If All You See…

By William Teach July 27, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is carbon pollution making the water green, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on why college tuition has stopped skyrocketing.

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‘Climate Change’ Could Maybe Possibly Lead To More Parasitic Worms Or Something

By William Teach July 27, 2017 – 10:30 am

Today’s OMG WE’RE TOTALLY DOOMED (unless you give up your freedom and money to Government) moment

Climate change could lead to more infections from parasitic worms

Fossil records suggest that there could be another consequence of climate change and rising sea levels: an increase in parasitic worm infections.

Scientists at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Bologna studied clams collected in northern Italy that date back to the Holocene Epoch, a time when the planet was warming up after the Ice Age. Parasitic worms called trematodes, also known as flukes and flatworms, would attempt to feed on these ancient clams and the clams would respond by developing pits to keep them out.

By looking at the pits, the researchers learned that the presence of trematodes increased during relatively short periods of sea level rise.

“Based on what we know of these sediments, these were processes happening on the scale of hundreds of years, rather than thousands,” said John Huntley, a paleontologist at Mizzou.

Of course, despite some further doomy discussion in the article and from Mr. Huntley, we learn

However, researchers haven’t figured out how sea level rise could increase infections from parasitic worms. Huntley’s team recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to help understand that connection.

The seas go up, the seas go down. What caused the last glaciation period to end, leading to a massive sea rise? And why can’t the current warm period be mostly/solely caused by the same?

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Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Woman Plays Games At Immigration Checkpoint, Is Shocked!!! That She Was Detained

By William Teach July 27, 2017 – 7:43 am

This is a story that has been hanging out for a couple days now, but seems to be growing as illegal alien loving/immigration officer hating news outlets get in on the Outrage, even as far away as Columbus, Ohio

Woman records confrontation after refusing to answer immigration questions

A California woman says she was detained for about 90 minutes after refusing to tell border patrol agents if she is a US citizen.

One of Shane Parmely’s children recorded the exchange last Friday while sitting in the back seat of the car, KFMB reported.

Parmely, a teacher from San Diego, was approached by agents when she approached an inland immigration checkpoint. The agents asked her if she was a US citizen.

“Are we crossing a border?” Parmely responded.

“No,” he said, “But are you United States citizens?”

“Are we crossing a border?” Parmely responded. “I’ve never been asked if I’m a citizen before when I’m traveling down the road.”

“This is an immigration checkpoint,” the agent responded.

“Right, but we’re not crossing a border,” Parmely said. “You can ask me, I don’t have to answer.”

Actually, by law, she does. But, what was really going on here?

Parmely told KFMB she refused to answer the questions in a show of solidarity with friends who say they have been aggressively questioned by border patrol agents.

“It’s horrifying to hear what has happened to my friends’ kids who are just brown,” she said.

“So, if I have an accent, and I’m brown, can I just say, ‘Yes,’ and go ahead or do I have to prove it?” Parmely asked the agent. “I have a bunch of teacher friends who are sick of their kids being discriminated against.”

In other words, she intentionally provoked an incident here, and then complained when she got what she was asking for. This isn’t one of those things that just happened, as you can see from the video at the link. The officers were respectful and polite. She was nasty and rude.

Via Newsbusters, a CBS News This Morning report noted that she asked her kids to start recording as they approached the checkpoint. She knew she was going to create a scene.

The Border Patrol released this statement

Border Patrol checkpoints are critical tool for the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws. At a Border Patrol checkpoint, an agent may question a vehicle’s occupants about their citizenship, place of birth, and request document proof of immigration status, how legal status was obtained and make quick observations of what is in plain view in the interior of the vehicle. During the course of the immigration inspection, if an occupant refuse to answer an agent’s questions, the agent may detain the driver for a reasonable amount of time until he or she can make a determination regarding the occupant’s immigration status. It is agency policy that all individuals with whom we interact are treated with dignity and respect.

She, and many illegal alien/immigration enforcement agent hating news outlets seem very proud that she never answered the question. Well, that’s because the Border Patrol would have verified who she was, before releasing her after a “heart-wrenching” 90 minutes. She asked for trouble, and go it.

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Posted in Barking Moonbats, Illegal Immigration | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

GOP Controlled Senate Looks Towards More “Modest” Overhaul Of Ocare

By William Teach July 27, 2017 – 7:16 am

For the most part, overhauling Obamacare, otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as the Putting Government In Control Of Your Healthcare And Raising Your Premiums and Deductibles Act), is all the Republicans in Congress have been doing from the start. Once they found a way to start debate, they didn’t even give full repeal a shot

(Vox) On Wednesday afternoon, a cleaner repeal bill, the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, also failed, 45 to 55, with seven Republicans and all Democrats voting to block it.

The legislation would have repealed Obamacare’s spending on insurance coverage and its taxes on the wealthy and health care industries; it would not have included any new provisions to replace the law. The projected outcome, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would have been 32 million fewer Americans with health insurance 10 years from now without such a replacement.

That is NOT full repeal. So, what to do? Water the already watered down “repeal and replace” even more

GOP momentum grows for more modest plan to overhaul Obamacare

The Senate rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have repealed major parts of the Affordable Care Act, but Republican leaders were growing more confident about their chances of passing a more modest overhaul of the health-care law later this week.

Republicans appeared to be ­coalescing around a “skinny repeal” that would abolish the individual and employer insurance mandates and perhaps just one tax in an attempt to sustain their seven-year quest to unwind President Barack Obama’s health-care law. But even if they succeed — and start negotiations with the House — they will face significant obstacles in accomplishing anything more substantial.

Top Republicans such as Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, said that although leaders have not yet found “the sweet spot” between conservatives and centrists, they had picked up support for a more modest plan because it did not include deep cuts to Medicaid. Some Republican senators were simply open to any legislation that could keep alive the roller-coaster push for an overhaul.

“We’re edging closer and closer” to getting 50 votes for a bare-bones plan, Thune said. He said leaders were betting that some Republicans who defected on votes this week would feel more pressure to support any bill that emerged from negotiations with the House to face a final vote in the Senate.

Of course, a “skinny” bill which dinks and dunks around the edges but leaves Obacare in force of law has real Conservatives up in arms, proclaiming it would be DOA. Even squishy Lindsay Graham finds that it is not the solution. A group of 10 Republican Governors is also against this deal.

This is a corner Congressional Republicans have backed themselves into. They ran on full repeal of Obamacare for 7 years. Yet, they aren’t really attempting to actually repeal Ocare. Just modify it. And their modifications aren’t even that good.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Surprise: Ireland Is A Massively Hypocritical On Climate

By William Teach July 26, 2017 – 7:51 pm

The nation of Ireland has long been a big, big ethusiastic supporter of Doing Something when it comes to anthropogenic climate change, both at the governmental and citizen levels. Both levels love the Paris Climate Agreement, and the government, including current and past Prime Ministers, is one of the staunchest backers in the EU and the UN for Doing Something. Well, how about this, from the uber-Leftist UK Guardian

Ireland’s staggering hypocrisy on climate change
The national climate policy is a greenwash – the country is certain to miss its 2020 emissions target and still handing out drilling licences

On the face of it, Ireland appears to be acting on climate change. Last year it appointed its first ever “climate action minister”, and in June it outlawed onshore fracking. What’s more, the telegenic new taoiseach Leo Varadkar dedicated much of the first day of his Cabinet retreat to discussing climate change.

Last week Varadkar introduced Ireland’s first national mitigation plan (NMP) in more than a decade, and said that addressing climate change would “require fundamental societal transformation and, more immediately, allocation of resources and sustained policy change.” If success could be measured simply by repetition – the word “sustainable” appears no fewer than 110 times in the NMP – Ireland would undoubtedly be among the world’s leading countries.

But looks can be deceiving. The promised “fundamental societal transformation” turns out to be a soothing combination of words entirely lacking in substance.

Surprise?

Per capita, Ireland’s emissions are the third highest in the EU, and it is one of only four EU states (alongside Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria) expected to miss its 2020 targets. Things may be about to get a lot worse. With no public announcement, on 11 July Naughten’s department issued a licence permitting oil drilling on the Porcupine Bank off Ireland’s west coast.

Ireland was one of the early Believers, especially as pushed by PM Mary Robinson, who went on to bigger and better things with pushing ‘climate change.’ She’s a big player in the UN IPCC circles, with perhaps more sway than Al Gore. But, is anyone surprised in the least that a nation fails to follow what it says? This is pretty much what happened with almost every nation that was part of the Kyoto Protocol.

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Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 26, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is an entertainment device created by murdering carbon pollution sucking trees, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Noisy Room, with a post on Snopes being taken hostage by Progressives.

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Trump Tweets: The Gender Confused Will Not Be Allowed To Serve In Military

By William Teach July 26, 2017 – 9:31 am

This should make the people who support the mentally ill very mad, and create some lawsuits and demonstrations (that will turn violent, as usual)

As you would expect, Leftist are losing their minds over this, both under the tweets and in places like the Washington Post (which now has a big red “breaking news” banner). It’s an utter dumpster fire in the comments at the NY Times tweet on this.

When it comes to the military, anything that doesn’t help the mission in a positive manner is a distraction. Having to placate and patronize a tiny number of people with mental illness is contradictory to the mission of protecting the United States.

The First Street Journal has a few thoughts on the military having to be ready to go, and gender confusion doesn’t help. And more at Red State.

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Posted in Barking Moonbats, Donald Trump | 40 Comments | Trackback URL

Global Warming Discussions Need Apocalyptic Thinking Or Something

By William Teach July 26, 2017 – 8:28 am

Because there’s no better way to get people behind a political movement than to have Chicken Little as the spokesperson

Why Hope Is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change
Global warming discussions need apocalyptic thinking.

This is from Tommy Lynch at Slate, which is trying to go Full Salon, as he finally has his take on the nutty piece about Earth soon being too hot to support humanity

Lots of people worry about climate change, but as David Wallace-Wells shows in his recent New York magazine piece, the future is almost certainly worse than you imagine. Drawing on a wide range of experts, he tracks how climate change could alter every aspect of planetary existence. Ocean acidification gives rise to oxygen-eating bacteria. Melting ice results in the absorption of more sunlight and greater warming. Rising temperatures hasten the destruction of plants that replenish our oxygen. As things get worse, they will get worse faster.

Tommy yammers on for quite a while, even getting into what philosophers think about hope and stuff, before arriving at Doomy Land

That world is ending: a world of eating food shipped from country to country, a world of discount airlines, widespread meat consumption, and constant air conditioning. The problem with hoping for a technological solution to climate change is that it is often insufficiently critical of the ways of life that wreaked havoc on the rest of nature. It is easier to hope for a wild geoengineering solution than face the reality that billions of people need to change their daily habits in order to lessen the immense suffering appearing on the horizon. This hope cruelly prevents us from confronting the deep structural challenge of rethinking the way that some humans relate to nature. Obviously not all people experience this world in the same way, and it is a further tragedy that those who have contributed the least to climate change will be among those who experience its consequences earliest.

Some responses to Wallace-Wells’ piece have decried its alarmism and despair. But Slate’s Susan Matthews has already argued that it is not alarmist enough. I agree—and I would add that its hopeful conclusion also avoids the pessimism necessary for confronting the reality of the changes ahead. (snip)

If Moore is right, then the patterns of production and consumption at the heart of the global economy are integral to global warming. Maybe that way of life isn’t worth saving. Kafka reportedly once said that there is “plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us.” Rather than investing in technological salvations that will allow us to prolong a way of life that is destroying the rest of nature, we can embrace pessimism. In abandoning hope that one way of life will continue, we open up a space for alternative hopes.

These people. Utter Debbie Downers. Whiners who always want Other People to be forced to be part of the “solution.” Interestingly, the more apocalyptic they become the more people stop caring about anthropogenic climate change, which in turn causes the Cult of Climastrology to become more apocalyptic in an attempt to drag people back to caring. Twenty five years of spreading awareness, especially through a mostly liberal media around the world, and this is what they’ve come to.

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Senate’s First Attempt To Revamp Obamacare Fails

By William Teach July 26, 2017 – 7:49 am

Revamp. What a great word. One definition is “an act of improving the form, structure, or appearance of something.” Some synonyms are overhaul, refurbish, repair, and update. And that’s the word the front page of Fox News (mostly an AP article) uses in their headline (but not in the single story page), which is perfect for what the Senate is trying to do

FALSE START: Senate’s ObamaCare revamp fails, lawmakers fight to break gridlock

The Senate has blocked a wide-ranging proposal by Republicans to repeal much of former President Barack Obama’s health care law and replace it with a more restrictive plan.

Senators voted 57-43 late Tuesday to reject the plan in the first vote on an amendment to the bill. Those voting “no” included nine defecting Republicans.

The amendment vote portends a rough road ahead for GOP efforts to advance some form of ObamaCare replacement, even after the Senate narrowly revived the core bill in a dramatic test vote Tuesday afternoon.

Senators planned to vote Wednesday on another Republican amendment repealing much of the health law and giving Congress two years to come up with a replacement. A combination of solid Democratic opposition and Republicans unwilling to tear down the law without a replacement in hand were expected to defeat that plan as well.

The NY Times notes

The Senate voted narrowly on Tuesday to begin debate on a bill to repeal major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but hours later, Republican leaders suffered a setback when their most comprehensive plan to replace President Barack Obama’s health law fell far short of the votes it needed.

This is what you see everywhere: Axios, Bloomberg, Vox, Washington Post, etc. There is no actual full repeal. All they’re trying to do is make a few changes to Obamacare, but, the basics of the law would still be in place. And not necessarily in a good way. Because, even getting rid of some of the taxes and requirements, the government is still the main controller of our health insurance and health care. It is entirely too involved in what should be between doctors and patients.

Here’s an interesting sidebar from the NY Times’ article

The Senate is now moving ahead with debate, amendments and ultimately a final vote in the coming days on legislation that would have a profound effect on the American health care system — roughly one-sixth of the United States’ economy. But it is entirely possible that by week’s end, the senators will have passed nothing.

Funny that they, along with most of the Democratic Party supporting Credentialed Media, weren’t that concerned with what Ocare was going to do to 1/6th of the US economy before it was passed.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Hotcoldwetdry Is Going To Heat Up The 2018 Midterms Or Something

By William Teach July 25, 2017 – 3:54 pm

It’s interesting how we are told for every election cycle that ‘climate change’ is going to be a Big Big Issue, and each time it barely makes an appearance. But, hey, next time! Daniel Cohan, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, is super enthused for Next Time

Climate change will heat up midterm elections

The midterm congressional elections are still a year away, but hundreds of rookie candidates are crafting policy positions for the first time.

Most of them are Democrats, spurred by polls showing their party with the edge for 2018.

In Texas alone, so far 35 Democrats are challenging House incumbents, while just two Republicans are doing so (both in primaries against Republican incumbents).

In previous elections, many candidates glossed over their positions on climate change, assuming they were of secondary interest to voters. That could be a mistake this time around.

President Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Agreement has galvanized support for climate action. A new survey by Politico and Harvard shows that Democratic voters rank climate change alongside Trump scandals and health care as the top issues motivating them to vote in 2018.

Yet, each and every time, even with lots of money from big moneyed Hotcoldwetdry believers, ‘climate change’ ends up being like a fart in the wind: barely recognized. And this looks more like the standard Trump Derangement Syndrome “resistance” we’ve come to know and love since November 9th, 2016.

Cohan offers some policy advice for Democrats, who would end up preaching to the

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