…is a pond frozen due to climate change moving Arctic air to lower areas, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Independent Sentinel, with a post saying it’s no time for small battles.
It’s cold week! Since it will be so cold this week. Which is, BTW, your fault.
Read: If All You See… »
Happy Sunday! Another great day in Returned America. Got some nice rain, the Devils are number one in the Metropolitan, and the Rangers are winless at home. This pinup is by Art Frahm, with a wee bit of help.
What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15
As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014, so, most are hosted internally). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your Pinups for Vets calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me. I’ve also mostly alphabetized them, makes it easier scrolling the feedreader
Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!
Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?
Two great sites for getting news links are Liberty Daily and Whatafinger.
Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »
First, though, Chuck Schumer had a meltdown, and doesn’t want to put Dems one year subsidies to insurance companies extension in writing
From the Mercury County Outlook
Moreno: “Is there a proposal in writing that we can read?”
Schumer: “There is a proposal that is very simple…”
Moreno: “Would it still have no income caps, so people who make a million, two, three million dollars a year—”
Schumer: “We can fix that later. We care about working people, not billionaires. I yield the floor.”
And then he stormed off. And from the tweet
Moreno: “I was going to ask him before he stormed out of the room because evidently he doesn‘t want to hear any opposing views or actually engage in meaningful negotiation … Would he continue 0 dollar premiums, which we know for a FACT, have enormous levels of fraud..”
“If he had stayed, I would have asked him a third question: Does he these monies to go directly to insurance companies?”
Why, exactly are the premiums so darned expensive, and how much go to pad the accounts of the insurance companies?
Trump demands ACA subsidy changes as Senate remains divided over shutdown
President Donald Trump on Saturday urged Senate Republicans to redirect funding for Affordable Care Act subsidies away from health insurers and toward average Americans, his latest gambit to pressure Democrats as a government shutdown snarls air traffic, leaves food stamp benefits in limbo and furloughs roughly 650,000 federal workers. (snip)
Trump’s demand to send funds directly to Americans, which would require an act of Congress, met immediate resistance from some Democrats and would face serious legislative headwinds given lawmakers’ inability to reach consensus on much smaller changes to the health law.
Trump, in several Truth Social posts Saturday, renewed his criticism of the health law, commonly known as Obamacare, when offering his proposal.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote.
Wait, Democrats are against sending the money to Americans, and want to make sure it goes to the insurance companies? Hmm.
So, um, since Barking Moonbat seems too tame these days, how about Barking Humpty’s, because they are so broken they can never be put back together, just like Humpty Dumpty?
Read: Trump Wants Obamacare Money Sent Directly To Americans, Not Insurance Companies »
At one point the Sierra Club actually concerned itself with the environment. Clean water, air, land. Though always somewhat leftist, I supported them. Then they went full on climate cult and Woke
Huh what?
The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.
The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened as it takes on the Trump administration.
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.
The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.
Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.
They embraced climate doom while forgetting about real environmental issues. Most of the funds raised went into raising more funds, paying exorbitant salaries, and donating to Democrats, not helping the environment. Or even Doing Something about Hotcoldwetdry. Is it any wonder so many said “nah, I’m out”?
And this year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.
Maybe shouldn’t have hired a stone cold activist, who’s never really worked a real job, and is all about playing the race card?
During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the Sierra Club was flush with donations, its leaders sought to expand far beyond environmentalism, embracing other progressive causes. Those included racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, immigrant rights and more. They stand by that shift today.
“As long as climate change and environmental protection are viewed as just being concerns for a limited group of elites, we lose,” Loren Blackford, the group’s new executive director, said in a statement. “We only win by building a powerful, diverse movement.”
Apparently not.
The downside, according to interviews with people involved with the group and a review of financial records and internal documents, was that the Sierra Club lost its focus, then its strength.
By 2022, the club had exhausted its finances and splintered its coalition.
It drove away longtime volunteers who loved the club’s single-minded defense of the environment, by asking them to fully embrace its pivot to the left. Some even felt they were investigated by the club for failing to go along. Many hard-core supporters felt the Sierra Club was casting aside the key to its success: It was an eclectic group of activists who had one, and sometimes only one, cause in common.
Oops.
The club hired Mr. Jealous, its first Black executive director, that year to stop that slide, but his tenure accelerated it as accusations of sexual harassment, bullying, and overspending piled up.
Oops. They decided to become Trump Derangement Syndrome 24/7, have the workers unionize, give them big raises, and go full Woketard
It issued an “equity language guide,” which warned employees to be cautious about using the words “vibrant” and “hardworking,” because they reinforced racist tropes. “Lame duck session” was out, because “lame” was offensive. Even “Americans” should be avoided, the guide said, because it excluded non-U. S. citizens.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the group called for defunding the police and providing reparations for slavery.
The club even turned on its own founder, John Muir, with Mr. Brune saying the environmental icon had used “deeply harmful racist stereotypes” in his writings about Native Americans and Black people in the 1860s.
I mean, I don’t know where to stop with the excerpts, because the Crazy keeps going and going, so, I’ll just stop here. You have to read it in full. Long piece.
Read: NY Times Notices Sierra Club Tearing Itself Apart With Woke »
…is beer which will soon be destroyed by global boiling, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Flopping Aces, with a post on Mamdani being the tip of the spear.
Let’s see if the photo posts correctly twice in a row.
Read: If All You See… »
Other than a quick mention in the subhead, the NY Times buries the actual facts in favor of emotion
Immigration Agents Arrest Man in L.A. Raid and Drive Off With His Toddler
The child was later reunited with her grandmother, but the episode alarmed immigrant rights groups. The father, a U.S. citizen, faces a gun possession charge.
At first, the encounter seemed typical of the kinds of immigration raids that have roiled the nation’s biggest cities. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents descended on a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles this week and detained a Latino man. They secured his hands behind his back, and the man, later identified as Dennis Quiñonez, leaned against his Chevy hatchback.
Immigrant rights activists stood nearby, taking video and shouting at the agents, who were masked and heavily armed.
But the situation, on Tuesday, soon took an unusual turn, according to interviews with four witnesses and footage shared with The New York Times by an immigrant rights group with permission from the person who took it.
Mr. Quiñonez was taken away to another vehicle. An armed agent slid into the driver’s seat of his Chevy.
This would probably be a good spot for a non-Activist news outlet to mention what he was arrested for
“There’s a baby in the back!” an onlooker shouted. Minutes later, someone cried out, “They’re about to drive!”
Another agent, wearing body armor and carrying a rifle, got into the passenger seat.
Mr. Quiñonez’s daughter — who relatives said later is a few months shy of her second birthday — looked on, wide-eyed from her car seat. Then the driver reversed the car and drove away.
The girl was reunited with her grandmother later in the day. But immigrant rights groups say the episode underscores how federal agents across the country have pushed legal boundaries, sometimes in the presence of children, as they carry out the Trump administration’s agenda to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
That’s just straight emotion. How many times have other perps been busted in front of their kids? I witnessed this years ago and when the mother and her friend were swarmed with cops because she stole a car and credit cards.
According to an affidavit by federal authorities, Mr. Quiñonez, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen, was charged with illegally possessing a firearm and ammunition as someone who had previously been convicted of domestic violence. He was convicted of a misdemeanor for injuring a spouse or cohabitant in 2014, the affidavit said.
Mr. Quiñonez was held at a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles until Thursday afternoon, when he was released on $10,000 bond. He is set to be arraigned on Dec. 1.
Oh, so, he’s a bad guy and a repeat offender. Huh.
Tuesday’s events began when Customs and Border Protection agents arrested five undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Federal authorities said in the affidavit that Mr. Quiñonez got out of his car while holding a hammer “in a threatening manner” about 100 feet away from them. As agents started to drive away, they said they saw Mr. Quiñonez throw two “rock-like” objects at the vehicle before getting back into his own car. After a team of agents boxed in Mr. Quiñonez’s car, he got out and approached agents, who said they believed he had tried to assault them.
Don’t start none, won’t be none.
Mr. Quiñonez did not want to be separated from his daughter, and he initially gave agents permission to drive his car with both of them to another location, away from a growing crowd, according to federal authorities. But after they found a gun on the floor of the passenger’s side, they decided to transport Mr. Quiñonez in a C.B.P. vehicle.
Wait, I thought Democrats were against people illegally owning guns?
Read: Oh, Noes, CBP Drives Off With Toddler In The Car After Arresting Father »
Nothing says climate doom from fossil fuels like 40,000 cultists taking long, fossil fueled trips
World at a crossroads to stop climate change, Germany’s Merz says
Wait, I don’t have global heating on here?
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday urged wealthy industrialized nations to increase their contributions to the global fight against climate change.
“We are at a crossroads,” Merz told an international climate summit in Brazil. “All countries with the economic resources and high emissions—and we are among them—should contribute to international climate finance,” he said.
The German leader noted that his government allocated more than €6 billion ($7 billion) for climate action last year. He also announced Germany’s support for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) proposed by Brazil.
“We will contribute significantly to this initiative’s success,” he told participants at the Belem Climate Summit. “To achieve our climate goals, the tropical forest must be preserved while more private sector funding is mobilized. This can only succeed together with our partners in the Global South and North,” he said.
Would this be the same Amazon cut down to create a road to move people from the airport to the conference site? All these prognostications of doom would be better if the people who tell us there’s a problem acted like there’s a problem and practiced what they preached.
Let’s tax luxury air travel to fund climate adaptation and loss and damage
Developing countries are set to need hundreds of billions of dollars a year to adapt to climate change but, at the moment, developed countries are providing them with just tens of billions of dollars.
One solution to this ‘adaptation gap’ is a levy on premium flyers—covering business class, first class, and private jet travel. This represents one of the fairest and most politically feasible ways to mobilize new public finance for adaptation and loss and damage.
This would be a ‘polluter-pays’ approach, as business and first-class travel are 3-4 times more polluting than economy flights and private jets travel is up to 14 times more polluting.
I like this, and we’ll start taxing private jets, especially those flown by politicians and Warmists.
Read: After Taking Fossil Fueled Flight, German Chancellor Says “We are at a crossroads” »
This is what they should have offered to start with before voting to shut down the government
Democrats name their price on ending government shutdown
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday that Democrats would vote to end the government shutdown in exchange for a one-year extension of expiring ACA tax credits, multiple sources told Axios.
Why it matters: Democrats, emboldened by sweeping election victories this week, are adamant that Republicans must make concessions on health care before opening the government.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) rejected the offer, calling it a “non-starter.”
“I think it’s an indication that they’re feeling the heat, and they know that their last proposal was unserious and unrealistic,” Thune told reporters. “I just don’t think that it gets anywhere close to what we need to do here.”
The extension should be through December 2026, that way the Dems cannot play games for the 2026 midterms. But, there needs to be language that negotiations to fix this need to happen
The Democratic offer includes adding the ACA tax credit extensions to a package of appropriations bills and a short-term spending bill.
Would those be the add ons to give healthcare to illegal aliens, re-open USAID to make sure taxpayer money gets funneled through donor NGOs, etc?
(The Hill) “It’s terrible,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was on the way to a Senate GOP conference meeting to discuss the path forward.
“The five largest health care companies in America have had a 1,000 percent increase in their stock prices since 2010. We’re flooding these people with money that’s creating inflation,” Graham continued. “The program is broken, and I’m not going to keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies.”
The premiums are going to those companies, who are getting rewarded by Obamacare, while those who get the insurance are getting boned. For all the talk about premiums, let’s not forget that deductibles have been high from the get-go, and getting treatment is limited.
I don’t think Time Magazine is making the point they think they are
What Global Climate Action Looks Like at COP30 Without the U.S.
Greetings from São Paulo where corporate executives from around the world have gathered ahead of this year’s United Nations climate talks—known as COP30. This is my second stop in a two-week trip to Brazil as I try to understand how the world is approaching climate change at this moment.
People always ask me whether it’s really worth spending so much time and energy at COP. This year, I’ve heard that question even more than usual given the rapid developments in the U.S.—from the AI-linked rise in power demand to the Trump Administration’s ongoing assault on climate policy.
My answer has never been clearer: to understand the state of climate efforts requires getting out of the U.S.—now more than ever. Acquiring a true sense of where things currently stand almost requires going region by region, sector by sector, technology by technology. And anticipating where things are headed means grappling with changing economics. For me, the COP experience is an opportunity to drink from a firehose and get a crash course in answering these questions. What I’ve learned is that geopolitical tension, reshaped trade dynamics, and technological advances all mean that when it comes to climate change, the U.S. is no longer in the driver’s seat.
For the past decade, a decent portion of my time at COP has been dedicated to trying to track down what the U.S. delegation is doing—whether that’s watching the U.S. broker compromises to help deliver the Paris Agreement or sitting in as the first Trump Administration pitched coal-fired power as a source of clean energy.
In other words, hobnob with the other cultists, especially the government wonks, rather than asking the average Bob and Betty what they think. What cult policy is doing to them.
Read: It’s Super Important You Get Out Of The US To Find Out About ‘Climate Change’ »
…is a rising sea bumping up against the mountains, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on Ford potentially trashing the entire F-150 EV line.
Hmm, looks like direct photo linkage is working again. If you can’t see it, an iframe version is below the fold
Read: If All You See… »
All posts here are my views. None represent my employer. If ye can prove me wrong, so be it. Ye can rant and rave at me, but be mostly polite to any other commentors. I will put up with quite a bit, but be mostly respectful to others.
NOTICE In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material on this web site is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use" non-profit educational purposes, without permission of the copyright owner.
Pirate's Cove by Pirate's Cove is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
