WWIII Watch: Neocons Whine At Hegseth Over Ukraine

By William Teach June 12, 2025 – 6:45 am

I wonder what kind of financial stake they have in continuing to prop up Ukraine?

McConnell Tells Hegseth America’s Reputation Is at Stake in Ukraine War

Two senior Republican senators sharply criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s handling of Russia in its efforts to end the war in Ukraine, revealing a deepening public split in the party on foreign policy.

Senator Mitch McConnell — one of three Republicans who opposed Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation in January — opened a Senate budget hearing with a blunt critique of President Trump’s approach to Ukraine.

“It seems to me pretty obvious America’s reputation is on the line,” said Mr. McConnell, the former Senate majority leader who leads the Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. “Will we defend democratic allies against authoritarian aggressors?”

Mr. McConnell, an outspoken hawk on Russia and military issues, has been critical of the Trump administration’s defense spending plan, and countered Mr. Hegseth’s argument that the administration was making the largest investment in the military in 20 years through Mr. Trump’s reconciliation package.

Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said that putting military spending into that package and not increasing spending in the regular budget “may well end up functioning as a shell game to avoid making the most significant annual investments that we spent years urging the Biden administration to make.”

Yeah yeah yeah

The exchange between Mr. McConnell and Mr. Hegseth offered a glimpse into the widening foreign policy gap between the diminishing cohort of internationalists in the Republican Party, like Mr. McConnell, and an emboldened wing led by figures like Mr. Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, who articulate an “America First” view of U.S. involvement around the globe.

“We don’t want a headline at the end of this conflict that says Russia wins and America loses,” Mr. McConnell told the Pentagon chief, chiding him for failing to include additional military assistance for Ukraine in the Pentagon’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

What they never really say, and Lindsay Graham, is how, exactly, Ukraine can win. And how WWIII can be avoided.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, also challenged Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was going to stop at Ukraine, if successful on the battlefield there.

“I don’t believe he is,” General Caine said.

Russia is having a tough time taking Ukraine: how will Putin go after other nations?

Read: WWIII Watch: Neocons Whine At Hegseth Over Ukraine »

Posted in Current Affairs, Idiot GOPer's | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Carbon Capture (scam) Industry Having Issues Because Trump

By William Teach June 11, 2025 – 3:00 pm

If your business model cannot survive without massive influxes of government cash it might not be the most stable idea. It’s one thing if you are a defense contractor or provide specific things that government needs. But, carbon capture? It was really based on Government giving them money

Carbon Capture Comes Back Down to Earth

Six months ago, the prospects for the nascent carbon removal market seemed as vast as the sky.

Bill Gates and other investors were lining up to fund start-ups that promised to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping to curb global warming. Big-name companies like Google, Airbus and Amazon moved in to buy carbon removal credits. And McKinsey projected the market could be worth as much as $1.2 trillion by 2050. One investor called it “the single greatest opportunity I’ve seen in 20 years of doing venture capital.”

But less than six months into President Trump’s second term, in which he has moved to drastically reshape climate policy, the carbon capture industry is decidedly more subdued.

The Energy Department last month terminated 24 awards worth $3.7 billion, most of which had been earmarked for carbon capture and storage projects. Applications for new carbon capture and sequestration permits in the United States were down 55 percent in the first three months of the year.

If these start ups were so great why can’t they do it without the government money? Surely Gates and the others could fund them 100% with their own money, right? Or, is it that they were looking for a big return based on Los Federales spending a ton of taxpayer money on the projects, not caring if they succeed, but, just looking good temporarily?

Yet it’s not just the political landscape that has changed. There are also new questions about the viability of some prominent carbon capture technologies.

Climeworks’ flagship plant in Iceland, which uses so-called direct air capture to scrub carbon dioxide from the sky, removed just a sliver of the carbon dioxide it had hoped to during its first 10 months in operation, according to Heimildin, an Icelandic news organization.

In other words, it’s BS. Maybe some of these projects around the world should be audited, see where the money has gone. Did it enrich some people, while doing little, just like with lots of solar projects (Solyndra, for instance)? If it is projected to be so big, then why is it failing and unable to operate without vast sums of taxpayer money, whether taxpayers like it or not?

Read: Bummer: Carbon Capture (scam) Industry Having Issues Because Trump »

Posted in Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach June 11, 2025 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful low carbon skateboards, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on the damage an EV can do on one bad day.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

Mexican Flag Is Defining Symbol Of LA Riots

By William Teach June 11, 2025 – 10:30 am

Many of the violent illegals being picked up are not Mexicans, but, I guess it’s a little harder to find flags of their home countries

CNN: ‘Mexican Flag Has Become a Defining Symbol’ of Los Angeles Riots

CNN, the left-leaning media conglomerate, has declared that the Mexican flag is “a defining symbol” of riots across Los Angeles, California, over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents enforcing federal immigration laws.

Days worth of photos and footage from the riots have depicted rioters burning cars, assaulting police, and throwing bricks at vehicles, all while waving the Mexican flag.

CNN, in a piece titled “The Mexican flag has become a defining symbol of the LA protests,” is boasting that rioters are using the foreign flag to “express solidarity with immigrants and denounce the Trump administration’s raids…”

But the waving of foreign flags speaks to the generations of people from Mexico and other Latin American countries who have called the US, and particularly California, home, Hinojosa-Ojeda, the UCLA professor, said. [Emphasis added]

“The flags mean their families. The flags mean their communities. It’s not about having an international invasion,” he added.  [Emphasis added]

It’s one thing if they are actually citizens and celebrating their heritage on Cinco De Mayo, much like Irish flags are flown on St. Patrick’s day. But, they are being flown in support of illegal actions, much in the same way people flew Palestinian flags, in support of terrorists.

Mexican flags have become so prominent at the riots that organizers are now reportedly handing out American flags following intense criticism.

Vice President JD Vance has called the rioters “insurrectionists” and said the riot is even further proof why Republicans ought to pass President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which includes a remittance tax on money transfers from immigrants sending funds to their native countries.

“Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one half of America’s political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil,” Vance wrote on X. “Time to pass President Trump’s beautiful bill and further secure the border.”

If the illegal alien Mexicans want to be Americans they should be flying US flags to start with. For the American liberals, well, they hate the US flag, and, I hope the Mexicans and other illegals realize they are just being used.

And here’s the NY Times dropping some seizing!

Mexican Flags Have Become Republican Fodder, but Protesters Keep Waving Them

As images of protests in Southern California have flooded television and social media in recent days, a key question has emerged: Why are so many protesters carrying Mexican flags at an American political protest?

The sea of red, white and green Mexican flags at anti-deportation protests this week in Los Angeles has been seized upon by conservatives who argue that the demonstrations are inherently un-American, causing some protesters to consider leaving them at home.

Photos of masked provocateurs waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo taxis spread instantly across conservative social media this weekend. Republicans pointed to them as a prime example of why President Trump called in the National Guard and how immigration had gone too far in California.

Oh, NY Times, never change

But protesters said this week that they see the Mexican flag as a symbol of defiance against Mr. Trump’s immigration policies or of solidarity with other Mexican Americans. The flag has become so ubiquitous in recent decades that it is a part of the Southern California landscape, adorning pickup trucks and flapping from bridges. Few mass gatherings occur in the region without a Mexican flag or two, from weekend soccer matches to Los Angeles Dodgers championship parades.

You mean as a symbol against the laws of the United States?

Read: Mexican Flag Is Defining Symbol Of LA Riots »

Posted in Illegal Immigration, Wonky Media | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: EPA To Propose Ditching Climate Scam Rules For Power Plants

By William Teach June 11, 2025 – 7:00 am

I’ll say again, I’m no fan of coal. But, until real clean energy can be dependable, affordable, and reliable, we need coal and especially natural gas (and to build nuclear)

EPA to propose rolling back climate rule for power plants Wednesday

The Trump administration will move Wednesday to repeal federal limits on power plant climate pollution, attacking the Biden era’s most ambitious attempt to use regulations to rein in heat-trapping gases from the electric grid, according to six people familiar with the situation.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will announce the repeal of the power plant carbon dioxide rule along with a separate regulation to curb hazardous air pollution such as mercury during an event at agency headquarters, the people said.

The two repeal proposals are the most important EPA regulatory actions of President Donald Trump’s second term to date. Without offering details, EPA said Tuesday that Zeldin will make a “major policy announcement” at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Scrapping the Biden-era power plant rule would effectively shelve regulations for the nation’s second-biggest producer of climate pollution — the electricity sector — which accounts for one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases.

The move will come one day after the executive director of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, Jarrod Agen, defended the administration’s focus on coal and natural gas for maintaining the reliability of the electric grid. Speaking at POLITICO’s annual Energy Summit on Tuesday, Agen said Trump is not considering renewable sources such as solar power for the nation’s energy mix, despite those technologies’ support from some GOP lawmakers as well as business leaders such as Elon Musk.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of rolling back mercury rules, but, some say the current regulations are overly strict. Further, really, all of this should have been done by legislation to start with, not regulations. But, Congress likes to abdicate its responsibility on everything to federal agencies.

The rules should be finalized by the end of the year.

Read: Good News: EPA To Propose Ditching Climate Scam Rules For Power Plants »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

House Passes Bill To End Non-Citizen Voting In D.C.

By William Teach June 11, 2025 – 6:45 am

Really, D.C. never should have had the authority to allow non-citizens to vote in the first place, being the seat of the federal government

House passes Republican-led bills to repeal D.C. laws on noncitizen voting and policing

The Republican-controlled House is poised to pass a trio of bills this week to repeal Washington, D.C., laws on immigration, voting and policing, even as it has yet to restore a painful $1 billion cut to the city’s budget.

The House passed two of the bills Tuesday. One would bar noncitizens from voting in local elections in the nation’s capital, overturning a Washington law that was passed in 2022. It passed 266-148, with 56 Democrats joining Republicans in support.

The other bill would restore collective bargaining rights and a statute of limitations for Washington police officers involved in disciplinary cases. It passed 235-178, with 30 Democrats voting for it and four Republicans voting against it.

Will there be enough Democrats in the Senate to push these through? Will the be down for cutting off the noncitizens voting and treating the police well? The force is already down about 16%, thanks to the anti-police sentiment of Democrats

Then, on Thursday, the House is expected to pass a third bill, the District of Columbia Federal Immigration Compliance Act, which would require the Washington government to comply with requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security to share information and detain undocumented immigrants. Under current Washington law, local authorities do not work with federal immigration officials unless they have judicial warrants.

Altogether, the bills represent House Republicans’ attempt to assert authority over deep-blue Washington at a time when the GOP has unified control of the federal government.

Congress is supposed to have control over D.C. government, and the city should not be protecting illegal aliens, being the seat of the federal government, for goodness sakes.

“D.C.’s City Council made radical decisions in our nation’s capital under the Biden-Harris administration, passing local laws that are woefully inconsistent with national standards or constitutional principles,” Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee who authored the GOP voting bill, told NBC News in a statement.

Of course, a problem here is that Los Federales try and put their hands in way too many cookie jars, instead of dealing with the core mission as defined by the Constitution, particularly Article 1 sections 8 through 10.

Read: House Passes Bill To End Non-Citizen Voting In D.C. »

Posted in Current Affairs | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Fault: Cheese Is Doomed From Global Boiling

By William Teach June 10, 2025 – 3:04 pm

Have I seen this before? I don’t remember if the climate cult has done this before. This comes from “Science News”, which looks like a cult outlet

Climate change is coming for your cheese

climate cowBy affecting cows’ diets, climate change can affect cheese’s nutritional value and sensory traits such as taste, color and texture. This is true at least for Cantal — a firm, unpasteurized cheese from the Auvergne region in central France, researchers report February 20 in the Journal of Dairy Science.

Cows in this region typically graze on local grass. But as climate change causes more severe droughts, some dairy producers are shifting to other feedstocks for their cows, such as corn, to adapt. “Farmers are looking for feed with better yields than grass or that are more resilient to droughts,” but they also want to know how dietary changes affect their products, says animal scientist Matthieu Bouchon.

For almost five months in 2021, Bouchon and colleagues at France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment tested 40 dairy cows from two different breeds — simulating a drought and supplementing grass with other fodder, largely corn, in varying amounts. (snip)

They found that a corn-based diet did not affect milk yield and even led to an estimated reduction in the greenhouse gas methane coming from cows’ belching. But grass-fed cows’ cheese was richer and more savory than that from cows mostly or exclusively fed corn. Grass-based diets also yielded cheese with more heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids and higher counts of probiotic lactic acid bacteria. The authors suggest that to maintain cheese quality, producers should include fresh vegetation in cows’ fodder when it is based on corn.

So the taste of cheese is doomed. Because there have never been droughts before. Except during the Little Ice Age, which led to a revolution in France. It’s always something.

French producers will possibly need different strategies to fit their environment and cow breeds. But Bouchon is certain of one thing: “If climate change progresses the way it’s going, we’ll feel it in our cheese.”

Yes, because a whopping 1.6F increase in temperatures since 1850 is bad.

Read: Your Fault: Cheese Is Doomed From Global Boiling »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach June 10, 2025 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Greatness, with a post on Harvard’s $3 billion grant loss.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

WWIII Watch: Now Russia Wants NATO Out Of Baltic Nations To End Ukraine War

By William Teach June 10, 2025 – 10:30 am

Things would have been so much simpler had Biden not been so weak that Russia invaded Ukraine, just like when Russia took Crimea with Biden as Obama’s VP

Russia Won’t End Ukraine War Until NATO ‘Pulls Out’ of Baltics: Moscow

The Ukraine war won’t end until NATO withdraws troops from the Baltics, a top Russian official has warned.

Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister responsible for U.S. relations, nonproliferation and arms control, made the remarks in an interview with state-run news agency Tass.

Newsweek has reached out to the Kremlin and NATO for comment by email.

Ryabkov’s comments mark a shift in the Kremlin’s position. He suggested that the conflict’s roots lie not only in Ukraine itself but in NATO’s eastward expansion. According to Ryabkov, the withdrawal of NATO forces from the Baltics would help bring an end to the war.

NATO maintains a strong military presence in the Baltic States, with multinational battle groups and brigades stationed in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

So, that’s pretty much a “never going to happen.” Can you imagine giving back Poland and Romania, for starters? Will Putin take this position as negotiations are on and off? Slow walking?

Last month, three Russian sources with knowledge of Washington-led negotiations told Reuters that Putin’s conditions for ending the Ukraine war include a written pledge from Western leaders to halt NATO’s eastward expansion.

Complications.

Meanwhile

Zelenskyy demands ‘action from America’ after latest Russian drone, missile attack

At least two people were killed in the Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight into Tuesday morning amid another night of intense nationwide Russian drone and missile strikes. (snip)

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Chernihiv regions were targeted. Russia’s bombardment included at least two North Korean-made ballistic missiles, he added…..

“Action from America, which has the power to force Russia into peace,” he continued. “Action from Europe, which has no alternative but to be strong. Action from others around the world who called for diplomacy and an end to the war — and whom Russia has ignored. There must be strong pressure for the sake of peace.”

Russia attacks, Ukraine responds, and around it goes. Ukraine makes a deep strike against Russia bombers with drones, Russia responds. That’s war. Well, the slow war which is bleeding Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the US. Here, it sure seems like Zelenskyy wants NATO members to commit direct military action against Russia.

Read: WWIII Watch: Now Russia Wants NATO Out Of Baltic Nations To End Ukraine War »

Posted in Current Affairs | 14 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: UN Says Oceans Are Dying

By William Teach June 10, 2025 – 7:15 am

But, hey, maybe they can save them as thousands fly into Nice for a nice working vacation

Oceans are dying. Can a UN summit in Nice turn the tide?

From 9 to 13 June, the coastal city of Nice will host the Third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3), a high-level summit co-chaired by France and Costa Rica. Its mission: to confront a deepening ocean emergency that scientists warn is nearing a point of no return.

“The ocean is facing an unprecedented crisis due to climate change, plastic pollution, ecosystem loss, and the overuse of marine resources,” Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, who is also serving as Secretary-General of the event, told UN News.

“We hope the conference will inspire unprecedented ambition, innovative partnerships, and maybe a healthy competition,” he said, highlighting the need for international cooperation to avoid irreversible damage.

The pressure is on. UNOC3 is bringing together world leaders, scientists, activists, and business executives to tackle the growing crisis in the world’s oceans.

The goal is to spark a wave of voluntary pledges, forge new partnerships, and — if organizers succeed — inject a much-needed dose of accountability into the fight against marine degradation.

The thing is, there is some reality to this. There are serious problems with plastic pollution and overuse of marine resources. And straight pollution, though, it is much better than it was 40 years ago. Just leave the whole climate scam out of, though, guys, because you are going to bury all the real problems under the banner of the cult. Leave it out, and we can get most to agree on fixing issues.

And the damage runs deeper still. The ocean continues to absorb more than 90 per cent of excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions — a worldwide service that may be nearing its limits.

“Challenges like plastic pollution, overfishing, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and warming are all linked to climate change,” Mr. Li warned.

Read: Bummer: UN Says Oceans Are Dying »

Posted in Climate Cult, Environment, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove