The Paradox and Absurdities of Carbon-Fretting and Rewilding

Herschel Smith · 28 Jan 2024 · 4 Comments

The Bureau of Land Management is planning a truly boneheaded move, angering some conservationists over the affects to herd populations and migration routes.  From Field & Stream. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released a draft plan outlining potential solar energy development in the West. The proposal is an update of the BLM’s 2012 Western Solar Plan. It adds five new states—Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming—to a list of 11 western states already earmarked…… [read more]

Release The Transcript, Donald

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Ace:

Ben Smith, at Buzzfeed:

On Saturday, columnist Gail Collins, one of the attendees at the meeting (which also included editor-in-chief Dean Baquet), floated a bit of speculation in her column:

The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal. So you obviously can’t explain how you’re going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, because it’s going to be the first bid in some future monster negotiation session.

Sources familiar with the recording and transcript –which have reached near-mythical status at the Times — tell me that the second sentence is a bit more than speculation. It reflects, instead, something Trump said about the flexibility of his hard-line anti-immigration stance.

So what exactly did Trump say about immigration, about deportations, about the wall? Did he abandon a core promise of his campaign in a private conversation with liberal power brokers in New York?

“If [Trump] wants to call up and ask us to release this transcript, he’s free to do that and then we can decide what we would do,” Rosenthal said.

If you visit the source article at Buzzfeed, there is a little more than what Ace includes, and a link to a demand by Cruz that Trump release the transcript.

Speaking to reporters in San Antonio, Texas, Cruz called for the tape to be made public before Super Tuesday.

“Apparently there is a secret tape that the New York Times editorial board has of Donald Trump saying that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying on immigration, saying that all of his promises to secure the border are not real and if he’s president he doesn’t intend to do what he said,” Cruz said. “I call on Donald: ask the New York Times to release the tape and do so today before the Super Tuesday primary.”

He won’t, but he should.  Sadly, his supporters won’t really know his sincere positions (as opposed to what used car salesmen do) until it’s far too late.

Release the transcript, Donald.  Do it.  Just do it.  I care about my readers.  Your supporters deserve to know.

They Wanted Those Gangster Guns

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

David initially observed that there was a lesson to be learned, but what, he pondered, somewhat sardonically?  I goaded him into spelling it out, and he responded that “my basic thought was to note the irony of the demonizing “gangster gun” sentiment” reserved for when they’re possessed by anyone else.”

But it’s interesting how we all see different flavors depending upon, I don’t know, psychological differences?  Archer says:

The caption says it all (emphasis added): “Although British officers early on denigrated submachine guns as ‘gangster guns,’ when the Nazis were only 20 miles from their shores they gladly bought all the Thompson submachine guns they could get, including the M1 version (top) and the earlier Model 1928A1.”

Another possible “lesson” could be directed at “Fudds”: if/when tyranny comes knocking, you’ll wish you hadn’t allowed pushed for all the “scary” guns to be banned as “weapons of war that don’t belong on our streets”. When it comes to defense of life, limb, and family, you’ll want something proven more effective than your “sporting purpose” 3-shot (with the dowel) 12 gauge pump gun.

In other words, you’ll be kicking yourself for allowing the attacks on others’ rights when they come for yours and there’s nobody left to stand with you.

And yet when I saw the question, my thoughts were that while we should all endeavor to shoot like pros (which means careful shot selection with rapid target acquisition in single shot mode, it would still be good to have an area suppression weapon.  Not nice enough to spend $20,000 on it, now necessary since the Hughes amendment.

Then again, American Rifleman had this several months ago, the modern incarnation of the B.A.R. shooting 30-06 (hotter than the .308), with muzzle brake and upgraded with modernized features making it more amenable to modularization like ARs.  Ohio Ordnance makes it, calling it the HCAR.  You too can have this for just under $4400.  If someone wanted to donate this to TCJ, I would do a great review.

BAR

This ain’t no gangster gun, boy.  This is high dollar high power, to be sure.  I think this would suffice as an area suppression weapon, semiautomatic or automatic.

Notes From HPS

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

David Codrea:

Taking the cake for media manipulation may be PressTV, a state-owned affiliate of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. They borrowed a photo of a cute little girl reaching for an unattended handgun to illustrate their take on the story, as if that’s what anyone is talking about, but with a headline like “Iowa approves bill to let children aged 14 and under have guns,” their job is done.

I noticed that sort of thing in my coverage of OIF and OEF for years.  When it comes to gun rights, I sure am glad that American journalists are fair and balanced.  They aren’t anything like journalists in Iran.

Rubio and Trump on guns.  We knew this about Trump, but until now I hadn’t know the truth about Rubio and gun rights.  I do now.

In Scotland they now have to license air guns.  Such is the sad road when you start down it.

Guns Tags:

A Touching And Heartwarming Story Of Violence And Revolution

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

I have certain incorrigible views of covenant and sovereignty that have their genesis in my Calvinian theology, and it is always interesting to observe and study how men relate to one another and to God.  But before we get to that, let’s begin with what’s happened in the narco-trafficking world.  This analysis promises to be lengthy and perhaps even tedious, so if you intend to make it through a sweeping panorama of violence, revolution and covenant, get a strong cup of coffee and a hard back chair.

There was a time, the story goes, when if a local collided with a drug trafficker’s car on the streets of Culiacán — a bastion of the infamous Sinaloa cartel — the narco was likely to hop out to check that everything was ok.

“They’d say: ‘If you have any problems call this doctor and I’ll pay,'” says journalist Javier Valdez, who specializes in delving into the entrails of drug trafficking culture in Sinaloa. “Not anymore. Now they’ll get out of the car with a pistol. Not only will they not pay you; they’ll beat you, threaten you, or kill you.”

Such tales of shifting mafia etiquette are part of the legend of the underworld in Sinaloa but, close observers like Valdez say, there is also truth to the idea that the newer generations rising up within the Sinaloa drug trafficking scene are more violent and impulsive. And none more so than the one emerging to take control right now.

Few in Culiacán dispute Chapo’s status as a ruthless and bloodthirsty operator, but many credit his generation of Sinaloa traffickers with ensuring the cartel is still considered less wholeheartedly exploitative and sadistic than some other Mexican groups, such as the Knights Templar or the Zetas. While the point is often overstated, the Sinaloa cartel leadership has traditionally limited the expansion of side-rackets, such as extortion and kidnapping, at least on its home turf.

[ … ]

At other times the cartel has prospered because Chapo and his peers have maintained strong relationships with the impoverished communities where they grew up, Valdez says. The writer also emphasized that such leaders have often shown themselves to be been smart enough to know when to negotiate with enemies, including rival cartels, politicians, state security forces, and even the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. This may not be the case, he says, with their more impetuous offspring.

“This generation does not have this sense of belonging, they’re more violent, more dangerous,” Valdez warns. “Their ascendency could put the stability of the cartel at risk.”

Those fears have proven true enough, as the current cadre of Hispanic and Latino crime lords have been known to behead, torture, and engage in inflicting pain and violence merely for the pleasure they see in it with no intended tactical advantage.  I have long said that I don’t believe in the war on drugs, but that without such a misinformed and misdirected campaign the cartels would still exist because they are warlords and shouldn’t be considered “drug” cartels per se.  Just as the Tehrik-e-Taliban engage in extortion, kidnapping, and mining of precious metals and gemstones, the Hispanic and Latino cartels aren’t restricted to drugs.

They have expanded into timber harvesting, and this has caused enough problems in one area of Mexico to catalyze the violent overthrow of the government and cartels altogether.

CHERÁN, MEXICO — Silently in the mountainous deep green of southwestern Mexico’s ancient pine and oak forests, volunteers armed with automatic weapons press forward on patrol.

They aren’t hunting insurgents or drug smugglers, common here in Michoacan state. And they aren’t part of any army. These self-appointed guardabosques — forest guards — are defending the land from illegal clear-cutting by regional organized crime cartels.

In doing so, they illustrate a determination not to succumb to despair in the face of violence — a commitment Pope Francis urged on Mexicans during a visit to Michoacan earlier this month.

Few people interviewed here last year would give their full names out of concern over retaliation. But they were undeterred nonetheless. Jacinto, from a neighboring village, explained what happened: “The trouble began in 2008. That’s when the federal officials came in with the gun registry lists and went house to house. They took our guns away.”

That disarmament effort, to which locals ascribe to nefarious motives, left them with only antiquated single-shot weapons for hunting vermin. These were of little use when the cartel loggers came over the mountain in 2010.

In his cowboy hat and black-and-white plaid shirt, Don Santiago, a 62-year-old wiry, soft-spoken resin farmer of the Purhépecha tribe, said organized criminal syndicates have entered into the large-scale forest destruction business. “We couldn’t go to the police,” he said. “The police were in the pay of the gangsters.”

The main criminal cartels in Michoacán are known as The Michoacán Family, known as La Familia for short, and the Knights Templars, or Templares.

Tension rose as the people of Cherán found their treasured forests being leveled closer to home. Huge, noisy lumber trucks tore through town to haul out the logs, seemingly around the clock. With police and elected officials unwilling to help, a small group of local women, led by a diminutive, five-foot firebrand affectionately known as Doña Chepa, rose up to take their forests back.

“The breaking point came on April 15, 2011,” said David, a big, animated Purhépecha tribesman. “It was Holy Week. The women came to stop the clear-cutters.”

About 15 women piled rocks on the roads as barricades. With the trucks immobilized, the women used rocks and fireworks to chase the cartel raiders away. A church bell clanged an alarm for citizen reinforcements. When the police arrived, the women directed their fireworks on them, pushing them back. “We surrounded all the exits to the town,” David said.

Nothing like this had happened before in Cherán. Energized locals directed their rage at the politicians who had done nothing to stop the deforestation. Armed with their obsolete hunting rifles and shotguns, families converged on the town center. Using one of the abandoned logging trucks as a battering ram, citizens stormed the town administration building and police station and overthrew the local government. The police abandoned their posts — and their weapons.

Mexico’s militarized police, even in small towns, often carry AR-15 assault rifles. Now those weapons were in the hands of the townspeople. “Then we started the rondas,” David said, referring to the armed citizen patrols.

The townspeople created a provisional government and banned political parties so that no candidate for public office would be beholden to outside political forces. They invented an electoral system to eliminate vote-buying and ballot-stuffing. All candidates for public office had to stand in the central square, with their supporters lining up behind them to determine who would win. Gangsters sent agents into the villages to burn cars and homes, and hunt down the guardabosques. In the course of the next three years, 18 of Cherán’s defenders, including Don Santiago’s brother, would be killed, and five more disappeared before the organized crime operations were shut down.

Cherán is a tidy little town that’s closed to outsiders. Heavily armed uniformed guards man checkpoints at every entrance and exit, questioning people whose faces or vehicles they don’t know. Hand-painted graffiti, in neat lettering, tells outsiders what the locals really think: “Leave us alone.”

To save face while recognizing reality, the Mexican government officially accepted Cherán’s new autonomous status. It deputized the checkpoint guards and guardabosques as the de facto authority to protect the forest lands. It issued them uniforms as “community police,” without attempting to take away or even register their newfound automatic weapons.

Federal police in shiny black twin-cab pickup trucks, wearing black tactical gear and armed with M4s and an occasional roll-bar-mounted machine gun, patrol the clean superhighways and the potholed back roads of rural Michoacán. The locals generally welcome the federales, sent in last year by President Enrique Peña Nieto to crush the cartels. The federales don’t interfere with Cherán’s guardabosques, and keep in contact with them by radio.

The checkpoint guards, young men in their late teens or early 20s, wear blue uniforms bearing embroidered seven-point stars and custom-made shoulder patches.

This is truly great investigative reporting, the kind we don’t often see any more.  I applaud the folks in this little corner of the world.  But will it last, and can it expand?

The article concludes with this. “Our whole way of life is in these forests,” said Don Santiago, the soft-spoken tribal elder. Tapping the resin from highland pines is a way of life, and an art, he inherited from ancestors who can be traced back to the Aztec empire. An individual pine tree can be tapped for up to 80 years for resin sold as raw material for industrial and food products.  “The pines have faces,” said Don Santiago, reflecting the mysticism of his people.”

Their way of life is tied up in the forest and protecting it’s health and viability.  But what if instead of cartel violence, they employ another strategy?  What if they get to several of the mothers and tell them, “We’re here to help you.  Here is a million dollars for each of you, take your family across the border, enroll you children in American schools and universities, and live a much better life than you could here?”  Will they break, or are they committed to a world view that can sustain them against the advances of their enemies, come what may?

At WRSA there is a salient question being posed concerning the American constitution and body of constitutional law.  It isn’t worth a duck’s fart, concludes the analysis, because it admits to, among other things, abortion on demand.  True enough, abortion is murder against the innocent, and whether you are a conservative Christian like me, or a committed libertarian (in which case abortion is unjustified aggression against an innocent party), a country that sacrifices its young won’t long last as a viable entity.

I’ll give you the premise of the article, as long as you give me the following stipulations.  The American constitution is the best that man has come up with so far, by a long ways, as long as you consider what John Adams said about it.  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Implemented by gargoyles, demons and bloodthirsty tyrants, the constitution is like the Book of Church Order for Presbyterians.  It becomes merely a system of protection of those in charge, regardless of what those in charge do.  It can be twisted to say anything you want as long as you see the world through the eyes of evil.  And thus we are back to world and life views.

My own views on this are fairly well known, and I have rehearsed them before.  The views of my teacher, John Calvin, are the very basis of the American war of independence.  Douglas Kelly, my former Systematic Theology Professor (along with C. Gregg Singer), observes the following.

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

When the rulers break covenant, as they did in the case above in Mexico, and as the King did against Americans, revolution is not only just, it is covenantally necessary.  Covenant, to be proper, has two parts: promises and curses, the later applied for breaking covenant.  These beliefs for me are, to use the words of philosopher Alvin Pantinga, incorrigible.  There is never a time when I will not believe these propositions.  Similarly, I don’t care one iota about the second amendment.  As I’ve explained before, my rights are issued by divine decree, not a piece of parchment.

I have come by these beliefs the hard way.  And I am concerned that the bases we claim for our liberties is founded in chaos, anarchy and whatever seems to be popular that particular day.  But these things will not sustain you and your family in difficult times.  Anarchy is the mother of tyranny because you aren’t the baddest person around.  There is always somebody badder than you are.  Into the void will always step a ruler more despotic than the last one.  Ideas that float away with the wind will tire and disappoint you.

The most significant revolutions in the history of Western civilization are the reformation and the American revolution, both of which have their basis in the protestant reformation (and Calvinian theology).  The Brothers of the Common Life taught the reformers everything – Luther was their student, and Calvin was deeply influenced by them.  These men taught the reformers logic, letters, languages, mathematics, and everything else they needed to develop a coherent and powerful world view.

The reformation didn’t proceed and finalize without bloodshed, and lots of it.  Swords were necessary, but the most important part was a world view that sustained the generations who fought this conflict on the European continent and on the British Ilse.  Similarly, the men who founded this nation believed things that sustained them and their families in spite of the horrible losses they suffered.

I am an educated man.  I hold an engineering degree – albeit Bachelor’s degree – from Clemson University.  Clemson isn’t among the top tier schools like RPI or Cal Tech (which is unquestionably the toughest engineering and physics school in the nation), but it’s up there with NC State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, University of Texas, and so on.  I know fluid mechanics, strength of materials, statics and dynamics, differential equations, and so on.  And I’ve had all of their stupid liberal arts courses, from their revisionist history classes to the English course where the professor couldn’t go a single class without sexual innuendo or double entendre.  Oh, and don’t leave out that ridiculous sociology course where we studied everything from prostitution to poverty, all along the way rejecting the student’s demands that we solve these “problems” because we were just studying them, only to get to the issue of race in America with the professor starting the class that day with “How are we going to solve this problem?”  When I brought up the logical inconsistency with the class heretofore, I was savaged by the other students for being a prejudiced bigot.  A bigot I’m not, a lover of consistency I am.

If you think this is a discussion on how smart I am, you have it all backwards.  In my opinion I left college a dullard and ignoramus.  My real education began in graduate level seminary under Dr. C Gregg Singer, who assigned reading in Francis Turretin, “Institutes of Elenctic Theology.”  I was left on my own with Turretin to self-instruct, as with all graduate level courses.  It was my first introduction to the so-called scholastic writers.  I was overwhelmed and dumbfounded.

Reading through these volumes required lots of coffee, a hard back chair, and lots of time.  I got such severe headaches trying to study these volumes that it made my stomach upset.  I usually couldn’t get more than one or two sentences without having to stop and rehearse what I had read, how it related to the sentence before it, and ensure that I understood his points.  When I shared my experience with my colleagues, they had the same experiences I did with Turretin.  Mine wasn’t unique.

Horrace Mann has done his job well, yes?  I only home schooled my children their final years in High School (I wasted money on Christian education for much of their previous years), and I wish I had home schooled all four of them all twelve years.  The dumbing of the American child has been virtually complete, and combined with common core, the product of the public school system will be truly atrocious (and culpable to be manipulated).  At another time I will share a horrible school experience with one of my sons, but that is saved for later.

By all means, have your AR-15s.  Get your comms gear and learn how to use it.  I don’t begrudge learning how to conduct small unit combat maneuver warfare, patrolling techniques, perhaps satellite patrolling, make and break contact drills, carbine and handgun target acquisition drills, and so on.  I’m not sure that it will be used, but I am certain that any future conflict will be fought in the shadows (more on that later).

But more than AR-15s with optics, good handguns and lots of ammunition and comms gear, you need a world view.  You need an ideology that will sustain you through thick and thin, through life and until death.  I cannot tell you how to craft yours.  Most readers get annoyed or offended when I try to do that.  I know mine – it is incorrigible.  There are worse things than death.  I will meet God face to face one day, and death doesn’t mean that my body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  I have been predistined to whatever God commands, and my life and death are in his hands.  Thus shall my world view honor Him and remain unchanged by the winds opinion.

What about your world and life view?

Prior: I Do Not Fear Terror Because I Am Redeemed, And I Have Been Predistined To This War

What Length AR-15 Barrel?

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Notes From HPS

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Oh dear.  Mike Vanderboegh is in some health trouble.  I don’t like what I’m hearing.  Keep praying for him.

Actually, I’m interested in what you think the lesson is, David?  I’ve thought about it some, now what are your thoughts?  You go first.

Make sure to check out the comments on David’s most recent article.  They are enlightening.

Distributed lethality.  Because I want you to be aware of current military doctrine.

Megacities and littoral regions.  Because I want you to be aware of current military doctrine.

Ace’s thoughts on Donald Trump.  No one says it quite like Ace.  Read it all.

David Codrea Response To Robert Bateman On The Militia

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

David Codrea:

LTC Robert Bateman presumes to lecture us on the militia and the Constitution, choosing Esquire Magazine as his forum so that, near as I can figure, we can also educate ourselves on the latest fashion tips for men, join in “progressive” attacks on conservatives, and catch up on all-important information about pop star Prince and his surprise concert tour. Bateman’s bottom line: The militia is what the government says it is, and if you join with others to defend against criminal acts of usurpation committed against you by those with government titles, you’re committing treason.

[ … ]

The Second Amendment only protects a well regulated militia, he argues. “As of 1903,” he maintains, “the ‘militia’ has been known as the National Guard.”

Actually, the resulting United States Code also recognized the “unorganized militia” to include “members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia,” but Bateman dismissed that, claiming, “Weapons are there for the ‘well regulated militia.’ Their use, therefore, must be in defense of the nation.”

There are two problems with Bateman’s assertions in addition to the obvious one that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about: First, as the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress documented, “Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.”

There’s more.  Make sure you read David’s analysis.  We’ve run into Bateman before on issues of concealed (or open) carry, the offense he takes at seeing someone who carries, and his idiotic proposals for national gun control.  Finally, we’ve caught him lying about gun control during Operation Iraqi Freedom when my son explained what really happened there (I suppose Bateman didn’t believe anyone who was there would jump into the conversation to call him out).

Bateman has a long history of telling you he is good at everything and that he is a scholar and historian and that he’s special.  But Bateman fails miserably on what constitutes the militia, and David provides him a bit of teaching.  To see just how badly David spanks him, read David’s piece, which is both educated and educational.

He Led An Nondescript Life, But He Was Hated In Washington

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

I haven’t watched much of the republican debates, but I have occasionally passed through while my wife was watching.  Tonight was one such time.  I heard Trump say something like, “You aren’t endorsed by a single Senator …  You should be ashamed of yourself!”

I heard that and thought, “You have got to be kidding?  Did you just say that?  Seriously?  Seriously?”  The one who has claimed that he will bring everyone into the Oval office and cut deals, but who has previously sworn to burn it all down according to his bot followers, has hurled the insult at Cruz that he isn’t loved in Washington.  Reality is more bizarre than fiction.  I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

A couple of days before the primary in South Carolina, I heard the following men speak: Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Mike Lee, and Dave Brat (Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina was there and praised by Ted Cruz, although he didn’t speak), and others (Mark Levin, etc.).  I listened intently to Louie Gohmert describe the events leading up to the death of the “gang of eight bill.”  I am a political wonk, and I keep up with these things.  Even I didn’t know some of what he told us.  I cannot give you all of the details, but I can provide a summary.

Gohmert described the intense strategic meetings to plot the death of the bill.  The meetings were held between Cruz, Lee, Brat, Gohmert, Duncan and others.  When the bill hit the House, it was all but a done deal because the gang had a pretty new face to put with it, i.e., Rubio.  It was very hard to turn it back.  America doesn’t know how close we were to having the gang of eight bill as law.

One of the tactics was a poison pill by Ted Cruz placed into the bill during deliberations between the House and Senate, but it also required much work in the House proper.  And all of this was led by whom, you asked?  Why, it was led by Ted Cruz, with all the meetings in Ted’s office.  If Louie Gohmert was lying, Mike Lee, or Congressman Brat or Duncan could have stopped Gohmert.  None did, because Gohmert was telling the truth.  You don’t have a gang of eight law because Ted Cruz led the effort to kill it.  Why doesn’t America know this?  Well, Ted is trying ever so hard to tell them, but they can’t hear it for the confusion of the mob of monkeys as they screech and bark and howl and sling their feces everywhere.

That’s why Ted Cruz is hated in Washington.  And I’ve thought about my own life this evening in terms of being hated.  In a way, a man’s measure is found in his enemies.  I drifted off this evening to what my grave marker might read.  If it reads something like this: “Herschel was an objectionable and loathsome man but for the sovereign grace of God.  He led a nondescript life.  In fact, he wasn’t worth much even after God saved him … except that he was hated in Washington,”  I would die a happy man.

How do I do that?  How do I make it to 33rd degree blogger-hated-in-Washington?  I so want to be hated in Washington.  Good heavens.  If someone hurled that insult at me, I would wear it as a badge of honor.

Fun With The Candidates, Part I

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Marco Rubio is a robot.  Well, actually I think of him more like a windup doll who in this case got stuck on the same line, over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Trump: “What the hell is a caucus … no one even knows what a caucus is?”  Well, I think I know what a caucus is.  And I think I’m someone.

Trump: “What the hell is he talking about?”  Well, this, Donald, where you said:

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

You likened federal ownership of land to protection of the second amendment, remember Donald?

Who said it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Who tweeted it, Trump or Kanye?  I confess that I didn’t even get close to 100%.

Perhaps Trump could pick Kanye as his running mate.  They go together just fine.

Vicente Fox: “We’re not paying for that f***ing wall!”  Hey, you sound like a carnival barker.  Our carnival barker is louder and more obnoxious than you are.

See how much fun this can be?  As the republican field winnows to a single candidate very soon, this should become easier with a veritable smorgasbord of things to discuss.

On Immigration, Donald Trump Is A Rank Hypocrite

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

NYT:

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Charles C.W. Cooke comments:

Or, put another way, Trump has deliberately chosen to hire foreign workers to fill those jobs that “Americans just won’t do.” 17 out of 300? That’s 5.6 percent. 17 out of 500? That’s 3.4 percent. Bad! So what’s Trump’s excuse? That’s he’s a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I’m afraid, won’t wash. When Disney behaved like this, there was a loud and sustained outcry from . . . well, no less than Donald Trump himself. In an interview with Breitbart, Trump argued that Disney should be forced to rehire any Americans it had overlooked or replaced. Trump also said this: If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them. And he offered this critique of expanding the “H” program: It would allow any company in America to replace any worker with cheaper foreign labor. It legalizes job theft. It gives companies the legal right to pass over Americans, displace Americans, or directly replace Americans for good-paying middle class jobs.

Oh dear.  You mean to tell me that Donald Trump is a charlatan, hypocrite and liar?  Remember boys and girls.  Noise, light and magic.  Noise, lights and magic.


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