Bummer: Recession (scam) Fears Recede, Which Is A Boon To Trump

By William Teach November 29, 2019 – 6:43 am

Democrats and their pet media who all pushed the “coming recession” doom and gloom hit the hardest (oh, and Glenn Beck, who pushes this for his advertisers like Gold Line and prepper foods)

Recession fears recede in boost to Trump

After a summer dip, consumer spending has roared back to life heading into the holiday shopping season, giving the stock market a boost and fending off recession fears with less than a year until the 2020 elections.

The improving economic picture could be a boon for President Trump, who has made the economy a central argument for his reelection.

Recent economic data stands in contrast to just a few months ago, when economists were worried that consumer spending would be the next shoe to drop after manufacturing hit a slump and as investment was in the midst of contracting.

The tumultuous summer was also marred by a rocky stock market, escalating trade tensions with China and repeated warning signs from the bond market that a recession could be on the 2020 horizon.

By the time fall rolled around, analysts were forecasting flat or even decreasing sales for Halloween, a further sign of declining consumer sentiment.

But sales beat expectations, raising prospects for the all-important holiday shopping season.

“Consumers are in good financial shape and willing to spend a little more on gifts for the special people in their lives this holiday season,” said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay.

While there were certainly real concerns, and still are, for some international markets, particularly in Europe (which has killed its economy through Progressive regulations and climate change policies), the U.S. was never really in danger. The media just liked to over-hype dangers to the economy, because Trump is in office, which hurt consumer confidence, which is now rising up

“Consumers are finally acknowledging that consistent — albeit moderate — wage inflation and steady job gains combined with subdued price inflation have made them financially better off than they were 12 months ago,” Morning Consult wrote in an analysis of the polling data. (snip)

The economic news is likely to benefit Trump. Despite the effects of his ongoing trade war with China and criticism over the high cost and uneven benefit of the 2017 tax-cut law, the economy has proven resilient. And Trump has taken notice.

So, expect the media to tout how bad the economy is and that doom is coming next year in an attempt to defeat Trump, in complete defiance of the economic indicators.

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Climate Cultists Refuse To Fly Home For The Holidays Or Something

By William Teach November 28, 2019 – 7:16 pm

Well, that’s good, because less unhinged arguments. I love the way this starts

Choosing Not To Fly Home For The Holidays, For The Climate’s Sake

This year Thom Hawkins is missing his fourth family Thanksgiving back home in Minnesota, by choice.

The 82-year-old lives in Glendale, Calif., and hasn’t visited his extended family of nieces, nephews and cousins since September 2016. That’s when he decided he couldn’t fly anymore because of environmental concerns. Ever since, he has missed weddings, birthdays and graduations, and he expects to miss funerals.

“On the last trip there I felt guilty, if you want to know the truth,” Hawkins says. “I [had] become very aware of climate change … probably hyper-aware, more than most people that I know.”

He’s even told his family to no longer fly to California to visit him, as he doesn’t want them to contribute to climate change on his behalf. Hawkins is part of a small but growing number of people who are choosing not to fly, or to fly less.

So, for 80 years he had the good life, took flights, traveled, but, now he gives it up, and won’t even attend important times in the life of his family? Cult.

A group called Flight Free, which has members in at least 10 countries, and another called NoFlyClimateSci, claim more than 20,000 people around the world have signed different public pledges to not fly in 2020. There is an international push to raise those numbers by the end of the year.

“We’re trying to inspire climate action, and when people choose not to fly that’s one of the most immediate and direct and cheapest ways that people can help solve the climate crisis,” says Ariella Granett, who helped found Flight Free USA.

But, will they give up traveling in fossil fueled vehicles?

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Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 28, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is people eating too much food, causing the seas to rise, you might just be a Warmist

The blogs of the day are

These are just the blogs with posts up when I set this in the a.m. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Read: If All You See… »

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Massive Winter Storms Hitting U.S., And This Is All Your Fault

By William Teach November 28, 2019 – 8:07 am

You see, big winter storms never happened before 1980/invention of fossil fueled vehicles/1950/Industrial revolution (the starting timepoint depends on what a Warmist is arguing). They are a thing of man-caused climate change, and this is all your fault for taking a fossil fueled trip home for Thanksgiving, where you will bombarded with talking points about ‘climate change’ as crazy old Uncle Pete, even if you are a 16 year old girl

Thanksgiving Weather: Historic ‘Bomb Cyclone’ And Snow Hit Much Of The US

In many American homes Wednesday the Thanksgiving turkey is thawing and the yard is either blanketed with snow or bracing for big winds.

The National Weather Service warned on one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States that two major storm systems will work their way across the continent this week, including a so-called “bomb cyclone” that could be historic.

People from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes region woke up to snow Wednesday as hurricane-force winds began to lash southwest Oregon and northwest California.

The storm on the west coast has gone through the period of rapid intensification known as bombogenesis to earn the title of “bomb cyclone,” which basically means that this is a super-strong storm!

The storm is predicted to bring plenty of precipitation to the west, with the possibility of one to three feet of snow in mountain ranges from the Sierra Nevada to the Northern Rockies to the San Juans in Colorado.

While no single weather event can be directly attributed to climate change, which merely establishes the background conditions against which weather events form, recent research from UCLA predicts more “climate whiplash” for California, quickly transitioning from extreme dry to extreme wet conditions.

And then there’s

Read More »

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Trump Signs Two Bills For Hong Kong Democracy, Angering China Or Something

By William Teach November 28, 2019 – 7:49 am

The bills he signed are a good thing. Somehow, the NY Times almost makes it out, it’s very subtle, like this is a bad thing, and that Trump didn’t really want to do it

Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Legislation, Angering China

President Trump on Wednesday signed tough legislation that authorizes sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights abuses in Hong Kong, signaling support for pro-democracy activists and escalating tensions with Beijing as Mr. Trump tries to negotiate a trade deal with Chinese leaders.

China’s Foreign Ministry was furious, saying the bill “seriously interfered with Hong Kong affairs, seriously interfered with China’s internal affairs, and seriously violated international law and basic norms of international relations.” The ministry warned the United States against acting arbitrarily and said that any consequences would “be borne by the United States.”

Whether Mr. Trump would sign the legislation had been a subject of debate. He refused to commit to doing so as late as last Friday, saying that he supported the protesters but that President Xi Jinping of China was “a friend of mine.” But Mr. Trump was left with few options: The bill had passed both the House and the Senate by veto-proof majorities.

So, instead of congratulating Trump for signing in, they go with “China mad!” and subtlety positioning Trump signing the bills as something he didn’t really want to do.

The second bill that Mr. Trump signed bans the sale of crowd-control munitions like tear gas and rubber bullets to the Hong Kong police.

The pro-Beijing government in Hong Kong expressed its strong displeasure, calling the two measures “unnecessary and unwarranted, and would harm the relations and common interests between Hong Kong and the U.S.”

We care what Beijing thinks why? Oh, right, it’s supposed to make it seems as if Trump was doing things without thinking.

The main measure, titled the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, would compel the United States to impose sanctions on officials. It would also require the State Department to annually review the special autonomous status it grants the territory in trade considerations. That status is separate from the relationship with mainland China, and revoking it would mean less favorable trade conditions between the United States and Hong Kong.

That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Evan S. Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was the senior Asia director on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council staff, said Mr. Trump’s action could be his attempt to look tough on China to American voters without entirely upsetting the negotiations.

Um, it was passed almost unanimously. Does this mean Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Booker, Harris, Sanders, and the rest of the Dems were attempting to look tough?

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Posted in Current Affairs, Donald Trump | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Narrative Fail: Battleground Voters Who Went Democrat In 2018 Switching Back To Trump

By William Teach November 27, 2019 – 4:53 pm

This had to really, really hurt the NY Times to publish. After all the scaremongering, the negative stories on Trump, the refusal to run any but a handful of stories buried deep on the good things Trump has done (the story on Trump signing the animal cruelty bill was nowhere on the front page on the web nor the paper), all the negative opinion pieces, spinning good news as bad, telling us the economy is cratering and a recession is coming, all the impeachment theater, etc, and we get this

They Voted Democratic. Now They Support Trump.

Midterm victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin gave Democrats hope of retaking the Rust Belt battleground states that handed the presidency to Donald J. Trump in 2016.

Yet success in the midterms might not mean as much for Democratic presidential candidates as the party might think. Nearly two-thirds of voters in six battleground states who voted for President Trump in 2016 — but for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 — say they intend to back the president against each of his top rivals, according to recent polling by The New York Times Upshot/Siena College.

The results suggest that the party’s winning formula in last year’s midterms may not be so easy to replicate in a presidential election. The Democrats’ relatively moderate House candidates succeeded in large part by flipping a crucial segment of voters who backed the president in 2016. If these voters remain open-minded again in 2020, Democrats will have a ready-made blueprint for winning back the crucial Rust Belt battlegrounds.

Of course, the Times attempts to spin this, denigrating the voters as “overwhelmingly white, 60 percent are male, and two-thirds have no college degree”, because, obviously, they aren’t allowed to have an opinion.

Other voters say they are preparing to take an even greater leap: vote for Mr. Trump after supporting Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.

In the survey, 7 percent of those who supported Mrs. Clinton in 2016 said they now approved of the president’s performance — despite his personality and his Twitter account, many said.

What this really is is a warning for Democrats to get their buts in gear to attempt to find a way to win.

Many of the voters cited economic strength as a major reason to support Mr. Trump in 2020, even if they didn’t support him last time. Also, certain voters who support Trump said they had soured on Democrats because of partisan fighting, culminating in impeachment hearings.

So, he’s doing pretty good and Democrats are unhinged.

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If All You See…

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

…is wonderful low carbon sailboat needed for when the land is swamped by the seas, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Real Climate Science, with a post on NOAA blocking access to their temperature data.

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Posted in If All You See | 45 Comments | Trackback URL

EU Parliament Considers Declaring “Climate Emergency” Or Something

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

Let’s see: all the EU nations were members of the Kyoto Protocol, and failed. They’ve instituted all sorts of taxes and fees and restrictions and such, and they’ve failed. They hailed being part of the “historic” Paris Climate agreement, yet, none of them are even close to their own stated goals. So, sure, declare a climate emergency, right? Fourth times the charm, right?

European parliament split on declaring climate emergency

The European parliament is split over whether to declare a global climate emergency before next week’s crucial UN summit.

If passed, the climate emergency resolution – to be voted on on Thursday – would throw down the gauntlet to incoming European Union leaders. The European commission’s president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen, is expected to take office on 1 December, having promised “a European green deal” in her first 100 days.

The draft resolution states there is “an environment and climate emergency in Europe and globally” and declares the EU will “take action accordingly”.

“It is a message to European citizens, to young people, to say that Europe is the very first continent to declare a climate emergency and to act accordingly,” said Pascal Canfin, a French MEP who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee and co-authored the resolution.

Oh, good, they’re sending a message! Since they like platitudes, how about “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”?

The text also references the US president Donald Trump’s decision to begin formal withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement earlier this month.

“We need to send a signal that after Trump’s decision, Europe is more than ever committed to deliver,” said Canfin, an ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

They’re so committed that they are all failing on their Paris pledges.

While the climate emergency resolution is supported by many Liberals, Socialists, Greens and the radical left, the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) – the European parliament’s largest group – is uneasy about the word “emergency”. A source said the German word der Notstand was associated with the name of an infamous law of the Nazi era.

Hey, in that context, it’s the perfect word, considering the actual goals of the Cult of Climastrology, which really aren’t that different from the Fascists.

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Hotcold Take: East Coast Will See More Big Snowstorms But Less Overall Snow

By William Teach November 27, 2019 – 7:25 am

This seems to be a variation on the old trope about being fewer hurricanes but them being much, much bigger. Of course, they mean that this is all your fault for your big carbon footprint, rather than something that keeps happening during the Holocene, ie, warm periods

With climate change, Washington may have entered era of more blockbuster snowstorms but less snow overall

As Washington’s winter climate has warmed several degrees over the past 120 years, average snowfall has declined by about half a foot, from roughly 21 inches to 15 inches. Yet recent decades have also featured several of the biggest snowstorms the city has ever recorded.

Snowfall trends in Washington, as well as other East Coast cities, are leading scientists to this conclusion: Global warming, while eating away at some snow events, may paradoxically be contributing to an uptick in big East Coast snowstorms.

Several recent studies show that this trend toward more blockbuster storms will continue into the coming decades, although there are open questions about how climate change is skewing the odds toward particular winter weather scenarios.

Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at AER, a Verisk Analytics company, has published multiple studies that link changing snowfall trends in the eastern United States to change in the Arctic. His research shows that the loss of Arctic sea ice is contributing to an increase in fall snowfall in parts of Siberia. This is, in turn, having an influence on weather across the Arctic, extending high into the atmosphere above the vast region, favoring weather patterns that tend to direct Arctic air into the Lower 48 states.

This kind of thing goes on for a bit, and, really, the whole point is to attempt to blame winter storms on anthropogenic climate change from greenhouse glasses, much like they’ve changed it from global warming to climate change so that all non-warming weather can be blamed. We’ve all seen them try this for several years, saying that snow storms and cold weather are worse due to carbon pollution.

For example, a computer modeling study published in Geophysical Research Letters last year found that smaller snowstorms will significantly diminish across a broad swath of the Northeast, including Washington, by late in the century. However, the bigger storms will get even more destructive and are unlikely to diminish in number, the study found.

Colin Zarzycki, the lead author of the study, says that as winters continue to warm, overall snowfall will decline in the Northeast, and the total number of snowfall events will also decline. However, when conditions align to produce snow, it will fall at more intense rates than typically occurs now. This will increase the odds of having a big snowstorm, he says.

Computer models.

However, all hope for D.C. snow lovers is far from lost. Big snowstorms still occur, and they may become more routine as air and sea surface temperatures warm, supercharging coastal storms. In addition, snow events have not dropped sharply yet in January and February, which tend to be the coldest winter months. But instead of expecting a winter full of small snow events to keep things looking wintry, it’s possible we’ve already entered a climate characterized more by a feast-or-famine scenario, in which a major snowstorm or two accounts for the bulk of our seasonal snowfall.

They love their doomsaying, eh?

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Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

According To Reports, San Francisco Is Super Racist For Citing Blacks For Eating On Trains

By William Teach November 27, 2019 – 7:09 am

I wonder if anyone has explained to the UK Guardian and the SF Examiner that this is high caliber friendly fire

Police cited 55 people for eating on San Francisco trains. Only nine were white

Police officers for the San Francisco Bay Area commuter train system disproportionately target black riders with citations for eating and drinking, according to new data that has renewed concerns about racial profiling.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) data was released following a viral video showing police handcuffing a 31-year-old black man who was cited for eating a breakfast sandwich on his way to work. The new records show that more than 81% of people who have been stopped for eating and drinking on Bart since 2014 were people of color, and that the vast majority of them were black.

Stops for eating and drinking on trains or platforms are infrequent within Bart, the train system that runs between San Francisco, Oakland and surrounding suburbs. Of 55 people cited for this offense over the last five years, 33 were black passengers, representing 60% of the citations. Nine of the stops were white passengers, seven were listed as Hispanic, five were categorized as “other” and one was unknown, according to the data, which was obtained by the San Francisco Examiner.

Only 10% of Bart’s total riders are black, meaning they are six times more likely than others to be stopped for eating and drinking. Ridership data, collected last year, showed that 35% of overall riders are white, 32% are Asian/Pacific Islander and 17% are Latino.

The Bart spokeswoman Alicia Trost said in an email that the data shows citations are “very rare” and are “handed out at stations across the system”. “When an officer witnesses someone eating, they remind the rider that eating is not allowed and if the rider puts the food away no citation is necessary. It is a rare occurrence to need to issue a citation after reminding the rider not to eat,” she said.

So, see, San Francisco is raaaaacist. You know, the completely controlled by the Democratic Party San Francisco.

The answer, though, is very simple: don’t eat on a Bart train. If you give it a shot, put it away when you’re called on it. That’s why people are getting citations: they’re getting caught and either refusing to put the food away, or, most likely, getting caught a second time after putting it away and thinking the officer is walking away. Without even looking up the regulation on stopping eating on the trains, you know it is about trying to keep the trains clean. Food will get everywhere, people will wipe their hands on everything, and could be getting it on other people.

You are not allowed to smoke, vape, or dip. No alcohol, of course. You aren’t allowed to actually drink anything. So, no morning coffee or, being SF, weirdo smoothies. No listening to anything without headphones. No littering.

Further, starting in 2018 BART put a lot more police officers in the stations and on the trains. Why? First because of the exploding homeless problem. Second, because crime was skyrocketing on the trains, especially aimed at taking people’s phones. So, yeah, cops will see people attempting to eat, drink, vape, etc, more often. Don’t want to get cited? Do not do it. Or, at least comply if you get caught and don’t try and do it again.

Seriously, though, a total of 55 over five years is not much. It means most who got caught complied. There’s no racial profiling, it’s just who got caught and then failed to comply.

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