If All You See…

…is an evil plastic water bottle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Tradition, with a post on a school making things more dangerous for kids.

PS: Just a reminder, please recycle. It’s environmentally friendly.

Read: If All You See… »

Ted Cruz Understands Federalism: Leave Marijuana Votes To States

If you remember, I’ve written along these same lines many times, the only difference being that I couldn’t care less whether marijuana is legal or not, since I don’t use anymore, and haven’t in over 20 years. I find it rather boring, and do not enjoy the high

(Reason) In two interviews on Saturday, Ted Cruz reiterated his support for marijuana federalism. “Personally,” he told the ABC station in Denver, “I would vote against marijuana legalization. If the state of Texas had a referendum on it, I would vote no. But I think it is the prerogative of the states to make that determination. I think the people of Colorado have the right to make the decision that they’ve made under the Constitution, and as president I would respect that right.”

Talking to The Denver Post the same day, Cruz explained the practical advantages of letting states go their own way. “It is an opportunity for the rest of the country to see what happens here in Colorado, what happens in Washington state, see the states implement the policies,” he said. “If it works well, other states may choose to follow. If it doesn’t work well, other states may choose not to follow.” He said it was too early to say how legalization is going in Colorado.

This is the very essence of federalism: other than the few things expressly delegated to the federal government per the Constitution, issues should be left in the hands of the states, which are much closer to the Citizenry, The People. Which leads to much deeper discussions of what Los Federales should and shouldn’t be doing, Constitutional conventions, repealing the 17th Amendment, and others.

Read: Ted Cruz Understands Federalism: Leave Marijuana Votes To States »

Warmist Michael E. Kraft Wants To Punish Climate Deniers

Who is Michael E. Kraft? Does it really matter, because, he seems to be saying what most Warmists think, namely, yeah, there’s a First Amendment and all, but, some things are more important, so, it’s OK to violate their free speech rights. For the record, he is professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Michael E. Kraft: Climate-change deniers deserve punishment

Most of us recognize the value of science in dealing with complex problems that pose significant risks to public health and well-being.

Thus we expect reputable science to be reported and used in helping us make difficult policy choices, such as what to do about climate change.

Scientific findings and associated uncertainties should be scrutinized carefully and debated vigorously within the scientific community and among the public.

Can’t you feel the “but” coming?

However, denying the best scientific evidence we have is neither smart nor safe. It could lead to greater societal harm than if we had taken sensible action when reliable knowledge was first available.

The best available science at the time said that the world was flat, that it was only 6,000 years old, that the Sun went around the Earth, and that witches were real. After some blather about the Cult Of Climastrology’s favorite comparison, to the tobacco company lawsuits (funny how they all seem to have the same talking points), we get to the meat

Some ask whether such inquiries should be limited to fossil fuel companies. What about extending the liability, they say, to certain think tanks and advocacy groups?

Some such groups have been heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry and have misrepresented climate change risks to the public. That might be a tougher sell, given rights to free speech, but it could be given consideration.

In other words, they could manufacture a way to eliminate Free Speech protections for those who fail to fall in line.

Our current limited policies reflect a history of science denial by fossil fuel companies and others that have sown confusion and weakened public support for doing more. Those who intentionally misled the public about climate change should be held accountable.

Isn’t interesting how Warmists/Progressives always seem to go for the Big Government, draconian, authoritarian route? Wanting to punish people for their beliefs? This is the route they will take, saying that people “intentionally misled the public” (even as Warmists are unable to support their belief in anthropogenic climate change with hard facts and data) and should be punished, 1st Amendment be damned.

Read: Warmist Michael E. Kraft Wants To Punish Climate Deniers »

Bummer: Adult Video Website Supposedly Bans NC Citizens Over HB2

Yet another bunch of leftists who fail to understand the law itself. But, is this really about protesting?

(Huffington Post) There’s a new kink in North Carolina’s LGBT controversy: A popular porn website is banning all computers from “The Tar Heel State.”

XHamster.com has been refusing to serve anyone from North Carolina since 12:30 p.m. EDT, Monday.

Instead, users with a North Carolina IP address are just seeing a black screen on their computer — no porn.

The extreme measures will stay in place until North Carolina repeals House Bill 2, a law passed on March 23 that effectively prevents cities and counties in the state from passing rules that protect LGBT rights.

Huh. Never heard of them. But, now that they’ve supposedly done this ban, and received some press, more people will have heard of the site, earning them more traffic. According to Alexa, they are #91 worldwide, with a drop of 18 due to declining views. Pornhub, which is probably more well known, at least per picture websites using the name for funny stuff, is number 66, and though own 2 in ranking, has seen increased traffic.

I gave typing in the address a try, and, I am not blocked as stated, and my IP is most certainly a North Carolina one. Nor does it block the playing of video. Could this simply be a traffic generating attempt?

XHamster.com spokesman, Mike Kulich, said the website believes in equality for everyone.

“We have spent the last 50 years fighting for equality for everyone and these laws are discriminatory which XHamster.com does not tolerate,” he said in an official statement sent to The Huffington Post. “Judging by the stats of what you North Carolinians watch, we feel this punishment is a severe one. We will not standby and pump revenue into a system that promotes this type of garbage. We respect all sexualities and embrace them.”

See, they believe in tolerance and equality and not being discriminatory, so, they will not be tolerant, will discriminate against North Carolina porn watchers, and not allow equality for NC users.

Kulich said the website plans to replace the black screen currently seen by North Carolina porn buffs with a petition demanding the repeal of the law.

And they surely want everyone to go there for their adult video watching needs. Of course, they are engaged in questionable use of copyright law in hosting the videos. And, like most, fail to understand the bill. If they had operations in North Carolina, they would be free to allow TG folks to use the bathroom of their gender identity. That’s choice. Don’t liberals like choice anymore?

It’d be interesting to check the Alexa traffic for xhamster.com in a month or two, see if it has seen an increase.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Bummer: Adult Video Website Supposedly Bans NC Citizens Over HB2 »

Dems Are Opening Lemonade Stand To Fight For Wage Equality Or Something

They’re so cute at this age

Of course

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/719636224500199424

There’s much more fun at Twitchy, including this gem

https://twitter.com/Laura_Beth_02/status/719612325574144000

Oh, and will the DNC be paying the workers $15 an hour?

Read: Dems Are Opening Lemonade Stand To Fight For Wage Equality Or Something »

If All You See…

…is a rising sea encroaching on a carbon pollution created desert, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post on protecting women and girls over making a few people feel good.

Read: If All You See… »

We Should Totally Be Freaking Out About Natural Climate Change Or Something

This is a new one, coming from uber-Cult of Climastrology, and very far left, site Triple Pundit

Climate Change is Natural? And That Doesn’t Freak You Out?

In what now appears to be a regular habit, Gallup just surveyed a thousand-odd U.S. adults on their views on climate change. Overall, 49 percent of those surveyed attributed climate change to human activity while 46 percent blamed “natural” causes.

In a not-so-surprising but certainly fearful asymmetry, 72 percent of democrats but only 27 percent of republicans attributed climate change to human activity. Young adults: 61 percent human-caused, 38 percent natural; Older adults: 39 percent human-caused, 54 percent natural. This dichotomy in “beliefs” pervades other areas of scientific knowledge and splits states along political and demographic lines, as evident from the red-state-blue-state correlations in the maps above. (snip)

What I want to get at is this: If one indeed believes that climate change is natural, should that not be far scarier than if it were human-caused?

Perhaps if the Earth was heading back into a glacial age, but, a minor increase in global temperatures, less than during previous Holocene warm periods, is not particularly concerning. The article goes on to tell us about how doom-worthy this natural Hotcoldwetdry is, and why everyone who thinks it is mostly/solely natural should be freaking out, which leads to

As we sit here watching this natural climate change unfold, with glaciers melting everywhere and the arctic warming at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, there is no remedy, nothing to do and no other planet to take refuge in. The expected damage from droughts and floods and sea-level rise could devastate economies — particularly of already fragile nations — and send refugees scattering around the globe to safer ground. But if it is, as the climate scientists seem to suggest, just a matter of carbon in the atmosphere, there are ways — even at this late juncture — to fight this thing. Oil is not going to last forever anyway, and everybody hates the pollution from coal (just ask the Chinese). So it may, after all, be a good thing to innovate our way out of this climate problem. And is innovation not the lifeblood of the American economy? And here we have the opportunity to transform everything we do through brand new technologies!

So, it seems to me that meeting this natural climate variation that is heading our way with sanguine resignation locks us into economic stasis — frozen in place by the warming. I wonder what drives those who hold on to the “it’s natural” theory, the 70 percent of republicans and 54 percent of older Americans? It cannot be the fear that I feel at contemplating an unexplained, inexorable natural warming. Can it be fear of change?

So, even if it is mostly/solely natural, it still means we should spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money, increase taxation, put more and more people under the power of the central government. Why does every solution revolve around these?

As for fear of change, Republicans have been advocates for wise policies on developing alternatives that work, rather than flinging money to splatter against the wall like a monkey flinging poo in their enclosures. But, yes, we do fear quite a bit of what the Warmists are pushing, because it is about centralized authoritarian government, which will further degrade our lives.

Read: We Should Totally Be Freaking Out About Natural Climate Change Or Something »

Salon: The Democratic Party Run Education System Has Led To Our “Disgraceful State Of Politics”

Salon is one of the main websites to head to when you want to see what the nutter Democratic Party base really thinks. Er, feels. Every once in a while, they unintentionally land on a real truth. In this case, how bad the education system is. Obviously, they fail to assign blame, which lands almost entirely upon the Democratic Party. Poll after poll after poll, article after article, protest after protest, they all show that the vast majority of teachers vote Democrat. Sure, not all of them are the nutters creating songs about Obama and forcing students to do exercises that make them “understand radical Islam”, and aren’t freaking out about water pistols and finger pistols, but, they vote Democrat. Their unions are chock full of the more hardcore Progressives, which vote Democrat. And we end up with this, where the subhead is the actual meat of the article

We let the idiots take the wheel: Donald Trump, Fox News and how we let our democracy rot
Disgraceful state of politics is tied to collapse of education. Philistines are marching, swarming Trump rallies

It is easy in a country dedicated to a megalomaniacal style of self-praise to grow tired of all the parades, hymns, and maudlin speeches about the wisdom of the “founding fathers.” Compounding the frustration is that many of their most valuable insights are now forbidden from entry into public school curriculums and cultural discourse. As the word “elitist” continues to undergo unfair demonization, no one dare utter that the framers of the United States Constitution were, themselves, elitists. They were terrified of what damage the public might inflict upon their invention. Benjamin Franklin even went so far as to predict that “the people shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

The author, David Masciotra, proves that we do need a better education system, since that Ben Franklin quote is used out of context, and doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. The full quote, along with Franklin’s full writing, actually shows what happens with the type of politics and policies Dems push.

In the current circus posing as a political campaign, commentators and candidates waste much of their time and energy frothing about insignificant issues and phony crises. Donald Trump, with all the eloquence and brilliance of a barroom belch, has introduced illegal immigration into the political debate, often claiming that it is one of the reasons that America is “going to hell.” Trump has failed to make a deal with reality, as it stubbornly refuses to submit to his paranoia. Illegal immigrants comprise a mere 3.5 percent of the American population, and from 2009 to 2014, more Mexicans left the United States than entered it. If trends continue, Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” will keep more Mexicans in the country than it keeps out.

Meanwhile, the cowardly obsession surrounding “Islamic terrorism” continues to play out like a scene of absurdist theater. Tragedies and atrocities, like recent bombings in Brussels and Pakistan, demand sympathy for mourners and vigilance toward the perpetrators, but standard methods of statistical evaluation demonstrate that an American has a one in 4 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack. The average American is more likely to drown in the bathtub.

Yes, Democrats are more concerned with forcing compliance with allowing the gender confused to be allowed to use whichever bathroom they feel like using, rather than all the myriad issues surround illegal aliens and Islamic radicalism (even though the LGBT community is treated far, far worse by Islam). And bathtubs do not intentionally attempt to kill us. This all shows the poor education system

Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, far from a radical, co-chaired a task force on education reform in 2010, and in her scathing conclusion, labeled the decline of public schools so calamitous that it constitutes a “long term national security threat.”

In a more recent speech at Stanford University, where Rice is now a professor, she stated truths so obvious they would need amplification only in a country routinely neglectful of its educational system: “Failing schools undermine economic growth, social cohesion, and the ability to fill positions in institutions vital to national security.”

An advanced degree in sociology is not mandatory for finding evidence confirming Rice’s bleak forecast of America’s ignorant future. Two-thirds of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice, and half are incapable of identifying all three branches of government. Forty-two percent of the public does not believe in evolutionary biology, while 24 percent believe that the sun orbits the earth.

Nearly a quarter of Americans read below the fifth-grade level, which helps to explain why only 29 percent read a newspaper, and why 24 percent of Americans do not read even one book a year.

Of course, the article goes on to bash Trump and his supporters, but, fails to note who runs the education system. The problems can be laid almost entirely at the feet of the Democratic Party. They aren’t particularly worried about education, they are attempting to create good little Democrats, everywhere from standard liberals to frothing at the mouth Progressives, Socialists, and Marxists. They’re the ones pushing kids to get worthless degrees, typically ones that end in “studies”, which have little to no value as a marketable skill, and are even detrimental, as employers will look at the degrees, along with what the Snowflakes did in college, and decide that the person will bring more trouble then they are worth, and even be a threat for a lawsuit.

If they cannot name a SCOTUS justice, if they do not know the three branches of government, if they are missing lots knowledge, whose fault is that? Do not look towards Republicans. We do not own the system.

Read: Salon: The Democratic Party Run Education System Has Led To Our “Disgraceful State Of Politics” »

Head Of Border Patrol Council Tells Congress Border Is Essentially Open To Mexico

You thought the border was pretty bad, did you? You thought Obama’s illegal alien executive orders were bad, did you? You probably did not think they were this bad

(Washington Times) Border Patrol agents have been ordered to release dripping-wet illegal immigrants at the Rio Grande unless they actually see them climbing out of the river, creating what amounts to “an open border with Mexico,” the chief of the agents’ labor union told Congress in new testimony last week.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told the House Judiciary Committee that agents were given the orders verbally soon after President Obama laid out plans for limiting immigration enforcement in 2014.

“We have apprehended illegal aliens just north of the border who are still soaking wet from crossing the river. If they claim, as increasingly they are doing, that they have been here since January 1, 2014, we will process and then release them,” Mr. Judd said in written testimony following up on questions from a hearing earlier this year.

“They are still wet from the river and miles from any civilization and on their word alone we release them unless we physically saw them cross the river,” he said. “This policy de facto creates an open border with Mexico for any illegal alien who wants to claim that they were here before 2014.”

The January 1, 2014 date comes from Obama’s executive orders regarding illegal aliens, designed to give a de-facto extra-legal amnesty, and the illegals have learned to game the system. In a sane world, these illegals would be trotted back to the border and sent across immediately. Instead, not only are they not being held for deportation hearings, they are simply being let go if a simple fingerprinting and background check shows no criminal issues.

It matters not a bit whether the illegal is a good person who will work hard and just wants a better life. The very fact is that they are here illegally, will be a drain on our systems, and should have done it the legal way by applying for either a work visa or citizenship. Instead, they will agitate and demand to be legalized, all while demanding that US citizens speak their language, give them stuff, and calling illegal alien opponents bigots, racists, and other nasty things. Then you have those who steal guns and shoot citizens. And drag race and kill citizens. Burglarize them. Steal their identities. Cause misery for citizens.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Head Of Border Patrol Council Tells Congress Border Is Essentially Open To Mexico »

If All You See…

…is a field that will soon be flooded from hundreds of feet of sea rise, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day A View From The Beach, with a post on more Obamacare problems.

It’s biking week!

Read: If All You See… »

Pirate's Cove