NY Times Super Excited About Senate Trial Not Being About GOP Party Loyalty Or Something

By William Teach December 28, 2019 – 6:56 am

The Editorial Board is squeeing over ultra squishy Lisa Murkowski, calling her the conscience in the Senate….but, then they and other Democrats used to think that Ted Kennedy, who left a woman to slowly drown while he worked on his alibi, and Robert Byrd, a former high ranking KKK member, were consciences in the Senate

A Stirring of Conscience in the Senate

(many many paragraphs attempting to defend the way the House held it’s impeachment theater)

But Mr. McConnell’s pledge to place the Senate at the president’s service puts other Republicans in an awkward spot — at least those still interested in maintaining a modicum of independence or integrity. And this week, a thin crack in conference unity appeared.

In an interview that aired on Christmas Eve, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told an Anchorage TV station she was “disturbed” by Mr. McConnell’s pledge to coordinate with the president’s legal team. It would be wrong to “prejudge” this matter, she said. “To me, it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense.” Mr. McConnell, she lamented, had “further confused the process.”

Ms. Murkowski is known for her independence and has proved unafraid to buck her party and her president, including opposing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year. That said, her criticism should not be taken as a sign that she will vote to remove Mr. Trump. Ms. Murkowski has also criticized the House’s impeachment inquiry as flawed and rushed.

No one likes her.

But in a Republican Party so cowed by this president, with most lawmakers too timid to question even his most grotesque behavior, Ms. Murkowski’s expression of concern sets her apart. The senator is sending a message, to her constituents as well as to Mr. McConnell, that she does not want to be viewed as a rubber stamp for a preordained acquittal. She takes her public duty more seriously than party loyalty, and she can be pushed too far.

If only more of her colleagues felt the same.

Right, right. Where’s the NYT editorial about party loyalty in the House? I don’t remember any editorials praising Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey for voting against the silly articles of impeachment, and Tulsi Gabbard for voting present, bucking party loyalty in what was a foregone voting conclusion. What will the Times have to say about any Democrats who vote against impeachment in the Senate? You know the vast majority have already made up their minds to vote for impeachment.

Read: NY Times Super Excited About Senate Trial Not Being About GOP Party Loyalty Or Something »

Posted in Current Affairs, Donald Trump, GOP, Wonky Media | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

We Only Have 10 Years Left To Save The Planet Or Something

By William Teach December 27, 2019 – 3:46 pm

And Warmists have ideas!

10 years to save planet Earth: Here are 6 imaginative climate change solutions

A giant parasol that hovers high in orbit to block the sun. Refreezing the melting poles by making submarine-sized ice cubes. Pumping extra carbon dioxide deep underground for indefinite storage. Spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to form clouds to artificially cool the Earth.

As global warming becomes direr – and nations dither about decreasing emissions – could these controversial technological fixes known as geoengineering buy us time to move away from burning fossil fuels?

Scientists say that transition needs to be well underway in the next 20 years. While geoengineering isn’t a replacement for moving to a carbon-neutral economy, it’s increasingly been seen as something we need to explore as a stopgap.

We don’t have much time, said Hugh Hunt, an engineering professor at Cambridge University in England, where he directs the Center for Climate Repair.

He compares geoengineering to the often harsh and sometimes dangerous chemotherapy used to treat cancer.

“I’m no more pro-geoengineering than someone working on chemotherapy is pro-chemotherapy. But if someone has cancer, you try chemotherapy,” he said.

And the ideas?

  • Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere
  • Creating clouds with sulfur
  • Dump iron shavings into the ocean
  • A giant sunshade orbiting the Earth
  • Refreeze the polar ice caps
  • Wrap glaciers in thermal blankets

Anyhow, when Doom fails to arrive in 10 years, does this mean we won’t have to see and hear stories on climate doom?

Read: We Only Have 10 Years Left To Save The Planet Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 20 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach December 27, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a gym that is great to reduce obesity which is Bad for climate change (but this is also fat shaming), you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on a New Year’s resolution to Not Be Hitler.

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New California Law Will Give Illegal Aliens Subsidized Healthcare

By William Teach December 27, 2019 – 10:30 am

Hey, remember when Democrats were freaking out about conservatives saying that Dems wanted to give illegals all sorts of free healthcare? When they went off on Joe Wilson when he said that Obama lied regarding Ocare and illegals? Good times

New California law to provide subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants

Under the new law SB 104 California will offer government subsidized health benefits for undocumented immigrants under the age of 26.

Previously only undocumented immigrant children could apply. It’s part of new funding for MediCal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom says there will be “An additional $450 a month in subsidies reducing premiums by 25%. No state in America does that.”

To qualify, an applicant must make less than 138% of the federal poverty level, which is $17,200 for an individual and $35,500 for a family of four.

Guess who’s paying for this?

“The state has taken numerous steps over the years to accommodate people who are in the country illegally,” says Ira Mehlman from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

He says the program will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

“In Sacramento they continue to make choices that will further discourage the middle-class from remaining in California and further encourage more people to come and settle illegally,” says Mehlman.

This would actually seem to violate federal law, specifically 8 USC 1324.

Read: New California Law Will Give Illegal Aliens Subsidized Healthcare »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

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.

Read: Cult Of Climastrology Now Wants To Question Private Home Ownership »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 19 Comments | Trackback URL

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.

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

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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.

Read: Fat Shaming: Cult Of Climastrology Wants To Tackle Obesity »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

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.

Read: If All You See… »

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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.

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

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 50 Comments | Trackback URL
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