If All You See…

By William Teach December 22, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is snow which will soon be a thing of the past, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on the Democrats stink of weakness and defeat.

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TDS: How Trump Totally Stole Christmas (Or Something)

By William Teach December 22, 2017 – 10:30 am

The Trump Derangement Syndrome is strong in this one, young Padawan

(Dallas News)  A home in central Austin makes no apologies for its politically themed Christmas display that equates President Donald Trump’s handling of hot-button issues with a certain green-furred holiday icon.

“‘Twas a few days before Christmas, decorations on display; and some are custom-made, but to many’s dismay, this one jumps into the political fray,” KVUE-TV reporter Brandon Jones said, wasting no time getting into the Dr. Seuss-inspired spirit of things.

The decoration depicts the Grinch — sporting Trump-like bushy hair and eyebrows — making off with some “Christmas gifts” in the form of the Affordable Care Act, DACA, the Paris climate accords and net neutrality.

Interestingly, when some had anti-Obama yard displays, the media pretty much refused to cover them, and those few that did castigated those who put them up.

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‘Climate Change’ Puts Santa’s Delivery System At Risk Or Something

By William Teach December 22, 2017 – 7:09 am

On the 9th day of Christmas, the Warmists gave to me, more Cult of Climastrology insanity

Global warming puts Santa’s delivery system at risk

It is proving extremely difficult in the aviation sector to find technological solutions to greenhouse gas emissions that influence climate change. As a result, flying may be the last sector staying with fossil fuels.

However, Christmas each year tests an alternative approach. The sleigh driven by Santa Claus is powered by nine reindeer. Like cows, reindeer are ruminants: when they digest grass and lichen, they emit methane gas. Unfortunately this is a very powerful greenhouse gas. On the face of it, this would appear to be a black mark against reindeer-powered sleighs.

However, we should also consider how much greenhouse gas is emitted per tonne of payload per kilometre travelled, and how that might compare with alternative modes of travel. Given that the sleigh is believed to traverse the entire globe over the course of just one night, the number of kilometres travelled is very high.(snip)

While this Christmas delivery service has been in business for aeons, global warming is putting its future at risk. Research shows that the extent of Arctic ice in the winter is rapidly declining each year, due to the continual rise in temperature in these regions driven by climate change. While still adequate for sleighs to take off and land today, in 20 years time this may no longer be possible. As the depth of ice is reduced by global warming, the take-off weight for sleighs in Arctic regions may be steadily reduced under international aviation regulations.

This could give rise to serious disappointment in future years as deliveries will have to be curtailed.

Increasing desertification, combined with the loss of polar ice, could put pressure on Santa to switch to camel-powered flight. This could be seen as unfair double-jobbing, given camels already have a role in bearing gifts and wise men. Taxes on emissions could, however, help fund redundancy payments for Rudolf and friends.

But maybe the best Christmas gift of all for today’s and tomorrow’s children could be effective action to tackle climate change through implementing the Paris Agreement. May all our North Pole Christmases be white.

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Team Trump Considers New Method To Discourage Illegal Border Crossings

By William Teach December 22, 2017 – 6:54 am

Ever since Mr. Trump took office, the rhetoric of his administration has been harsh on illegal immigration, which has worked very well to discourage people from crossing the border illegally. The numbers for border crossings are way down. Paired with allowing law enforcement to actually enforce the laws on illegal aliens, they’ve done a great job on this issue. Then, you add in how the media and Democrats have freaked out all throughout the year, talking about fear among illegals and stuff, and there’s even more disincentivizing of people coming illegally. Really, the media has done Trump a big service by keeping the issue at the forefront for much of the year. But, numbers in November, so

To curb illegal border crossings, Trump administration weighs new measures targeting families

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is considering a series of measures to halt a new surge of Central American families and unaccompanied minors coming across the Mexican border, including a proposal to separate parents from their children, according to Trump administration officials with knowledge of the plans.

These measures, described on condition of anonymity because they have not been publicly disclosed, would also crack down on migrants already living in the United States illegally who send for their children. That aspect of the effort would use data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to target parents for deportation after they attempt to regain custody of their kids from government shelters.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has previously considered some of these proposals, but there is renewed urgency within the administration to address an abrupt reversal of what had been a sharp decline in illegal immigration since Trump took office in January .

In November, U.S. agents took into custody 7,018 families, or “family units,” along the border with Mexico, a 45 percent increase over the previous month, the latest DHS statistics show. The number of Unaccompanied Alien Children, or UACs, was up 26 percent.

Those numbers are well below most Obama era numbers, but, whether or not this report is real (it’s repeated at the NY Times and other outlets with the same us of anonymous sources), the idea is to scare those who might come illegally, along with those who are here illegally.

Trump administration officials described the measures as an unpalatable but necessarily tough series of policy options to discourage Central American families from embarking on the long, dangerous journey to the border — or hiring smugglers to bring their kids north.

“People aren’t going to stop coming unless there are consequences to illegal entry,” one DHS official said.

Unlike the Obama administration, which encouraged people to come here illegally (particularly from Central America. Numbers from Mexico were and still are way down), Team Trump is doing all they can to discourage illegal entry. You don’t have to spend the time and money catching and deporting if fewer attempt to come illegally.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Illegal Alien Hiding In Church Feels Like He’s In Jail Or Something

By William Teach December 21, 2017 – 7:48 pm

Uh huh

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/943642104986730496

From the link

Jose Chicas spends a lot of time on a porch of a home run by St. John’s Baptist Church in Durham, looking out on a street where he dares not walk.

Chicas fled a civil war in his native El Salvador three decades ago and has lived in the U.S. ever since. Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told him he had to leave the country. He said he believes ICE’s stance is linked to his convictions for impaired driving and domestic violence 20 years ago.

Instead of leaving, however, he sought sanctuary in late June at the church on Onslow Street. ICE policy is not to arrest people on church property, so Chicas feels safe as long as he stays at the church and the house it has.

“I cannot go outside in the streets. I just stay over here in the parking lot or the house or go a little bit outside and come back inside again,” he said. “[If] ICE see me in the street, he can catch me. I don’t want to go back to my country.” (snip)

“(It’s) very, very difficult. This is like jail,” he said. “It’s a house, but it’s like jail.

And he goes on to Blame Trump

“The new [Trump Administration] policy decision to simply remove people and separate them from their families is an act of violence we want to stand against,” he said.

This situation is strictly his own fault. He wasn’t forced to come here illegally. He wasn’t forced to stay here all these years illegally. He wasn’t forced drive while impaired or commit domestic violence. Any issues that this causes for him and his family is strictly on him.

But, tell you what: if he stays in that “jail” for the next, say, three years without leaving, then let’s give him legal status. Not citizenship. Just permanent resident status. If he wants citizenship, he can go through the system just like other people do.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 21, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is dark skies covered with carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Refuge, with a post on a former FBI assistant Director saying something is about to happen.

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Twas The Night Before Christmas Is All About ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach December 21, 2017 – 10:30 am

Members of the Cult of Climastrology just can’t help themselves

Here are all the environmental lessons packed into ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas poem

This year I sent Christmas cards with pictures of our two electric cars with the text: “Electrify Your Christmas” and an exhortation to make 2018 your greenest year ever (by making your next car electric).

Here’s my holiday-themed environmental reminder set to select stanzas of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore:

‘Twas the night before Christmas … night, the best time to save energy by turning off lights and using only energy-efficient LED light bulbs. On Jan. 1, the 125-year-old incandescent bulbs won’t be sold because the state energy standard, which is three times more efficient, kicks in. Did you know there are 250 million sockets in California still with the higher-energy use bulbs? If all are replaced with LEDs, it will save $1 billion a year on electric bills. Plus, they are just as bright and last 25 times longer.

OK, in all fairness Steve Scaulzillo does make a few good points about real environmental concerns, like using rat poison, using fireplaces to burn wood in sunny southern California, and how lawns are silly and water intensive in a place like southern California.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, and he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name … bald eagles are an environmental success story. After the EPA banned DDT, bald eagles came back. I did a story on the first nesting pair found in Los Angeles County two years ago and I believe mom and dad eagle are still there.

And now wind turbines are literally cleaving them out of the sky.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread … sometimes I find myself dreading the effects of climate change, what future we are leaving our children and grandchildren.

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Trump Threatens To Cut Aid For Those Nations Who Vote Against U.S. Jerusalem Move

By William Teach December 21, 2017 – 7:19 am

If nations do not like the way we do things, maybe they should stop receiving the money taken from U.S. taxpayers

(Fox News) President Donald Trump’s threat to cut off U.S. funding to countries that oppose his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has raised the stakes in Thursday’s U.N. vote and sparked criticism at his tactics, which one Muslim group called bullying or blackmail.

Trump went a step further than U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley who hinted in a tweet and a letter to most of the 193 U.N. member states on Tuesday that the U.S. would retaliate against countries that vote in favor of a General Assembly resolution calling on the president to rescind his decision.

Haley said the president asked her to report back on countries “who voted against us” — and she stressed that the United States “will be taking names.”

At the start of a Cabinet meeting in Washington on Wednesday, with Haley sitting nearby, Trump told reporters that Americans are tired of being taken advantage of and praised the U.S. ambassador for sending the “right message” before the vote.

“For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us. They take hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars and then they vote against us,” Trump told reporters at the Cabinet meeting. “We’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us.”

“We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” he said, alluding to U.S. aid.

It’s long past time that America gets payback and respect for all the money we pump into the United Nations and countries around the world, many which would collapse without our help. And long past time that the Israel and Jew hatred in the United Nations is stomped on.

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Washington Post Is Super Enthused That Everyone Gets A Tax Break

By William Teach December 21, 2017 – 6:44 am

Just kidding: the WP Editorial Board is unhinged in their typical way

A win for the wealthy, the entitled and the irresponsible

REPUBLICANS IN Congress passed a huge tax bill Wednesday, in what is being hailed as a major win for President Trump and his party. In time, however, it very likely will be remembered as an ignominious moment for Republicans.

To be sure, there will be some unmitigated winners. The bill is a victory for wealthy heirs, who will no longer have to pay estate taxes on inheritance worth up to $22 million. It helps tax dodgers and their lawyers, who will have some potentially huge new loopholes to exploit. Because the drafting process was so hasty and sloppy, no doubt there are many hidden in the text that even its authors do not realize are there.

Like the heirs of the rich people who own and run the WP, and those who sit on the Editorial Board.

The bill is a victory for corporations that look like the Trump Organization, the president’s privately held real estate business. “Pass-through” businesses like many of those within the Trump Organizationget a new tax break. Other provisions single out real estate for special consideration in the tax code. The public can only guess at how much the president will personally benefit from the tax bill he is about to sign, because he has defied decades of bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns. In that sense, the bill is also a win for nontransparent government.

While there are certainly big big companies that are pass throughs, a goodly chunk of small business run by middle class Americans are also pass throughs, and would see their taxes go way down.

The bill is a victory for the discredited theory of trickle-down economics. It embodies the notion that big tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit low- and middle-class workers rather than simply enrich the already well-off.

Two points: first, even if it doesn’t trickle down, the middle class is getting a tax cut. Period. How well did the middle class do under the policies of the Democrats and under Obama? Not well. Second, who really cares if people who make a lot of money get to keep the money they earned? Why is this a thing? How does this harm anyone? There are multiple companies who are already saying they will pump more money into the economy, such as AT&T and Boeing.

The bill is a victory for corrosive partisanship. Republicans could have hashed out a better, bipartisan plan, but they never seriously tried. Instead, they added to the bill a stealth repeal of a key piece of Obamacare and a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Remember how the Democrats worked with Republicans on Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Stimulus? Oh, right.

Most of all, the bill is a victory for fiscal irresponsibility. Some of its provisions, such as lowering the corporate tax rate, would have been worthwhile if they had been paid for by closing loopholes or raising other federal revenue. Instead, the bill will make the nation’s debt trajectory even worse, by a trillion-plus dollars, even after accounting for new economic growth. The bill’s mild potential effects on competitiveness and growth are not worth such a steep price tag.

Remember all the complaints from the WPEB during the Obama years, when the debt virtually doubled? Or how the Stimulus was simply small short term growth that wasn’t sustained even through Obama’s first term, while shoving a trillion in debt on America’s grandkids?

Anyhow, you know this bill must be great if outlets like the WP are freaking out in this manner. Do you know what should have been put in the tax bill? An exception for companies that are in the news business. Should have left their taxes at the current rate while doing away with any “loopholes”. If they love high taxes so much, let them pay them by law, because, for all their caterwauling, they won’t stroke a check to the IRS.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Big Changes To WordPress – Everything Look OK?

By William Teach December 20, 2017 – 3:30 pm

There was a big update to WordPress. I don’t see any issues in in Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer (interestingly, I can see the Live Traffic widget on IE). Everything look fine on y’all end? My concern is about some code in core files that could have been automatically changed.

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