Fake news: Gizmodo smears Trump, then issues “correction” #fakeNews

If you want real fake news, look to secular leftists
If you want real fake news, look to secular leftists

Oh my goodness, Trump is going to explode the planet with nuclear weapons! That’s what Ashley Feinberg, a clown journalist for the far-left blog “Gizmodo” wants you to believe. (H/T Christina Hoff Sommers)

Here’s her story. (Warning: vulgar language)

Excerpt:

According to an official within the Department of Energy, the Trump transition team has declined to ask the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration and his deputy to temporarily stay in their roles after Trump takes office on January 20th.

The NNSA is the $12 billion-a-year agency that “maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.” It’s unclear when the two officials will be replaced. Their offices will remain vacant until they are.

[…]Trump, however, appears determined to be free of anyone who was appointed by Obama, regardless of whether or not he has anyone in line for the job.

Oh, it’s terrible, that awful Trump! Firing critical personnel before he even takes office.

OK, so what this post is saying is that Trump’s team WAS EXPLICITLY ASKED TO RETAIN these nuclear arsenal administrators, and Trump’s team EXPLICITLY SAID NO. That would indeed be irresponsible, if it were true.

But wait, here’s a correction:

Correction, 1/9/17, 11:03 p.m., : Another NNSA official, speaking on background to Gizmodo and Defense News, has disputed this report as “inaccurate” while confirming that “there have been no discussions between the president-elect’s transition team and any of NNSA’s political appointees on extending their public service past Jan. 20.” In other words, the Trump transition team has not asked the top two NNSA officials to stay on until they can be replaced.

After speaking to our source for clarification, we have updated the story and headline to reflect that, while Klotz and Creedon have submitted their resignations, intend to depart on January 20, and have not been asked by the Trump transition to stay past that date, the Trump team has not explicitly instructed them to leave or “clean out their desks,” as we reported. According to our source, both officials “have expressed [to the Trump team] that they would likely be willing to stay to facilitate a smooth transition, if asked,” as is the tradition for key officials, and have received no response.

OH!!!!!! So the Trump team never actually asked them to leave or clean out their desks? Wow, that makes the whole story false. And the author of the post is a “Senior Reporter” for Gizmodo. She has a BA in Communication and English, which is about the least challenging major there is, except for maybe Education. The bottom of the barrel. I would imagine that this is what people who want to major in being drunk and hooking up study.

You can read more about Ashley’s “journalism” in this post on Gawker, who also employs her.

Why do Democrat voters rely on fake news for their view of the world? I guess they think that clowning is more important than accuracy.

If you ever wanted to understand how secular leftists journalists operate – I mean from the lowliest blogs right through Slate to the New York Times and Washington Post, there you have the perfect example. Ashley will probably be working for the NYT or the WaPo in the near future. She has every qualification. This is why I keep telling young people to study STEM, because at least that won’t give you brain damage.

Meet the young conservative running against a Democrat senator in Ohio

Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel
Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel

Although Republicans have the House, Senate and White House now, there are still a lot of very liberal senators who need to be defeated in 2018. In Ohio, there is a very liberal and very old senator named Sherrod Brown who faces a challenge from a much young conservative candidate.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Josh Mandel, Ohio’s 39-year-old Republican state treasurer, is making his second attempt to unseat Democrat Sherrod Brown in the U.S. Senate by running as a conservative and defender of the Constitution.

Mandel, a former Marine who served as a state representative before winning election to two terms as state treasurer, spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about his 2018 campaign to “transfer the power from the politicians to the people.”

Among Mandel’s goals as a senator would be instituting term limits to “clean out” veteran politicians who have stayed too long in Washington, torching political correctness in the fight against Islamic extremism, and rolling back federal government regulations that have squeezed entrepreneurs and small businesses. He is also passionate about enforcing immigration laws and protecting Ohio’s oil, gas, and coal industries.

“I think that everyday taxpayers are fed up with the feeling that Washington is rigged on behalf of special interests and lobbyists and I think there is a hunger for a new generation of leaders to come shake this place up,” Mandel said in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.

The 2018 Senate race will pit the young conservative against Brown, a liberal politician 30 years Mandel’s senior who has been in Washington for more than two decades. The way Mandel sees it, Ohio voters will have a clear choice between a veteran politician who has stayed in Washington to “do well” and a leader from the next generation who is unafraid of standing up for conservative principles.

“I think the voters of Ohio are going to have a choice of do they want someone who ran on term limits and then changed [his] mind so he could spend his entire adult life in Washington like Sherrod Brown, or someone like me who is going to come here to Washington, do as much good as possible, and then go home and live under the budget and laws that I created,” Mandel said.

[…]The young Republican likely faces a fierce battle against Brown, who he unsuccessfully challenged in 2012. Brown defeated Mandel by six points to win reelection to the U.S. Senate.

Brown has served in the Senate since 2007 and represented Ohio’s 13th district in Congress for 13 years before that. The Democrat has had a long career in politics, serving as Ohio’s secretary of state and a member of the state’s general assembly before coming to Washington.

Accomplishments:

When asked about his accomplishments as state treasurer, Mandel pointed to his work releasing the Ohio checkbook online, which gives taxpayers a look at how the state spends its money, and improving Ohio’s rating on government transparency. Mandel also helped dig the state out of an $8 billion budget hole; Ohio’s finances have moved from 43rd to 7th in national rankings since 2011.

Under Obama (and Sherrod Brown), the US national debt went from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in 8 years.

Here is Mandel’s 2018 Senate race ad:

Sherrod Brown has a conservative rating of 7% from Heritage Action. Ohio is a purple state. I think Ohio can do better than 7% in 2018.

Luke Barnes discusses the fine-tuning of the fine structure constant

Fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant
Fine-tuning of the strong nuclear force and the fine structure constant

Here is an article from The New Atlantis written by cosmologist Luke Barnes about one specific example of cosmic fine-tuning. (H/T Uncommon Descent via J. Warner Wallace tweet)

Excerpt:

Today, our deepest understanding of the laws of nature is summarized in a set of equations. Using these equations, we can make very precise calculations of the most elementary physical phenomena, calculations that are confirmed by experimental evidence. But to make these predictions, we have to plug in some numbers that cannot themselves be calculated but are derived from measurements of some of the most basic features of the physical universe. These numbers specify such crucial quantities as the masses of fundamental particles and the strengths of their mutual interactions. After extensive experiments under all manner of conditions, physicists have found that these numbers appear not to change in different times and places, so they are called the fundamental constants of nature.

These constants represent the edge of our knowledge. Richard Feynman called one of them — the fine-structure constant, which characterizes the amount of electromagnetic force between charged elementary particles like electrons — “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.”

[…]A universe that has just small tweaks in the fundamental constants might not have any of the chemical bonds that give us molecules, so say farewell to DNA, and also to rocks, water, and planets. Other tweaks could make the formation of stars or even atoms impossible. And with some values for the physical constants, the universe would have flickered out of existence in a fraction of a second. That the constants are all arranged in what is, mathematically speaking, the very improbable combination that makes our grand, complex, life-bearing universe possible is what physicists mean when they talk about the “fine-tuning” of the universe for life.

Atheists, both rank-and-file and expert, almost universally misunderstand the fine-tuning argument. They imagine that if the constants and quantities specified at the origin of the universe were different, then humans would just have green skin, or maybe forehead ridges, or pointy ears. Atheists tend to get their view of science from science fiction in novels or television or movies, and they base their worldview off of fantasies, since this is less thinking and feels better than letting the scientific evidence influence their worldview.

So what does the scientific evidence actually show?

Barnes explains:

The strong nuclear force, for example, is the glue that holds protons and neutrons together in the nuclei of atoms. If, in a hypothetical universe, it is too weak, then nuclei are not stable and the periodic table disappears again. If it is too strong, then the intense heat of the early universe could convert all hydrogen into helium — meaning that there could be no water, and that 99.97 percent of the 24 million carbon compounds we have discovered would be impossible, too. And, as the chart to the right shows, the forces, like the masses, must be in the right balance. If the electromagnetic force, which is responsible for the attraction and repulsion of charged particles, is too strong or too weak compared to the strong nuclear force, anything from stars to chemical compounds would be impossible.

Stars are particularly finicky when it comes to fundamental constants. If the masses of the fundamental particles are not extremely small, then stars burn out very quickly. Stars in our universe also have the remarkable ability to produce both carbon and oxygen, two of the most important elements to biology. But, a change of just a few percent in the up and down quarks’ masses, or in the forces that hold atoms together, is enough to upset this ability — stars would make either carbon or oxygen, but not both.

It’s very important that theists are well-equipped to explain how individual cases of fine-tuning work. We need to know what you lose if you alter these constants and quantities even slightly. You can read about some more examples in this previous post.