NC Senate Advances Bill With Increased Penalties On Those Who Wear Masks While Committing Crime

By William Teach May 15, 2024 – 10:30 am

All those pro-Hamas demonstrations where lots were wearing masks caught the attention of the NC General Assembly

North Carolina Senate panel advances anti-mask bill

A COVID-era change that allowed people in North Carolina to wear a mask for health reasons moved a step closer to being removed from state law Tuesday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Republican voted in a voice vote with Democrats objecting to advance a law to enhance penalties for people who wear masks while committing another crime or for those who block traffic. House Bill 237 now moves to another Senate committee.

But the bill also removes a provision that exempts people who wear masks for health and safety reasons that was added in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.

And it was that part of the legislation that attracted the most opposition from Democrats on the panel and public speakers.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson County, said the bill is not intended to “prosecute granny for wearing a mask in the Walmart — unless she was sticking steaks in her bag.”

The bill comes after pro-Palestinian demonstrations and protests at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in previous weeks. Many of the protesters wore masks throughout the demonstrations.

It had been against the law for people to wear masks in public, except for times like Halloween or for approved parades and demonstrations. Also, for certain jobs where it’s necessary. Likewise, if it was freaking cold. This whole “immunocompromised” thing? How often did you really see someone wearing one in public before COVID? Those few who did were wearing ones that actually made a difference. It wasn’t performance art like now. It certainly wasn’t a bunch of Brave protesters hiding behind COVID so they could hide their faces against consequences of being pro-Hamas and showing their Jew hatred.

Newton said his message to people who need to wear masks for health reasons or concerns was to wear them. But Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg, said lawmakers had a obligation to write clear laws.

“We make sure that the bill says what we mean for it to say,” she said. “And, to be clear, this bill, by crossing out Section 6, says it’s not legal to wear a mask if you’re doing it for the safety of yourself and others, and that is an outrageous change to make. It’s not appropriate. You say, well, this wasn’t a problem before COVID. The world is different now.”

Yeah yeah yeah. Performance art. It’s mostly only COVID wackos who wear them now, and, if you follow them around you’ll see them remove them when the performance is over. And, really, if someone is wearing one for real reasons, they mostly will not be out in public. The few who do will pretty much be left alone by police. They don’t have time for that. But, stores can tell people to remove them if they so choose.

The bill would also create a new crime specifically for protests that block roads — a tactic some recent Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestinian protests have engaged in during demonstrations in Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill and across the nation.

Don’t forget the climate wackos.

Liz Barber, with the ACLU of North Carolina, called Tuesday’s anti-mask bill part of a “broader attack on democracy.” She said the provision was unconstitutional because it imposed different punishments based on the content of speech or protest.

Good grief. These people. So tiresome.

Read: NC Senate Advances Bill With Increased Penalties On Those Who Wear Masks While Committing Crime »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, NC News, Unhinged Tools | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Kiddies Plan To Try And Sue In California Again

By William Teach May 15, 2024 – 7:15 am

A better idea would be for them to live the net zero life they demand for Everyone Else, and convince all their climate cult friends to do the same

Judge dismisses California kids’ climate lawsuit. They plan to try again

After a federal judge dismissed a landmark climate lawsuit filed by 18 California children against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the youth plaintiffs plan to amend and resubmit their allegations, their attorneys say.

The children — who have lost homes in wildfires, suffered health problems from breathing polluted air, missed weeks of education due to climate change-related school closures and been forced to ration tap water due to unprecedented droughts — sued the EPA for allegedly violating their constitutional rights by allowing pollution from burning fossil fuels to continue despite knowing the harm it poses to kids.

Except, the EPA is not a dictatorial federal agency, and doesn’t have the statutory authority to act as one. CO2 is not a pollutant.

Judge Michael Fitzgerald of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California this month ruled the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring the suit because they did not show how the remedies they sought — including a declaratory judgment that their constitutional rights have been violated — would mitigate those harms.

“Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate how a declaration regarding Plaintiffs’ rights under the Constitution and the legality of Defendants’ conduct, on its own, is likely to remedy these alleged injuries,” he wrote. The ruling granted the plaintiffs permission to amend their complaint by no later than May 20.

Too bad Judge Fitzgerald didn’t ask the kiddies if they were practicing what they preached, and if they were traveling around in fossil fueled vehicles.

The co-executive director of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit law firm that represents the plaintiffs and has filed similar suits in other states, called the order unjust and said attorneys would be filing an amended complaint.

“When presented with a constitutional violation, there is no reason for a federal judge to throw up his hands and say nothing can be done,” Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children’s Trust, said in a statement. “In doing just that, this order tells children that judges have no power to hear their complaints. Courts do, in fact, have that power.”

They keep saying “constitutional”, but, they never actually point to the part of the constitution, other than a vague notion

The children who filed Genesis v. EPA are asking the federal court to hear and weigh their evidence, then ultimately issue a declaratory judgment that the EPA has violated their fundamental constitutional rights to equal protection of the law and their fundamental rights to life.

The filed suit doesn’t actually explain how this violates “equal protection of the law”. And there is no fundamental right to life (which is interesting, because the same people astroturfing these suits surely believe in abortion on demand). They further assert that they have a fundamental right to a life-sustaining climate. They seriously try to cite things like Article II, but, it gets pretty squishy and more along the lines of “The EPA must Do Something because we say so!”

Read: Climate Kiddies Plan To Try And Sue In California Again »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Surprise: Hamas Has Been Using UN Vehicles, UNRWA Compound

By William Teach May 15, 2024 – 7:00 am

I mean, we already know UNRWA employees have been stealing aid bound for Gazans. And now

IDF reveals Hamas terrorists use UN vehicles, UNRWA compound as cover in Rafah – watch

The IDF revealed on Tuesday that during operational activity in eastern Rafah on Saturday, terrorists were identified in UNRWA’s central logistics compound alongside UN vehicles.

In the footage, several terrorists and gunfire can be seen near UN vehicles and in the area of UNRWA’s logistics warehouse compound in eastern Rafah, which is a central point for the distribution of aid on UNRWA’s behalf in the Gaza Strip.

Following the event, representatives of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) conveyed the findings to senior officials in the international community and called on the UN to conduct an urgent investigation into the matter.

Please. The UN won’t care. They’re full of wackjobs and Israel/Jew haters, having been dhimmified by the Islamists.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz commented on the footage on X, formerly Twitter, saying, “Hamas terrorists firing at civilians from within a UNRWA facility next to UN vehicles in Rafah. No lie from Antonio Guterres and Philippe Lazzarini will hide the truth: UNRWA is an arm of the terrorist organization Hamas.”

Yet, the UN will still blame Israel for the actions of Hamas, a UN designated terrorist organization.

Read: Surprise: Hamas Has Been Using UN Vehicles, UNRWA Compound »

Posted in Israel, RoP, UN | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Washington Post Wants You To Use Cold Water To Save The Planet

By William Teach May 14, 2024 – 3:00 pm

The interesting part is that “reporter” Allyson Chiu fails to mention whether she’s fully switched from not using hot water, nor is it mentioned whether the WP has turned off hot water at their office

Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time

You may not be giving a second thought to setting your washing machine on the hot cycle, cranking your showers to a steamy temperature or scrubbing your dirty dishes under a stream of scalding water.

No, I really don’t. I actually do most of the laundry in cold water, and use the appropriate detergent. Though, if I am doing a big load of whites I might do it in hot. I don’t mind saving some energy, and making sure I have hot water for other things. But, not to “reduce emissions.”

If you did, you’d find that you probably don’t need to use so much hot water — and that you could be saving energy and cutting your utility bills. Water heating is responsible for more than 10 percent of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs, the biggest share after air conditioning and heating, according to the Energy Department. An American household uses an average of 64 gallons of hot water a day — close to the amount needed to fill an average bathtub — by doing laundry, showering, washing the dishes and running kitchen and bathroom faucets. (snip)

By washing four out of five loads of laundry in cold water, you could cut 864 pounds of CO2 emissions in a year, an amount equivalent to planting 0.37 acres of U.S. forest, according to the American Cleaning Institute.

Piss off. Mind your own business.

Showering accounts for roughly 17 percent of the water Americans use in their homes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Your steamy showers also consume energy: Nearly half of a home’s hot water is used for bathing. A cold shower uses less energy than a hot one.

Why do these people feel the need to nag? Is Allyson doing this?

You should also rethink washing your hands with hot or warm water for the same reason, she added.

Washing up with cooler water could also have additional benefits for your skin, according to dermatologists.

Yet, doctors recommend you wash with hot water. Anyhow, this is the kind of “news” you get these days, with “reporters” who never leave the office (or their apartments), never cultivate leads, never ask tough questions of politicians and bureaucrats.

Read: Washington Post Wants You To Use Cold Water To Save The Planet »

Posted in Climate Cult, Global Warming, Wonky Media | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 14, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible carbon pollution beer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Real Climate Science, with a post on shrimp being Bad for ‘climate change’.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Unhinged Democrats Want Biden To Find That Grocery Stores Are Price Fixing

By William Teach May 14, 2024 – 10:30 am

The idea here is to Blame grocery stores for artificially creating high prices so that they can say that food inflation is not the fault of Democrats and Joe Biden. They’ve decided that grocery stores are their new enemy of the state

Democrats Ask Biden to Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing

A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden to investigate grocery store chains for price manipulation, writing in a letter sent Monday morning that he should use executive authority to take additional enforcement action to address rising food prices without the help of Congress.

The letter, shared exclusively with TIME, comes after a report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that major grocery chains seemed to take advantage of supply chain disruptions during the pandemic to hike up prices to increase their profits. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who led the letter and is one of its signatories, has called for more competition and stronger enforcement of antitrust laws to bring down grocery prices for families—but her proposed legislation on the topic has been largely stalled in Congress.

She’s now hoping that Biden will leverage his executive authority to initiate a thorough investigation into the alleged price-fixing practices of major grocery store chains. “Big food companies want to keep these huge profits and they’re hiring plenty of lobbyists to keep Congress from acting,” Warren tells TIME in an interview. “Congress has stalled out on doing work that it could do to help families lower costs… and the President has the tools to fight back.”

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Martin Heinrich (D-N. Mex.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Peter Welch (I-Vt.) also signed on to the letter requesting Biden’s intervention, along with 35 House Democrats. The lawmakers outlined several proposals in their letter that the Biden Administration could take—from encouraging the FTC to issue guidance on potential violations of price discrimination laws, to creating a joint task force to investigate food price manipulation throughout the supply chain.

Even if they did raise prices beyond what was reasonable, so what? That’s 100% illegal. They can charge what they want. But, really, a lot of the report is along the lines of “suggests”, as in, “we think they really did this, but, we aren’t quite sure, because business happens, big stores have more leverage, and the world was disrupted from the Chinese coronavirus and Democrats shutting businesses down.”

Wages are up. Utility costs up. Insurance costs up. Property taxes up. Maintenance costs up. Input costs up. Cost of borrowed money up. Transportation costs up. This not only applies to grocers but to the growers and processors of food products. How do you think prices can stay where they were when there is cost increases every step of the way from production to retail? And with fuel way up, that will effect almost every part of getting food to the stores and in your basket.

But, also, does the Biden admin actually have the statutory authority to do this investigation? The story really doesn’t say. Obviously, Democrats want to blame grocery stores, not China for releasing COVID and Democrats for shutting things down, but, what else is in play?

The letter underscores what many progressive Democrats and liberal economic minds see as an urgent need for regulatory intervention to level the playing field in the food and grocery sector, ensuring fair competition and affordable prices for consumers nationwide. Studies have found that corporate profits account for more than 50% of current inflation as many American families are being hit with higher costs for groceries. In the food industry alone, four retailers—Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Albertsons—account for over a third of national grocery sales, potentially allowing dominant retailers to extract more favorable prices and terms from suppliers.

Hmm, having Government take massive control of the food sector? What could possibly go wrong?

Read: Unhinged Democrats Want Biden To Find That Grocery Stores Are Price Fixing »

Posted in Democrats, Food and Drink | 13 Comments | Trackback URL

Doom Today: Coral Reefs Could Totally Disappear

By William Teach May 14, 2024 – 7:00 am

These would be the same coral reefs which have survived higher temperatures and higher sea levels since the end of the last ice age, but, see, not it’s totally different

Coral reefs could vanish if temperatures continue to rise

A recent study published by Oxford University Press highlights a disturbing trend in the health of coral reefs globally, underscoring the severe implications of climate change on ocean temperatures and circulation patterns.

Over the past year, these vital ecosystems have experienced unprecedented levels of bleaching and mortality, particularly around the Caribbean, the coasts of Mexico and Central America, and several Pacific islands including Kiribati and Fiji.

The data reveals a grim future, suggesting that coral reefs might soon vanish if current trends persist.

Sherman Potter Bull Cookies

It’s always some sort of doom with these people. It’s what they know. Perhaps instead they should just practice what they preach and get their climate cult comrades to do the same.

Read: Doom Today: Coral Reefs Could Totally Disappear »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

LOL: UNC Chapel Hill Kills It’s DEI Program, Shifts Money To Campus Police

By William Teach May 14, 2024 – 6:45 am

Such a shame

UNC board votes to shift $2.3 million in DEI funds to public safety

As North Carolina’s public university system considers a vote on changing its diversity policy, the UNC-Chapel Hill university board voted Monday to cut funding for diversity programs in next year’s budget.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees unanimously approved a change that would divert $2.3 million of diversity spending — known as DEI for diversity, equity and inclusion — from state funds to go toward public safety and policing at a special meeting to address the university’s budget.

One board member told CBS 17 that he believes the DEI programs only divide campuses.

“The DEI efforts seemed counterproductive to that effort to treat people based on who they are as a human, not based on any kind of characteristic they might have,” Board of Trustees budget chair Dave Boliek said.

Well, that’s exactly what it is about: treating people unequally. Giving priority to people based on race, sex, and all sorts of leftist values at the expense of others.

The board’s vote would only impact UNC-Chapel Hill’s diversity funding, which could result in the loss of its diversity office.

UNC will join the ranks of other notable public universities that have stripped diversity spending, such as the University of Florida in Gainesville, which announced in a March memo it was reallocating funds to faculty recruitment.

The vote to shift more funding to public safety comes as continued pro-Palestinian protests on UNC’s campus have resulted in several arrests in recent weeks. The budget committee vice-chair Marty Kotis said law enforcement has already been forced to react to protests, but they need more funding to keep the university “safe from a larger threat.”

“It’s important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just the 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university’s operations,” Kotis said. “It takes away resources for others.”

It really is a hoist on their own petard situation: if the wackjob Hamas supporters/Jew haters hadn’t caused so many problems with their protests this might not have happened. That whole taking down the American flag and replacing it with a Palestinian one was probably the last straw.

Read: LOL: UNC Chapel Hill Kills It’s DEI Program, Shifts Money To Campus Police »

Posted in NC News | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Sac Bee: Gavin Newsom Is Failing The PRC On ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach May 13, 2024 – 3:36 pm

Weirdly, the Sacramento Bee’s Tom Philp is missing a big point (non-paywalled here)

As he heads to the Vatican, Gov. Newsom is failing on climate change | Opinion

Gov. Gavin Newsom is flunking a key climate change test within a stone’s throw of the Capitol. A freeway widening project on parts of Highway 50 and Interstate 80 is moving forward under his leadership that is in blatant defiance of the Sacramento region’s climate change strategy to dramatically move motorists into carpools.

When the governor visits the Vatican later this week to attend an international climate change summit, he has reason to confess a Sacramento sin. Instead of doing the hard work of real leadership, risking the annoyance of some commuters by compelling them to use carpool lanes that produce less emissions, Newsom has instead ducked this issue for months.

Team Newsom is siding with the road builders of the California Department of Transportation and ignoring his own Air Resources Board and their two blistering critiques of the coveted Caltrans project to widen freeway lanes between Sacramento and Davis. The Air Resources Board says this project will worsen the effects of climate change, but Caltrans and Newsom and trying their damndest to ignore them. Oh, and they are also ignoring the six-county Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), who want more carpool lanes.

Newsom is no Jerry Brown, a governor who was willing to take on CalTrans from his very first term, when necessary. When it comes to road building, Newsom has far more in common with Donald Trump, pretending that unpopular moves to tackle the globe’s biggest challenge aren’t really necessary.

But, um, is Gavin listening to what the citizens of the People’s Republik Of California want with the road? Are they in favor of the road widening project? Should Gavin be listening to the citizens more than the unhinged Air Resources Board?

There is nothing popular about reversing the effects of climate change. It will demand some big changes in human behavior to reduce the gas emissions that contribute to trapping the sun’s heat and causing drier rainy seasons and temperatures to rise.

This is one of the perfect climate cult sentences: it doesn’t matter if you like it, the Elites will force you to comply. Sit down, shut up, and do what you’re told.

Philp actually forgot to mention two things: that Newsom is taking a long, fossil fueled flight all the way to Italy, and you can bet it isn’t a commercial flight. Second, Philp forgot to mention what actions he’s taken in his own life.

Read: Sac Bee: Gavin Newsom Is Failing The PRC On ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 13, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is a weird looking sun from what is obviously carbon pollution driven wildfires, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Right Scoop, with a post on another Democrat breaking with Biden on Israel.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 9 Comments | Trackback URL
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