The Hunter Biden Scandal

Attacks from the mainstream media and an investigative DOJ probe comprise the latest chatter surrounding Hunter Biden's email scandal, but as former deniers arrive at the consensus that Biden's dealings with China warrant skepticism, Fox Nation digs deeper.

A new live episode from Fox Nation hosted by Fox News commentator and legal analyst Gregg Jarrett succeeds the four-part "Who is Hunter Biden?" series which shaped the backstory and the scandals plaguing President Biden's son.

This time, Jarrett dives into the latest bombshell developments surrounding Hunter Biden and hosts a discussion surrounding the potential ethical violations associated with his dealings with China – violations the mainstream media, for months, labeled as "Russian disinformation."

"Why has The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN now reluctantly, begrudgingly and belatedly – 16, 17 months later – come out and said ‘oops, the laptop’s real, it's authentic, yes, there are incriminating emails contained therein?'" Jarrett asked during the episode's panel segment.

Jarrett theorized two possible reasons mainstream outlets elected to ignore the steaming Hunter Biden scandal until it reached an overboil.  READ MORE...

SWAT Squad

 

The China Russia Pact

MALIBU, Calif. – As the Russia-Ukraine war wages on, we asked Professor Robert Kaufman of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy for his in-depth views. Kaufman specializes in American foreign policy, national security and international relations. He has written several books on these subjects.

What follows is a Q&A that has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. We strongly encourage you to watch the accompanying video so you may hear Kaufman in his own words.

Q: What is the significance of the Feb. 4, 2022, pact that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

A: On Feb. 4, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, announced that China and Russia had signed an extensive security pact – 5,000 words, very detailed – with each side pledging to the other that they would support mutual efforts to supplant the United States as the world's primary power and make the world safe for the survival of Russian and Chinese tyranny.

This is a hugely significant development, and it signals that we are at a major negative inflection point in international relations that is a long time in coming. For years, with honorable exceptions, there's been a wide consensus operating on the delusion that Russia is a partner for peace, and China seeks to become part of our system … This pact should be a warning call that this is not the case and that the free world, and the United States in particular, will have to take seriously the imperative of vigilance across the board, dealing with this threat.

We've already seen manifestations of it already. China is enabling Putin's invasion of Ukraine, blunting the effects of sanctions. And Putin, likewise, has embraced China's implacable determination to subjugate Taiwan. This is in many ways a 21st century version of a dangerous gangster pact known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact, consummated between two rogue regimes in August of 1939.     READ MORE...

Muscle Arm

Flying South

Oldest Sun Observatory

Long before the Incas rose to power in Peru and began to celebrate their sun god, a little known civilization was building the earliest known astronomical observatory in the Americas.


While not quite as old as sites like Stonehenge, these ancient ruins, known as Chankillo, are considered a "masterpiece of human creative genius", holding unique features not seen anywhere else in the world.


Based in the coastal desert of Peru, the archaeological site famously contains a row of 13 stone towers, which together trace the horizon of a hill, north to south, like a toothy bottom grin.

The Thirteen Towers of Chankillo. (David Edgar/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Apart from this remarkable structure, known as the Thirteen Towers, the ruins of the observatory also include a triple-walled hilltop complex called the Fortified Temple and two building complexes called the Observatory and the Administrative Center.


Completed over 2,300 years ago and abandoned in the first century of the common era, the site has remained a mystery to travelers for centuries.


Only when official excavations began at the turn of the 21st century, did archaeologists realize what they were looking at.  READ MORE...

Pig Fan

 

Saving an Old Laptop

It’s not pleasant seeing a once-beloved laptop (or desktop) computer slowly slide into obsolescence as it gets too old and tired to keep up with the demands of modern-day computing, but Google has now provided an option for these ailing machines in the form of Chrome OS Flex.


Chrome OS Flex is the standard Chrome OS that runs on Chromebooks, in a form that you can install on computers that aren’t Chromebooks. The idea is that the lightweight operating system won’t weigh your old device down to the same extent as Windows or macOS. It’s essentially just a web browser, and hey presto, your laptop or desktop has a new lease on life.


We should warn you that this project is in its very, very early stages: Google says it’s in “early access” mode and is “still unstable” at this point. As a result, you should expect some weird behavior and bugs—at the moment, this is really something to attempt on laptops that you’re otherwise going to get rid of.


That said, you can try it. Google has a list of computer models that it plans to eventually certify for Chrome OS Flex. It has also published some minimum requirements for the operating system: An Intel or AMD x86-64-bit compatible device, with at least 4GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space, with the ability to boot from a USB drive.  READ MORE...

Climbing Down

 

Unlocking One's Pleasure Centers

JAMIE WHEAL: How many of us are just suffering micro-PTSD all day, every day, that is just accumulating from the stuck in traffic or the held on customer support, or the family squabbles, or the social media flame wars, social injustice, or relentless news feeds of people suffering around the world. The sheer grind of it, the repetitiveness of it, and the questionable point. If we're only stuck down in the world, then the mundane will crush us. 

We need tools to mend our trauma, tools to reconnect with inspiration, why we're here and what it all means, and tools to better connect with each other. Well, how would we do that? Start with our own bodies and brains. On the one hand, it seems very low-tech, and on the other hand, leads us right to the doorstep of some of the most potent, controversial, taboo-laden, and powerful psycho technologies that humans have ever assembled.

I'm Jamie Wheal, Founder of the Flow Genome Project and author of "Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind".

The collapse in meaning that I think you can at least argue we're in the midst of right now is complex and multivariable. Things are likely to get harder before they get better. Give me some sense that there is something more in this mortal coil beyond life's a bitch and then I die. If you want to do things that everybody has access to that are effective and zero to low-cost, start with our own bodies and brains, because our own bodies and brains shape our ability to access inspiration, healing, and connection, like breathing. 

We are all strongly, strongly, strongly encoded to breathe. In our nervous systems, there is all sorts of reinforcement of respiratory rate, rhythm depth, and it has a profound impact on our consciousness. We can alleviate stress. We can affect depression. We can even remove or lessen PTSD all just by teaching people how to breathe better. That's amazing. So respiration is one example.  READ MORE...

Up Ya Go

 

Freedom Fighter

Psychedelics and Consciousness

SOURCE:  Johns Hopkins Medicine 

Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, an ingredient found in so-called magic mushrooms, have shown promise in treating a range of addictions and mental health disorders. Yet, there’s something mysterious and almost mystical about their effects, and they are commonly believed to provide unique insights into the nature of consciousness.

Now, a new study by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers addresses the question of whether psychedelics might change the attribution of consciousness to a range of living and nonliving things.

The findings, published March 28 in Frontiers in Psychology, reveal that higher ratings of mystical type experiences, which often include a sense that everything is alive, were associated with greater increases in the attribution of consciousness.

“This study demonstrates that when beliefs change following a psychedelic experience, attributions of consciousness to various entities tend to increase,” says Sandeep Nayak, M.D., postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research and one of the researchers involved in the study.

“It’s not clear why, whether that might be an innate drug effect, cultural factors, or whether psychedelics might somehow expose innate cognitive biases that attribute features of the mind to the world.”

For the study, the researchers analyzed data gathered between August 2020 and January 2021 on 1,606 people who had had a belief-changing psychedelic experience. Participants averaged 35 years of age and were predominately white (89%), male (67%) and from the United States (69%).  READ MORE...

Turning Around

 

Native Americans Reacquire Land

The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Friday the return of more than 400 acres of land to an indigenous tribe in Virginia.

About 465 acres at Fones Cliffs on the eastern side of the Rappahannock River was returned to the Rappahannock Tribe, which regards the sacred site as its ancestral homeland, according to a press release from the DOI.

The Rappahannock Tribe will own and maintain the land, but the site, within the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge, will be available to the public. The tribe plans to create trails and a replica 16th-century village at the site to educate visitors.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) also holds a permanent conservation easement on the land, which was donated to them by environmental organization Chesapeake Conservancy.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, said she was “honored to join the Rappahannock Tribe in co-stewardship of this portion of their ancestral homeland.”

“This historic reacquisition underscores how Tribes, private landowners, and other stakeholders all play a central role in this Administration’s work to ensure our conservation efforts are locally led and support communities’ health and well-being,” Haaland said in a statement.

The Biden administration has been working to support indigenous people and tribes through an array of methods, including building out physical infrastructure and financially supporting tribal nations, according to a White House fact sheet released in November.   READ MORE...

Arm Wrestling

 

The Electric Vehicle

A (Costly) Political Scam?

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Jan 15, 2022

The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections to operate electric vehicles (EVs) or the increased rates that they will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required, but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it. Electric vehicles will never become the mainstream of transportation!

In part 1 of our exposé on the problems with electric vehicles (EVs), we showed that they were too expensive, too unreliable, rely on materials mined in China and other unfriendly countries, and require more electricity than the nation can afford. In this second part, we address other factors that will make any sensible reader avoid EVs like the plague.

EV Charging Insanity.
In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?

ICSC-Canada board member New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical:

“If you’ve got cars coming into a petrol station, they would stay for an average of five minutes. If you’ve got cars coming into an electric charging station, they would be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour, but let’s say its 30 minutes. So that’s six times the surface area to park the cars while they’re being charged. So, multiply every petrol station in a city by six. Where are you going to find the place to put them?”

The government of the United Kingdom is already starting to plan for power shortages caused by the charging of thousands of EVs. Starting in June 2022, the government will restrict the time of day you can charge your EV battery. To do this, they will employ smart meters that are programmed to automatically switch off EV charging in peak times to avoid potential blackouts.

In particular, the latest UK chargers will be pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8 am to 11 am (3-hours), and 4 pm to 10 pm (6-hours). Unbelievably, the UK technology decides when and if an EV can be charged, and even allows EV batteries to be drained into the UK grid if required. Imagine charging your car all night only to discover in the morning that your battery is flat since the state took the power back. Better keep your gas-powered car as a reliable and immediately available backup! While EV charging will be an attractive source of revenue generation for the government, American citizens will be up in arms.

The Used Car Market.
The average used EV will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of an American car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery typically costs $10,000 so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

Tuomas Katainen, an enterprising Finish Tesla owner, had an imaginative solution to the battery replacement problem—he blew up his car! New York City-based Insider magazine reported (December 27, 2021):

“The shop told him the faulty battery needed to be replaced, at a cost of about $22,000. In addition to the hefty fee, the work would need to be authorized by Tesla…Rather than shell out half the cost of a new Tesla to fix an old one, Katainen decided to do something different… The demolition experts from the YouTube channel Pommijätkät (Bomb Dudes) strapped 66 pounds of high explosives to the car and surrounded the area with slow-motion cameras…the 14 hotdog-shaped charges erupt into a blinding ball of fire, sending a massive shockwave rippling out from the car…The videos of the explosion have a combined 5 million views.

"We understand that the standard Tesla warranty does not cover “damage resulting from intentional actions,” like blowing the car up for a YouTube video.

EVs Per Block In Your Neighborhood.
A home charging system for a Tesla requires a 75-amp service. The average house is equipped with 100-amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

LONG LIVE THE V-8!
Batteries.
Although the modern lithium-ion battery is four times better than the old lead-acid battery, gasoline holds 80 times the energy density. The great lithium battery in your cell phone weighs less than an ounce while the Tesla battery weighs 1,000 pounds. And what do we get for this huge cost and weight? We get a car that is far less convenient and less useful than cars powered by internal combustion engines. Bryan Leyland explained why:
“When the Model T came out, it was a dramatic improvement on the horse and cart. The electric car is a step backward into the equivalence of an ordinary car with a tiny petrol tank that takes half an hour to fill. It offers nothing in the way of convenience or extra facilities.”

Our Conclusion.
The electric automobile will always be around in a niche market likely never exceeding 10% of the cars on the road. All automobile manufacturers are investing in their output and all will be disappointed in their sales. Perhaps they know this and will manufacture just what they know they can sell. This is certainly not what President Biden or California Governor Newsom are planning. However, for as long as the present government is in power, they will be pushing the electric car as another means to run our lives. We have a chance to tell them exactly what we think of their expensive and dangerous plans when we go to the polls in November of 2022.

Drs. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris
Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years of experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.

Smell the Coffee

Put It Off Until Tomorrow

It is raining in East TN this afternoon...  as it is all across the south...  no doubt this is the result of Climate Change brought about by the previous President Donald Trump, COVID-19, or Vladimir Putin after he invaded Ukraine...  although, I am still a little uncertain as to which event came first...  

We live in a state of confusion brought about by party affiliations and conflicts of interests that do not always revolve around Hunter Biden's laptop or Hilliary Clinton's Russian dossier...  both of which have influenced the way we hide stuff in plain sight when we have the mainstream media in our back pockets.

Life is confusion

Life is doubt

But life is life and we don't always have the luxury of blaming someone else.

Anxiously we await tomorrow since we have no desire to do today what we should be doing...  especially since it is raining and the stimulus checks help us postpone whatever we thought was important until tomorrow when it will be less important but more critical to do since we put it off...  our logic is impeccable...  in its stupid simplicities.

I feel sorry for the people in Ukraine because Putin did not put off until tomorrow what he could have done today...  and now we see innocent civilians being killed, tortured, and raped because they refuse to give in to a bully...

But, it is different here in the good ole US of A because we have no bullies....  just wealthy people who have self-ordained themselves to be our CREATORS-in-chiefs and consequently can screw with our lives on a regular basis and keep a majority of us suppressed and beholding to their financial desires.

WHile these wealthy people live the good life...  they will eventually die just like all the rest of us...  and that is their one saving grace...

Lawsuit