Excitable Adam Schiff: Mueller Couldn’t Prove Collusion, But There’s Lots Of Evidence Or Something

By William Teach April 7, 2019 – 7:39 am

The Russia Russia Russia collusion meme has mostly disappeared from most mainstream news outlets at this point. Nothing in the NY Times or Washington Post, the LA Times in Hollywood #Resistland is bereft of mentions, ABC, CBS, and NBC News all ignore it. Because it’s dead, Jim, just move on. But, this tiny little thing has set the CollusionConspiratists off at some 2nd tier outlets

Trump: Mueller report a ‘total waste of time’ – but it proves no collusion

Donald Trump said on Saturday he has not read Robert Mueller’s report about contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia, which his Democratic opponents say should be released in full.

“I have not read the Mueller report yet, even though I have every right to do so,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Only know the conclusions, and on the big one, No Collusion.”

See, it’s that part that has set them in Barking Moonbat Level 4: they’re all asking “how does he know if he hasn’t read it? There must be a conspiracy going on with AG Barr! YEaaaaaaar! Seriously, how would you know that you haven’t committed what you’re being accused of unless you actually read a report on it, right?

Meanwhile, Newsweek continues its stellar writing, the same type that got the rag sold for $1, with a piece by Moonbat Frank Snepp entitled BARR’S MUELLER REPORT SUMMARY IS LIKE WITNESSING A MURDER AND BEING TOLD IT NEVER HAPPENED. Of course, Frank isn’t actually able to offer any evidence that collusion happened, just like Excitable Adam Schiff, who just won’t give up, as we see from the MSNBC transcript

Schiff: I Fully Accept That Mueller Couldn’t Prove Collusion, But “There Is Plenty Of Evidence”

WILLIE GEIST, MSNBC: Do you accept the fundamental conclusion in that four-page letter, that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I accept [Robert] Mueller’s conclusion, and I assume Barr wouldn’t misrepresent this, that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt the crime of conspiracy. As I said all along, there is plenty of evidence of collusion and corrupt co-mingling of work between the Trump campaign and the Russians. I fully accept that as a prosecutor, that he couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that crime.

As you know, because I’ve made this distinction on your show, I always said there was ample evidence of collusion in the public record. Whether Bob Mueller could prove the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt would be up to him and I’d accept his conclusion, and I do.

GEIST: You said on this show and others that there is direct evidence of collusion. Were you wrong about that, now that you’ve seen the summary of the special counsel’s report?

SCHIFF: No. Because I think what you see in the public record is direct evidence. When the Russians, through an intermediary, offer dirt on the Clinton campaign as part of what’s described as the Russian government effort to help the Trump campaign, and Donald Trump’s son who played a pivotal role in the campaign who says, if it is what you say it is, I would love it, and sets up a meeting to receive it, that is very direct evidence of collusion.

So, then it would be criminal collusion for the Hillary campaign to be working with a British citizen, Christopher Steele, to obtain the “dossier“, right? Or, would that just be typical political dirty tricks in an age of global connectivity thanks to modern technology? Where foreign citizens and governments attempt to sway elections in other countries? Like has been done for a long, long time?

But, if Schiff has any real evidence, let’s see it: put it on the table. Let us judge it. He can’t, because there isn’t. He, and some other Leftards, just cannot move on from this.

Read: Excitable Adam Schiff: Mueller Couldn’t Prove Collusion, But There’s Lots Of Evidence Or Something »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats | 84 Comments | Trackback URL

Dutch Warmist Group Sues Shell Over Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach April 6, 2019 – 4:05 pm

Here we go again, another Warmist group suing a fossil fuels company rather than advocating that all their fellow Warmists stop using fossil fuels. The accompanying photo shows great parental responsibility

Environmental Groups to Sue Shell Over Climate Change

Climate activists delivered a court summons Friday to oil company Shell in a court case aimed at forcing it to do more to rein in carbon emissions.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands, one of the groups involved, said it wants a court in The Hague to order Shell to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and to zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Climate Accord.

“Shell’s directors still do not want to say goodbye to oil and gas,” said the group’s director, Donald Pols. “They would pull the world into the abyss. The judge can prevent this from happening.”

The summons, more than 250 pages long and backed up by boxes of supporting documents, was wheeled into the headquarters on a trolley as a couple of hundred activists looked on. (snip)

The Shell case, which has more than 17,000 claimants, follows a groundbreaking ruling by a Hague court in 2015 that ordered the Dutch government to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels.

The new case is not seeking compensation; it focuses instead on pushing Shell to take more action to rein in emissions.

Here’s what would be fun: Shell could hire private detectives to follow those 17,000 claimants around and video them in their fossil fueled vehicles, especially when they are at the gas station. Bonus points for filling up at a Shell station.

They could also just refuse to sell their products in the Netherlands. Have fun getting government services without the gasoline, oil, and other products. They could give the kid back what he’s giving them.

Read: Dutch Warmist Group Sues Shell Over Hotcoldwetdry »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach April 6, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrendous fossil fueled vehicle that should be replaced with trains in America, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on the censorship wars.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

Libya Heads Towards Full Blown Civil War, NY Times Drags Trump Into It

By William Teach April 6, 2019 – 11:49 am

Here’s the mess Obama left behind with his foolish Libyan adventure

In Libya, fears of full-blown civil war as fighting nears capital Tripoli

Libya edged closer to full-blown civil war on Friday as forces of an eastern commander clashed with pro-government militias near the capital Tripoli and an effort by the U.N. chief failed to stop the offensive.

A battle for control of Tripoli would mark the most significant escalation of violence in oil- and gas-rich Libya since the toppling of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011 following a populist rebellion backed by NATO bombings.

No mention of Obama. Weird, that. Let’s go to the NY Times opinion pages, where they are suddenly cool with American intervention. If they can bash Trump at the same time

Libya Is Entering Another Civil War. America Can Stop It.

…

Ghassan Salame, the United Nations envoy to Libya, had recently urged opposing Libyan factions to come together at a U.N.-brokered national conference in mid-April to lay the groundwork for elections and pull Libya back from the brink. By ordering his forces toward Tripoli when U.N. Secretary General António Guterres was in the city to help organize the national conference, General Hifter has made his disdain for the peace efforts clear.

The septuagenarian commander, who is backed by the United Arab Emirates, France, Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia, was aiming to scuttle the conference in a brazen bid for power. But he has encountered more resistance than he expected.

Despite appeals from the United Nations for stronger American diplomatic engagement, especially to restrain meddling by General Hifter’s foreign backers, the Trump administration has long been uninterested in Libya. Recently, it seems to be warming to General Hifter, according to foreign diplomats we have spoken with. Such support from the Trump administration aligns well with the White House’s ties to General Hifter’s backers in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, and President Trump’s preference for authoritarian leaders.

So, would this mean that French President Macron also has a preference for authoritarian leaders?

A former officer in Muammar el-Qaddafi’s army, General Hifter broke with the dictator in the 1980s and received C.I.A. support before fleeing to Virginia, where he lived for two decades. He returned to Libya shortly before the NATO intervention in 2011 hoping to lead the revolution against Colonel Qaddafi. Sidelined by the rebels, he re-emerged in 2014, waging a battle against Islamists in the eastern city of Benghazi. After years of fighting, he gained control over eastern Libya. Then he set his sights on Tripoli.

Hifter is against the Islamists, including those in Obama’s “junior varsity” ISIS.

Although the United States has officially backed the Tripoli Government of National Accord, continued American ambivalence on Libya or, worse, active support for General Hifter, could push Libya into greater conflict. This disorder could strengthen the Islamic State, which carried out a spate of attacks in Libya last year.

Would that be the Islamic State which rose when Obama recklessly involved America in the 2011 Libyan civil war?

Anyhow, the Times wants Trump to disavow Hifter, get more involved in talk talk talk, and put sanctions on Hifter. Yeah, that should fix the mess Obama left behind.

The United States cannot solve all of Libya’s manifold problems, but the next several weeks offer a crucial window, and decisive American diplomacy could make all the difference. Without it, Libya risks spiraling into wider violence.

Suddenly, Leftists want Trump to become interventionist. And you can bet they’ll bash him if he does.

Read: Libya Heads Towards Full Blown Civil War, NY Times Drags Trump Into It »

Posted in Current Affairs | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Burger And Fossil Fuels Addiction Could Make Trees Grow At South Pole And Seas Rise 60 Feet

By William Teach April 6, 2019 – 7:20 am

When most of the coastline is erased, people are zipping around NYC in bass boats, and the South Pole is an exotic vacation spot, blame yourself

A climate change preview: Trees at the South Pole, 60 feet of sea-level rise.

Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 meters higher than now, and global temperatures 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today.

Using sedimentary records and plant fossils, researchers have found that temperatures near the South Pole were about 20C higher than now in the Pliocene epoch, from 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago.

Many scientists use sophisticated computer models to predict the impacts of human-caused climate change, but looking back in time for real-world examples can give new insights.

The Pliocene was a “proper analogy” and offered important lessons about the road ahead, said Martin Siegert, a geophysicist and climate-change scientist at Imperial College London. “The headline news is the temperatures are 3-4C higher and sea levels are 15-20 meters higher than they are today. The indication is that there is no Greenland ice sheet any more, no West Antarctic ice sheet, and big chunks of East Antarctic [ice sheet] taken,” he said.

Fossil fuel burning was pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere extremely rapidly, he said, though it took time for the atmosphere and oceans to respond fully. “If you put your oven on at home and set it to 200C the temperature does not get to that immediately, it takes a bit of time, and it is the same with climate,” Siegert said, at a Royal Meteorological Society meeting on the climate of the Pliocene.

Wait, what? Who was pumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere back then? Is this saying that someone was using fossil fuels as an energy source millions of years ago, or just shoddy writing? Because we all know that the climate was fully natural all those millions of years ago. So, why can’t it be mostly/solely natural now?

About 100 million years ago an even more extreme climate occurred. In the Cretaceous period, carbon dioxide levels were 1,000 ppm. Antarctica still sat over the South Pole, but the region was warm and covered in great forests, the stumps and soil of which have been preserved as fossils in places like Alexander Island.

“If we keep carbon emissions going at the current rate, by the end of the century we will have 1,000 ppm,” said Siegert. The low 280 ppm level of carbon dioxide in the run-up to the industrial revolution was rooted in carbon being removed from the air by plants and animals and then buried. “It formed coal seams, gas and oil fields. And what we have been doing for the last 150 years is digging it all up and putting it back into the atmosphere, it’s crazy.”

First, it is unscientific language. “carbon emissions” is a political advocacy phrase. Second, what caused the CO2 rise 100 million years ago? Did dinosaurs drive pickup trucks? Then never really explain why everything is different now in their attempt to provide a bit of scaremongering.

Read: Your Burger And Fossil Fuels Addiction Could Make Trees Grow At South Pole And Seas Rise 60 Feet »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 89 Comments | Trackback URL

Excitable Democrat House Sues Trump Admin Members Over Border Declaration

By William Teach April 6, 2019 – 7:07 am

This won’t go very well for the Democratic Party run House when video of what’s going on down at the southern border is introduced as evidence, nor the video of the mass migrant caravans traveling towards the southern border

House sues members of Trump administration over ‘sham’ border-emergency declaration

The U.S. House of Representatives is suing members of President Trump’s administration over his national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border to divert funds for his signature border wall.

The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges the administration “flouted the fundamental separation-of-powers principles and usurped for itself legislative power specifically vested by the Constitution in Congress,” Politico reported.

The complaint names as defendants Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and the departments they oversee. Trump is not named as a defendant.

“The House has been injured, and will continue to be injured, by defendants’ unconstitutional actions, which usurp the House’s appropriations authority and mean that the relevant funds are no longer available to be spent on the purposes for which they were appropriated,” the complaint says.

It also won’t help that the complaint say early and often that this is a “political fight”, which will mean this is simply a difference of opinion, and will make it difficult for them to win. But, the point is most likely to get a judge to rule that construction on a wall must cease till the hearings are over and a final ruling is made.

The complain further spends a lot of time whining about Trump campaigning for a wall and wanting a wall after he won. The judge might be wise to ask why the main focus of the complaint is not a defendant.

House Speak Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced her intention to sue the administration Thursday, the Politico reported.

“The President’s sham emergency declaration and unlawful transfers of funds have undermined our democracy, contravening the vote of the bipartisan Congress, the will of the American people and the letter of the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Congress shouldn’t have give the POTUS the ability to do this in the first place, then.

If Nancy and Company manage to win this, then it would be appealed. And expect Trump to continue to slam Democrats as open borders advocates. This suit just gives him more ammunition, which he then tweets, which the media then picks up in an attempt to defend Democrats, which then even more citizens see and wonder “why are Dems against securing our border?”

Read: Excitable Democrat House Sues Trump Admin Members Over Border Declaration »

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

We Can Halt ‘Climate Change’ By Challenging The Logic Of Capitalism Or Something

By William Teach April 5, 2019 – 3:21 pm

Remember, ‘climate change’ is a serious scientific subject which has nothing to do with hardcore leftist politics

The only way to halt climate change is to challenge the logic of capitalism
We need to break with a system in which the value of everything is determined by how much money it can make for the wealthy.

Last Saturday, as Brexit continued to dominate the headlines, Momentum activists sought to draw the nation’s attention to a slightly more pressing issue. The group staged protests outside bank branches across the UK to put pressure on financial institutions such as Barclays to stop “financing climate chaos” after a report revealed that the bank is the largest single lender to fossil fuel companies.

And chaos is exactly what we are facing. On current trends, the planet is set to warm by at least three degrees by 2030. At such temperatures the environmental systems that sustain human life would start to collapse. Harvests would fail, water cycles would be disrupted, and extreme weather events would become the norm. Huge swathes of the planet would become uninhabitable, killing millions of people and displacing many more.

Good luck with this. The world’s temperature has gone up, if data is to be believed, by a mere .8C since 1850. Grace Blakeley is talking about over triple that in 11 years (I assume she’s talking Celsius, as this is a UK publication).

But climate change is, and always has been, a class issue. It has been caused by the wealthy, and its effects will fall on the poor. Just 100 companies are responsible for 70 per cent of all carbon emissions. Globally, the wealthiest 10 per cent are responsible for 50 per cent of all lifestyle consumption emissions. In the UK, the top 10 per cent is responsible for nearly 25 per cent of lifestyle consumption emissions, with the bottom 50 per cent responsible for just five.

And if climate change is a class issue, then decarbonisation should be a class project. The only way to halt climate change is to challenge the logic of capitalism itself: that the value of everything – land, knowledge, and even human life – is determined by how much money it can make for the wealthy.

Marx and Lenin would be proud.

But given the scale of the challenge, we must be far more ambitious. Dealing with the existential threat humanity is facing requires the kind of radical state intervention that no liberal government would consider and no international institution would allow: it requires a global green new deal.

Citizens must pressure their political leaders into implementing a just transition towards a zero-carbon economy. This would mean a huge increase in state spending – in the area of 30 per cent of GDP per year – to decarbonise energy and transport infrastructure and boost investment in green technologies. The costs of such a project should be imposed on the wealthy. This will require tax reform, constraints on capital mobility, and the replacement of private financial institutions with green, democratic, publicly-owned alternatives.

Huh. So the government would essentially take over the financial institutions, including banks. Do you trust your money there? And if citizens are stupid enough to demand this kind of authoritarian government, they’ll get what they deserve.

Providing for green growth over the long term would also require increasing public and collective ownership over the most important economic assets. Pension funds must be reformed and democratised so their members can put pressure on private corporations to take climate change seriously. The state should also start to act as an activist investor, using the funds from quantitative easing to buy up corporate bonds and pressuring companies to reduce their emissions. And some industries will need to be nationalised outright to deliver the levels of investment required to make the green new deal a success.

The green new deal must be global – states must work together to achieve these goals. But they will have to do so outside of existing international institutions. The kind of state intervention required to tackle climate change – democratic public ownership over most of the economy, dramatic increases in state spending, and the controls on capital mobility required to achieve this – are not merely frowned upon by the World Bank and the IMF, they are actively prohibited.

It’s almost like this is about politics and not science, eh?

Read: We Can Halt ‘Climate Change’ By Challenging The Logic Of Capitalism Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 16 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 5, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle which will kill all the trees, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Sonoran Conservative, with a post on the fun fact of the day, involving coffee.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

New Thing That’s Raaaaacist: Time

By William Teach April 5, 2019 – 10:30 am

Are you white and discuss time? Then you’re an evil, horrible person

Rutgers Professor Brittany Cooper: Concept of ‘Time’ Is Racist

Rutgers University Professor Brittany Cooper is back with another hot take. This time, she’s arguing that the modern conceptualization of time is racist.

According to a report from The College Fix, Cooper, who once argued that Jesus was “queer,” spoke with NPR last week about how white people “own time.” In the interview, Cooper made the case that white Americans have solely been responsible for conceptualizing the notion of “time.”

“If time had a race, it would be white,” Cooper said. “White people own time.”

After the NPR host asked her to explain that statement, Cooper offered a vague answer. She argued that Europeans developed the modern attitude about time which is characterized by the amount of time that is spent in leisure.

Yes. So when I say time has a race, I’m saying that the way that we position ourselves in relationship to time comes out of histories of European and Western thought. And a lot of the way that we talk about time really finds its roots in the Industrial Revolution. So prior to that, we would talk about time as merely passing the time. After the Industrial Revolution, suddenly, we begin to talk about time as spending time. It becomes something that is tethered to monetary value. So when we think about hourly wage, we now talk about time in terms of wasting time or spending time. And that’s a really different understanding of time than, you know, like seasonal time or time that is sort of merely passing.

Cooper went on to argue that white people “own” time in a second way. According to Cooper, European philosophers have refused to recognize African history as part of the global historical timeline.

This race baiter has given TED talks on the subject. Unsurprisingly, she’s a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, so, three studies which are all about grievances, rather than helping people and making things better. Here’s a snippet from the TED talk as published in NPR

COOPER: Typically, we talk about race in terms of black and white issues. In the African-American communities from which I come, we have a long-standing multigenerational joke about what we call CP time or colored people time. Now, we no longer refer to African-Americans as colored. But this long-standing joke about our perpetual lateness to church, to cookouts, to family events and even to our own funerals remains. I personally am a stickler for time. It’s almost as if my mother, when I was growing up, said, we will not be those black people. So we typically arrive to events 30 minutes early. But today I want to talk to you more about the political nature of time; for if time had a race, it would be white. White people own time.

So, if you show up on time, you’re actually a racist. Good to know.

Read: New Thing That’s Raaaaacist: Time »

Posted in Unhinged Tools | 47 Comments | Trackback URL

After New Zealand Shooting, Australia To Ban “Violent Content” On Internet

By William Teach April 5, 2019 – 7:04 am

Like New Zealand, Australia also has massive bans and limits on private ownership of firearms, nor do they have a 1st Amendment like the United States. As the old saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions

Australia To Criminalize Failure To Remove Violent Content From Internet Platforms

Australia’s parliament has passed new legislation to criminalize Internet platforms for failing to remove violent videos and audio, after an Australian gunman livestreamed himself shooting worshippers in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Under the new legislation, social media executives — among other online content or hosting providers — could be imprisoned for up to three years and companies could face penalties of up to 10 percent of their annual revenue if they do not remove violent content in an “expeditious” manner.

The bill passed on Thursday local time with cross-party support but faced criticism, including that it could cause increased censorship and that the process was rushed.

Christian Porter, Australia’s attorney general with the Liberal party, said of the bill, which he said was likely a “world first,” was a direct response to footage of the terror attacks in New Zealand that spread across social media. The original video was available on Facebook for about an hour from the beginning of the live broadcast – and viewed by thousands of people – before Facebook removed it. Facebook said it blocked or removed 1.5 million copies over the next 24 hours. (snip)

Porter said the legislation is intended to make companies take responsibility for the spread of video or audio of “abhorrent violent conduct” — defined as terrorism, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape and kidnapping.

I’m sure we can all agree that those are pretty bad, right? There’s also like a gazillion (slightly more than a shitload) of videos on the web right now.

Arthur Moses, president of the Law Council of Australia, told the AP that the legislation could have an impact on online business investment and lead to media censorship.

“Media freedom and whistleblowing of atrocities here and overseas have been put at risk by the ill-informed livestream laws passed by the Federal Parliament,” Moses said.

Scott Farquhar, CEO of Sydney-based software company Atlassian, said the bill would make any person working at a company that allows uploads of videos or images “guilty until proven innocent.”

“They need to violate users’ privacy to police this,” he wrote on Twitter.

The question needs to be asked, what next? The law is cool with allowing violent content in the news and for artistic purposes, meaning TV shows and movies. What about video games? Will they be targeted?

And what happens next? What do they ban? The law itself is very vague, so, do they crack down on things that are mean? There’s always mission creep from Government. And what will citizens do about it? That’s one reason we have a 2nd Amendment, to protect the measures in the 1st. Sure, you might not win against the government, which has tanks and such, but, you can try. And when we band together, we can.

Read: After New Zealand Shooting, Australia To Ban “Violent Content” On Internet »

Posted in Current Affairs, Progressive Goals | 4 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove