Sore Loser Symphony: Dems Look To Keep Trump Off 2020 Ballots

By William Teach January 4, 2017 – 8:18 am

It’s not even fun wackadoodle, like the Obama Birther movement. But, then, Democrats a crazy enough to yell at horses

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/797854636816338945

BTW, she was arrested for punching said horse. Anyhow

Blue-state lawmakers want to keep Trump off 2020 ballot unless he releases tax returns

Lawmakers in several deep-blue states want to require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the ballot in those states, a sharp rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to make his tax records public.

A pair of Maryland Democrats on Tuesday announced they would introduce a bill mandating the release of five years of tax returns, mirroring similar proposals in New York, Massachusetts, California and Maine.

If approved, the proposals could keep Trump from appearing on some ballots in 2020 if he continues breaking with the decades-long tradition of financial transparency and decides to seek a second term.

The state lawmakers say they want to enshrine into law what’s been a long-standing norm among presidential contenders: the public release of tax returns detailing sources of income, business interests and charitable giving.

And, yes, this might well be Constitutional, since this is about who can be on the ballot, as conditions like submitting signatures and paying a fee are allowable.

Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings (R-Baltimore County) said it should be up to voters to decide if they don’t want a president who hasn’t disclosed tax returns.

“To me, it just looks like sour grapes over the election,” said Jennings. “We don’t reveal our tax returns as legislators. Why are you doing it for the president and not every other office too?”

Because

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On Obamacare Repeal, Republicans Use Same Game Used To Pass It

By William Teach January 4, 2017 – 8:01 am

This has liberals very freaked out, but, as David French notes, what comes around goes around, because, as Vox notes, Democrats cannot stop it

(Vox) The new Congress was sworn in on Tuesday, and the first thing it did was prepare to repeal Obamacare.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a budget resolution Tuesday that includes “reconciliation instructions” that enable Congress to repeal Obamacare with a simple Senate majority. Passing a budget resolution that includes those instructions will mean that the legislation can pass through the budget reconciliation process, in which bills cannot be filibustered.

That means Republicans will only need 50 of their 52 members in the Senate, and a bare majority in the House, to pass legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget resolution could be passed by both houses as early as next week.

Vox’s Dylan Matthews disingenuously forgets how Obamacare was actually passed, but, that’s what Liberals do

The idea that Republicans could junk Obamacare with a simple majority vote may sound baffling, given that Barack Obama famously had to wrangle together all 60 Senate Democrats in late 2009 to push the law through in the first place.

It was initially passed with 60, but, remember, they lost that vote when Scott Brown won, and instead of working with Republicans, they went with the highly partisan roadway, and pulled shenanigans leading to reconciliation.

What makes this possible is that Republicans aren’t actually going to repeal all of Obamacare, as my colleague Sarah Kliff has explained. But they’re going to repeal enough of it to reverse almost all of the coverage gains made under it.

Some things will be left intact, such as coverage for kids up to 26 and the pre-existing conditions rider. You can expect a serious amount of caterwauling from Democrats. Let’s consider just why Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced

Repealing Obamacare affects everyone
Obamacare touches just about everyone.

…

“The ACA made changes in every part of the health care system,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, of the Affordable Care Act. “Virtually everyone has been touched by the ACA.”

As we see from the headline, subhead, and third paragraph, this horrendous bill touches really everyone. The original intent was to make sure that the 40-45 million Americans without health insurance were able to get it. Then what gets passed, followed by all the rule making since, involves the federal government heavily in not just our health insurance, but our health care. Our business. And doesn’t really make it better. Nor less expensive.

Change is coming. Democrats need to get that through their minds. And, hey, I thought Liberals said they liked change? That said, Republicans need to be very careful to make sure the system stays calm as it transitions.

Done.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 3, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle in the wonderful progressive community of California, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Political Clown Parade, with a post on visitors to the White House.

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Idling Your Car During Climate Change Cold Days Is Bad For Climate Change

By William Teach January 3, 2017 – 10:23 am

Is it really necessary to idle a vehicle on a cold day? More importantly, are you dooming the planet when you do?

(Patch) Across the U.S., people with remote car starters sit in their kitchens sipping coffee while their car warms up in the driveway.

It’s a commonly-held belief that engines need to warm up before you hop in the car on days when the temperature drops below freezing. In fact, a 2009 study from Vanderbilt University found that most Americans think a car should idle for at least five minutes before its driven.

But that commonly held belief is wrong. And here’s why.

It comes down to vehicles using fuel injection now instead of carburetors, but, really, is it bad to let the oil and lubricants warm up? Not too mention warming up the engine so that hot air blows out, making the vehicle comfy, and being able to help get ice off the windows (that’s a big problem for me, living so close to the Neuse River)? Well, yeah, of course, we’re talking about the Cult of Climastrology

Every 10 minutes your car runs, it releases one pound of carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. This greenhouse gas is the biggest contributor to global warming.

Breathing in carbon dioxide is also bad for your health, especially for children, the elderly and anyone with asthma. Breathing car exhaust has been linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease, asthma and allergies, according to The Madison Energy Group.

Interesting. That makes it appear as if the CO2 is at fault, rather than other pollutants. And uses a link which provides a 404 response.

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Big Green Was A Big Loser In 2016

By William Teach January 3, 2017 – 8:04 am

There were many Big Losers in 2016. The media. Obama. Democrats. And, let’s face it, American Conservatism. The Washington Times’ Stephen Moore claims that Big Green was the biggest loser of 2016

The day after the presidential elections the executive director of the Sierra Club glumly called the Donald Trump victory “deeply disturbing for the nation and the planet.” Well, yes, if you’re a climate change alarmist who hates fossil fuels, you’re in for a bad four and maybe eight years.

Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard was even more apocalyptic saying: “I never thought I’d have to write this. The election of Donald Trump as president has been devastating There’s no question, Donald Trump’s climate denial is staggering. He wants to shut down the EPA, cancel the Paris Climate Agreement, stop funding clean energy research and drill baby drill.” Ah, but if this is so crazy, why did he win?

The short answer is that Americans went to the polls and rejected environmental extremism among other things. The biggest loser on election night was the Big Green movement in America dedicated to the anti-prosperity proposition that to save the planet from extinction we have deindustrialize the U.S. and throw millions and millions of our fellow citizens out of their jobs. Voters turned thumbs down on the climate change lobby and rightly so. (snip)

In so many ways climate change was one of the primary issues that allowed Donald Trump to crash through the blue wall of the industrial Midwest. The Democrats’ preposterous opposition to building the Keystone XL pipeline which could create as many as 10,000 high-paying construction, welding, pipefitting, electrician jobs is emblematic of how the party that is supposed to represent union workers turned their backs on their own members and their families.

Climate change was a rather silent issue, being barely discussed during election season by the politicians. It didn’t make the news that much. Yet, people thought about it, and what the policies of Democrats had been and would be. Job killing, economy damaging, cost of living increasing, and governmental power increasing. And they voted against that in the places that mattered. If all those extra Hillary voters in California and Oregon and Washington want those policies, let them pass them and live under them.

The surprise of this election is that Democrats were surprised by the mass voter rejection of the radical climate change agenda. Every poll for the last five years at least has shown that climate change barely registers as a leading concern of American voters. Jobs and the economy were always issues number one and two, and global warming was usually close to last on the list. A 2015 Fox News poll found that only 3 percent of Americans believed that climate change was “the most important issue facing America today.” That means 97 percent disagreed with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernard Sanders and Tom Steyer that global warming was the greatest threat to America. This didn’t stop Hillary Clinton from telling West Virginians that she would put every coal miner out of a job. Then she wonders why she got crushed in this unionized historically reliable Democratic state.

Moore goes on to note that the Democrats will only rise when they get rid of the climate change extremists in their party and start listening to the working Americans again. But that’s not who Democrats are anymore. They are elitists whose every policy is about increasing the size and dominance of Government, about spreading the tendrils of government into the lives of citizens. They do not want to give up that power.

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David Brooks Seems Pretty Upset That Trump Does Things Different Than Other Elected Leaders

By William Teach January 3, 2017 – 7:38 am

One of the reasons people jumped on the Trump train was that he was not an insider, not a career politician. He thought different and talked different. He tended to communicated directly with citizens, primarily via Twitter, which, of course, has the Legacy Media very upset, because they prefer to be the gatekeepers of the news, with the ability to spin it to the benefit of the Democrat party and Progressive ideals. And they still haven’t wrapped their minds around the notion that things will be done differently. Witness Excitable David Brooks

The Snapchat Presidency of Donald Trump

Normal leaders come up with policy proposals in a certain conventional way. They gather their advisers around them and they debate alternatives — with briefing papers, intelligence briefings and implementation strategies.

As opposed to gathering all the insurance executives, interest groups, and hardcore activists together to craft things like Obamacare.

Donald Trump doesn’t do that. He’s tweeted out policy gestures in recent weeks, say about the future of America’s nuclear arsenal. But these gestures aren’t attached to anything. They emerged from no analytic process and point to no implemental effects. Trump’s statements seem to spring spontaneously from his middle-of-night feelings. They are astoundingly ambiguous and defy interpretation.

Here’s the thing: is Brooks sure of that? Did he ask? Or just assume?

Normal leaders serve an office. They understand that the president isn’t a lone monarch. He is the temporary occupant of a powerful public post. He’s the top piece of a big system, and his ability to create change depends on his ability to leverage and mobilize the system. His statements are carefully parsed around the world because presidential shifts in verbal emphasis are not personal shifts; they are national shifts that signal changes in a superpower’s actual behavior.

Brooks has obviously missed the last 8 years.

Donald Trump doesn’t think in that way, either. He is anti-system. As my “PBS NewsHour” colleague Mark Shields points out, he has no experience being accountable to anybody, to a board of directors or an owner. As president-elect, he has not begun attaching himself to the system of governance he’ll soon oversee.

Personally, I see that as a good thing. Perhaps it is time for some change in the way things are done. The debt clock is approaching $20 trillion dollars. Unfunded liabilities are somewhere in the range of $75-180 trillion dollars. No one truly knows. The government pisses away money that was earned through hard work by the citizens. It dictates policies that government officials won’t live themselves. Maybe it’s time to make government accountable to We The People.

Finally, normal leaders promulgate policies. They measure their days by how they propose and champion actions and legislation.

By that measure, Obama is an utter and complete failure.

When Trump issues a statement, it may look superficially like a policy statement, but it’s usually just a symbolic assault in some dominance-submission male rivalry game. It’s trash-talking against a rival, Barack Obama, or a media critic like CNN. Trump may be bashing Obama on Russia or the Mideast, but it’s not because he has implementable policies in those realms. The primary thing is bashing enemies.

While Brooks certainly has a point here, where was the same complaint about Obama, who continuously trashed Congressional Republicans to the point that he was also denigrating Republican voters?

His statements should probably be treated less like policy declarations and more like Snapchat. They exist to win attention at the moment, but then they disappear.

And that there is the mistake of the liberal and media elite. They should take Trump very seriously, but, they’ll continue to underestimate him, just like during the election. Continue to dismiss him. And continue to misread him. And he’ll continue to make them look like chumps.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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If All You See…

By William Teach January 2, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible fossil fueled vehicle leading to the future end of the world, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Doug Ross @ Journal, with a post on the 2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards. Thank you to Doug for placing my little spot on the list again! Check out all the winners.

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Good News: Climate Doom Has Been Averted

By William Teach January 2, 2017 – 10:30 am

I’d forgotten about this

So, how exactly do we arrive at the ticking clock of 100 months? It’s possible to estimate the length of time it will take to reach a tipping point. To do so you combine current greenhouse gas concentrations with the best estimates for the rates at which emissions are growing, the maximum concentration of greenhouse gases allowable to forestall potentially irreversible changes to the climate system, and the effect of those environmental feedbacks. We followed the latest data and trends for carbon dioxide, then made allowances for all human interferences that influence temperatures, both those with warming and cooling effects. We followed the judgments of the mainstream climate science community, represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on what it will take to retain a good chance of not crossing the critical threshold of the Earth’s average surface temperature rising by 2C above pre-industrial levels. We were cautious in several ways, optimistic even, and perhaps too much so. A rise of 2C may mask big problems that begin at a lower level of warming. For example, collapse of the Greenland ice sheet is more than likely to be triggered by a local warming of 2.7C, which could correspond to a global mean temperature increase of 2C or less. The disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet could correspond to a sea-level rise of up to 7 metres.

In arriving at our timescale, we also used the lower end of threats in assessing the impact of vanishing ice cover and other carbon-cycle feedbacks (those wanting more can download a note on method from onehundredmonths.org). But the result is worrying enough.

We found that, given all of the above, 100 months from today we will reach a concentration of greenhouse gases at which it is no longer “likely” that we will stay below the 2C temperature rise threshold. “Likely” in this context refers to the definition of risk used by the IPCC. But, even just before that point, there is still a one third chance of crossing the line.

Yet another in a long line of failed Cult of Climastrology prognostications. Of course, what they really wanted was a massive increase in Government. As the saying goes “be careful what you wish for. You might get it.” Warmists never think the bad parts of their policies will affect themselves.

I eagerly await the next doomy prognostication, to go with all the other failed ones.

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Will Texas Pass A Gender Confused “Bathroom Bill”?

By William Teach January 2, 2017 – 9:14 am

Liberal activists and the UK Guardian are Very Concerned about this, since they believe it is better to allow gender confused men who feel they’re women into locker rooms, bathrooms, and changing rooms with women, invading the female’s privacy and peace

Texas looks set to follow North Carolina with push for ‘bathroom bill’

The passage of a “bathroom bill” last March sparked a maelstrom with severe political, economic and cultural consequences for North Carolina that continued through the end of 2016. Yet Texas is poised to propose a similar law in 2017.

In November, one of the state’s most senior politicians published his top 10 priorities for the next legislative session. A “Women’s Privacy Act” was at number six, right after banning immigration “sanctuary cities” and insisting on photo ID at the ballot box.

The act, said lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, is necessary so that “women and girls” can have “privacy and safety in their restrooms, showers and locker rooms”. (snip)

Patrick hasn’t released his own proposed bill, but has said it would allow businesses to create their own bathroom policies.

Oh, no! Create their own policies! How horrible! In Liberal World, only Government is allowed to set policy. That’s how it is supposed to be! Government is Government! The private sector is here to serve Government.

Can we place this in the fake news category? Because this is all Things That Haven’t Happened. But, it should happen. Democrats talk about how important women are, but, again, we see them placed lower on the rungs, below Islamic radicalism and fake women

Despite the demonstrable negative consequences in states that have passed laws that undermine LGBTQ equality, the coming months will indicate whether the ascent of Donald Trump to the White House is emboldening religious conservatives to press for more such bills after a series of gains for gay and transgender people at the federal level under the Obama administration.

They do have equality. Men go to the men’s room, women go to the women’s room. Men compete on male teams, women compete on female teams. The interesting thing here is if they’d stop making such a big deal of it, if they’d stop trying to force compliance, there would be less pushback. They’re harming their own cause. Of course, it’s still a really bad idea to allow men who think they’re women in the bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms with young girls. But, they refuse to accept accommodations, they demand compliance.

But, Liberals really do not care about women, when it comes to it. They care about fringe interest groups, and women’s rights and privacy can go to hell in their world of perversion.

The rest of the article is about as wacky and unhinged as you’d expect, as it delves into religious freedom.

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Paul Krugman: America Has Now Become A “Stan” Or Something

By William Teach January 2, 2017 – 8:51 am

Remember when we were supposed to give Barack Obama a chance in 2008? Not in Paul Krugman’s world, where doom is occurring and Trump is at fault

America Becomes A Stan

In 2015 the city of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, was graced with a new public monument: a giant gold-plated sculpture portraying the country’s president on horseback. This may strike you as a bit excessive. But cults of personality are actually the norm in the “stans,” the Central Asian countries that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, all of which are ruled by strongmen who surround themselves with tiny cliques of wealthy crony capitalists.

Americans used to find the antics of these regimes, with their tinpot dictators, funny. But who’s laughing now?

We are, after all, about to hand over power to a man who has spent his whole adult life trying to build a cult of personality around himself; remember, his “charitable” foundation spent a lot of money buying a six-foot portrait of its founder. Meanwhile, one look at his Twitter account is enough to show that victory has done nothing to slake his thirst for ego gratification. So we can expect lots of self-aggrandizement once he’s in office. I don’t think it will go as far as gold-plated statues, but really, who knows?

(blah blah blah)

In short, America is rapidly turning into a stan.

Here’s the kicker

But let’s get real. Everything we know suggests that we’re entering an era of epic corruption and contempt for the rule of law, with no restraint whatsoever.

Really?

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/815915882266365952

We’ve literally (not the Joe Biden type) just been through 8 years of what Krugman is complaining about. The massive waste of taxpayer money so that Obama can vacation and campaign. Using the IRS as a tool to abuse conservative groups. Attempting to hide everything from Freedom Of Information Requests. And Congress. Lying to Congress and the People. Using secretive email to communicate. Hillary’s server. People like Huma Abadin double dipping in their work for government and private entities, and doing it for pay for play. The constant photos of Obama inserting himself into everything that happens. Refusing to engage Congress and instead passing rule after rule, regulation after regulation, many of which exceeded statutory limitations and had federal judges telling the Obama administration to cease and desist.

Krugman even goes on to whine about the George W. Bush administration. But nothing for Obama and his time.

The only question now is whether the rot has gone so deep that nothing can stop America’s transformation into Trumpistan. One thing is for sure: It’s destructive as well as foolish to ignore the uncomfortable risk, and simply assume that it will all be O.K. It won’t.

How will it go with Trump? Time will tell. Yes, I’m concerned. I’ve been concerned since he started rising in the polls. But, I’m willing to give him a chance. Lefties like Paul Krugman are not only unwilling to give him a change, they’re at level 10 Moonbat.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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