In New Poll, Democrats Pick Hotcoldwetdry As Their Number One Issue

If you’re thinking “huh, I guess the whole socialism, government control, government healthcare thing is not that important”, think again: the Cult of Climastrology dogma actually would require all the Big Government, authoritarian stuff that Democrats are pushing

Voters Really Care About Climate Change
For Democrats, climate change is now one of the two most important issues in politics, according to a new poll.

It’s not a fluke, an error, or an outlier. In poll after poll, the results are clear: Climate change is one of the most important issues in the 2020 presidential election.

A new survey, released today and provided exclusively to The Atlantic, only drives the point home: Climate is the clear number-two issue—second only to health care—for Democrats who live in one of the upcoming primary or caucus states. Among all voters, the warming planet is now one of the most salient issues in American politics. The poll was conducted by Climate Nexus, a nonpartisan nonprofit group, in partnership with researchers at Yale and George Mason University, and included nearly 2,000 registered voters.

Climate change now sits alongside only four other mainstays—health care, the economy and jobs, immigration policy, and Social Security—in its ability to command the electorate’s attention. And for self-described liberal Democrats, climate change is now nationally the most important issue, beating out 28 others, Anthony Leiserowitz, a senior research scientist at Yale, told me.

“This is the first time in American political history where climate change is not just a top-tier issue—it is the top-tier issue,” ​said ​Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate-Change Communication, which helped conduct the new poll​.

Yet while Democrats have grown more alarmed by climate change, self-identified Republicans remain largely unmoved. In the poll, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say climate change is one of their top two issues, and they support more aggressive policies. This reflects a deepening divide among Americans: Climate change, Leiserowitz said, “has become more polarized now than any other issue, including abortion.”

In the poll, there are all sorts of questions about enforcing 100% renewable, taxing fossil fuels companies, much stronger CAFE standards, and so forth, but, the one question they forgot to ask is how much the individual Democrat voters are willing to pay themselves. Let’s not forget this one

Though Americans are increasingly worried about climate change, fewer than 4 in 10 say they believe that tackling the problem will require them to make “major sacrifices.” And most are unwilling to pay for it out of their own pockets.

For example, while nearly half of adults say they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on their electricity bills to help combat climate change, just over a quarter say they are willing to pay $10 extra each month. And while two-thirds support stricter fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, increases in the gas tax remain deeply unpopular.

Instead, clear majorities say they would prefer that climate initiatives be funded by increasing the taxes on wealthy households and on companies that burn fossil fuels.

See, they want Other People to pay for their beliefs, not themselves. Oh, and they should be asked how much liberty and freedom they are willing to give up for their beliefs. That would be a fun poll.

Read: In New Poll, Democrats Pick Hotcoldwetdry As Their Number One Issue »

St. Greta Has A Tiny, Highly Sensitive Snail Named After Her

I wonder if the snail also tells all the other snails what to do to comply with the first snails beliefs

Video: Tiny, Highly Sensitive Snail Species Named After Greta Thunberg

A diminutive brown snail species has been named after Greta Thunberg, with researchers saying they named the mollusc for the Swedish climate worrier because her generation “will be responsible for fixing problems they did not create.”

The new species – Craspedotropis gretathunberga – is approximately one inch long and half an inch wide with grey tentacles and a concave shell. It is found in the mountainous foothills of Borneo.

“The newly described snail belongs to the so-called caenogastropods, a group of land snails known to be sensitive to drought, temperature extremes and forest degradation,” says snail expert Dr Menno Schilthuizen.

“All individuals were found very close to the research field station at the foot of a steep hill-slope, next to a river bank, while foraging at night on the green leaves of understorey plants.”

Thunberg told the group she was “delighted” that the snail had been named after her, researchers said. (snip)

Last year, a beetle was named after her by the UK’s Natural History Museum , as Breitbart News reported.

Definitely not a cult.

Read: St. Greta Has A Tiny, Highly Sensitive Snail Named After Her »

Bummer: Report Claims Russia Is Interfering To Help Comrade Bernie

Now, good for the Washington Post and several others, who gave this story about Comrade Bernie the same front page lead article as the did with the story on Russia interfering to help Trump. Of course, the headlines tend to be a little different

Help vs see. Anyhow, the NY Times has a much smaller, non-lead article, because they are totally unbiased (the headline is also less confrontational)

Russia Is Said to Be Interfering to Aid Sanders in Democratic Primaries

Russia has been trying to intervene in the Democratic primaries to aid Senator Bernie Sanders, according to people familiar with the matter, and Mr. Sanders said on Friday that intelligence officials recently briefed him.

The disclosure came a day before the Nevada caucuses, where Mr. Sanders is a favorite, and followed revelations a day earlier that Moscow was interfering on President Trump’s behalf this year, as it did in 2016.

Mr. Sanders denounced Russia in a statement, calling President Vladimir V. Putin an “autocratic thug” and warning Moscow to stay out of the election. Drawing a contrast with Mr. Trump, he said he would stand against any efforts by Russia or another foreign power to interfere in the vote.

“The intelligence community is telling us they are interfering in this campaign right now in 2020,” Mr. Sanders separately told reporters in Bakersfield, Calif., where he held a rally on Friday. “And what I say to Mr. Putin: ‘If elected president, trust me, you are not going to be interfering in American elections.’”

So, once he gets elected he’ll stop Russia from interfering? Huh. But, wait, suddenly the Times realizes what this is all about

Russia’s interference on behalf of both Mr. Trump, the dominant force in the Republican Party, and Mr. Sanders, a stalwart of the left, underscores its efforts to sow chaos across the political spectrum. Undermining the democratic system remains at the core of Russia’s effort to raise its own stature by weakening the United States, according to current and former officials.

Sow chaos? They wouldn’t do that, would they? Certainly not like in 2016, eh? Because according to Dems Trump was a Russian asset in 2016.

You have to admit, the score is Russia/Putin 1 – Democrats 0, because the Dems fell for the chaos hook, line, and sinker.

Read: Bummer: Report Claims Russia Is Interfering To Help Comrade Bernie »

Good News: About A Quarter Of You Skeptics Are Actually Bots

Because of course they are

Revealed: quarter of all tweets about climate crisis produced by bots

The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal.

The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.

An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.

The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account.

“These findings suggest a substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages about climate change, including support for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement,” states the draft study, seen by the Guardian.

Anyone they disagree with is apparently a bot, folks.

Read: Good News: About A Quarter Of You Skeptics Are Actually Bots »

If All You See…

…is horrible heat snow from carbon pollution which causes the climate crisis, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bookworm Room, with a post on thoughts on the current state of the 2020 election.

Read: If All You See… »

ICE Defies California, Arrests Two Illegals At Sonoma County Courthouse

Guess what? Federal law supersedes California law when it comes to immigration (via Blazing Cat Fur through PJ Media)

ICE flouts state law in arresting two people at Northern California courthouse

U.S. immigration agents have arrested two people at a Northern California courthouse, including a man detained in a hallway on his way to a hearing, flouting a new state law requiring a judicial warrant to make immigration arrests inside such facilities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made the arrests Tuesday at Sonoma County Superior Court, prompting an outcry from criminal justice and court officials who said the action undermines local authority and deters immigrants who are in the country illegally from participating in the U.S. justice system.

ICE said in a statement that California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” David Jennings, ICE’s field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.

See, their job is to capture, detain, and deport people here in contradiction to federal law, and getting them at courthouses is safer for ICE officers

Sonoma County Dist. Atty. Jill Ravitch, Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi and San Francisco Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin condemned the arrests for undermining public safety. Sonoma County Counsel Bruce Goldstein called ICE’s actions lawless because the agents had no warrants.

“It’s now going to put total fear in the community,” Pozzi said in an interview with the Press Democrat. “People aren’t going to come to court. Victims will refuse to show up. Witnesses will refuse to show up … cases will have to get dismissed.”

If they’re here illegally, they should be afraid. ICE is empowered to detain all here illegally. They don’t need warrants. One of the men was in court because he had been “arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence and misdemeanor drunken driving charges stemming from an incident involving a girlfriend.”

Oh, and then

Sonoma County officials condemn ICE arrests. 24 hours later, 2 more were detained

Apparently, there were originally 3 arrested on that first day. If the illegals are going to criminal court, doesn’t that mean they have done something wrong besides just being in the nation illegally?

Read: ICE Defies California, Arrests Two Illegals At Sonoma County Courthouse »

Who’s Up For Some Omnicide With Our ‘Climate Change’ (scam)?

This is one I’ve seen cropping up on climate Twitter, and now we have

From Climate Change to Omnicide

As this decade dawns, we are confronted with the reality of climate crisis—both in the image of uncontainable fires raging across the Australian bush, and in the voices of young people speaking truth to power and calling out for their future and the living Earth. This man-made crisis, caused by carbon emissions and our treating the Earth as an endless resource to be exploited, is no longer an image of a potentially dangerous future, but is our present reality.

And as this future has arrived with smoke-filled air, its vocabulary has evolved: from the innocuous sounding “climate change,” to “climate crisis,” and now “climate collapse,” gradually awakening us to an accelerating disaster. Our seas polluted with plastic, air toxic, trees burning whether in the Amazon or Australia, we are also including other words to describe the nature of this crisis: ecocide, our deliberate destruction of the natural environment; and most recently: omnicide. Omnicide images a crime “we have previously been unable to witness because we have never imagined it.” Across Australia—with billions of dead animals and birds, and millions of people suffering ill health effects—we are witnessing what the world will look like with three or more degrees warming, “the killing of everything.”

Until now, for most of us, two or three degrees of warming was academic. We may have heard Bill McKibben and others stress the importance of keeping the warming of our Earth at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the exponential impact of rising to 2 degrees. We understood that cutting carbon emissions to keep within this level is essential to the future of humanity and the living biosphere of the planet. But this belonged to a future we could not see, or touch, or feel, could not even really imagine. Until now. Until we saw and felt the Earth burning, and witnessed the vastness of this destruction, this omnicide.

Most of these issues are actual environmental issues that have nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change. And, let’s not forget the hundreds of people arrested for starting fires in Australia. There have been reports with no proof provided that many of the fires were set by environmental extremists. The author even links the California fires, which, while man-caused, were not due to CO2, but downed power lines and such from negligence. Anyhow, the author, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, really loves the word omnicide

This insecurity, anxiety, is especially affecting young people, who rightly fear for their future, fear that the current system is pushing the Earth beyond its ecological limits. More awake than their parents, they feel that something essential to life is being destroyed, that possibly they won’t die from old age but from climate change. We cannot imagine their future—what it means when the fires continue to burn, the sea levels rise, a world becoming increasingly toxic. Those who counter these dystopian feelings with visions of a green economy, a carbon-neutral world full of new possibilities, do not understand the depths of their fear, of a 20-year-old who finds herself crying during the day and awakening at night in panic. Omnicide points to the end of a way of life—both for humanity and the web of life that supports us.

Unhinged.

To list the level of neglect, shortsighted concern, misplaced focus on profit and power, and outright greed and corruption shown by corporations and politicians is too painful, too distressing. To sell our shared sustainability and life’s multihued diversity, beauty, and wonder—created over millennia—in just a few short years, is too heartbreaking, too vast a crime. “Earth Justice” is a phrase that speaks to this crime, that the Earth itself has rights and needs to be protected.

We can give the Earth justice with a tax, you know.

But as images of raging fires and burning bush fill our screens, it is important to remember that omnicide has already arrived in poor parts of the world. It is vital that we bring racial justice into our understanding of climate collapse, that we recognize what is happening in war-torn Somalia as much as in New South Wales. In a country described as a “failed state,” home to warlords and al-Shabab, climate emergency has already arrived, with the rains and crops failing—extreme weather a direct result of our global climate imbalance.

See, since the climate crisis movement is overwhelmingly dominated by middle and upper class whites, they think blacks can’t take care of themselves, including in areas that have always had issues. Kinda racist. Anyhow, all this justice stuff is meant to take money from your pocket and give it to other people because you owe them. But, these Warmists never give from their own pockets. Weird, eh?

Anyhow, omnicide or something.

Read: Who’s Up For Some Omnicide With Our ‘Climate Change’ (scam)? »

It Starts: Credentialed Media Run Stories That Russia Is Looking To Get Trump Re-Elected

Who’s surprised by this? Especially with all the anonymous sources. Here’s the NY Times

Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia Is Meddling to Re-elect Trump

Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.

The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.

During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.

And then the Washington Post

Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected

A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.

After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ­ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

It was not clear what specific steps, if any, U.S. intelligence officials think Russia may have taken to help Trump, according to the individuals.

Now, this is all meant to do two things: first, both these articles, and many others from other outlets, go on to mention Trump’s appointment of Richard Grenell to replace Maguire, so, it’s meant to say that Grenell is compromised.

Second, this is the Democrat leaning Credentialed Media attempting to position that if Trump wins in 2020 it is because of Russia Russia Russia. It’s Excuse Making, just like they did in 2016. Further, that Trump is Putin’s guy and will take care of Russia (hey, remember when Obama tried to stop the interference in 2016? That’s right, he didn’t).

If Putin is saying this stuff, it’s to cause chaos, just like in 2016, because he knows Democrats will lose their minds. Remember the report that Putin wanted Hillary to lose to anybody because she and Obama interfered in Russia’s elections, a “Senior intelligence officials told Time that a Russian military intelligence officer with GRU said his group “was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election”.

This is about sewing chaos. And making Trump’s upcoming re-election as illegitimate.

More:

So, I guess it was just based on a feeling from people who don’t like Trump? If only he hadn’t give Russia that reset button and talked about having more flexibility.

Read: It Starts: Credentialed Media Run Stories That Russia Is Looking To Get Trump Re-Elected »

Washington Post: Say, Will Trump Scare Democrats Into Not Being Nutjobs?

EJ Dionne has Thoughts

Will Trump scare some sense into the Democrats?

While the Democratic presidential candidates tear each other to pieces, President Trump is sending a message to the country: The rule of law means nothing to him. He will weaponize the federal government to his own political purposes, and things will only get worse if he’s reelected.

Trump has said many awful things, but here are his most chilling words yet: “I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”

Trump as “the chief law enforcement officer” is akin to putting the Houston Astros in charge of policing cheating in Major League Baseball.

It should worry Democrats that as the dangers posed by four more years of Trump (and two more years of a supine GOP Senate) become clearer, their presidential race may be coming down to a choice between a billionaire and a democratic socialist. “ ’Tis the final conflict,” as “The Internationale,” the old anthem of the left, put it. It’s hard to imagine a confrontation more likely to shatter the party.

What follows is lots of whining, including about Trump providing pardons, clemencies, and commutations, which is totes different from when Obama did it, you know. And lots more whining, because

But this is not a normal time. We have seen too many cases in history when authoritarian leaders triumphed because their opponents were so focused on adversaries within their own camp that they lost track of the larger struggle to preserve democracy and free government.

I’m still waiting for some Lefty to explain how, exactly, Trump is authoritarian, and how he is controlling their lives. I mean, isn’t that exactly what most of the Democrats are saying they each want to do?

Thus a modest suggestion: Can these Democratic candidates start competing over who is best positioned to bring together the majority of Americans who disapprove of how Trump is running things? Can they try to prove it by reaching out now to constituencies not part of their own natural base — and by taming the furies within their own factions? Can they look at the smirk on Trump’s face and realize the damage they’ll do our nation if they just pretend that this primary is like every other?

Nope. They’re all nuts, and none of them will reign in the wackadoodle. They’re all trying to see how much they can appeal to the extremists in the Democrat party. And they won’t stop.

Read: Washington Post: Say, Will Trump Scare Democrats Into Not Being Nutjobs? »

If All You See…

…is a horrible paper book made from killing carbon pollution sucking trees, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Crawdad Hole, with a post on the #NeverTrump unity dream team.

Read: If All You See… »

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