On Trump Letting Mattis Set Troop Levels, Washington Post Savages Barack Obama

By William Teach June 17, 2017 – 6:42 am

Yesterday we discussed the NY Times having a tizzy over President Trump giving Secretary of Defense James Mattis the power to set troop levels, something that shouldn’t be controversial in the least, as that is the way it used to be done. It’s why Presidents have people around them with the requisite knowledge and capabilities for the job. Today, the Washington Post Editorial Board finally finds an approving word for Mr. Trump, and savages past president Barack Obama at the same time

Trump is right to leave Afghanistan troop levels up to the Pentagon

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S resolution to delegate decisions on troop levels in Afghanistan to the Pentagon is a worthy corrective to the approach of President Barack Obama, who micromanaged U.S. military forces in a way that badly undercut their ability to achieve their goals. By politicizing force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan and setting timetables for withdrawal unlinked to conditions on the ground, Mr. Obama helped to ensure failure on his watch in both countries. The Islamic State gained control over much of Iraq, forcing the redeployment of U.S. troops, while a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan now demands a similar reversal of previous withdrawals.

You could virtually put that entire paragraph in bold for its notations of failure by Mr. Obama, and it’s something incredible to see in the Washington Post, most especially by the Editorial Board. It would have been nice to see this while Mr. Obama was still in office, mind you.

A U.S. surge like that ordered by Mr. Obama in 2009, which sent tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan, is not in the cards. Instead, perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 additional U.S. personnel, supplemented by troops from NATO nations, will join the some 8,400 Americans and 5,000 Europeans currently in the country. The main aim will be to bolster Afghan forces so they can stop the Taliban’s momentum, including by increasing the size of elite Special Operations forces and backing them with air power — something the Obama administration senselessly restricted.

Obama’s policy was more on politics, on trying to look strong, than on ground realities. He made lots of promises and statements during the 2008 campaign, particularly about Afghanistan being the “right war” and Iraq being the “wrong one”, and managed to mess up both.

The editorial goes on to note that the White House will need to become involved at some point, once the plan is in place, as the overall mission is something Mr. Trump is responsible for, ending with

Mr. Obama did his best to distance himself from the Afghan war, with the result that key political objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan remained out of reach, while domestic support for the mission steadily declined. That’s another mistake that Mr. Trump has the opportunity to correct.

During the entire time Mr. Obama was in office, I cannot remember the WPEB ever so viciously attacking Mr. Obama. Perhaps they are finally realizing just how bad his presidency actually was, including his foreign policy.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Cost Of Complying With Paris Climate BS Reported To Be $12.7 Trillion

By William Teach June 16, 2017 – 4:41 pm

I can hear Warmists right now: “it’s only $12.7 trillion by 2040. No biggee”

(Daily Caller) A whopping $7.4 trillion will be spent globally on new green energy facilities in the coming decades, but another $5.3 trillion is needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, according to a new report.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) is out with a new long-term energy outlook report, this time projecting a total of $12.7 trillion to keep projected global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — a goal of the Paris accord.

BNEF projects $7.4 trillion will be invested in new green energy capacity by 2040, and that global carbon dioxide emissions will be 4 percent lower in that year than in 2016.

There’s a training program we use in my company, which has lots of statistics in terms of sales, what people buy, how people buy, etc., and the presenters always say “if you don’t believe it, cut it in half. Cut it in half till you believe it, because it still means more sales for you.” In this case, when it comes to all this “green energy” and climate projects and stuff, double the number. Don’t believe it? Double it again. Because whatever the number is, it will be huge with government involved. Certainly, if it was all so super awesome, companies would be putting lots and lots of their own money to develop it.

Realistically, most of the money is going to go to administration, barely functional projects, in politicians pockets, and redistributed to 3rd world shitholes.

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If All You See…

By William Teach June 16, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful low carbon bike turning down the fossil fueled carbon temperature knob, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post on a new sugary drink tax in Cook County, Illinois.

And, because I completely forgot to schedule the time for an IAYS post yesterday, the second blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on the Special Agent heroes. (photo under the more tag)

It’s evil heat created snow!

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Bummer: DOE Closes Oversees Hotcoldwetdry Office

By William Teach June 16, 2017 – 10:30 am

For all of Trump’s faults, he’s been pretty good so far when dealing with ‘climate change’

Energy Department Closes Office Working on Climate Change Abroad

The Energy Department is closing an office that works with other countries to develop clean energy technology, another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat on climate-related activities after its withdrawal from the Paris agreement this month.

The 11 staff members of the Office of International Climate and Technology were told this month that their positions were being eliminated, according to current and former agency employees. The office was formed in 2010 to help the United States provide technical advice to other nations seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The small office also played a lead role preparing for the annual Clean Energy Ministerial, a forum in which the United States, China, India and other countries shared insights on how best to promote energy efficiency, electric vehicles and other solutions to climate change. (snip)

The office is the only one in the Energy Department to have “climate” as part of its name.

The office played an important role, for instance, in helping India develop its own lighting efficiency standards and start a program to purchase LED lamps in bulk for consumers.

Why can’t India pay for these programs themselves? Why is it necessary for the US government to spend this money?

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Today’s NY Times Conniption Fit: Trump’s Allowing Mattis To Set Troop Levels In Afghanistan

By William Teach June 16, 2017 – 8:37 am

Having been beaten senseless over their idiotic editorial which eroneously blamed Palin for the Gabby Giffords shooting, the NY Times shifts away to a several days old story and sees a Horrid Dereliction Of Duty!!!!!!!!!!1!!!! which starts out in a facepalm inducing manner

Mr. Trump, Afghanistan Is Your War Now

President Trump was typically self-absorbed in his tweet on Wednesday celebrating the 242nd birthday of the United States Army. “Proud to be your commander-in-chief,” he proclaimed to the soldiers.

Um, what? Really? This is self absorbed?

That said, where was the NY Times Editorial Board on this?

As we’re all aware, Obama was constantly inserting himself into everything, making it all about himself. Plus, Obama has said he’s proud to be commander in chief many times, such as here. Where were those complaints from the Times about being self-absorbed? Moving on (graphic from the article)

Yet, when it comes to the actual life-and-death responsibilities of the commander in chief — overseeing America’s vast war machine and sending men and women into conflict — Mr. Trump seems more like the delegator in chief. The latest evidence was his decision this week to give Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to determine troop levels in Afghanistan, which could lead to an increase of as many as 5,000 troops, if proposals favored by Mr. Mattis and his generals go forward. (snip)

Military commanders chafed under Mr. Obama’s tight controls on troop deployments and war making, which some of them saw as micromanagement. Even so, commanders in chief cannot subcontract their most sacred duties; what the United States faces at this moment is not some routine tactical maneuver or choice. It is what to do about America’s longest war. That is, at bottom, Mr. Trump’s responsibility, and at the moment the nation has no idea what he thinks or where he is headed.

Good grief. Who better to make the decisions on troop levels than the military commanders, especially the Secretary of Defense? Jazz Shaw said this was the “next scandal”, and he has now become right. As he writes “getting the White House involved in the specifics of the force management levels (FML) list is a fairly recent thing.” It is rather recent. Do you think FDR was the person setting FML for D-Day? Let the military do their thing.

The Times whines on for a bit in their typical deranged manner, moving on to

Apart from the fact that the need for additional troops has not been cogently debated, much less established as necessary..

So, wait, the NYTEB is upset that Trump is going to allow SecDef Mattis, with all his military experience, to set FML, but wants Trump to abdicate his role as Commander In Chief to what is essentially a National Conversation by people without the requisite knowledge? Which is it, Times EB?

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Homeland Security Chief Cancels Program Protecting Illegal Alien Parents

By William Teach June 16, 2017 – 8:07 am

Realistically, the point of all these “harsh” illegal immigration policies is not necessarily to round up tons of illegal and deport them, though that is a side benefit. The point is to reduce the flow of illegals, who are being put on notice that past shenanigans, such as bringing your kids to the U.S. illegally/coming illegally and having kids on U.S. soil will no longer work as a means to stay in the country

Trump administration cancels program to protect immigrant parents from deportation

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly formally revoked a policy memo that created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program. The revocation came on the fifth anniversary of another effort that has protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.

The program to protect parents was announced by President Obama in November 2014 but was never fully launched. It was intended to keep the immigrant parents safe from deportation and provide them with a renewable work permit good for two years, but it was blocked by a federal judge in Texas after 26 states filed suit against the federal government and challenged the effort’s legality.

Republicans decried the effort as “backdoor amnesty” and argued that Obama overstepped his authority by protecting a specific class of immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Because it was a backdoor amnesty. It would have rewarded people who are unlawfully present within the U.S. for their bad behavior. And the next thing would have been for Democrats to proclaim that it was not fair for these unlawfully present parents weren’t allowed to become immediate citizens (even though most don’t even speak the language) because their kids who were born here are. And for the kids who were brought illegally, they should be made citizens. It makes a mockery of those who come to this country legally, spend lots of money, and take all the time to become naturalized U.S. citizens because they want to be U.S. citizens.

Arrests of immigrants in the interior of the country have increased under the Trump administration, but deportations are slightly down as fewer people have been caught crossing the Mexican border into the United States illegally.

So, the policies are working.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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The Hiatus Was A Myth, Except For The “hiatus in global air temperatures”

By William Teach June 15, 2017 – 4:52 pm

It’s amusing when members of the Cult of Climastrology confuse themselves

From the article

Readers of The Spectator will be familiar with the argument that climate change, like Britpop, ended in 1998. Raised on a diet of Matt Ridley and James Delingpole, you may have convinced yourself that climate scientists, for their own selfish reasons, continue to peddle a theory that is unsupported by real-world evidence.

No, we do not claim it ended. We rightly, scientifically, factually point out that the claims made by Warmist scientists using computer models failed to account for the pause in statistically significant warming, just like has happened multiple times during the Modern Warm Period. Because, again, the debate is on causation of the warm period, not warming. How much is anthropogenic, and how much natural. If it is mostly/solely caused by Mankind, then the pause should never have happened.

You may also have picked up the idea that the ‘green blob’, as it has been called in these pages, is somehow suppressing the news that global warming is a dead parrot. That was the case made by Dr David Whitehouse, science editor of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Forum in a Spectator blog in February last year. He accused the world’s media of ignoring a paper in Nature Climate Change which concluded that the rise in global surface temperature had stalled, contrary to the narrative of man-made climate change. In contrast, an earlier paper by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Science magazine, which questioned the existence of that hiatus, had been given huge coverage.

Those of us who work in climate research do not, of course, ignore evidence. A study published in Nature Climate Change does not go unnoticed. But the particular paper to which Whitehouse referred does not counter the reality of man-made change. By the time he wrote his piece, the hiatus in global air temperatures had already come to a blistering halt. The years 2014, 2015 and 2016 were the three hottest years on record — an unprecedented run.

So, wait, it didn’t happen, but, it did happen? This is the kind of insanity you get from people who are more cultish than scientific.

Of course, they go on to blame the whole “the ocean ate my warming” meme.

But this is only part of the story. Anyone who considers climate change to be all about air temperatures at the Earth’s land surface misses something rather important. The evidence is not just blowing in the wind; it is 500 fathoms deep.

That’s convenient.

As a land species, it’s hardly surprising that we’re more concerned about what’s going on in the atmosphere than with conditions under the sea — but in the context of global warming that’s a big mistake. Around 93 per cent of the extra heat gained by the Earth over the past 50 years has sunk into the ocean, while 3 per cent has made ice melt, and 3 per cent has warmed the land. Only around 1 per cent has stayed in the atmosphere. So if we just measure air temperatures, we’re looking in the wrong place for climate change. Recent analyses by the World Meteorological Organisation and independent researchers have looked at deep-ocean as well as sea-surface temperatures, and both groups found that significant increases in total ocean heat content began around 1980, continuing more rapidly after 1998.

Here’s a question that I’ve never seen an answer to: what mechanism caused this eating of the warming to happen?

Also, if this started around 1980, then what caused the Pause to happen in 1998, rather than 1980? You had a warming period from around 1978-1996. Why was the heat not disappearing then?

The apparent slowdown in global temperature rise in the early years of this century was nothing more than the Earth’s climate system expressing its natural variability.

If that’s the case, that it is natural variability … even though the headline and early part of the article said the Pause never happened… then why can’t the warming be mostly/solely (I would argue mostly) natural variability?

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Trump Is Releasing A “Reign Of Terror” On Illegal Aliens Or Something

By William Teach June 15, 2017 – 10:30 am

Your Thursday humor comes to us from the uber-lefty Common Dreams

‘Reign of Terror’: ICE Chief Says Immigrants Should Be Looking Over Their Shoulders

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan declared on Tuesday that the federal government “shouldn’t wait” for undocumented immigrants to commit a crime before they are detained, comments that were characterized by one immigrant rights activist as part of the “reign of terror“ President Donald Trump has unleashed in immigrant communities.

Homan added that undocumented residents in the U.S. “should be uncomfortable” and “looking over their shoulder[s],” concluding that “no population of persons” in the country illegally is safe from deportation.

“You should look over your shoulder,” he said, “and you need to be worried.”

The full quote from Homan, per that link from the Washington Post in “declared”, is

“If you’re in this country illegally, and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Homan said. “You should look over your shoulder.”

We also see in that same article

Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told lawmakers at a hearing on Capitol Hill that the agency is churning out detainer requests, adding thousands of cases to its docket and deputizing an increasing number of local law enforcement agencies to help enforce federal immigration law.

People who are unlawfully present in the United States should be looking over their shoulders. They should be scared. More importantly, this “reign of terror” on lawbreakers sends a message to those who would attempt to come illegally to not bother.

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Warmists Sue Trump Admin Over Failure To Enforce Costly Household Appliance Rule

By William Teach June 15, 2017 – 7:51 am

The Cult of Climastrology really, really wants to raise the cost of all your home appliances in order to stop the extinction of all life on Earth or something

(Daily Caller) Environmentalists and a coalition of Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration Tuesday for delaying Energy Department energy efficiency regulations on common appliances.

The Trump administration failed to implement the appliance regulations on time, according to the suits, which are part of a broader effort to block White House efforts to roll back Obama-era regulations. The Obama administration finalized the efficiency rules as part of its “Climate Action Plan.”

“These delays are not only baffling, they’re unnecessary and illegal,” Kit Kennedy with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said in a statement about the lawsuit.

NRDC and other environmentalists joined 11 Democratic-led states and New York City in suing the Trump administration. Eleven states, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, also sued the Trump administration in April over delaying the energy efficiency rules, saying that rules would yield “net savings to consumers and businesses of approximately $23.8 billion.”

The rules were supposedly finalized by Obama’s Energy Department, but weren’t immediately published in the Federal Register, and Trump’s DOE never bothered publishing them, either. The rules themselves would be burdensome and costly, and due virtually nothing to stop anthropogenic climate change (mostly because ACC is pretty much false to start with).

Aside from increased appliance prices, critics argue that the promised energy savings don’t always materialize. DOE’s ceiling fan rule is expected to cost $4.4 billion, according to regulatory estimates. Even the plaintiffs suing Trump don’t have consistent estimates of benefits from the rules.

That rule would raise the cost of ceiling fans (and shows just how insane the intrusion of the federal government’s tentacles into everything has gotten). Sure, you might save a little or break even after 30 years, but, they don’t typically last 30 years, do they? Nor would you usually use them for 30 years, as most people do not stay in the same home for that length of time.

That applies to so many of the appliances they’re trying to regulate. You don’t keep them that long. And all these rules were rushed into play after Trump had already won the election.

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Posted in AGW Idiocy, Democrats, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

The Congressional Shooting Was A Left Wing Assault On Democracy

By William Teach June 15, 2017 – 7:29 am

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post uses the occassion to say our political discourse is too rough, and, oh, yeah, we need gun control

The shooting at a GOP baseball practice was an assault on democracy

….

What occurred on that playing field just outside Washington, where a gunman seemingly nursing a political grudge unleashed an apparently premeditated attack on Republican lawmakers, amounts to an assault on democracy…..

That James T. Hodgkinson III was a Bernie Sanders supporter was, surprisingly, mentioned, but, we only got that he “had strong feelings against President Trump” for the rest. He was a wacko and utter full of Trump Derangement Syndrome

Who knows what mixture of madness and circumstance causes someone to pick up a gun and go on a rampage?

How about Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine talking about Democrats having to fight in the streets? How about looking at the pages of the Washington Post, not too mention all the other left leaning news outlets which feature a constant deluge of articles on How Evil Trump And Republicans are.

Perhaps papers like the Washington Post should consider their own role in continuously pushing that Trump’s election was illegitimate, which would be an assault on democracy. Will there be any introspection on that? Of course not! They go on to push for gun control at the end of the editorial. Wouldn’t attempting to take the 2nd Amendment Rights away from people be an assault on democracy?

Then we have the NY Times

America’s Lethal Politics

…

Not all the details are known yet about what happened in Virginia, but a sickeningly familiar pattern is emerging in the assault: The sniper, James Hodgkinson, who was killed by Capitol Police officers, was surely deranged, and his derangement had found its fuel in politics. Mr. Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders supporter and campaign volunteer virulently opposed to President Trump. He posted many anti-Trump messages on social media, including one in March that said “Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Though there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.

I’ll let Beckett Adams respond regarding the utter idiocy of the Palin accusation, except to say that Loughner was a nutball who held all sorts of views, some on the right, most on the left. But, if the Times needs a link, how about

You can find plenty more examples of Democrats talking about fighting and violence in to #Resist Trump and the GOP.

And, of course, the NY Times Editorial Board ends their missive like the Washington Post did, with a call for an assault on the 2nd Amendment. Perhaps they should tone down their constant assaults on Trump and Republicans, because their unhinged “we’re all doomed” attitudes surely incites Leftists to become violent.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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