…is an awesome low carbon mode of transportation that Everyone Else should be forced to use, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is DaTechGuy’s Blog, with a post on Democrat polls and Mueller going dark.
It’s ladies on bikes week!
Read: If All You See… »
Happy Sunday! A super fine day in America. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the golfers are, well, cursing a lot and throwing their clubs, but, they’re outside enjoying the fresh air. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.
And this is the 700th edition. Kinda hard to imagine 700 Sunday’s. Well over 13 years of doing this same meme every week. I suppose it’d be better to pimp the 728th edition, since that is 14 years worth.
What’s happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15
As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. 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.
One would think that people would be happy that things are looking up in the case of North Korea. Sure, they could be playing their typical games, but this feels rather real. Denuclearizing North Korea would be a big step towards normalization, and this whole process could seriously reduce the tensions between the Koreas, as well as against Japan and the U.S. Sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due. I’m happy to give Obama credit for being in charge when our guys killed Osama Bin Laden. I’m happy to give O credit for going after jihadis and wanting to kill them. Sure, you can’t give all the credit to Trump for what’s going on with North Korea, but he certainly deserves a lot. That’s made the Washington Post’s Colin H. Kahl and Vipin Narang a sad
Trump thinks his North Korea strategy will work on Iran. He’s wrong on both.
On April 24, French President Emmanuel Macron walked into the Oval Office with one overriding mission: persuade President Trump not to ditch the Iran nuclear deal. It looks like he failed. Macron later told reporters that Trump repeated his long-standing view that the nuclear agreement — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — is “the worst deal ever, it’s a nightmare, it was a catastrophe.†According to Macron, Trump indicated that he would probably fulfill his campaign pledge to scrap the deal when U.S. sanctions relief is due to be renewed May 12. This impression has only been strengthened since.
As troubling as this is, something else Macron said about Trump is even more ominous. “His experience with North Korea is that when you are very tough, you make the other side move and you can try to go to a good deal or a better deal,†Macron recounted. “That’s a strategy of increasing tension.†At a critical juncture for U.S. policy, this suggests that Trump is operating under deeply flawed assumptions about both North Korea and Iran.
What Trump seems to have internalized from North Korea is that threats and “maximum pressure†can force his opponents to negotiate away their nuclear programs on American terms. Yet U.S. pressure is probably not the primary driver of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s willingness to bargain, nor is there much reason to believe that Pyongyang is ready to completely dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. Trump’s faulty assumptions and unrealistic expectations could doom prospects for peacefully deescalating one nuclear standoff — and applying these misguided lessons to Iran could manufacture yet another.
In other words, the two authors are hoping beyond hope that Trump fails. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome to the max. First, Trump’s bluster has, in fact, worked, as it’s been coupled with the good cop routine of S. Korea President Moon Jae-in, and some old school type diplomatic pressure from Japan’s Abe Shinzo. Trump has put pressure on China, getting them to back of on their NK support. Regardless, you get the feeling that these liberal namby pambies want the negotiations to fail. How deranged is that, when it means NK has nuclear program and is belligerent towards South Korea and Japan and the United States, the country these writers live in?
Trump appears to think that he will go to his summit with Kim, scheduled for late May or early June, and be handed the keys to the country’s nuclear kingdom. His campaign of economic sanctions, “fire and fury†threats and “Little Rocket Man†taunts and tweets worked, the White House logic goes; North Korea is now facing deep economic and military vulnerability and is willing to trade its nuclear weapons — its “treasured sword of justice †— for sanctions relief and assurances that the United States won’t attack the country.
But there is no evidence that North Korea feels weak, economically or otherwise. And there is no indication that Kim is willing to surrender his nuclear arsenal for economic benefits, security guarantees or any other incentive Trump might offer.
It’ll be funny when Trump goes to the summit and does things totally unexpected. And you still get the feeling that these Washington Post writers want the summit to fail. This next one is hilarious
Trump’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, continues to call for a “Libya model †of denuclearization for North Korea, where the United States would take custody of the weapons. For Kim, though, Libya illustrates why giving up nuclear weapons is folly. Moammar Gaddafi agreed to surrender his nuclear program in 2003, and the United States and its allies toppled his regime less than a decade later. Kim is unlikely to make the same mistake — and unlike Gaddafi, Kim’s weapons already work. Libya and Trump’s rhetoric on Iran reinforce a critical lesson for North Korea: Nuclear weapons offer a lifetime insurance policy, while security assurances can have expiration dates.
They forget to mention who completely, well, how to say this correctly, totally f*cked it all up. That would be Obama, who decided to join France and England in their attempt to settle things down in Libya to keep the oil flowing to those two nations.
If Trump exits the Iran deal believing he can impose much tougher terms on Tehran, he is deluding himself.
I will say, despite the obvious TDS, they are right when it comes to Iran. There will be no better terms, because the EU weenies do not want better, and Iran knows that all they have to do is bide their time. Obama did a great job in making sure that Iran will be able to get their nuclear weapon in the late 2020’s. But, it also seems that these weenies don’t want there to be a stronger deal with Iran which would truly make it damned near impossible for Iran, the world’s leading supporter of Islamic terrorism, to get nuclear weapons. Because Trump is president.
Read: Washington Post Seems Pretty Upset That Trump Might Win In North Korea »
This should totally solve their problems
Draft EU budget earmarks sizable increase in spending to curb climate change
In a draft budget plan released this week, the European Commission announced the allocation of a quarter of the 2021-2027 European Union (EU) budget to climate adaptation and mitigation.
A total of 320 billion euros ($383 billion) will be directed toward climate, an increase of 114 billion euros, according to a report from Climate Action.
“We mean business! Our resolve to mainstreamÂ
#ClimateAction into all EU funds is being reinforced,â€Â tweeted Maros Sefcovic, vice president of the EU Commission.Currently, 206 billion euros, or 20 percent of the EU budget, is being spent to fight climate change through various environmental initiatives to 2020. The proposed budget represents an increase of 5 percent.
How did it work out spending 20% of their budget in 2017? “Carbon emissions” went up. Not much, but, one would have thought they would go down. Of course, as we learned, Warmists aren’t big on practicing what they preach.
One would also think they’d be more invested in spending money attempting to keep their citizens safe from all the backasswards 3rd world “refugees” they brought in, who love raping, robbing, sexually harassing, stabbing, and so forth all the EU citizens. And pooping in pools. And demanding Sharia police and courts. And requiring women to cover up.
Read: EU Lunatics Spending 25% Of Budget On ‘Climate Change’ (scam) »
…is a horrible fossil fueled airplane, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Watcher Of Weasels, with a post on Kanye sorta being correct.
Read: If All You See… »
Probably because White Democrats really do not care about the blacks living on the Dem plantations, except for the brief periods when their votes are needed
There’s A Cheap And Effective Way To Reduce Gun Violence. Why Aren’t More States Doing It?
Maryland enacted a wide-reaching package of gun violence prevention laws last week, becoming one of just a handful of states to get behind little-known measures that could save hundreds of lives and millions of dollars.
The measure, the Public Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2018, was designed to address urban violence, an issue that gets relatively little attention in the U.S. gun debate — it’s the mass shootings like Newtown, Las Vegas and Parkland that make the headlines — despite accounting for most of the 13,000 firearm homicides and 60,000 nonfatal shootings that take place across the nation each year.
The bill sets aside $5 million in the coming year to fund grants for programs that have been effective at making violence-stricken neighborhoods more peaceful. (snip)
Baltimore has already seen success with a prevention model called Cure Violence, a public health strategy that addresses the causes of violence. Case workers provide street outreach to those at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun violence and mediate conflicts before they boil over. Neighborhoods that have adopted the program have seen far fewer shootings, with some recording periods of more than a year without a homicide, Lierman said.
Democrats created the situation in their cities where violence occurs, then they want lots of money to fix the problem
Of the 13,000 victims of gun homicides in 2015, over 8,500 were men of color, according to the Giffords report. Black men account for nearly half of firearm homicide victims each year but make up only 6 percent of the population. This phenomenon, known as murder inequality, is one of the many racial disparities that plague urban neighborhoods in the form of poverty, lack of employment opportunity and disinvestment in education and social services.
This is what Democrats have created, then they start yammering about racism.
Read: Say, Why Aren’t More Blue States And Cities Enacting A Cheap And Effective Way To Reduce Gun Crime? »
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As Powerline notes, this study simply confirms green hypocrisy
"ON CLIMATE CHANGE, A DISCONNECT BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR…A new study finds climate change skeptics are more likely to behave in eco-friendly ways than those who are highly concerned about the issue" https://t.co/ho88gKrou1
— Tom Nelson (@TomANelson) May 4, 2018
From the link
Do our behaviors really reflect our beliefs? New research suggests that, when it comes to climate change, the answer is no. And that goes for both skeptics and believers.
Participants in a year-long study who doubted the scientific consensus on the issue “opposed policy solutions,” but at the same time, they “were most likely to report engaging in individual-level, pro-environmental behaviors,” writes a research team led by University of Michigan psychologist Michael Hall.
Conversely, those who expressed the greatest belief in, and concern about, the warming environment “were most supportive of government climate policies, but least likely to report individual-level actions.”
Sorry, I didn’t have time to recycle—I was busy watching a documentary about the crumbling Antarctic ice shelf.
Hey, you know where I stand on anthropogenic climate change. But, I still believe in being eco-friendly. I recycle whenever I can. I turn the lights out when I’m out of the room. I tend to purchase CFLs and LEDs, because it’s my choice. Who eats the end pieces on a loaf of bread? Almost no one, right? I feed mine to the birds out back. There are lots of things I do. Of course, most of these things are about being environmentally friendly and/or saving money on electricity. The Warmists have hijacked real environmental concerns for their nefarious big government policies.
The researchers found participants broke down into three groups, which they labeled “skeptical,” “cautiously worried,” and “highly concerned.” While policy preferences of group members tracked with their beliefs, their behaviors largely did not: Skeptics reported using public transportation, buying eco-friendly products, and using reusable bags more often than those in the other two categories.
This pattern was found consistently through the year, leading the researchers to conclude that “belief in climate change does not appear to be a necessary or sufficient condition for pro-environmental behavior.”
Wait for it
Hall and his colleagues can only speculate about the reasons for their results. But regarding the concerned but inactive, the psychological phenomenon known as moral licensing is a likely culprit.
Previous research has found doing something altruistic—even buying organic foods—gives us license to engage in selfish activity. We’ve “earned” points in our own mind. So if you’ve pledged some money to Greenpeace, you feel entitled to enjoying the convenience of a plastic bag.
Why shouldn’t they feel that way? Their leaders, like Al Gore, Barack Obama, the entirety of the UN IPCC, and so forth, act in this manner. They talk a big game, then do not practice what they preach. The article ends by noting that, since conservatives tend to act in individual manners and tend to take actions just because they do, it might be time to move on from attempting to sway conservatives to be Warmists, and instead focus on getting Warmists to be less hypocritical. As Eric Worrell notes
Perhaps that sense of personal ownership, of responsibility for one’s actions, is what is missing from the green movement – a point made by the authors of the study.
Won’t happen. Because this whole thing is a typical Progressive push for big big government dominance, with higher taxes and fees and control of people’s lives. And the little Warmist idiots never stop to think that all the negatives will effect their own lives.
From the Powerline article
It is an old, familiar story. Liberalism is all about forcing other people to behave in socially desirable ways. Having achieved that goal, the liberal typically puts down his shovel and indulges his own anti-social whims. Whether it’s Harvey Weinstein or a greenie wienie, the phenomenon is the same. It isn’t just that most liberals are hypocrites, it is that hypocrisy is the essence of liberalism. Conservatives, meanwhile, take action in their own lives rather than using government to force others to obey.
How long have I been writing about Other People syndrome?
Read: Study: Climate Skeptics More Likely To Act In Eco-Friendly Ways Than Warmists »
It’s kinda hard to tell the difference between the Washington Post and uber-Lefty Internet sites like Slate, Salon, and Vox, as David Nakamura loses it, as typical
‘Stay tuned!’: Trump and advisers treat fate of North Korea prisoners as a cliffhanger
As he has sought to build anticipation for his high-stakes summit with Kim Jong Un, President Trump has delighted in dropping tantalizing hints about where the meeting will take place — maybe the Korean demilitarized zone! — and what can be achieved — perhaps a peace treaty!
This week, the president, without direct prompting, casually raised another possibility, noting on Twitter that three Americans prisonershave been held in a North Korean labor camp. But, he suggested in a tweet, that could soon change: “Stay tuned!â€
Stay tuned. Who knows? We’ll see what happens. The president often uses such phrases to hype dramatic possibilities, even if some of them might not pan out or might fall short of his grand pronouncements.
Considering how the WP covered for Obama, and grand pronouncements such as “if you like your health plan, you can keep it“, and all the variations. That said, the above news isn’t news: it’s simply someone with a byline having a Trump derangement syndrome meltdown. Leaks from Team Obama and O himself were treated with squeeing.
But in the case of the prisoners, Trump and some key surrogates have again shattered long-standing Washington protocols by speaking so openly about delicate negotiations on American detainees, potentially risking a last-minute setback or coming across as insensitive to the privacy of their families, according to former U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials.
“I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who has ever spent five minutes negotiating with the North Koreans that you do not announce things that have not happened,†said Christopher Hill, a former State Department official who led the U.S. delegation in the six-party talks with Pyongyang during the George W. Bush administration.
“I understand they take pride in doing things differently,†Hill said of Trump’s team. “But this is serious business — people’s lives are at stake. It just takes a little bit of discipline.â€
It should be noted that the previous old-school diplomacy kinda, you know, didn’t work. And maybe, at the end of the day, North Korea will be shown to be full of bat guano yet again. But, so far, things look a lot more promising than they did during previous negotiations. Think about it: it was just last year that Trump and Kim Jong-un were exchanging nasty tweets. Threats were being made. Rockets were being launched. Now? All sorts of good things are happening (Kim is still raving, murderous, torturous, nutjob, let’s not forget that). This is all serious enough that Kim met with South Korea’s President, and will be meeting with Trump.
North Korea just changed its time zone to match South Korea’s (they had previously changed to half hour behind SK in 2015). The LA Times and other outlets think this is pretty big news, and it is.
Almost every time the media have a freakout over the way Trump Does Things the media turns out to made into fools when Trump’s way works.
Read: Washington Post: ZOMG, Trump And Team Drop Comments On North Korean Negotiations! »
The Editorial Board of Investors Business Daily isn’t buying what the Warmists are selling
Global Warming: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have a boring name, but it has a very important job: It measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it seems to be a captive of the global warming religion. Its data are fraudulent.
What do we mean by fraudulent? How about this: NOAA has made repeated “adjustments” to its data, for the presumed scientific reason of making the data sets more accurate.
Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — lowering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past, and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in the recent present.
This creates a data illusion of ever-rising temperatures to match the increase in CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere since the mid-1800s, which global warming advocates say is a cause-and-effect relationship. The more CO2, the more warming.
It also goes to the notion of “why the heck are they consistently changing the measured data?” Sure, they’ll give you this, that, and the other excuses. But, if you measure something as 57.23 degrees, and say that it was 57.23 degrees, you don’t go back and change it. At that point, it’s not a scientific fact. It’s a fudgible number based on whim.
But the actual measured temperature record shows something different: There have been hot years and hot decades since the turn of the last century, and colder years and colder decades. But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, at least not one that suggests runaway warming.
That is, until the NOAA’s statisticians “adjust” the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data to reflect not reality, but their underlying theories of global warming. That’s clear from a simple fact of statistics: Data generate random errors, which cancel out over time. So by averaging data, the errors mostly disappear.
That’s not what NOAA does.
According to the NOAA, the errors aren’t random. They’re systematic. As we noted, all of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past, and warmer in the more recent past. But they’re very fuzzy about why this should be.
Far from legitimately “adjusting” anything, it appears they are cooking the data to show a politically correct trend toward global warming. Not by coincidence, that has been part and parcel of the government’s underlying policies for the better part of two decades.
OK, I’m at the point where I should stop excerpting. Go read the rest. I will note, though, that if the theory hypothesis assertion of global warming/climate change mostly/solely caused by Mankind was real, they wouldn’t have to play with the data so much to match their beliefs. In Science, if the outcomes do not match the hypothesis, then the hypothesis must be changed. Warmists just adjust the data (or make it up) to match their Beliefs.
Read: The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Hotcoldwetdry Scam »
…is a horrible weapon of war needed because carbon pollution causes war, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is This ain’t Hell…, with a post on your Friday feel good stories.
Read: If All You See… »
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