John McCain once said: “It is clear that any serious attempt to improve our health care system must begin with a full repeal and replacement of Obamacare, and I will continue fighting on behalf of the people of Arizona to achieve it.” That was a promise. Now he has voted against repealing Obamacare. So one brain-damaged person had the power to do that, and he did it. He betrayed his party, his President, and all who voted Republican in the expectation of the repeal. And he broke his own promise.

John Hawkins writes at Townhall:

During the Obama years, there was one message we heard over and above all others. One that was repeated time and time again. One that was repeated so often that EVERYONE knew that’s what the Republican Party wanted to do. It was that if the Republican Party had its way, it was going to torpedo Obamacare. By 2014, the GOP had tried to defund Obamacare at least 6 times, and by the Democrats’ count, had tried to gut the law more than 50 times. Republican candidates across the country promised to repeal Obamacare. …

So, what happens when Republicans FINALLY control the House, the Senate and the presidency and vote on repealing Obamacare? Seven Republican senators VOTED AGAINST a straight repeal of Obamacarewith a two year window to come up with a replacement. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; John McCain, R-Ariz.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Rob Portman, R-Ohio all decided that after years of claiming to oppose Obamacare at every turn, they now want it to stay in place. Why, it’s almost as if they’ve been lying to you for years about their opposition to Obamacare!

In fact, it reminds me of something that Ted Cruz once said that rings true right now:

Part of what’s so problematic with Washington is how many Republicans want a show vote to pretend to their constituents they’re fighting for what they say they’re fighting for, rather than actually fighting for it and actually winning. In both parties, you’ve got entrenched politicians who have barely veiled contempt for the American people. They think their voters are gullible rubes – and you give them a little ‘show vote,’ you tell them, ‘Hey, I’m totally with you,’ then they go to Washington and they don’t actually do what they say.

What price will these traitors pay?

… Did Mitch McConnell threaten to try to cut them off from their donors? Did the National Republican Senatorial Committee tell them not to expect their support the next time they run for office? Did anything of consequence happen to any of them at all … ?

This is so big that Republican Congressman Mo Brooks called for Mitch McConnell to be kicked out of his leadership position for this failure.

If they’re gonna quit, well then, by golly, maybe they ought to start at the top with Mitch McConnell leaving his position, and letting somebody new, somebody bold, somebody conservative take the reins so that they can come up with a plan that can get through the United States Senate and serve the needs of the American people.

Isn’t he right? Mitch McConnell has a backbone made from butter and cream cheese; he couldn’t talk a telemarketer into taking his money and other than his correct, but not extraordinary decision not to move on Merrick Garland, his reign has been nothing but one long string of losses, punishing failures and missed opportunities. I’m sure he probably remembers to send a card to everyone on his birthday and does a great teenage mutant ninja turtle impression, but we should expect more out of our leaders. ,,,

There is nothing these senators who voted against the repeal of Obamacare have ever done or will ever do that can make up for their betrayal. None of them should ever represent the Republican Party in a general election again. That shouldn’t just be the position of the voters they have lied to; it should be the position of the REPUBLICAN PARTY. …

The GOP … should represent something more than running the country into the ground to maximize the chances of a few stuffed shirts keeping their cushy jobs.

If that isn’t what the GOP is really about, then prove it. Punish the Republican senators who sold all of us out on Obamacare and show that the GOP at least wants to be something more than all talk and no action.

John McCain has a reputation for being brave.

But not for being overburdened with intellect (even at the best of times).

Benjamin Krause writing at the Disabled Veterans website calls him “infamous”, and accuses him, with convincing explanation, of the betrayal of veterans and rank hypocrisy.

One of the most infamous veterans, Senator John McCain (R-Az), rejected free VA surgical services when he instead received surgical treatment at Mayo for emergency brain tumor removal.

Over the past two months, Washington DC insiders have wondered why McCain has behaved so erratically, often tripping on his questioning during hearings. Last week, McCain supposedly needed non-emergent surgery on a blood clot in his cheek.

Yesterday, it was announced McCain received emergency surgery to remove a deadly brain tumor called a glioblastoma during a 3-hour procedure at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

This kind of brain cancer is generally terminal with a short amount of time between diagnosis and death.

According to the American Brain Tumor Association, this condition is a particularly aggressive tumor. The median survival rate post-diagnosis is 14 months meaning McCain will likely step down from office immediately.

McCain is historically noted as telling veterans it is “foolish” for them to pursue non-VA care while he refuses to receive health care from Phoenix VA. It is important to note Mayo Clinic now refuses to accept Veterans Choice to treat veterans eligible for non-VA care.

Fortunately for McCain and his family, he will now enjoy at least 14 months before passing into the next stage of human spiritual existence.

While some consider him a hero for his prisoner of war (POW) status in Vietnam, McCain has also been considered a turncoat when it comes to veteran rights, often standing on the wrong side of any debate affecting his fellow veterans.

Ironically, both brain cancer and skin cancer, two conditions he has suffered from, are considered disabilities for which a veteran can receive service connection if they were also exposed to Agent Orange herbicides.

Agent Orange is a generic term that references a host of toxic chemicals used as herbicides during the Vietnam War. There is no doubt McCain was likely exposed to such chemicals while in the military, especially during his internment as a POW for many years.

Post diagnosis, instead of receiving surgical care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a fate McCain is comfortable with for other veterans, he, as a multi millionaire and 100% disabled veteran, chose to receive his cancer care from the private sector.

So, despite years of VA claiming its health care is top notch, and sometimes even more highly rated than non-VA care, McCain sees through the smoke screen and opts for private care at Mayo. …

For many years, McCain has been noted as being a traitor to any advancement of veterans rights despite supporting many wars and conflicts without budgetary care or concern.

Recently, McCain is noted for failing to act in preventing hundreds of deaths of disabled veterans who were fraudulently denied access to needed health care from Phoenix VA Medical Center.

Before that, he rejected advances in GI Bill benefits citing that service members would leave the military to receive educations. Apparently, McCain did not want educated veterans.

Instead, he would rather force under-educated soldiers, from disadvantaged backgrounds, to stay in the military. His justification at the time was that enhanced education benefits would entice military service members to leave the military.

McCain enjoyed a rather entitled life as a child.

His grandfather, John McCain Sr, was an Admiral in the US Navy. McCain’s father was also an Admiral.

After two generations of success, the McCain family had a surprise in store for the establishment when it served up the next iteration.

After graduating from boarding school and then almost dead last from the Naval Academy, McCain showed history who was boss by crashing numerous planes. His flying was so careless that he once crashed into power lines, a feat that would be difficult to repeat without looking stupid.

In Vietnam, he was shot down by a rocket and was severely injured. When captured, he received favorable treatment once his captors realized McCain was a high profile soldier due to his father’s status as an Admiral.

After McCain returned from his POW internment, he divorced the wife (who stood by him the whole time) in favor of blonde bombshell Cindy Lou Hensley, a beer mogul’s daughter more than a decade his younger. She was heiress to a massive fortune linked to the Anheuser–Busch family. … There is no question McCain, good or bad, has enjoyed the fruits of his familial ties. …

The writer addresses Senator McCain directly:

There are many Vietnam veterans and widows still desperately pushing for benefits VA still wrongfully denies. How great would it be if your last act as Senator would be to push for fairness on behalf of all those Vietnam veterans still fighting for justice?     

We doubt he’ll do that.

John McCain is going out in a blaze of infamy.

It is not remarkable or surprising to read this account of just some of the IMMENSE AND APPALLING HARM that the United Nations does.

Nor is it surprising to read that the Clintons profit from the harm.

What is surprising is to learn that the New York Times, National Public Radio and CNN actually reported the harm, and the Huffington Post actually criticized the UN and the corrupt firms and organizations that profited from it.

And it’s utterly astonishing to be told that the UN admitted that the 150,000 or so peacekeepers it sends out into the world each year have done so much harm that the UN cannot allow a single claim for compensation to be met because it would be a precedent for an untold number of other such claims. 

From Disobedient Media by Elizabeth Vos:

After earthquakes, hurricanes, and United Nations sex rings have ravaged Haiti, it might be fair to call the locale a hell on earth. In the aftermath of the massive 2010 earthquake, the UN further deteriorated the situation by introducing cholera to the poverty stricken nation. Six years would pass before the U.N. admitted its role in bringing the infection to Haiti.

In the intervening years, thousands of Haitians died from the infection that spread uncontrollably through lack of infrastructure and poor medical treatment. While shockingly little was done by the United Nations in response to the disaster, the tragedy allowed micro-lenders and re-insurers to quickly move in, profiting where critics say aid organizations should have provided help.

The United Nations dispatched peacekeepers to aid the recovery process after a severe earthquake struck Haiti in 2010. Unfortunately the peacekeepers added to the Haitian death toll after introducing cholera to the already devastated environment, apparently brought over by UN peacekeepers from Nepal. It was not until 2016 that the UN finally admitted responsibility for the outbreak. Cholera was not the only plague brought to Haiti by U.N. peacekeepers. As previously reported by Disobedient Media, peacekeepers were revealed to have also been operating a Haitian sex ring in the country from 2004 to 2007.

Bill Clinton was appointed as the United Nation’s special envoy to Haiti at the time of the cholera outbreak, but immediately focused on helping negotiate the release of child trafficker Laura Silsby and her co-defendants before giving attention to Haiti’s plethora of other issues.

Just over ten thousand Haitians are officially reported to have died as a result of the cholera epidemic. However, a study conducted by Doctors Without Borders estimated that this figure may represent a vast underestimation of the death toll. The New York Times reported the results “could multiply the known death toll by roughly a factor of three, at least in the first six months of the epidemic, when it was most intense.” Many of those who died never made it to hospitals, where official counts of the dead were made.

Seven years after it was introduced, cholera is still endemic in Haiti. The United Nations has provided no financial reparations to the victims of the illness and their families. Haitian cholera victims have sued the United Nations in hope of achieving some compensation; so far the absolute diplomatic immunity of the UN has been upheld.

NPR reported that victims want the U.N. to end cholera by installing a national water and sanitation system; paying reparations to cholera victims and their families and publicly apologizing for bringing cholera to Haiti.

U.N. officials’ were cited as fearing that if the Haitian plaintiffs succeed in piercing the agency’s cloak of immunity, it would open the way to unlimited lawsuits seeking compensation for acts of the U.N. or the 150,000 peacekeeping forces it sends out into the world each year.

The UN’s reticence to aid Haitian cholera victims contradicts its central platform promising to uphold human rights. While the country still lacks proper sanitary conditions and medical care, CNN reported that the World Health Organization planned to send one million doses of cholera vaccine to Haiti, adding that there were still: “770 new cases per week in 2016″.

Less than a year after the cholera outbreak, microfinancers and re-insurers including Swiss Re, Fonkoze, Mercy Corp partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative to create the Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organization (MiCRO). At this time Haiti still lacked basic sanitation. Mercy Corp is Chaired by Linda A. Mason, who also co-founded Bright Horizons, a large child care organization that has previously operated in Haiti with Mercy Corp.

Disobedient Media has previously reported on Swiss Re’s involvement with a land grabbing scandal targeting impoverished farmers in Brazil. The report highlighted close financial ties that Swiss Re had to investors George Soros and Warren Buffet. The George Soros Foundation is a major investor in Leapfrog Investments, a private equity firm. Other investors in Leapfrog Investments include the European Investment Bank, JP Morgan, Prudential Financial, Metlife, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and most significantly the TIAA [Financial Services] and Swiss Re. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. also sank billions into Swiss Re in 2009. Buffet has since offloaded a portion of his stake in Swiss Re in 2015, ending a five year long tenure as the reinsurance group’s largest investor.

On the surface, it appeared that microfinance would benefit Haitians. However, re-insurance and microfinance are for-profit business models, not to be conflated with the work of aid groups. According to an article published by the Standford Social Innovation Review, “in some instances microcredit makes life at the bottom of the pyramid worse… in contrast to nonprofit organizations, commercial banks that make microloans typically provide only financial services.

Indonesia’s Bank Rakyat, Ecuador’s Bank Pichincha, and Brazil’s Unibanco all directly target poor customers.” The apparent inability of microfinance to improve the lives of the impoverished it targets has led to detractors denouncing it as a means of de-facto economic enslavement.

The presence of microfinancing groups in Haiti as the UN failed to intervene during the cholera outbreak raises questions in regards to profits these groups may have made in the wake of disasters, be they natural or man-made.

In 2012, the Huffington Post cited critics who speculated that cholera had introduced a profit motive for international reinsurersand asked why Haitians should pay for cholera insurancewhen the United Nations has yet to make reparations for a disease it introduced to a country that had never before experienced this strain of cholera and no other cholera infections for over a century.

The affair raises serious concerns about whether or not insurance and reinsurance firms used the UN-created crisis to profit, and highlights the endemic problems that the involvement of special interests can cause in humanitarian aid work.

Let us sum up what happened:

The UN introduced cholera to poverty-stricken, earthquake and hurricane tormented Haiti.

Insurance companies extract insurance from Haitians to “protect” them from all such “catastrophe risk”.

George Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill and Hillary Clinton profit. 

Haitians continue to die of cholera and are even poorer.

Ben Shapiro argues that it is not.

We agree with him.

But we would simply argue that one cannot have a right to something if the provision of it forces obligations on others.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for:

Corruption – it’s the Clinton way: graft, dishonesty, bribery, venality.

The Muslim Brotherhood – Huma Abedin, whose family is a pillar of the MB, will hold a powerful position in a Hillary Clinton presidency.

Terrorism – the entrance of hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Muslim “refugees” will include al-Qaeda and ISIS operatives.

Racism – the anti-White movement in the universities, the “Black Lives Matter” anti-police campaign, the New Black Panthers and other non-white racist organizations will be funded and protected.

Redistribution – wealth will be taken from those who have earned it and allotted to those who have not in accordance with government whim.

Poverty – will ultimately result from redistribution policies.

Socialism/statism/collectivism – the aim of redistribution and the fulfillment of Hillary Clinton’s life-long commitment to far Left ideology.

Globalization – her expressed wish for “open borders” means the passing of the nation-state and a step towards world government. “Climate change” policies – also designed to attain that end – will be enforced.

Uncontrolled Immigration – on the scale now destroying Europe will result from the ”open borders” policy; immigrants will have instant enfranchisement.

One-party rule – immigrant enfranchisement, votes granted to convicted felons, and the banning of opposition parties will keep the Democratic Party in power permanently.

Stasi-style policing – essential to the maintenance of one-party rule.

Intolerance – a climate of fear will prevail.

End of free speech – her Stasi and her appointed judges will enforce the criminalization of critical speech.

Gun control – civilians will be disarmed.

Industrial-scale abortion – the killing of babies in the womb right up to the hour of their birth and even live-birth killing will be government-funded and encouraged.

Nationalized health care – including death panels will give government the power of decision over your health and survival.

Iranian nuclear armament – will be expedited.

Civil War? – Will Americans submit to all this without resistance?

Readers are invited to add their own prognostications.

Mark Steyn talks about bad things in a recently published (April 25, 2016) video: environmentalism, Islam, state-created art.

Well worth the 27+ minutes it takes to hear it through.

We like the last few minutes best, starting at about 24.40 when he talks about how lucky we are to be living in a warm period.

… that never happened.

On the first Earth Day in 1970, environmentalists predicted the direst imaginable consequences, including the possible extinction of the human race, within 30 years.

That is, if we earthlings didn’t obey them and go back to living the life of the savage: “poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.  They didn’t put it that way exactly. But that’s what their wishes would have brought us to.

“Solitary” should also be in that quotation from Thomas Hobbes, but that wouldn’t be the case because the doomsday environmentalists are collectivists to a man and feminist.

Not a single one of their predictions has come true.

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute writes:

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled Earth Day, Then and Now to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 46th anniversary of  Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 16 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey. Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind”. 

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By 1975 some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off”. 

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support … the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution … by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half. …”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in his 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone”. Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945″. Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946 … now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out.

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any’.”

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it”.

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

The Daily Caller notes just how wrong some of those predictions have turned out to be:

1: “Civilization Will End Within 15 Or 30 Years”

Harvard biologist Dr. George Wald warned shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 that civilization would soon end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind”. Three years before his projection, Wald was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Wald was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. He even flew to Moscow at one point to advise the leader of the Soviet Union on environmental policy. Despite his assistance to a communist government, civilization still exists. The percentage of Americans who are concerned about environmental threats has fallen as civilization failed to end by environmental catastrophe.

2: “100-200 Million People Per Year Will Be Starving To Death During The Next Ten Years”

Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent. His dire predictions failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declined and the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The world’s Gross Domestic Product per person has immeasurably grown despite increases in population.

Ehrlich is largely responsible for this view, having co-published The Population Bomb with The Sierra Club in 1968. The book made a number of claims including that millions of humans would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, mass famines would sweep England leading to the country’s demise, and that ecological destruction would devastate the planet causing the collapse of civilization.

3: “Population Will Inevitably And Completely Outstrip Whatever Small Increases In Food Supplies We Make”

Paul Ehrlich also made the above claim in 1970, shortly before an agricultural revolution that caused the world’s food supply to rapidly increase.

Ehrlich has consistently failed to revise his predictions when confronted with the fact that they did not occur, stating in 2009 that “perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future”.

4: “Demographers Agree Almost Unanimously … Thirty Years From Now, The Entire World … Will Be In Famine”

Environmentalists in 1970 truly believed in a scientific consensus predicting global famine due to population growth in the developing world, especially in India. …

[But] India, where the famines were supposed to begin, recently became one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products and food supply per person in the country has drastically increased in recent years. In fact, the number of people in every country listed by Gunter has risen dramatically since 1970.

5: “In A Decade, Urban Dwellers Will Have To Wear Gas Masks To Survive Air Pollution”

Life magazine stated in January 1970 that scientist had “solid experimental and theoretical evidence” to believe that “in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution … by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by one half”.

Despite the prediction, air quality has been improving worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Air pollution has also sharply declined in industrialized countries.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas environmentalists are worried about today, is odorless, invisible and harmless to humans in normal amounts.

6: “Childbearing [Will Be] A Punishable Crime Against Society, Unless The Parents Hold A Government License”

David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club made the above claim and went on to say that “all potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing”. Brower was also essential in founding Friends of the Earth and the League Of Conservation Voters and much of the modern environmental movement.

Brower believed that most environmental problems were ultimately attributable to new technology that allowed humans to pass natural limits on population size. He famously stated before his death in 2000 that “all technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent” and repeatedly advocated for mandatory birth control.

Today, the only major government to ever get close to his vision has been China, which ended its one-child policy last October.

7: “By The Year 2000 … There Won’t Be Any More Crude Oil”

On Earth Day in 1970 ecologist Kenneth Watt famously predicted that the world would run out of oil saying, “You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any’.”

Numerous academics like Watt predicted that American oil production peaked in 1970 and would gradually decline, likely causing a global economic meltdown. However, the successful application of massive hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, caused American oil production to come roaring back and there is currently too much oil on the market.

American oil and natural gas reserves are at their highest levels since 1972 and American oil production in 2014 was 80 percent higher than in 2008 thanks to fracking.

Furthermore, the U.S. now controls the world’s largest untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation in Colorado. This formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil shale, half of which may be recoverable. That’s five and a half times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. This single geologic formation could contain more oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined.

We’ll give Mark Perry the last word:

Let’s keep those spectacularly wrong predictions from the first Earth Day 1970 in mind when we’re bombarded [around Earth Day 2016] with media hype, and claims like this from the 2015 Earth Day website:

Scientists warn us that climate change could accelerate beyond our control, threatening our survival and everything we love. We call on you to keep global temperature rise under the unacceptably dangerous level of 2 degrees C, by phasing out carbon pollution to zero. To achieve this, you must urgently forge realistic global, national and local agreements, to rapidly shift our societies and economies to 100% clean energy by 2050. Do this fairly, with support to the most vulnerable among us. Our world is worth saving and now is our moment to act. But to change everything, we need everyone. Join us.

Finally, think about this question, posed by Ronald Bailey in 2000: What will Earth look like when Earth Day 60 rolls around in 2030? Bailey predicts a much cleaner, and much richer future world, with less hunger and malnutrition, less poverty, and longer life expectancy, and with lower mineral and metal prices.

But he makes one final prediction about Earth Day 2030: “There will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future – and the present – never looked so bleak.”

In other words, the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions will continue, promoted by the “environmental grievance hustlers”.

No controversies on our Facebook page are as long and passionate as those concerning health care. The most passionate commenters are those who want a nation-wide central government-run health service. They say that all other “civilized countries” have it and the US is “behind” them in not having it.

But the US does have such a thing – for military veterans.

Two years ago the service was revealed to be scandalously badly managed. Reforms were promised. Is it now a model of what a government-run health service should be?

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

In the summer of 2014, President Obama promised swift changes to resolve chronic delays and cover-ups at the Veterans Health Administration. Today, veterans are still waiting months to see doctors and the VHA is still doctoring wait times, an audit finds.

The Government Accountability Office tracked 180 newly enrolled veterans to see how quickly they could get in to see a doctor. The results are disturbing.

It found that 120 of these vets waited from 22 to 71 days to see a primary care doctor. Worse, 60 of these vets still hadn’t gotten in to see anyone, and in almost half these cases it was because the VHA didn’t bother to schedule them. Mind you, these are primary care doctors, the first step in getting whatever care these vets need.

The GAO also found that the VHA systematically tries to mask the length of these delays by starting the delay clock from the date vets say they’d like to be seen, instead of when they call to schedule an appointment.

What’s more, “ongoing scheduling errors, such as incorrectly revising preferred dates when rescheduling appointments” — which is to say, VHA incompetence — also served to understate the amount of time veterans waited to see a doctor, the GAO says.

This is the same VHA that was supposed to have been fixed two years ago, in the wake of revelations about chronic delays that in some cases led to veteran deaths, as well as findings that VHA officials had tried to cover up these problems.

In August 2014, Congress overwhelmingly passed a reform bill providing the VHA with $16 billion in extra money. When he signed the bill, Obama called the scandal “outrageous” and promised that his administration was “moving ahead with urgent reforms, including stronger management and leadership and oversight, and we’re instituting a critical culture of accountability.” Obama said the new funds would be used to “hire more doctors and more nurses and staff more clinics”.  He also promised that vets would gain access to private providers outside the VHA through a new “Veterans choice card”.

Since then, Obama has kept none of those promises.

The VHA remains largely unreformed, and almost no one involved in the scandal was fired. The Justice Department couldn’t even bring itself to file charges against two VHA officials who allegedly defrauded the agency of $400,000. The VHA only demoted them.

Last year, an Associated Press investigation found that “the number of patients facing long waits at VHA facilities has not dropped at all” and the number of vets waiting more than 90 days to get an appointment “has nearly doubled”.

Whistleblowers who alerted the public to the original VHA scandal say that wait times are still being manipulated.

“I can promise you that it is still going on at facilities across this country,” one source told USA Today. “I mean, it’s sad because veterans are still getting poor care.”

The “choice card” Obama touted has turned out to be a cruel joke, as the VHA made it difficult for vets to use it in a timely manner, and because the VHA didn’t pay some private doctors and hospitals who took the card. One survey found the VA owed Florida hospitals more than $100 million in unpaid claims, for example.

Obama should be held accountable for his abject failure to fix the VHA as promised. But of course he won’t be, since no one ever holds Obama accountable for anything.

And because everything government runs, it runs badly.

In the meantime, however, the ongoing scandal at the VA should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks socialized medicine is a good idea. The VHA is a showcase of what it’s like when the government runs health care.

Almost all the advocates of “free” – ie. tax funded – medical treatment for everybody, insist that it is a “right”, equal to the “unalienable Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” proclaimed in The Declaration of Independence.

But Walter Williams points out that no one can have a right that puts an obligation on someone else:

Here is what presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I believe that health care is a right of all people.” President Barack Obama declared that health care “should be a right for every American”. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: “Every person has a right to adequate health care.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his January 1944 message to Congress, called for “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health”. And it is not just a health care right that people claim. There are rights to decent housing, good food and a decent job, and for senior citizens, there’s a right to prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let’s look at it.

In the standard historical usage of the term, a “right” is something that exists simultaneously among people. As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference.

Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. Again, that right imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Contrast those rights to free speech and travel with the supposed rights to medical care and decent housing. Those supposed rights do impose obligations upon others. … If one does not have money to pay for a medical service or decent housing and the government provides it, where do you think the government gets the money? …

Congress does not have any resources of its very own, [so] the only way for Congress to give one American something is to first take it from some other American. In other words, if one person has a right to something he did not earn, it requires another person’s not having a right to something he did earn.

Let’s apply this bogus concept of rights to my right to speak and travel freely. Doing so, in the case of my right to free speech, it might impose obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. My right to travel freely might require that others provide me with resources to purchase airplane tickets and hotel accommodations. If I were to demand that others make sacrifices so that I can exercise my free speech and travel rights, I suspect that most Americans would say, “Williams, yes, you have rights to free speech and traveling freely, but I’m not obligated to pay for them!”

As human beings, we all have certain natural rights. Of the rights we possess, we have a right to delegate them to government. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Because we possess that right, we can delegate it to government. By contrast, I do not have a right to take one person’s earnings to give to another. Because I have no such right, I cannot delegate it to government.

If I did take your earnings to provide medical services for another, it would rightfully be described and condemned as an act of theft. When government does the same, it’s still theft, albeit legalized theft. …

The bottom line is medical care, housing and decent jobs are not rights at all … they are wishes.

If government is to be a father-like Provider, and everyone who lives in the country it governs is to be its child-like Dependent, that government will need to be totally trustworthy. It will care unstintingly – and equally – for every single one of those whom it feeds, houses, educates and cures. It will never abuse its power by withholding food, shelter, schooling, medical care from any of its charges, or by giving better food, housing, schooling, doctoring to some of them. Nothing less than perfect uniformity will do.

How will it be done? How will all Americans be brought to live in docile uniformity and sweet harmony under the authority of a loving government?

None can say. But they can wish, can’t they? They can dream.

Call it Bernie’s Dream.

The “man-made global warming” con is not the first false science racket that the Left has imposed on the citizens of the USA  –  and forced them to pay for.

This video, just published (on September 4, 2015), is titled The Alternative Medicine Racket: How the Feds Fund Quacks.

Which means: how you the tax payers came to fund shamans, mountebanks, and snake-oil salesmen.  

The racket was launched by two members of Congress, both Democrats: Tom Harkin, US Senator from Iowa 1985-2015, and Berkley Bedell, also from Iowa, member of the US House of Representatives 1975-1987.

It’s amazing and depressing to learn how quickly the universities caved to the demand that they should teach magic as if it were respectable medical practice; and how quickly the hospitals let the quacks in to play with seriously ill patients. It happened because of the lavish – and ever increasing – funding by which the voodoo was promoted by the Democratic Party.

Finally, pretend-healing was included in the Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare. As the video reveals, the “controversial section 2706” of that nefarious piece of legislation – sneaked through Congress and passed by sleight-of-hand – requires that quacks be paid on the same scale as properly qualified doctors.

A group of House Republicans unveiled a 192-page health care plan that fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with “patient-centered reforms” and “free-market solutions“.

We quote from a report in the Daily Signal:

Lawmakers released the plan Thursday as the GOP-led Congress prepares to attack the Affordable Care Act. Both houses of Congress have already signaled their intentions to repeal Obamacare by a simple majority vote using the reconciliation process — just as the law was passed in 2010.

The new GOP plan, American Health Care Reform Act, was written by Reps. Phil Roe of Tennessee and Austin Scott of Georgia. It has the backing of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus made up of nearly 170 members of the House of Representatives.

Authors of the plan say it’s an “aspirational model” of American health care.

“This is not the perfect bill,” said Roe, who worked as a physician for more than 20 years prior to joining Congress. “We’re open for amendments”.

Highlights of the bill include removing any subsidy assistance, increasing tax benefits, expanding federal funding for state “high-risk pools”, allowing Americans to purchase policies across state lines, reforming medical liability laws, and investing in research for the most common causes of death in the United States. …

While introducing the legislation to a small group of reporters, members of the Republican Study Committee slammed the Affordable Care Act.“Access to a waiting line is not access to health care,” said Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky. He called Obamacare a “spectacular and breathtaking failure”. 

“American citizens are suffering from the president’s broken promises under the unaffordable Obamacare law,” Scott added. “That’s why today, I am proud to join my colleagues in offering a plan that fully repeals Obamacare while replacing it with a patient-centered, free-market alternative.”

The American Health Care Reform Act covers four broad areas:

1) Encouraging Competition in the Health Care Market. The Republican Study Committee criticized the Affordable Care Act for not offering competition in health care.

“There’s less competition in the health care system than ever before,” Scott said.

The proposed legislation addresses this issue by allowing Americans to purchase health insurance products across state lines. Small businesses also are permitted to merge together to coordinate better rates.

Scott said adding more insurance carriers into the health care market is paramount to providing more competition.

2) Improving Access for Vulnerable Americans. Federal support for state high-risk pools will increase to $25 billion over 10 years.

Under the bill, premiums would be capped at 200 percent of the state’s premium average. Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions can alternate between health insurance markets, provided they maintain “continuous coverage”.

Roe said veterans would be positively impacted and would receive a Veterans Choice Card, providing more health care options.

3) Supporting Medical Breakthroughs. The bill provides funding for an eight-year, $15 billion Medical Breakthrough Fund at the National Institutes of Health to develop cures for the top five causes of death in the United States: heart disease, cancer, strokes, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. These conditions kill more than 1.5 million people each year. …

4) Reforming Medical Liability Laws. The bill identifies several solutions to the medical liability crisis, which increases health care costs and deters physicians from practicing, according to lawmakers.

All good stuff. But what are the chances that Obama will sign the bill into law?

To our suspicious mindset, the term “non-profit” is a red flag, signaling the presence of sentimental claptrap likely to be covering up a crooked scheme.

When the name Clinton is associated with it, our suspicion turns to certainty.

The Clinton Foundation has spawned many a “non-profit initiative”. One of them – acronym CHAI – allows  the charitable Clintons to take care of the health of the human race. Remember, Bill Clinton feels everybody’s pain.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

The Clinton Foundation and its major health charity have raked in more than $7 million from the U.S. government in recent years …

Those millions are tax dollars of course.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), chaired by Bill Clinton and run by the former president’s long-time associate Ira Magaziner, has received $6,010,898 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since 2010. CHAI, the biggest arm of the Clinton family’s charitable efforts, accounting for 60 percent of all spending, received $3,193,500 in fiscal years 2010, 2011, and 2012, according to federal contracts, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The organization received an additional $2,817,398 from the CDC in FYs 2013, 2014, and 2015.

The grants, including $200,000 awarded as recently as January, have gone to CHAI’s Global AIDS program, and are filed under “Global Health and Child Survival”.  The CDC is listed as a $1 to $10 million contributor to CHAI, according to its donor list released earlier this month.

Why should a US government agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, channel its aid for AIDS through a Clinton charity? 

Why should the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) – which is on that donor list (which itself rewards perusal) – need to do so?

Or the African Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology? Wouldn’t you expect such an institution to be a recipient of charity rather than a giver of it?

The Boston-based health arm of the Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for failing to disclose donations from foreign governments — in violation of a pledge Clinton made to the Obama administration before she assumed office as secretary of state.

A Reuters report found that the [Clinton] health initiative stopped making its annual disclosure in 2010 and that “no complete list of donors to the Clintons’ charities has been published” since. The group only recently published a partial donor list, which its spokesperson Maura Daley told Reuters “made up for” CHAI’s “oversight” of failing to meet the disclosure agreement. …

A mere momentary slip on a busy day.

CHAI received hundreds of millions from foreign nations between 2009 and 2014, including: the United Kingdom ($79.7 million), Australia ($58.6 million), Norway ($38.1 million), Canada ($12.1 million), Ireland ($11.7 million), Sweden ($7.2 million), and New Zealand ($1.2 million).

Why should the governments of the UK, Australia, Norway, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, and New Zealand – all of which have departments responsible for providing foreign aid – channel their aid for AIDS through a Clinton charity? 

The Boston Globe found that foreign donations “sharply accelerated” to CHAI when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state.

“Government grants, nearly all from foreign countries, doubled to $55.9 million in 2013 from $26.7 million in 2010, according to the records,” the report said.

The Clinton Foundation is a money-sponge, soaking up cash from all over the world. Into what buckets is it squeezed out?  

The health initiative broke off into a nonprofit separate from the Clinton Foundation in 2010, though it is still chaired by Bill and Chelsea Clinton.

The charities have remained intertwined. CHAI received a $2 million cash grant from the Clinton Foundation for “Haiti relief,” according to the group’s 2013 tax filing. It received a $4 million cash grant from the foundation for “program service” in 2012.

CHAI’s chief executive officer and vice chairman, Ira Magaziner … a long time associate of the Clintons … was paid $415,000 in salary and consulting fees from the Clinton Foundation in 2013, according to Politico. Bruce Lindsey, Bill Clinton’s longtime lawyer and chairman of the board of the Clinton Foundation, was the highest paid official at CHAI, paid $398,159 in salary and benefits in 2013 as a board member.

Yet –

CHAI’s website says they are a “frugal” charity that focuses on saving lives, rather than “compensating ourselves excessively”. 

So what exactly are the charitable grants provided by CHAI spent on? How does CHAI “save lives”?

Let’s see. In Ethiopia, for instance –

CHAI’s spokesperson, Maura Daley, said that taxpayer funding to her organization is being provided by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and distributed through the CDC for AIDS work in Ethiopia. … She said the funding is going towards enrolling hospital CEOs in masters programs for hospital management. …

To repeat: the money is “going towards enrolling hospital CEOs in master programs for hospital management”. Wow!

Aside from millions given to the health initiative, the Clinton Foundation itself has received more than $1.4 million in U.S. taxpayer funding from federal agencies and the 2009 stimulus law.

The Clinton Foundation lists several state and federal agencies as financial contributors, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA is listed as contributing between $1,001 and $5,000, as is an agency entitled the “Office of Minority Health and Human Services”. The Free Beacon was unable to determine what this donation referred to, or which federal or state office it came from.

The Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Minority Health (OMH) was unable to locate any donation to the Clinton Foundation. The Office of Minority Health and Human Services, a state agency in Nebraska that recently changed its name to the Office of Health Disparities and Health Equity, said the donation could not have come from their office because they do no solicit or issue funding.

The EPA did not return request for comment.

State agencies in Arkansas have also given financial contributions to the Clinton Foundation, according to the organization’s website.

The Arkansas Minority Health Commission gave between $1,001 and $5,000. Michael Knox, executive director of the Arkansas Minority Health Commission, told the Free Beacon that the donation was for the Clinton Center’s annual “Head of the Class Bash” in June 2011 that paid for “car seat inspections, immunizations and health screenings, and backpacks with school supplies to the children of Arkansas.”

Car seat inspections? Backpacks with school supplies for children? Why should a state agency, established and funded to deal with health care, pay the Clinton Foundation to pay for immunizations and health screenings? Why should it pay the Clinton Foundation to pay for any of these things?   

The Arkansas Energy Office is also listed as donating between $500,001 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation, though the contribution actually came from spending authorized by the 2009 stimulus law.

Scott Hardin, director of communications for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, told the Free Beacon that the Clinton Foundation received nearly $800,000 from his office, through a grant funded by the stimulus.

“The Energy Office distributed more than $50 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds a few years ago and the money provided to the Clinton Foundation was part of this effort,” he said.

The grant, amounting to $758,123, was provided to the Clinton Foundation in October 2009, Hardin said.

The funds went to the Clinton Foundation’s Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL) program, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings through “energy-efficiency and monitoring strategies.”

“Monitoring strategies”. Wow again.

The project is listed as creating zero jobs.

So no one is actually doing any monitoring? Or even working out “monitoring strategies”?

The Free Beacon found one case where an agency was listed as a Clinton Foundation contributor, even though it has never donated to the organization.

The Arkansas Department of Human Services is currently listed for a donation between $1,000 and $5,000. However, the state agency never paid the Clinton Foundation, and only helped host a conference at the Clinton Center. The state agency nonetheless received a gift receipt from the Clinton Foundation. …

The Clinton Foundation did receive $1,350 from the U.S. taxpayers, but through another federal agency: the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Amy Webb, director of communications for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, told theFree Beacon that her agency helped the Clinton Foundation host an event honoring AmeriCorps in Little Rock, Ark. last year.

It “helped the Clinton Foundation host an event” – an event to honor AmeriCorps. We repeat because we are trying to get our heads round the extent of the Clintons’ benevolence. This particular donation to help the charitable Clinton Foundation was provided by (among others) a Division of Community Service and Non-profit Support, who received it from the Corporation for National and Community Service. –

“Our Division of Community Service and Non-profit Support, along with other local entities, co-hosted an AmeriCorps 20th Anniversary event at the Clinton Center in September 2014,” she said. “Via a grant, the Corporation for National and Community Service provided our agency with $1,350 to help cover costs associated with that event.”

Webb provided an invoice from the Clinton Foundation detailing the $1,350 charge, which she said was for refreshments.

“The money was not a donation to the Clinton Foundation,” Webb said. “In January, we incorrectly received a ‘gift receipt’ for a donation for the money we used for that event, and we notified the foundation of that error.”

In all, state and federal agencies have contributed between $1,402,187 and $1,414,184 directly to the Clinton Foundation.

Together with the health initiative, taxpayers have contributed roughly $7.4 million to Clinton charities.

Which enroll people for courses; inspect car seats – or would if someone actually did the job; devise monitoring strategies – ditto;  and host events with refreshments bought with taxes.

Truly, the charity of the Clintons knows no bounds. Is it their goodness that brings those tears to your eyes? Or what?