If All You See…

…is horrible heat snow from Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on the Democrats caving.

Read: If All You See… »

Big Earthquake In Alaska: Can You Guess What Get’s Blamed?

So

(ABC) A 7.9 magnitude earthquake off the southern coast of Alaska early Tuesday triggered fears of a tsunami along the state’s coast and reaching all the way south to the U.S. mainland’s West Coast.

The earthquake happened just after 1 a.m. local time about 175 miles south of Kodiak, Alaska.

Residents of Kodiak were asked by police to move at least 100 feet above ground as a precaution. Kodiak Police Department said slightly before 2 a.m. local time (7 a.m. ET) they had not seen any increase in waves. By 2:30 a.m., Kodiak police said in the area said waters were receding from the town’s harbor.

And, of course, the Cult of Climastrology showed up

Read More »

Read: Big Earthquake In Alaska: Can You Guess What Get’s Blamed? »

Bummer: Tariffs On Imported Solar Parts Increased To 30%

It’s the “biggest blow to the renewable energy market yet”

(Bloomberg) President Donald Trump dealt his biggest blow to the renewable energy industry yet.

On Monday, Trump approved duties of as much as 30 percent on solar equipment made outside the U.S., a move that threatens to handicap a $28 billion industry that relies on parts made abroad for 80 percent of its supply.

The tariffs are the latest action by Trump to undermine the economics of renewables. The administration already decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, sought to roll back Obama-era regulations on power plant-emissions and signed sweeping tax reforms that constrained financing for solar and wind. The import taxes are the most targeted strike on the industry yet and may have larger consequences for the energy world.

Isn’t it great how a news story jumps to opinion by paragraph 3? The first two have nothing to do with people using “renewables”: they’re welcome to do it. The last, tax reforms, simply mean that the federal government will no longer be pissing away money as did previously on projects that provided few jobs and often failed.

U.S. panel maker First Solar Inc. jumped as much as 9 percent to $75.20 in after-hours trading in New York. The Tempe, Arizona-based manufacturer stands to gain as costs for competing, foreign panels rise.

Just the threat of tariffs shook solar developers in recent months, with some hoarding panels and others stalling projects in anticipation of higher costs. The Solar Energy Industries Association projected 23,000 job losses this year in a sector that employed 260,000.

What’s going on is that China has been and still is dumping solar panels and parts at well below market prices, even taking losses, which harms American business who cannot compete with the artificially low prices. Hence the reason First Solar jumped. Because, as the story explains later, they are one of the last ones left, after all the others moved to China (often after taking money from the Obama administration during his first term)

The duties are lower than the 35 percent rate the U.S. International Trade Commissionrecommended in October after finding that imported panels were harming American manufacturers. The idea behind the tariffs is to raise the costs of cheap imports, particularly from Asia, and level the playing field for those who manufacture the parts domestically.

See? Bloomberg finally got around to explaining the reality.

Read: Bummer: Tariffs On Imported Solar Parts Increased To 30% »

LA Times: Trump Can’t Arrest It’s Way Out Of This Immigration Mess

Um, why not? The LA Times Editorial Board is rather vexed

The Trump administration can’t arrest its way out of our immigration problem

State and local governments in California rightly recognize that it’s up to the federal government to determine which people living in the country illegally ought to be tracked down and deported. It’s no more the responsibility of the Los Angeles Police Department to run immigrants to ground than it is for them to sniff out people cheating on their federal income taxes.

It’s a cute argument, but, typically the IRS has other methods other than physical arrest to deal with tax evasion. By the LATEB reasoning, local, county, and state law enforcement shouldn’t assist in capturing kidnappers or killers who fled from other states. Oh, and then there’s this little thing called federal law, which requires cooperation.

There is an important public safety reason for keeping local police and sheriff’s deputies out of the deportation business. If people who are living in the country illegally come to view local law enforcement officers — whose duty is to maintain the peace and enforce criminal codes — as just another set of immigration agents, they will be far less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigators. In Los Angeles alone, Police Chief Charlie Beck said last year that fewer Latinos in the city were reporting rapes, spousal abuse and other crimes for fear of being deported under the Trump administration’s policy of stepped-up arrests.

Well, they’re here unlawfully: if they’re so afraid, they can……leave! They can pack their stuff up and go. Notice the phrase “enforce criminal codes” above. The LATEB just stated that it is the duty of the police to enforce immigration law. Maintain the peace? Yeah, how about keeping U.S. citizens from have their lives damaged by people who shouldn’t be here.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for state and local governments that refuse to use their own resources to help Washington enforce federal immigration law. Twice this month, top officials — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan — said they have asked the Justice Department for an opinion on whether local officials who don’t report residents who are in the country illegally can be charged with violating the federal laws on harboring. Homan also has warned that he will “significantly increase our enforcement presence in California” to ramp up arrests in neighborhoods and on streets as a payback for the California Values Act (the “sanctuary state” law adopted last year), which denied ICE agents access to jails unless they have a warrant. “California better hold on tight,” he said in a Fox News interview. “They’re about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers in the state of California.”

Do you know what this does? It scares illegals. It makes them leave. And, it makes them think really hard before coming. And it puts those who protect federal law breakers on notice. The LATEB sees the notion that state and local officials follow all laws differently

That’s not enforcing immigration law. That’s coercion by the federal government to try to compel local officials to, in effect, do their jobs for them. It is also the kind of thuggishness we’d expect from someone like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not the president of the United States.

It wouldn’t be necessary if state and local officials weren’t supporting lawbreakers. It shouldn’t be necessary for Los Federales to threaten state and local officials to follow the law.

It’s deplorable that the government is pursuing such a heartless and heavy-handed approach to enforcing immigration laws in service of a system that is hopelessly broken. A wise president would pursue truly dangerous immigrants who are here illegally, find ways to keep new arrivals out (and ensure visa holders leave when they are supposed to) and work with Congress for a humane resolution to the fate of more than 11 million people who have lived in the U.S. for, on average, more than a decade. But wisdom and this president are opposing forces.

Team Trump is going after the dangerous ones. They are finding ways to keep new arrivals out, in big part by creating massive fear in those who would come illegally. Interestingly, another method, the border wall, is something Democrats, like the LATEB, are totally against.

Why should we find a “humane resolution” for the 11 million? If someone has been stealing food out of the LA Times breakroom for years and years, and is finally caught, do you think they find a “humane resolution”, or terminate that person? At the end of the day, the American people come first.

And all these illegals who’ve been here for, “on average”, more than a decade? Instead of demanding citizenship, healthcare, education, welfare, jobs, food, etc, while refusing to learn the language, with tons committing crimes and stealing identities, they could have taken the time to apply for citizenship and gone through the lawful manner to become a citizenship.

Read: LA Times: Trump Can’t Arrest It’s Way Out Of This Immigration Mess »

Obligatory Dems Utterly Cave On #SchumerShutdown Post

Is anyone as surprised as me that Republicans held strong and forced Democrats to completely cave?

Oh, and then there’s this bit of fun, just to rub salt in the wound (via Twitchy)

Read: Obligatory Dems Utterly Cave On #SchumerShutdown Post »

Your Burger Habit Which Causes ‘Climate Change’ Could Be Made Worse By ‘Climate Change’

You know what could solve this? A tax!

Your burger habit could be threatened by weather chaos — but gene editing could help us save cows and avoid ‘mass famine’

Making meat is wasteful work.

An ounce of beef — one-sixth of a standard burger patty — requires over 100 gallons of water. Dairy cattle, chickens, and pigs also belch out methane, a key greenhouse gas, and the factories and farms that house them add carbon dioxide to the mix. Livestock are also prone to disease. An estimated 20% of the world’s animal protein is lost to bacterial infections and illness.

A new technology may help solve these issues. CRISPR, which allows for tiny, precise tweaks to DNA that were previously considered impossible, is being used to make crops that are cheaper, more reliable, and more immune to environmental challenges like drought and pests. Experts say the first CRISPR corn and mushrooms could be on grocery shelves within two-to-eight years.

Of course, the anti-GMO crowd will freak out about this.

Climate change is projected to drive down crop yields by up to a quarter in some parts of the world, with important food sources like corn and wheat seeing dramatic losses. A study published by researchers at Michigan State University suggests that high temperatures not only weaken plants’ natural defenses but strengthen bacterial attacks, a sort of double whammy for crop productivity.

Except for the part where CO2 is plant food and food production has continued to go up up up. But, hey, doom is totally going to come soon!!!!!!

“Agriculture must transform over the next 30 years in order for us to avoid mass famine,” Charlotte Lusty, who helps manage agricultural gene banks for an international nonprofit called the Crop Trust, said at the UN Climate Change Conference in November.

By change, they mean put it under the control of the Central Government.

Read: Your Burger Habit Which Causes ‘Climate Change’ Could Be Made Worse By ‘Climate Change’ »

If All You See…

…is an evil mega-matic assault rifle, which fires bullets that make climate change worse, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Powers That Be, with a post on the FBI having a hard time monitoring their own people.

Read: If All You See… »

Big Snowfall, Cooler Oceans Totally A Sign Of Global Warming Or Something

It’s all your fault for using natural gas to heat your home and refusing to ride a bicycle to work instead of your fossil fueled vehicle when it’s cold

Big snowfall, a cooler ocean and, yet, more signs of global warming

Two of America’s top science agencies confirmed last week that 2017 was one of the hottest years on record. But the news came with some anomalies — the kind that skeptics might use to muddy the evidence that the planet is growing dangerously warmer.

The reports from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that global temperatures remain markedly above the Earth’s pre-industrial levels. But they also showed that the upward heat trajectory is not constant, or uniform, around the globe. And the studies revealed that serious cold spates, and big snowfalls, have not disappeared.

One counter-intuitive finding from the two agencies was that Earth recorded its second– or third-warmest year in recorded history, in the same year that storms left the Northern Hemisphere with more snow than at any time in the last three decades.

Another twist: The warming forces couldn’t entirely overwhelm that age-old weather trickster — the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño/La Niña temperature oscillation.

Scientists say weather quirks should not distract from the more worrisome, long-term trend: Temperatures that are inexorably increasing as mankind’s burning of fossil fuels loads the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Anyhow, they just keep spinning and spinning. Because that’s what people in Cults do. Make everything conform to their preconceived dogma.

Read: Big Snowfall, Cooler Oceans Totally A Sign Of Global Warming Or Something »

NY Times: Shutdown Is Based On Dems Distrust Of GOP On Illegal Immigration

This is a hoot. First it’s an attempt to manufacture a reason to blamestorm Republicans. Second, it’s almost always Democrats who offer bad faith on illegal immigration

Shutdown’s Crux: Democrats’ Deep-Rooted Distrust of G.O.P. on Immigration

At the heart of the confrontation that led to a government shutdown lie two weeks of mixed messaging by the president — and two decades of deep-seated acrimony and suspicion between Democrats and Republicans on immigration.

“The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked,” President Trump tweeted Sunday. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, said his Democratic counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, was “playing with all of those lives over the issue of illegal immigration.” A Trump campaign official, Michael Glassner, lauded the president for keeping Americans safe from “evil, illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes against lawful U.S. citizens.”

Those derisive statements and others help explain why Democrats entered into the politically perilous fight. After several fruitless efforts at overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, Democrats simply do not trust Republicans, who control Congress and the White House, to follow through on pledges to protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation unless forced to do so.

Yes, this does belong in the opinion section. And this continues on and on, forgetting to mention the number of times Democrats have offered legislation and ideas whereby a “pathway to citizenship” would be given now for a “promise” of border security later, all while lying that that security will be done first. Look at the current situation

(Breitbart) Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while discussing the government shutdown, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offer on the border wall was only to “authorize” funding, not “appropriating” the money.

Mulvaney said, “The president is absolutely interested and wants to get DACA fixed but what with you’ve just read really bears a close read which is what the Senate minority leader said was to authorize $20 billion. I know it’s getting real deep down in the weeds. You can authorize left and right but it’s appropriating the money that makes the difference. He wants to authorize the wall to be built but doesn’t want to spend the money to get it built. There was money authorized in 2006 that Mr. Schumer voted for for a wall that still hasn’t been built because that money hasn’t been spent.”

These are the types of games that Democrats play. They want all the legalization, with the right to vote, for as many millions of illegal aliens as they can get while giving up almost nothing.

Back to the NY Times

In recent months, Republicans suggested that they would hold a strong hand in any funding showdown because Democrats would be reluctant to force a government shutdown over undocumented immigrants. If Democrats did, Republicans figured they would have a strong message to counter with by attacking Democrats as willing to shortchange Americans to help those who entered the country illegally.

They are now aggressively pressing that line of assault. But the message is also provoking new doubts about the sincerity of Republican determination to help Dreamers, muddying an immigration debate that is at the center of the conflict and has confounded Washington for almost 20 years.

Here’s what they are also really, really upset about: Republicans holding strong and firing back. Democrats and their Leftist media expect Republicans to wilt, and they usually do. They aren’t this time. And their message is that Democrats are picking illegal aliens over American citizens, including our military.

Read: NY Times: Shutdown Is Based On Dems Distrust Of GOP On Illegal Immigration »

California’s Newest Idea: Force Companies To Fork Over Half Their Federal Tax Savings

California is already considered to be one of the worst states for businesses. Over the years, companies big and small have abandoned the state in favor of others, like Texas. Now, they’re exploring another way to make things worse

(Fox News) Calling the Trump administration’s tax reform plan a “middle-class tax increase,” two California lawmakers introduced a bill that would force large companies to fork over half of their expected savings to the state.

Assemblymen Kevin McCarthy and Phil Ting, both Democrats, introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 22, which calls for a 10 percent surcharge on companies with a net earnings over $1 million. The plan could potentially raise billions for the state’s social services programs.

“It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals,” Ting said in a statement, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “This bill will help blunt the impact of the federal tax plan on everyday Californians by protecting funding for education, affordable health care and other core priorities.”

The Democrats have lost their super-majority, and this would require two-thirds to pass before heading to the governor for a signature, so, it is most likely not going to happen. However, just the notion that Democrats would give this a shot can drive companies out. If you broadcast a punch, even if you don’t throw it, people duck. If you broadcast your intention to take more money, businesses take action, which means getting away from those who would take it. Plenty of other states would welcome companies that provide jobs. California seems to think companies, and the people who own them and work at them, are ATMs.

Read: California’s Newest Idea: Force Companies To Fork Over Half Their Federal Tax Savings »

Pirate's Cove