Bat Soup Virus Crazy Today: Hunting Down A Jogger With A Drone

By William Teach April 16, 2020 – 10:49 am

They tell us to practice social distancing. OK, we do. Stay home, but you can go out for exercise as long as you social distance

Rome Mayor Uses Drone to Hunt Down, Fine Jogger During Lockdown

Rome mayor Virginia Raggi boasted on social media this week that she used a drone to track down and eventually fine a jogger who violated the coronavirus lockdown.

On Easter Monday in Rome, local police carried out more than 14,000 checks and issued 162 sanctions, Ms. Raggi has tweeted, adding that a runner on Rome’s Appian Way tried to evade police but was tracked down with a drone and fined.

Ms. Raggi has adopted a “tough cop” approach to the pandemic, attempting to terrorize citizens into submission through an increased police presence and by regularly publishing the number of random stops carried out and citations issued.

For a while, Rome police would slowly patrol city streets using bullhorns to warn people to stay home or face the consequences. The mayor announced moreover that she has hired an additional 300 police officers who will go on active duty to patrol the nation’s capital on April 17.

Raggi has also urged citizens to report on each other’s failure to comply with regulations and set up a special website where people can file their reports anonymously. Many Romans complained about the measure, insisting it was a “witch hunt” reminiscent of Italy’s dark days of fascism.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It seems more and more we are seeing the authoritarian natures of elected officials come out. And, sadly, as we have seen, law enforcement is following right along

Sacramento cops now warn: Violate coronavirus stay-at-home order, you could be arrested

Sacramento County’s law enforcement agencies jointly announced Wednesday they would step up enforcement of the state and county orders to stay at home, and begin charging “blatant” violators with misdemeanors that carry a penalty of a fine or possible jail time.

“While education continues to be the primary focus of all agencies when it comes to violations of the health order, law enforcement agencies in Sacramento County will now also take enforcement action on violations of the public health order that clearly put the health and safety of our communities in jeopardy,” the news release by the Sacramento Police Department said. (snip)

People in violation of the public health order could potentially be charged with a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of a $50 to $1,000 fine or up to 90 days in jail, officials said.

Want to go for a jog? Jail for you. Unless you are an illegal alien. Or already in jail. Then they’ll let you go

Read: Bat Soup Virus Crazy Today: Hunting Down A Jogger With A Drone »

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Your Fault: Clear Skies Causing More Greenland Melt

By William Teach April 16, 2020 – 8:58 am

See, everything is your fault, but, we can fix this with a tax on you and government controlling your life

Climate change: Blue skies pushed Greenland ‘into the red’

While high temperatures were critical to the melting seen in Greenland last year, scientists say that clear blue skies also played a key role.

In a study, they found that a record number of cloud free days saw more sunlight hit the surface while snowfall was also reduced.

These conditions were due to wobbles in the fast moving jet stream air current that also trapped heat over Europe.

As a result, Greenland’s ice sheet lost an estimated 600 billion tonnes.

Current climate models don’t include the impact of the wandering jet stream say the authors, and may be underestimating the impact of warming.

Of course, the wandering jet stream is blamed on your carbon footprint, that you ate a burger and took a fossil fueled trip to work. Seriously, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the nuclear furnace in the sky, right? That would be silly.

The authors believe their study explains why, despite the fact that 2019 was not as warm as 2012, last year produced a record drop in surface mass balance.

You were taking long showers and watering your garden, hence, this happened. The notion of long term variability and that this has happened multiple times naturally during the Holocene alone is silly. Stop it.

The exact mechanism by which climate change affects the jet stream isn’t understood. But the view is that as the Arctic warms, the temperature differences between the region and the mid-latitudes that drive the air current are reduced. This slows down the stream, making it wander further.

“The more CO2 we pump out, the more divergence starts to emerge between the behaviour of the Arctic and the mid-latitudes and this behaviour is accelerating and enhancing some of the differences. It is a crucial part of what is creating this waviness and the consequences,” said Dr Tedesco.

See? Your fault. Give up your freedom and choice to government, along with your money, and we can solve this.

Read: Your Fault: Clear Skies Causing More Greenland Melt »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Report: Bat Soup Virus Escaped From Wuhan Lab

By William Teach April 16, 2020 – 8:42 am

Obviously, this is not the first report. There have been plenty of those. This one just seems to be making it more official, having moved from a conspiracy theory to a “you know, this kinda makes sense” conspiracy theory, to a “this is likely true” theory

Sources believe coronavirus outbreak originated in Wuhan lab as part of China’s efforts to compete with US

There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.

This may be the “costliest government cover-up of all time,” one of the sources said.

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized — as is often the case with intelligence — that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.

Everyone pretty much knew that the lab was doing risky research, and gave known that for a long time. There’s reasonable certainty that both Sars and N1H1 escaped from the lab. To what purpose? Labs doing research on viruses and such all over the world. Some look to weaponize them

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Consider this

Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern

Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week.

The Wuhan Virus follows its own pattern, he told Mako, an Israeli news agency. It is a fixed pattern that is not dependent on freedom or quarantine. “There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures,” he wrote in his paper.

“Is the coronavirus expansion exponential? The answer by the numbers is simple: no. Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks,” Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concluded. The reason why coronavirus follows a fixed pattern is yet unknown. “I have no explanation,” he told Mako, “There are is kinds of speculation: maybe it’s climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.”

Let’s speculate: the Wuhan lab was messing around with it, playing around, changing it, and it got out. Let’s go further, as many have suggested: they intentionally created an easily transferred virus which would create panic and destroy the economies of 1st World nations before just fading away. Which seems to be happening right now.

Another theory being bandied about is that it was meant to kill off the elderly and sickly in China, a nation which has never been overly concerned with its people, especially ones that the State has to take care of, considering the massive population. But, it got out by accident. Or, maybe not.

Or, perhaps it was meant to decimate 1st World Nations. One has to wonder just how it spread like it did so easily. Maybe they knew that most would get sick but not die, and China would get to sell ventilators, test kits, and so forth to nations.  This is China we’re talking about, and their intentions are not honorable.

Read: Report: Bat Soup Virus Escaped From Wuhan Lab »

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Bummer: Palo Alto’s “Lofty Climate Goals” Crash And Burn

By William Teach April 15, 2020 – 3:10 pm

It’s very easy to say you support climate action in theory. Once you try and implement them, if it gets that far, it’s not so easy

After setting a lofty goal on climate change, Palo Alto struggles to make progress

Palo Alto’s evolving plan to curb carbon emissions faced a sharp rebuke Monday from numerous local environmentalists, who argued that the city is overstating its achievements while falling well short of its targets for combating climate change.

The criticism came as the City Council took a brief break from its immediate priority — responding to the coronavirus pandemic — to unanimously adopt a two-year plan aimed at getting the city closer to its goal of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2030, with 1990 as the baseline. The council had adopted the goal — known as 80/30 — in 2016 and has since taken some steps to advance it, including raising the energy efficiency standards in new buildings, retiring the sewage-burning incinerators near the Baylands and launching a carbon-offset program for natural gas. (snip)

But even with these steps, the city has curbed emissions by only about 36%, with the vast majority of the decrease attributed to the council’s shift to “carbon neutral” electricity in 2013. If the carbon offsets are factored in, the city’s reduction is about 56.5%, according to the Public Works Department.

Oops.

Despite the progress, residents maintained that the proposed steps are insufficient to meet the goal, which requires the city to reduce its carbon emissions by 224,600 metric tons annually. The advocacy group Carbon Free Palo Alto criticized the city in a letter for what it called a “longstanding disconnect between our GHG reduction goal and Palo Alto’s program results and plans.”

The question is, which residents? Just the climate groups, or most citizens? If they really care, are they giving up their own fossil fueled vehicles, 2 minute showers, hand washing clothes, growing their own food, etc?

The group argued that the city has not seen significant reductions in emissions since 2013 and does not have any programs that could feasibly scale to the 80/30 goal.

Funny how this always seems to happen, eh?

The council didn’t propose any new initiatives on Monday, though members reiterated the desire to see more electric vehicles. The two-year Sustainability Implementation Plan, which the council unanimously adopted, calls for a greater focus on the installation of charging equipment for electric vehicles at low-income homes.

“I think we really need to focus on electric vehicles and keep driving that adoption rate up in the city,” said Vice Mayor Tom DuBois. “We’re going to add in the electrified heating and cooling for homes and businesses, but a really strong focus on electric vehicles I think is going to go a long way.”

Why, so the rich can scoot on by and charge their vehicles? Low income folks do not spend $37k+ on electric vehicles. They don’t even spend $25K on regular hybrids. Warmists are very much elitists. And do the folks on the council and in the advocacy groups have plugins?

Read: Bummer: Palo Alto’s “Lofty Climate Goals” Crash And Burn »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 15, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible pizza with horrible cheese that comes from horrible carbon polluting cows, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lid, with a post on Bat Soup Virus and selective outrage.

Read: If All You See… »

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60 Year Old Italian Woman Gets Fined For Walking Her Turtle

By William Teach April 15, 2020 – 10:30 am

Italian law enforcement must be Very Proud of themselves

Italian Woman Fined for Taking Her Turtle for a Walk During Coronavirus Quarantine

A 60-year-old woman has been fined for breaking Italy’s lockdown measures—her excuse: she was walking her pet turtle.

According to Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, police found the woman outside her home on Monday. When asked to present justification for breaking quarantine, she said she had left her house to take her turtle for a walk. The reason was not considered satisfactory and she was fined €400 ($430).

Italy has been in lockdown since March 9 and this is not the first time residents have broken protocol. As Newsweek previously reported, a 31-year-old man from San Fermo della Battaglia was fined in March after flouting the lockdown rules to play “Pokemon Go.” Some 16,545 fines were issued on Easter Monday alone. (snip)

Italians are allowed out to buy food and medication, and to go for a walk, but must carry a certificate giving their reasons for being outside the house. As Newsweek previously reported, anyone found in violation of these policies can be fined or even sentenced to jail time

Government around the world has become unhinged. They say keep your distance, yet, when people are doing that they fine them and even arrest them for daring to be outside. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.”

And this from Twitchy

Read More »

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Tackling Hotcoldwetdry Is Is Vital For Bat Soup Virus Recovery Or Something

By William Teach April 15, 2020 – 7:54 am

Why, no, no, the climate cultists will not give up on forcing Other People to comply and passing ‘climate change’ legislation

Tackling climate change is vital for the strongest economic recovery after coronavirus

Recovery from coronavirus must reckon with climate change. The current and urgent focus properly needs to be flattening the curve and saving lives.

Yet even as this overriding priority absorbs us, governments now need to be thinking how to support the strongest possible recovery as we emerge from this crisis.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, underscores we are in both a health and economic crisis. In dealing with the former we cannot lose a generation to the latter.

Focus on recovery must be on maximising economic growth and jobs, and ensuring this includes everyone. This was the guiding star that steered the international response to the global financial crisis. (snip)

Reckoning with climate change will support a strongest possible recovery. The threat of climate change that is driving global action against it has not gone away. Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic is a harbinger of climate disasters to come and the resilience we need to build into our systems – including health – to deal with what we know will be the adverse impacts of climate change.

We know that unless we address this challenge, we will all be worse off; and the longer we take in addressing the challenge, the worse it will be. Just as Covid-19 requires us to act now to save lives in the next few weeks, climate change requires action now to avert a future global catastrophe. The logic of climate action has increasingly applied to global economic activity since the Paris agreement, and must continue to underpin the investment decisions governments make going forward.

I’ll tell you what: when I see the majority of Warmists, especially the big shots and the ones who go on TV and write things along with all the ones who protest and such, practice what they preach, I’ll consider supporting Hotcoldwetdry policies.

Significantly, climate related investments in many cases will offer the best prospects for economic growth and jobs. On that basis alone they should be prioritised. The OECD report Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth demonstrated this in detail for the G20 in 2018.

For example, they provide options for major infrastructure investments which should be a bedrock of government stimulus for recovery: clean energy and new transport systems, more sustainable homes and buildings, improved agricultural practices water and waste management.

In other words, government controlling where you go and where you live. What you eat.

In short, if banks will not finance new coal-fired power in Australia but will lend for renewable energy and storage, which would you tend toward, and where then are the growth and jobs, and best place for stimulus?

Telling banks who they can loan money to.

Turbocharging this with a stimulus package for more renewable energy and flexible storage of all sorts (including hydrogen), accompanying transmission and security technologies for our electricity grid, and investment in dramatically improving energy efficiency would – literally and figuratively – power our economy forward.

Funny, nations have been doing this for well over a decade, but, especially for the 2008 recession recovery, and, it mostly failed.

In the aftermath of our drought and bushfires, another obvious area for nation-building investment is our land sector. Farm productivity can be dramatically improved by precision agriculture and regenerative farming technologies while building resilience to drought.

So, controlling farms. Strange how this always seems to end in government control.

Read: Tackling Hotcoldwetdry Is Is Vital For Bat Soup Virus Recovery Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 16 Comments | Trackback URL

Fact Check: Did The Raleigh PD Violate Civil Liberties?

By William Teach April 15, 2020 – 7:06 am

The local Raleigh News and Observer fact checker kinda comes to the conclusion of “maybe, we think so, but, maybe”

Fact check: Did police violate constitutional rights at ‘Reopen NC’ protest in Raleigh?

The issue: Were police in the wrong when they arrested at least one protester near the legislature who was accused of violating the statewide stay-at-home order?

Why we’re checking this. The protesters asked for an end to Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-at-home order, and the reaction from the Raleigh Police Department that “Protesting is a non-essential activity” inspired many angry responses.

What you need to know. During an official emergency, like the coronavirus is in North Carolina, can people be arrested for violating emergency orders while they protest?

Well, the other issue is, really, can law enforcement in North Carolina tell people that they must leave open public property, including the streets, when they are doing all they can to stay 6 feet or more apart, and many were simply in their vehicles, isolated from other people

Protesting is certainly a constitutionally protected act. The First Amendment guarantees that and more. But those constitutional rights don’t necessarily protect protesters from being arrested for breaking other laws while they protest.

For example, many liberal protesters have been arrested at the state legislature for trespassing in recent years, after refusing police orders to leave. Some have later had their charges dismissed, while others — most notably a frequent protest leader, the Rev. William Barber II — were prosecuted and convicted.

But, see, the Moral Monday protesters were arrested for being inside the General Assembly building. There were no problems with them being outside, except where they blocked entrance to the GA building. That’s a big difference between what they were doing here. And, no, the protesters yesterday couldn’t be arrested for trespassing, since the actual streets and state house grounds were not closed.

In addition to the arrest with the Reopen NC protest, anti-abortion protesters were arrested in Greensboro and Charlotte earlier this month. Those arrests have now triggered lawsuits.

Last week, after Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he thought the arrests of the anti-abortion activists were unconstitutional, The News & Observer wrote a fact-check about that claim.

The fact-check concluded that, as with many legal issues, it depends.

Police do have the power to use criminal charges to enforce Cooper’s stay-at-home order, said Shea Denning, a criminal law expert at the UNC School of Government. And in an officially declared emergency like this, there is much precedent for the government being able to take actions to address the emergency that might in normal times infringe on people’s rights.

The question, then, isn’t a simple one like whether people have a constitutional right to protest. The real question, Denning said, becomes whether the restrictions went too far — or whether the restrictions were enforced in a discriminatory manner.

The fact check offers many articles at the end on the subject, but only a few touch on North Carolina specifically, and do not really answer the question. Now, consider that NC Governor has not declared martial law, just a state of emergency, which is authorized by the North Carolina Emergency Management Act. Nowhere within does it discuss the loss of civil liberties during a state of emergency, that the government at any level (state, county, local) may abrogate any civil liberties laid out in the North Carolina Constitution. Again

Sec. 2. Sovereignty of the people: All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.

Sec. 12. Right of assembly and petition: The people have a right to assemble together to consult for their common good, to instruct their representatives, and to apply to the General Assembly for redress of grievances; but secret political societies are dangerous to the liberties of a free people and shall not be tolerated.

Here’s another interesting one I ran across reading further

Sec. 17. Slavery and involuntary servitude: Slavery is forever prohibited. Involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the parties have been adjudged guilty, is forever prohibited.

Is being ordered to stay home involuntary servitude? How about law enforcement order such?

Nationwide, the American Bar Association wrote in March, “Lawsuits challenging COVID-19 quarantines and restrictions on public gatherings may be doomed to failure.”

Possibly, but that is not the question: it’s whether law enforcement can impede people engaged in a constitutionally allowed protest that is purely peaceful. That is really not answered, so, it will be interesting to see what courts may rule. I have a feeling that they will simply dismiss the fines and move on, except in more egregious cases of law enforcement over-reach.

Read: Fact Check: Did The Raleigh PD Violate Civil Liberties? »

Posted in 1st Amendment, Constitution, NC News | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Raleigh Police Fail To Understand Federal And State Constitutions, Break Up Protest

By William Teach April 14, 2020 – 5:52 pm

Wish I had known this was going to happen, I might have gone, but, also had a sales appointment

Raleigh police break up crowd protesting to #ReopenNC

Dozens of people, many wearing red, white and blue and waving American flags, gathered outside the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh Tuesday to protest the statewide stay-at-home order that has shut down businesses and crippled North Carolina’s economy in an attempt to slow and contain the spread of coronavirus.

The order, issued March 27 by Gov. Roy Cooper, prohibits gatherings of 10 or more people, closes businesses not considered “essential,” and asks people to stay home other than trips to buy groceries, pick up prescriptions, visit a health care provider, exercise, care for family members, volunteer to serve the needy or visit a place of worship. (snip)

But Raleigh police disagreed. After observing the crowd for about an hour, officers determined it was too many people too close together and asked them to disperse.

“If you fail to leave, if you do not disperse, you will be subject to a physical arrest and taken to the jail,” an officer on a bullhorn told the crowd.

Most got in their vehicles and continued the protest by blowing their horns, but one woman who failed to leave was taken away in handcuffs. Monica Faith Ussery, 51, of Holly Springs, faces a single misdemeanor charge of violation of executive order.

The WRAL article fails to mention the authoritarian tweets by the RPD, nor does ABC11 one

Read More »

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Michigan Residents Plan Protest Against That Woman In Michigan

By William Teach April 14, 2020 – 2:00 pm

Gretchen ‘Il Duce” Whitmer may not be happy Wednesday

‘A slap in the face’: Furious Michiganders are planning to protest their governor’s travel crackdowns in the state capital

Paul LaFrance, a business owner who lives in the Detroit metro area, has never protested. But that’s going to change this week.

He’s joining a group of Michigan residents planning to protest their governor’s stay-at-home order at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing on Wednesday.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who was elected in 2018, issued a new stay-at-home order on Thursday to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The order, one of the nation’s most stringent, included closing parts of big-box stores that sell gardening and home-improvement goods, limiting the use of motorboats, closing public golf courses, and curbing interstate travel. (snip)

“To say that I am furious about this would be an understatement,” LaFrance told Insider. “This is a complete overreach by the government.”

The Facebook event for the protest, organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, instructs people to stay in their cars and “honk horns, paint cars or bring signs” to express their displeasure. More than 3,000 Facebook users have indicated that they plan to attend.

I wonder if Imelda Marcos, er, Gretchen Whitmer will sick the police on these people? And if the police will respond, or say “whoa, hold on a moment, what are we doing? This authoritarian stuff is not us, and we still have a 1st Amendment.”

https://twitter.com/ChrissyBaker19/status/1250049158620250118

Read: Michigan Residents Plan Protest Against That Woman In Michigan »

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