Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach April 14, 2019 – 9:05 am

Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in America. The plants are getting some rain, the birds are screaming for sex (otherwise known as bird song), and the NHL playoffs are in full force. This pinup is by Bill Randall, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Yid With Lid notes Dem darling Stacey Abrams under investigation by Georgia State Ethics Board
  2. Twitchy covers the thumbs up gesture now being considered Raaaaacist
  3. Weasel Zippers notes Democrats rushing to defend Omar’s very bad 9/11 comments
  4. The Right Scoop notes the new words added to the Woke-dictionary
  5. The Other McCain discusses the collusion delusion boomerang
  6. The Last Refuge covers a horrendous Reuters headline
  7. The Daley Gator notes another Leftist calling for speech and media control
  8. Powerline discusses the spying by the FBI
  9. Political Clown Parade highlights winter coming for Hillary
  10. Patterico’s Pontifications notes Trump being blamed for incitement for firing back on Islamist Omar
  11. Pacific Pundit highlights Stop Socialism rallies on April 15th
  12. neo-neocon covers Ilhan Omar and the victimhood competition
  13. Moonbattery notes the media hiding a reason for a guy killing his family
  14. Maggie’s Farm has some questions on immigration
  15. And last, but not least, LL1885 discusses a taxpayer funded anti-Semitic conference at a UNC Chapel Hill

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

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Democrats Who Can’t Get Over Losing 2016 Formally Demand Trump’s Tax Returns, Part Two

By William Teach April 14, 2019 – 7:56 am

The late Robin Williams had a joke about British bobbies having no weapons other than a nightstick, in which he would mimic them saying “Stop! Or I’ll tell say stop again.” Having failed to obtain all of Trump’s tax returns, personal and business, with all sorts of explanations, by April 10th, Democrats are yelling “stop again”

House Democrats give IRS until April 23 to turn over Trump tax returns

House Democrats are giving the Trump administration a hard deadline of April 23 to turn over the president’s tax returns, pushing back against Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s skepticism over their request for the private records.

Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Saturday sent a two-page letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig rebuffing Mnuchin’s statement earlier this week that Treasury would miss House Democrats’ initial April 10 deadline for the returns.

Mnuchin’s concerns “lack merit,” Neal wrote.

Neal’s latest letter sets the stage for further escalation in the conflict between Congress and the White House, as legal experts have suggested that an outright denial of their request by Mnuchin could be followed by subpoenas or a lawsuit in federal court. Mnuchin so far has only postponed responding to Democrats’ request and said he would confer with the Justice Department, but he has not yet rejected it.

Well, good luck with this, Democrats who just can’t get over Hillary losing to Trump. Come April 24th, will we get an even more Strongly Worded Letter? They are never going to get Trump’s taxes in a legal manner, certainly by the the 2020 election day, and the more they push this attempt to get his taxes, the more they are going to show that this is political, personal, and unhinged

Congressional Republicans and Trump’s personal attorney, William S. Consovoy, have argued Democrats’ request risks weaponizing the IRS for partisan political gain, with Consovoy calling it a “gross abuse of power.” Mnuchin’s letter earlier this week said Neal’s request “raises serious issues concerning the constitutional scope of congressional investigative authority.”

There is no reason to see Trump’s taxes other than because Trump has told them “no” and Democrats are unhinged. They think they might find something illegal in there, but, do they think that the IRS wouldn’t have found it previously?

Hilariously, the NY Times’ Binyamin Applbaum thinks

Everyone’s Income Taxes Should Be Public

…

Almost a century later, it’s time to revisit the merits of universal public disclosure. Democrats in Congress are fighting to obtain President Trump’s tax returns under a separate 1924 law, written in response to related concerns about public corruption. That issue could be resolved, at least in part, if Congress embraced the broader case for publishing everyone’s tax bill.

Democrats wouldn’t care if Trump wasn’t president, and, of course, they feel the need to turn the amp up to 11 by calling for all returns to be released (can we start with Nancy Pelosi and a goodly chunk of elected Dems? How about Binyamin’s?)

Disclosure also could help to reduce disparities in income, as well as disparities in tax payments. Inequality is easier to ignore in the absence of evidence. In Finland, where tax data is published each year on Nov. 1 — jovially known as National Jealousy Day — people treat the information as a barometer of whether inequality is yawning too wide.

See? They’re going to take the TDS and use it for their SJW purposes. Funny thing, I don’t remember Democrats being as obsessed with transparency when Republicans were trying to get the information on Operation Fast and Furious, the Benghazi attacks, nor IRS targeting. They want to destroy privacy simply because they are, in fact, unhinged sore losers.

Read: Democrats Who Can’t Get Over Losing 2016 Formally Demand Trump’s Tax Returns, Part Two »

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Might Deport Later

By William Teach April 13, 2019 – 2:49 pm

Read: Might Deport Later »

Posted in Donald Trump, Humor | 31 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 13, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded by too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on Excitable Maxine Waters and banks.

Read: If All You See… »

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NYC Plans On Releasing It’s Own Green New Deal

By William Teach April 13, 2019 – 10:30 am

What could possibly go wrong?

NY is introducing its own Green New Deal

As Washington debates the controversial Green New Deal, New York City is forging ahead with its own measures in a bid to curb climate change.

The city council will announce Thursday a batch of proposed legislation, dubbed the Climate Mobilization Act, that aim to curb carbon emissions in the country’s largest metropolis and would force landlords to cut emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to HuffPost.

The most drastic measure would require landlords with buildings over 25,000 square feet to conduct retrofits like new windows and insulation that would make the building’s more energy efficient.

NYC has one of the largest carbon footprints in the world (this site ranks them #3). It is a city that depends on fossil fuels. Taxis, private vehicles, limos, buses, cop cars and fire trucks, ambulances, and all the trucks and ships which bring goods to and from the city. Think you can power all those skyscrapers with solar panels and wind turbines? Good luck.

And who will pay for all those retrofits? NYC is also one of the most expensive places to live: that will get worse. Who gets hurt the most? Certainly not the rich Warmists pushing this. And what happens with jobs? What happens when companies whose costs skyrocket leave, also taking their tax money with them?

Other measures in the act, which would be implemented by 2024, would require solar panels or plants to cover the roofs of some buildings, or install miniature wind turbines. A second batch of legislation, that is expected to be introduced in coming months, would require all school buses to be electric. [HuffPost]

Whelp, good luck with this, citizens of NYC. But, hey, you voted for this stuff. Now you can deal with the fallout.

Read: NYC Plans On Releasing It’s Own Green New Deal »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

We Have To Change Economics And Design To Survive ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach April 13, 2019 – 7:24 am

Funny how an issue we’re told is all about science always involves changing our system away from capitalism and having the government dictate changes to our lives, eh?

Surviving climate change means transforming both economics and design

What could be more important than sustaining habitable living conditions on Earth? Climate change, biodiversity loss and other environmental problems demand changes on an order of magnitude well beyond the trajectory of business-as-usual. And yet, despite accumulative social and technological innovation, environmental problems are accelerating far more quickly than sustainable solutions.

If all Warmists gave up their own fossil fueled lives and went carbon neutral, we could solve this! (not really, because it is mostly natural, CO2 is not the control knob, but, it would be amusing watching Warmists live like it’s 1499)

The design industry is one of many industries mobilising to address environmental imperatives. While sustainability-oriented designers are working towards change from many angles, addressing and other  on this scale demands much more dramatic transformations in economic ideas, structures and systems that enable – or disable – .

Put simply, designers cannot design sustainable future ways of living on scale without a shift in economic priorities. Human impacts on planetary processes in the Anthropocene require new types of ecologically engaged design and economics if the necessary technological, social and political transitions are to take place.

Design is crucial to this debate because it is key to the creation of future ways of living. Designers make new ideas, products, services and spaces desirable to future users. With the shape of a font, a brand, the styling of a product, the look and feel of a service, the touch of a garment, the sensation of being in a particular building, designers serve the interests of customers (generally, those with disposal income). They do so according the logic and modes of governance generated by what is valued by economic structures. Design is the practice that makes capitalism so appealing.

Well, they just can’t have capitalism, now, can they?

Contemporary  reproduce this tradition by rewarding individuals and companies for using (and often exploiting) resources to generate profit, regardless of the ecological or social consequences. The extractive and exploitative dynamics of capitalist economics generate economies locked into accelerating climate change, species extinction and other severe environmental and social problems. This economic system continues to produce ever greater degrees of crises as planetary boundaries are breached in ever more extreme ways.

Holy cow, phys.org sounds more like something put out by the Communist Party USA.

But there are economic alternatives. Heterodox economic theory (such as ecological, feminist and Marxist economics) challenges the assumptions of mainstream economics. It has shown how neoclassical and neoliberal economics produce unsustainable economies that consistently devalue the natural world, women’s work and the labour of other groups historically denied equal access to capital.

For example, the Iceberg Model depicts a feminist economic framework where non-market activities, including the unpaid labour that buttresses capitalist economics, are made explicit.

The challenges of the Anthropocene demand that we overcome the exploitative and anti-ecological biases in neoclassical and neoliberal economics. One popular alternative is Kate Raworth’s Donut Economics. This would prioritise both social justice and environmental sustainability to create a safe operating space for humanity. Unlike conventional economics, heterodox economics takes the ecological context and planetary boundaries into account – while also addressing the interests of historically disadvantaged populations.

Funny thing is, most of the same people who call for replacing capitalism refuse to do it in their own lives, because they want money, just like Bernie Sanders.

Read: We Have To Change Economics And Design To Survive ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Trump Doubles Down On Dropping Illegals Off In Sanctuary Jurisdictions

By William Teach April 13, 2019 – 7:08 am

Whether it was originally a serious proposal, a joke, or just throwing ideas against the wall, it matters nary because Democrat Open Borders advocates are twisting their own panties into massive knots in High Dudgeon. So, of course, Trump will further tweak their noses, because this is a hill Dems apparently want to die on

Trump says he is considering putting migrants in sanctuary cities

President Trump said Friday his administration is “giving strong considerations” to a controversial plan that would release migrants into so-called sanctuary cities, even though officials said the idea was never seriously considered.

In a pair of tweets, Trump accused Democrats of being “unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws” and suggested they should feel the consequences of what he has called the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1116742282286440448

Everything else says that the idea was discarded, being too expensive and too much of a pain to accomplish for ICE to implement. Transporting illegals a day or more away to sanctuary jurisdictions would suck up too many resources and time. But, Trump really does know how to troll Democrats and move them to Barking Moonbat level 10. Look at Senator Spartacus

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) hammered President Trump for reportedly telling the head of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that he would pardon him if he were jailed for violating immigration law.

“That should shake every American. We basically have a president telling people to break the law and that he will pardon you,” Booker, one of more than a dozen Democrats running for president, told MSNBC host Joy Reid.

By all accounts, it was not serious, but, you do you, Spartacus. Because I reckon that the coming polls will show that a majority of Americans don’t care about this, and are against illegal immigration. Hey, perhaps they could just send illegals to Seattle to help clean up all the used drug syringes

Seattle isn’t afraid of immigrants, Mr. Trump

Here’s a message to President Trump: Seattle is not afraid of immigrants and refugees. In fact, we have always welcomed people who have faced tremendous hardships around the world. Immigrants and refugees are part of Seattle’s heritage, and they will continue to make us the city of the future. (snip)

On Friday, Trump took to Twitter to confirm a Post report that the White House wants to place detained immigrants in so-called sanctuary cities represented by Democrats.

In doing so, he trotted out his favorite playbook: He is demonizing immigrants and refugees to incite fear and to distract the American public from his own failures. Despite his party having control of the whole federal government for two years, Trump has utterly failed to fix our immigration system, to provide real opportunity for middle America or to improve the lives of the Americans in the places that supported him.

And, in writing this, Jenny A. Durkin, Mayor of Seattle, trotted out a favorite trope, namely, conflating legal immigrants and actual refugees with those who are unlawfully present in the nation. And she should worry more about the city’s rising crime rate, unemployment rate, filth in the streets, and homeless arriving in droves.

If Democrats want to keep making a Big Deal out of this, Trump will continue to troll them. It takes him all of a minute or two to do, and then he moves on with his day, while Open Borders advocates spend the day fuming and writing pieces. They just can’t help themselves.

Read: Trump Doubles Down On Dropping Illegals Off In Sanctuary Jurisdictions »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Donald Trump, Illegal Immigration | 57 Comments | Trackback URL

Having Solved All Of Oregon’s Problems, Senate Passes Bill Limiting Straws

By William Teach April 12, 2019 – 2:44 pm

Plastic pollution is not a joke. Even with the notion that the majority these days comes from China and India, each of us can do our part. It doesn’t have to be about ‘climate change’, or even extreme enviroweenieism. Seriously, do you like driving around, going for a walk, riding a bike, going to beach or the mountains or the park and seeing garbage, much of which is plastic? But, should Government be dictating choice?

Oregon Senate passes bill limiting plastic straws

Oregon’s Senate passed a law Thursday to limit the use of plastic straws.

SB 90, approved by a 23-6 vote, would prohibit single-use plastic straws at restaurants unless a customer asks for one. Drive-thrus would still be able to hand out plastic straws.

In a press release, Oregon Democrats highlighted the environmental risks of plastic straws.

“We use a straw for less than an hour, but it continues to exist in nature for longer than our lifetime,” said state Sen. Michael Dembrow (D), who introduced the bill on the Senate floor.

“We can use a straw, throw it away and forget about it as an inconsequential part of our lives. But that straw can easily end up in the ocean or somewhere else in nature. There, a single straw can have significant and sometimes deadly impacts on animals. The viral video of a turtle having a straw painfully removed from its nostril provides clear evidence that our seemingly inconsequential acts have significant consequences for other creatures.”

I’m not going to disagree with Dembrow’s assessment. This doesn’t have to be a political issue in terms of reducing plastic pollution. But, again, should government be passing laws like this? For one thing, there really is no enforcement mechanism. Does anyone think a cop will go in to get a burger and give a ticket when they are given a straw? Heck, most places do not hand you a straw, they have a big container with them. Something like this would be better as a resolution which asks places with straws to limit their use and replace them mostly with recyclables, paper straws, and recycle containers for plastic straws, many of which are stirrers for coffee.

Because, really, Oregon has a few more important issues, such as the quick rising homeless problem, used syringes all over the streets in cities like Portland, and rising crime. We do learn, though, from the overview

Prohibits restaurant from providing single-use plastic straw to consumer unless consumer requests straw.] Provides that State Department of Agriculture shall enforce prohibition in course of inspecting food establishments. Provides that after second instance of violation, department may impose fine of not more than $25 for each day in which restaurant remains in violation of prohibition. Caps total fines at $300 per restaurant during each calendar year.] Specifies exemptions from prohibition. Permits enforcement officer to enforce prohibition in course of conducting inspection of food and beverage provider or convenience store. Provides that violation of prohibition is subject to notice in first and second instance and to fine of $25 for each subsequent instance. Caps allowable fines at $300 during calendar year. Preempts local regulation after effective date of Act. Becomes operative on January 1, 2020. Declares emergency, effective on passage.

Sigh.

Read: Having Solved All Of Oregon’s Problems, Senate Passes Bill Limiting Straws »

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If All You See…

By William Teach April 12, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a terrible tiny plate of food, because carbon pollution will harm food production and we’ll all starve, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post noting that the phrase “ugly duckling” is now considered raaaaacist.

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NC General Assembly Takes Aim At Spam Callers

By William Teach April 12, 2019 – 10:52 am

Have you ever had someone call you with the same prefix as your phone, and you think it’s legit? It happens a lot in my area. So you block the number. Then the same company/person calls you from a different number. Well, the NC GA wants to do something more about it

Lawmakers take aim at camouflaged robocalls

How many spam calls do you get a day on your cell phone?

Many of them look like local numbers, but they’re really sales calls.

State lawmakers filed a bill Thursday to try to crack down on phone scammers.

The scammers mask their real phone number so that the call shows up on your caller ID as a local number, or from a family member or even from yourself.

It’s called neighbor spoofing – using an alias number or name to hide the caller’s actual identity. Making it look like a local call or a call from someone you know increases the likelihood that you’ll answer it.

The practice is already illegal under federal law, but robocallers are using it anyway. And it seems to be getting worse all the time.

The proposed “Truth in Caller ID Act” would ban telemarketers from using fake numbers or names at the state level. Callers would have to use their own information or the information of the business they’re representing.

You might be saying “well, it’s already illegal under federal law (and, hey, what the hell’s with the do not call list?), so, what’s the point?” If the call is originating within the state, authorities would have the power to levy fines and even criminal penalties against the companies/people in violation. Otherwise, state officials have no power to go after those breaking federal law. This empowers them. If the calls are originating from outside NC, nothing can be done. A goodly chunk do originate locally, though.

Can we all get behind this going nationwide in a bipartisan fashion?

BTW, a great app to use is Mr. Number. Though, they want to charge you now after letting you use it with all the features free for years. However, if you get version 5.2.3-6703 for Android, and make sure you turn off auto-update. This will give you full functionality, spam blocking, show you the name if it is in the system. I had been using their other app, Hiya, since back when it was called White Pages, but, I don’t know the version that would let it be free. Not sure if you can do something like this with Apple. I one time fee would be one thing. They want a monthly payment.

Read: NC General Assembly Takes Aim At Spam Callers »

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