The Hill Seems Rather Upset That Trump Said It Didn’t Matter If Iranian Attacks Were Imminent

By William Teach January 14, 2020 – 11:02 am

The Hill fableists Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels think they are on to Something Big

Trump says it doesn’t matter if Soleimani posed an imminent threat

President Trump on Monday downplayed the significance of any imminent threat to the U.S. before he ordered the strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, raising new questions about the intelligence preceding the move.

The comments marked the latest revision in what’s become a shifting explanation about the threat Soleimani posed to U.S. personnel in the Middle East. Over the weekend, some of Trump’s top advisers were unable to confirm his claim that Soleimani was planning to target four U.S. embassies.

The episode has prompted renewed scrutiny of the Jan. 3 strike that nearly set off a wider conflict in the Middle East.

“This administration already has a credibility problem, and President Trump has a pretty casual relationship with the truth,” said William Inboden, who served on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “So even when he does what I would regard as the right thing or a good policy decision with Soleimani, he then hurts himself and widens the credibility gap with these shifting explanations.”

Can you guess what’s missing in this article? The actual full comment by Trump in full. Which is kinda important, as it would harm the Narrative they are trying to spin

Later on in the article they have a little bit

Trump on Monday insisted the threat posed by Soleimani was imminent and that his team was in agreement on the strike, but tweeted “it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!”

Kinda missing context, eh? Previously, Chalfant and Samuels wrote

The drone strike was widely cheered by Republicans, who argued it was long overdue given Soleimani’s actions as head of Iran’s Quds Force, a designated terrorist organization. He had also been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of American service members in the Middle East.

That is rather a horrible past, is it not? It’s interesting that they note that only Republicans were cheering. There’s really no revision, Trump is simply noting that Soleimani is a terrible person. Seriously, going by Dem talking points, it was wrong for Obama to take out Bin Laden.

Read: The Hill Seems Rather Upset That Trump Said It Didn’t Matter If Iranian Attacks Were Imminent »

Posted in Donald Trump, Wonky Media | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Say, How Bad Can The Climate Crisis (scam) Get If Trump Is Re-elected?

By William Teach January 14, 2020 – 7:12 am

President Trump should come out in favor of the Cult of Climastrology: most Warmists will suddenly find themselves “deniers” due to their kneejerk reaction to being opposed to anything Trump believes

How bad can the climate crisis get if Trump wins again?

Climate pollution in the US is up under Donald Trump and threatens to undermine international efforts to stall the crisis, especially if he wins re-election this year and secures a second term in the White House.

While US climate emissions fell 2.1% in 2019, they rose significantly in 2018, according to estimates from the economic analysis firm Rhodium Group. On net, emissions are slightly higher than in the beginning of 2017, when Trump’s administration began enacting dozens of environment rollbacks aimed at helping the oil and gas industry.

Trump is still working to further weaken bedrock standards. This week he proposed to allow major projects like pipelines and highways to bypass reviews of how they will contribute to global warming. The draft rule is unlikely to become final before the November election, but it is yet another reason industries weighing climate choices might delay significant action. (snip)

Andrew Light, a climate negotiator for President Barack Obama’s state department, said the world is taking note of those efforts, but if Trump is re-elected “you are going to see a lot of people who are worried anew about what the US can do”.

Americans choosing Trump would send the signal that they don’t care about the climate, Light said.

We don’t, we really don’t. But, most don’t even know they don’t care about Hotcoldwetdry, because it is a low ranking issue for most voters, because they really don’t care about it in practice.

The Trump administration has initiated essentially all of its planned climate rollbacks – from weakening standards for cars to go farther on less gasoline to erasing rules for power companies to shift away from coal. It would be able to defend those changes in court against environment advocates and Democratic states if the president wins election.

“The biggest impact of a second term of a Trump administration would just be more lost time,” said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group. “It would be more time in which emissions weren’t really declining when they really needed to be.”

Here’s what Donald Trump should do: release a statement about his changed belief and go on TV saying he wants to enact all the policies of the Cult of Climastrology, including the Green New Deal. Then he should lay out exactly what those policies will do. All the higher taxes and fees, all the control of citizen’s lives by Government, all the restrictions on foods, products, vehicles, travel, size of homes, use of air conditioning and heating, no more ice makers in the fridge, electricity will be metered (ie, shut of during busy times and times not home), rolling brownouts and blackouts will be common place, etc. That the cost of living for citizens will go up, but, it is For Their Own Good.

How well would that go over?

Then he should explain that he’s exempt from all the restrictions and such because he’s a Leader, and it would interfere with him getting stuff done, just like for all the other bigwigs in the CoC.

Might there be a few people who suddenly realize what the CoC is actually about, and quite? I’ve got a movie scene right on the tip of my brain, one where people are cheering and into it and then are being told stuff where they go “hey, wait a minute, what’s that? That’s not what we want.” Maybe I’ll suddenly realize which one it was.

Read: Say, How Bad Can The Climate Crisis (scam) Get If Trump Is Re-elected? »

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Hot Take: The Gun Sanctuary Movement Is Seeking Protection From Democracy Itself!

By William Teach January 14, 2020 – 6:53 am

Surprisingly, there has been very little written in terms of the 2nd Amendment gun sanctuaries, except for straight articles. So, if there’s going to be a hot take, it has to be a scorcher, right? Along comes Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg, which is, of course, owned by gun grabber Michael Bloomberg

The True Aim of the Gun Sanctuary Movement

At first glance, the Second Amendment sanctuary movement currently burrowing into rural Virginia looks like a ballistic twist on the immigrant sanctuary cities movement. Both movements defy the law, one to protect undocumented immigrants from legally sanctioned deportation, the other to protect unlicensed firearms from legally sanctioned regulation.

But there is a significant difference, more political than legal. One sanctuary movement aims to protect a vulnerable population from personal harm. The other movement seeks to protect a group’s capacity to do harm — no matter how loud the outcry from a population vulnerable to gun violence.

First, that’s actually not the primary hot-take. Second, it’s not guns that are licensed, but citizens. The vast majority of lawful firearms owners have no problem with background checks, and want firearms kept out of the hands of criminals. The gun grabber movement seeks to make law abiding citizens into criminals, rather than cracking down on criminals who use guns. Also, it is interesting that Wilkinson mentions “unlicensed”: is that a slip up that denotes what the gun grabbers actually want, which is registration, which means it is easier to confiscate later?

Advocates for immigrant sanctuaries commonly invoke humanitarian, economic and public-safety arguments. Leaders of the guns-everywhere-for-anybody movement tend to dress up their concerns in the legal finery of the Second Amendment (minus the “well-regulated militia” part). Their argument, reduced to its essence, is two words: It’s unconstitutional.

Well, yeah. She should also read the Virginia Constitution, Article I, Section 11 (due process) and Section 14 (firearms).

Roughly 100 Virginia cities and counties have embraced some kind of sanctuary provision regarding guns. Other locales around the nation have as well. In the extremes of gun culture, commonplace proposals are treated as existential threats.

The thing is, we know where your “commonplace proposals” lead, when gun grabbers talk about the Australian, and now New Zealand, solution: mass bannings and confiscation of lawfully acquired firearms from non-criminals, disarming the public.

Let’s skip to the primary hot-take

America is a representative democracy. But the gun lobby and other parts of the conservative coalition are increasingly skeptical of that. Armed with an all-purpose Constitution that means whatever they want it to mean, they seek to block popular government action.

Nope, it is a representative republic. Same with Virginia, which has lots of protections for the minority from the majority. When can call them part of the Democracy model, since they vote. But, it is still a republic, not a democracy. Not mob rule.

The Second Amendment sanctuaries emerging in Virginia and elsewhere may mark a burgeoning conservative counterculture. Contempt for the “geographically small, yet heavily populated” regions where most Americans reside is becoming a conservative tic. It’s the impetus behind those triumphal MAGA maps depicting countless hectares of American forest, farm and pasture in bold Republican red, while little enclaves such as Brooklyn, with a higher population than 15 states, are dismissed with a tiny blotch of blue.

Densely populated America, in other words, is not real America, and opposing real America is by definition unconstitutional. What the gun sanctuary movement is seeking is not protection from government overreach, but from democracy.

Well, that would be a sick burn if the nation, and Virginia, were democracies.

Read: Hot Take: The Gun Sanctuary Movement Is Seeking Protection From Democracy Itself! »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Unhinged Tools | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Say, Will ‘Climate Change’ Move The Needle For The 2020 Elections?

By William Teach January 13, 2020 – 4:23 pm

This is a very important question to the people at the Atlantic Council, a right leaning institution

Will climate change move the needle in 2020?

Nope. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, you want article. OK.

From the release of the Green New Deal to global protests on environmental policy, “climate [has become] a prominent national issue and all the attention it received in 2019 guarantees that it will be a top issue in an American presidential election for the first time ever,” according to former US Congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-FL).

Speaking at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on January 12, Curbelo argued that there has been a recent “Republican evolution on climate,” that has led Republican politicians at the federal and state level to begin to ponder their own climate policies in response to those of their Democratic colleagues. “The growth of the Republican side of the aisle,” on this issue “has been extraordinary,” he said. He noted plans by Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy to roll out a new package of bills to address climate change and the formation of a bipartisan climate caucus by Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) as evidence that Republicans are beginning to move on the issue. This shift in thinking leads Curbelo to believe that “we are moving inexorably towards a national climate policy and…that will happen regardless of who wins the next election.”

Nothing says “I believe and I’m super concerned” like taking a long fossil fueled flight to Abu Dhabi. One interesting thing is the way some of the squishy Republicans are handling their beliefs in the man-caused climate change scam. They avoid taxation, fees, and governmental power increases. Mostly. And much is simply pandering to brainwashed cultists.

The climate plans of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president have already received significant attention as the primary season heats up. While there is concern among many Democrats that the plans of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) are too radical for a general election, Goldwyn argued that “there is rhetoric and there is reality. I think the rhetoric is that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders cannot, without having both House of Congress and a lot of support from swing Democrats, intervene and [enact policies like] regulating fracking on private lands.” Garbow argued that in his view, there really isn’t “a tremendous difference between the climate plans at least that have been put forward by Elizabeth Warren, certainly Bernie Sanders. Even [former Vice President] Joe Biden’s plan is relatively aggressive in contrast to what we saw in the Obama administration and what we have seen since.”

Goldwyn warned, however, that the 2020 election will likely once again come down to swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, that have significant oil and natural gas industries. “Democratic candidates have to have their eyes on Pennsylvania and Ohio and places where they are gas producing states,” he said, “and not threaten the efficacy of their industry there.” (snip)

All of the panelists agreed that climate change will be one of the top issues on the minds of voters as they elect a new president in 2020—even if the implications of their choice are still unclear.

The panelists were squishy Republicans like Michael Steele and climate cultist Dems like Curbelo. If they think this election will be about Hotcoldwetdry, then they haven’t been paying attention. Because it doesn’t move the needle. The Democrats whose focus for the primaries was on ‘climate change’ dropped out. Then a few more go in, and they aren’t gaining traction. If they want to lose swing states, they’ll keep yapping about ‘climate change.’ And then Trump will run roughshod through the china shop, explaining how the Democrats plans will increase taxes and fees, as well as limit freedom and choice.

Read: Say, Will ‘Climate Change’ Move The Needle For The 2020 Elections? »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 13, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is heat snow from fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on Pelosi downplaying the Iranian protesters.

BTW, ladies, it’s a new decade. The whole grabbing the hair thing for selfies is so last decade.

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Are St. Greta Posts Being Written By Her Father And A Climate Activist?

By William Teach January 13, 2020 – 10:46 am

Pretty big if true

The original post comes from Zero Hedge, which has screenshots

A Thursday evening software update at Facebook accidentally allowed anyone to view exactly who is posting under the accounts of public figures, businesses and other entities, according to Wired.

The result? For starters, some 3 million followers of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg have been reading posts written  by her father, Svante Thunberg, and a climate activist in India who serves as a delegate at the UN’s Climate Change organization, Adarsh Prathap. Thunberg, Inc. claims Greta is still the one writing the content.

Greta, Inc. explained this in a Saturday Facebook post purporting to be the young climate activist.

“Some people have been asking who manages this page. First of all, since last spring I only use Facebook to repost what I write on my Twitter and Instagram accounts,” reads the post, in which ‘she’ says she tried Facebook “early on,” but didn’t like it, so she uses “my father Svantes account to repost content.”

“The rest that is shared on Facebook is reposted from Twitter and Instagram by the guy who founded the Greta Thunberg Facebook page long before I knew it existed. His name is Adarsh Prathap and he lives in India. Since a lot of people thought it was my official page in the beginning I asked if I could co-manage it and he said yes.”

In other words, “of course it’s not me silly – you should have known I just ‘co-manage’ the fan page.”

As Zero Hedge notes, the Facebook page is solely hers, no mention of others. We’ve all wondered who is writing the posts, not just on Facebook but other social media outlets, because so many big ones seem to come from an adult, rather than a teenager who’s blowing off her education. It says a lot when St. Greta cannot actually answer questions off-script.

Read: Are St. Greta Posts Being Written By Her Father And A Climate Activist? »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: New Zealand Schools To Teach Kids How To Be Deranged Over Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach January 13, 2020 – 7:45 am

This should work out well, eh?

New Zealand schools to teach students about climate crisis, activism and ‘eco anxiety’

Every school in New Zealand will this year have access to materials about the climate crisis written by the country’s leading science agencies – including tools for students to plan their own activism, and to process their feelings of “eco-anxiety” over global heating.

The curriculum will put New Zealand at the forefront of climate change education worldwide; governments in neighbouring Australia and the United Kingdom have both faced criticism for lack of cohesive teaching on the climate crisis. The New Zealand scheme, which will be offered to all schools that teach 11 to 15 year-old students, will not be compulsory, the government said.

“One of the pieces of feedback we’ve got from teachers around the country is that they’re really crying out for something like this, because kids are already in the conversation about climate change,” said James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister and co-leader of the left-leaning Green Party.

They’ll be teaching the kids that everything is horrible and they are all doomed and the Earth is doomed and that they should feel horrible and anxious and neurotic, then tell them how to process those feelings of Doom, which shall surely involve activism and agitating for the Government to take Other People’s money, freedom, and choice.

“They’re seeing stuff on social media on a daily basis and none of it’s good news, and the sense of powerlessness that comes from that is extremely distressing.”

Perhaps they need to stop reading unhinged doomsayers, put down the phone, and go outside and trek around a beautiful country.

Materials created for teachers that were provided to the Guardian suggest students keep a “feelings thermometer” to track their emotions, learn how to change defeatist self-talk, and consider how their feelings could generate action and response.

This won’t work out well. Perhaps it is a good thing that the government is banning firearms, because these kids are going to graduate with serious mental health issues.

Read: Good News: New Zealand Schools To Teach Kids How To Be Deranged Over Hotcoldwetdry »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times: ZOMG, Trump Was Against Forever Wars, What If He Starts A New One?

By William Teach January 13, 2020 – 7:30 am

It’s amazing the lengths that Democrats will go to oppose President Trump ordering the drone strike that took out a stone cold terrorist, a guy with the blood of thousands of American soldiers killed and wounded, because Democrats are infested with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Had it been President Hillary Clinton, they would be lauding her for taking Suleimani out. Perhaps they should have read the opinion piece by Tom Cotton in the Times on how bad a person Soleimani actually was before they published this front page opinion piece disguised as news

Trump Sold Voters on Stopping ‘Endless Wars.’ What if a New One Starts?

Almost exactly four years ago, Donald J. Trump touched down at an airport hangar here, delivered a donation to a group that provides service dogs to veterans and, before inviting a few kids to run around on his Boeing 757, criticized the wars in the Middle East that many local families had sent their sons and daughters to fight in.

“I’m the guy that didn’t want to go to war,” he told a crowd of several hundred. “It’s just unjust, it’s a mess,” Mr. Trump went on, promising that if he ever did deploy the military anywhere, it would be “so strong, so powerful that nobody is going to mess with us anymore.”

That November, Dubuque County voted Republican in the presidential election for the first time since 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was on the ballot.

Mr. Trump’s success in places like Dubuque — heavily white, working class, union-friendly and Catholic — remade the Republican electorate. And his path to a second term depends heavily on whether those voters turn their backs on the Democratic Party again.

But the specter of a new conflict in the Middle East — this time with Iran — threatens the political coalition that Mr. Trump built in 2016 by running against a national Republican Party that many voters came to see as indifferent and unresponsive, particularly when it came to the human cost of war.

A couple points. First, a lot of us disagreed with Trump’s notion of not getting involved in Afghanistan and Iraq. We do agree that they way they were fought was dumb, turning into quagmires. Second, most of us were not considering this part of Trump’s campaign as more than a minor point, especially since we know that once a person takes office things often look quite different. Barack Obama was almost going down the same roads in 2008, and was quickly educated on the Way The World Works, to the point that an opinion piece in the same NY Times was taking him to task. In late 2016, of course, rather than back in his first term. After starting a war in Libya, sort of maybe getting involved in Syria. Drone striking jihadis all across the Middle East, Northern Africa, and southern Asia.

Anyhow, let’s hear from a Trump voter who’s upset

“All he’s been saying is, ‘We’re getting out of there, we’re getting out of there, we’re getting out of there,’” said Mark Blume, a contractor in Dubuque who stopped into the local American Legion after work one evening last week for a beer.

Mr. Blume, who was raised in a Democratic household in New York and said he voted for Republicans and Democrats in presidential elections but did not vote for either Mr. Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016, expressed fatigue with the president’s erratic style. If it weren’t for that, he would be less uncertain about voting for Mr. Trump, who he believes has done a better than expected job as president.

Oh, he didn’t vote for Trump. Huh. They did find some other quotes by a few people who never said they voted for Trump, and even from Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carleson, but, at the end of the day, Trump is not starting a forever war with Iran. Heck, there’s essentially been a cold war going on with Iran since 1979. And, if Iran doesn’t want any, then they should stop killing and wounding Americans. Trump did not start this.

And, I dare say that the vast majority of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 approve of killing Soleimani. We also approved of Obama killing Osama Bin Laden. This is just the NY Times attempting to slam Trump for killing Soleimani. Funny, how the same paper doesn’t slam Iran and Soleimani. Though writer Jeremy Peters lost the Narrative at the end

As Mr. Blume ordered another round at the American Legion, he considered the last three years under Mr. Trump. “He’s made my life better,” he said, citing the steady stream of contracting work he had been getting because of the healthy economy. “I haven’t lacked.”

Wait, life is good? Huh.

Read: NY Times: ZOMG, Trump Was Against Forever Wars, What If He Starts A New One? »

Posted in Donald Trump, Wonky Media | 40 Comments | Trackback URL

Scottish Billionaire Sir Tom Hunter Is Looking For The Scottish St. Greta

By William Teach January 12, 2020 – 5:38 pm

But, hey, remember, this is all home grown, natural, not being driven by people vested in the climate cult. Nor making money off of Useless Idiots brainwashed into giving up their money and freedom

Tycoon Sir Tom Hunter launches hunt for ‘Scottish Greta Thunberg’

One of Scotland’s richest men is hoping to find the country’s answer to Greta Thunberg for ideas on how to address climate change.

Sir Tom Hunter, the businessman and co-founder of the Hunter Foundation, will work with Scottish schools to help identify ideas to reduce environmental damage — and is enlisting the help of Sir David Attenborough. The naturalist and broadcaster will be guest speaker at a dinner in Edinburgh on February 18, run by the foundation.

Secondary school pupils who enter a competition on how they would address what has been termed the “climate and environmental emergency” will have an opportunity to attend the charity dinner at the National Museum Of Scotland…

Sadly, the rest is behind a real paywall, so, bummer. But, you get the idea. This is all astroturf.

Read: Scottish Billionaire Sir Tom Hunter Is Looking For The Scottish St. Greta »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 12, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible heat snow from dogs as pets, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post on Iran’s only female Olympics medal winner defecting.

It’s snow week!

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 36 Comments | Trackback URL
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