Patrick's Notebook

by Rebecca Beitsch

The Trump administration gutted a key portion of the Clean Water Act on Monday, limiting states’ ability to block controversial pipeline projects that cross their waterways.

The final rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) targets Section 401 of the law, which lets states halt projects that risk hurting their water quality.

It’s been a target of President Trump, who last April ordered the agency to accelerate and promote the construction of pipelines and other important infrastructure.

“Today, we are following through on President Trump’s Executive Order to curb abuses of the Clean Water Act that have held our nation’s energy infrastructure projects hostage, and to put in place clear guidelines that finally give these projects a path forward,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement.

The Clean Water Act essentially gives states veto power over large projects that cut through their rivers and streams, giving them a year to weigh permits and determine how projects would impact their water quality. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Martin Bashir

Last night he held a Bible in front of St John’s Episcopal Church, just across the road from the White House. Today, he’ll visit the Shrine to St John Paul II, also in Washington DC.

But US President Donald Trump’s signalling of religious affiliation has not been welcomed by a range of clerics as the nation struggles to manage the twin challenges of a pandemic and widespread political protest.

The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, said: “The president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.”

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and consultant to the Vatican’s communications department, tweeted: “Let me be clear. This is revolting. The Bible is not a prop. A church is not a photo op. Religion is not a political tool. God is not your plaything.”

@JamesMartinSJ
Let me be clear. This is revolting. The Bible is not a prop. A church is not a photo op. Religion is not a political tool. God is not your plaything.

» Read the rest of this entry «

by Mark Glennon

Numbers, budgets, charts and graphs about government finances. That’s what we do here. We try to understand where public money should be spent and what it accomplishes.

Through that lens, it’s difficult to know where to begin on what has befallen the Chicago area and most of the country.

For now, this simple observation seems paramount: The most fundamental element of the social contract between government and the people is cracking. That’s the obligation of government to keep its citizens safe. For that, we surrender a portion of of our freedom and wealth to government for the collective good.

That arrangement has been recognized as a foundational philosophy of civil society since Thomas Hobbes articulated it over 300 years ago.

Citizens expect government to protect their lives and adhere to a civil process even when being arrested, just as they expect to be protected from riots and looting. Both expectations are now broken.

“The sight of looters and arsonists pillaging stores at will has shaken the confidence of many that law enforcement is capable of maintaining the peace. It has also tainted the very real grief felt over the tragic loss of life.”

That’s not from a source that’s unsympathetic to George Floyd or protesters. It’s from an editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

What will be the consequences breaking the social contract? Speculate if you want, but know that it may extend far beyond George Floyd’s murder and the resulting violence.

-Mark Glennon, Wirepoints Founder

by Lance Roberts

The death of George Floyd was both unjust and tragic. However, his death was the catalyst that lit a powder keg of dissension, which has simmered beneath the headlines for over a decade.

While we focus on events that fill our media streams, it is worth remembering Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Manuel Diez, Kimini Gray, and Michael Brown. These events, and many others throughout history, show civil unrest has deeper roots. Pew Research made a note of this in 2017:

“The U.S. economy is in much better shape now than it was in the aftermath of the Great Recession. It cost millions of Americans, their homes, and jobs. It led him to push through a roughly $800 billion stimulus package as one of his first business orders. Since then, unemployment has plummeted from 10% in late 2009 to below 5% today, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled.

But by some measures, the country faces serious economic challenges: A steady hollowing of the middle class and income inequality reached its highest point since 1928.”

Look at the faces of those rioting. They are of every race, religion, and creed. What they all have in common is they are of the demographic most impacted by the current economic recession. Job losses, income destruction, financial pressures, and debt create tension in the system until it explodes. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Gordon Duff

COVID 19 may well be a naturally occurring disease but, upon closer examination, it is really a criminal enterprise with considerable evidence of planning and preparation.

As May 2020 comes to an end and Americans demand “freedom” from an ineffective lockdown policy that was enacted with no national testing regime to back it up, news in America is race riots, fake scandals and, as usual, everything but reporting the reality of America at war with the world, a war without reason or purpose, on the surface at least.

Even if one were to accept the Pandemic of 2020 as naturally occurring and the endless blunders by the US to be simple incompetence, it takes very little to conclude that COVID 19 is “big business.”

Background

43,000 British died in the Blitz during World War 2, an unimaginably high number. The then stature and flowery pronouncements of Winston Churchill made their suffering indelible then as it is now. Jewish suffering during that war is similarly remembered while the greatest deaths, those of uncounted millions of Russians, is erased, stifled, censored.

The same is going on in America where twice as many aged Americans have died of COVID 19 than the Germans killed of all British civilians during World War 2, the most brutal civilian bombing campaign until Vietnam.

Less than 25% of Americans know someone thus far that has died of COVID 19 though higher numbers apply for the Hispanic and African American communities, a nagging question behind a question that will never be asked nor answered. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Kit Knightly

In recent days a series of leaks across the globe have further shown the “official line” on coronavirus does not hold water…

The science of the coronavirus is not disputed. It is well documented and openly admitted:

• Most people won’t get the virus.
• Most of the people who get it won’t display symptoms.
• Most of the people who display symptoms will only be mildly sick.
• Most of the people with severe symptoms will never be critically ill.
• And most of the people who get critically ill will survive.

This is borne out by the numerous serological studies which show, again and again, that the infection fatality ratio is on par with flu.

There is no science – and increasingly little rational discussion – to justify the lockdown measures and overall sense of global panic.

Nevertheless, it’s always good to get official acknowledgement of the truth, even if it has to be leaked.

Here are three leaks showing that those in power know that the coronavirus poses no threat, and in no way justifies the lockdown that is going to destroy the livelihoods of so many.

1. “IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!”

On May 26th Dr Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information, gave an interview to former-Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in which he apparently let slip his true feelings. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Jeff Deist

In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration and its media accomplices waged a relentless propaganda campaign to win political support for what turned out to be one of the most disastrous foreign policy mistakes in American history.

Nearly two decades later, with perhaps a million dead Iraqis and thousands of dead American soldiers, we are still paying for that mistake.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were key players behind the propaganda—which we can define as purposeful use of information and misinformation to manipulate public opinion in favor of state action. Iraq and its president Saddam Hussein were the ostensible focus, but their greater goal was to make the case for a broader and open-ended “War on Terror.”  ​

So they created a narrative using a mélange of half-truths, faintly plausible fabrications, and outright lies:

• Iraq and the nefarious Saddam Hussein were “behind,” i.e., backing, the Saudi terrorists responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US;
• Hussein and his government were stockpiling yellowcake uranium in an effort to develop nuclear capability;
• Hussein was connected with al-Qaeda
• Iran was lurking in the background as a state sponsor of terrorism, coordinating and facilitating attacks against the US in coordination with Hamas;
• Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and other terror groups were working against the US across the Middle East in some kind of murky but coordinated effort;
• We have to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”;
• The Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators.

And so forth. » Read the rest of this entry «