Word Salad: AOC Says Growing Cauliflower Is Basically Raaaaacism Or Something

By William Teach May 21, 2019 – 2:34 pm

This is not from the Babylon Bee

What’s up with the OK symbol? Isn’t that all about White Power now? Anyhow, from the link

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., explained Sunday that a “core component” of her Green New Deal legislation is ending “colonial” attitudes that dominate community gardens.

“What I love too is growing plants that are culturally familiar to the community. It’s so important,” the freshman congresswoman said in an Instagram video while exploring a Bronx community garden.

“So that’s really how you do it right. That is such a core component of the Green New Deal is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context, and it’s an area that we get the most pushback on because people say, ‘Why do you need to do that? That’s too hard,’” Ocasio-Cortez said in another Instagram video of her walking the streets of New York after leaving the community garden.

“But when you really think about it — when someone says that it’s ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows Yucca instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something — what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism, and that is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements because they come with the colonial lens on them,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

See, only certain gardening is Allowed. Or you’re a racist colonizer like it’s 1700.

Read: Word Salad: AOC Says Growing Cauliflower Is Basically Raaaaacism Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 21, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a desert created thanks to Other People refusing to vote for carbon tax schemes, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post noting a 725% increase in Islamic extremist attacks in Europe.

Read: If All You See… »

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Chicago Has A New Mayor, Warmists Want Her To Initiate A Green New Deal

By William Teach May 21, 2019 – 10:29 am

Because Chicago has no other issues to focus on, at least according to Heidi Stevens in the Chicago Tribune

Welcome to your new job, Mayor Lightfoot. How about launching a Green New Deal, Chicago-style?

Welcome to your first day on the job, Mayor Lori Lightfoot. I have an idea.

Create a Green New Deal for Chicago.

The Green New Deal, a resolution aimed at combating climate change, urges the federal government to adopt policies that create renewable energy jobs, provide clean air and water, work toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and, in the process, reduce systematic racial, social and economic injustice.

Congress may or may not pass the plan, introduced in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in the House and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts in the Senate. Illinois Democrats Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Danny Davis, Mike Quigley and Jan Schakowsky have signed on as co-sponsors in the House. As of last week, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth had not yet signed on in the Senate.

But Chicago could adopt its own Green New Deal, modeled on Ocasio-Cortez’s and Markey’s resolution, regardless of what Congress does.

Chicago needs clean water. Ours has brain-damaging lead, as I’m sure you’re aware. Lake Michigan water becomes contaminated after it leaves the city’s treatment plants and passes through lead service lines and internal plumbing. Individual property owners are responsible for maintaining service lines under the city’s plumbing code. Guess which residents can afford that?

Do they really need a GND to fix the lead and other contaminants in the water? Perhaps they could just, you know, focus on fixing the issue without muddling the waters with the lunacy of ‘climate change’?

Our sewer system is old and incapable of containing the amount of rain water we’ve gotten this spring. Thousands of homes in Chicago have been flooded, often with raw sewage. That’s going to get worse as climate change leads to more heavy precipitation and hurricanes.

I don’t think Chicago really has to worry about hurricanes.

Our recycling program is a joke.

Huh. So in super liberal Chicago they do not recycle well.

From the resolution introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Markey:

“Climate change, pollution and environmental destruction have exacerbated systematic racial, regional, social, environmental and economic injustices by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities and youth.”

So, basically uber-leftwing unhinged activism wrapped up in something green.

A Green New Deal could also energize the youth vote, something you did not capture in April.

And there’s the real point, patronizing the youth vote.

Read: Chicago Has A New Mayor, Warmists Want Her To Initiate A Green New Deal »

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NY Times: “Troubling” Message Of Economic Populism Beats Doomy ‘Climate Change’ Push

By William Teach May 21, 2019 – 7:07 am

The NY Times Editorial Board attempts to discuss the destruction of ‘climate change’ in last Friday’s Australian elections, and it appeared, up front, that they would perhaps be noting that people care less about ‘climate change’ in favor of pocketbook politics in a rational manner with a subhead noting “Once again, analysts overestimated the resonance of climate change and underestimated the power of economic populism.” Alas, no, the article bogs down

An Electoral Brush Fire in Australia

It was another election that couldn’t be lost until it was. Rived by years of infighting, Australia’s conservative governing coalition was trailing in the polls. The opposition Labor Party’s polls showed it all but certain of ousting Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and its action platform on climate change seemed bound to resonate in a country devastated by drought, heat waves, brush fires and the loss of its magnificent Great Barrier Reef to warming seas.

On Saturday, in another surprise of the sort that had stunned Americans and Britons, Australian voters handed Mr. Morrison what he called a “miracle” victory. His conservative Liberal-National coalition, sharply opposed to cutting down on carbon emissions and coal, is expected to take 77 seats, one more than enough for a majority.

Stunned! Only by those who weren’t paying attention to the notion that focusing everything on an issue that is basically low hanging fruit on the scale of What People Care About is a really, really Bad Idea.

In hindsight, there are many reasons Mr. Morrison defied predictions. One was his success in projecting himself as the average Joe, a rugby-loving, beer-drinking evangelical Christian in a baseball cap who peppered his speeches with folksy Australianisms and slogans like “a fair go for those who have a go.” Urban Australians rolled their eyes, but polls show that whatever they thought of his party, the larger pool of those Mr. Morrison called the “quiet Australians” — a category similar to those who voted for Brexit or President Trump — consistently favored him over the Labor Party’s Bill Shorten.

In other words, the entitled urbanites, who always think they are Better Than Everyone Else, should put aside their sneering and condescension and get a clue. Just like here in 2016.

The troubling message was that even on an island-continent where the ravages of climate change are there for all to see, especially after the hottest summer on record, invocations of economic stability, secure jobs, cuts to immigration and conservative family values trump the unknowns and costs of dealing with climate change.

Got that? It’s a troubling message to campaign on issues that citizens actually care about, things that involve their pocketbooks, instead of campaigning on Hotcoldwetdry. This is the type of elitist message that ended with Trump elected president. The type of elitist message that saw Brexit succeed (in a vote, anyhow) and the climate nutters lose in Australia.

And the NYTEB still doesn’t get that it’s not a troubling message at all, and that people really do not care about ‘climate change’ beyond theory, and they offer some bad advice to end the piece

Mr. Morrison confounded the pundits with his victory. He could now confound them even more by showing that he is ready to lead Australia, a country where the ravages of man-made climate change are most evident, in fighting back. As the first director of Tourism Australia, Mr. Morrison approved the cheeky “So where the bloody hell are you?”advertising campaign. The next target of that Australian brashness should be the climate. Otherwise, a new generation of voters will be putting that question to him when the next election rolls around in three years’ time.

And if Morrison starts pushing Hotcoldwetdry policies, he and his party will lose. Elites like the NYTEB just do not get it.

Read: NY Times: “Troubling” Message Of Economic Populism Beats Doomy ‘Climate Change’ Push »

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Gallup Poll Shows Democrats Super Excited For Socialism

By William Teach May 21, 2019 – 6:49 am

Well, of course they do, because they’re very interested in Other People’s money (not their own, of course) and Social Justice Warrioring

70% OF DEMOCRATS SAY SOCIALISM WOULD BE GOOD FOR AMERICA: SURVEY

Seventy percent of Democrats say “some form of socialism” would be a “good thing” for the U.S., according to a new Gallup survey.

While socialism is popular among Democratic voters, a majority of voters overall, 51%, say embracing it would be bad for the country, the Gallup survey found.

Just 25% of Democrats said some form of socialism would be “a bad thing for the country as a whole,” according to the survey, which Gallup released Monday.

Among Republicans, 84% of respondents said that embracing some form of socialism would be bad for the U.S.. A plurality of independents, 48%, said the same.

Gallup’s writeup of the survey did not note that it showed 70% of Democrats supporting some form of socialism, which was included in the full results.

Establishment Democrats, meanwhile, have attempted to distance their party from socialism ahead of the 2020 election.

“I do reject socialism as an economic system. If people have that view, that’s their view. That is not the view of the Democratic Party,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last month.

Yeah, well, Nancy and the few remaining less lunatic Democrats are being over-ridden by people like AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, etc.

The survey that year found that 57% of Democrats had a favorable view of socialism. That survey also marked the first time that Democrats had a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism.

They’ll have that favorable view right up till the money starts streaming from their pockets and their freedom starts being seriously impacted. Apparently, they do not see what has happened in places like Cuba and Venezuela, but, then, they try to spin the Bad Things away.

But, what do they mean by “Socialism”? From the Gallup link

Previous Gallup research shows that Americans’ definition of socialism has changed over the years, with nearly one in four now associating the concept with social equality and 17% associating it with the more classical definition of having some degree of government control over the means of production. A majority of Democrats have said they view socialism positively in Gallup polling since 2010, including 57% in the most recent measure in 2018.

That socialism link leads to

When asked to explain their understanding of the term “socialism,” 17% of Americans define it as government ownership of the means of production, half the number who defined it this way in 1949 when Gallup first asked about Americans’ views of the term. Americans today are most likely to define socialism as connoting equality for everyone, while others understand the term as meaning the provision of benefits and social services, a modified form of communism, or a conception of socialism as people being social and getting along with one another. About a quarter of Americans were not able to give an answer.

So, they do not necessarily understand what it truly means. They’ll be surprised as hell if they get it. What they’re really describing is Progressivism (nice Fascism), whereby the government is really in charge of everything, not just the economy.

Read: Gallup Poll Shows Democrats Super Excited For Socialism »

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Guy Whose Company Has Massive Carbon Footprint Says His Generation Has Failed On ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach May 20, 2019 – 3:49 pm

So, hey, I’m wondering if Tim Cook will give up his own massive carbon footprint

Tim Cook: My generation has failed in climate change debate

Apple CEO Tim Cook says his generation failed on climate change.

“We spent too much time debating,” Cook told Tulane University graduates during a commencement speech in New Orleans on Saturday. “We’ve been too focused on the fight and not focused enough on progress — and you don’t need to look far to find an example of that failure.”

During his 15-minute speech, Cook, 58, called on the students to do better for humanity and to ignore the political noise around the climate change issue in order to make a real difference.

“This problem doesn’t get any easier based on whose side wins or loses an election,” he said, adding that people should stop and think about why some deny climate science. “It’s about who has won life’s lottery and has the luxury of ignoring this issue and who stands to lose everything.”

So, I’m guessing Tim rode his bike or walked from his home in Palo Alto, California, to New Orleans, right? Hey, give him props for living in a 2,400 square foot house rather than a giant mansion, but who wants to bet that he flew on a private jet, then took a big SUV limo from the airport? What this guy, who is worth over $1.3 billion, is proposing these students do is ignore reality, be activists, and essentially be low wage workers, because no one of consequence wants to hire a pain in the ass who’ll cause problems. He doesn’t want them to have the same life as he does.

And, what will he do about Apple’s carbon footprint? All the products produced in China and around the world then shipped around the world? The mining of precious metals (using fossil fueled machines)? That iPhones and such are not made to last long, so people have to buy another, leading to massive waste? And so much more. But, hey, it’s easy to be rich off the backs of capitalism then call for Other People to do different, right?

The Apple CEO also briefly commented on the tech industry. He said the algorithms that run our digital lives can keep us wrapped up in ideas we already agree with rather than exposing people to alternative viewpoints. He challenged the students to seek out information from the other side.

Which would be very dangerous to the Cult of Climastrology. Once you start exposing people to the counter-culture view, you might lose them to reality. Do you think I was always a Skeptic? No. The modern Internet with the ability to see other information was one of several things that changed my mind from being a Warmist.

Read: Guy Whose Company Has Massive Carbon Footprint Says His Generation Has Failed On ‘Climate Change’ »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach May 20, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a hill drying out due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Wizbang, with a post on pervasive spying by the previous administration.

Read: If All You See… »

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Shellshocked ‘Climate Change’ Groups Remain Resolute In Australia Or Something

By William Teach May 20, 2019 – 10:26 am

At what point do they realize that they’re beliefs may be popular in theory, but not practice?

After the climate election: shellshocked green groups remain resolute

The environmental movement drew first blood on election night by helping independent Zali Steggall oust Tony Abbott but, in the end, the Coalition – which rated a miserable 4% on the Australian Conservation Foundation’sclimate change scorecard – won.

After the unexpected result environmentalists have questioned whether their campaign tactics need revision or whether the progressive side of politics was let down by other factors.

The Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, told Guardian Australia climate “was definitely a top issue in the election … but it didn’t convert to votes in all the places it needed to”.

It rarely does. Again, Labor was utterly destroyed in 2012 in the Queenland elections. You see high profile Warmist initiatives and politicians losing around the world. When given a chance to vote on ‘climate change’ policies, the People more often vote against them than for them, especially when those policies have been in place and people realize that they hurt their own lives.

But, hey, Warmist groups are attempting to spin their loss

Peter McCallum, the coordinator of the Mackay Conservation Group, rejects the suggestion, noting the LNP had made gains in places with no stake in coalmining, like Tasmania and Western Australia.

But he said the “lie” that Labor would shut down the coal industry pushed by Clive Palmer and News Corp had hurt.

O’Shanassy said the “myth” that there is a binary choice between jobs and the economy is persistent and was “a very strong part of the Coalition campaign”.

But there were “too many moving parts” in the campaign to say that high-profile tactics like the Stop Adani convoy may have contributed to the disappointing result.

O’Shanassy cites the Coalition’s negative campaign on tax, Bill Shorten’s unpopularity and Palmer injecting “millions and millions of dollars” into the campaign as other possible causes.

See, it wasn’t really that they lost, it was just all lies and those pesky Queensland people. And money! Because the pro-climate crazies didn’t poor tons of money into their own elections, right? Right?

“Climate change is complex issue and people are confused by it and where the parties stand – it’s up to the ACF to help Australians understand that better,” O’Shanassy said.

O’Shanassy said the ACF will also need to “learn and adapt” and “seriously consider our strategies” but she believes rising concern about climate, particularly among the young, makes action inevitable.

“We must continue to build people power – there’s no way we’re going to move politics unless people demand it.”

In other words, they aren’t giving up on what doesn’t work. They’ll continue with their doomy prognostications and demanding of policies that increase citizen’s cost of living and remove liberty, while taking over even more of the private sector, the energy sector, and making government bigger and bigger.

Read: Shellshocked ‘Climate Change’ Groups Remain Resolute In Australia Or Something »

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

Who’s Up For Some “Green” Union Jobs?

By William Teach May 20, 2019 – 7:28 am

It’s always interesting how the so-called science issue of ‘climate change’ ends up being mostly about left-wing politics, eh?

New York aims to fight climate change by creating green union jobs

As global warming has worsened in recent years, environmentalists and union members have often protested against each other, whether over fracking, oil pipelines, coal production or the Green New Deal.

But an innovative new labor-environmentalist effort in New York – to build offshore wind turbines to power up to 6m homes – is a sharp departure from all that feuding and shows that these two groups can work together to advance renewable energy and reduce dependence on carbon-based energy.

Giving this plan a vital boost, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has announced plans to have the state’s energy authority invest billions of dollars to build hundreds of offshore wind turbines. For Cuomo, this plan is key to New York state’s ambitious mandate to obtain 70% of its energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, by 2030.

As a sidebar, you can bet that there will be a lot of groups, mostly environmentalists and leftists, which will file lawsuits to stop the wind turbines and the transmission lines.

Pushed by a professor at Cornell University, more than a dozen unions came together to develop what they call Climate Jobs New York, a plan that they say will create more than 10,000 jobs; jobs that they agree should be middle-class, union jobs.

“We brought together more than a dozen unions, and said things are not good at the national level in terms of how unions are relating to environmental organizations and the climate movement,” said Lara Skinner, the labor relations professor at Cornell who spearheaded this effort. She noted that several unions were furious at environmentalists for opposing fracking and the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines, which many unions viewed as a boon for job creation. (snip)

In an unusual move, more than a dozen unions and labor federations developed the climate plan, without inviting environmental groups to participate in the early discussions. One fear was that if the two sides were together from the start, there might be fights over fracking and pipelines that blew up and prevented progress on other fronts. One union leader involved in the effort said: “The labor movement and environmental community agree on probably 90% of things, so we shouldn’t focus on the things that are going to destroy goodwill.”

And the union will donate money to NY Democrats to make sure that the jobs only go to the unions, locking out individuals and small companies that are not part of the union. But, remember, this is science, not politics. Or something.

Read: Who’s Up For Some “Green” Union Jobs? »

Posted in Democrats, Global Warming | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times Suddenly Concerned Over Presidential Pardons

By William Teach May 20, 2019 – 7:08 am

Let’s face it, all presidents in the modern era have used pardons that left people shaking their heads. You can find lots of examples for Republicans and Democrats. But, have you heard the NY Times Editorial Board complain? Well, that’s because Trump is now in office

The President and His Power to Pardon

The Constitution assigns to the president the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

On its face, this authority appears unquestionable, and the Supreme Court has called it “unlimited.” But in his more than two years in office, Donald Trump has found ways to wield or dangle the pardon power in a manner that departs from any established practice and even calls into question the principles of justice that undergird it.

The full pardons of Conrad Black, a wealthy friend of Mr. Trump’s who has written charitably about him, and Patrick Nolan, a former Republican Assembly leader from California who has criticized aspectsof the Russia investigation, are the latest examples in what seems to be a new trend in presidential clemency: mercy for lawbreakers in the mold of disgraced politicians, media personalities and political allies who have flattered, defended or curried favor with the president.

Then came news that the president may mark this Memorial Day with pardons for outlaws in a category all their own — war criminals. The Times reported on Saturday that Mr. Trump has asked the Justice Department’s pardon unit to begin processing paperwork for what could be serial pardons for service members accused or convicted of war crimes. This month, Mr. Trump already pardoned Michael Behenna, a former Army lieutenant who was court-martialed and convicted of killing a detained Iraqi man whom he was interrogating. The American Civil Liberties Union said the pardon represented “a presidential endorsement of murder.”

This may leave you asking: What have these people done to merit a presidential pardon?

See, when Trump hands out pardons it is Bad. Where were the complaints from the NYTEB when Obama was handing out a pardon (technically clemency) to Bradley Manning? Or how about Oscar Lopez Rivera, a terrorist member of the FALN? All the drug dealers?

But, you know, Orange Man Bad, and no matter what Trump does Liberals will throw a fit. When he provided a pardon for Alice Marie Johnson, Democrats found a way to spin this as being bad.

President Bill Clinton’s 11th-hour pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich caused its share of controversy and even led to congressional and criminal inquiries in 2001. At the time, The Times reported, senior government officials in the Bush administration said “the investigation would try to determine whether anyone acting on behalf of Mr. Rich in effect sought to buy his pardon or obtain it by fraudulent misrepresentation.” It is past time for Congress to display a more robust appetite for exploring this president’s use of the pardon power — if only to assure the public that he is pursuing his constitutional duties rather than his political interests.

And that last bit (along with some other pardons the NYTEB do not like) was thrown in to make it seem like this isn’t all about Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Constitution gives the POTUS the power to do this, for good or bad. George Washington pardoned those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion. Andrew Johnson pardoned the citizens of the Confederate States. Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam war draft dodgers. And there are others. The Times is just calling for House Democrats to use this as another means to investigate Trump.

Read: NY Times Suddenly Concerned Over Presidential Pardons »

Posted in Donald Trump, Wonky Media | 1 Comment | Trackback URL
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