, as always, hiding behind bodyguards. It was his mob that took over. And one man who forgot to pin back his yarmulke was Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year old Orthodox Jew visiting from Australia who, after turning down a wrong street, was dragged from his car to the shouts of “Kill the Jews!” by throngs of angry protesters and stabbed to death. Never once has Sharpton shown any remorse for his role in this bloodletting.

When, in 1995, Fred Harari, a Jewish sub-tenant who operated a store called Freddie’s Fashion Mart, evicted his own sub-tenant, a black-owned record store owner, Sharpton, who told the protesters, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business,” saw another opportunity to provoke chaos.

Never mind that it had been a black Pentecostal church that had asked Harari to evict the record store owner. If you’re inclined, you can listen to his ceaseless race-baiting and anti-Semitism that Sharpton allowed, and engaged in, on his show day in and out. The venomous protests, fueled in part by his show and his presence, soon began to resemble a mob. When Roland Smith Jr. went in with a gun, he asked all the black patrons to leave before he killed everyone else. The “white interloper,” as Sharpton perceptively predicted, “did not expand his business in Harlem.” 

You wouldn't have to enumerate the other reasons these people and their party are immediately morally disqualified from holding high office (even as some of them do): celebration of infanticide, Jew-hatred ( a trait they share with Sharpton), driver's licenses and voting privileges for illegal aliens, and the perpetuation of several lies: that the global climate is in a state of crisis, that gender is fluid, that two people of the same gender can get married, that systemic bigotry is as major societal problem. That they would have anything to do with a repugnant figure like Sharpton, much less speak at his conference, seals the deal on their illegitimacy as agents of public-policy influence.

The only question is whether there is still a critical mass of post-Americans who understand this. I feel reasonably confident that there is. Growing numbers of post-Americans are secular and collectivist in their outlook, but they still retain at least a faint glimpse of our nation's philosophical foundation and can see that association with Sharpton bears the stench of civilizationsl death.

Wasting resources in the name of conserving resources

I've long wondered it some data wasn't going to come in about green building codes that might cause us to rethink the excitement over them in the construction industry.   Here  it is:

Green building codes have failed to conserve energy use in the nation’s most populated state, according to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

California, currently home to 12 percent of the United States population, enacted energy building codes for the first time in 1978. The codes were projected to reduce residential energy use and its associated pollution by 80 percent. Instead, buildings constructed after the green energy codes took effect are not using less energy than homes built prior to the codes.

The supposedly-green codes added $8,000 to the construction cost of a new home. That’s essentially an $8,000 tax on new homes, with little public benefit.

The study was conducted by Arik Levinson, an economics professor at Georgetown University. Levinson’s results were published by the NBER Working Paper Series.

Levinson's team accounted for all the variables that might have led to an apples-to-oranges conclusion.

It's just a lot of money that hs unnecessarily moved from one pocket to another in our economy, and time that can't be retrieved.

Steven Goddard outs himself

He's a whistle blower:

My name is Tony Heller. I am a whistle blower. I am an independent thinker who is considered a heretic by the orthodoxy on both sides of the climate debate.

I live in Columbia, Maryland – an amazing city where I can ride my bicycle everywhere through the forest, and never need to get in a car.

I am a lifelong environmentalist. I testified at my first Congressional subcommittee hearing at age 15 in Kanab, Utah, in support of  a wilderness area – very close to the one which President Obama recently set aside. I worked to get the Clean Air Act passed. I worked as a volunteer wilderness ranger for two summers in the Cibola and Santa Fe National Forests in New Mexico. I worked on the Safety Analysis Report for DOE’s nuclear waste disposal site in New Mexico. I probably have the smallest electricity bill in Columbia, Maryland because I am very careful not to waste. I have never turned on my heat or air conditioning.

I have degrees in Geology and Electrical Engineering, and worked on the design team of many of the world’s most complex designs, including some which likely power your PC or Mac. I have worked as a contract software developer on climate and weather models for the US government.

I do not receive any funding other than small donations on my blog, which have worked out well below minimum wage. I have tried to obtain funding, but skeptics with money are terrified of political attacks directed by the White House and/or being targeted by the IRS. They openly state this to me.

My position on global warming:

The claims of 97% consensus are a massive lie. Only 52% of American Meteorological Society members believe that man is the primary contributor to global warming.

Pray for this man.  Now that he's revealed his real identity, he can expect to come in for ire of a degree that would sear the souls of timid men.

Ah, but the MEC can feel good about his noble intentions

We've seen this play before.  The Most Equal Comrade touts a play-like green "company" as a robust engine of growth and job creation, and then the place goes kabust:

our years have passed since President Obama visited Kansas City's main airport, rolled up his shirt sleeves and admonished the skeptics who said Smith Electric Vehicles was unlikely to make good on its promises to build 510 experimental electric-powered trucks and buses suitable for commercial use.

“Come see what’s going on at Smith Electric," the president said, inspecting a table full of bright green truck batteries in what was once a maintenance hangar for TWA. "I think they’re going to be hard-pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.”

The skeptics turned out to be right.

Despite $32 million in federal stimulus funds and status as one of Obama's favorite "green" companies, the firm has halted production, having built just 439 of the promised 510 vehicles.

It has also left a trail of broken promises and unpaid bills.

Smith created just a quarter of the jobs it initially promised the state of Missouri it would create in return for $1.4 million in tax credits. Meanwhile, it has also stiffed the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the state government, and a local electrical supply company, as well as its landlord, the Kansas City city government, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to interviews and reviews of public records by the Washington Examiner.

As of today, the company still owes $36,000 to Missouri S&T for work the university performed as a subcontractor on a U.S. Army project.

But when you're the Lightworker-in-chief, you never have to account for this stuff.

Blowing the whistle on the ideological bullies at the heart of Green-ism

Robert Stavins, head of the environmental economics program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, says politicians from various countries with a vested interest in a certain set of IPCC conclusions breathed down the necks of the scientists who drafted that body's report:

A top US academic has dramatically revealed how government officials forced him to change a hugely influential scientific report on climate change to suit their own interests. 

Harvard professor Robert Stavins electrified the worldwide debate on climate change on Friday by sensationally publishing a letter online in which he spelled out the astonishing interference.

He said the officials, representing ‘all the main countries and regions of the world’ insisted on the changes in a late-night meeting at a Berlin conference centre two weeks ago.

Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.

Prof Stavins claimed the intervention amounted to a serious ‘conflict of interest’ between scientists and governments. His revelation is significant because it is rare for climate change experts to publicly question the process behind the compilation of reports on the subject.

Prof Stavins, Harvard’s Professor of Business and Government, was one of two ‘co-ordinating lead authors’ of a key report published by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month. 

His chapter of the 2,000-page original report concerned ways countries can co-operate to reduce carbon emissions.

IPCC reports are supposed to be scrupulously independent as they give scientific advice to governments around the world to help them shape energy policies – which in turn affect subsidies and domestic power bills.

Could it be any more clear what this is really about?

The sure sign that a Freedom-Hater has run out of intellectual gas

The most recent comment from someone I've been having a Facebook snit with today in a thread under a post about climate.  Further up the thread, I posted a number of links you've seen here in posts in the "environment policy" category.  Links having to do with economic dislocation, discrediting of the IPCC, arctic ice levels and the like.

It finally deteriorated to this:

Barney, poor dumb Barney, you are quite simply a pompous moron. Someone perfectly content to seek out knowledge as long as it only agrees with your preconceived opinion. But you know what? I'm not going to have to worry about you because you're out of date. People like you are expired. You're views on life and the world are archaic and based on feelings rather than facts. You're nothing more than a protesting worm on the verge of being eaten up by the birds of knowledge around you and soon you will be nothing more than white stains on statues and cars. Your future is bird shit, Barney. And the nice thing about bird shit is it comes right off with a good car wash. And if you don't get my metaphor then let me put it simply: You'll be dead soon and and we won't be dragged down anymore by your ignorance and out of date beliefs. We will evolve and move on

Peace, love, tofu and sprouts to you, too, pal.

The greenies' real agenda

The new IPCC report not only ramps up the utterly-fabricated-from-computer-models climate-related prognostications of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but extends its supposed forecasting abilities to realms such as economics and sociology:

 "Existing gender inequalities are increased or heightened by climate-related hazards," says the report, while dilating on the deleterious effects global warming has on "discrimination based on gender, age, race, class, caste, indigeneity, and (dis)ability."

The IPCC also turns out to have an agenda that's less about climate change than income inequality and redistribution. What else given the liberal fashions of the day? "Recognizing how inequality and marginalization perpetuate poverty is a prerequisite for climate-resilient development pathways," the IPCC insists, before suggesting that the costs for "global adaptation" should run between $70 billion and $100 billion a year from now until 2050.

So adaptation funding needs to be "orders of magnitude greater than current investment levels, particularly in developing countries." If one Solyndra wasn't enough, try underwriting thousands of them. Preferably in third-world countries. For those who suspect that the purported threat of global warming is really a vehicle of convenience for reviving the discredited economics of the 1970s, this IPCC report will serve as Exhibit A.

It's just a means for imposing The Great Leveling Project.

And there's no political agenda for the warming-is-real crowd?

Then why did these guys choose Media Matters as the venue in which to lodge their protest against the NIPCC?

On September 18, two scientists sent emails to Media Matters for America denouncing a new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Why would two scientists publicly attack a team of nearly 50 of their peers for creating a peer-reviewed report more than 1,000 pages in length and citing nearly 4,000 peer-reviewed articles? Why would they choose to send their criticism to a Web site notorious for being the source of sound-bites for the Democratic Party and groups on the far left?

The two scientists, Kevin Trenberth with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, have long histories of being extremists in the debate over climate change. They speak as advocates for a cause and not as scientists. So we ask journalists and the interested public to weigh their intemperate opinions against the following endorsements of NIPCC from more credible climate scientists. Who is more likely to be right? 

When even the WaPo sees the need to address it in a house editorial

There is yet another interestingly right-headed editorial from the Bezos-era Washington Post.  Probably too early to make a connection or predict a long-range turnabout in orientation, but the editors clearly don't think too highly of Terry McAuliffe's play-like car "company" and its cavalier attitude toward its financial losses.

The green folly right here at home

Going local again here.  As I have stated, I do so when a news item in our city has broader implications.

One of my steady writing gigs is the cover story and other local feature in each monthly issue of a local business magazine.  For last year's October issue, my editor had me profile a solar panel manufacturer that had started up a few months before.

As is my routine for embarking on such assignments, I went out to the industrial park where the plant was located.  It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and I was immediately struck by the absence of any cars in the parking lot.  I was able to get into the lobby, though, although, again, there was a dearth of warm bodies.  I rang a buzzer and eventually a gal who identified herself as the plant manager came out to greet me.  I asked her about the appropriate person for an interview.  She told me it would be the CEO, so we began the process, concluded by e-mail, of setting that up.  The day came for the interview and I went back out there.  Again, no cars in the lot. One idle eighteen-wheeler by the receiving bays.

The CEO and I had a nearly hour-long conversation in his office.  He was a good-looking young fellow with a go-getter demeanor.  Told me about his back ground in the overall renewable-energy field.  Spoke knowledgeably about a raw silicon supplier in South Korea, and the different grades of photovoltaic cells.  Talked about how his main market was folks living off-grid and how the firm was expanding into African countries where energy development was still being sorted out.

Very impressive, I thought, but, um, where are the people here?

Anyway, the above-the-fold headline in our local paper this morning was about how this company is suppose  to be paying back a bunch of local money that it obtained in the form of tax abatements, grants and loans, and is not doing so.  The company had told the city that it expected to employ 80 people by the end of 2012.  As of February 2013, it still only had 15.  The city is looking at foreclosure proceedings.

This guy had told me that his model was different from that of companies like Solyndra and that his growth forecasts were solidly backed up.  As I say, he had that charge-ahead way about him and, despite the eerie silence of the place during my two visits, I was ready to be convinced.

Turns out the city, in its efforts to be ever-so green and diverse and amenable to young professionals, blew my hard-earned tax dollars on yet another gravy train rider.   We got took.

No, he didn't, did he? Yes, the sick bastard did

While watching footage of the unspeakably fearsome tornado that ripped though Moore, Oklahoma, the thought fleetingly crossed my mind that some loudmouth leftist would try somehow to blame it on pro-freedom normal people.

Sure enough, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse did exactly that.

Confirming our conviction that he'd be a horrible Secretary of State

With all the hot situations flaring around the globe right now, Global Test is in Sweden pushing the idiotic line that "climate change" is some kind of urgent matter  - and apologizing for the US to boot, for not mustering the requisite sense of urgency.

The goofy priorities of our overlords - today's edition

File under WTF: Secretary of State Global Test gives his first major foreign-policy on global change.

36 of 'em

The Heritage Foundation has a complete list of the bankrupt or faltering green-energy "companies" hat the MEC regime has propped up with your tax dollars.

And the regime is still swallowing the Kool-Aid - or at least employing the Kool-Aid as the public face of its agenda of planned decline.  Interior Department is forming a climate-change committee to advise policy-shaping.

If the MEC loses the election, look for an accelerated pace of such lame-duck power grabs.

You're still working your tail off in the service of a failed fantasy

Michigan lithium-ion battery maker - and recipient of federal stimulus funds and Michigan state largesse - A123 Systems is going belly-up.

Michigan's not getting much help in its comeback efforts from the FHers, is it?

Still, the overlords keep pouring our hard-earned tax dollars into bankruptcy-bound "green" "companies"

Another round of evidence that global warming is a lot of hooey.