🇺🇸 Logging, Forestry and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) RT/Follow ≠ endorsement
Nevada, USA
Joined November 2022
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👍 Had a logging company with long hard hours. Training crew to work slower (for equipment and safety sake) and make every move count required a change in thinking individually, and as a crew. Water doesn’t rise above its own level.
“The West is not declining because of outside forces.
It is declining because it abandoned its own operating system.”
Truth is not inside you, it is above you, it is revealed and received, not constructed.
This is the idea that built the West’s entire moral and intellectual universe.
You don’t create truth, you conform yourself to it.
When John writes: “In the beginning was the Logos... The Word became flesh” He was not borrowing from Greek philosophy.
Logos theology is Jewish, it grows out of the Memra in the Aramaic Targums, the Wisdom tradition in Proverbs, the personified Word that creates, commands, judges, reveals.
Truth is not discovered by introspection. Truth came down and revealed itself.
Christianity didn’t build the West by telling people to “look within.” It told them to look up.
If truth is revealed, rulers don’t invent justice, they obey it. This is the foundation of Western law.
People carry worth because God says so, not because the state approves. This is the foundation of Western rights.
Right and wrong are real categories, not subjective moods. There is a moral universe outside of you.
The Enlightenment relocated the source of truth. Instead of God, nature and human reason.
Truth was still “out there,” but no longer revealed, it was discovered by rational investigation. This was a downgrade, but not yet a collapse.
Romanticism said: Feelings matter more than reason. Authenticity matters more than duty. The inner world matters more than the outer world.
It didn’t yet say “the self creates truth,” but it made the self important enough to challenge it.
Then Nietzsche announces the death of God, which means: there is no longer an external truth to submit to.
Freud placed ultimate authority in the subconscious. Now truth isn’t above you, it is buried inside your psychological wires.
By the time of Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, postmodernism turned truth into a power structure.
Meaning is socially constructed, identity is fluid, language creates reality, all knowledge is relative, the self is the final interpreter.
This is the full inversion of the Judeo-Christian model.
Now:
Truth is not discovered; it is manufactured. Reality is not received; it is constructed. Identity is not given; it is chosen. Meaning is not revealed; it is invented.
This is the philosophical root of everything happening today, from gender ideology to the empowerment of Islam.
A civilization built on external truth can't survive when external truth is denied.
The West today is trying to live on the moral capital of a worldview it already abandoned.
Without external truth law becomes arbitrary, politics becomes tribal, and morality becomes preference.
Freedom loses its foundation, rights lose their justification.
You can't sustain Western civilization on the exact opposite of what built it. You can't dismantle transcendent truth and expect transcendent values to remain. You can't deny revealed morality and expect moral order to survive.
The West is not declining because of outside forces.
It is declining because it abandoned its own operating system.
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
Best I've read on the near term prospects for energy/climate legislation in the US
Against my better judgment, I’m weighing in here, on the dumbest policy discussion platform in the world, to talk about permitting reform. As background, I was Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff at the Energy Department in the Obama Administration; I worked for seven years in the Senate Democratic Leader’s Office; and I served as Chief of Staff in the House. I co-founded the largest energy transition advisory and advocacy firm in the United States 13 years ago. I have worked directly or indirectly on nearly every major piece of energy and climate legislation in the past two decades, as well as many other pieces of legislation outside of energy. I’ve also worked as a political researcher for multiple campaigns and the DSCC, where I cataloged politicians’ and candidates’ votes and positions. Today, I spend nearly all of my time talking to policymakers, clean energy companies, advocates, and journalists on energy and climate issues.
The idea that there will be anywhere near 60 votes in the Senate for a clean-energy-only bill in January is not based in reality. I have no idea where this idea came from, but it ignores mountains of evidence and seems to underpin the arguments of everyone on here saying we’re somehow going to get a bill that excludes oil and gas if we wait.
First, and very obviously, every candidate in 2026 ran on reducing gasoline and electricity prices for consumers. One post-election analysis found that only six victorious Democrats used the word “climate” in their election night statements, while 166 discussed affordability. I couldn't find a single Senate candidate who flipped a seat who mentioned it. Voters sent a clear mandate to focus on affordability, and they are rightly irate that Washington has pushed ideological issues favored by special interest groups ahead of the issues they care most about. After getting trounced in 2024 for ignoring inflation, Democrats won by promising to focus on those issues.
Second, very few Democrats in the Senate support anything remotely close to a keep-it-in-the-ground agenda. Next Congress, 19 members of the Democratic caucus who voted for cloture on the motion to proceed on this version of the permitting bill will return. They’ll be joined by James Talarico, who has endorsed all-of-the-above and vowed to protect oil and gas jobs. Mary Peltola has explicitly called for more oil and gas development. Scott Colom supports natural gas. Both Adam Hamilton and Annie Andrews endorsed an “all of the above” strategy, which includes oil and gas.
They will join the 14 members of next year’s caucus who declined to strip the natural gas-carrying Mountain Valley Pipeline from the 2023 debt limit bill. Senator Kaine offered an amendment to remove the provision expediting the pipeline’s completion. Senators Bennet, Brown, Coons, Fetterman, Hassan, Hickenlooper, Kelly, King, Murray, Ossoff, Padilla, Reed, Schatz, and Schumer voted against that amendment. The year before, 27 members of next year’s caucus voted to advance Senator Manchin’s permitting amendment, which would have completed MVP.
Both Bennet and Warner voted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Senators King, Murphy, and Blumenthal all urged FERC to expedite the Algonquin pipeline expansion. Fetterman, Kaine, and Hickenlooper have all supported LNG exports (as did the Obama Administration). Senator Gallego released an energy plan last December that called for clear timelines for oil and gas pipeline permitting. Roy Cooper’s administration approved the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s water permit in 2018 when he was North Carolina’s governor. Mary Peltola has introduced legislation to open ANWR and NPR-A to drilling.
Next year, the caucus will contain only 14 senators who co-sponsored the Senate Green New Deal resolution. Three of them voted for cloture this week, including Senator Heinrich, who is leading the charge on permitting. That’s 10 Democrats out of 56 who supported the GND and opposed cloture on permitting.
This does not mean that a majority of the Democratic caucus will push for new oil and gas infrastructure. But much of the commentary here implies that Democrats will only support renewables and Republicans will only support oil and gas infrastructure. The record doesn't support that idea.
This, of course, doesn’t even get to the fact that we will need more than a few Senate Republicans to support a permitting package in the next Congress. Getting those Senators will require compromises that will likely push some Democrats to vote no. So you’ll very likely need more than four. A bill that gets Fetterman, Murkowski, and Curtis could easily lose Sanders, Warren, Markey, and Merkley. So then you’d need more GOP votes. This is how legislation works. The IRA was the exception, not the rule, and it nearly died before it passed. It was that hard to get Manchin and Sanders on the same page, and it didn't need a single GOP vote. Many of the groups opposing permitting didn’t like the IRA. And, of course, a bill that doesn’t get signed by the President is about as useful as any tweet on this hellscape of a website.
There seems to be a very real disagreement about what would make this bill “better.” There is no “clean energy only” version of the bill that can pass the next Congress. NEPA and the NHPA are, at best, fundamentally outdated at a time when we need to build as much clean energy infrastructure as possible, as quickly as possible. Those who argue that these two statutes are the only way to achieve meaningful engagement with the sovereign tribes and frontline communities lack imagination. Remember that under both NEPA and NHPA, Dakota Access got built - adjacent to tribal land and under the Missouri River. Acting as if these laws, written long before climate change was a known crisis, are sacred and should not be touched ignores their reality. Saying that the nation-to-nation relationship between sovereign tribes and the federal government is only a function of “historic preservation” is quite insulting to tribes. Since NEPA and the NHPA were signed into law, more than 250,000 miles of pipelines have been built in the United States. NEPA is actually a pretty poor tool for killing infrastructure. It is, however, great for lawyers.
And finally, the policy window is open now. There is no guarantee it will remain open indefinitely. In 2009, with overwhelming Democratic majorities, we got eight Republicans to vote for cap-and-trade legislation in the House. It passed by seven votes after 44(!) Democrats voted against it, and it died in the Senate without a floor vote. It took us 13 years to get another big climate vote via the IRA (which was, again, not good enough for some of the activists). There is no guarantee oil stays below $100/barrel or that the economy doesn’t slip into a recession or the wars in Iran and Ukraine stay confined to those countries. Macro events could create even more pressure for policies that support oil and gas or crush the appetite for a debate on permitting.
I’ve worked on nuclear, solar, wind, electric vehicles, transmission, energy storage, and just about every other form of clean energy technology. I haven’t lobbied on behalf of any of the oil and gas bills I cited above, nor have I lobbied for oil or gas companies. I’ve worked with many of the NGOs supporting this bill, and many of the NGOs opposed to it. I’ve spent many decades working on policy, building coalitions, and trying to instill a sense of urgency on climate policy. Reasonable people can oppose this bill for many reasons. But don’t delude yourself into thinking there are 56 votes against fossil fuel infrastructure, or that there is a viable path to a permitting deal that will keep oil and gas in the ground in the next few years. Any permitting bill will need to be bipartisan, and once policy windows close, there is no guarantee they will open again soon.
In short, no legislation is perfect. This bill is very clearly a net-positive for the climate. We cannot solve climate change without policy changes that lower emissions. The status quo is not good enough. There is an opportunity to move the needle today, and we should take it.
I look forward to all of the thoughtful, constructive comments on this post, which will once again prove that this is the best place on earth for substantive policy discussion. I will take suggestions to delete my account in good faith, and I recommend that anyone serious about policy do the same.
Saudi Railways freight train 💪
ليس #بالذكاءالأصطناعي كماتفعل بعض الشعوب البائسه هناوهناك ممن يغيضهم منظرمثل هذابل هي الحقيقه بأم عينها
وهاهوعملاق الشمال يشق طريقه امام ومرئى الحاقدين #إنهاالسعوديه_العظمى
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Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
Recent polls show both parties share high concern about AI, with roughly equal shares more worried than excited. Democrats rate the risks higher versus benefits, push harder for regulation, and oppose local data centers more often, citing job losses, energy costs, environmental strain, and wealth concentration. Republicans have grown relatively more positive on innovation and company trust. Workplace AI use tracks jobs and education more than party.
This clearly explains why the Electoral College matters to our republic.🇺🇸 👇
The Electoral College was basically a compromise. The Founders wanted the president chosen with the people’s support, but they didn’t want a straight national popular vote or to just hand the decision to Congress.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, they talked for months about how to pick a president. A direct popular vote worried them. Bigger states would almost always win. A lot of voters wouldn’t really know candidates from other parts of the country. And someone who was just good at stirring people up in one area could end up winning.
Letting Congress pick the president worried them even more. The president would end up depending on Congress, which goes against the idea of keeping the branches separate. It also opened the door to backroom deals, corruption, or other countries trying to influence the choice.
So they settled on the Electoral College. Each state gets electors equal to its number of House seats plus its two senators. Those electors cast the actual votes for president. You need a majority to win. If no one gets it, the House decides, and each state gets one vote. The states get to decide how they pick their electors.
This setup treated the country as a union of states instead of one giant population. It gave smaller states more of a voice, kept the president from being controlled by Congress, and still let the people’s choice matter.
Alexander Hamilton explained it in Federalist 68. He said the people’s voice still counts because they choose the electors. The electors would be people who could actually study the candidates and make a careful choice. Meeting in their own states (instead of all in one place) would make it harder for chaos, bribery, or foreign influence to take over. And the president would still depend on the people, not Congress, to stay in office.
Hamilton also pointed out that being good at “the little arts of popularity” might get someone ahead in one state, but it would take real ability and character to win the confidence of the whole country. He thought the system made it very likely only someone highly qualified would end up as president.
That’s the idea they were going for: a capable president with support across the country, protection for smaller states, and an executive that stayed independent. Things changed later with political parties and the winner-take-all system most states use now, but the basic structure is still what the Constitution set up.
The Electoral College must be protected at all costs— it’s common sense in a country filled with lunatics.
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“When a state is divided into competing tribes, it cannot enforce one law for all…”
The USA, France, the UK, and most EU states cannot replicate the El Salvador cleanup, because they no longer have the one thing El Salvador had: a unified nation.
Demography is the enemy. Multiculturalism, open borders, diversity, and tolerance have created a disaster.
These policies did not create unity. They created parallel societies. They created communities that do not share the same laws, the same loyalty, or the same values as the host nation. When a state is divided into competing tribes, it cannot enforce one law for all.
There are Muslim communities in the West where, if the police try to enforce the law, the media will immediately call it Islamophobia. Enforcement is not judged by the crime. It is judged by the religion of the criminal.
There is a Somali community where, if you try to enforce the law, the media will label you racist. The crime disappears from the conversation. The accusation of racism becomes the story.
In El Salvador, the opposite happened. During the cleanup, every citizen was behind the great leader, the philosopher Nayib Bukele. Behind the army. Behind the police. Behind the whole government. Citizens and government were in unison.
There was one nation, one will, one mission: to destroy the gangs and reclaim the country. That unity is something the West cannot have, because the West has deliberately destroyed its own unity.
President Trump tried the illegal migrant cleanup, and the result exposed America. American woke liberals were shielding the criminals.
The Democrats, the media, and the activists were shielding illegal immigrants. They were against their own President. They were against ICE. They were against their own government for trying to enforce the law.
In El Salvador, the people protected the police from the criminals. In America, the people protect the criminals from the police.
It is pure madness in America. Murders can be reduced. Hopelessness can be reduced. Gang violence can be reduced. The solution is proven. El Salvador proved it. But Americans want to protect the problem. They want to make excuses for it. And they hate the leaders who try to solve it.
El Salvador chose order. The West chose chaos and called it compassion.
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Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
What’s up Jerry, how is this for you:
- $185 million stopped in Minnesota from going to daycares
- $1.2 BILLION in California Medicaid deferred
- The head “Learer” pleaded guilty to daycare fraud in Minnesota
- Largest autism fraud bust in US history following my video
- 450+ daycares in Minnesota shut down
- 500+ hospices in LA shut down
- Multiple NYC adult daycares raided and recently a $100m fraud bust in NYC
- Over $250 BILLION in fraud exposed since my Minnesota fraud video
Are you angry I’ve stopped money going to learers and put it back into the hands of the poor and needy who actually depend on these government programs?
Please continue to defend people who rob, steal and cheat from the most vulnerable in the United States. I’ll continue to help America while you keep complaining on 𝕏.
“THIS is why they demonize Bukele, that is why they sabotage Haiti, that is why they hate any man who actually helps the poor.”
The chaos in El Salvador before Bukele was never an accident, and the chaos in Haiti today is not an accident either.
The media told you that the gangs were just poor boys who went bad on their own, but that story falls apart the moment you ask one simple question.
Where does a poor sixteen year old boy living in a slum with no job and no money get an AK-47 and an AR-15 and a Glock and thousands of rounds of ammunition, and where does he get a brand new Toyota Hilux and motorcycles and speedboats and drones and encrypted phones and bulletproof vests and night vision goggles, and who pays his monthly salary and pays for his safe house and pays his lawyer when he is arrested and pays the police and the judge and the prison guard to look the other way, and who pays his family when he dies?
A poor boy cannot afford even one bullet, so someone else is paying for all of it.
That someone is the multimillionaires and the billionaires and the wealthy entities who profit from chaos, because chaos is a business and a broken country is the most profitable business in the world.
When a country is in chaos its land becomes cheap so they can buy it, its gold and its drugs and its resources can be stolen without anyone asking questions, its government becomes weak so they can control it, and its people become so scared that they obey anyone who promises them a little safety.
In El Salvador the gangs were not fighting the system, the gangs were the system, paid to keep the poor terrorized so the poor would never rise up and demand a better country.
In Haiti it is the same story, the gangs are not independent, they are funded and armed and protected by rich families and foreign businessmen and foreign NGOs who want Haiti to stay weak so they can keep stealing its ports and its gold and its labour.
And when a man like Bukele comes and says I will lock up all the gangs and end this in two years, who attacks him? It is the same people.
The same billionaires who fund the gangs fund the media that calls Bukele a dictator, the same wealthy entities who arm the gangs fund the NGOs that cry human rights for murderers, the same people who profit from chaos fund the political voices that hate real help in Haiti and sabotage anyone who is actually capable of doing it.
Look at the pattern and it becomes clear, when a gang kills a hundred innocent people there is silence, but when a leader kills a hundred gang members there is outrage.
When a gang rapes children there is no campaign, but when Bukele locks up rapists there is a global campaign against him.
That is because the media is not independent, it is owned by billionaires, the NGOs are not independent, they are funded by billionaires, and the politicians are not independent, they are bought by billionaires.
They do not want Haiti saved and they did not want El Salvador saved, they want them broken, because a broken country is cheap to buy and easy to control.
Bukele exposed them, he proved that gangs can be destroyed in months if you have the will, and that terrified them, because if El Salvador can be fixed then Haiti can be fixed, and if Haiti can be fixed then Africa can be fixed, and if Africa can be fixed then the billionaires lose their business.
That is why they demonize Bukele, that is why they sabotage Haiti, that is why they hate any man who actually helps the poor.
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
The electoral college is an indispensable feature of the Constitution.
We must protect it.
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
This is the actual aircraft I'll be flying solo around the world, across all seven continents, including Antarctica.
Currently based in Orlando, Florida.
Thinking of throwing a departure party in Orlando before I fly around the planet.
OPEN INVITE. Come see the plane, meet some cool people, and hang out before takeoff. Date soon TBC.
Drop a comment or DM me if you’d be down to come!
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
I’ve been using X for 15 years and I finally put the greatest photos I’ve ever taken on your timeline
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
Having written a textbook Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999), I got good laugh out this one.
“The Islamic Republic expected energy disruption to become its ultimate weapon.
The United States is turning the regime’s dependence on energy exports into the weapon being used against it.”
🍷
The United States says economic warfare is crippling the Islamic Republic so effectively that a full-scale military offensive is unnecessary.
Marco Rubio said the sanctions campaign and naval blockade are inflicting “extraordinary” economic pain that is intensifying every day.
“We don’t need to conduct military strikes if we’re achieving the same objective through economic means and economic pressure.”
The numbers support his assessment.
The Islamic Republic loaded no crude or condensate onto tankers throughout September, the first full month without loadings since modern tracking began. No new cargo has been loaded since approximately August 25, while tankers filled since mid-July remain trapped inside the blockade zone.
Iranian oil stored at sea outside the blockade has fallen from nearly 89 million barrels in July to zero. Another 43 million barrels remain stranded inside the restricted area.
Without functioning export routes, production has reportedly fallen from pre-war levels of approximately 3.3–3.6 million barrels per day to around 2 million or less.
CENTCOM estimates the blockade has already prevented more than $25 billion in crude exports.
Because Chinese buyers normally pay weeks after receiving shipments, the regime is still collecting delayed revenue from earlier deliveries. If the blockade holds, however, its crude and condensate income could approach zero by mid-December.
This is succeeding where conventional sanctions repeatedly failed.
Sanctions could be circumvented through shell companies, falsified documents, ship-to-ship transfers and shadow fleets. The physical blockade prevents tankers from leaving Iranian ports and transporting oil through the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
The Islamic Republic has also failed to sustain the global energy crisis it expected would force the United States to retreat.
Other Persian Gulf producers have increased exports, regional oil flows have recovered and Brent has fallen toward $90 after recently approaching $118.
The regime is losing its oil revenue while the international market adapts around it.
The United States is now expanding the pressure beyond maritime routes.
Task Force Iron Gate is targeting weapons, dual-use technology, sanctioned materials and illicit revenue moving across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea.
It is not a physical ground blockade, but it is designed to disrupt the alternative routes the Islamic Republic needs to finance itself and rebuild its missile, drone and military capabilities.
This does not eliminate the risk of escalation.
A regime losing its primary source of foreign currency could retaliate through shipping attacks, cyber operations, proxies or direct military action.
But launching a wider offensive while the existing strategy is steadily draining the regime’s revenue would create enormous military, economic and political risks before the blockade has reached its full effect.
The strategy is working because it forces the Islamic Republic to absorb compounding damage while denying it the oil shock, American casualties and regional chaos it needs to fracture the coalition against it.
The Islamic Republic expected energy disruption to become its ultimate weapon.
The United States is turning the regime’s dependence on energy exports into the weapon being used against it.
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Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
We don’t have to agree on everything guys, but here’s what we do need to agree on if we want America to continue being America:
- All forms of collectivism are bad and against the US Constitution, including but not limited to Marxism, communism, socialism, Naziism, DSA, fascism, and Islamism.
- The US Constitution was built for a moral Christian population and is wholly inadequate for any other (yes, this includes immigrants of different faiths and values that refuse to assimilate).
- The mass welfare state that has become the biggest welfare state in the world and gives away multiple trillions of dollars a year must be drastically scaled back.
- Our military is the primary reason the USD is the world’s reserve currency and our economy stays afloat because of that fact, so we must stop acting like every time it is necessary to use our military to shape international affairs that it is a bad thing for America, because it is not.
- Our education system is entirely broken and must be revamped from pre-school through higher education and be based on legitimate history, merit, and a genuine commitment to knowledge.
- The federal government must return to its original Constitutional intent, shrink by 90%, and stay out of the lives of everyday Americans as much as possible. Local and state governments are more in tune with what their people actually need, and should supersede the federal government in almost all government related affairs.
There is much more I could go into, obviously, but I think this is a good start.
Share your thoughts and what you would add to this list.
Mr. Ted Silberstein retweeted
And, I do want to wish a happy Veterans Day to ALL military spouses and families! I’ve seen it from both sides. Families serve, too. And their service is instrumental in us doing our jobs safely when abroad.
Thank you, military spouses and families! Happy Veterans Day!
On this Veterans’s Day, let me retell one of my favorite stories because it really touched me and made me proud to be an American airman. “Returning Home.”
When I was an Air Force C-141 pilot based in Northern California, we flew a lot of missions that involved “island hopping.” Flying from one to another of the many US military installations around the Pacific. Really good flying, lots of fun, and this was all pre-GPS. Just a couple pilots with dual Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) to point the way. No navigator and nothing between the islands except the Pacific Ocean.
On one particular trip in the mid-90s, I was tasked with flying the body of a WWII veteran who’d fought in the Battle of Kwajalein. Immediately upon his return from the war, this veteran told his family that, upon his death, he wanted to be buried on Kwajalein. It’s a touching one. Grab a beverage and a tissue, and lean in close.
That night, my crew and I “crew rested” (laid over) and grabbed a bite to eat at their dining facility. After dinner, a couple of us grabbed beers and headed to the ocean. It was a glorious night. Gentle warm ocean breezes, flags flapping in the wind, and the stars were incredible. Absolutely spectacular. The other guys finished their beers and turned in.
I stayed and sat on a concrete pillar, my feet dangling right over the waves, and stared at an almost full moon, an occasional shooting star, sucking on a beer. The only sounds were the waves, the only lights sparsely populated the island behind me.
I thought about the Marine I’d brought with me. Why, of all places, would he want to be laid to rest here? I thought about the battles that must’ve been fought right where I was sitting. And I thought about the man’s military service and what it must’ve meant to him. To be so committed to a time and a place, that he told his family his plans more than 50 years ago. Incredible.
Under the stars in a sky that seemed to go forever, I thought about how small and trivial I was in God’s plan. Yet, here I was, firmly implanted in the life and experience of this stranger. A man so driven, that he was being buried 7,000 miles away from home.
But I felt like I knew him and understood him. And I was humbled to have been blessed with the opportunity to bring him “home.” 🫡🇺🇸
