Cult Of Climastrology Now Wants To Question Private Home Ownership

By William Teach December 27, 2019 – 7:15 am

In many Democrat areas, they are attempting to force multi-family housing in areas that are typically single family in suburban and rural areas, because single family housing is raaaaacist and bad for ‘climate change’. The Nation wants to take it even further

From the screed

This fall, California residents awakened to a new reality of inconvenience and terror. In early October, the utility companies Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison all announced precautionary power shutoffs for thousands of customers, prompted by especially hot, dry conditions and forecasts for strong winds.

This is all based on the fires in California, and the author spends a lot of time on them, building up to

But few are discussing one key aspect of California’s crisis: Yes, climate change intensifies the fires—but the ways in which we plan and develop our cities makes them even more destructive. The growth of urban regions in the second half of the 20th century has been dominated by economic development, aspirations of home ownership, and belief in the importance of private property. Cities and towns have expanded in increasingly disperse fashion, fueled by cheap energy. Infrastructure has been built, deregulated, and privatized, extending services in more and more tenuous and fragile ways. Our ideas about what success, comfort, home, and family should look like are so ingrained, it’s hard for us to see how they could be reinforcing the very conditions that put us at such grave risk.

To engage with these challenges, we need to do more than upgrade the powerlines or stage a public takeover of the utility companies. We need to rethink the ideologies that govern how we plan and build our homes.

From the early years of this continent-wide republic, federal policies such as the Homestead Act of 1862 rewarded private home ownership and pioneering activities such as making individual claims on land. Programs such as the “Better Homes in America” campaign in the 1920s attempted to make private property ownership a moral issue in addition to a financial one, linking home ownership with upstanding citizenship and family values, as a presumed bulwark against communist class collectivity.

And to prove that it’s not a bulwark they want to take away private home ownership. OK. Of course, the author has to include private home ownership as raaaaacist, hatred of the poor and people of color, single family homes being Bad, inequity, etc

The valorizing of homeownership and property rights results not only in increased exposure to climate-change-fueled fires, but also in our inadequate responses to them.

Good grief. Anyhow, this keeps going and going and going

In California, that would mean more than moving away from fire-prone areas. It would require planners, designers, and community members to consider planning for fire alongside issues of health and accessibility, social services, physical beauty, and other aspects of environmental sustainability and climate protection. “Defensible space” could mean protecting more than an individual structure; it could scale up to protect a neighborhood, or better yet, an entire district. At the same time, such zones of defense could be designed to address other aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation: They could include green infrastructure for water infiltration and “soft” flood protection, as well as ecological linkages, such as drought-resistant, non-fire-fueling vegetation to protect biodiversity and lessen urban heat islands. These “green” zones could be planned around community centers and libraries, public institutions that have already become important places of refuge and mobilization in times of disaster.

Oh, your Betters will plan everything for you, and you’ll live in an urban commune.

Even with the threats of climate change and rampant fire looming, the ideals of the American dream that have been instilled for more than 150 years will be difficult to dispel. Those ideals have blinded us to other possibilities. Given the scope and scale of the climate crisis, it is shocking that we are being presented with so few serious, comprehensive alternatives for how to live. We need another kind of escape route—away from our ideologies of ownership and property, and toward more collective, healthy, and just cities.

Nope, nope, don’t say this is communism/Marxism/Socialism/Progressivism/Etc.

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Good News: Democrats Are Very Upset Trump Is Reshaping The Courts

By William Teach December 27, 2019 – 6:58 am

The #NeverTrumpers on the right seem to focus on Trump’s personality, rather than the great Conservative things he’s doing, like this

What Happened When Trump Reshaped a Powerful Court

With the help of Senate Republicans, Donald Trump spent the first three years of his presidency remaking the federal judiciary in his own image. The president has appointed 133 district court judges, 50 appeals court judges, and two Supreme Court justices—meaning about one-fifth of the nation’s federal trial judges, and one-fourth of its federal appellate judges, are Trump appointees. These jurists are leading a conservative revolution that will upend decades of precedent and enshrine reactionary policies into the law. The transformation has only just begun. But for a glimpse of where the judiciary is heading if Trump wins a second term, Americans can look to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A traditionally conservative bench, the court has been newly reshaped by Trump—and quickly got to work translating right-wing priorities into legal doctrine that will govern generations.

The 5th Circuit’s descent into lawlessness did not happen by accident. Senate Republicans would not let President Barack Obama fill several seats on the court, allowing Trump to reshape it after taking office. He appointed five of the court’s seventeen active judges, who immediately allied with the court’s existing far-right bloc, which includes extremists like Judges Jerry Smith and Edith Jones (appointed by Ronald Reagan) and Jennifer Walker Elrod (appointed by George W. Bush). There are now 11 GOP nominees on the court and just five Democratic nominees. (There’s also one vacancy, because some Republican senators deem Trump’s choice for the seat insufficiently militant.) (snip)

Like all federal appeals courts, the 5th Circuit first hears cases as a three-judge panel whose members are randomly selected; a majority of the court can then choose to rehear the case “en banc,” with every active judge sitting. Today, extremists are more likely to constitute a majority on three-judge panels, and they have an insurmountable majority when the court sits en banc.

In 2019, the conservative majority went on a rampage. In December, the court ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate had become unconstitutional in an overtly partisan decision, and suggested that the rest of the law may have to fall, as well. Another appalling December ruling provides a good example of the 5th Circuit’s cruelty. The court granted immunity from civil suit to prison guards who locked an inmate in two filthy cells for six days. These cells, including the floor and the faucet, were covered in “massive amounts” of feces. The inmate, who was completely naked, was forced to sleep in feces and could not eat or drink because excrement contaminated everything. He sued the guards, who laughed and taunted him as he suffered, for subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The writer, Mark Joseph Stern, attempts to paint almost every decision of the court as The Worst Ever, spinning them all, because, really, who has the time to delve deep into each ruling to discover the truth? Like that the 5th Circuit was simply upholding lower court rulings, because the plaintiff did not prove his case.

Trump’s judicial nominees are not selected because they are unbiased or nonpartisan or fair-minded. They are chosen largely because of their loyalty to the Federalist Society, a network of conservative attorneys led by Leonard Leo, who advises Trump on judges. Leo has spent decades—and millions in dark money—grooming and vetting lawyers who impose their hard-right views from the bench. He views moderate judges like Haynes as mistakes. The influx of Trump judges, who had to pass an ideological purity test to win Leo’s approval, will not drift to the left.

Is that like the Illuminati?

The 5th Circuit today is a sneak peek of what more courts will look like once they have been fully captured by judges both Trump-appointed and Trump-aligned. The president has already flipped the 2nd, 3rd, and 11th Circuits, creating a majority of Republican appointees. As the president solidifies his grasp on these courts, we can expect them to issue more extreme decisions that drag the law to the right. Although the Supreme Court is fiercely conservative, the chief justice has stopped it short of going full partisan in occasional high-profile cases. If Trump gets one more Supreme Court appointment, however, SCOTUS may join the 5th Circuit in abandoning any pretense of impartiality and simply embracing the Republican Party platform.

Trump, along with McConnell, is remaking the courts, moving them out of the hands of liberals and into the hands of Conservatives who will apply the Constitution to decisions, who will stop the Leftist nonsense. #NeverTrump needs to get over themselves and get with the program.

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Fat Shaming: Cult Of Climastrology Wants To Tackle Obesity

By William Teach December 26, 2019 – 3:37 pm

The same people who support overweight people, holding them up as icons and such, decrying anyone who says “saying it is OK and great to be fat because it is unhealthy” as a fat shamer, also complain about obesity as being bad for ‘climate change’

Another reason to combat the obesity epidemic: scientists say overeating contributes to climate change

Obesity is complicating the climate-change fight, researchers say, especially as the Earth’s population adds roughly 83 million people of all shapes and sizes every year.

A combination of higher metabolism leading to more carbon dioxide, an additional increase in carbon-dioxide emissions from greater food and drink consumption and the extra output of emissions from fossil fuel-powered transportation, obesity is associated with approximately 20% more greenhouse gas emissions compared to people considered to have a healthier weight.

Researchers in a recently published study found that global obesity was estimated to contribute to an extra 700 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, or about 1.6% of all man-made emissions. Obesity has been labeled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an “epidemic” that contributes to a higher rate of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer.

“Our analysis suggests that, in addition to beneficial effects on morbidity, mortality and health-care costs, managing obesity can favorably affect the environment as well,” said Faidon Magkos, of the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and an author of the paper published by the Obesity Society.

So far, the Cult of Climastrology hasn’t subsumed the health industry nor the workout industry like they have others (remember the recent freakout from Leftists over the Peloton wife?), but, they will try, making those things secondary to the overall CoC agenda. But, they can’t do it when the members also say that telling people to get fit is Fat Shaming.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 26, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible paving meant to move fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on too much snow for Rudolph.

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Good News: Hallmark Movies Are Fascist Propaganda

By William Teach December 26, 2019 – 10:38 am

Apparently, Salon wants to be relevant again with a serious hot take, but, hey, the news is rather slow on Christmas, so, they get noticed. This is from the crazy mind of Excitable Amanda Marcotte

From the screed

Which is, of course, laughable to anyone who has even glancing knowledge of the channel’s offerings. Running down this year’s schedule of Christmas movie offerings is like a trip into an uncanny valley of shiny-teethed, blow-dried heteronormative whiteness, with only a few token movies with characters of color. It’s like watching “The Stepford Wives,” but scarier, since the evil plot to replace normal people with robots is never actually revealed.

None of this should be a surprise, because Hallmark movies, as cloying and saccharine as they are, constitute the platonic ideal of fascist propaganda.

That is probably a startling statement to some. When most of us think about fascistically propagandistic movies, we think of the grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl’s films celebrating the Third Reich — grand, but cold sweeping shots of soldiers goose-stepping and flags waving, all meant to inspire awe and terror. But the reality is, even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of “normality.”

If you don’t believe me, listen to authoritarians themselves. At the Federalist, which is ground zero website for generating frankly fascist “culture war” arguments, Hans Fiene argues that, “culturally speaking, Hallmark Christmas movies are noticeably Christian.”

By this, Fiene isn’t talking about characters who actually go to church or pray — even self-identified conservative Christians don’t want to see that —  but a set of patriarchal and authoritarian values that are more about white evangelicals defining themselves as an ethnic group, and not about a genuine feeling of spirituality.

This keeps going and going and going. And this is the kind of leftist insanity which allows Trump to win in 2020.

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2019 Was The Year The World Woke Up To The Climate Emergency Or Something

By William Teach December 26, 2019 – 7:36 am

The Cult of Climastrology has only been pimping it since the 1980’s, and it’s just now that the world is woke?

The year the world woke up to the climate emergency

Schoolchildren skipping class to strike, protests bringing city centres to a standstill: armed with dire warnings from scientists, people around the world dragged the climate emergency into the mainstream in 2019.

Spurred on by Swedish wunderkind Greta Thunberg — virtually unknown outside of her homeland a year ago but now a global star nominated for a Nobel prize — millions of young people took part in weekly demonstrations demanding climate action.

And, like harbingers of the apocalypse, the Extinction Rebellion movement embarked on a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience that spread worldwide, armed with little more than superglue and the nihilistic motto: “When hope dies, action begins.”

Although scientists have warned for decades about the risk to humanity and Earth posed by unfettered burning of fossil fuels, in 2019 — set to be the second hottest year in history — their message seems to have finally hit home.

So, the world is listening to an un-educated child who’s blowing off her education to scold people around the world, along with a group of nutjobs gluing themselves to streets and doors and walls? People can demonstrate all they want: most of them are failing to live the carbon neutral lifestyle they want everyone else to be forced to live. Yet again, Doing Something about ‘climate change’ is popular in theory, not practice. Most refuse to spend more than $10 a month of their own money to “solve” it. They aren’t giving up their fossil fueled travel, they aren’t giving up AC and heating, they aren’t giving up meat, they are growing their own food, they aren’t giving up most things.

But while society and particularly younger generations appear to have woken up to the threat of climate catastrophe, industry shows little signs of sharing their urgency.

True, because the same climate cultists are buying products from them.

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GOP Believes It Can Pick Up A Few Democrat Votes In Senate Impeachment Trial

By William Teach December 26, 2019 – 7:24 am

Of course, this is all based on whether Nancy Pelosi gets around with sending the articles of impeachment over to the Senate or sits on them forever

GOP predicts bipartisan acquittal at Trump impeachment trial

Republicans are becoming increasingly confident they’ll be able to hand President Trump a bipartisan acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial.

With 67 votes needed to convict the president and remove him from office, and the outcome of a Senate trial all but guaranteed, GOP senators are broadening their sights as they plot their strategy.

Senate Republicans think they’ll be able to pick up one or two Democrats on a final vote on the articles. That would let them tout Trump’s acquittal as bipartisan — an angle they’ve already seized on when talking about the House vote, in which a handful of Democrats crossed the aisle to oppose impeachment.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) declined to say who he thinks will flip, arguing he didn’t want to put pressure on them.

“I think we might have a couple,” Perdue said. “I don’t want to speculate on who — obviously that puts too much pressure on them — but I really think we have people on both sides that are trying to get to a reasonable, nonpartisan answer.”

A few Democrats might as well cross over, especially ones from toss-up states, because there is no possible way to get to 67 votes with the silly charges from the House. Just like it was a foregone conclusion that the Democrats would vote for impeachment in the House, it’s the same with the Republicans in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), during a recent Fox News interview, also predicted that Democrats would break ranks. He doubted any GOP senators would vote to convict Trump.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if we got one or two Democrats. It looks to me over in the House, the Republicans seem to be solid and the Democrats seem to be divided,” McConnell said.

In, reality, you most likely will get no more than 2-3 Democrats tops. Despite the whining from Democrats about going into the trial “unbiased” and “listening to the arguments” and being “impartial”, you know that the vast majority of Senate Democrats have already made up their minds. Heck, their minds were made up on November 9, 2016. So, the Democrats can give up their talking points.

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Thanks To ‘Climate Change’, Santa Might Have To Move To The South Pole Or Something

By William Teach December 25, 2019 – 10:30 am

This is all your fault for engaging in consumerism and buying presents for people you love and having a big dinner

Southern comfort for Santa Claus? Given climate change-induced warming, a move to Antarctica may be inevitable

Now that Santa Claus has done his work for the year distributing presents on Christmas Eve, he should spare time today to ponder about that much-advised move to Antarctica. While climate change is affecting all parts of the planet, warming oceans and other unseasonal factors are taking longer to affect the permafrost down south because of its bigger landmass. And, it is well known that Santa’s abode at Rovaniemi in Lapland cannot deal with warm climes; nor can his team of industrious elves, reportedly.

It is rumoured that even the glow of Rudolph’s famously red nose has been dimming over the years because of the lack of sufficiently biting cold weather inside the Arctic Circle. He could air-condition his home-cum-workshop, but with seas rising, he could then have to finance an underwater premises in the not-too-distant future. So, a move to icier climes may be the only viable solution for Santa and his retinue as most countries appear to be unwilling to do much as yet to halt climate change.

Of course, any move to South Pole would have to take the locals — penguins — into account. The venerable gentlemen (and ladies) in formal black-and-white may not like the idea of a rotund red-and-white immigrant moving into their homeland with bag-and-baggage, not to mention a full complement of reindeer and elves.

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Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

By William Teach December 25, 2019 – 8:05 am

Every Christmas, once everyone is up, Christmas greetings were made, hugs were exchanged, the presents were opened, and breakfast was being made, I would read this first in the paper (ye olde parental units get an actual paper, and they live in NJ). It is a Christmas classic that has always touched my soul. While some people outside of the Tri-State area have heard of it, rarely do papers outside of the NY-NJ-Conn area see it in print, and I always direct them to read it online. I humbly bring it to you, and hope it touches you as much as it touches me:

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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Harvard Names “Climate Emergency” Word Of The Year

By William Teach December 24, 2019 – 2:58 pm

Who wants to tell them?

Say, will Harvard ban the use of fossil fuels to transport the kids to school? How about their athletic department? How about electricity for the school? From the link

Every year the publisher of the august Oxford English Dictionary peers into the zeitgeist and selects a “word of the year” whose sudden appearance or rising popularity tells us something about our collective mood or obsessions. The last three, for instance, have been toxic, youthquake, and post-truth. Take from those what you will.

This year’s word — in actuality a phrase — is “climate emergency.” The publisher Oxford Dictionaries said the choice was prompted by a 100-fold increase in usage over the previous year, a rise that reflected the rising heat of environmental activism and the growing guilt and angst over our role in the problem.

Along with climate emergency, Oxford selected a short list of other environment-related terms whose usage also grew noticeably. That includes some that will seem familiar to many — climate action, climate denial, climate crisis, net zero, extinction, and plant-based — and others newer to the tongue — eco-anxiety, ecocide, flight shame, and global heating, whose usage soared 18,358 percent.

They should have chose “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Or, how about, climahypocrite? Anyhow, they asked several faculty members, including Gina McCarthy…yes, the one who worked for Obama

What I take away from this is that climate change has reached a turning point in the public consciousness. In 2019, people all over the world began demanding actions and solutions. We don’t have to worry so much about whether we use “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” or “global heating.”

Yet, the majority of people, including climate cultists, refuse to spend even $10 a month on the “climate emergency”, nor change their own lives. Go figure.

Read: Harvard Names “Climate Emergency” Word Of The Year »

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