Report: Al Gore’s Home Energy Use ‘Surges up to 34 Times the National Average’

Question: If you really, truly believe the use of fossil fuels is actually going to wreck Earth in the next few years, would you, charter private jets so you can fly with convenience and have multiple homes with central heat/air, heated pools, etc.? If you REALLY believed these things are "destroying" Earth, would you do things like this? Of course not! This is hard evidence that Algore is fraud, a charlatan, a liar. So why would he live life a fraud? I can think of a 200 million reasons (one estimate of his net worth).

The American Revolution was the triumph of Individualism over Collectivism; freedom over the tyranny of rule by a few Masterminds who purport to know best how you should live your life. The freedom established by the American Revolution and grown over time was based in a philosophy diametrically opposite to that of the neo-communism being advance by the Left, today. Radicals like Bernie Sanders are out of the closet. Idealistic, emotional, ignorant college faculty and students are part of the useful fool toolbox. That punitive, controlling ideology is now fully in our faces and getting increasingly asinine and violent.

One of the tactics of the radical Left is to create problems where they don't exist, sell them, then "fix" them with the iron fist of government. It's an Alinsky tactic that wasn't original to him. The Maoists, Soviets, Nazis every totalitarian, murderous regime in history has used the idea of telling a lie often enough, using seemingly credible sources, until it eventually became the "truth" in the mind of the average citizen.

One big lie, pushed hard by the Great Demagogue, Barak Hussein Obama, and now rolling under it's own inertia is the idea that America is full of white racists, woman-hating men, homosexual-hating heterosexuals, etc. Fabricated "outrages" like The Great St. Olaf College Racism Hoax of 2017 are corrosive and insidious. Each is another chip out of reality and the brilliant society in which we live.

Do not let these counter-revolutionary attacks pass without reacting. Every time one of these hoaxes is exposed we should publicize it. Put it on social media. Email it (if you still do that). Tell your younger relatives about it. Don't browbeat them, just plant the seed of skepticism (healthy doubt that requires substantive evidence).

There are some truths about this transsexual/transgender issue:

1. Most of us feel great sympathy for someone a person who spends his/her entire life feeling like they were born the wrong sex.
2. Transsexuals are a TINY group.
   
3. This whole debate would have been dismissed as radical and outside the realm of common sense just 10 years ago. The only thing that's changed is the politics and messaging; it's been embraced by the extremist Democratic Party as part of the strategy for changing our culture.
4. The idea that simply claiming to be a transsexual is proof of the condition is asinine. Actually have the surgery and it's a whole different game.
   
5. Most of us aren't worried about a transsexual molesting women or girls in the female shower, changing room or restroom, we're worried about the criminals who would take advantage of stupid laws with no objectivity (see #3, above).
   
6. Opposition to the Charlotte "bathroom bill" has nothing to do with one's view of homosexuality. Homosexuality and transgenderism are entirely different things. The Left has always asserted such and it is a completely rational premise. Therefore, the only reason the two are linked (ex., "LGBT") is to boost political power.

The radical, former ACLU pleader, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, acknowledged all this (one way or the other), and that is the point of the Daily Haymaker article.

I like the idea of little English-speakers (K~4) becoming bilingual in the normal course of going to school. Why not? And since Spanish is the predominant language in this hemisphere it is a logical choice. I'm also a proponent for making English the official language of the US and restricting all federal documents/Websites to English, teaching logic and critical thinking to elementary and high school children—such as is part of the ciriculum of Sandhills Classical Christian School, and teaching them solid, market-based, basic economics.

So I like the foreign language immersion idea, but "intelligence guided by experience" with the U.S. education system has generated two questions:

   —What does this program cost relative to the rest of the county? There is something inherently wrong about demanding that citizens with no children pay (or lose their property) to educate the children the rest of us made. That is a debate for another time but the moral obligation of the school board and the county commissioners to exercise severe frugality with the taxpayers' property is most certainly germane to this discussion.

   —Who are the "native Spanish speaking teachers" and from whence did they come to West End Elementary? That is, do they come with a political message? Are they part of an organization with a much larger, anti-American agenda (ex., La Raza)? I'm not suggesting or implying they are because I have no information one way or the other. I'm simply very familiar with the tactics of the Left and am firmly asserting that we must examine cost and agenda before we leap on the Good Idea Fairy's train.

What if the program is not more expensive and the teachers are great, America-loving immigrants? Then I ask, why not make this an option for parents? What do you think? What do you know about this West End Elementary's program?

Read The Pilot's article: Elementary to End Spanish Immersion Program

Submitted by Skeptical Thinker

Trumpmania has two absurd sides. One amounts to paranoid fantasy and the other to magical thinking. It is what happens when one ignores objective facts.

The nutters end of the extremist spectrum is illustrated by the group that is pushing transsexuals to change their names and genitals before Trump is sworn in. They seem to believe that the man who said Caitlyn Jenner was welcome to choose which restroom to use in his building (Jenner actually did use the ladies' room with no opposition from Trump Tower employees) will use the unconstitutional Obama Pen to outlaw transsexualism.

On the psychic end of Trumpmania are the descendants of Nostradamus who confidently pronounce "Trump is going to ____ [fill in your own superlatives about the grandiose things you want to see]. Try to suggest to these mouth-frothers that their pet issues are decided by Congress vs. the President, or that they are economically damaging (eg., tariffs), or are 180º from what Trump said in even the recent past. They will respond with rationalizations or the much worse Nationalist-Populist declaration that (for the good of the nation, of course) Trump should roll over Congress like Obama did. That is, we must abandon the constitution to save the constitutional system! (Thank you, G. W. Bush.)

So what is the rational position for those of us who cherish liberty and the through-and-through wisdom of the Declaration of Independence and it's completing document, the U.S. Constitution? Cautious, watchful, optimistic skepticism.

Donald Trump has a mixed history. He raised his children to be seemingly good Americans who love and respect him. He opposed banning abortion at any stage. He earned billions in business. His business declared bankruptcy, defaulting on obligations several times. He's done wonderful things for people. He's vindictively gone after people. He's apparently willing to speak honestly; without a PC filter. His company dragged out payments to many subcontractors and never paid others. He's made some good nominations and appointments to his Executive Branch.

Donald Trump may be a great President. He might be an OK president. He might be disastrous. We don't know because his history is a mixed bag; he's been all over the political map. Filling that place of anxious uncertainty with cult of personality worship is, at best, naive and erodes one's credibility as an open-eyed rationalist. At worst, it is dangerous, trading skepticism for blind allegiance and the rationalizing away of evil. We must hold to our principles and judge the man by what he does, not by what you want him to be.

—Matt Horsley