NY Times: Democrats Are Increasing Showing Their Pro-Illegals Stance With “Abolish-ICE”

The NY Times thinks it’s highlighting something positive with this opinion piece by Sean McElwee of the ultra far left group Data For Progress, but, what it actually does is show how utterly extreme Democrats have become

The Power of ‘Abolish ICE’

In June, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina organizer, unseated Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful Democratic incumbents in the country, many analysts were shocked. But maybe they shouldn’t have been.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory came after she criticized Mr. Crowley regularly on the campaign trail for voting to establish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in 2002. She called for the agency to be abolished. And as she zeroed in on the brutality of immigration enforcement, she became a leader in the movement to abolish ICE, going so far as to spend the last few days of her campaign at the border bearing witness to the viciousness of America’s immigration system.

While some saw this as a sign of her political weakness, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was tapping into a sharp shift in the way that Democrats understand immigration. In much the same way that the Democratic Party has had a reckoning on financial deregulation, the punitive 1994 crime bill and the callous welfare reforms of the mid-90s, incumbents are now facing criticism for their votes on immigration.

From the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996 to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Democrats have voted overwhelmingly to help construct the apparatus that President Trump is using to engage in a campaign of mass deportation. And candidates like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are forcing them to take those votes seriously. Ayanna Pressley, who is challenging another incumbent, Michael Capuano, in the Seventh Congressional District of Massachusetts, has also called for abolishing ICE. In Delaware, Kerri Evelyn Harris, running against Tom Carper, another incumbent who supported the creation of the agency, has too.

Democrats should be careful what they wish for: they might end up with a federal agency whose sole mission is to capture people who are unlawfully present in the United States and to quickly deport them, rather than doing the other things ICE does. ICE would be able to spend all their time just catching illegals.

In Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who wants to replace Keith Ellison, who is running for attorney general, notes that ICE is relatively new. “ICE’s mission was created in 2002 — they’ve only been around for 15 years,” she told me. “In that time, they have grown to be an agency whose mission is to tear families apart and put fear into immigrant, refugee and undocumented communities. ICE has only become increasingly militarized, brutal and unaccountable.” For her, the call to abolish ICE is a demand to create an immigration policy “based in compassion.”

At the end of the day, this is all about scapegoating the men and women who work for ICE because Democrats are looking for another avenue to make it easier for illegal aliens to come to the United States and stay here, at which point the Democrats start giving them more and more legal avenues, such as voting in local elections.

Abolishing ICE is not only a campaign issue among upstarts in primaries in deep blue districts. Mark Pocan, a representative from Wisconsin who is a co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said his concerns about ICE stem from the increasingly racist overtones of the agency’s enforcement priorities, “They’re trying to send every possible signal that there are people who don’t belong in this country, and it’s not people from Norway. This is being done almost exclusively on race. Sitting in the parking lot outside of a Head Start school is not for the security of the country.”

Mexican and Latin American is not a race. And they are people who shouldn’t be in the country, because they failed to do it through legal channels. Oh, and there aren’t that many people coming to the U.S. illegally or overstaying their visas from places like Norway.

Anyhow, McElwee thinks this is a totally winning idea as it drives Democrats even further left, and, it might be in districts where Democrats almost never lose: how will it play in the general population? Quite frankly, Republicans and conservatives are happy they’re doing this. You have President Trump making speeches and comments about how Democrats simply want more crime with this abolish ICE push, and all the media outlets put this on TV. This might be better for the election of Republicans and Trump’s re-election than Hillary’s “Deplorables” remark

The abolish ICE movement is not just about the agency; it is also a demand that the next attempt to carry out comprehensive immigration reform doesn’t look like the last one. The next time Democrats have the power to change policy, they will have clear instructions from the base: a mandate to envision an immigration system centered on dignity. For as long as America has existed, the question of immigration has been defined through the lens of white supremacy, although that began to change with the Hart-Cellar Act in 1965. For the most part, though, we have seen immigrants as an other to be controlled and understood these “others” as a threat: of crime, of terror, of economic dislocation. Now, for the first time in American history, there is a possibility that we can build an immigration system that sees immigrants as something else: human.

See? This is all just about their typical support for illegal alien criminals.

Read: NY Times: Democrats Are Increasing Showing Their Pro-Illegals Stance With “Abolish-ICE” »

Global Warming And ‘Climate Change’ May Possibly Be Contributing To…Wait, What?

I’ve been following this scientific political issue since the late 1980’s, a time when, as I’ve mentioned many times, I did believe that Mankind was mostly changing the climate, creating global warming. I’ve seen them change it to ‘climate change’. I was able to do my own homework, rather than relying on a partisan news media, and changed my belief set in the early 2000’s. And I’ve been blogging about this issue as a big part of this small site since the mid-2000’s. I scroll be dozens, if not hundreds, of stories and Tweets a day, yet, I do not recollect ever seeing a whopper like this one

Global warming and climate change may be contributing to record-breaking heat waves

The question of why these high-temperature heat waves seem to come back every so often has yet to be fully answered. However, some studies do indicate factors such as global warming might play a role in these events, Texas State University professor Richard Dixon said.

“The climate models predict, in an overall warming world, heat waves will become more frequent and more long-lasting,” Dixon said. “So, if you think about the climate model as an experiment that poses a question, then we’re seeing the answer that was posed from that climate model.”

Global warming is not the only scientific topic that has been introduced to explain increased temperatures and heat waves over the last few decades. Climate change, which has been a topic of discussion in both the scientific and political world, is another occurrence that has been invited into the conversation.

Scientists believe climate change to be an event that has been occurring over the last century due to hazardous toxins and activity produced by humans. These hazardous elements are believed to have been the cause of numerous changes to the world’s original composition.

While scientists continue to study to gather evidence of climate change, the recent heat wave will have to remain off their list of evidence for quite a while, McGregor said.

“I don’t believe that what we’ve seen is necessarily evidence of climate change. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that global warming is real and climate change is occurring,” McGregor said. “But you can’t take every unusual weather event that happens and say that’s proof of climate change because it’s not necessarily.”

Huh what? This is what happens when you’re trying to intermix actual science with dogmatic cult talking points, while also scapegoating mankind and ignoring past warming periods.

Read: Global Warming And ‘Climate Change’ May Possibly Be Contributing To…Wait, What? »

If All You See…

…is a sea that has flooded the land, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on the Pope and capital punishment.

Read: If All You See… »

SEC Drops Investigation Of Exxon Over ‘Climate Change’ Disclosures

This will make members of the Cult of Climastrology so upset that they’ll jump in their fossil fueled vehicles to go protest (and leave a bunch of litter behind)

(Wall Street Journal) Securities regulators dropped an investigation into whether Exxon Mobil Corp. misled investors about its accounting practices and the risks that climate change and greenhouse-gas regulations posed to its business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in a Thursday letter informed Exxon that it closed the probe and decided against trying to penalize the energy giant over its disclosures and how it valued oil and gas assets. The letter was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Exxon in a statement confirmed the probe had ended, saying it began in January 2016 and involved more than 4.2 million pages of records. “After a thorough investigation, including a review of these documents, the SEC issued its closure letter,” company spokesman Scott Silvestri said in the statement.

Of course, the unhinged AGs of NY and Massachusetts are continuing their own probes, using lots and lots of fossil fuels to do so.

Under U.S. law, public companies must tell shareholders about risks or uncertainties that matter to shareholders’ investment decisions. Environmental groups and some activist investors have pushed the SEC to force companies to disclose more about how they weigh their exposure to climate change.

Realistically, most do not actually care about it beyond some platitudes. They sure do not care enough to modify their own lives and stop using fossil fuels.

Read: SEC Drops Investigation Of Exxon Over ‘Climate Change’ Disclosures »

In Chicago, Anti-Violence Protesters Demonstrate, Law Abiding Gun Owners Blamed

Chicago has a problem: its streets are rife with violence, from fights to stabbings to shootings. This has been going on for years, but grew during the years Obama was in office. Casual gun play is the norm for some areas of Chicago. So, they’re going after the law abiding citizens who own firearms, rather than the criminals with illegal guns. And, to be fair, they aren’t happy with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, either

Chicago protestors threaten to ‘get arrested’ and ‘shut down streets’ in anti-gun violence demonstration

Chicago activists have warned a sprawling anti-violence protest may lead to multiple arrests and the shutdown of busy streets.

The demonstration was being organised in an effort to unseat Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s Democratic mayor, and Eddie Johnson, the city’s police superintendent, according to organisers. Protestors planned to march from Lake Shore Drive to Wrigleyville in the middle of Thursday rush hour, and had not ruled out entering the Wrigley Field, where the Chicago Cubs were scheduled to play against the San Diego Padres.

In fact, they did do this, but, the game wasn’t really affected. They’re also threatening to disrupt O’Hare Airport if they do not get their way, which is partly that Emanuel resign. Interestingly, one thing they’re upset about is the focus on helping illegal aliens over the legal residents of Chicago.

Several major protests have occurred throughout Chicago in response to the city’s unending issues with gun violence. The region became an epicentre for gun violence after local courts rolled back the city’s strict gun ordinances and weapons guidelines from over a decade ago, which banned residents from keeping handguns in their homes and required that all firearms were registered and obtained a permit.

Chicago has suffered a spike in gun violence ever since, with over 50 people being shot during a single week in May this year — including law enforcement.

Got it? The spike in shootings is being blamed on law abiding citizens engaged in their Constitutional Right to own and posses a firearm, often to protect themselves for the violence in Chicago’s streets, which the city government often ignores. I wonder what else happened a decade ago?

If they really wanted to protest appropriately, they’d be streaming through their own streets where the violence occurs. They’d be teaching their kids to put the violence away and get a proper education, instead of being an “aspiring rapper,” a term that so often pops up in the papers when a person is murdered.

Anyhow, how’d this work out?

An unidentified male was killed and at least nine people have been wounded in city shootings since Friday morning, including a 66-year-old man carjacked in the West Side’s Fifth City neighborhood, Chicago police said.

Perhaps they should be blaming the people, not the firearms.

Read: In Chicago, Anti-Violence Protesters Demonstrate, Law Abiding Gun Owners Blamed »

Judge Orders DACA Reinstated Because Apparently Doesn’t Understand Federal Law

This is rather nuts, and, also, the DHS needs better lawyers

A Judge Says The Trump Administration Must Reinstate DACA Because They Gave No “Rational” Reason For Ending It

A federal judge said on Friday that the Trump administration must reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in its entirety — because the Department of Homeland Security failed to “give a rational explanation for its decision” to end it.

US District Judge John D. Bates — who has been hearing the challenge brought by the NAACP and others to the administration’s decision to end DACA — put his decision on hold for 20 days “to permit the government to determine whether it intends to appeal the Court’s decision and, if so, to seek a stay pending appeal.”

Bates initially ruled against the administration in April, but put his ruling on hold to give the government a chance to provide a rational for its decision.

In Friday’s ruling, Bates found that “the Court sees no reason to change its earlier determination that DACA’s rescission was arbitrary and capricious.”

So, arguing that federal law is federal law which DHS is attempting to follow, and that the program itself wasn’t actually authorized by statutory law, and that Obama pretty much manufactured a pseudo amnesty out of thin air, doing something Obama himself said was un-Constitutional and against the law, was apparently the wrong tact to take with this judge

In his conclusion, Bates appeared to make an effort to preempt criticism from Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Trump’s supporters.

“The Court did not hold in its prior opinion, and it does not hold today, that DHS lacks the statutory or constitutional authority to rescind the DACA program. Rather, the Court simply holds that if DHS wishes to rescind the program—or to take any other action, for that matter—it must give a rational explanation for its decision,” he wrote. “A conclusory assertion that a prior policy is illegal, accompanied by a hodgepodge of illogical or post hoc policy assertions, simply will not do.”

So, the judge knows the program is illegal and DHS has the power to deep-6 it, and that it never should have been initiated, but, he did not like the way they decided to kill the illegal program.

Meanwhile, the hearings for the states that are suing to end DACA start next week. It’ll be interesting to see if we then have competing rulings.

Read: Judge Orders DACA Reinstated Because Apparently Doesn’t Understand Federal Law »

Doom: ‘Climate Change’ Could Maybe Possibly End The Grouper’s Moonlit Orgies

Bet you never thought you’d read those three words in a sentence, eh?

Climate Change May Bring the Nassau Grouper’s Moonlit Orgies to an End

Just before a full moon ascends over the Caribbean, Nassau groupers congregate by the thousands in winter and early spring to lace the water column with eggs and sperm. One such bacchanalia in the Bahamas in 1971 included an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 of these four-foot-long, brown-and-white-striped fish getting their freak on. Bull sharks visit this spawning frenzy too, in the hopes of an easy meal, as do gigantic whale sharks who can’t resist all that fresh caviar. (snip)

Trouble is, after decades of overfishing, just 10,000 mature Nassau groupers remain, and their spawning spectacles can’t occur just anywhere. The fish, which can weigh as much as a bulldog, breed only in a narrow band of temperatures, from about 74.2 to 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit (24 to 27 degrees Celsius). According to a study published by Erisman and lead author Rebecca Asch in the journal Diversity and Distributions, climate change could cook the Nassau grouper’s orgies out of existence.

Through computer modeling, Erisman and Asch dialed up all the Caribbean habitat currently conducive to grouper sexy times and then projected how much would remain over the course of the next century if current carbon pollution rates continue as expected. The findings were bleak: Some 82 percent of the Nassau grouper spawning habitat found between 1981 and 2000 could disappear by 2081. Most of this lost habitat would be in the waters surrounding Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Central America’s Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System.

Did you catch the flip from “overfishing” to AGW doom? In fact, much of the rest of the article, and others if you look them up, discuss the issue of overfishing. It’s like they threw ‘climate change in there for the hell of it.

Read: Doom: ‘Climate Change’ Could Maybe Possibly End The Grouper’s Moonlit Orgies »

If All You See…

…are islands created by sea rise covering lower lands, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on Selective Outrage Syndrome.

Who has recommendations for what country to do next week?

Read: If All You See… »

The Conservative, Millennial Approach To Solving ‘Climate Change’ Looks A Lot Like The Warmist Approach

I’ve covered this kind of thing again and again and again: so-called Republicans/Conservatives advocating for Doing Something about anthropogenic climate change in a manner than is the same as the Warmists but uses different language. Here we have Jacob Abel, a youngster attending Seton Hall in NJ but sorta from the Charlotte, NC area, publishing an opinion piece in the Charlotte Observer (a very leftist newspaper)

A conservative, millennial approach to climate change

One year ago, the U.S. announced its intention to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, taking the champion of the free-market out of the global communities solution to addressing climate change.

The Trump Administration has taken an eraser to the words “climate change” from federal agency strategic plans, including the one guiding the Federal Emergency Management Agency over the next four years.

As a Republican it pains me to say that the current administration is going in the wrong direction, even when we as a party and a nation hold all the right cards to leading the fight against climate change.

Right there, you should be getting the idea that this is all about government solutions. And, let’s not forget that the majority of 1st world nations who signed on to Paris aren’t even close to upholding their pledges, and if we the government are supposed to Do Something, that’s the opposite of free market.

Some of these issues were on the table at the UN over the winter, when I had an opportunity to travel there with a delegation from Seton Hall University for annual United Nations Association Members day. One point that struck me was the resounding youth support for big government and multi-trillion dollar solutions to climate change. This is where the youth in the conservative movement can play a real impact on the climate solutions debate. Our generations clearly support policies that combat climate change, but we can also ensure advancements in technology don’t leave millions of people behind. Organizations such as RepublicEN, which advocates for free-market based solutions to climate change have the right idea: put a price on carbon, ensure the revenues remain neutral (i.e. don’t grow the government but instead are used to offset a tax cut or provide a dividend to citizens) and watch innovation soar. Utilizing both the technologies of the past and innovations of the future is the best way forward.

If you’re going through the United Nations, and you’re advocating for a price on “carbon”, an unscientific, utterly political term for carbon dioxide, then you are not advocating for free market solutions. You are advocating for government controlled solutions, as it is government putting a price on “carbon.” The government that is mandating this. The government that is deciding who pays, and whether people get money back. The government that is artificially raising the cost of living.

However, solutions for climate change can be brought about through free market solutions and through the innovations of concerned individuals.

Except, this is rare, because there really is little demand for it. If there was money in it, companies would be doing this left and right, instead of mostly only doing it because of government tax breaks and even outright subsidies and loans, ones which are often never paid back.

As far as Abel goes, is he actually a Republican? His Facebook doesn’t give many clues, other than he liked the GOP and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), and a few other right leaners. He also follows a lot of left leaners. But, he’s also taken a long fossil fueled trip to Israel, and takes fossil fueled trips to NJ from NC. Regardless, I do not want to make this about him, but about the silly notion that carbon fees/taxes, cap and trade, or any of the myriad programs are anything but anti-free market. And the group republicEN pushes for government solutions, rather than making changes in their own lives. Go figure.

Read: The Conservative, Millennial Approach To Solving ‘Climate Change’ Looks A Lot Like The Warmist Approach »

UK Guardian Seems Pretty Upset Over Conservatives Making Fun Of Straw Bans

Luke O’Neill seems pretty darned upset over this state of affairs, and even links this to the culture wars

How plastic straws became the latest victim in the US culture wars

Typically a young woman posting a photo of herself posing with a gun to social media wouldn’t be all that surprising in 2018 America. A show of political defiance, photos like these have become commonplace in the ongoing debate about gun control in the country. But in one such photo posted to Twitter this past weekend, it’s the accessory that went with the gun that stood out. Not a box of ammunition or a shooting target, but a drinking straw. Welcome to the latest front in America’s never ending culture war, where possession of a tool of mass refreshment is now a form of protest.

In the photo, posted by Alana Mastrangelo, a writer and political activist known for provocative Twitter stunts, she spelled out her intent.

https://twitter.com/ARmastrangelo/status/1023291321199542272

I think that’s a pretty on-point message. It’s we the people, not Government Dictates All. A few more tweets are highlighted, before we get to

“Conservatives Are Now Drinking From Plastic Straws to Own the Libs” noted New York Magazine’s The Cut this morning.

Like any such attempt to performatively spite liberals, turning the possession of straws into a subversive political action here is part goofy joke, part sincere expression of conviction, and part attempt to inflame the passions of the fishing-trip-avatar-dads who make up their audience, but most importantly a finger in the eye of the left.

The straw pride movement comes amid a flurry of fear-mongering from the news media on the right. This time it’s not Hillary and Obama coming to steal your guns, but the liberal boogeyman who doesn’t want you to enjoy an ice cold beverage.

Straw pride, baby, straw pride! O’Neill might be taking this a little to seriously.

Although, in fairness to the right, straw bans are in fact quickly taking shape around the country, including in multiple cities in California and Seattle among others, as well as at companies like Starbucks and Disney.

“It’s all a bunch of moral preening,” Mike Slater a commentator on Fox & Friends explained on Saturday, in a line of thinking typical among the right on the issue. “This idea that we are holier than thou … It’s not going to make any difference in the environment, but it does a wonderful job of making people feel better about themselves.”

Even Vox and others show that this is mostly moral preening which won’t make a real difference. O’Neill asks a good question before going moonbat

Regardless, any honest person might conclude that Perhaps we shouldn’t be producing so much waste? is a reasonable question to ask, but to be clear none of the critics of the straw ban actually care about the real environmental outcomes, they care that so-called liberal elites are telling them they can’t do something. In this case that would be true, as many, like Chelsea Clinton, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Tom Brady, among others, have joined the protest against single use straws.

Perhaps O’Neill should check the carbon footprints of conservatives vs liberals: ours tend to be lower. How much waste comes from Chelsea and Tom traveling all over in fossil fueled vehicles? And, maybe attend marches by both sides, and see which one cleans up and which one leaves a mess. Regardless, it might have been better had these governments run spreading awareness campaigns, asking people to use fewer straws, recycle when they do, and asking eateries and such to give out straws on request, rather than just a blanket ban.

Nothing angers the American right so much as trying to make their lives somewhat better. So the response here, wielding straws like some sort of contraband, is just the latest attempt to spite the liberals, or “own the libs” as its called in Twitter parlance.

Not sure how banning straws makes my life better. But, you know, Moonbat World.

Read: UK Guardian Seems Pretty Upset Over Conservatives Making Fun Of Straw Bans »

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