The Leftist Entertainment Industry Needs To Stop Glorifying Violence And Misogyny

By William Teach March 4, 2018 – 7:48 am

A good Sunday morning to you! There are two articles of interest to me this morning, and are rather intersectional. The first comes from the Chicago Tribune

‘I’m a gun owner, but I am for gun control’: Protesters gather outside gun show at Lake County Fairgrounds

Twelve-year-old Ruth Turpin of Hammond struggled through tears Saturday to explain why she wanted to participate in an anti-gun-violence protest outside of a gun show at the Lake County Fairgrounds.

“I can’t believe that something as horrible as this could happen,” Ruth said, referring to the mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that resulted in the deaths of 17 students and faculty members. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand. It’s not something that should happen to kids.”

Bad Things happen in this world. Children are murdered, abused, enslaved, sold of to older men, forced to have their genitals mutilated, and so much more by radical (and sometimes not so radical) Islamists. Yet, these same Leftists do all in their power to defend any denunciation of a portion of Islam as being Islamophobia.

Ruth’s father, David Turpin, Jr., said his wife worries for his daughter’s safety while she is in school, and the family came to the protest to support sensible gun regulations. Turpin said while such measures would be a step in the right direction, the solution to violence is multi-faceted.

“We have created a culture of violence by glorifying it. We need to rethink that seriously,” Turpin said. “I’m a gun owner, but I am for gun control.”

Let me ask: what is the biggest creator of this glorified violence? We’ll return to that in a bit.

Indiana is one of 29 states that does not require universal background checks, Halstead said. That means there is no required background check when purchasing a firearm from a private seller at a gun show like the one underway at the fairgrounds through Sunday. Federally licensed gun dealers are required to do background checks but nothing prevents a private seller from legally obtaining a gun and then selling it to someone who cannot pass a background check.

First, this is a canard. The number of people who purchase firearms in this manner is shocking small. Second, if someone is purchasing in the manner describe, that could easily be considered a straw purchase, rather than some who had some guns and is selling them. Personally, I have no problem requiring all gun sales/transfers to have a federal background check performed, even if it is from father to daughter. We could draft very simple legislation on this, but, Democrats are opposed to small bills, because they want to restrict and even ban guns and citizens from owning them.

There’s lots more in this, worth the read, but let’s move on to this NY Times opinion piece, one of many at the paper today and yesterday, what with the Oscars (tomorrow’s headlines: “Oscars have lowest viewership in decades”)

We Got Rid of Some Bad Men. Now Let’s Get Rid of Bad Movies.

The Oscars are here: the first Oscars since powerful men started falling to #MeToo, a Trump-era Oscars, a #TimesUp Oscars, an Oscars in the shadow of “Black Panther.” Some big chairs will be empty. Some big secrets will stalk the red carpet, newly unleashed.

In an America where the ruling party seems willing to sacrifice many things — including decency and justice — to reassert white Christian masculinity as the tentpole of the universe, the best picture category offers a contrasting vision: a flaw-free indictment of that same colonial pathology (“Get Out”), a blazing affirmation of young womanhood (“Lady Bird”) and an aching gay romance (“Call Me by Your Name”), among others.

Let me ask: would anyone at the Times dare write anything negative and stereotyping as “to reassert white Christian masculinity…” in terms of Islam, where women are treated as owned things, required to wear several different types of body covering clothes, have their genitals mutilated, 11 year olds are married off to 50 year old men, etc and so forth?

Jordan Peele has the chance to become the first black person ever to win best director; Greta Gerwig would be only the second woman. Yance Ford, whose film “Strong Island” is up for best documentary feature, would be the first trans director to win an Oscar. Vulture reported last week that some older Academy voters refused to even watch “Get Out,” calling it “not an Oscar film,” a dismissal more air horn than dog whistle. Identity politics loom large over the 90th Academy Awards, as well they should.

TV and film are in the thick of an unprecedented sociopolitical reckoning, the first ever of such scale and ferocity, a microcosm of our ever-more-literal national culture war. But to make that reckoning stick, we have to look ahead and ask ourselves what we want of this new Hollywood, and look back to avoid repeating the past.

It’s interesting that op-ed writer Lindy West is almost demanding that Hollywood not make certain movies, that they be censored. Get Out is a horror movie: not many get nominated for an Oscar except for things like makeup.

It’s also interesting that it seems as if Hollywood is rather racist and sexist.

Hollywood is both a perfect and bizarre vanguard in the war for cultural change. Perfect because its reach is so vast, its influence so potent; bizarre because television and movies are how a great many toxic ideas embedded themselves inside of us in the first place.

What do both articles share? The notion that Hollywood is a horrendous hive of scum and villainy. The first on guns, when we start referring to a culture of violence, where is this coming from? It’s in TV shows, it’s in movies. It’s hypocrites

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/970266936314654725

It’s also Hollywood which has perpetuated all the racism and sexism as portrayed by Lindy West. As a straight male, I certainly appreciate the female body. But even I will point out how women are treated as sex objects by Hollywood for the sake of being a sex object. How many times have you watched a show and said “that scene with a woman was simply gratuitous?” Or seen a movie poster where the man is dressed and the woman is wearing a few scraps of clothing. Like this

Perhaps Hollywood and the entertainment industry should take a deep look at itself first.

Read: The Leftist Entertainment Industry Needs To Stop Glorifying Violence And Misogyny »

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Southern Californians Totally Know That Pleasant Weather Is Real, Deadly, And Here

By William Teach March 3, 2018 – 4:10 pm

These are the same people who refuse to give up their own fossil fueled lifestyles and go carbon neutral, but, the UK Guardian is Totally Concerned

Southern Californians know: climate change is real, it is deadly and it is here
An earthly paradise is ravaged by inferno and flood, the earth itself rising to proclaim a horrifying and deadly new normal

I love that subhead. Very apocalyptic.

People who visit from colder climates have been complaining lately. Last year, when it finally rained after six years of drought, and we were practically on our knees with gratitude, a woman from New England remarked, “I didn’t come here for the rain.” I almost said, “Well, then, why don’t you go back home?” Another pestered a friend: when was her club in Montecito going to open? My friend replied, “I think it’s under eight feet of mud.” She wanted to add, “And they’re still looking for the bodies.”

It’s always been a struggle here to have a normal life, to hold on to reality.

In December, we got a mega-dose of reality when the biggest fire in California’s history burned more than 270,000 acres. Seven cities were evacuated.

When the air was labeled “hazardous” for three days running, we made plans to leave. On Sunday morning, my phone pinged a mandatory evacuation for Montecito. I called a friend who lives there. “Packing,” she said. The fire was less than a mile away. I drove through the brown air and falling ash to a gas station and when I got there, my credit card wouldn’t work; the power was out. I stood in the zombie snow as others lined up behind me. Finally, we drove north to a hotel on the coast, where, with evacuated friends, we hiked and walked together along the shore.

See? Wildfires, which have always happened (and are also made worse by the draconian enviroweenie demands to stop all clearing of brush till the area is a tinderbox) are hell on earth, you guys.

After we’d been there a few days, I woke up at 3am and thought of a movie I’d watched years ago. Ava Gardener and Gregory Peck waiting for the fallout from a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere to float on the wind to them in Australia. They were going to die, and everyone and everything they cared about was already dead or was going to be. I remembered a lot of drinking and dancing, fruitless searching by submarine along the coasts of the United States for survivors and Fred Astaire fixing up his sports car so he could rev it up in his garage and commit suicide.

I thought, we are On the Beach.

And we know now what the dread was we felt in December. Call it climate change or climate collapse, that was the Big Dread behind the smaller ones. Climate believers, climate deniers, deep in our hearts we think it will happen somewhere else. Or, in some other time, in 2025 or 2040 or next year. But we are here to tell you, in this postcard from the former paradise, that it won’t happen next year, or somewhere else. It will happen right where you live and it could happen today. No one will be spared.

Oh, and hey, just to illustrate doom on earth, they provide this picture of doom

Refer back to facepalm GIF.

Read: Southern Californians Totally Know That Pleasant Weather Is Real, Deadly, And Here »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 3, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a world turned to desert, except where it’s flooding, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Lady Liberty 1885, with a post on no more free rides for the Moral Monday crowd.

Read: If All You See… »

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CNN: Trump Totally Changed The Rules To Arrest More “Non-Criminal” Illegals!

By William Teach March 3, 2018 – 10:37 am

Of course, they have to term them “immigrants”

How Trump changed the rules to arrest more non-criminal immigrants

A businessman and father from Ohio. An Arizona mother. The Indiana husband of a Trump supporter. They were unassuming members of their community, parents of US citizens and undocumented. And they were deported by the Trump administration.

You could stop right there. That they’re “undocumented” means they are unlawfully present, violated our laws and sovereignty, and should be deported.

It’s left many wondering why the US government is arresting and deporting a number of individuals who have often lived in the country for decades, checked in regularly with immigration officials and posed no danger to their community. Many have family members who are American citizens, including school-aged children.

If I had been stealing CNN writer Tal Kopan’s newspaper for 20 years, think she would be OK with that?

Where the Obama administration focused deportation efforts almost exclusively on criminals and national security threats, as well as immigrants who recently arrived illegally, the Trump administration has also targeted immigrants with what are called final orders of removal — an order from a judge that a person can be deported and has no more appeals left.

In other words, these are people who have orders that even preceded Obama’s time in office who should have been kicked out a long time ago. Because, you know, when a judge issues a final order, it should be followed.

Of course, the story goes on into “gut wrenching”, “heart breaking”, and other types of feelings based journalism, failing to note that what the Trump administration is doing is, get this, following the law as written. Trump didn’t change any rules: he’s following them.

Don’t like it? Try and get the laws changed. Go for it. Please tell the American citizenry that they are less important than the people who are illegally present in the nation, and that you want to create a situation where more will come illegally/overstay their visas.

Read: CNN: Trump Totally Changed The Rules To Arrest More “Non-Criminal” Illegals! »

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Climate Change Is Biblical And Playing Out On The News Nightly Or Something

By William Teach March 3, 2018 – 7:32 am

The lengths that Cult of Climastrology members won’t go to in order to implement taxes/fees on citizens

From the link

This week in the statehouse in Olympia, Wash., Gov. Jay Inslee fought but failed to bring a vote on a historic climate change policy that he has pursued for years: instituting the nation’s first tax on planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution

The fate of the Senate vote, which was canceled on Thursday after it became clear that it could not gain enough support even in the Democratic-majority legislature of this West Coast state, was being watched closely around the country and the world. But for Mr. Inslee the loss of this week’s carbon-tax battle was just one step in a war to keep pushing his carbon plan, either as a ballot initiative this year — or possibly as part of a platform in a 2020 challenge against President Trump for the presidency.

In an interview, Governor Inslee declined to say whether he intends to run for president, but his name is increasingly appearing on lists of possible Democratic contenders.

Sounds great. The Democrats should definitely nominate a guy trying to increase the cost of living on citizens.

Advocates and opponents of climate change action are paying close attention to Mr. Inslee’s next steps. Economists broadly agree that taxing the carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is the most efficient way to fight climate change. But politicians agree that it is also a nearly surefire way to get voted out of office.

After all, a carbon tax is, by design, an energy tax. Among other things it would most likely raise the prices that voters pay for gasoline and electricity, which is why the idea has long been seen as politically toxic.

I don’t think they were supposed to admit that.

In the interview, Governor Inslee said that whoever ultimately runs against Mr. Trump in 2020 on the Democrat side should put climate change front and center in his or her campaign. The politics of global warming are changing, he said, as more Americans experiencing economically damaging weather events that scientists can attribute to the changing climate.

“Climate change used to be an abstraction. It used to be a graph,” he said. “Now we’re seeing biblical events play out on the 6 o’clock evening news.”

“I believe it is a successful and winning issue,” Governor Inslee said.

You do you, Jay. Go for it. ‘Climate change’ has pretty much lost every time it has been a major issue on the ballot. Which is why most Democrats, and politicians around the world, avoid it.

Read: Climate Change Is Biblical And Playing Out On The News Nightly Or Something »

Posted in Carbon Credits, Democrats, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

REI And Mountain Equipment Co-op Virtue Signal Over “Assault Rifles”

By William Teach March 3, 2018 – 7:20 am

The NY Times’ Julie Creswell has provided the names of two more companies which have decided to play politics

Anti-Gun Movement Is Infecting an Outdoor Brand’s Other Products

The national debate over gun control is now sweeping up bike helmets and water bottles.

REI and Mountain Equipment Co-op, two outdoor retail chains that are also customer cooperatives, said Thursday they were suspending orders for popular items like Bell bicycle helmets and CamelBak water bottles from the company that owns the brands, Vista Outdoor, because Vista also makes assault-style rifles.

Vista actually makes a wide variety of products, which includes scary looking rifles and non-scary looking rifles. But, hey, they want to virtue signal, which, they are allowed to do in a free market

Huh.

The wave of responses started with a number of companies cutting tieslate last week to the National Rifle Association, and gained momentum when Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger announced changes to their gun policies, including halting the sale of firearms to customers under the age of 21. Late Thursday, L.L. Bean joined its retail counterparts, also announcing a minimum age of 21 to purchase weapons or ammunition in its flagship store in Freeport, Me., the only one where it sells firearms.

A lot of this is disingenuous, as many were barely selling “assault rifles” in the first place. I really don’t have a problem with them changing the age to 21.

But, it’s cool about denying cakes and flowers now, right?

On social media, some argued that boycotting brands like CamelBak and Giro would only hurt people making quality products. Others chided REI for what they saw as mixing business with politics.

Liberal gun grabbers (and they do want to ban guns big time) never really consider that they’re actually hurting real people with their bans. And it can often end poorly for the companies. Look at Delta, which virtue signaled while ending the discount for NRA members. They’d only given out 13 discounts in total. But they tried saying they support the 2nd Amendment, their CEO tweeted out, Georgia pulled their tax breaks (which, hilariously, Democrats started defending the tax break, calling pulling it unconstitutional), and Delta is losing lots of customers who’ll simply fly other carriers.

Read: REI And Mountain Equipment Co-op Virtue Signal Over “Assault Rifles” »

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Humans Will Go Extinct If We Don’t Fix ‘Climate Change’ (scam) By 2023 Or Something

By William Teach March 2, 2018 – 6:00 pm

I should put this one into ye olde calendar for 2023 to see how it’s gone

Top Climate Scientist: Humans Will Go Extinct if We Don’t Fix Climate Change by 2023

A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.

In a recent speech at the University of Chicago, James Anderson — a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University — warned that climate change is drastically pushing Earth back to the Eocene Epoch from 33 million BCE, when there was no ice on either pole. Anderson says current pollution levels have already catastrophically depleted atmospheric ozone levels, which absorb 98 percent of ultraviolet rays, to levels not seen in 12 million years. (snip)

While some governments have made commitments to reduce carbon emissions (Germany has pledged to cut 95 percent of carbon emissions by 2050), Anderson warned that those measures were insufficient to stop the extinction of humanity by way of a rapidly changing climate. Instead, Anderson is calling for a Marshall Plan-style endeavor in which all of the world takes extreme measures to transition off of fossil fuels completely within the next five years.

Of course, he doesn’t actually say when humans will become extinct. Just that it’s going to happen, so, Other People have to pay taxes and stop using fossil fuels.

“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,” Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.

And there’s another prognostication to track.

Read: Humans Will Go Extinct If We Don’t Fix ‘Climate Change’ (scam) By 2023 Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 2, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a sea that will soon rise up and swamp the mountains, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on racist Chuck Schumer.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Professor Discredits Paper Saying Exxon Knew About Hotcoldwetdry Danger, Misled Public

By William Teach March 2, 2018 – 10:50 am

And the professor was willing to do this in court

(Forbes) Harvard professors who claim their analysis proves ExxonMobil misled the public about climate change were obviously biased, a colleague says, and the company says their data shouldn’t be used to help a “corrupt enterprise” of private lawyers and California officials suing the energy sector.

In papers filed by the company March 1 in a Texas state court, Cleveland State University communications professor Kimberly Neuendorf discredited a 2017 study that accuses Exxon of misleading the public about climate change in its statements from 1977-2014. In fact, its authors had already made up their minds about the issue years earlier, with one of them even announcing it on Twitter in 2015.

“Content analysis coding ought to be conducted with coders who are at arm’s-length with regard to the research, in order to maximize objectivity,” Neuendorf wrote. “Optimally, coders should be blind to the research questions or goals.

“In the S&O study, the coders were not blind. In fact, they were as non-blind as could be imagined. They were the investigators themselves, as well as an affiliated graduate student. In this particular case, the problematic nature of informed coders is magnified by the coders’ longtime and intensive involvement in the popular communication of climate change.”

Authors Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes claimed to have found “a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles and what it presented to the general public,” but Neuendorf takes issue with those results.

“I have concluded that S&O’s content analysis does not support the study’s conclusion because of a variety of fundamental errors in their analysis,” Neuendorf wrote. “S&O’s content analysis lacks reliability, validity, objectivity, generalizability and replicability.

Basically, it comes down to the notion that the scientists had a biased, political viewpoint, and generated a paper designed to reinforce that viewpoint. And they, and all the Warmists assaulting Exxon and the other fossil fuels companies, including government officials, probably thought that Exxon would roll over and comply. Instead, Exxon, which keeps really good, highly educated lawyers on staff, is fighting back against the unhinged Cult of Climastrology. This court filing by Neuendorf (who will surely be assaulted by the CoC as a “denier”, hounded by the CoC, and the CoC will attempt to have Neuendorf terminated) identified 7 fundamental flaws in the original study, which is not unusual with Warmist papers.

Read: Professor Discredits Paper Saying Exxon Knew About Hotcoldwetdry Danger, Misled Public »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Friday Funny: Dreamers Who Walked 250 Miles In Protest Arrested In D.C.

By William Teach March 2, 2018 – 7:04 am

Did you hear about this little demonstration by illegals?

(Global Citizen) Eleven undocumented youths arrived in Washington DC today after trekking for more than 250 miles from New York to protest US President Trump’s elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act and the government’s ongoing inaction around its renewal.

The march is called #WalkToStayHome.

“I feel like my parents and people around the country who are undocumented have sacrificed so much,” Li Adorno, one of the Dreamers said at the start of the march, according to Democracy Now.

“And like to this day, they’re criminalized every night in the evening news, right? And we feel like that’s not fair,” she said. “We’re asking for dignity and respect for everyone, right? Not just the DREAMers, because right now we’re getting a lot of attention.

So, wait, they’re calling for the people who “sinned”, ie, their parents, in bringing them to the country to be given legal status, too? Why are illegal aliens demanding anything? They should be pleading, begging, asking nicely, for lawful legal status.

But, do you know what happened?

(USA Today) Four young immigrants were handcuffed and arrested Thursday afternoon while protesting on the streets of Washington, D.C., capping off a 250-march from New York City to the nation’s capital.

Osvaldo Rodriguez, 26, of Red Bank, N.J., blocked an intersection near the U.S. Capitol holding a sign that read, “Build bridges, not walls,” chanting that he was “undocumented and unafraid” before his arrest Thursday afternoon. Aldo Solano, Maria Duarte and Cinthia Garcia Benítez also were arrested, but they were released after paying a ticket.

I’ve read that the number arrested was 6 or 7, but, let’s go with four. Unlike the accompanying picture with the article, they were blocking the entire intersection in front of the Capitol building, and it’s not like a lot of traffic doesn’t go by there during the afternoon.

They were supposedly yelling (video at the link)

“They’re sending us to deportation detention,” the person taking the video is heard saying as she films the incident. All the while, the illegal aliens area heard yelling, “Unafraid! Unafraid!”

They chant that they are “freedom fighters,” and they know how to fight.

And their protest lasted all of a couple minutes after their 250 mile march.

Their goal? To campaign for legislation that would not only offer DACA-eligible people a path to citizenship, but also reject the border wall, restrictions on family-based petitions and increased resources for Immigration and Customs enforcement.Congress has stalled on passing an immigration bill as Republicans pushed for a deal that would grant a pathway to citizenship to 1.8 million young immigrants without legal status in exchange for a border wall and President Trump’s other demands to crack down on illegal immigration.

Their goals are to give people who broken our laws a free pass, and set the conditions for even more illegal aliens to pour into the nation.

ICE should take possession of these illegals and deport them. They have no right to be in the nation, they’re hear in contradiction of federal law, and they damned well should not be demanding anything nor telling us how to go about giving them legal status.

Read: Friday Funny: Dreamers Who Walked 250 Miles In Protest Arrested In D.C. »

Posted in Humor, Illegal Immigration | 23 Comments | Trackback URL
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