Any Green New Deal Must Include “Decarceration” Or Something

By William Teach August 29, 2019 – 8:19 am

Remember, the Green New Deal Is all about science, not politics

A Green New Deal for Decarceration

This June, after nearly two decades of organizing, local activist groups in eastern Kentucky stopped construction of a federal prison in Letcher County. In a powerful rebuke to Kentucky Congressman Hal “Prince of Pork” Rogers, the project to build the prison on a reclaimed mountaintop looks dead for good: Trump’s proposed 2020 budget rescinded $510 million previously approved for construction.

The news is a major victory — not just for the anti-prison activists who have fought for decades against the new facility, but also for the environmentalists who became their allies.

In fights against prison expansion, activists across the country are forging alliances on unexpected common ground: the struggle against ecological devastation. These campaigns’ lesson — that the fight against mass incarceration and for environmental justice are tightly interwoven, and require the same political coalitions — should inform the policies and principles of the Green New Deal movement.

Strange how they’re able to link the totally science issue of man-caused climate change with pretty much everything, eh?

The devastation wrought by blowing up mountaintops to extract buried fossil fuels parallels the community ruin caused by forcibly removing residents from their neighborhoods to be warehoused in massive, faraway, high-security institutions. Both cause enormous injury to humans and habitats alike. Neither offers long-term economic benefit, security, or safety to the communities in whose name these extractions are publicly justified.

These communities deserve better. Instead of prison-building as local development, they deserve real investment in living-wage jobs, social infrastructure for healthy living, and just solutions to ecological and social problems, from rampant inequality to the climate emergency.

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. But, hey, they only do the crime because the world has warmed a minimal 1.5F in 170 years, and it’s because you drive a fossil fueled vehicle

In other words, they deserve a Green New Deal. And like the people housed inside the correctional institutions they are asked to embrace, what they really deserve is what we’re calling a Green New Deal for Decarceration.

A Green New Deal for Decarceration echoes Bernie Sanders’s sweeping criminal justice and Green New Deal plans, released over the past week. But in order to expand the climate justice and decarceration movements and build the coalitional power required to avoid both carceral and ecological catastrophe, we need to integrate these fights, and tell a clearer story about shared values, goals, and strategies. We need to get explicit about how the exploitation and racism underpinning climate change are also those that animate mass criminalization and mass incarceration.

Science!

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Most House Democrats Play Coy On Impeachment

By William Teach August 29, 2019 – 7:58 am

Most House Democrats know, either from being smart enough to figure it out, or, most likely, being told by others, that actually attempting impeachment won’t work out well for them. Poll after poll show that the majority of Americans do not want impeachment. Even most Democrats do not want it. It’s an electoral loser. But, they’ve dug this hole with their Trump Derangement Syndrome, counting on the Mueller Report early on. They really have no evidence, despite all the Democrats, such as what Excitable Adam Schiff and Crazy Jerry Nadler say they have. Russia Russia Russia has failed. So….

House Democrats blur lines on support for impeachment

House Democrats facing pressure from constituents back home over the August recess are increasingly blurring the lines on where they stand on impeaching President Trump.

While about 30 Democrats have announced support for beginning the impeachment process in some form since heading back to their districts for the summer, none have said they’d be ready to vote to immediately impeach Trump when they return to Washington next month.

Only about 20 Democrats are on the record saying outright that they believe Trump should be impeached, according to an analysis by The Hill. But most have long been vocal proponents of impeachment for months, if not years, and well before former special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress before the start of the House’s six-week August recess.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) gave many Democrats cover when he said this month that his panel is already effectively conducting an inquiry to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment as it reviews potential abuses of power by Trump, stating in a CNN interview that “this is formal impeachment proceedings.”

Democrats on the Judiciary panel are also battling in court for grand jury material underlying Mueller’s report, arguing they need the information in order to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.

That has led many Democrats to make announcements in recent weeks merely stating that they support the existing investigations, and without actually expressing outright support for impeaching Trump.

For most, even if they support impeachment, they are moderating their language, trying to empower the nutjobs while playing coy for the majority of voters

Still, liberal groups like Indivisible, MoveOn, Need to Impeach and Stand Up America have ramped up pressure on Democratic lawmakers while they are home in their districts for town halls over the six-week break, demanding they back a formal impeachment inquiry.

There’s the danger when your major, primary backing groups are hyper-leftist nutjobs, and keep pushing the party even further left. How do you patronize them, soothe them, while not causing the rest of the voters, along with Independents, the unhinged #NeverTrumpers, and even some squishy Republicans, to vote Democrat?

This is their own bedbug ridden bed in their cockroach infested room they’ve made. How do they ride it out?

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Posted in Democrats, Donald Trump, Unhinged Tools | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: Dairy Queen Doesn’t Have Human Meat In Their Burgers

By William Teach August 28, 2019 – 5:59 pm

Or, bad news, if you’re into that kind of thing (via Jazz Shaw)

(NY Post) Dairy Queen has had to oddly clarify that the store’s food does not contain “human meat” after one of its South Carolina restaurants was swarmed by federal agents last week, sparking gruesome rumors online.

“At Dairy Queen, we are very proud of our 100 percent beef hamburgers,” the fast-food chain tweeted Friday. “We serve a high-quality hamburger with no additives or fillers.”

The statement was in response to a news story published by the Index-Journal, of Greenwood, SC, reporting that someone complained about “human meat being inside a burger” at the local Dairy Queen.

As Jazz points out

As it turns out, the swarm of law enforcement descending on the restaurant (including the FBI and Homeland Security) had nothing to do with cannibalism. A couple of guys were allegedly running an illegal money transfer and/or laundering business out of the restaurant and were using a safe there to store hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. That’s quite different than the allegations blowing up on social media.

Serendipity.

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Eco-Anxiety Causing Stress, Panic In Millions Or Something

By William Teach August 28, 2019 – 3:00 pm

Crazy people making themselves crazier

‘Eco-anxiety’ over climate change causing stress, panic in millions, experts say

Alysis Morrissey was sitting at her desk last October when she stumbled upon a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“It said we only have 12 years to change our course and prevent a climate catastrophe from threatening life as we know it,” she recalled.

Immediately thinking of her two young children, she pondered, “What’s going to happen to them? Will they have a future?”

Morrissey’s heart rate increased, she couldn’t breathe and began hyperventilating. This quickly turned into a full-blown panic attack and she ended up in the nurse’s office at the private school in Connecticut, where she’s director of communications.

Experts say they’re seeing more panic episodes like this due to what’s termed “eco-anxiety,” or anxiety about impending catastrophic climate change.

Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a Washington psychiatrist, said she’s seen “an enormous uptick” in persons who identify climate change as a factor with their anxiety.

“Unless you live in a cave, you’ve been hearing about sea level rise, dreadful storms and headlines that warn a quarter of the population will be without water by a certain year,” she said.

Well, sure, some weak minded people will respond to the constant Pronouncements Of Doom. Climate cultists are already brainwashed enough so that all these reports make them even crazier.

Laura Schmidt and Aimee Lewis-Reau, co-founders of the Good Grief Network — a 10-step program to reduce eco-anxiety — said young people and children, the elderly and persons who have suffered some sort of trauma or grief are most vulnerable. But Van Susteren said just about everyone is experiencing such anxiety on some level — whether they know it or not.

See? Even though you aren’t a member of the Cult of Climastrology, you are still suffering from it. You just don’t know it. But, if you pay a tax, that can be solved.

Oh, and here’s a good example (via Twitchy)

Read More »

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

If All You See…

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

…is an evil road for fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Elephants, with a post on climate hysteria and why the media pushes it.

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Posted in If All You See | 22 Comments | Trackback URL

San Jose Mayor Is Asking Residents To Buy Gun Insurance Voluntarily

By William Teach August 28, 2019 – 10:30 am

This is as Sam Liccardo is attempting to make it law

Commentary: I’m asking San Jose residents to insure their guns

…

Mayors who experience such suffering in their communities after senseless gun violence do not have the luxury of waiting for Congress to act, as lawmakers offer their “thoughts and prayers.” Cities demand problem-solving over posturing. So this month, I proposed an oft-considered but as-yet-never-implemented idea: require every gun owner in the 10th-largest city in the United States to buy liability insurance.

Every U.S. state mandates that automobile drivers buy liability insurance; we should require no less of gun owners. Cars and guns have exacted a similarly grim human toll, each causing about 40,000 deaths in 2017. If San Jose’s gun owners can’t get liability insurance, they can comply with the mandate by paying a fee to compensate taxpayers for the “gun violence subsidy” borne by the public.

That is, for decades, taxpayers have subsidized gun ownership and the harms that accompany it. Direct costs of gun violence to California taxpayers—for ambulances, cops and emergency rooms—exceeded $1.4 billion last year, according to a study from gun-control advocacy group Giffords. While the Second Amendment protects a right to bear arms, it does not require taxpayers to subsidize the exercise of that right. Courts routinely uphold the imposition of reasonable, nonobstructive fees or taxes on constitutionally protected activities, such as forming a tax-exempt nonprofit, selling a newspaper and purchasing a gun.

Insurance can provide a useful mechanism for harm reduction. Risk-adjusted premiums provide financial incentives that reward good driving and installing air bags, and discourage parents from handing the keys to their risk-taking teenagers. Similarly, insurers could use premium discounts to prod law-abiding gun owners to take gun-safety courses, purchase gun safes and install child-safety locks—a welcome improvement for a nation where more than 4.6 million children live in a household where a gun is kept loaded and unlocked. Insurers would also hike the premium on a 19-year-old looking to buy his first semiautomatic weapon, someone such as the Gilroy shooter.

Except, they all know that the cost of insurance would be so high as to make it unaffordable, which would mean a citizen could not exercise their 2nd Amendment Right, and you could bet that the “fee” would also be too high. Heck, some even say the insurance would be racist, and make a good argument for this.

Essentially, this is, at the top, requiring citizens to pay to use their Constitutional Right. Do you need insurance to speak and practice your religion? To petition for redress of grievance? What it really is is an attempt at a stealth ban, because too many would not be able to afford to have a firearm.

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Hotcoldwetdry Today: “If A Kids Says “Help”, You Help”

By William Teach August 28, 2019 – 7:59 am

If a kid asks you to help find Bigfoot, do you help? What if they ask you to go through someone else’s garbage? Steal from a store? Blow up a school? Do you help? Nope. But, this is the Cult of Climastrology, which always has some sort of Hotcold take

‘If A Kid Says Help, You Help’: Adults Urged to Join Upcoming Global Climate Strike

As climate activist Greta Thunberg neared the United States on a boat which set sail from Britain on August 14, the global climate action movement called on adults to join in the climate strike begun in part by the 16-year-old Swedish student.

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote Monday in a letter to supporters that the choice to join in the global climate strike taking place in dozens of cities on September 20 should be a simple one.

“If a kid says help, you help,” said McKibben.

The climate strike will take place a year after Thunberg, who is expected to arrive in the U.S. on Wednesday, began a global mass mobilization with a one-person protest outside Swedish Parliament.

Thunberg’s action kicked off climate strikes all over the world, with an estimated 1.4 million students walking out of their classrooms to demand governments end their support and complicity in the extraction of oil, gas, and coal.

As McKibben wrote, Thunberg’s “argument was that if the world’s adults weren’t willing to prepare the planet for her generation, they had no right to demand that her generation spend their youth preparing for the future. Kids across the planet saw the logic.”

Right, right, we’re supposed to listen to this child, backed by big ‘climate groups’, as she makes Pronouncements about coming doom and pushing hardcore Modern Socialist policies, never once considering that this will destroy her adult life. No thanks.

On September 20 and during the Week of Action which will follow, hundreds of thousands are expected to holding sit-ins at pipeline projects, planting trees, or attending rallies and marching in cities around the world to make a number of demands—passage of a Green New Deal, a shift to renewable energy and a just transition, and greater commitments from UN countries to cut their carbon emissions.

Strange that they aren’t committing to reducing their own carbon footprints. How many will take fossil fueled trips to these sit ins and such?

“We strike now, because now is our last chance; because change must occur today; because the future is written in the present,” said Fridays for Future NYC in New York, where Thunberg will speak at one of the strike’s biggest events. “‘Business as usual’ is no longer excusable. ‘Middle ground’ solutions are no longer justifiable. September 20th is not the end goal, but a catalyst for breaking down the status quo, and creating a just, sustainable world in its place.”

Sounds like more of the same, hardcore Socialism.

350.org promoted the strike on social media, calling on adults to join the mobilization after the world’s children have spent a year making the case for concrete climate action. The youth movement has had some success, including a number of official climate emergency declarations by local and national governments and a commitment from the European Commission to spend $250 billion over seven years to fight the climate crisis.

It’s all astroturf by people who aren’t willing to spend their own money and practice what they preach.

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Washington Post: Possible U.S.-Iran Talks Obscured By Something Ominous

By William Teach August 28, 2019 – 7:44 am

Can you guess what is ominous? Once you see the headline, you’re probably going to think that this Editorial is going to be Trump Derangement Syndrome. Nope

The hype of possible U.S.-Iran talks obscured something much more ominous

A FRENCH attempt to jump-start talks between the United States and Iran got plenty of attention over the weekend at the Group of Seven summit, but it might have been less serious than it seemed. Though President Trump agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron that a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani could happen within weeks, Iran’s foreign minister dismissed the prospect on Tuesday as “unimaginable.”Meanwhile, the hype over a possible diplomatic breakthrough obscured a much more ominous development: another escalation in Iran-related tensions across the Middle East, this time driven by Israel.

Since July, Israel has quietly expanded its air campaign against Iranian assets and allied militias from Syria to Iraq, with potentially far-reaching consequences for U.S. forces in the region. U.S. officials have said a July 19 airstrike on a weapons depot north of Baghdad was carried out by Israel, which has launched hundreds of strikes in Syria in recent years but had not targeted Iraq since 1981. Three other recent attacks on arms storehouses controlled by Iranian-linked militias are also believed to have been Israeli operations.

On Sunday, a drone attack on a Shiite militia convoy in western Iraq reportedly killed a senior commander and up to eight others. The previous night, an Israeli air raid in Syria killed two operatives of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which also blamed Israel for a drone that crashed near its media center south of Beirut. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed credit only for the Syria operation, saying it had preempted an Iranian-directed drone attack on multiple military and civilian targets inside Israel.

So, Israel fighting back against all the Iranian backed forces designed to harm Israel and her citizens. That’s a good thing, right?

Israel clearly has a right to defend itself from Iranian attacks, and there should be no objection to its action in Syria, a lawless country where Tehran and its allies operate with impunity…

See, the right to defend itself. But

…But the expansion of what has been a mostly measured and covert Israeli campaign to Iraq comes with considerable risks — including for the United States. Some 5,000 U.S. troops are still based in the country — and could be targets for Iranian reprisals; at the same time, the Iraqi government, which remains allied with Washington, is highly vulnerable to pressure from the Shiite militia groups, which among other things control a large bloc in parliament. That faction reacted to the attack on the militia convoy Sunday by blaming both Israel and the United States and calling for U.S. forces to leave the country. (snip)

Mr. Netanyahu faces a tough election next month, and he has been a staunch opponent of any U.S.-Iranian rapprochement. He might consider this a good moment to escalate with Iran; he may also believe that Mr. Trump will not object, even if the result is damage to U.S. interests in Iraq and a greater risk of a full-scale war. Unfortunately, on the latter point, he’s probably right.

Got that? Israel is supposed to just stand by and allow Iran to arm all these nations and groups, which don’t just threaten Israel, but actually use the munitions. They launch rockets, suicide attacks, firearms attacks, kites and balloons, murder soldiers and private citizens. Does the WPEB really want Israel to stand down? Of course they do. Like most Democrats, they hate Israel. Just like Iran. Iran would be very happy if Israel stood down.

Read: Washington Post: Possible U.S.-Iran Talks Obscured By Something Ominous »

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The Climate Crisis Is Causing PTSD Or Something

By William Teach August 27, 2019 – 5:12 pm

Yet another hysterical, in all ways, piece on eco-anxiety, taken up a notch

After the wildfire: treating the mental health crisis triggered by climate change

The nightmares kept coming and David Leal knew he was in trouble. A navy veteran with a can-do attitude and a solidly middle-class IT job at a hospital in Santa Rosa, California, he didn’t think of himself as mentally vulnerable. But when the Tubbs fire snatched his house off the face of the earth in the early morning hours of 9 October 2017, it hit him hard.

“Long story short, I went through a lot of PTSD,” Leal says, as we tour his nearly rebuilt home in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. Wildfires are not uncommon in the mountains outside of this northern California town, but residents can’t remember one like this: the fire jumped six lanes of Highway 101, into the city, and licked up about 1,300 of the suburb’s 2,000 homes as if they had just evaporated. Leal thought, I live in the city; it’s not supposed to burn. (snip)

The climate crisis is manifesting as ever bigger wildfires, hurricanes, floods and heat waves, and cities are just starting to grapple with the mental impact of the emergency. A climate taskforce of the American Psychological Association, citing scores of studies over the last decades, reports that survivors of these human-enhanced disasters are experiencing dramatic increases in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, suicide and suicidal thoughts, violent behavior and increased use of drugs and alcohol. A Rand study found that one-third of the adult survivors of California wildfires in 2003 suffered depression and one-quarter suffered PTSD.

See, they take a real issue, one that has happened many times because the area is prone to wildfires, and is made worse by construction by Mankind and a failure to allow for clearing the undergrowth due to restrictive laws, and Blame it on man-caused climate change. Wildfires happen. If you put more fuel where they happen, in the form of buildings and other things that burn, there will be problems. But, really, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, etc, are not bigger now. Nor is there definitive, scientifically supported evidence that this warm period is mostly/solely caused by Mankind.

Yet, the teachings of the Cult of Climastrology are making people nutso. Even giving them PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal thoughts. From “human-enhanced disasters.”

The mental health effects of climate change have been known for quite some time now: a 1991 meta-study found that as many as 40% of those directly affected by climate-enhanced superstorms and fires suffer acute negative mental health effects, some of which become chronic. Puerto Rico, for example, has seen an epidemic of suicide, PTSD and depression after Hurricanes Irma and Maria. After Hurricane Katrina, some people referred to the sense of generalized anxiety and depression common to survivors as “Katrina brain”.

But it’s not just storms that impact mental health. An extensive 2018 Australian study established that extremes of both hot and cold are linked to suicide and mental illness, and the ensuing drought has contributed to a surge in deaths of Australian farmers. Even those not directly impacted by flood or fire can experience a sense of ecological loss termed “eco-anxiety” or “climate grief”.

You know, you almost don’t want to make fun of these people, because natural events and disasters can cause mental health problems. If your home was destroyed by a tornado, you’re certainly going to get really anxious whenever a strong thunderstorm is around and when warnings/watches go up for tornadoes, right? The CoC is mixing these very real anxieties with their cultish beliefs, and making people’s mental health worse, rather than being resilient and helping them get to a good place.

The Cult pretty much tells people that things are hopeless and doom is coming. That these people are victims and should feel horrible. Unless everyone pays a tax, of course.

Read: The Climate Crisis Is Causing PTSD Or Something »

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

If All You See…

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

…is a horrible, water intensive golf course, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on paper straws not saving the world.

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