What Has Elizabeth Warren Been Smoking In Her Peace Pipe?

Governor Jay Inslee’s (D-WA) presidential campaign and his global warming climate change fighting proposals.  Governor Inslee tried to impose a state ‘carbon tax’ to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Despite being a very liberal state, voters there rejected Initiative 1631 by a landslide margin, 1,340,725 (43.44%) for versus 1,745,703 (56.56%) against.

Mr Inslee attempted to base his presidential campaign on fighting, but received so little support that he dropped out.

But, not to worry: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), looking for a wedge issue to move up in the polls, decided to pick up the issue which got Mr Inslee nowhere:

Warren adopts Inslee’s climate plan as part of her 2020 platform

By Brandon Conradus and Rachel Frazin | September 3, 2019 07:16 PM EDT

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday announced she’s backing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee‘s (D) climate plan as part of her platform in the 2020 presidential race, calling for the U.S. to achieve 100 percent clean energy within the next 10 years.

“Today, I’m embracing that goal by committing to adopt and build on Governor Inslee’s ten-year action plan to achieve 100% clean energy for America by decarbonizing our electricity, our vehicles, and our buildings,” Warren said in a Medium post Tuesday night. “And I’m challenging every other candidate for President to do the same.”

Warren had already announced plans on green manufacturing and public lands. She said in her Tuesday post that she was committing an additional $1 trillion over 10 years “to match Governor Inslee’s commitment, and to subsidize the economic transition to clean and renewable electricity, zero emission vehicles, and green products for commercial and residential buildings.”

The candidate aims to achieve clean electricity, clean vehicles and clean buildings.

Specifically, she said she hopes to achieve “100% zero-carbon pollution for all new commercial and residential buildings” by 2028, “100% zero emissions for all new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and all buses” by 2030, and “100% renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation” by 2035.

She’s got one heck of a task ahead of her!

What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?

In 2018, about 4,178 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or 4.18 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States. About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases). About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 17% was from renewable energy sources. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that an additional 30 billion kWh of electricity generation was from small-scale solar photovoltaic systems in 2018.

Breaking that down a bit, natural gas had the largest share, at 35.1%, while 27.4% was generated by burning coal. That, alone, is 62.5% of total electricity generation in this country, with petroleum and other gases adding another 0.9%. Nuclear power generation, which is another bugaboo of the left, added 19.3%. Total renewable energy production was 17.1%, roughly 1/6 of the total.  But Senator Warren is going to replace all of that fossil fueled power generation in fifteen years? And it’s more than just the fossil fuel plants:

The last two nuclear power plants to be built in the US were the Watts Bar plant, which began construction in 1973, was completed in 1990, and didn’t begin commercial operation until 1996, and the River Bend plant, which was built in 1977 and went online in 1986.

President Obama announced, in 2010, loan guarantees to start building nuclear power plants again, but even with that, only two have begun, and construction on those did not start until 2013. Other than those two new plants, every nuclear power plant — though not every individual reactor — has been in service for more than twenty years, with most decades older. Even if Mrs Warren plans on including nuclear power in her plan, she’s going to be faced with a considerable number of nuclear plant retirements during her time as President . . . assuming that she has any time at all in that office.

In 2018, there were 276.1 million vehicles registered in the United States, but only one million of them are plug-in electric vehicles. The Edison Electric Institute projects that there will be 18 million plug-in electric vehicles in the US by 2030, but that would still be just six to seven percent of the total.

With roughly 17 million new vehicles sales per year of automobiles and light trucks, just how would “President” Warren replace the entire American automobile, SUV and light truck fleet by 2030? How is she going to force everybody in the country to trade in their gasoline powered vehicles — which would be worthless, since they couldn’t be resold — to buy a new plug-in vehicle? Perhaps Mrs Warren — net worth: $8.75 million — can afford to buy a Tesla (Model 3 = $35,000 starting MSRP; Model S = $75,000; Model X = $81,000), but most Americans cannot. Millions and millions of working-class Americans are stuck in the used car market, unable to afford any new vehicle. Is Mrs Warren going to buy them all new electric vehicles?

Replacing ‘just’ 100 million personal vehicles with the cheapest model Tesla would cost $3.5 trillion — not billion, trillion — or more than Mrs Warren estimates her global warming climate change program to cost.

Mrs Warren’s plan makes about as much sense as the other Democrats’ plans .  .  . which is to say, none at all.  She is talking about replacing almost our entire energy and transportation systems in just fifteen years.  Whatever the Democrats are smoking, it can’t be legal. https://www.redstate.com/diary/kentucky_dana/2019/09/04/elizabeth-warren-smoking-peace-pipe/
__________________________________

Amrie

      

“Red Flag” Laws Too Dangerous to Support.

Hard cases make bad law, as they say, and red flag laws are bad. 

“Red Flag” laws, which have been a hot topic of discussion since last weekend, are designed to take guns away from mentally unstable people before they can harm themselves or anyone else. 

This sounds good in theory, but in practice, such laws are a danger to mentally healthy people in our day and a threat to the Constitution to boot. 

The main question is this: who gets to decide who is too mentally unstable to own a firearm? And how is that decision made? Most newly adopted laws (six such laws have been signed this year) and newly proposed laws (two dozen have been introduced in various states) require some kind of certification from a mental health professional that a judge can then use to confiscate someone’s firearm(s). 

To put it bluntly, this puts your right to own a firearm into the hands of the American Psychological Association or the American Psychiatric Association, who will set the standards for the mental health community. No thanks. 

These groups, for instance, once correctly viewed homosexuality as prima facie evidence of a profound mental disorder. But now they think that those who still believe that are the mentally disordered ones. 

There are many on the left, including many in the helping professions, who think of conservative Christians as mentally disordered and incurable bigots, racists, homophobes, and xenophobes, and fantasists who believe in an invisible but powerful friend in the sky whom no one has ever seen. If these mental health professionals acquire the authority to legally recommend the confiscation of firearms, every liberty we value will be placed at risk. 

As NRA spokesman Catherine Mortensen said, any risk protection orders must include, at a minimum, “strong due process protections.” After all, we are talking here about an explicit constitutional right, the right to own and carry firearms, enshrined in the Constitution as one of the inalienable rights bestowed on us by the Creator. 

The Constitution is clear that an individual can be required by the state to forfeit a constitutional right, but only after he has received “due process” first. This means that he must be indicted for a crime established by lawmakers, have the right to face his accusers in open court, be put on trial before a jury of his peers, and have the assistance of counsel. If a jury finds him guilty, then and only then can he be deprived of his right to self-defense. 

If lawmakers are serious about these protection orders, then some form of treatment must be required if the restriction is to do any good. Who will administer the treatment and who will be required to pay for it? Do we have any evidence that conventional professional counseling even works in situations like these? Otherwise, it’s all just feel-good legislation that accomplishes nothing. 

Will such legally prescribed treatments include confinement in a facility? That’s important because it involves the revocation of another inalienable right, the right to liberty. Will such extreme risk orders include meaningful punishments for those who inevitably will make false claims in circumstances of high interpersonal conflict? What exactly will those penalties be? 

Finally, if a judge manages to take a firearm away from someone he considers dangerous, what will prevent the accused from simply finding another weapon? According to researcher Clayton Cramer, mass murders have been carried out with axes and hatchets and knives, with fire, poison gas, explosives, and vehicles. 

Another danger is that, if mental stability becomes the issue, anyone who is on any kind of prescription psychotropic medication from antidepressants on up will be suspect. 

In USA Today’s list of mass murders for the years 2008 to 2017, almost 25% were carried out without guns. We don’t hear much about them because they don’t fit the left’s narrative that it is guns and not people which are inherently evil. 

On top of all this, only about 25% of all mass shooters had been clinically declared mentally ill before the carnage occurred. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control organization, says only about half the gunmen in mass shootings even exhibit warning signs before the killings. How does that help us with the other half? 

Besides which, in America, we do not punish people for what they might do. 

The only solution is the one that has been there since 1789: the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right of all Americans to defend themselves with a weapon at home and in public. Of all mass shootings in the last 70 years, 98% have taken place in gun-free zones which turn into human shooting galleries when nobody in the place can shoot back. It turns out the only ones who were gun-free were the ones who needed a gun to protect themselves. Red flag laws aren’t going to do anything about that.https://www.afa.net/the-stand/culture/2019/08/red-flag-laws-too-dangerous-to-support/

Former Marine and a Trump supporter, had firearms seized under Oregon's 'red flag' law over anti-Antifa comments

Shane Kohfield, a Trump supporting former Marine, had his firearms confiscated by law enforcement last month under Oregon's new "red flag" law.The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task took "extraordinary steps" against Kohfield last month after he threatened to "slaughter" Antifa in self-defense during a demonstration outside Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler's house, the Oregonian reported.

"If Antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I'm going to kill them next," Kohfield reportedly said. "I'd slaughter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out Antifa."

FBI agents reportedly responded within days, forcing Kohfield to temporarily surrender his firearms — which included an AR-15, handgun, rifle, and shotgun — to authorities. He was also committed to a veteran's hospital for psychiatric observation.

Kohfield was never charged with a crime.

Oregon's red flag law allows a judge to issue an "extreme risk protection order" against individuals who law enforcement or family members believe is potentially violent to themselves or others. The "protective order" lasts one year, but can be renewed indefinitely.  Phil Lemman, Oregon's acting deputy state court administrator, told the Oregonian that judges have approved 98 "protective orders" since the law took effect last year.

What did Kohfield say?

The ex-Marine, who served two tours of duty in Iraq, told the Oregonian he understood why law enforcement targeted him.

"I looked unhinged. I looked dangerous and have the training to be dangerous," he said.

"I figured that the key to de-escalating the situation was to not be the most violent person in the room," he explained. "It was to be the scariest person in the room."

As far as protests go, Kohfield said his days of demonstrations are over.https://www.theblaze.com/news/former-marine-had-firearms-seized-under-oregons-red-flag-law-over-anti-antifa-comments

Bernie Sanders Pledges to Release Any Information About Aliens If He's Elected in 2020: Hey Bernie If Your Looking For Aliens Call Jack O'Neill , I Think He All Ready Found Them

Spanning ten years and several films, Stargate SG-1 developed an extensive and detailed backdrop of diverse characters. Many of the characters are members of alien species discovered while exploring the galaxy through the Stargate, although there are an equal number of characters from offworld human civilizations. While Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe are separate shows, they take part in the same fictional universe, so no character is internally show-specifi

Will space aliens become an election issue in 2020?

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says he's prepared to disclose any government information about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — but only if he wins, and mainly because his wife, Jane, asked him to.

"Well I tell you, my wife would demand I let you know," Sanders told podcast host Joe Rogan on Tuesday (Aug. 8), according to Fox News, even promising he would announce the findings on the podcast. (You can see the full podcast here.)

Rogan asked if Jane was a "UFO nut", which Sanders denied. Jane, however, has been pressing the candidate about what information he might have right now, as a senator. "She goes, Bernie, 'What is going on [that] you know? Do you have any access?'" Sanders said. 

Related: UFO Watch: 8 Times the Government Looked for Flying Saucers

It's unclear, however, if the Republicans will push this issue into election headlines. In June, U.S. President Donald Trump — who will run again for the Republican party in 2020 — told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that he also received a briefing about recent sightings by military pilots. "I did have one very brief meeting on it," he said. "But people are saying they're seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly."

Although this debate sounds like a rehash of conversations surrounding the 1950s- and 1960s-era Project Blue Book, a famous set of Air Force studies concerning UFOs that shut down in 1970 amid a lack of evidence, it does have more recent origins.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that pilots with the U.S. Navy saw swiftly flying UFOs several times off the East Coast in 2014 and 2015. But the reports of these vehicles don't necessarily point to something extraterrestrial, experts caution. 

For example: the sightings happened shortly after a radar system was upgraded in the jets. "As anybody who uses Microsoft products knows, whenever you upgrade any technical product, there are always problems," Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, told Space.com in May.

Click here for more Space.com videos...

CLOSE

Volume 0%

This video will resume in 14 seconds

But there's been so much attention on the issue that in June, the Defense Department briefed Mark Warner (D-Va), the Senate's intelligence committee vice chairman, about these encounters — along with two senators, Politico reported. But it appears the motivation was focused more on safety than finding visitors.

"If naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that's a safety concern Senator Warner believes we need to get to the bottom of," Warner spokesperson Rachel Cohen said in a statement to Politico at the time.

Click here for more Space.com videos...

Famous People Who Believe in Aliens

Volume 0%

While we wait on party positions on space aliens for 2020, remember that this isn't the first time the issue popped up in talks with a Democratic presidential candidate. In 2016, Hilary Clinton promised New Hampshire's Conway Daily Sun News that she would "get to the bottom" of the UFO phenomenon. She added that Earth may have been visited already by aliens, but "we don't know for sure." 

However, it is unclear how seriously Clinton was speaking to the newspaper, which is located in a key state for the election primaries.https://www.space.com/bernie-sanders-would-reveal-ufo-information-2020-election.html