Donald Trump – Page 6 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

What is the importance of 8/8?

Tomorrow, August 8 is my birthday. Hooray!! I have lived a long and fruitful life, and am thankful for every extra day God has granted me here on earth. 8/8 has always been a number of interest to me, so if anything else happens on that day I take notice. On Monday Frank Figliuzzi, the former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and a regular contributor to NBC News, told MSNBC’s Brian Williams that President Trump’s decision to fly flags at half-staff until Aug. 8 may very well be a tip of the cap to white supremacist groups. Here’s what he said:

The president’s either getting really good advice and rejecting it, or he’s getting really bad advice. We have to understand the adversary and the threat we’re dealing with, and if we don’t understand how they think, we’ll never understand how to counter them, so it’s the little things and the messaging that matters.

The president says that we will fly our flags at half-mast until August 8, that’s 8/8. Now I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately, but I am using it as an example of the ignorance of the adversary demonstrated by the White House. The numbers 8/8 are very significant in the neo-Nazi and the white supremacy movement. Why? Because the letter ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and to them, the numbers 8/8 stand for ‘Heil Hitler.’

So we’re going to be raising the flag back up at dusk on 8/8. No one’s thinking about this. No one’s giving the advice, or he’s rejecting the advice.”

In my more than seventy years of reading, listening to radio, watching television and watching old WWII movies I have never once encountered that my birthday equated “Heil Hitler”. Neither has anyone, even in jest thrown it at me.

Such is the hatred for President Donald Trump that some grasp for anything, no matter how far fetched to find some connection between him and racism and white supremacy, or in this case Neo-Nazism.

The truth about rats and lemmings, Trump and Baltimore. A Limerick.

The truth about rats and lemmings.

The rats in the Baltimore port

are eating the “food” of all sort.

Where corruption abounds

it’s as bad as it sounds

for rats are Corruption’s cohort.

Everybody have heard about lemmingyears, when a large number of lemmings follow each other over a cliff, falls down into the sea below and drown. Political analogies abound, and so this has become common knowledge: That’s what lemmings do. But why? By the way, 2011 was a lemming year in Northern Sweden, it repeats itself every 20 years or so. Here is a video from BBC Nature.

To explain why, there is an even better example with rats. When food is plentiful they multiply fast and after about 4 years there are far too many rats for the food supply. No, they do not die of starvation, virtually all the rats get stressed out and die, all in short order, and the cycle starts anew. It used to be a fairly limited supply of food for the rats, people ate what the land produced, and the number of rats were kept below the stress level. Enter modern day landfills and cities with inadequate sanitation like Baltimore. There is an overabundance of food in a very limited area, so rats congregate there and multiply. Eventually they will hit the stress level die out and the cycle is renewed. Enter the division of rodent control. In their wisdom they put out rat poison to keep the population down. In so doing they manage to keep the rat population just below the stress level, thereby ensuring that every year is a year of plenty of rats rather than every fourth year.

The only solution to get rid of a rat infestation is to eliminate the food source!

To point that out is not racist.

Donald Trump pointed out the rat-infestation and was immediately labeled a racist. It is also not racist to point out that the three last mayors of Baltimore have resigned. None of them addressed the real problems of Baltimore, a once beautiful, vibrant City with a charming inner harbor.

Make Baltimore beautiful again!

The red dragon of China. World dominance by 2025 averted? A Limerick.

Insane is to praise the Chinese

and say they go green, planting trees;

for they lie, cheat and steal,

human rights they repeal.

We must stand, no more time to appease.

Beijing’s massive tree planting campaign has worsened air pollution in the city, a new study by Chinese scientists suggests. The “Green Great Wall” prevented dispersion of as much as 15 per cent of PM2.5 – health-damaging fine particulates less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter – during a major smog episode in the capital in January 2014, according to researchers. At its peak during the period studied, the PM2.5 reached 350 micrograms per cubic metre of air – 14 times the safety level recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Man-made forest slowed down the winds that otherwise help to disperse smog and turned the city into an enormous trap for air pollutants, according to the scientists.

How can that be?

China burned 51.2% of the world’s coal in 2012, USA produced 12.5%. China’s production was more than four times larger. This has now stabilized and was in 2018 47%, because India and the real developing world are increasing their dependence on coal for electricity production, and also for cooking meals.

This of course is with the Paris accord in mind. U.S. and the European countries are to limit their emissions and slowly diminish them, down to a per capita emission comparable to the mid 1800’s, while China, being a “developing” country is allowed to increase their emissions until 2030, and then stabilize them, not decrease them.

How can they be burning nearly half the world’s coal mined?

One reason is they are the world’s state controlled manufacturing company. They are also responsible for half the world’s Steel production. China produced 50.3% of the world’s crude Steel in 2015, USA produced 4.9%. China’s production was over 20 times larger than the U.S.Some of this steel was dumped below production cost to crush our domestic low end steel industry. An example: Rolled steel to make steel cans were exported at about $200 a ton, the production cost in the U.S. is more like $400 a ton. They can do this, since their environmental regulations only pay lip service to pollution. Remember how Pittsburgh was 60 years ago? China is much worse.

Cement production. China produced 51.4% of the world’s cement in 2015, USA produced 1.8%. China’s production was almost 30 times larger.

It takes a lot of concrete to build artificial islands so they can take control of the South China Sea. But they are building many other things, Ghost Cities, but also an impressive infrastructure with high speed trains on elevated concrete tracks.

Worrisome as that may be, it isnothing compared to China,s dominance in Rare Earth Metals. Let me explain why rare earth metals are so important to our modern economy.

First, rare earth metals re not rare at all, they exist in small quantities together with Thorium and sometimes Uranium wherever other metals are mined.

The Lanthanides occur in quantity in Monazite, a byproduct of mining Phosphates, but also as a byproduct of mining Titanium, and even from some Iron ores. The rare earth metals are free to begin extraction if it was not for one thing, they also contain Thorium, and Thorium is radio-active, so in the mid 1980’s the NRC and IAEA reclassified Monazite and anything containing Thorium as a “Source Material” and after that it became too costly to comply with all the regulations for nuclear material, so all production of rare earth minerals ceased in the U.S.

China saw an opportunity to grab the world market for Rare Earth Metals and is now controlling about 94% of the supply of all rare earth metals.

So what are rare earth metals used for?

China now has a de facto monopoly on all usages of rare earth metals, and in the case of war or an embargo, not only are our precious cell phones and computers in jeopardy, so is our defense, night vision goggles, aircraft engines, navigation systems, laser guidance, just to name a few uses.

And not only that, we import the completed parts from China, even for our most sophisticated military equipment, such as the F35 aircraft, after telling the Chinese how to make the components. The very same components are now in China’s version of the F35, still under development, but in a year or so China will have their faithful copies made! A F35 aircraft contains about 935 pounds of rare earth metals.

This is clearly unsustainable, so in 2014 Congress tried to pass HR 4883 and S 2006 to remedy the situation, but the bills got killed in review by none other than the defense department, citing National Security! Our only major rare earth metals mine reopened, only to go bankrupt in 2015. It has since reopened, but the ore is shipped to China for refining! One good point is that the Mountain Pass mine is scheduled to reopen the processing facilities late 2020.

The idea was that we should change our electricity production into renewable sources, such as wind and solar.

Wind power uses a lot of rare earth metals to get the most efficient generators, all made by China. Wind power is about maxed out, that is, if you care about birds, especially eagles and raptors. The allowable bald eagle kill was upped from 1200 to 4200 a year for all U.S. wind turbines during the Obama administration. Killed golden eagles and storks has a S250000 fine, paid by the electricity users, and if we build it out more, we may exterminate some species.

Solar power looked promising until pollution was taken into consideration. China added 53 GW solar capacity in 2017. The forecast for this year i 45 GW, and for next year 35 GW.

The efficiency of solar panels are drastically reduced by the layer of soot accumulating daily from air pollution. They have to be cleaned daily with water, and water is in short supply in northern China. The yellow river no longer reaches the ocean during large periods of the year, all water is spoken for. In southern India a solar farm used up so much water that the wells went dry and there was no more water for agriculture and people, except during the monsoon season. Germany has given up on their solar program except for special needs.

Where it rains, China pollutes. The Yang -Tse river carries nearly half the plastic waste that is dumped in the ocean. It can be stopped, but it will mean a lot of energy, both man-power and electricity to do all the cleanup.

The solution is found in Thorium power. Here are 25 reasons why we shouls jump on the opportunity to solve the energy crisis:

1. A million years supply at today’s consumption levels.

2. Thorium already mined, ready to be extracted.

3. One ten-thousandth of the TRansUranium waste compared to a U-235 based fast breeder reactor.

4. Thorium based nuclear power produces Pu-238, needed for space exploration.

5. Radioactive waste from an LFTR decays down to background radiation in 300 years compared to a million years for U-235 based reactors.

6. Thorium based nuclear power is not suited for making nuclear bombs.

7. Produces isotopes that helps cure certain cancers.

8. Molten Salt Thorium Reactors are earthquake safe.

9. Molten Salt Thorium Reactors cannot have a meltdown, the fuel is already molten.

10. Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control.

11. Atmospheric pressure operating conditions, no risk for explosions.

12. Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport.

13. Thorium Nuclear Power generators scale beautifully from small portable generators to full size power plants.

14. No need for evacuation zones, can be placed near urban areas.

15. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will work both as Base Load and Load Following power plants.

16. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors will lessen the need for an expanded national grid.

17. Russia has an active Thorium program.

18. China is having a massive Thorium program.

19. India is having an ambitious Thorium program.

20. United States used to be the leader in Thorium usage. What happened?

21. With a Molten Salt Reactor, accidents like the Three Mile Island disaster will not happen.

22. With a Molten Salt Reactor, disasters like Chernobyl are impossible.

23. With Molten Salt Reactors, a catastrophe like Fukushima cannot happen.

24. Produces electrical energy at about 4 cents per KWh.

25. Can deplete some of the existing radioactive waste and nuclear weapons stockpiles.

Did I mention that Thorium based reactors do not produce CO2, and molten salt reactors do not use water?

Oh – and wish President Trump well in our negotiations with China. Pray, if you believe.

Obamacare made sharing of data between federal departments, including citizenship question possible. A Limerick.

Since the legal delays made it impossible to put the question of citizenship back on the 2020 census forms, where it had been from the 1800’s to 2000, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Commerce Department to obtain citizenship data through means other than the census. That includes documents from the Department of Homeland Security, which houses citizenship and asylum services, and the Social Security Administration.

The order was signed and released to reporters late Thursday night. The Justice Department notified federal district judges of the administration’s decision.

Sharing of data between federal agencies has always been a sticky point, since federal agencies jealously protect their turf. The introduction of Obamacare changed all that, so the legal hindrances were removed for sharing data.

Obamacare did blaze the trail

of sharing of data, no fail.

Who’s a citizen now

can be found out somehow.

It’s better in every detail.

We all remember the introduction of the Obamacare website. It will stand out as an example for all time how not to design a website. The cost was estimated to be 95 million dollars to design and implement. The final cost was more than 2.2 Billion dollars, maybe an all time record for a website. There were many reasons for this overrun, one of which was it had to import a number of data bases and read the data securely. One of the features of Obamacare was that you were not eligible to enroll if you was not a citizen, so they needed full access to all that data. If the need for sharing had arisen first now, imagine the legal delays!

Since the citizenship question on the census form was voluntary, this is a much better way to obtain somewhat accurate data (the drug runners and child traffickers and sex slaves will never be counted accurately anyway)

One final question: Who took the citizen question off the 2010 long form census and why?

Here is the 2000 long form.

The Iranian nuclear deal null and void! A Limerick.

The Iranian Nuclear appeasement:

For Mullahs was quite an achievement.

In a year, give or take

there’ll be nukes, much at stake.

It’s time for a real peace agreement.

According to an article in Iran Watch (http://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/articles-reports/irans-nuclear-timetable) Iran has enough Uranium to make a number of Nuclear bombs in a very short time.

Using their 6000+ centrifuges agreed to under this contract they can produce 1 nuclear bomb in 1 year assuming they only use the 5060 Ir-1 centrifuges allowed to be operated under the contract and use only natural Uranium as fuel (0.7% U235).

If they use all 9000 existing separators they can produce 1 bomb in 6.8 months. In fact, they have been running them since negotiations began and have now reached the limit of 300 Kg reactor grade Uranium (3.5% U235), enough to produce one Nuclear bomb.

Since they did break the contract Sunday July 7, they are free after 35 days to use all 9000 centrifuges to produce weapons grade Uranium at the rate of 1 bomb every seven weeks.

They also have 1080 IR-2 centrifuges currently not yet operating, far more efficient than the IR- 1 centrifuges ready to be started up.

In addition they have 20% enriched Uranium in the form of yellow cake. This used to be UraniumHexaFlouride gas, ready for further enrichment. According to the agreement it was “neutralized” into yellow cake so it couldn’t be further enriched. It takes less than two weeks to convert it back to gas, and another two weeks to enrich it to weapons grade Uranium. They have enough of this to make 1 bomb.

So, this is why the Mullahs exclaimed: We Won! Death to America!

After the contract is finally totally broken the first bomb will be ready less than 1 month, after that, 1 bomb every seven weeks!

And then again, who is to say that they do not already have nuclear bombs? Deep down in mountains are their military “research” facilities dug down, impervious to normal bombs, with radiation shielding doors so no external measurements can be made by nuclear inspectors. In a side deal, the Iranians are going to do the inspections themselves to assure all is above board and no cheating occurs.

Quite a negotiating feat for the Obama administration!

No wonder president Trump did not force congress to ratify it as a treaty, but declare it no longer valid!

Tweeting diplomacy yields results. A Limerick.

Step in the Demilit’rized Zone

Trump showed he can wing it alone

For he didn’t tell Xi;

Tweeted Kim: Come and see.

Diplomacy better than drone.

Fullsized image

See what can be done without “deep state” career diplomats!

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This was Kim Jong-un’s reaction when president Trump thanked him for coming with such a short notice. (if you only knew)

The tweet that started the ball rolling:

Donald J. Trump

After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!

3:51 PM – 28 Jun 2019

They talked for over forty minutes in the very small “treaty room” in the DMZ.

Donald Trump got the Ellis Island medal of honor award, A Limerick.

Awards from the Island of Ellis

The Democrat racists are jealous

Donald Trump shared the prize

with Ms. Parks; they tell lies.

He’s racist, that’s now what they tell us.

In 1986 the Ellis Island Medal of Honor was given for the first time. It is an American award founded by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO), presented annually to American citizens whose accomplishments in their field and inspired service to our nation. Among the very first recipients were:

Joe DiMaggio: An American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak. He is also widely known for his marriage and lifelong devotion to Marilyn Monroe.

Victor Borge: A Danish and American comedian, conductor, and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in the United States and Europe. His blend of music and comedy earned him the nicknames “The Clown Prince of Denmark,” “The Unmelancholy Dane,” and “The Great Dane.”

Anita Bryant: An American singer and political activist. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including “Paper Roses“, which reached #5 on the charts. She was also a former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and was a brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission (which marketed orange juice) from 1969 to 1979. In the 1970s, Bryant became known as an outspoken opponent of gay rights in the US. In 1977, she ran the “Save Our Children” campaign to repeal a local ordinance in Dade County, Florida that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This involvement significantly damaged her popularity and career in show business.In spite of her downfall defending traditional family values she was recognized at this event.

Muhammad Ali: born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century. From early in his career, Ali was known as an inspiring, controversial, and polarizing figure both inside and outside the ring. He converted to Islam and as such refused to be drafted into the military.

Rosa Parks: An activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake‘s order to give up her seat in the “colored section” to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled.

Donald Trump: Yes, He too was honored. This in no way negates his lifelong compassion for sports, showbiz, political activism, religious freedom and civil rights.

Obama and Trump signs the Westminster Abbey guestbook. What a difference! A Limerick.

President Barack Obama signs the Westminster Abbey Guestbook, May 24, 2011.

Image result for obama signs westminster abbey

June 3, 2019 President Donald Trump does likewise.

Image result for Trump signs westminster abbey 2019

Obama and Trump sign the book

On Brexit, a different look.

No more “last in the queue,”

trade for me, trade for you.

The year is important, just look.

Queation: Who is more presidential?

The one that can’t even get the year right. or the one that thanks the hosts for the “special place”?

The need to develop Thorium based Nuclear Energy as the major electric energy supply. 2. Thorium already mined, ready to be extracted.

Thorium is a by-product of mining heavy metals and rare earth metals. The price is the cost of extracting and refining, which can be as low as $40/Kg. No extra mining is required for extracting the Thorium, and we all know that mining is a major source for pollution.

The first thing we must realize is that rare earth metals are not all that rare. They are a thousand times or more abundant than gold or platinum in the earth crust and easy to mine, but a little more difficult to refine. Thorium and Uranium will be mined together with rare earth metals.

U.S. used to be the major supplier for rare earth metals, which was fine up to around 1984. Then the U.S. regulators determined that Uranium and Thorium contained in the ore made the ore radioactive, so they decided to make rare metal ore a “source material” with all what that meant for record keeping and control. This made mining in the U.S. unprofitable so in 2001 the last mine closed down. China had no such scruples, such as human and environmental concerns, so they took over the rare earth metals concession and in 2010 controlled over 95% of the world supply, which was according to their long term plan of controlling the world by 2025. Luckily this has now been rectified with U.S. and Australian mines reopened.

Rare Earth Element Production

So, why is this important? Just take a look at all the uses for rare earth metals. The most sought after pays all the cost of mining and refining, and the rest are readily available at nominal cost.

The Chinese almost got away with it, and that is but one reason the trade negotiations are so complicated and hard fought, but necessary. Donald Trump fights for reciprocity and fair competition.

The Presidential Commission on Climate security (PCCS). A Limerick

Commission to study what’s best:

The Climate Security quest;

CO2 keeps alive

plants and animals thrive.

The end of the world? No, it’s blest.

Item: March 20, 2019. A federal judge temporarily blocked new oil lease auctions in Wyoming on Tuesday after finding the Department of the Interior “did not sufficiently consider climate change” when proposing the lease sales, The Washington Post reports.

Washington D.C. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled the government violated federal law and did not fully study the environmental impact of oil development on 300,000 acres of federal land.

Meanwhile, a massive coalition of environmental organizations, activists, and think-tank leaders signed a letter to President Donald Trump supporting the proposed Presidential Commission on Climate Security (PCCS), as well as the work of Trump climate and national security adviser Dr. William Happer of Princeton University.

A small excerpt from the letter:

It (the commission) would be charged with conducting an independent, high-level review of the Fourth National Climate Assessment and other official reports relating to climate and its implications for national security. Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly-qualified scientists only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing the reports. Among major issues that have been raised and that we hope the commission will scrutinize: the models used have assumed climate sensitivities to CO2 concentrations significantly higher than recent research warrants; the models used have predicted much more warming than has actually occurred; predictions of the negative impacts of global warming have been made based on implausible high-end emissions scenarios; the positive impacts of warming have been ignored or minimized; and surface temperature data sets have been manipulated to show more rapid warming than has actually occurred.

The letter is signed by over 150 scientists and organizations.