NY Times Suddenly In Favor Of Doxxing Campaign Contributors

By William Teach August 9, 2019 – 10:26 am

As long as they are Republican contributors, of course. Now, it’s not hard to find out who has donated to campaigns, especially the big contributors. You can get this information from Open Secrets, among others. It’s public record. But, to use that data to “shame” and harass is disturbing, and along comes to the NY Times Editorial Board

May the SoulCycle Boycott Make Democracy Better
Stunts like Joaquin Castro’s upstage a real concern: Americans should want to know more about who funds political campaigns.

That’s an interesting take in the subhead, since this same paper had exactly zero interest in knowing who was donating to Mr. Obama’s campaigns, especially when he had no safeguards to stop foreigners from donating through credit card. Nor are they interested in broadcasting how so many Democrats receive money from people who live in far away states.

It has been an unsettling week for some of President Trump’s political contributors.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Stephen Ross, the billionaire real estate developer whose firm owns SoulCycle and Equinox gym, was hosting a big-money fund-raiser in support of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee on Friday, with ticket prices running as high as $250,000. This news did not sit well with many patrons of Equinox and SoulCycle, who took to social media to call for a boycott.

Lower down the donor ladder, 44 residents of San Antonio who had contributed the maximum legal amount to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign found themselves in the spotlight, after their names were tweeted out on Monday by Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, who declared himself “Sad to see so many” of his constituents “fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’”

Unsettling? An elected politician, tasked with being a public servant, called for harassment of those contributors. Any violence that ensues will be on Castro’s head.

Public shaming seemed to be at the core of Mr. Castro’s tweet as well, though the outcry from Republican officials was much louder. The Texas congressman was accused of “inviting harassment” and “encouraging violence against” his own constituents. “People should not be personally targeted for their political views,” warned Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, noting that he knew “firsthand” that “lives are at stake.” (Mr. Scalise was shot by an apparently politically motivated gunman in 2017.) Donald Trump Jr. equated Mr. Castro’s tweet with the “hit list” kept by the perpetrator of Sunday’s mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. There were calls for Mr. Castro to resign, and the hashtag #ImpeachJoaquinCastro trended on Twitter. (Note: Constitutionally speaking, impeaching House members is not a thing.)

But, in NY Times World

There is rich irony in Republican self-righteousness about public attacks on people’s political donations. Prominent Republicans routinely assert that the billionaire George Soros, a major donor to progressive candidates and causes, secretly controls the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump and his supporters spent over a year publicly smearing members of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as “13 angry Democrats,” based on their voter registrations or political giving, or both.

Perhaps the NY Times might investigate those links. They’re happy to rail against the Koch brothers. But, this is just an attempt to normalize the doxxing of political contributors for harassment.

As with all political tactics, there is also a high risk of escalation, to the point where each side routinely sics the dark furies of social media on their opponents’ donors.

Yet, the NYTEB is not castigating Castro for doing what he did.

And now this

https://twitter.com/OratioLiberum/status/1159540234780123137

Read: NY Times Suddenly In Favor Of Doxxing Campaign Contributors »

Posted in Journalistic Malpractice, Politics | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Germany To Tax Sausage To Fight ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach August 9, 2019 – 6:51 am

Want to get the German people to rise up, revolt, and put a stop to the climate change scam? This might be it. They had the yellow vests in France, would they be the pink vests in Germany?

Wurst Idea Ever? Germany to Tax Sausages to Fight Climate Change

German legislators have proposed raising the sales tax on meat from seven percent to 19 percent to fight climate change and improve animal welfare.

Research has shown that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock account for a higher percentage of total global emissions than the world’s 1.2 billion automobiles, a fact underscored by some German Greens who are pushing for higher meat taxes,

A United Nations report from 2012 found that the earth’s cattle population generates more carbon dioxide than automobiles, planes, and all other forms of transport combined. Moreover, the cow pies they deposit and the wind they break produce a third of the world’s methane emissions, considered 20 times more detrimental to the environment. (snip)

The idea of raising meat taxes would be to reduce livestock numbers — as well as their gaseous output — by discouraging people from eating meat.

Last June, Germany’s Green party vowed to ban industrial farming to reduce global warming if it ever were to come to power.

The measure was proposed by Katrin Goering-Eckardt, the party’s leader in the Germany parliament, as part of a massive €100 billion project to finance climate initiatives.

Or, they could just mind their own business and leave people alone. Because you don’t hear about these same elected representatives giving up their meat consumption, do you? And it is interesting that they love going to taxes, taking more money out of people’s pockets, eh?

Read: Germany To Tax Sausage To Fight ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Elizabeth Warren Has A Plan To Take Over All Broadband For Your Own Good

By William Teach August 9, 2019 – 6:42 am

She’s apparently just given up on the incrementalism of Net Neutrality and gone straight to government ownership

What could possibly go wrong? From the link

Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren unveiled a proposal to guarantee universal high-speed internet access on Wednesday as part of a new plan to invest in rural communities.

“I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford,” the senator from Massachusetts wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. “That means publicly-owned and operated networks — and no giant [internet service providers] running away with taxpayer dollars.”

Warren said she would create a federal Office of Broadband Access to manage an $85 billion grant program. The grants would be awarded to electricity and telephone cooperatives, nonprofits, tribes and municipalities that pledge to bring high-speed internet to underserved areas. (snip)

Warren’s proposal cites low rates of internet access in rural communities.

About 1 in 4 people living in rural areas, and 1 in 3 living on tribal lands, did not have access to minimum speed broadband, the proposal says, citing an FCC report released earlier this year. And in urban areas, Warren wrote, many low-income residents cannot afford to connect to the internet despite technically having access.

“One of the best tools for unlocking economic opportunity and advances in health care, like telemedicine, is access to reliable, high-speed Internet. In the twenty-first century, every home should have access to this technology — but we’re not even close to that today,” Warren wrote.

If Net Neutrality is the heavy hand of government, this is like that hand wearing a lead gauntlet. A Megladon vs a great white shark.

People worry about the control that broadband providers have, and tech companies like Google and Facebook. How will it work with Government essentially owning and controlling access to the Internet? And what’s next? Taking over existing companies? Don’t scoff. Having a new Office Of Broadband would create mission creep, and, Warren yammered about broadband companies running away with taxpayer dollars, which seems to be her way of saying they are government dollars, rather than citizen’s money.

Read: Elizabeth Warren Has A Plan To Take Over All Broadband For Your Own Good »

Posted in Democrats, Web/Tech | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Hot Take: AOC Accuses Democrats Of Voter Suppression When Her Candidate Loses

By William Teach August 8, 2019 – 4:25 pm

Poor loser

From the link

New York is as bad as the Deep South when it comes to voter disenfranchisement — and Democrats share the blame, according to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In the wake of Tiffany Cabán’s concession in the Queens district attorney Democratic primary race, the freshman congresswoman is laying blame for her fellow progressive’s loss at the feet of state lawmakers and Gov. Cuomo.

“Voter disenfranchisement in the state of New York is a given,” she told the Daily News in an interview at her Queens district office on Wednesday. “Our voting laws are horrifying in how they suppress the vote and how they disenfranchise voters on a regular basis.”

Cabán conceded on Tuesday, officially cementing Melinda Katz’s 60-vote win after six weeks of contentious recounts and court battles. Ocasio-Cortez said there is plenty blame to go around, but called out Cuomo for not signing an election reform bill that Cabán supporters believe could have put the Manhattan public defender over the top.

“New York State historically has been just as bad as any deep southern state when it comes to voter disenfranchisement, whether it’s poll locations changes, whether it’s having your ballot tossed out over technicalities even though you’re a registered Democrat, which also happened in this race,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But it was legal disenfranchisement so that disenfranchisement was within the bounds of the law.”

Modern Socialists love the notion of Direct Democracy. But, they cannot abide losing fair and square. She even admits the counts were lawful, but, since her preferred candidate lost, obviously, things are Very Bad.

Read: Hot Take: AOC Accuses Democrats Of Voter Suppression When Her Candidate Loses »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach August 8, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is an area flooding from too much carbon pollution, causing trees to die, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 357 Magnum, with a post on where most mass shootings occur.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 13 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Massive ICE Raid Captures 680 Illegal Aliens

By William Teach August 8, 2019 – 10:30 am

This is made the Open Borders advocates Very Upset

ICE raids on Mississippi food processing plants result in 680 arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Wednesday that its officers had raided seven food processing plants in Mississippi and detained approximately 680 “removable aliens” in what a federal prosecutor described as “the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history.”

Nearly 600 ICE agents swarmed the plants in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie and Sebastapol, surrounding the perimeters to keep workers from fleeing.

“The execution of federal search warrants today was simply about enforcing the rule of law in our state and throughout our great country,” U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst said in a statement. ” I commend these federal agents, our state and local law enforcement partners, and our federal prosecutors for their professionalism and dedication to ensure that those who violate our laws are held accountable.”

Hopefully, everyone involved in running the plants will see civil and even criminal penalties if it can be shown that they did not do their due diligence to make sure the workers were authorized to work. And it should be noted that anyone not illegal was let go.

Shep Smith had a meltdown over the arrests. The Washington Post tries the “won’t someone think of the children” tactic, forgetting that the parents put their kids in this position by being law breakers.

Mayor is calling for citizens to break the law. Good job, Mayor! And you’re getting this

And this

As hot-takes.

Read: Bummer: Massive ICE Raid Captures 680 Illegal Aliens »

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The Green New Deal Must Be Global Or Something

By William Teach August 8, 2019 – 7:46 am

Poverty and eco-fascism for all!

The Green New Deal Must Be Global
For a planet-wide climate crisis, solutions must also span the planet.

June 2019 was the hottest June in recorded history. July was even hotter — in fact, it was the hottest month ever recorded worldwide, as a wide swath of the continental United States sweltered with heat indexes of over 100 degrees.

Unless new action is taken to curb emissions driving the climate crisis, warns the Union of Concerned Scientists in a new report, the worst is yet to come. By mid-century, nearly one-third of Americans could be experiencing a month or more every year with a heat index above 105 degrees.

Add in more frequent storms, flooding, and wildfires, and the scale of the crisis is harder and harder to ignore. Public opinion polls show that a majority of registered U.S. voters now favor the ambitious Green New Deal, details of which remain to be spelled out. But it’s clear that the crisis is global, and that solutions cannot be limited by national borders.

This means action on multiple fronts in all countries to prevent catastrophic worldwide damage. But both the drivers and the effects of climate change are distributed unevenly. The most vulnerable countries have contributed the least to causing the crisis. Rich countries, through their greenhouse gas emissions, have contributed the most.

Actual data shows that July was not the hottest ever recorded, but, that’s immaterial. When cold records are pointed out climate cultists will say that’s just weather. Or blame it on ‘climate change’. But, it doesn’t prove anthropogenic causation. Just warmth. Which happens during periods. And people might say they support the GND in theory, but, in practice, most aren’t willing to pay $10 a month to Do Something about Hotcoldwetdry.

The Green New Deal: Poverty for Everyone!

Johnson, the Texas Democrat who extended Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal with his own Great Society, was an old-school liberal, certainly on domestic policy. The political activist-agitators LBJ impugned then as “liberals” are today’s progressives—one might even call them reactionaries of the left.

Epitomizing them is Saikat Chakrabarti, the outgoing chief of staff for freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y). Chakrabarti recently starred in a Washington Post article. The spotlight left a key to the influential staffer’s undemocratic mentality in shadows.

Chakrabarti, 33, acknowledged “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez’s multi-trillion dollar zero-carbon emissions mirage, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all… Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

If people had the actual reasons for the GND and were told what it would actually do, would support among Independents collapse, and, heck, even drop below 50% for Democrats? Yes.

Chakrabarti seems to have deduced two things. First, he saw a glass largely full and still filling but for some still empty, and concluded he must first shatter the glass. After that, he apparently failed to consider that the dystopian streets of San Francisco — homeless people living in tents and defecating on sidewalks near high-rent high-rises, and the middle class and affordable housing squeezed by heavy taxes and constrictive zoning — might be a result of local “progressive” politics. The problem is that if his “change-the-entire-economy-thing” would ever be imposed, America as a whole might resemble those dystopian streets. If Soviet Russia, Cuba or Venezuela come to mind, consider India before 2014, when its prime minister, Narendra Modi, was elected.

San Francisco is a good approximation. The cost of living is through the roof. Rents are sky high, housing is sky high, and energy is sky high. Food is expensive. Everything is expensive. The GND is not about the climate or environment, it is about eco-fascism and instituting an Authoritarian governmental system based around the Socialistic belief in controlling the economy. But, it’s not real Socialism, since that would require that the government mostly leave us alone in our private lives. The GND would put heavy controls on citizens and private entities. Explain this to people, and let’s see how those polls go.

Read: The Green New Deal Must Be Global Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Comrade Bernie Wants Concessions From Gun Owners, 99.9% Of Whom Aren’t Mass Killers

By William Teach August 8, 2019 – 7:24 am

Why should any of us concede anything? If someone goes on a stabbing spree, we don’t blame the knife. We don’t ask for concessions from chefs (oh, wait, bad example considering what has been going on in London). We also do not concede anything because we know that the gun grabbers will demand something else, then something else. It never ends, until we get to a total ban on private ownership of firearms

Sanders seeks ‘concessions’ from gun owners, though ‘99.9%’ would never commit mass shootings

Sen. Bernie Sanders says “99.9 percent of gun owners” would never commit gun violence, but wants them to make “concessions” following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

The Democratic presidential candidate has somewhat distinguished himself from his Democratic opponents, who have proposed sweeping gun control measures — but the U.S. senator from Vermont took a more conciliatory tone to gun rights during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Tuesday.

When the conversation turned to gun rights, Sanders expressed condolences to those who were killed or wounded in El Paso and Dayton but noted that nearly all gun owners would never commit such violence.

“All that I ask of the gun owners — and you’re absolutely right, 99.9 percent of gun owners would never in a million, billion years think of doing these horrible things — but at the moment that we are living in, I think we are all going to have to make some concessions to the reality of what’s going on, and that is that there is a small number of — call them whatever you want, depraved people — who are prepared to do that,” Sanders said.

“I wish I could say in the best of all possible worlds, yeah, you can own any weapon you want and so forth and such. We’re not in the best of all possible worlds. We’re living in a world where we’re shocked every day by horror,” he added.

Bernie hasn’t been exactly as staunch anti-gun as most liberals, and was even backed by the NRA back in 1990. Anyhow, what concessions does he want? He doesn’t say. Most Democrats are yammering about universal background checks, which wouldn’t have stopped most of the mass shooters over the past 10 years. The Dayton nut passed his check. Pretty much since the local police did not take warnings from other citizens seriously and report them. All the gun laws in California haven’t really stopped anything.

And then there’s this nut

In fairness, Abby was a Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life. But, let me trot this out again, a reasonable compromise on gun control

Read More »

Read: Comrade Bernie Wants Concessions From Gun Owners, 99.9% Of Whom Aren’t Mass Killers »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Democrats | 39 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Fault: UK Guardian Finally Gets In The Business Of Blaming California Cliffside Collapse

By William Teach August 7, 2019 – 3:19 pm

If you’ll think back just back to the 3rd, a cliff collapsed in California near the sea, killing three and hurting several others. The climate cultists came out in droves to blame this on ‘climate change.’ Now, of course, some will say this was just the fevered rantings of some outlying kooks. But, what of when a major news outlets jumps in the water?

Deadly cliffside collapse underscores California’s climate-fueled crisis

Three women were killed last week while sunning on a beach in Encinitas, California, when the bluff above them gave way.

The sudden tragedy that befell Anne Clave; her mother, Julie Davis; and her aunt Elizabeth Cox, who had gathered at the resplendent coastline in the seaside community north of San Diego to celebrate Cox surviving cancer, made headlines around the world. But cliff erosion continues to imperil people and property around the state. California is falling into the sea piece by piece, and coastal conditions will only grow more dire with worsening climate crisis.

Nearly three-quarters of California’s coastlines are actively eroding, putting lives, homes, roadways, railways, utilities and other infrastructure in danger. The cliffs have been crumbling since before the Arctic began melting, but natural geological collapse stands to worsen in the coming years. (snip)

Although researchers can’t point to a single cause of any particular cliff failure now, they expect to see more as the climate continues to collapse. “What we can say unequivocally is as sea level rises, these kinds of events will become more common,” said USGS research geologist Patrick Barnard.

Got that? This is all natural, has been going on for 20,000 years (surely longer, because tectonic activity in California has been going on much longer), and they cannot say with science that ‘climate change’ is a cause, but they will still blame you for driving a fossil fueled vehicle.

Scientists say sea level rise will accelerate cliff retreat, doubling average erosion rates in southern California by 2100, including some of the state’s most heavily populated, tony coastal communities. That’s because sea level rise and more extreme storms mean bigger, higher waves washing away beaches and lapping at the bottoms of the cliffs. California stands to lose two-thirds of its beaches by the turn of the next century, in a wave of coastal economic destruction worse than the state’s most devastating fires to date.

I’m not going to post the graphics of actual data yet again of sea rise in California, but, I will note that San Diego shows a whopping relative sea level trend of 2.19 millimeters/year, equivalent to a change of 0.72 feet in 100 years. The next gauge up the coast is La Jolla, which is 2.17 millimeters/year. Encinitas is between the two. That level of sea rise is exactly average, and well below what would be expected during a Holocene warm period.

California will not be losing 2/3rds of its beaches in the next 81 years. Pure fear-mongering by cultists.

Read: Your Fault: UK Guardian Finally Gets In The Business Of Blaming California Cliffside Collapse »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach August 7, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a lake that will soon dry up unless we pass a Green New Deal to deal with indigenous populations, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Political Clown Parade, with a post on never letting a good crisis go to waste.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 11 Comments | Trackback URL
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