Pentagon Shoots Down ABC Report That White House Knew About Bat Soup Virus In November

By William Teach April 9, 2020 – 6:47 am

See, ABC “News” tried this

This sent many resistance types over the edge. But, see, there’s a big problem

Defense official says media reports about November coronavirus intel assessment are false

A defense official on Wednesday issued a rare denial of reports by ABC News and others that claimed a November intelligence assessment warned about a rapidly spreading coronavirus in China that posed a threat to American forces in the region.

The official said no such assessment existed.

ABC News cited unnamed officials with knowledge of the assessment by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) that raised concerns of the coronavirus and highlighted how it was disputing daily life and business in the area.

Col. R. Shane Day, the director of the NCMI, a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency, refuted the ABC News report in a statement.

“As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” he said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

I’m utterly shocked, shocked I tell you, that ABC ran a hit piece with zero named sources. And then they wonder why Trump attacks them as fake news. Expect this to show up during today’s press conference.

The supposed intelligence reportedly was obtained through wire and computer intercepts and satellite images. ABC News did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment Wednesday.

The DIA and NCMI spent the past 24 hours going over anything that could be related to the alleged assessment, but failed to find anything, a defense official told Fox News.

ABC News reported that the White House was briefed several times about the document, with one source telling the outlet that “analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event.” Another source said policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government, including the National Security Council at the White House, were repeatedly briefed on the matter.

And ABC offers zero named sources for all this. And the Credentialed Media wonders why their ratings for being trustworthy are so low. It’s strange how virtually every hit piece from the media, every attempt to dunk on him, every attempt to score point, includes no named sources. It’s almost like they are making stuff up. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s actually the Trump admin feeding the media this stuff to make the media look bad as bad as they really are, knowing they’ll run off that cliff like Wiley E. Coyote.

Read: Pentagon Shoots Down ABC Report That White House Knew About Bat Soup Virus In November »

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Tone Deaf Chicago Mayor Makes A Good Point After Getting Out And About For A Haircut

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 3:00 pm

See, the thing is, our Political Betters always are excused from practicing what they preach

Left-wing Chicago mayor gets testy after being called out for haircut when it’s banned for everybody else: ‘I’m the public face of this city’

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said late last month that the growing coronavirus outbreak “is deadly serious. And we have to take it seriously, all of us.”

“I personally been concerned about what I’ve seen in our parks, people playing basketball,” she added during her news conference. “And what I’ve seen along our lakefront, way too many people gathering like it’s just another day. This is not just another day.”

To that end, city officials warned that social distancing violators could be fined $500 and then could be arrested.

They won’t be arrested, though, nor will illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdiction Chicago

See, one of Illinois’ social distancing stipulations, like other states operating in this way, is that nonessential businesses are supposed to be shut down. Among them are barber shops and hair salons, WBBM-TV reported.

But Lightfoot got a haircut over the weekend — and defended doing so.

“I am practicing social distancing,” she said Monday, the station noted. “The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on. So … I’m practicing what I’m preaching … we are trying to do everything we can to emphasize the messages around social distancing, washing your hands, staying at home. But as [an] elected official and the public face of the city, I need to make sure that I am out there and visible through this crisis.”

The Chicago Tribune reported that when Lightfoot was asked a follow-up question about the issue — that included a reference to a public service announcement in which she says “getting your roots done is not essential” — the mayor became “visibly annoyed.”

“I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media, and I’m out in the public eye,” Lightfoot added, according to the paper. “I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?”

Now, there are quite a few people blasting her for this, and rightfully so. But, look at the bold: she kinda has a point, besides staying at home. People need to be careful, wash their hands (BTW, via the woman walking into Target earlier, I don’t think it helps when you wear a mask and gloves but also wear flip flops, short shorts, and a muscle T, leaving all that skin exposed), and get on with their lives. The show must go on. We need to do things like get our hair cut. Maybe not go to bars and nightclubs and parties, but, what about having restaurants at half capacity, where people can sit a table away from others? Staggered seating. Go to the beach. We can have space. And so forth.

She’s still a hypocrite, though, and has set the terms where anyone arrested for being out will sue the city.

Read: Tone Deaf Chicago Mayor Makes A Good Point After Getting Out And About For A Haircut »

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If All You See…

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible plastic bottle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on shady reporting that Trump has a financial interest in hydroxychloroquine.

Read: If All You See… »

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NY Times Extols The “Magic Of Empty Streets”

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 10:30 am

Contributing opinion writer Allison Arief, whose focus is design and architecture (do we really need opinion on that?) is super thrilled with all these empty streets, forgetting that they’re empty because people are scared, sick, and dying. They aren’t working, they’re fearful of getting booted from their homes, losing their cars, having no money to eat. But, hey, Modern Socialists see an opportunity

The Magic of Empty Streets
Social distancing gives us a rare chance to fix cities.

We’re in week four of sheltering in place here (it feels like week 40). It’s a completely unfamiliar situation in so many ways. As someone who has lived in cities her whole adult life, for me it’s especially strange to experience a time when all the things I love are no longer available. Nearly everything is closed — restaurants and shops, libraries and museums, and of course all schools. All nonessential workers are under a mandatory work-from-home order.

But these efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus have also offered us a rare experiment: We can see our cities for the first time without the choking traffic, dirty air and honking horns that have so often made them intolerable.

Throughout the world, the coronavirus has forced extreme changes in our behavior in just days. And we’re already seeing the impact of those changes: On Monday, for example, Los Angeles had the cleanest air of any major city in the world.

Yes, changes that have decimated our economy, but, it’s easy for people like Allison who’re getting paid to write this stuff to be cavalier about empty streets being magic.

As a die-hard urbanist, it’s heartening for me to see how many people are adapting, turning the city into a pedestrian paradise. Parks are populated to an extent I’ve never seen before (though some are too populated). Streets are crowded not with cars but with people — and accordingly, pedestrian fatalities (and subsequent emergency room visits) have plummeted.

Yeah, they’re doing it because they have nothing else to do because they are not working and not making money.

Streets are also quieter. Skies are bluer than I’ve ever seen. I saw a dad in the park last week doing a Zoom meeting from a lawn chair while his kids played on the grass. People are saying hello, people are offering to help neighbors, people are rediscovering board games and puzzles, bread-baking and canning.

OK, I can agree with her on that. We do tend to get caught up in the hustle and bustle. I like giving a smile to all the people I see on the greenway when I go for a walk.

If streets become so much safer, if air quality can change so much in just weeks, can we be more hopeful about our efforts to combat climate change?

Pedestrian advocates have suggested converting traffic signals to four-way stops so that people aren’t bunched up in groups waiting to cross. There’s also a move to deactivate “beg buttons,” that thing you push when you’re trying to get a “walk” signal to cross the street. We shouldn’t be touching them now, obviously, but more broadly, they’re designed not so much for pedestrian safety but to serve drivers. Anything that puts pedestrians first and cars second will have a significant impact on the quality of city life and, ultimately, the climate.

What will things look like in the future? How will we navigate our cities? Will we be able to wander in and out of stores and cafes as we do now? That remains to be seen: In China, information design has crossed over into surveillance, requiring citizens to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed to go out in the world. Each individual is assigned a QR code based on a health assessment: A red QR code confines you to two weeks of self-quarantine, a yellow one indicates one week, and a green code means that you can move around as you desire.

Germany plans to introduce coronavirus “immunity certificates” to indicate who has recovered from the virus and is ready to re-enter society. It is likely that similar ID’ing mechanisms will emerge here in the United States and elsewhere. Working to ensure that this sort of visual marking of health status doesn’t devolve into profiling, discrimination or worse is essential.

Those sound like wonderful ideas to control the population, don’t they?

Ultimately, what we really need to figure out is how the world gets put back together. Our new Covid-19 reality shows that behavior can change. It is also, however, making it glaringly apparent how poorly existing systems (and places) have been working for most. Time and tragedy create opportunity — in this case an opportunity to make them work for all.

She doesn’t really answer the “how”. I’m betting we can figure out what she wants. No cars, everyone riding the bus or walking or biking. Government in charge.

Read: NY Times Extols The “Magic Of Empty Streets” »

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Planting Lots Of Trees Could Do More Harm Than Good For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 8:02 am

After decades of pushing to plant tree after tree after tree, planting millions and billions of trees, with carbon offset companies saying they will use (some of the money) to plant trees, we’re now getting pushback from the Cult of Climastrology about planting trees

Climate change: UK forests ‘could do more harm than good’

Mass tree planting in the UK could harm the environment if not planned properly, a report warns.

Badly-planned trees would increase greenhouse gas emissions, say the government’s advisers on the economic value of the natural environment.

The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.

Peat locks up vast quantities of carbon – but trees dry out peat.

This can release more greenhouse gases than the trees absorb.

One NCC member, Prof Ian Bateman from the University of Exeter, said: “The mantra has to be ‘the right tree in the right place’.“

“We would be crazy to undertake the massive scale of planting being considered if we did not also consider the wider effects upon the environment including impacts on wildlife, benefits in terms of reducing flood risks and effects on water quality, improvements to recreation and so on.”

Soooooo, trees aren’t proper for everywhere?

The report adds that carpeting upland pastures with trees would reduce the UK’s ability to produce meat – which may lead to increasing imports from places that produce beef by felling rainforests.

Huh. Why are they suddenly coming out softly against all those trees?

(Vox) During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump didn’t breathe a word about climate change, the most serious threat to our security, health, economy, and natural world.

He did, however, mention his surprising new support for trees.

“To protect the environment, days ago, I announced that the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world,” Trump said.

As soon as Trump mentioned his support of the Trillion Trees Initiative, Warmists started finding ways to poo-poo it. Here’s Mother Jones

Trump’s Plan to Plant a Trillion Saplings Misses the Forest for the Trees
As a means to address climate change, it’s a complete cop-out.

CNN

Trump’s desperate embrace of ‘one trillion trees’

Gizmodo

Trump’s Vow to Help Plant a Trillion Trees Is Worse Than Stupid

The Verge

PLANTING 1 TRILLION TREES MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE A GOOD IDEA

If Trump came out in favor of gun control and abortion on demand, leftists would find reasons to be pro-gun and pro-life.

Read: Planting Lots Of Trees Could Do More Harm Than Good For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

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Why Are Blacks Dying At A Much Higher Rate From Bat Soup Virus?

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 7:45 am

While some have fear-mongered and blame-stormed regarding racial inequality and the typical Race Card stuff they like to play, many of them could have done it a much different way, because there is a problem

The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate, a Post analysis shows

As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to an analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country.

The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States.

A Washington Post analysis of what data is available and census demographics show that counties that are majority-black have three times the number of infections and almost six times the number of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.

In Milwaukee County, home to Wisconsin’s largest city, African Americans account for 73 percent of the dead but just 26 percent of the population. The disparity is similar in Louisiana, where 70 percent of the people who have died were black, although African Americans make up just 32 percent of the state’s population.

Obviously, Democrats are going to go with the raaaaacism angle, but, considering that in almost every specific area where this is occurring the government is run by Democrats and has been run by Democrats, they might want to reconsider their political attacks.

President Trump acknowledged for the first time the racial disparity at the White House task force briefing Tuesday.

“We are doing everything in our power to address this challenge, and it’s a tremendous challenge,” Trump said. “It’s terrible.” He added that Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “is looking at it very strongly.”

“Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people?” Trump said. “It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t like it, and we are going to have statistics over the next probably two to three days.”

Why is it?

African Americans’ higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and lung disease are well-documented, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) noted those that health problems make people more vulnerable to the new respiratory disease. But there never has been a pandemic that brought the disparities so vividly into focus. (snip)

Elected officials and public-health experts have pointed to generations of discrimination and distrust between black communities and the health-care system. African Americans are also more likely to be uninsured and live in communities with inadequate health-care facilities. (snip)

Even then, some activists argued, black people might have been more exposed because many held low-wage or essential jobs, such as food service, public transit and health care, that required them to continue to interact with the public.

Dare I say, these folks living in Democratic Party run areas are kept down thanks to Democratic Party policies, left in a vulnerable condition?

“This outbreak is exposing the deep structural inequities that make communities pushed to the margins more vulnerable to health crises in good times and in bad,” Dorianne Mason, the director of health equity at the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. “These structural inequities in our health care system do not ignore racial and gender disparities — and neither should our response to this pandemic.”

Yes, that would be the structural inequities of Democratic Party policies in the areas they run. Chicago isn’t run by Republicans. Nor is Washington, D.C. Nor Milwaukee County. Nor Connecticut. Or New Orleans. Or NYC. Or Baltimore. Democrats, who had been the party of Jim Crow, segregation, and the KKK, used the Civil Rights era to switch it up and get as many blacks as possible living in government run neighborhoods, jammed together, reliant upon government while also being leery of government.

Read: Why Are Blacks Dying At A Much Higher Rate From Bat Soup Virus? »

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Oil Is Making Guyana Wealthy Which Ticks Warmists Off

By William Teach April 7, 2020 – 3:00 pm

Of course, it doesn’t tick climate cultists off enough that they give up their own use of fossil fuels and 1st World lifestyle. They just want developing nations to not have the same privileges. And, yes, this would be an actual privilege, not mentioned in the NY Times screed

‘It Changed So Fast’: Oil Is Making Guyana Wealthy but Intensifying Tensions

On a sprawling abandoned sugar estate by the coast of Guyana, the scale of the changes sweeping across the country is immediately visible.

In just a few years, enormous warehouses and office buildings servicing international oil companies have sprung up amid the shrub land, irrigation canals and fields of wild cane.

People are “moving from cutting cane to businessmen,” said Mona Harisha, a local shop owner. “It changed so fast.”

Guyana is giving up its past as an agricultural economy and speeding toward its near-term future as an oil-producing giant. And so Ms. Harisha has renovated her general goods shop, redolent of Indian spices, which she runs from a side of her cottage in the Houston neighborhood of Georgetown, the county’s capital.

She said oil companies have brought jobs and better roads, and have raised home values — and brought new business to her shop.

Her daughter is thinking of returning from New York, an example of how the government is enticing Guyana’s huge diaspora home with promises of the oil bounty.

Guyana is one of the fastest growing economies in South America, and one of the best for developing nations. They’re doing all the smart things that Venezuela, which is oil rich, isn’t. Fossil fuels, when not stifled by idiotic government and Warmist do-gooders, is one of the best ways to lift people out of poverty. It brings modernity, job opportunities, affordable energy, and a higher standard of living, among others.

For many, the transformation into an oil economy has brought optimism about greater prosperity. But that optimism is often mixed with a fatalism that nothing will really improve for the vast majority of people in one of South America’s poorest countries.

See, of course they have to see the potential negative. In fact, go and read the rest of the article. You’ll see that any fatalism and “intensifying tensions” have nothing really to do with the oil, but other issues. And devolves into all sorts of other things, that really have little to nothing to do with oil. It’s the kind of screed you’d expect from a cult.

Read: Oil Is Making Guyana Wealthy Which Ticks Warmists Off »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Energy, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 7, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful carbon sucking trees, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on crime spiking in Seattle.

I’ve never seen women actually work out in clothes like that. She’s getting arrested soon for breaking quarantine.

Read: If All You See… »

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Bernie Megafan Joe Rogan Says He’d Vote For Trump Over Biden

By William Teach April 7, 2020 – 10:30 am

Is this important, or just an isolated incident? (via Allahpundit at Hot Air)

Allahpundit then delves into some Trump is potentially doomed stuff, as he typically does, before getting to

I think the most useful thing about the Rogan clip for Republicans is his ongoing concern about Biden’s mental acuity. He brings it up every time he goes off on him; it’s his most basic objection to supporting the moderate, more so even than policy disagreements. If you’re wondering how much the GOP should attack Biden’s competence this fall, here’s anecdotal evidence that the answer is “a lot.” In fact, for some Bernie fans the competence concerns may be a fig leaf for their real reasons for wanting to stay home. If you’re a committed socialist trying to talk yourself into boycotting the election because Biden’s a squish and you keep running up against your visceral dislike for Trump, a “neutral” argument about Biden not being fit for the job might be all the persuasion you need. It’s difficult for a hard leftist to justify not supporting a center-leftist over a right-winger. It’s much easier if that center-leftist has disqualified himself on other grounds.

One has to wonder how many other Bernie bros (which includes women supporting Bernie) will refuse to vote for Biden. They may not be actually voting for Trump, but, it could be a lot of votes not going to Biden. How many decide to just stay home and not bother voting at all? Biden is a mess. He really does look like he’s losing his mental acuity. A lot will depend on the recovery post-Bat Soup Virus. If the economy comes roaring back, you’ll have a lot of Bernie Bros sitting out. You’ll also have a lot of soft Dems sitting it out when it comes to Biden, especially if Biden does poorly in debates.

Read: Bernie Megafan Joe Rogan Says He’d Vote For Trump Over Biden »

Posted in Elections, Joe Biden | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Cult of Climastrology Wonders If Lessons Of Bat Soup Virus Can Be Applied To ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach April 7, 2020 – 8:52 am

The doomsday cult always has to cult, and certainly do not want to let some suffering and fear get in the way

Can the Lessons of the Coronavirus Pandemic Be Applied to Climate Change?

As the world grapples with COVID-19, it cannot afford to ignore an even more serious global emergency that will persist long after the pandemic has passed: climate change. Last month, the United Nations issued a dire multiagency report warning that the world is “way off track” on its commitments to cut emissions under the Paris Agreement. Without dramatic and sustained emissions reductions, higher atmospheric and marine temperatures will bring more deadly heat waves, catastrophic storms, rising seas, food insecurity, health crises and mass displacement.

Although emissions have dropped sharply since January with the coronavirus pandemic virtually shutting down entire economies and most air travel, they are sure to surge again as the world economy roars back to life whenever the pandemic ends. Antonio Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, put it bluntly: “We will not fight climate change with a virus.” Indeed, the pandemic will make progress against global warming even more elusive.

Nobody welcomes a pandemic that threatens to kill millions, infect hundreds of millions more and throw the world into economic depression. Still, the dramatic global response to COVID-19 has captured many environmentalists’ imaginations, by showing what a less polluted planet might look like and suggesting how the world might mobilize to fight climate change.

See? Nobody welcomes a pandemic, except for the Warmists who want to take advantage of it. Bunch of ghouls. I’d say people will remember that the CoC tried to take advantage of the Chinese virus while people were scared, worried, fearful, losing their businesses and money, getting sick, and dying, but, most news outlets are barely even covering the notion of anthropogenic climate change right now. The number of articles has dropped massively.

The global economic shutdown provides an alternative reality, or at least a “mirage,” of what could be if humanity managed to reduce its carbon footprint. It has also exposed just how dangerous air pollution is to human health. Marshall Burke, a professor of earth science at Stanford University, calculated in March that China’s shutdown had “likely saved the lives of 4,000 kids under 5 and 73,000 adults over 70”—20 times the deaths China had attributed to the coronavirus—thanks to a decline in pollution-related respiratory illnesses.

So, Warmists are happy with the economic shutdown. Further, the air pollution has little to do with ‘climate change’. Anyhow, the article then spends lots of paragraphs explaining how the Cult really sees that there will be no climate policy being enacted as the world attempts to recover, that private business won’t bother doing anything, and

Finally, public pressure to combat climate change will dissipate, as rising unemployment and basic pocketbook issues leave citizens, particularly young people, with less time and energy for environmental activism. Climate advocates had planned enormous protests for April 22 to mark the 50th Earth Day. Thanks to the coronavirus, these will occur online.

People have learned that ‘climate change’ is truly a 1st World Problem. It’s something people who have it pretty good can whine about, but, once the bat guano hits the fan, it disappears as a non-entity. We already knew that most people who care about it only care in theory, not practice. Those who said they cared about ‘climate change’ before will now see it as a luxury issue, one that really doesn’t matter.

It is commonplace in politics for the urgent to overwhelm the important. This is particularly true when the former inspires panic and the latter permits procrastination. Defeating the coronavirus requires societies and individuals to suffer acute, short-term pain, in the expectation that the pandemic will pass and economies will quickly recover. Decarbonization implies something more daunting: a transformation of the entire global economy, with attendant dislocation, to avoid a catastrophe that we sense is coming, but are only beginning to feel.

They never really want to say what that economic transformation is, what it creates, what it looks like, do they. Not a question.

Read: Cult of Climastrology Wonders If Lessons Of Bat Soup Virus Can Be Applied To ‘Climate Change’ »

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