If All You See…

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

…is an evil pool which uses up lots of water and is made with evil concrete, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on a pure freakshow.

Read: If All You See… »

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Stick With Comedy: Eric Idle Wants To Put Climate Skeptics On Trial. And Kill Them

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

If you’re not familiar with Eric Idle, he was part of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, an all time classic British humor troupe. But, now, like most Warmists, he’s a bit unhinged (via Twitchy)

Obviously, he’s just one Warmist in the greater Cult of Climastrology. However, this is the way so many of them think, wanting to prosecute people for Wrongthink. And they show it in the replies to the tweet.

But, Twitchy missed a reply that is even more disturbing than the original tweet

Perhaps he meant it another way, but, it sure looks like he’s advocating killing climate skeptics.

Read: Stick With Comedy: Eric Idle Wants To Put Climate Skeptics On Trial. And Kill Them »

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Illegal Alien Supporters Are Aghast At ICE Arresting Illegals At Courthouses

By William Teach March 16, 2017 – 8:36 am

There’s apparently some sort of impropriety over detaining people who are unlawfully present in the country in courthouses

ICE agents make arrests at courthouses, sparking backlash from prosecutors and attorneys

Octavio Chaidez was walking out of a Pasadena courtroom with a client last month when four men jumped up from a hallway bench and rushed toward them.

The men asked his client’s name. Then they pulled out badges.

“They say, ‘You’re Mr. So and So?’ and he says, ‘Yes,’ ” Chaidez said. “They show him a badge, and they say, ‘We’re from Immigration and Customs,’ and they took him in.”

Chaidez, who has worked as a defense attorney in Los Angeles County for nearly 15 years, said he had never seen federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest inside the confines of a courthouse.

But in the past few weeks, attorneys and prosecutors in California, Arizona, Texas and Colorado have all reported teams of ICE agents — some in uniform, some not — sweeping into courtrooms or lurking outside court complexes, waiting to arrest immigrants who are in the country illegally.

ICE officials have defended the tactic, saying they make arrests in courthouses only when all other options have been exhausted. But activists, attorneys and prosecutors fear ICE’s increased presence in courthouses could deter other immigrants without legal status from appearing in court to testify as witnesses or answer warrants, which ultimately could endanger prosecutions.

Blah blah blah. It says it in the article: they’re in the country illegally, and this is a last resort. Wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t here unlawfully.

What’s barely mentioned in this article, and barely or not mentioned in so many that mimic the LA Times one above, is that Mr. Chaidez’s client was a “previously deported Mexican national with a prior felony conviction for drug trafficking”. Coming back into the U.S. after being deported is also a federal felony. Why are we concerned about a criminal like this being made scared?

San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascon called ICE’s forays into courthouses “very shortsighted” because some immigrants here illegally will simply avoid court for fear of being arrested.

“The chilling impact that has on an entire community is devastating,” he said.

Well, perhaps they’ll be so afraid that they will leave the country they shouldn’t be unlawfully present in in the first place.

ICE’s recent action in courthouses has been, in part, driven by an increase in the number of local law enforcement agencies that refuse to comply with ICE requests to detain suspects in county jails, she said.

“In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers,” Kice said “Now that many law enforcement agencies no longer honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.”

Cooperate with federal law enforcement, and this won’t be an issue. Furthermore, getting them in courthouses means that the illegal alien in question will have to have gone through metal detectors and screenings, so they are less likely to have weapons on them.

Suspects have to pass through metal detectors before entering courthouses, meaning they are unlikely to be armed. In recent months, ICE has arrested several suspects in courthouses in Portland, Ore., and Southern California who had prior convictions for sex crimes, drug trafficking and drunken driving, she said. The suspect who was arrested in the Pasadena courthouse last month was a Mexican national with a prior drug conviction, according to Kice.

See? Barely mentioned. Makes it seem like he was busted for something low level, instead of trafficking. And, again, why are we worried about the feelings of people convicted of sex crimes and such? Get them out of the country.

As an LA Times op-ed by Henry Olsen notes, are these really the type of people the Democrats want to defend? Because they’ll have a hard time winning elections if they want to defend criminals.

Read: Illegal Alien Supporters Are Aghast At ICE Arresting Illegals At Courthouses »

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Trump Announces The “America First” Budget

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

Regardless of whether you think Trump is taking a cleaver or a scalpel to the federal budget and federal programs, this is something that hasn’t been seen since the days of Reagan, and perhaps not even then. It is a massive expression of how Trump wants to deconstruct government

Donald Trump Budget Slashes Funds for E.P.A. and State Department

President Trump’s budget blueprint for the coming fiscal year would slash the Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent and cut State Department spending by a similar amount in a brash upending of the government’s priorities, according to congressional staff members familiar with the plan.

The budget outline, to be unveiled on Thursday, is more of a broad political statement than a detailed plan for spending and taxation. But it represents Mr. Trump’s first real effort to translate his bold but vague campaign themes into the minutiae of governance. The president would funnel $54 billion in additional funding into defense programs, beef up immigration enforcement and significantly reduce the nondefense federal work force to further the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” in the words of Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.

Of course, many parts are already (supposedly) being declared dead by even Republicans, ones who are caught up in using The People’s money to patronize people, especially rich donors, in their home districts. And, of course, the NY Times takes shots at Trump and his team, writing

Mr. Trump’s version is likely to be even skinnier than usual, a result of the chaos, inexperience and staffing problems encountered by the Trump White House over the first two months.

Or, it could be exactly what he wants. At the end, the President puts forth a budget, as required by law by a specific date (something Obama usually failed to do), and Congress debates what it wants to do (except when it is Obama’s, and Harry Reid refused to even discuss it in the Senate). These are the President’s priorities. The duly elected lawmakers then decide what to do. A little FYI, in case the NY Times, and other unhinged newspapers acting as arms of the Democratic National Party, have forgotten the way things work.

USA Today has a pretty good breakdown of what Trump wants sliced away.

Trump’s budget says hundreds of programs and agencies would be eliminated — with more than 50 in the Environmental Protection Agency. But his first budget proposal identified 62 specifically. The list includes

  • McGovern-Dole International Food for Education program ($202 million): Trump’s budget says the program — a sort of Third World school lunch project — “lacks evidence that it is being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity.”
  • Minority Business Development Agency ($32 million): The White House says this minority business incubator program is “duplicative” of other programs in the Small Business Administration. (WT-wacking of duplicative programs is big in this budget)
  • 21st Century Community Learning Centers program ($1.2 billion): The formula grants to states support before- and after-school and summer programs. “The programs lacks strong evidence of meeting its objectives, such as improving student achievement,” the budget says. (lacking evidence of meeting objectives also is bigly in the budget)
  • Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy ($382 million): This alternative energy research program was established by Congress in 2007 with the goal of funding projects that the private sector would not. (a lot of this goes to ‘climate change’)
  • Title 17 Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program: This loan fund finances projects that combat global warming. (awesome)
  • State Energy Program ($28.2 million): Gives grants to states to help them work on energy efficiency and anti-climate change programs.
  • Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program ($3.4 billion): LIHEAP helps the elderly and low-income people pay their heating and power bills. (I can’t see this being cut)
  • Community Development Block Grant program ($3 billion): CDBG has been a bread-and-butter funding source for local communities for 42 years, totaling more than $150 billion in grants over its history. “The program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results,” Trump’s budget says.
  • National Wildlife Refuge fund ($480 million): Maintains the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 563 wildlife refuges throughout the country. (won’t be cut)
  • State Criminal Alien Assistance Program ($210 million): Four states receive the bulk of the funding from this program, which reimburses states for the cost of incarcerating criminal immigrants.
  • The Global Climate Change Initiative ($1.3 billion) was an Obama administration proposal to support the Paris climate agreement. It includes the Green Climate Fund ($250 million), the Strategic Climate Fund ($60 million) and the Clean Technology Fund ($171 million).

There are many more at the article. Then there are the “independent agencies” he wants to scuttle, including

  • Corporation for National and Community Service ($771 million): The agency is best known for its Americorps community service program.
  • Corporation for Public Broadcasting ($485 million): Supports public television and radio stations, including the PBS television network and, indirectly, National Public Radio.
  • Denali Commission ($14 million): A state and federal economic development agency for Alaska.
  • National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million): Encourages participation in the arts.
  • National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million): Supports scholarship into literature and culture.

This is a business person’s budget. It targets spending from the large to the tiny. How often do you see a budget target something like the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is just $4 million dollars? It’s also an opening negotiation point. When Congress says “hey, we can’t get rid of the National Wildlife Refuge fund ($480 million)”, Trump says “fine, toast the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery ($499 million).” The art of the deal.

Some, like the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which funds popular programs like Meals on Wheels, housing assistance and other community assistance efforts, can be transformed via the budgetary process. As Trump says, it is not well targeted. Why not upgrade it and make it more effective, make the money go further and use it better?

This is also a budget meant to move power away from the federal government and back towards the States, counties, and municipalities, who know their people better. Obviously, the whole thing is driving the Credentialed Media and Democrats to a higher state of Moonbattery. Which will get worse as time goes on.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Trump Announces The “America First” Budget »

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Man Caused Global Warming Makes Snowstorms Worse Or Something

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 4:29 pm

This is not a new meme from the Cult of Climastrology. They’ve been beating this horse for several years now as a means to deflect off of seeing big snowstorms during a period in which the world is supposed to be boiling, especially as Europe and many parts of the world have seen brutal winters over many of the past ten seasons. But, hey, we had Stella, so, the CoC has to reiterated the meme, which states that ‘climate change’ causes snowstorms or makes them worse

Does Global Warming Cause Snowstorms? Weather Like Stella Enhanced By Climate Change

Winter Storm Stella bore down on much of the United States Tuesday, begging the question: What does a snowstorm in March mean for global warming? While it might seem easy to discount the latter because of the discontinuity between the two phrases — snow and warming don’t seem to go together — the changing climate can actually exacerbate extreme weather events like snowstorms in March.

Some point to snow and freezing weather as proof that global warming isn’t occurring. While snowstorms like Stella aren’t directly caused by a changing climate, global warming does cause hotter air. Hotter air, in turn, holds more moisture than colder air, causing heavier precipitation that comes in the form of extreme rain or snow.

As a result, the amount of rain or snow falling in the heaviest 1 percent of storms has increased over the last half century, according to the Union of Concern Scientists. Some areas have recorded up to a 71 percent increase in the amount of precipitation that has fallen in the heaviest storms between 1958 and 2012.

This must mean it was really hot during the last ice age, right? And must have been boiling during the Snowball Earth period.

Of course, at least half of what are considered the biggest snowstorms in U.S. recorded history happened before that 1958 period. One of them, the Blizzard of 1999, only dropped 15 inches. Heck, we had more than that in Raleigh in 1996, with 21 inches outside my door. Of course, the 1999 storm hit a much wider area.

And, we cannot forget that measurements are much better now as technology and a spreading population allows the information to be easier to obtain. If there was a giant snowstorm in Montana in 1800, how many would have noticed? This is the same with tornadoes. If no one saw it, and there was no radar to record it, it didn’t exist.

Regardless, no amount of science or reality will dissuade Warmists from their talking points.

Read: Man Caused Global Warming Makes Snowstorms Worse Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is wood that comes from trees that save the world from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Tradition, with a post on Planned Parenthood dodges.

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Trump Looks To Do Away With “Social Cost Of Carbon” In Federal Government

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

As Trump is staffing EPA with lots of climate skeptics, including many aides to Senator Jim Inhofe, a longtime foe of the idiocy of the ‘climate change’ movement, he’s also, supposedly, looking to release orders to make changes to the government involvement in ‘climate change’

(Washington Post) President Trump could issue a sweeping executive order within days aimed at reversing his predecessor’s climate policies, a measure that energy industry officials and environmentalists have been anticipating for weeks.

The directive will instruct members of the Cabinet to rewrite regulation restricting carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants, lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and revise the way climate change is factored into federal decision-making — all key elements of the Obama administration’s effort to address climate change. It will also reverse an executive order former president Obama issued that instructs agencies to incorporate climate change into the National Environmental Policy Act reviews it applies to federal actions, according to individuals briefed on the order.

This is about wacking the Clean Power Plan, and, even bigger, the social cost of carbon insanity

Separately, Trump will instruct federal officials in the directive to abandon Obama officials’ practice of factoring in the effect of climate change — what is dubbed “the social cost of carbon” — in their policymaking decisions. That calculus, which is set at $36 per ton of carbon dioxide, aims to capture the negative consequences of allowing greenhouse gas emissions to continue to rise. But some conservatives — including both House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who held a hearing on the issue last month, and senior members of Trump’s Energy Department and EPA transition teams — have criticized it as too sweeping.

That social cost idiocy has invaded almost all of the federal government, forcing all decisions to be based on junk science.

(Fortune) U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to release a wide-ranging executive order to reduce the role that climate change plays in policy decisions, according to a Trump administration official who reviewed a draft of the order.

The move could alter how U.S. agencies weigh regulations on a broad array of industries, from drilling, coal mining and auto manufacturing to refining.

The official on Tuesday confirmed a Bloomberg News report that the executive order will instruct the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to overhaul their use of the “social cost of carbon,” an Obama-era policy that seeks to quantify potential economic damage from climate change for the purposes of drafting regulation.

It may or may not occur this week, but, it is coming. It would discount that $36 rate, which was scheduled to rise, way down to even zero, and even negative. This would be a great start, because, as Christopher Flavelle writes

President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.

There is no single list of those programs or their cost, because President Barack Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did. The goal was to get all agencies to take climate into account, and also make those programs hard to disentangle, according to former members of the administration. In some cases, the idea was to make climate programs hard for Republicans in Congress to even find.

Finding all the programs and money is difficult, because they are not always named as climate change programs. Starting with the social cost of carbon target is a good start.

Read: Trump Looks To Do Away With “Social Cost Of Carbon” In Federal Government »

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Bummer: Trump’s Budget Could Shake Up The Uber Rich D.C. Area Economy

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 8:34 am

The Washington Post is Very Concerned over Donald Trump threatening to reduce the federal workforce

Washington region braces for budget that could shake up the historically stable local economy
President Trump’s budget, which is set to call for cuts of 10 to 20 percent to federal agencies headquartered in and around the nation’s capital, could threaten the prosperity that the D.C. region has built.

Washingtonians are beginning to worry that President Trump might do what wars, peace, recessions and government shutdowns could not: ­upend the historically stable regional economy.

Bolstered by the federal government, the metropolitan area has largely avoided the sharp ups and downs that have made life unpredictable for the rest of the nation. The Washington economy was barely nicked by the Great Recession, and it has roared ahead since then on the strength of steady job growth, booming home prices, a nascent technology sector and a huge influx of millennial workers.

But Trump is set to release a budget Thursday that threatens the prosperity Washington has built by suggesting cuts of 10 to 20 percent to federal agencies headquartered in and around the nation’s capital, while boosting defense spending. It’s a proposal that, if enacted, would shake up the local economy’s calculus, striking at government workers while possibly delivering new business to its contractors.

Is anyone outside the beltway really concerned over the plight of people who have a pretty cushy lifestyle on the backs of the taxpayers?

The federal bureaucracy has long shielded Washington from a bottoming out similar to the one automakers and other manufacturers experienced in parts of the Rust Belt — a stark contrast that Trump hammered on with his pledge to “drain the swamp.”

Unelected rulers making lots of money with little to no accountability while dictating the way Everyone Else must live.

Fuller tends to be an optimist when it comes to Washington’s growth and has watched as four Washington suburbs have climbed the rankings to join the list of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States.

The area mostly avoided the recession because of government money. Perhaps it’s time that the federal government was reduced, along with the reliance on suckling at the government teet.

Read: Bummer: Trump’s Budget Could Shake Up The Uber Rich D.C. Area Economy »

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Maddow’s Big Trump Taxes Scoops Is A Big Nothingburger

By William Teach March 15, 2017 – 8:12 am

In case you missed it, this is what Rachel Maddow stated before her show

Well, for those who tuned in, they kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Till, finally, we got this

Trump made $150 million in 2005 and paid $38 million in federal taxes

The White House said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes in 2005 — on $150 million in earnings — offering a small glimpse at the president’s personal finances, which Trump has so far kept almost entirely private.

The administration offered those details in a statement after journalist David Cay Johnston published two pages of tax information about the president, apparently from Trump’s 2005 return. The revelations were simultaneously broadcast on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow” show, which included an interview with Johnston. Based on the information on the two pages, Trump paid an effective tax rate of about 25 percent.

So, that’s it? There were no details, just the overview. He took a $100 million loss, he itemized, he used the tax deductions that Democrats and Republicans wrote into law. The Trump admin released the tax forms prior to Maddow’s “big release”, along with a statement

Chris Cillizza, no big Trump fan, has seemed to get tired of the Democrat apoplexy over nothingburgers as of late, and called this a total nothingburger

In short: We didn’t learn anything we don’t already know about Trump. Yes, he is very wealthy. Yes, he — like virtually all very wealthy people — looks for holes in the tax code to lower his overall taxable income. (Sidebar: As a non-wealthy person, I do the same thing.)

For all the hoopla surrounding the unearthing of these documents, there simply was no smoking gun — or anything close to it — here. A brief scan of Trump’s financial status a decade ago shows, roughly, what you would expect it to show. Nothing nefarious, nothing untoward.

In fact, President Obama typically paid a lower net effective tax rate. For his 2015 return, he and Michelle paid an 18.7% rate. Then yammered on about people needing to pay their fair share, after taking all the deductions embedded in law. The Bidens paid 23.3%, still less than Trump.

And that pattern continued for all Obama’s returns during his time in office, and his returns released as he was running for office.

Doug Powers notes that even Bernie Sanders paid a lower effective rate.

Perhaps Rachel Maddow could share her 1040, and let us see her effective rate. She reportedly is paid $7 million a year.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Maddow’s Big Trump Taxes Scoops Is A Big Nothingburger »

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Providing Treatment To Let Deaf People Hear Is “Cultural Genocide”

By William Teach March 14, 2017 – 6:22 pm

The Social Justice Warrior community, you know, bat guano shit crazy people, has now chimed in on curing deafness

(Daily Caller)  The professor, Teresa Blankmeyer Burke of the philosophy and religion faculty at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., espoused her theory of “cultural genocide” earlier this month at Impact Ethics, a website covering bioethical issues.

“Members of the signing Deaf community argue that research which aims to eliminate or cure deafness is a form of cultural genocide,” Burke explains. “The argument goes like this: the use of gene therapy to cure hereditary deafness would result in smaller numbers of deaf children. This, in turn, would reduce the critical mass of signing Deaf people needed for a flourishing community, ultimately resulting in the demise of the community.”

It can’t get worse than that, can it?

“This bias of Hearing culture can be seen in the normative claim that it is better to be a member of the dominant, mainstream Hearing cultural community than to be a member of the non-dominant Deaf cultural community,” Burke writes.

Suffering from hereditary deafness “confers on deaf children a Deaf way of being in the world” with “advantages” that “are not always obvious to members of the Hearing community.”

Certainly, the burning stupid won’t continue, right? RIGHT?

“Deaf children who receive gene therapy to treat their deafness lose this choice permanently, most likely without having had any input into the decision to change their genetic identity — a procedure that fundamentally changes their potential life experiences from those of deaf persons,” Burke laments. “This different identity is directly linked to their altered genetic make-up.”

I wonder if she considered asking deaf people what their opinions are?

Of course, these are the same wackjobs who think it’s OK to give hormones and stuff to allow children to transition to the other sex.

Read: Providing Treatment To Let Deaf People Hear Is “Cultural Genocide” »

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