Understand, these public servants are the same people who themselves haven't been able to provide shelter for their citizens

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Amish Volunteers Built 100+ 'Tiny Homes' for Hurricane Victims but Guess What Happened Next...

After Hurricane Helene which left untold thousands of western North Carolina (WNC) residents homeless, volunteer Amish carpenters showed up to build temporary shelters, but the heartwarming story has a bitter ending.

There are a couple of stories here that the mainstream media hasn't reported on much. The first is that FEMA, for whatever reason, has not been up to the task after Helen destroyed or damaged approximately 100,000 homes in WNC, impacting more than 200,000 people. People are living in trailers or even tents all these weeks later — and as temperatures drop. 

WNC resident (and X user) Margo reported last month that her area had "56 passenger bus load groups of skilled Amish carpenters coming down from Lancaster PA weekly to help build tiny homes for Cabins for Christ." Margo was doing her bit, looking for help finding room to lodge all of the volunteers. "We are bringing our own supplies and would be 100% self-sufficient," she posted, "Just need a place under [a] roof to sleep and house our volunteers from Monday night through Friday night every week."

And Another Thing: According to another X user, Scott Presler helped make sure all those volunteers voted early in Pennsylvania before they trekked down to North Carolina. Is this a remarkable time for conservatives or what?

That's the kind of spirit that helps make America great. Then there's all the hard work those Amish carpenters accomplished after they arrived.

Teamed up with Cabins 4 Christ, the Amish volunteers have been working five-day shifts before swapping out for the next team of volunteers. Nobody seems to know how many tiny homes have been built. But I used my paid research assistant, ChatGPT, to do some investigating for me. For whatever it's worth, ChatGPT claims that "In disaster relief efforts, such as the recent North Carolina project, Amish carpenters often build small cabins in as little as 5 days."

If a small team can build a home each week, and there are hundreds of volunteers working for almost four weeks, they must have built more than a hundred quality cottages by now. All on their own dime. If you know anything about Amish carpentry, you might safely assume those little cottages are well-built.

So of course …

Old Greenwich sale price reported

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24 Meadowbank Road was listed for $2.3 million October 15th, went to highest and best almost immediately, and closed this past Friday for $2.615. Meadowbank floods on a somewhat regular basis, and this particular house’s elevation certificate doesn’t give much hope that it won’t get wet feet, but Meadowbank has always attracted buyers (with Zodiacs?) and, obviously, continues to. And why not? It’s a nice street, in a friendly neighborhood. Its low-lying topography wouldn’t scare me off, either.

Just guessing here, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the winning bid came from a builder.

From the people responsible for conducting the country's foreign affairs and dealing with our allies and enemies alike

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Just sayin’ ….

Blinken questioned over reported in-house therapy sessions hosted by State Department after Trump win

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., took aim at Secretary of State Antony Blinken after it was reported that the State Department held therapy sessions for employees who were upset by President-elect Trump’s election victory.

"I am concerned that the Department is catering to federal employees who are personally devastated by the normal functioning of American democracy through the provision of government-funded mental health counseling because Kamala Harris was not elected President of the United States," Issa said in a letter to Blinken last week.

The letter comes after a Free Beacon report earlier this month that detailed two alleged therapy sessions that were held at the State Department after Trump’s victory, with sources telling the outlet that one such instance amounted to an information "cry session."

Here’s the real issue, as I see it:

Issa also raised fears that the sessions could also call into question the willingness of some of the State Department's employees to carry out Trump’s new vision for the agency.

Trump can’t fire them all, unfortunately, so there will be thousands of buried deep staters working covertly and, probably, openly to defeat his policies. Of course, that won’t be any different from any of the other agencies’ workforces, who have been opposing their bosses for literally decades.

‘We are more complicit:’ Biden’s Israel policies spur feds to protest at the White House

A group of federal employees say their knowledge and access force them to speak out against the administration's position in the Israel-Gaza war.

May 15, 2024

Agroup of federal employees congregated outside the White House on Wednesday to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel, saying they had a unique perspective and responsibility to push the president to change course. 

Organized by Feds United for Peace, which has led previous protests due to what it views as the U.S. government’s complicity in tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, the protest drew largely from employees working in foreign affairs and international assistance. A few dozen workers participated in the event, though they said they were representing a far larger group who could not, or were afraid to, join themselves. 

One federal employee who works on humanitarian assistance said he was motivated to join the protest because he felt his opinions were not being heard within his agency. 

“Our administration and the political appointees that are running our agencies are essentially ignoring working-level staff, who are technical experts when it comes to issues like famine, humanitarian assistance, conflict remediation,” the employee said. “And there are few outlets for us to express our discontent. So this is what it has come to, where people are literally in the streets now.”

Ann Wright has stayed active with the movement despite resigning as a Foreign Service officer at the State Department in 2003 as a protest against the Iraq war. She has remained an activist since that time and sees it as the duty for federal employees to do the same.  

“I think government employees and their resignation, or when they're challenging, is really, really important because they're the ones that are in the know,” Wright said. “You the public need to think more about what's happening and we as government employees that are in the know are saying, ‘Think, think and act right.’” 

Wright encouraged more employees to follow her path and resign from government service, but to one current employee who works in human rights and national security within the Homeland Security Department, there is more that can be done from the inside. 

“The whole reason I came into this employment is with the purpose of helping American citizens and helping others,” said the employee, a Palestinian-American, adding she does not have reservations about continuing to work inside the administration. “I don't find it difficult and I think it's been really amazing, as a civil servant, to help others.” 

Annelle Sheline spoke at the protest after taking the other path, publicly resigning from her position as a Foreign Service officer at State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in March.

Sheline said she tried to accomplish what she could from “the inside,” including drafting or signing multiple cables through the department’s dissent channel, but was ultimately swayed by “conversations with colleagues who would speak with such agony in their voices as they talked about the daily toll of having to show up to work and questioning themselves as to their own complicity in what was happening.” She noted to other participants she has had no remorse about her decision. 

“It is really great when you're on the outside,” she said. “I feel a great sense of relief for having resigned.” 

Most of the employees who gathered on Wednesday declined to give their names and covered their faces with masks, sunglasses and head coverings. Several of the protesters highlighted that trepidation, with one noting it spoke to the “fear around this issue in several federal agencies right now.” 

The Office of Special Counsel, the agency that oversees the federal law spelling out the limited restrictions executive branch employees can face in voicing their personal political views, earlier this year issued new guidance clarifying that federal employees can discuss their opinions of the conflict in the workplace so long as they do not voice support or opposition for any politician or political party.

Feds United for Peace has instructed participants to communicate about their protests only on personal time and not using government resources, including email accounts. OSC’s guidance followed a call from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for the agency to investigate any potential Hatch Act violations concerning a letter from an anonymous group of political appointees and career employees in the Biden administration who called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

I was skeptical about this story about Georgetown's Law School, but apparently it's true. Given that school's actions after the election, I don't know why I didn't believe it

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See below*

To This:

Georgetown tells pregnant law student to take exam just days postpartum because making an exception “would be inequitable to all the other non-birthing students”

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Return of the Primitive

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Life will again be nasty, brutish and short

Arroz con racket: Brooklyn restaurant at center of illegal migrant-driven food-vending scheme

A dingy Brooklyn restaurant with a laundry list of revolting health violations is at the center of an illegal vending scheme involving dozens of migrant women, who hawk meals made in its filthy kitchen on street corners across the Big Apple, The Post has learned.

With growing concern over such unregulated and potentially dangerous operations popping up citywide, The Post tailed about a half-dozen pollo peddlers — illegal migrants mostly from Ecuador — who have commandeered choice spots to sell $10 plates of chicken and rice.

The food originates in a Dominican joint called Guisa’o Restaurant in Bushwick, where up to 50 migrants at a time squeeze into a tiny kitchen to cook the grub, which is then delivered in coolers by van to the illegal street sellers.

Histrionic prose aside (and it is the NY Post, after all), this is a typical example of the collision between modern western civilization and the third world. These immigrants would have fit in perfectly in mid-19th Century New York, when this was how food was prepared and sold by and to the Irish and other rough peasants. But our society, if not the Irish, adopted rules governing hygiene, minimum housing standards, and working conditions, and then enacted taxes and licenses, and hired people to enforce them. Landlords and food vendors must pay for all these higher standards; whether that’s an improvement over the freewheeling 1800s can be debated, but that’s the reality of the social contract we have evolved.

Except for the illegals, who do not feel bound by that contract, nor are they being obliged to by the government to which we surrendered some of our rights as free citizens so that they would enforce its terms. Filthy, unsanitary restaurants are just the tip of what these criminals have brought back into our modern world, and the deterioration is accelerating.

A fond farewell (except for the dumb Minnesotans who reelected him as their governor in 2022) to the weirdest, gayest VP candidate ever

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Oh well, he’ll soon be just another forgotten unsuccessful vice presidential candidate rummaging in the trash bin of history. Does anyone remember Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016? I certainly didn’t, and had to look him up.

do you know who i am?

I could almost feel sorry for them; it sucks to try to run a business in a command economy (UPDATED)

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you will build your beautiful new battery factory there. but check in next week; that may change.

Poor carmakers: the political commissars running their countries issued a 10-year plan, a great leap forward: “you will produce only electric vehicles in 10 years, starting at a minimum of 20% today. Comply, or go out of business.”

What were automakers to do? They caved; research on new ICE engines was halted, thousands of workers were laid off, and billions of dollars were spent building new factories and (trying to) develop new manufacturing techniques and technology. They have now been forced into an unsustainable business model: produce cars consumers don’t want and won’t buy, and offer them nothing that are willing to purchase.

I don’t see how our present automakers survive this debacle (which has long been the dream of those who want to abolish private transportation). Even if they federal government backs off, eight states already have the same 2035 deadline, and those will remain. And if a carmaker wanted to retrench and resume building internal combustion engines, how will it attract the required capital to rebuild when investors know that the next shift of the wind will make the product illegal again? It’s the same dilemma faced by energy companies: No one will sink money into developing a mine today, when the process to get it up and running will take 15-20 years, and there can be no guarantee that the commissars will allow it to open when it’s finally completed. (Fortunately for the west, China has all sorts of mineral mines operating, and its leaders will gladly sell it to us no matter how our relationship is going.) Power plants, same thing.

No one likes uncertainty, especially business, yet we now have an economy that’s entirely dependent on the fickle whim of politicians. That’s not just a zero-growth plan, it’s one for deindustrialization.

Exactly as planned.

UPDATE

John Stossel: Destructive Environmentalists

…         Physicist Mark Mills wonders why anyone would try to open a mine in America today. "Why in the world would you put millions, maybe billions of dollars at risk, spending those decades to get a permit, knowing there's a very good chance they'll just cancel a permit? How in the world do you build mines in America knowing that that's the landscape you have?"

        Well, you don't.

        America now ranks second to last in the time it takes to develop a new mine -- roughly 29 years. Only Zambia is worse.

        "You start applying for permits," says Mills, "You're going to be waiting not months, not years, but decades!"

Read the whole thing

Green Energy has always been about the graft (UPDATED)

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Biden-Harris Admin Races To Dish Out $25 Billion for Green Energy Before Trump Takes Office, Sparking Fraud Fears

The Biden administration is in a hurry to finalize more than a dozen green energy loans worth more than $25 billion before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in mid-January—a frantic effort that lawmakers and industry officials are warning could lead to fraud and abuse of taxpayer money.

Through the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, the administration is working to finalize a total of 16 pending loans worth a total of $25.1 billion, a Washington Free Beacon analysis found. Those loans figure to be in serious jeopardy—Trump repeatedly vowed to "terminate" green energy spending on the campaign trail—and, in recent weeks, Biden officials have picked up the pace finalizing pending commitments.

Over the last two months, the Loan Programs Office closed on seven loans worth $5.9 billion, including two that were closed after the election. Those two loans went to EV battery component plants in Michigan and New York. By comparison, the office closed on five loans worth $6.5 billion during the prior 27 months.

The quick pace carries risks, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) told the Free Beacon.

"Now that the election is over, the Biden administration wants to triple the amount of money passed out to politically connected firms," Barrasso said. "Congress and the incoming Trump administration will act to ensure taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted on insider payoffs and green pipe dreams."

"President Biden’s Department of Energy is rushing billions of dollars out the door as a last-ditch effort to advance its failing rush-to-green agenda," added McMorris Rodgers. "This effort only increases the risk for Solyndra style waste and abuse—which is why the administration should immediately end its reckless spending spree."

Of course, the global warming profiteers are not just in the United States. Yesterday, the deserving poor of the world managed to extract a promise from developed (western) countries to loot their people and hand over $300 billion a year so that these petty crooks can replenish their Swiss bank accounts. The thieves had initially and indignantly demanded $1.2 trillion, so I’m sure our betters will announce the latest holdup as a victory for the people who’ll be paying this money. Hooray for Robin Hood.

Cop29 signs off $300bn climate deal after poorer nations stage walk-out

UPDATE: Someone agrees with me

Third-World Grifters Reject Climate Deal on Wealth Transfer

The Conference of the Parties(COP)29 ended in anger as the developing nations rejected an agreement by the wealthy nations that would have given the greedy little grifters $300 billion in funding for projects to combat climate change.

It's a "disaster," some of the representatives claimed. The $300 billion in aid would come "from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources." 

Nigeria branded the deal "a joke." Ralph Regenvanu, envoy for the island nation of Vanuatu, stated: "The dollar amounts pledged and the emissions reductions promised are not enough. They were never going to be enough. And even then, based on our experience with such pledges in the past, we know they will not be fulfilled."

Regenvanu has figured it out. The industrial West is not going to give a blank check to third-world kleptocrats without strings attached. 

That's exactly what the developing nations and their NGO lobbyists wanted. They're angry because their demands for yearly $1.3 trillion in no-strings-attached grants were rejected.

That's $11 trillion over the next decade. And we're not supposed to ask what they're going to use it for.

…

“We are disappointed with the outcome, which clearly brings out the unwillingness of developed-country parties to live up to their responsibilities." India’s Chandni Raina added, “India does not accept the goal proposal in its present form.… The goal is too little, it is too distant. It is 2035, too far gone.”

India has the third-largest carbon footprint of any nation on Earth. They are the fifth richest country by GDP. What are they showing up at COP29 with their hand out for?

India is acting as if it's still a developing country. They can get away with it because the definition of "developing country" hasn't changed since 1992 when the first COP was held.

…. The election of Donald Trump has thrown the entire climate change industry into chaos.

“I’m not sure we will have a better situation next year because of the geopolitical situation,” said Ana Toni, the climate negotiator for Brazil. Brazil will host COP30 next year.

Trump is right to reject the entreaties of these grifters. The Climate Action Network (CAN), which represents more than 1,900 organizations in 130 countries — all in line to receive a healthy slice of that funding — is beside themselves.

CAN executive director Tasneem Essop could barely hold back the tears.

“This has been the most horrendous climate negotiations in years due to the bad faith of developed countries. This was meant to be the finance COP, but the Global North turned up with a plan to betray the Global South."

Had they been peacefully protesting the COVID lockdown, Trudeau would have jailed them, frozen their bank accounts and confiscated their vehicles

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Three, out of thousands of rioters were finally arrested, and that was all. But Trudeau did join Great Britain in vowing to arrest enemy of these pro-Hamas thugs, because that’s who Trudeau is, and that’s who Starmer is.

Trudeau Confirms Canada Will Arrest Netanyahu Upon Visit After World Court Order