If All You See…

…is a horrible, electricity sucking smartphone, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is America’s Watchtower, with a post on Rod Rosenstein’s unusual request on Brett Kavenaugh.

Read: If All You See… »

NY Times Wonders If ‘Climate Change’ Has Something To Do With Thailand Floods

In the wake of the kids being trapped in the cave, you just knew someone had to run something like this. In this case, it’s the NY Times’ Nadja Popovich and Kendra Pierre-louis, who want to remind us that no one’s suggesting that the kids being trapped was climate change, it’s just climate change

Does Climate Change Have Anything to Do With Floods in Thailand?

After 12 members of a youth soccer team and their coach were trapped in the Tham Luang Cave in northern Thailand nearly three weeks ago, their plight, and then their rescue, captured the world’s attention.

By now, it’s well known that their predicament was caused by rising floodwaters in the cave. What is less known is that the pattern of precipitation that ensnared them is in keeping with broader changes to the region’s seasonal monsoon that researchers have attributed to climate change.

“Over the South Asian landmass, we’ve seen that extreme rainfall events have become more frequent,” said Amit Tandon, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who studies ocean systems.

No one is suggesting that climate change itself was responsible for trapping the boys in the cave. Brief downpours have always been common during Thailand’s wet season, which runs from late May to early October. Periods of a week or two of relatively heavy rainfall are punctuated by drier periods.

See? No one is suggesting. They’re just hintimating. Climaggesting?

The alternating dry and wet periods are called the intraseasonal oscillation, said Arnold L. Gordon, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. That variation has always happened, unrelated to climate change. But what has changed in recent years is that those wet periods have been wetter.

“It’s likely climate change, in the sense that there’s more moisture in the air,” Dr. Gordon said. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and “when the air has more moisture in it, you would get wetter wet bands and drier dry bands,” he said.

Which is not proof of man-caused climate change, just that climate changes. Which it always does.

Flash floods were known to be a danger in the cave, and a sign at the entrance warned against entering in the rainy season. But the strongest rains normally begin in July, so the boys and their coach may have been caught off guard when they ventured inside the relatively dry cave on June 23. Though the total June rainfall in the area, 9.6 inches, was only slightly higher than average, five of those inches fell between June 21 and 28, according to Eric Leister, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather. The resulting floodwaters trapped the team and complicated rescue efforts.

And taken altogether, it sure looks like ‘climate change’ is being blamed, does it not?

Read: NY Times Wonders If ‘Climate Change’ Has Something To Do With Thailand Floods »

Landmark Settlement Is A Nightmare For Gun Grabbers, Especially On “Assault Rifles”

This is bad news for the anti-gun crowd (who often have firearms themselves (see Alyssa Milano’s husband) and/or armed protection, at times weapons that the average American is banned from having), but not as bad as being portrayed, except for one thing

A LANDMARK LEGAL SHIFT OPENS PANDORA’S BOX FOR DIY GUNS

FIVE YEARS AGO, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun. When, to his relief, his plastic invention fired a .380-caliber bullet into a berm of dirt without jamming or exploding in his hands, he drove back to Austin and uploaded the blueprints for the pistol to his website, Defcad.com.

He’d launched the site months earlier along with an anarchist video manifesto, declaring that gun control would never be the same in an era when anyone can download and print their own firearm with a few clicks. In the days after that first test-firing, his gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Wilson made the decision to go all in on the project, dropping out of law school at the University of Texas, as if to confirm his belief that technology supersedes law.

The law caught up. Less than a week later, Wilson received a letter from the US State Department demanding that he take down his printable-gun blueprints or face prosecution for violating federal export controls. Under an obscure set of US regulations known as the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Wilson was accused of exporting weapons without a license, just as if he’d shipped his plastic gun to Mexico rather than put a digital version of it on the internet. He took Defcad.com offline, but his lawyer warned him that he still potentially faced millions of dollars in fines and years in prison simply for having made the file available to overseas downloaders for a few days. “I thought my life was over,” Wilson says.

Instead, Wilson has spent the last years on an unlikely project for an anarchist: Not simply defying or skirting the law but taking it to court and changing it. In doing so, he has now not only defeated a legal threat to his own highly controversial gunsmithing project. He may have also unlocked a new era of digital DIY gunmaking that further undermines gun control across the United States and the world—another step toward Wilson’s imagined future where anyone can make a deadly weapon at home with no government oversight.

As you can guess, Mr. Wilson won his suit.

Two months ago, the Department of Justice quietly offered Wilson a settlement to end a lawsuit he and a group of co-plaintiffs have pursued since 2015 against the United States government. Wilson and his team of lawyers focused their legal argument on a free speech claim: They pointed out that by forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable data, the State Department was not only violating his right to bear arms but his right to freely share information. By blurring the line between a gun and a digital file, Wilson had also successfully blurred the lines between the Second Amendment and the First.

This has caused the gun grabbers to freak out, because it means anyone can download the “code”, which is considered Free Speech now, and manufacture a firearm using 3D technology. You know, something very few of us have access to. We’d need parts and machinery and stuff, so, it’s not as easy as it is being portrayed.

Furthermore, just because anyone can download the instructions now as free speech, it doesn’t mean that state government cannot pass laws (in some cases, more laws) about these types of firearms to restrict the manufacture of them, require serial numbers, registration, and so forth. And criminals will do what criminals do, so, once the blueprints were out there, nothing was going to stop that. But, the average criminal, gang banger, etc, do not have access to 3D machines, either.

Here’s the really important part of the settlement

As part of the settlement, the government acknowledges that “non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber” such as the popular AR-15 and other semi-autos, are not “military” in nature, which Alan Gottlieb with the SAF said is a huge win. “For years, anti-gunners have contended that modern semi-automatic sport-utility rifles are so-called ‘weapons of war,’ and with this settlement, the government has acknowledged they are nothing of the sort,” he said in a statement.

The gun grabbers will still try and portray them as “weapons of war”, because they found a talking point, and they rarely give them up. But, per the US Department Of Justice, they aren’t. Not that they ever were. What dummy carries a semi-automatic rifle to war anymore?

Read: Landmark Settlement Is A Nightmare For Gun Grabbers, Especially On “Assault Rifles” »

“News Investigation”: Brett Kavanaugh Used Credit Cards To Buy Baseball Tickets

The Washington Post’s Amy Brittain has did a big, big investigation (she read a few documents, most likely provided by some hyper-leftwing outlet) of Brett Kavanaugh, and found something that should totally end his chances to be on the Supreme Court

From the article

Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying baseball tickets over the past decade and at times reported liabilities that could have exceeded the value of his cash accounts and investment assets, according to a review of Kavanaugh’s financial disclosures and information provided by the White House.

White House spokesman Raj Shah told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh built up the debt by buying Washington Nationals season tickets and tickets for playoff games for himself and a “handful” of friends. Shah said some of the debts were also for home improvements.

In 2016, Kavanaugh reported having between $60,000 and $200,000 in debt accrued over three credit cards and a loan. Each credit card held between $15,000 and $50,000 in debt, and a Thrift Savings Plan loan was between $15,000 and $50,000.

ZOMG, that’s horrible! Who does this? Nobody puts things like this on their credit cards and takes out loans!!!!!!

The credit card debts and loan were either paid off or fell below the reporting requirements in 2017, according to the filings, which do not require details on the nature or source of such payments. Shah told The Post that Kavanaugh’s friends reimbursed him for their share of the baseball tickets and that the judge has since stopped purchasing the season tickets.

This article seriously continues on for 22 paragraphs, which, in fairness, features many which are just one sentence. Still and all, what is this rubbish? It was seriously in the “investigations” section of the WP. It wouldn’t be there if they didn’t think it wouldn’t help in derailing Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Baseball tickets.

Really, this is the same Credentialed Media that refused to investigate virtually anything about Obama. No one really knows anything about his college days. They avoided anything about Obama regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. How about that birth certificate? That’s not a Birther thing, that’s a “the media spent a lot of time wondering if McCain was eligible because he was born at a military base in the Panama Canal zone” thing. The media could offer up soft hit-jobs on that, they could “we’re just wondering” about McCain having an affair, news that was totally unverified, but, they couldn’t bring themselves to investigate Obama’s drug use. They wanted ever medical record on McCain, then wanted more, but were fine with one-pager from Obama.

They freaked over Mitt Romney giving a kid a haircut back in high school as a prank, but didn’t care less about getting to the bottom of things like Fast and Furious and Benghazi. So, yeah, baseball tickets. This is what they do, and they wonder why no one trusts them.

Read: “News Investigation”: Brett Kavanaugh Used Credit Cards To Buy Baseball Tickets »

Woman Claims She Had “Handmaids Tale” Moment Dealing With US Customers

Liberals love running stories and linking them to “A Handmaid’s Tale”, eh? Here’s Brianna Sacks at Buzzfeed

This Mom Said She Had A “Handmaid’s Tale” Moment Having To Prove Her Daughter Was Her Child

After nearly 10 hours of flying Sunday, Sylvia Acosta was exhausted and dreaming about a cup of coffee as she stood in line for customs at Dallas–Fort Worth airport. Her daughter, Sybonae Castillo, was relieved to be back in Texas and craving Hot Cheetos. But instead of lounging in the food court, the 50-year-old found herself fighting to prove that her 15-year-old was, indeed, her child and explain her decision not to change her name when she married.

Calling it a “Handmaid’s Tale” moment, Acosta recounted what she described as a “violating and demeaning” encounter with a Customs and Border Protection agent, who she accused of improperly detaining and berating her because she and her daughter had different last names.

“He looked up from the documents and was like, ‘Are you her mother?’ And I said yes and he then asked, ‘Why don’t you have the same last name?'” Acosta, who has a doctorate degree and chose to keep her professional name, recalled.

“I explained that I decided to keep my name and not change it when I got married because that is the name I had built my career on and people knew me by that, and I went on and on about that,” she said.

Unconvinced, Acosta said, the agent asked if she had any other proof that Sybonae, who was standing beside her, was her daughter, such as a birth certificate or a note from the father, citing concerns of human trafficking.

She kinda understood, but was still shocked! Especially when she claims that the Customs agent “told me my life would have been easier if I had taken my husband’s last name.”

Acosta, who is the CEO of the YWCA CEO of the El Paso branch (Buzzfeed offered the correction), a nonprofit geared toward eliminating racism and empowering women, found herself explaining that she had divorced Sybonae’s father, remarried, and still retained her birth name.

Well, that’s rather ironic, isn’t? She just haaaaaappppppens to be a social justice warrior. Huh. And she also claims the agent asked if she had a divorce decree. She claims she was humiliated and patronized and they were condescending. There’s just one teensy tiny problem, way down in the article (at a point most people would have moved on and sent Outraged tweets and stuff)

Customs and Border Protection, however, refuted Acosta’s account and contended that the agent had been following protocol.

The agency “has reviewed the audio and video of the encounter between a CBP officer and a woman traveling with her daughter, and found that the video does not support this claim,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

This was also explained to the Dallas Morning News, which starts their article out on this very point. The Fox News article goes even further

“U. S. Customs and Border Protection has reviewed the audio and video of the encounter between a CBP officer and a woman travelling with her daughter, and found that the video does not support the claim as it has been reported. The audio and video prove that there weren’t any inappropriate questions discussed,” a spokesperson wrote in a response to Acosta.

And it looks like the Facebook post, which received 16,000 shares, has now been either deleted or set to private.

Read: Woman Claims She Had “Handmaids Tale” Moment Dealing With US Customers »

If All You See…

…is a super bright world from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on Dems trying to fundraise off of Kavanaugh.

Read: If All You See… »

Gun Not Locked Up In Seattle? You Could Face A $10,000 Fine

Remember, they aren’t trying to take your guns and aren’t trying to put restrictions on law abiding citizens

(Seattle Times) Seattle will require gun owners to lock up their firearms, after the City Council voted unanimously Monday to pass legislation proposed by Mayor Jenny Durkan.

Starting 180 days after Durkan signs the legislation, it will be a civil infraction to store a gun without the firearm being secured in a locked container.

The legislation will apply only to guns kept somewhere, rather than those carried by or under the control of their owners.

Also under the legislation, it will be a civil infraction when an owner knows or should know that a minor, “at-risk person” or unauthorized user is likely to access a gun and such a person actually does access the weapon.

The legislation allows fines up to $500 when a gun isn’t locked up, up to $1,000 when a prohibited person accesses a firearm and up to $10,000 when a prohibited person uses the weapon to hurt someone or commit a crime.

As for the first, how will the city know? Will they come and check people’s homes? What if a prohibited person takes the firearm and unlocks it? This is all about making it more difficult for the law abiding to defend themselves in their homes.

It’s also most likely illegal

In addition to allowing fines, the legislation will pave the way for lawsuits. The infractions will be considered initial evidence of negligence in civil court matters.

A state law says Washington cities can’t regulate guns, blocking Seattle from taking a bolder step, such as banning semi-automatic firearms.

Gun grabbers do not care about the law.

Read: Gun Not Locked Up In Seattle? You Could Face A $10,000 Fine »

Youth Climate Movement Shockingly Pushing Anti-Capitalism And SJW Insanity

Who’s surprised that the little budding members of the Cult of Climastrology are pushing a whole raft of far left Progressive SJW measures (via Twitchy)

https://twitter.com/WomensMarchY/status/1016718378793234432

Let’s see it

On the frontlines of climate change is the Global South, People Of Color, Indigenous Peoples, Youth, People with Disabilities, Poor People, Women, Queer and Trans People, and People belonging to marginalized faiths.

In our youth movement to combat climate change, we uplift the youth voices of these communities.

Youth leadership is transformational and visionary. Youth must lead because they have always shifted culture towards progress and collective liberation.

Systems of oppression (capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy) have led to climate change, therefore we must shift our culture away from these systems.

Intersectional movement-building is the only way we can achieve collective liberation because working together on intersecting issues will unify communities who wish to join our struggle for a safe and healthy future for all.

The same climaidiots are sending this out using things like capitalist created Internet, WiFi, smartphones, tablets, and computers, wearing clothes made by capitalist companies (the man-bun creation is commie).

Anyhow, this kind of SJW shtick is why so many tune out from ‘climate change’, because they see this type of insane language and say “these people are nuts, and apparently received their language training from the old Soviet Union propagandists.”

The people must take action rather than waiting for elected officials to lead.

Go for it. Give up your own use of fossil fuels and make your lives carbon neutral

The elected officials must comply with the demands of the youth, therefore they must pass and enforce legislation and support policies that protect life and our future on this planet.

This is a revolution.

Oh, right, they want Government to Do Something. I wonder how they’ll feel about their “revolution” when their cost of living skyrockets and a small cup of foo foo coffee at Starbucks costs $10? When the non-GMO range free fair trade uber-sustainable tofu triples in price? When their use of smartphones is limited due to the cost of energy, rationing, and planned brownouts/blackouts?

And people who eat Tide pods are not particularly scary when talking about revolution. Especially not from their parent’s house.

They also claim they will be non-violent, peaceful, humble, and extend the hand of friendship. Of course, this only applies if you believe exactly as they do.

Read: Youth Climate Movement Shockingly Pushing Anti-Capitalism And SJW Insanity »

Trump Looks For Deal With Mexico To Reduce Illegal Immigration

This is an interesting idea, and could eventually lead to what I’ve recommended: if people want asylum, they need to apply to the US embassy in their home country

U.S. and Mexico discuss deal that could slash migration at the border

While President Trump regularly berates Mexico for “doing nothing” to stop illegal migration, behind the scenes the two governments are considering a deal that could drastically curtail the cross-border migration flow.

The proposal, known as a “safe third country agreement,” would potentially require asylum seekers transiting through Mexico to apply for protection in that nation rather than in the United States. It would allow U.S. border guards to turn back such asylum seekers at border crossings and quickly return to Mexico anyone who has already entered illegally seeking refuge, regardless of their nationality.

U.S. officials believe this type of deal would discourage many Central American families from trying to reach the United States. Their soaring numbers have strained U.S. immigration courts and overwhelmed the U.S. government’s ability to detain them. The Trump administration says the majority are looking for jobs — rather than fleeing persecution — and are taking advantage of American generosity to gain entry and avoid deportation.

“We believe the flows would drop dramatically and fairly immediately” if the agreement took effect, said a senior Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations with the Mexican government, which the official said had gathered momentum in recent weeks.

The number of illegal aliens claiming asylum from Central America have jumped since Obama took office (there was a quick uptick during the early Bush years, which went down), while the number who are actually approved has not. Overall, it’s about 7.4%. It was not just the welcoming attitudes of Obama and his Democrats, but illegals gaming the system with false claims.

This would be a good start in requiring all the potential illegals to work through a system, rather than just showing up.

Read: Trump Looks For Deal With Mexico To Reduce Illegal Immigration »

Surprise: California Blackouts Blamed On ‘Climate Change’

It couldn’t have anything to do with California making it difficult for reliable energy to operate and instead be dependent on so much alternative energy which is unreliable, could it?

Record heat put thousands of Californians in the dark Friday. Scientists predicted this from climate change.

Temperatures shot up over 110 degrees in Southern California on Friday, obliterating all kinds of long-standing heat records, and the lights went out for tens of thousands of customers. Californians were powerless, without air conditioning, in the hottest weather many had ever experienced.

Climate scientists have known this was coming, and it may only be the beginning.

“We studied this a long time ago . . . now our projections are becoming reality,” tweeted Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.

In 2006, Hayhoe and colleagues published the study “Climate, Extreme Heat, and Electricity Demand in California” in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

“Over the twenty-first century, the frequency of extreme-heat events for major cities in heavily air-conditioned California is projected to increase rapidly,” the study said. It warned that as temperatures soared, electricity demand would exceed supply.

In reality, this is nothing unusual. When weather events occur, people can use more energy, and this can cause brownouts and blackouts. In this case, I guess we’re supposed to blame the vast numbers of fossil fueled vehicles that drive around California.

If projections are correct, heat waves will become worse in the coming decades, further taxing California’s energy supply. Hayhoe’s 2006 study concluded a “potential for electricity deficits as high as 17 percent” later this century.

Of course, the Catch-22 is that if cities increase electricity capacity to adapt to a changing climate using fossil-fuel-based energy sources, greenhouse-gas emissions increase, which warm the climate even more.

Well, if every Warmist would give up their air conditioning, fossil fueled vehicles, and pay taxes, we could definitely solve this, right?

Read: Surprise: California Blackouts Blamed On ‘Climate Change’ »

Pirate's Cove