Democrats Need Leadership’s Approval To Back GOP Health Bills

Really? Approval?

Democrats say they need leadership green light to back GOP bills to extend ACA tax credits

House Democrats say they’re lining up to support a bipartisan extension of enhanced ObamaCare subsidies — if they get a green light from party leaders.

Supporters of two bipartisan proposals to extend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits, which are set to expire on Dec. 31, have launched discharge petitions to force votes on their legislation over the opposition of the GOP leaders who control the chamber.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has declined to weigh in on either of the proposals, which would extend the subsidies for one or two years, pressing instead for his partisan plan to extend those benefits for three years. His strategy has been for Democrats to keep their powder dry and let Republican infighting on health care take center stage.

But a growing number of rank-and-file Democrats say they expect that to change next week if it becomes clear that none of the partisan plans — Republican or Democratic — have the support to move to the Senate.

See, here’s the thing to my mind: this is horrendous politics, and not just for Democrats. This is NOT the way it should work. Every single member of the House of Representatives should be thinking one thing: “Is this good for the people in my district? The people who live there and voted for me.” Same with Senators and their states. No one should have to have a green light to vote what is best for the people who voted for them. Say what you will about the nutcases and Islamists in The Squad, they often vote for what the nutcases and Islamists in their districts want, not what Dem leadership wants. There’s way to much national party unity driven from the top down and not enough consideration of the voters in their districts. Say what you will about Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Green, they think about their districts (and, like Squad Dems, themselves. Hey, they’re politicians) and how to help the people there.

It’s not new, but, it continues to worsen. It makes discussion impossible in so many cases. Senators and Representatives further vote in the interest of the big money interests which typically reside outside their districts/states. You know what? Bring back earmarks. At least then Congress Critters would be bringing the bacon back to their own districts/states. They’d have a vested interest in them.

Read: Democrats Need Leadership’s Approval To Back GOP Health Bills »

If All You See…

…is a horrible old school fossil fueled vehicle which killed a tree, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on how many Britons want to buy EVs.

Read: If All You See… »

Huh: Bondi Beach Killer Influenced By ISIS

The Australian police would have been all over over the guy if he had sent mean messages on social media or didn’t get vaccinated, but, didn’t seem to have much interest in vetting an Islamist imported

Australian police say deadly Bondi Beach mass shooting was ISIS-inspired

A mass shooting in which 15 people were killed during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” Australia’s federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett said Tuesday.

The suspects were a father and son, aged 50 and 24, authorities have said. The older man, whom state officials named as Sajid Akram, was shot dead. His son was being treated at a hospital.

A news conference by political and law enforcement leaders on Tuesday was the first time officials confirmed their beliefs about the suspects’ ideologies.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the remarks were based on evidence obtained, including “the presence of Islamic State flags in the vehicle that has been seized.”

So, instead of doing a deep dive on Muslims imported to Australia

Albanese announced plans to further restrict access to guns, in part because it emerged the older suspect had amassed his cache of six weapons legally.

“The suspected murderers, callous in how they allegedly co-ordinated their attack, appeared to have no regard for the age or ableness of their victims,” said Barrett. “It appears the alleged killers were interested only in a quest for a death tally.”

So, it’s the fault of the guns, not the extremist religion

The suspects travelled to the Philippines last month, said Mal Lanyon, the police commissioner for New South Wales state. Their reasons for the trip and where in the Philippines they went would be probed by investigators, Lanyon said.

He also confirmed that a vehicle removed from the scene, registered to the younger suspect, contained improvised explosive devices.

The Philippines Bureau of Immigration confirmed Tuesday that Sajid Akram travelled to the country from Nov. 1 to Nov. 28 along with Naveed Akram, 24, giving the city of Davao as their final destination. Australian authorities have not named the younger suspect.

Groups of Muslim separatist militants, including Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines, once expressed support for the Islamic State group and have hosted small numbers of foreign militant combatants from Asia, the Middle East and Europe in the past.

Davao is a hotbed of Islamic extremism. So, let’s ban more guns from the law abiding citizens, because the Aussie authorities did a horrendous job in vetting the men, including for the gun permit.

Israel’s Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon visited the scene of the carnage on Tuesday and was welcomed by Jewish leaders.

“I’m not sure that my vocabulary is rich enough to express how I feel. My heart is torn apart because the Jewish community, the Australians of Jewish faith, the Jewish community is also my community,” Maimon said.

Maybe the government should do something about the Jew hatred in Australia, which is driven by the imported Islamists, rather than banning guns which are already heavily regulated and banned?

Read: Huh: Bondi Beach Killer Influenced By ISIS »

Cult Decides To Change The Time Frame For ‘Climate Change’

1850 has typically been used due to that being the end of the Little Ice Ace, and, per the cult, when Mankind started clogging up the atmosphere with “carbon pollution”. So, what is the point of this?

New data raises questions about how much the Earth has warmed

Planet-warming pollution rates exploded after the end of World War II. James Watt’s steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution in 1769. Before that, for thousands of years, humans were clearing forested land for farming, releasing carbon from trees and plants into the atmosphere.

The severity of global warming has long depended on your frame of reference — on what temperature you think was normal for the Earth before humans began changing it. But what year should mark that moment?

That’s what makes a groundbreaking new temperature dataset released by a group of scientists based in the United Kingdom so striking. The datasets used to diagnose the modern history of the planet’s climate — and to proclaim that the world is now very near to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming — typically begin with the year 1850.

The new one goes all the way back to 1781.

This extended time frame matters because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased 2.5 percent between 1750 and 1850, enough to have caused some warming that the data hasn’t accounted for.

I assume the point is to say that Mankind ended the Little Ice Age, not natural causation.

The new temperature record, dubbed GloSAT, helps contribute to the growing sense among scientists that the Earth has warmed more than what calculations based on the 1850 starting year would suggest.

See? It’s all your ancestor’s fault. Anyhow, would you be super surprised if they used climate models to create data temperature from the 1700s which, for the most part, didn’t exist. It’s just a continuation of the scam.

Read: Cult Decides To Change The Time Frame For ‘Climate Change’ »

Trump Signs EO Classifying Fentanyl As WMD

Will this cause the Trump deranged to now take the side of fentanyl dealers?

Trump declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, giving the U.S. government additional legal firepower in its efforts to combat illegal trafficking of the synthetic drug.

The executive order cites the lethality of the drug, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year, and the fact that transnational criminal groups the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations use the sale of fentanyl to fund activities that undermine U.S. national security.

Speaking in the Oval Office as he signed the order, the president said the amount of drugs coming into the U.S. by sea has decreased by 94 percent (most drugs, including fentanyl, enter the U.S. via land ports of entry). Trump added that drug flows are “a direct military threat to the United States of America.”

The administration has focused considerable resources on combating fentanyl as part of its efforts to secure the U.S. border with Mexico. Top administration officials have argued that Trump’s strict immigration limits and border security measures have led to a drop in domestic consumption of fentanyl.

This is a good thing, but, how soon till Democrats sue over this, trying to block this? Or some rogue leftist judge declares the EO invalid?

The timing of the designation is striking, as speculation mounts that the U.S. will carry out land strikes against alleged drug trafficking targets on Venezuelan soil as part of its pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction would give the U.S. additional legal justification to use military force against Venezuela.

Claims that Iraq still possessed WMDs were used as a legal justification for the invasion of the Middle Eastern country and the overthrow of its then-leader Saddam Hussein under the George W. Bush administration.

Read: Trump Signs EO Classifying Fentanyl As WMD »

Bummer: PBS Really Worried That Loss Of USAID (slush fund) Hurting The Fight Against Climate Doom In Indonesia

Couldn’t PBS hold a telethon fundraiser if they were so concerned?

How the loss of USAID funding affects Indonesia’s ability to fight climate change

Sherman Potter Bull CookiesThe ripple effects of the Trump administration’s elimination of USAID are being felt in dozens of countries where the agency supported initiatives ranging from public health programs to infrastructure and climate resilience projects. Angeles Ponpa from Northwestern University’s school of journalism traveled to Indonesia to see the effect on one of the world’s fastest-sinking cities.

Wait, she traveled all the way to Indonesia on a fossil fueled jet to yammer about ‘climate change’? Just to be clear, this is from a TV episode where there is a transcript

Angeles Ponpa: Outside the capital Jakarta and the Tanah Merah neighborhood, residents struggled for years to get access to clean water.

In 2016, USAID offered a program, IUWASH, that helped disadvantaged families obtain clean water.

OK, but, first, that has nothing to do with ‘climate change’, 2nd, why can’t the Indonesian government do it, especially when Americans have their own problems?

Decades of groundwater extraction have caused Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia to sink.

Meanwhile, with climate change, the seas are rising, making flooding worse and sending salty water into groundwater.

They failed to note how much the seas are rising. Or that there are serious tectonic forces along Indonesia. Or that they screwed themselves. Or how much of the money flowing from USAID through NGOs was siphoned off.

Angeles Ponpa: Jeff Cohen was USAID’s most recent mission director in Indonesia. He says the decision by the Trump administration to cut USAID funding will have dire consequences.

Jeff Cohen: Without USAID’s funding there, all the communities where we’re working are either going to have to do it on their own or find somebody else to be that catalyst. And honestly, some of them never will get access to clean drinking water, will never get access to safe sanitation until somebody replaces us. And I don’t think that’s going to happen.

You know, there might be a case if USAID was actually helping, instead of only delivering about 12% of the funds for the projects. Tell you what, let’s do a complete and full audit, utterly open, of how the money was spent. Where it went, who go it. What NGOs pocketed a ton of moola while delivering little aid. USAID had a ton of unnecessary programs wasting taxpayer money, so, the wackos screwed programs that actually helped (but should have been funded by foreign governments, not the US government). They ruined the whole thing themselves.

Oh, and giving people water wouldn’t actually fight ‘climate change’, if it existed.

Read: Bummer: PBS Really Worried That Loss Of USAID (slush fund) Hurting The Fight Against Climate Doom In Indonesia »

If All You See…

…is a horrible fossil fuels refinery, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Green Jihad, with a post on the Trump admin looking to bankroll at least 10 nuclear power plants.

Read: If All You See… »

20 Democrat AGs Sue To Stop $100K H1B Visa Fees

Apparently they prefer foreign workers over Americans getting the jobs

20 states lodge lawsuit against Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday that he and 19 other states are suing the Trump administration over its policy to hike fees on new H-1B visa petitions to $100,000.

Bonta claimed that the increases for the skilled-worker visa are illegal because they exceed what Congress has authorized and undermine its intent in establishing the program. All of the states joining the lawsuit have Democratic attorneys general.

“No presidential administration can rewrite immigration law,” Bonta said at a press conference in San Francisco. “No president can ignore the co-equal branch of government of Congress, ignore the Constitution, or ignore the law.”

Obama and Biden did that all the time. I’m not saying it’s right, but, many actions of the two had zero statutory authorization from Congressional bills. Heck, Congress often writes bills that are extremely broad and give the Executive Branch incredibly wide latitude to create rules and regs out of thin air. Where the hell did the contraceptive mandate come from? There is zero language in the Obamacare bill authorizing it.

Obama enacted all the stuff for Dreamers despite being pretty much un-Constitutional, and Democrats and their pet media said nothing.

The largest users of the visas are major tech companies bringing in high-skilled foreign workers, which MAGA Republicans have accused of abusing the program to pass over Americans for cheaper labor. But Bonta argued the fees will also worsen labor shortages within other important sectors to the state economy by making it more difficult to fill spots for physicians, researchers, teachers, nurses and public service employees.

How about pushing the kiddies into these disciplines, instead of getting worthless degrees that often end in “Studies” and put them in massive student loan debt? Anyhow, I’ve read about a dozen articles, none note which are all the states, other than New York and Massachusetts. Glad Democrats are fighting for Americans, eh?

The H1B authorization may or may not be legal, but, in a story about the Chamber Of Commerce lawsuit (shouldn’t they be advocating for American workers?)

First, DOJ argues that plaintiffs’ claims are foreclosed by “the longstanding doctrine of nonreviewability, which bars judicial review of the Executive’s discretionary determination under the INA to restrict the entry of aliens into the United States.” Later in the response, DOJ points to the “principles of consular nonreviewability,” writing that “The Supreme Court has long held that ‘[t]he admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a fundamental sovereign attribute’ that is ‘largely immune from judicial control.’”

Second, DOJ states that plaintiffs do not have a cause of action under the Administrative Procedure Act because “it is well-settled that (1) the President is not subject to suit under the APA and (2) his statutory authority to regulate or restrict the entry of aliens into the United States derives explicitly from 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182(f) and 1185(a).” The DOJ response adds, “Moreover, that authority is entirely discretionary, and judicial review to challenge such discretionary actions is unavailable via an ultra vires claim or the APA.”

Third, the response argues that the proclamation “does not conflict with any provision of the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act]” and “simply adds an additional restriction on the entry of a class of aliens to further a key national interest: protecting American workers and national security.” The final DOJ argument: “Any claim by Plaintiffs that implementation of the Proclamation is procedurally deficient because it did not go through APA notice-and-comment rulemaking fails because Defendants have merely implemented what the Proclamation requires.”

So, basically the DOJ is not necessarily saying that the fee is authorized, just that there can be no judicial review on it.

Read: 20 Democrat AGs Sue To Stop $100K H1B Visa Fees »

Faith Leaders Ask For Golden Calf For Climate Christmas

“I am the Lord thy God. Thou shall not have strange gods before Me.”

Faith leaders ask for Christmas gifts that ‘honour the Earth’

The seventh UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-7) met in Nairobi on December 8-12, under the theme “Advancing sustainable solutions for a resilient environment”.

“We all want the same thing: a better future for ourselves and families. This means stable climate, safe clean and sustainable environment, and pollution free future,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Program said.

UNEA is the top decision-making body on environment issues. While addressing climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste crises, it sets the global environmental agenda and develops international environmental laws.

So, many took long, fossil fueled trips?

During discussions on environmental sustainability, Ashley Kitisya, Laudato Si’ Movement’s Africa Program Manager, said that during Advent faiths were looking at Christmas giving through the lens of the three planetary crises.

“We can choose gifts that honour both people and the Earth,” she said, voicing faith groups’ concerns about overconsumption, waste, and environmentally harmful practices during the Christmas season.

Ms Kitisya specified plastic pollution, food waste and unnecessary energy use spike during the festive season.

In their statement, the faith leaders emphasised their role as custodians of the values, ethics, moral courage and global reach needed to fight environmental degradation.

“Integrity is key to ethical leadership; let us hear the call of Mother Nature and live a life that embodies our teachings and guides others,” their statement, titled “A call to Action-Faith for Resilient Planet”, said.

Can they still be Christian leaders, faithful to God when they are putting him after their cult?

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

These “faith” leaders have lost the plot, and are using a Holy time for their cult beliefs.

Read: Faith Leaders Ask For Golden Calf For Climate Christmas »

It Starts: Nags Already Asking For More Gun Control In Heavily Gun Controlled Australia

Perhaps there’s something else that needs to be controlled and banned

Australia had the ‘gold standard’ on gun control. The Bondi beach terror attack may force it to confront its surging number of weapons

For almost three decades, Australia’s gun laws have been recognised as among the most stringent – and effective – in the world.

After the horror of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people in Tasmania, Australia’s then conservative government stared down the gun lobby to introduce restrictions that led to a dramatic decrease in the number of guns.

In an almost unprecedented display of national collaboration, the federal government worked with the states to restrict semiautomatic weapons, toughen up licensing requirements and introduce a new requirement for gun holders to demonstrate a “genuine reason” for ownership.

Australians have been rightly proud of these reforms, confident that the community remains relatively safe from gun violence and far from the American reality of frequent mass shootings.

Sunday’s Bondi attack will shake that confidence and may force the country to again grapple with its gun laws.

Police confirmed on Monday morning that one of the alleged shooters was a registered gun owner and had six legally obtained firearms.

There has been growing concern among gun control advocates that firearms remain far too easy to access despite the country’s “gold standard” framework.

Of course they want more gun control, despite there being massive bans. But, nothing about Islamist control

Khaled al-Nablusi, an immigrant from an Islamist nation who was apparently a radical was given a permit for 6 firearms. How hard would it be for an Aussie citizen to get that same permit? Of course, the Aussie government seems to like to bring in unvetted Islamists from around the world and treat them better than actual citizens.

Shooting at Bondi Beach is what a globalized intifada looks like – analysis

All those wondering what the slogan “globalize the intifada” means need look no further than Bondi Beach.

Terrorists calmly firing into a crowd at a Hanukkah celebration. Screams. Panic. Parents fleeing with hysterical children. Victims lying dead on the sand.

That is the “globalized intifada” that tens of thousands of people around the world have been chanting for since the October 7 massacre – on the streets of Sydney, San Francisco, London, New York, and elsewhere – including by political figures who either embraced the phrase or refused to condemn it.

It’s well worth reading the whole thing.

Read: It Starts: Nags Already Asking For More Gun Control In Heavily Gun Controlled Australia »

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