Comments On Andrew McCabe And The FBI's Coup Plotters

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Disgraced ex-FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe has written a book, and of course then he’s out trying to sell it. On Thursday the Atlantic published an excerpt. Tomorrow McCabe is to appear on 60 Minutes in a pre-recorded segment, several snippets of which have become public in advance of the airing.

Plenty of people have already offered up comments. Here are some you might find interesting: Marc Penn at Fox News; Roger Kimball at Spectator USA; Andrew McCarthy at Fox News; Willis Krumholz at the Federalist; Julie Kelly at American Greatness; Byron York at the Washington Examiner.

Not wanting to repeat what’s already been said, I’ll just offer up a few thoughts. Most important, you really have to marvel at the deep state mindset exemplified by this guy — a combination of ignorance, stupidity, arrogance, and, more than anything else, sanctimony. Sanctimony. The total confidence in his own righteousness and holiness, even as he has wholly lost track of — or is completely ignorant of — all the applicable legal and ethical principles, even the very most basic ones.

Let’s look at a couple of quotes from McCabe’s book excerpt in the Atlantic: . . .

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We've Driven Amazon Out Of New York!

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It’s official! Earlier today, Amazon announced that it was pulling out of the deal to build a “second headquarters” in Queens (part of New York City) and hire some 25,000 people there. The New York Times is on top of the story:

Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers and union leaders, . . . The company, as part of its extensive search for a new headquarters, had chosen Long Island City, Queens, as one of two winning sites, saying that it would create more than 25,000 jobs in the city.

Leading progressives immediately took a victory lap. For example, there was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (tweet quoted in the Times article):

Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.

(Note: the proposed Amazon HQ is not actually within AOC’s district, but about 1 mile or so away.) And Elizabeth Warren:

@amazon – one of the wealthiest companies on the planet – just walked away from billions in taxpayer bribes, all because some elected officials in New York aren't sucking up to them enough. How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?

You’re probably wondering about the Manhattan Contrarian’s take on this situation. . . .

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The Laughable Fantasy Of 100% Renewable Energy

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You probably have heard by now of the famous part of the Green New Deal (endorsed by all major Democratic candidates for President!) that would eliminate “farting cows and airplanes”; but you haven’t yet actually read the full quote. As a service to readers, I provide it here (from the FAQ):

Yes, we are calling for a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases. Anyone who has read the resolution sees that we spell this out through a plan that calls for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy. Simply banning fossil fuels immediately won’t build the new economy to replace it [sic] — this is the plan to build that new economy and spells out how to do it technically. We do this through a huge mobilization to create the renewable energy economy as fast as possible. We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast, but we think we can ramp up renewable manufacturing and power production, retrofit every building in America, build the smart grid, overhaul transportation and agriculture, plant lots of trees, and restore our ecosystem to get to net-zero.

So yes, you’ll have to wait until after the first 10 years to fully eliminate the farting cows and airplanes. But the good news is that achieving 100% “renewable manufacturing and power production” and “the smart grid” is not a difficult problem at all. Only the evil fossil fuel companies stand in our way!

Does your pesky inquiring mind just keep wondering how exactly they propose to keep the lights on and the heat running on a calm winter night? . . .

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Progressivism: What Is The Limiting Principle?

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Yesterday’s semi-official launch of the Green New Deal has done a big favor for our national political debate: It has finally put squarely on the table the fundamental question that needs to be addressed, yet never is addressed, namely, what is the limiting principle of the progressive project? Or really, is there any limiting principle at all? Let me illustrate.

Always (or at least, always before now) the progressive proposals to make the world perfectly just and fair have been presented one by one. Wouldn’t the world be so much more fair if we only had free (government paid) college for all? Many people look at such a proposal and think, sure, that would make things a little more fair; I guess I could get on board with it. Then, wouldn’t the world be so much more fair if we had universal (government paid) health care for all. In isolation, same reaction. Separately, wouldn’t it be great to “save the planet” by getting carbon emissions under control (by some form of government subsidy and/or command)? Addressed separately, and with no context of what other proposals may be coming, many people find themselves nodding along. With your attention diverted from the big picture, any of these proposals might get your support. . . .

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The Climate Scare: Ever More Shrill, Ever Less Serious

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The Climate Scare: Ever More Shrill, Ever Less Serious

The Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives! And, for their first act, how about some scary “climate” hearings? The New York Times, of course, takes the occasion to run a big front-page story with the headline (in the print edition — online is different) “2018 Continues Warming Trend, As 4th Hottest Year Since 1880.” Let’s apply a little critical analysis.

The Times adorns their article with a huge temperature graph, covering the period 1880 to 2018, that goes across two-thirds of the top of the front page. The overall trend looks up at first glance. But on not-very-much-closer inspection, it is obvious that 2017 was down from 2016, and 2018 was down from 2017. How exactly does that constitute 2018 “continu[ing the] warming trend”? I would have said that the last two years in a row down is the opposite of “continuing the warming trend,” but what do I know?

The Times’s graph derives from the systematically-altered NASA/GISS surface temperature series. Go to my 19-part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time” to learn more than you would ever want to know about the adjustments that NASA and NOAA make to the surface temperature record to lower earlier year temperatures and raise later year temperatures to create a fake enhanced warming trend. Since all reasonably-informed readers would know about the serious allegations of data alteration in the surface temperature records of NASA and NOAA, would you think that the Times would deign to mention the issue, let alone mention the existence of the far more accurate satellite record that exists since 1979 and shows something far different? . . .

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Eulogy For Roger Andrews

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Eulogy For Roger Andrews

The Energy Matters web site reports today that Roger Andrews has died. This is a tremendous, almost immeasurable loss. He was 77 year old.

Although I have relied repeatedly on Mr. Andrews’s work since I first discovered it a couple of years ago, you may not recognize his name. He was by far the major contributor to the Energy Matters site. In the field of energy and the environment, he covered a particular niche, namely, analyzing data in order to evaluate the practical problems of trying to power an electrical grid with intermittent energy from the wind and/or sun. Although he was a trained engineer, his most important posts did not rely on any sort of arcane engineering knowledge inaccessible to the layman. Most of the time, what he did was simply to collect publicly available data and perform analysis of it based on simple arithmetic. The most important thing was that he thought like an engineer. Always he was asking, “What problems would you need to solve in order to actually make this system work?” The problems that he uncovered and exposed were generally blindingly obvious once you looked at his analysis — but, in a field currently dominated by quasi-religious zealotry, somehow people can’t see such things.

Today, I will remind you of a few of Mr. Andrews’s important contributions. . . .

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