Michael Moore explains why Trump will win (not really)

Michael Moore explains why Trump voters are angry and why he will win.  Later he asks the audience to vote for Hillary instead.

Jim Gaffigan: Disagree with Someone? Calling Them a Moron Won't Help

"Talk to people who are different from you. Widen your friendship circle, watch a wide range of news media; vary the sources through which you interpret the world."

One side calls the other ‘crooked elitists’, and the other fires back with ‘uneducated racists’, only this exchange rarely happens in the same room. Democrats and Republicans vent their frustrations in separate homes, separates states, and symbolically in separate worlds. Comedian (and all-round great guy) Jim Gaffigan takes issue with this. He lives in New York City, where the berating and shaming falls most heavily on Trump supporters, but he grew up in a small town in Indiana, a red state, so he has a valuable dual perspective.

He laments the absence of dialogue between Trump and Clinton supporters and – from his viewpoint within a blue state – there’s a blanket dismissiveness of the ideas from the so-called fly-over states. Many democrats, when they hear ‘Trump’ or ‘red state’ immediately think ‘moron’, and shut down any potential dialogue.

Dismissing people, or insulting their beliefs, isn’t how you convince someone that your argument is the valid one, says Gaffigan. Science journalist Michael Shermer seconds this motion, and has spoken to Big Think about how to talk to people whose beliefs oppose yours. Specifically when your position is based in science, reason, and critical thinking, and the other person’s is based in emotion.

And it’s no secret that I’m no Trump lackey. (see Donald Trump Condemns North Carolina: ‘Let transgenders use whatever bathroom they want…’ and NRA-Endorsed Donald Trump Now Wants to Ban Americans from Buying Guns…). If you need more proof of that, take a look at my mentions. But I don’t certainly hate him by any means and I think he’s a better choice than Hillary Clinton. Most importantly, I don’t begrudge or demean his supporters simply for holding an opinion. I know many very, very smart people who are the biggest Trump fanboys around. They can often be seen on my show.

There’s a reason why his supporters are as passionate and angry as they are. Jim Gaffigan understands that.

Let’s Take a Cue from Brexit and Leave the U.N.

Let’s Take a Cue from Brexit and Leave the U.N.

Instead of stamping out tyrants, the U.N. validates them.

By Josh Gelernter — July 2, 2016

The U.K. has shown its contempt for anti-democratic international unions by leaving the EU. Let’s do the same and leave the U.N.

The U.N. is generally thought of as having evolved from the silly and impotent League of Nations, whose primary achievement was permitting — through naïveté, cowardice, and inaction — the Japanese invasion of China and the start of the Pacific half of the Second World War. Actually, the U.N.’s origins were nobler: It supplanted the League, but it began as an organization of the Allied powers against the Tripartite German–Italian–Japanese Axis.
The U.N.’s first communiqué was the 1942 “Declaration of United Nations,” wherein the Allied governments pledged that they,

Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,
DECLARE:
(1) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
(2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.

This, in essence, is the founding document of the U.N. But its point was completely misunderstood by the writers of the U.N.’s charter: The United Nations Charter declares its goal as the preservation of peace. The Declaration of United Nations declared its goal as the preservation of freedom. This divergence is the essence of the failure of the U.N., and the source of its corruption.
A civilized world would say, To hell with world peace — give us world freedom. North Korea is at peace. Laos is at peace. Burma is at peace. Turkmenistan is at peace. But anyone in his right mind would choose rather to go back in time and live in London during the blitz than live in Turkmenistan, Burma, Laos, or the DPRK. Or any other of the grossly unfree countries that populate the U.N.
American slaves were at peace in the South, but I suspect they preferred the state of affairs during the Civil War.
Of course, the U.N. claims protecting human rights as a parallel goal to pursuing world peace. That’s the job the U.N. Human Rights Council is charged with. Cuba is a current member of the U.N. Human Rights Council. So is Russia. So are China, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. So are Qatar, Indonesia, and the Republic of the Congo. And Venezuela.
The U.N. will be corrupt so long as it pretends that governments that do not derive their power from consent of their governed are legitimate, and on that basis gives them a vote in its deliberations. The goal of the U.N. should be stamping out tyrants. What it does is validate them.
That’s why the only country the U.N. Human Rights commissioners are ever concerned with is Israel — because the vote of one Jewish democracy can be cancelled out 21 times by the votes of 21 Arab dictatorships.
Ukraine’s rights as a sovereign nation, as guaranteed by the U.N. Charter, are currently being violated by Russia. What can the U.N. do, when Russia is one of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members?
Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines — and every other country that enjoys the freedom of international waters — are currently having their rights, as guaranteed by the U.N.’s Convention on the Law of the Sea, violated by China. What can the U.N. do, when China is one of the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members?
There is no fixing the U.N. It is constitutionally incapable of making anything better; it puts the bad guys in charge of making the world less bad. It is a farcical monument to conflict of interest.
The U.S. pays the U.N. $8 billion every year, and covers roughly one-quarter of both the U.N.’s regular budget and its peacekeeping budget. Let’s pull out of the U.N., let it crumble, and put our $8 billion toward a new organization: a United Free Nations, whose goal will be to bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
(And then we’ll actually have world peace: It’s a well-established fact that democracies never go to war with one another.)
Write your congressman.
— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard. He is a founder of the tech startup Dittach.

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Local heros bring petition and letters to RWQCB

Bill McNicholas and Ray Day bring petition and letters to the Regional Water Quality Control Board in Oakland 2/22/2016

We gathered over 100 signatures on Saturday at the Marinwood Farmers market on 2/20/2016

Marinwood, CA:  Two members of the Clean Up Marinwood Plaza Now!  citizen oversight committee, Bill McNicholas and Ray Day of Marinwood,  bring a thick file of letters, petitions and scientific data to challenge the Remediation Action Plan for Marinwood Plaza.  The plan submitted by Geologica on December 29, 2015  fails to fully identify the extent of the toxic plume, lacks scientific rigor, has testing inadequacies and relies on a scientifically inappropriate means to clean up the site called Monitored Natural Attenuation.  Over 100 people signed the petition over the weekend to ask the Regional Water Quality Control Board to immediately remove the toxic hotspots on the site while a new plan is created and further testing and remediation of the plume continues.  All active remediation was halted in 2011 when it was thought that a new buyer would assumption the liability for the cleanup.  The property remains in limbo due to the costly and unknown nature of the cleanup.  Once the site is cleaned up development can commence.

Marinwood Plaza is the only commercial viable location for a grocery store and other retail due to its convenient access to Highway 101.  It is our town center.    This site also has other toxic issues with MTBE and Benzene and is home to a high powered microwave antenna farm making the site unsuited to residential structures.   The community welcomes affordable housing in the style of Rotary Village in Lucas Valley and encourages developers to submit projects that are sensitive to land use and healthy for families.