Monthly Archives: August 2023

Achieving Energy Security

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm thinks it would be good for our energy security were we to eliminate the 60% of our oil-centered energy that we import and switching over to 100% clean electricity by 2035.

It’s true that wiping out that 60% of our oil imports would help our energy security, but only if it’s done right. We shouldn’t be importing any energy, much less from enemy nations or from nations vulnerable to enemy nations. The right way to eliminate those imports is to release our own oil—and natural gas and coal, come to that—producers to produce from our own, domestic, hydrocarbon-based sources. It’s highly important, too, to get the regulators out of the way of our producers’ ability to produce nuclear power. Sadly, though, Granholm—Energy Secretary Granholm, mind you—seems unable even to say the words “nuclear power,” or at least she never does say them.

The problem with Granholm’s wish to supplant those imports with 100% clean electricity—as even Granholm knows full well—is that the raw materials needed for “renewable,” or “green,” or “clean” energy production come from Peoples Republic of China mines, or PRC-controlled mines in Africa and Siberia (the latter are not yet developed, but they will be). Beyond that, far too many components for “renewable” energy production come from PRC-domiciled factories. Granholm’s move in no way reduces our dependence on enemy nations for our energy.

It is, however, a distinct elimination of our ability to have energy security.

Whither Germany?

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Or maybe it’s quo vadis, Germania? It seems that a number of German daycare centers have set up “sexual exploration rooms,” for the children entrusted to their “care.” The German newspaper Die Welt has the…sad…report. It’s behind a paywall, so I’m only quoting the headline and lede paragraph. Otherwise, I’m relying on Not the Bee‘s reporting. The lede image is quite graphic (not copied here; it’s NSFW—German nudity taboos are looser than ours).

Wo Männer Babys gebären und „Mann und Frau“ tabu sind
Stand: 24.08.2023 | Lesedauer: 6 Minuten
Von Till-Reimer Stoldt
Auf dem Foto sieht man Handpuppen mit extrem ungewöhnlich kombinierten Geschlechtsmerkmalen – die eine mit Bart und Busen, die andere mit Vulva ohne Busen. Sie stammen aus Deutschlands einzigem Studiengang zu „Angewandter Sexualwissenschaft“ in Merseburg
Ob Masturbationsräume in Kitas oder Werbung für Geschlechtsumwandlung in Schulen – in den Bundesländern hat sich eine kleine genderpolitische Revolution ereignet. Ganz vorn dabei: Nordrhein-Westfalen. Nur eine Partei protestiert gegen gebärende Männer. Und Eltern haben Mitspracherechte.

That translates to

Where men give birth to babies and “man and woman” are taboo
Status: 08/24/2023 | Reading time: 6 minutes
By Till Reimer Stoldt
In the photo [the lede image mentioned above] you can see hand puppets with an extremely unusual combination of sex characteristics—one with a beard and breasts, the other with a vulva without breasts. They come from Germany’s only course in “Applied Sexology” in Merseburg.
Whether it’s masturbation rooms in day-care centers or advertising for gender reassignment in schools—a small gender-political revolution has taken place in the federal states. At the forefront: North Rhine-Westphalia. Only one party protests against men giving birth. And parents have a say.

NtB cites Fox News for this part:

Die Welt reported that one daycare in Kerpen [in North Rhine-Westphalia, a few miles west of Köln] offers children the “freedom to try out childish sexuality.” The daycare also said that sexual self-pleasure on its property is of “great importance,” insisting that “masturbation is normal.”

NtB reports that the day care centers have some rules, though:

  1. Each child decides for themselves whether and with whom they want to play physical and sexual games.
  2. All children, especially preschoolers, are aware of the places in the facility where nudity and body exploration can take place.
  3. Girls and boys pet and examine each other only as much as is comfortable for themselves and other children.
  4. No child hurts another.
  5. No child sticks anything into another child’s body openings (bottom, vulva, mouth, nose, ear) or licks another child’s body.
  6. The age gap of the children involved is at most 2 years.
  7. Older children, young people, and adults are not allowed to take part in the doctor games.
  8. You can say “stop” at any time and will always be respected.
  9. Asking for help is not snitching.
  10. If there are not enough educational staff to ensure compliance with the rules, there may be restrictions on play, g., children are not allowed to go naked.

Well, that’s all right, then.

No, it isn’t.

NtB also reports that

a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education in the Lower Saxony state capital said, “The educational concept in this form endangers the well-being of the child.”
Later, the head of the nursery group’s management company stated that their head office had not approved the letter [announcing the special rooms and their purpose] sent to parents, and the kindergarten has since canceled the project.

It’s still not all right. This sort of thing never should have gotten this far, and to date, there’s no indication that the fools who dreamed up this sewage and started to implement it have been fired and had whatever licenses they might have held canceled with prejudice.

This is the degradation of Germany.

SEIA’s Response to Bidenomic’s Tariffs

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly noted the internal—and intrinsic—contradictions in the Biden administration’s “renewable” energy demands and its trade policy. The administration is pushing ever harder to shift our economy, for good or ill (mostly ill IMNHO), to energy sourced to non-carbon-based, but renewable only—nuclear need not apply—producers. Then comes Gina Raimondo, Commerce Secretary, and her decision, backed by that same Joe Biden, to apply tariffs as high as 254% to solar power-related products imported from five People’s Republic of China enterprises, never minding that these companies are American domestic solar power producers’ primary sources of the needed articles.

But the Solar Energy Industries Association’s whine about the administration’s tariff policy leaped out at me.

It will take at least three to five years to ramp up domestic solar manufacturing capacity and the global supply chain will be vital in the short-term.

But would SEIA’s members actually ramp up domestic production without the tariffs, or would they simply continue buying from an enemy nation? SEIA is being disingenuous.

I’m not convinced that Commerce’s tariffs are the way to go—in general, they’re being applied as protectionist barriers rather than as foreign policy tools, and Commerce’s tariffs here are no exception—but SEIA’s plaints seem nothing more than excuse-making. After all, those members already have had those three to five years, and more, during which to ramp up domestic solar manufacturing capacity, and they’ve chosen not to do so.

My Mistake, You Pay for It

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That’s New York’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor Kathy Hochul’s solution to the illegal alien influx her State faces.

I’m fully aware that New Yorkers are concerned that over the past year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our state, requiring a historic humanitarian response. Moments ago, I issued a letter to the Biden administration formally requesting that it take executive action to address New York’s migrant crisis.

The prior mayor of New York City, the core of the State’s illegal alien “crisis,” the Progressive-Democrat Bill de Blasio, declared the city to be a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Current Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, has openly, loudly, continued the city’s status, inviting the influx of illegal aliens to continue and expand. It’s true enough that Adams is lately whining that he and his city can’t take it anymore, but he’s holding fast to the sanctuary city status.

The larger problem is that New York City and New York State brought this situation on themselves with their carefully, deliberately, done open invitation to all those illegal aliens, whom the Leftist politicians ruling the city and State euphemistically—dishonestly, I say—call “migrants.”

And now, with awesome gall, they demand that the rest of us ordinary Americans pay the costs of their foolish mistake. No. The rulers of New York City and of New York State created the mess they’re in; no one should pay the costs of that mess but the residents of the city and the citizens of the State who elected those rulers. There must be no consideration of any other funding source unless and until those rulers openly repudiate that sanctuary status and just as openly act on the repudiation.

AI to Teach Cops to be Politically Correct?

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The Los Angeles Police Department—yes, that one, of “violent extremist views” infamy regarding its cops displaying the Thin Blue Line flag anywhere in public—now is going to use Artificial Intelligence to teach cops how to be politically correct and suitably social justice-y when they make traffic stops and potentially in other, even more tension-filled, encounters.

The headline says it all:

AI to binge LAPD bodycam footage to weed out rude tone, aggressive language

Because rudeness is so terrible, and never mind the occasional—the often—need for cops to be aggressive during an encounter with an individual of the public, even on a traffic stop.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on Tuesday announced the research initiative during the Board of Police Commissioners meeting. LAPD Cmdr Marla Ciuffetelli said at the meeting the study will be used to help train future officers on how to best interact with the public while also promoting accountability, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Researchers at the University of Southern California will review [body camera] footage from about 1,000 traffic stops over the next three years and establish parameters on interactions deemed appropriate by department policies and public feedback, and inappropriate interactions.
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The researchers will take into account the location of the traffic stop, the driver’s race, and the officer’s rank and age when analyzing their findings.

What could go wrong?

One major problem is that every stop is a unique encounter and those factors have greater or lesser influence depending on the individual cop and the individual person being stopped—and the degree of influence will vary from time to time for both the cop and the person being stopped.

What’s the difference between rude talk and banter? How do they differ from time to time? Even the most PC remark by the cop can be taken amiss by the stoppee, ranging from being viewed as condescending to not being PC enough to the stoppee simply feeling like taking offense because he woke up in an owly mood. Or because cop. Never mind that every traffic stop, and many other types of encounters, start out with the cop needing to be aggressive. “Kindly to stop doing that, Sir/Madam/Zir, and let’s chat for a bit” just isn’t going to cut it.

The “training” the LAPD line officers will be forced to undergo will, also, simply add to the tension any LA cop will feel when beginning an encounter—not over the encounter itself or the person’s reaction to the stop and to the cop, but over how LAPD…managers…will perceive the cop’s behavior when they review the encounter.

I have a problem with the proposed methodology, too.

LAPD has 150 cops and civilians for traffic enforcement. Those thousand traffic stops over three years works out to a bit over 2 stops per traffic enforcer per year. That’s not a big sample, even for something as supposedly magic as AI.

Maybe the city should leave off this kind of claptrap and use the money instead for hiring more cops, putting more cops on the street, and training cops how to be cops rather than everybody’s best friend out for a nice chat.