Bummer: Four Young Girls Among Those Arrested During An Australian Extinction Rebellion “Protest”

Is it really a protest when they aren’t really being peaceable and causing lots of other people issues? Further, since the UK Guardian is Very Concerned of the arrest of the young girls, did no one think to ask “where are their parents?”

Climate change protests: four teenage girls among 30 arrested in Sydney

Four teenage girls are among dozens of protesters demanding government action on climate change to be arrested in Sydney on Monday.

The Extinction Rebellion climate protests movement has planned a “spring rebellion” from Monday to Sunday, including marches aimed at blocking traffic.

The protesters in Sydney were arrested and bundled into a mobile “custody unit” on Monday afternoon after they allegedly failed to move on when asked to do so by police.

Some 30 people were arrested, including four girls aged under 16, organisers say.

“Alleged offences committed range from obstructing traffic to disobeying reasonable direction,” New South Wales police said in a statement.

The assistant commissioner Mick Willing said police respected the right of groups and individuals to protest, but “we have a responsibility to the community and local businesses to ensure they can go about their normal activities without being impacted on or put at risk”.

“Unfortunately, despite the warnings issued by local police and our colleagues from across the country, this group continue to set out to break the law and put themselves and others at risk,” Willing said in a statement.

I am 100% behind the Rights to protest peaceably and petitioning for redress of grievance, but, once you start physically causing other people problems, you need to cease what you’re doing and do it somewhere else (like not in the streets during rush hour) or be arrested when you won’t move on.

Among those walking were sisters 10-year-old Luka and 12-year-old Maddie Brett-Hall alongside Ember Henninger, also 10, from the Blue Mountains.

The march was their second protest after they attended a flash mob at Echo Point earlier in 2019.

“I feel like we need to make a difference,” Maddie told AAP.

First, where are the parents, and second, what difference? Other than being loud, obnoxious, rude, and causing problems for others, what difference are they making?

Earlier in the day the Victorian activist Miriam Robinson said the group must “get right up in people’s grills” to convince governments to take firm action on climate change.

“We always apologise for causing inconvenience,” the retired public servant told AAP on Monday.

“But this is nothing compared to the inconvenience that is going to start happening when we start to run out of food and water.”

These people. Always with the doom and gloom. But, you know what helps make sure there’s food and water? Reliable energy sources, like fossil fuels.

Extinction Rebellion specifically wants governments to “tell the truth” about climate change by declaring a climate and ecological emergency.

It also wants them to prevent biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and let the public drive decisions on climate change through a Citizens’ Assembly.

So much nuttbaggery. The notion, though, of giving all the power over from elected officials, no matter how bad, to an unelected group of pseudo-religionists is insane.

BTW, this kind of thing is happening all over the 1st World. Amsterdam, Britain, Canada, and many other nations/cities are seeing these annoying protests.

Read: Bummer: Four Young Girls Among Those Arrested During An Australian Extinction Rebellion “Protest” »

Hot Take: Impeach Trump Repeatedly For Stonewalling

There are several really, really bad Hot Takes out there. There’s this one

Let’s make sure history doesn’t repeat itself: daughter of Holocaust survivors

which is quite possibly the worst article on the whole “caging illegal aliens is like the Nazis and the Holocaust” take you’ll ever read. The you have the NY Times publishing an opinion piece “In The Land Of Self Defeat“, in which Monica Potts takes a trip to Arkansas and someone links the closure of a library to Donald Trump (he’s living rent free) and highlight the utterly condescending, nasty attitudes them thar big city slickers have towards small town folks (yet, the city slickers keep leaving their liberal cities and states for those areas, because they aren’t liberalized with high crime, high taxes, etc).

Then you have Excitable Charles Blow, who’s living in Fantasy Land

Impeach Trump, Repeatedly
A president should not be able to stonewall and run out the clock.

When the Democratic leadership was finally forced to formally back an impeachment inquiry, they faced a choice: focus broadly on all of Donald Trump’s corruption and unfitness, which could drag on for a long time, or focus narrowly on the new revelations about Trump and Ukraine and do so quickly. They chose the latter.

I happen to agree with that strategy, if one assumes that you only have one shot at this. But, I also propose another scenario: Do both. Draw up articles of impeachment on the narrow case of Ukraine, but don’t close the impeachment inquiry. Keep it open and ready to draw up more articles as new corruption is uncovered. Impeach Trump repeatedly if necessary.

There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents a president from being impeached more than once.

Trump and his administration are stonewalling in every way possible, refusing to produce administration officials for testimony and refusing to produce documents.

That, my friends, is hilarious. Was Charles Blow asleep during the Obama administration? To say that Trump is stonewalling is like comparing a Pop Warner football team to an NFL caliber (well, maybe not the Jets and Broncos) one. Sheesh, through 2014, Darrell Issa had submitted 103 subpoenas due to the stonewalling. Have we forgotten, among others, “Fast and Furious scandal, the IRS, ObamaCare, and, most recently, the operations of a political office at the White House (massive Hatch Act violations)”? How about the stonewalling on Benghazi?  Those are just a few of the big examples. His administration was also the most secretive, setting records year after year for refusing Freedom Of Information Act requests, which led to lawsuit after lawsuit.

And let’s not forget the stonewalling from the Obama administration when it came to Hillary Clinton’s server issue, as well as what they were doing with their Iran deal.

But beyond that, there is an apolitical truth: All political corruption, abuses of power, conspiracies, cover-ups and attempts to deceive and mislead the public are wrong. Many Trump loyalists will never accede to this point, but many more Americans, at the core, know this difference between right and wrong.

Yet, Obama and his team did it constantly. But, hey, since Charles says all political corruption and abuses of power are bad, he’s up for investigating, officially, what Vice President Joe Biden did to help his son Hunter, in regards to China and Ukraine, right? Charles will tell the bosses at the NY Times to investigate the hell out of this, right?

Read: Hot Take: Impeach Trump Repeatedly For Stonewalling »

Bummer: Electric/Hybrid Vehicle Owners To See $75 Extra Fee

They thought everything would be free for them. Nope

HYBRID AND ELECTRIC CAR OWNERS SEE $75 FEE IN CAR-TAB BILLS

Beginning this month, hybrid-vehicle owners in Washington state will start paying an annual $75 car-tab fee to finance electric-car charging stations they’ll never use.

The little-known increase is labeled “Hybrid Vehicle Transportation Electrification” on bills from the state Department of Licensing (DOL).

“I was totally baffled,” said Brian Cook, of Shelton, Mason County, who received a vehicle-registration renewal notice last week to get his October 2020 tabs for his 2010 Toyota Prius. “It’s just another add-on, especially if you’re retired. You are on a budget, and if $75 is taken out of your budget, you have to work around it.”

The hybrid fee was part of House Bill 2042, intended to promote electric vehicles and reduce carbon emissions. Owners of plug-in electric cars like the Nissan Leaf, who already pay $150 into the state roads fund in lieu of gasoline taxes, will also pay the $75 electrification fee, for a total $225.

The fees are on top of car-tab taxes that help fund Sound Transit expansion as well as state and local transportation projects.

Why?

The new fee will pay for several electric-car incentives. Proponents intend to fill gaps in the statewide charging networks, to help overcome so-called “range anxiety” with an e-fueling station every 40 to 70 miles on major highways.

Well, since almost no private parties are stepping up, the state should charge the users for these to be built.

Amendments by state Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, D-Seattle, added hybrid owners to those paying the $75. In a Senate Transportation Committee hearing this year, Saldaña said she hopes to afford a used electric car, and that middle and lower-income people won’t feel comfortable buying them until charging stations are more available.

Um, the vast majority of Prius’ are hybrids, so they do not need to plug in to charge. That’s the beauty of them. And they’re getting punished for this. Hilariously, a goodly chunk of the people who drive them are causing elected Warmists to do this. So, hoist/petard.

Read: Bummer: Electric/Hybrid Vehicle Owners To See $75 Extra Fee »

If All You See…

…are pumpkins which will soon be wiped out from climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Brass Pills, with a post on sex dolls programmed to require consent.

It’s Fall week!

Read: If All You See… »

Pinup Part 2

Let’s see if I can finish this in a separate post

Crossing fingers.

Strange. I’ve never had a problem like this before. It just won’t let me post the full list, stops at Animal Magnetism. But, it’s not those links, because I can’t add just one more on.

Read: Pinup Part 2 »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Patriotic Pinup

Patriotic Pinup Earl Moran

Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in America. Fall is in the air, pumpkin spice fashion is showing up, and the baseball playoffs are in full swing. This pinup is by Earl Moran, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogoshere? The Fine 15

  1. Ice Age Now covers Dutch farmers protesting against climate fascism
  2. Independent Sentinel discusses PC madness in regards to the Islamist stabbing cops to death in Paris
  3. Weasel Zippers has video of the impeachment push failure
  4. The Right Scoop covers a report that seems to be saying Trump is throwing Rick Perry under the bus for the Ukraine call
  5. The Lid features a crazy woman attacking Hobby Lobby over humorous gun signs
  6. The Last Tradition discusses AOC’s latest nutty ideas to spend your money
  7. Raised On Hoecakes covers the latest in porch pirates
  8. Powerline notes Ilhan standing by her sham
  9. Patterico’s Pontifications covers how the Woke manage scandals
  10. Pacific Pundit notes the anti-Kavanaugh book failing miserably
  11. Neo-neocon discusses Trump not being allowed to be president
  12. Moonbattery covers the migrants destroying Italy
  13. Legal Insurrection notes that Queen Pelosi may have her own Ukraine problem
  14. Jihad Watch discusses Dems not standing up to their Jew haters, but will call Trump an anti-Semite
  15. And last, but not least, hogewash features great shots from space, in this case, Thor’s Helmet

Trying to publish this thing. Having trouble adding on the normal lists of rule 5 and linkfests and stuff. Maybe a little at a time?

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me.

The rest are in the next post. WordPress just won’t let me go further. Strange (Update: the TMP folder was full, causing the inability to post beyond 680 or so words, and couldn’t update plugins. Now let’s see if I remember to strip this extra stuff out next week )

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Patriotic Pinup »

NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That The Supreme Court Could Return Conservative Verdicts

Perhaps the Times’s editorial board shouldn’t have backed an utterly horrible candidate in Hillary Clinton. Oh, and to use Mr. Obama’s words, elections have consequences. There’s also a very important line that should be remembered

Watch Out, America — The Supreme Court Is Back in Session

On Monday, the Supreme Court will begin hearing cases in its first complete term since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, and the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, gave the court a newly emboldened right-wing majority.

The current five-member bloc has already started overturning decades-old precedents and remaking the law in ways that align remarkably well with conservative policy preferences.

The new term offers no shortage of opportunities for the conservative justices to block or roll back rights for certain groups — for example, women, L.G.B.T. people and undocumented immigrants brought to America as children — while bolstering rights for others, like gun owners and those who would knock down the crumbling wall between church and state.

Illegal aliens should only have as many rights from crime as everyone else, as our Constitution protects them. What it doesn’t protect is their ability to stay here in contradiction of federal law. And, ZOMG, how dare the Court protect 2nd Amendment Rights and blow away the entirely fictional wall between church and state.

In one of the most hotly anticipated cases, to be argued Tuesday, the justices will consider whether employers may fire employees for being gay or transgender.

The arguments will cover three separate cases — two involving gay men who said they were fired because of their sexual orientation and one involving a transgender woman who was fired after telling her employer that she was transitioning from male to female.

In regards to the first link, it mostly discusses Altitude Exp vs Zarda. You’ll have to dig pretty deep to find any article which notes that Zarda had been telling female clients for quite some time that he was gay, in order to calm them down for a tandem jump, and

On one occasion after Zarda informed a female client about his sexual orientation and performed the tandem jump with her, the client alleged that Zarda had inappropriately touched her and disclosed his sexual orientation to excuse his behavior. In response to this complaint, Zarda’s boss fired him. Zarda denied touching the client inappropriately and claimed that he was fired solely because of his reference to his sexual orientation.

Hence the reason why Zarda lost in a jury trial. And then up through many levels of court appeals. Touching clients (and telling them stories about their gay adventures, which was part of the firing) won’t keep your employed. As for the the gender confused case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said person decided they were a woman, were going to transition, and the funeral home said “not here.” They weren’t interesting in what would appear to their clients dealing with funerals to be a crossdresser. It is a very Christian focused business, but, they did offer a severance package, which the gender confused refused. And then the gender confused and the EEOC lost in court multiple times.

Here we go

Such discrimination is a daily fact of life for gay, lesbian and transgender people across the country. Some states have laws barring it, but most don’t. For people in states without their own legal protections, the only hope is federal law — specifically, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars employers from firing, harassing or discriminating against an employee “because of” that person’s “sex.” The plaintiffs in these three cases argue that the plain language of Title VII applies to them, because they would not have been fired but for their sex — after all, if the gay men had been women, their attraction to men would not have been an issue for their employers.

The employers in these cases, with the backing of the Trump administration, say the civil rights law provides no protection to the plaintiffs, because when it was passed in the 1960s, no one imagined that it would apply to sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s true — many L.G.B.T. Americans were closeted at the time, and they faced severe consequences for standing up for their equality in public. But what lawmakers might have thought more than 50 years ago is irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is what the law they passed actually says.

See, it doesn’t matter what the lawmakers might have thought, it matters what the law says. These leftists/Progressives/Marxists/Communists/etc, let’s just call them Modern Socialists, including the NY Times Editorial Board, have long argued that the Constitution is outdated, but, it says what is says. The Modern Socialists want to eliminate 2nd Amendment Rights because we didn’t have semi-auto and automatic weapons back then, but the Amendment is the Amendment.

Likewise, they want to erode the 1st. Free Speech, religious rights, and asking for redress of grievance.  Further, they are fine with ignoring the peaceably part of protesting, as long as it applies to Modern Socialist groups.

Further, if we stretch it, the power of the federal government needs to be immediately reduced, based on the 10th Amendment.

Regardless, what will the Court rule? The Times thinks they will rule against the gays and gender confused because they are gay and gender confused, not because there were actually reasons to fire them. They weren’t just fired in a vacuum.

This term, the court also will hear a challenge to President Trump’s decision in 2017 to reverse President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order protecting undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children — the roughly 700,000 young men and women known as Dreamers.

…..Mr. Obama claimed that he was using well-established presidential discretion to decide how to enforce immigration laws and to prioritize the deportation of certain people and not others, like the Dreamers.

Even Obama said that DACA was un-Constitutional, and you can bet that will be brought up. And, since it was an Executive Action, any future president has the explicit ability to cancel it. They have that discretion. I thought the Times said that it doesn’t matter what people thought, but what the law/Constitution actually says.

Read: NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That The Supreme Court Could Return Conservative Verdicts »

NY Times Wants To Crack Down On Freedom Of The Press Over Noxious Language

Oh, wait, wait, no, sorry, they just want Other People punished for daring to use their Constitutional Republic protected Free Speech right

Free Speech Is Killing Us
Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?

There has never been a bright line between word and deed. Yet for years, the founders of Facebook and Twitter and 4chan and Reddit — along with the consumers obsessed with these products, and the investors who stood to profit from them — tried to pretend that the noxious speech prevalent on those platforms wouldn’t metastasize into physical violence. In the early years of this decade, back when people associated social media with Barack Obama or the Arab Spring, Twitter executives referred to their company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” Sticks and stones and assault rifles could hurt us, but the internet was surely only a force for progress.

No one believes that anymore. Not after the social-media-fueled campaigns of Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump; not after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va.; not after the massacres in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a Walmart in a majority-Hispanic part of El Paso. The Christchurch gunman, like so many of his ilk, had spent years on social media trying to advance the cause of white power. But these posts, he eventually decided, were not enough; now it was “time to make a real life effort post.” He murdered 52 people.

Having spent the past few years embedding as a reporter with the trolls and bigots and propagandists who are experts at converting fanatical memes into national policy, I no longer have any doubt that the brutality that germinates on the internet can leap into the world of flesh and blood.

The question is where this leaves us. Noxious speech is causing tangible harm. Yet this fact implies a question so uncomfortable that many of us go to great lengths to avoid asking it. Namely, what should we — the government, private companies or individual citizens — be doing about it?

Funny, nothing about Antifa or other hardcore lefties. Or that the Walmart killer held some radical leftist views, as well.

Using “free speech” as a cop-out is just as intellectually dishonest and just as morally bankrupt. For one thing, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. Even the most creative reader of the Constitution will not find a provision guaranteeing Richard Spencer a Twitter account. But even if you see social media platforms as something more akin to a public utility, not all speech is protected under the First Amendment anyway. Libel, incitement of violence and child pornography are all forms of speech. Yet we censor all of them, and no one calls it the death knell of the Enlightenment.

Except, the way the 1st Amendment is written is explicitly designed to keep the Congress from passing laws that abridge the freedom of speech. That means on the citizens and private entities.

One has to wonder if the NY Times, and writer Andrew Marantz, would be cool if this was about Free Press killing us with their noxious language? The same case could be made. (neither should be limited)

The screed goes on and on and on, and you have to wonder if any editor at the Times sat back and said “you know, this is a Really Bad Idea.” Or do they just want troll material? Unhinged conversation material? Controversial material for the sake of ginning up controversy? As the First Street Journal notes

The author’s bias is apparent in so many ways. The speech he decries is all from the right side of the political spectrum. Not a word was published against the speech of Antifa, which has led to violence from the far left in this country. There was no criticism of speech by those supporting the socialist regime in Nicaragua or advocating the same socialism which led to totalitarianism and as many as 100 million deaths in the old Soviet Union, in Communist China, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia and North Korea. No, he was concerned that a social media campaign helped elect Donald Trump!

Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others:

Read both articles.

Read: NY Times Wants To Crack Down On Freedom Of The Press Over Noxious Language »

If All You See…

…is an overly bright day caused by the climate crisis, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 357 Magnum, with a post on minimum wage increases causing businesses to close unexpectedly.

Read: If All You See… »

Say, Those Extinction Rebellion Folks Seem Pretty White, Eh?

Let’s face it, the Cult of Climastrology is pretty darned Caucasian overall. Most of the leaders are white. St. Greta Thunberg, the newest face of the CoC, is beyond white. And now even the climahysteric UK Guardian has noticed this with Extinction Rebellion, and it’s a doozy

In all fairness, there are two black gents sitting on the left. I would wonder about the caption for the above photo as it appears at the article, “Extinction Rebellion protesters perform a water ceremony, mixing water from across the UK before pouring it into the River Thames, outside the royal courts of justice in the Strand, central London”. Seems rather cultish

It was just a tweet, and whoever sent it probably didn’t think much about it. It was a sunny day in July and environmental activists had blocked the Strand with a big blue boat.

“Live from the royal courts of justice,” Extinction Rebellion London wrote. “It has been announced that all protesters arrested during the April rebellion will be prosecuted. We are asking the police and legal system to concentrate on issues such as knife crime, and not non-violent protesters who are trying to save our planet.”

For those with ears tuned to hear it, the dogwhistle sounded clear. Stop bothering us non-violent protesters; focus instead on those frightening inner-city neighbourhoods, where black children carry knives.

“It was feeding into a racist narrative,” says Guppi Bola, an activist with the Wretched of the Earth, an environmental group that focuses on black, brown and indigenous voices. “When those kinds of things come up, then of course you are not going to feel welcome.”

So, not only is ER rather white, but they’re raaaaacists. Seriously, this almost wants to make me defend them. There’s nothing wrong with their tweet in terms of race. Certain other people will always see everything as race, no matter how innocuous.

But from the start XR has faced questions over its ability to reach out to diverse communities. Some critics go further, suggesting its tactics, its framing of key issues and a series of communications missteps show a carelessness around issues of race – or even institutional racism.

As climate anxiety increases, XR says it has listened to the criticisms and is prepared to make changes in order to reach as many people as possible.

Of course, they can’t just say “um, why do you crazies see every minor thing as a racist mountain when there was nothing racial about it?” Not in CoC World, with all their Woke folks, snowflakes, and such.

XR’s lack of diversity is not unique to the wider environmental movement – a “white middle-class ghetto”, in the words of one NGO chief, with research in 2017 finding the “environment profession” – including workers at green NGOs – was the second least diverse of all sectors in the UK, after farming.

So when a small group of activists got together in a Stroud living room last year to found a radical environmental movement, it was no surprise that they were white, or that they have gone on to create a movement in their own image.

Well, let’s be real: Whites account for around 87% of those in the U.K. Some form of Asian, in which Middle Easterners are included, is about 6%. Blacks account for only around 3%. So, of course it will end up as mostly white. But, that said, overall, it does seem that it is mostly those middle class whites, along with some rich whites, who are mostly concerned with anthropogenic climate change.

But, XR is doomed to become social justice first group, rather than a climate change first group, now that this has been brought up (and the Guardian keeps beating them in the article). And will be beaten on their white privilege

Or, as another activist put it to the Guardian: “Instead of using your privilege to get arrested, how about using it to stop other people getting arrested?”

There are plenty more hot-take quotes in the article.

Read: Say, Those Extinction Rebellion Folks Seem Pretty White, Eh? »

Pirate's Cove