NY Times Totally Upset That GOP Won’t Allow People On Arbitrary No Fly List To Be Denied Firearms

There are lots and lots of silly opinion pieces and editorials, long on outrage, short on facts. The NY Times Editorial Board provides possibly the dumbest one of the day

Tough Talk and a Cowardly Vote on Terrorism

Investigators now believe that what initially seemed a workplace shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., was a well-planned attack by a married couple with at least some contact with Islamic extremists.

The evolving situation has forced Republican leaders and presidential candidates to contort themselves: talking tough on terrorism, yet ignoring the fact that the two were armed to the teeth with two .223-caliber assault rifles and two 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, and hundreds of rounds, all purchased legally.

Armed to the teeth! Legally purchased. Wait, wouldn’t this be part of that whole “Islamophobia” liberals write about?

While the nation suffered through the shock of another bloody massacre, on Thursday every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives.

The measure has been introduced repeatedly since 2007. The Government Accountability Office has documented that over years of congressional blockage, hundreds of suspected terrorists on the watchlist bought guns.

Why didn’t Democrats pass it in 2009 or 2010, when they owned Congress and the White House?

No matter. The House speaker, Paul Ryan, issued his party’s weak defense of arming potential terrorism suspects on Thursday morning: “I think it’s very important to remember people have due process rights in this country, and we can’t have some government official just arbitrarily put them on a list.” Mr. Ryan’s Senate colleagues demonstrated that they are more worried about the possibility that someone might be turned away from a gun shop than shielding the public against violent criminals.

Got that? It’s weak to actually allow people their Constitutional right of due process.

How well has the No Fly List worked?

  • Children, even ones under the age of 1, have been on it
  • A marine returning from Iraq, David Brown, was on it
  • Senator Ted Kennedy was on it and had trouble flying
  • John Lewis, US Representative, was on it
  • David Nelson, the actor best known for his role on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, is among various persons named David Nelson who have been stopped at airports because their name apparently appears on the list
  • US Senator Ted Stevens’ wife Catherine has been stopped because they thought she might be Cat Stevens

Those are just a smattering of the problems with the list. Nelson Mandela, and even Nuns, are on/have been on the no fly list. Liberals used to complain about the No Fly List, decrying it as un-Constitutional, arbitrary, and just wrong. It can be darned near impossible to find out if one is on it, till one takes an evil fossil fueled flight (well, tries to), and very hard to get off it. Oh, wait, look


The No-Fly List Is Unconstitutional

The federal government’s no-fly list, which prevents those suspected of terrorist ties from boarding flights in the United States or flying through American airspace, is reported to include more than 20,000 names—a number that metastasized after the Sept. 11 attacks. There’s a low evidentiary standard for getting on the list. Once on, it’s not only difficult to get off but almost impossible to find out why, exactly, one was added in the first place.

That was the Editors blog for the NY Times back in 2014.

Perhaps the NY Times Editorial Board can answer the question “would this have stopped any of the “mass shootings”, including the recent one in San Bernardino?” Oh, and another question: “will the NY Times freak out when Muslims who have not done anything wrong other than going to nations which are hotbeds of Islamic terrorism are denied the right to purchase firearms due to being on the no fly list?”

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: NY Times Totally Upset That GOP Won’t Allow People On Arbitrary No Fly List To Be Denied Firearms »

Good News: Hillary And O’Malley Have Awesome Gun Control Plans That Wouldn’t Have Stopped San Bernardino

When Democrats call for “common sense gun control”, they need to look no further than California

Not half bad. Here’s what it looks like on the front page of Slate

From the article

Clinton has a three-pronged plan. First, there are background checks. As president, she would hope to sign comprehensive federal background check legislation and close such loopholes for gun show and Internet sales. On the supply-side, her plan calls for repealing the law that prevents victims of gun violence from suing manufacturers and dealers, and backing punitive action against “bad-actor” dealers that “knowingly supply straw purchasers and traffickers.” She would also seek to limit access to guns among the mentally ill—specifically people “involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment”—and make straw purchasing a federal crime.

As I mentioned this morning, California has very restrictive background checks, which require a Firearm Safety Certificate, 10 day waiting period, registering the weapon, and the purchasers fingerprints on file. All private sales must go through a federally licensed firearms dealer, which means no gun show loophole. All Internet purchases must also go through a federally licensed dealer. Straw purchases are already a federal crime (perhaps she should have a word with Obama and Eric Holder regarding Operation Fast and Furious). Almost everything she wants is already being done in California. Suing manufacturers? We don’t sue alcohol and auto makers when someone gets liquored up and kills someone with a vehicle.

O’Malley has a similar approach, drawn from his experience in Maryland. He wants expanded background checks, an end to “unregulated internet gun and ammunition sales”—which seems especially apt given the huge amount of ammunition held by the San Bernardino shooters—and greater information sharing between states, so that a background check in Virginia, for instance, is useful to authorities in Oregon.

Maryland has lots of shootings, especially in Baltimore. Increased sharing would be great. Would these Democrats allow information such as, oh, say, that someone who passed California’s restrictive gun permitting system was traveling to Saudi Arabia, a hardcore Islamist nation?

Beyond background checks, O’Malley wants fingerprint-licensing and safety training for all gun purchases, including private sales by licensed dealers; a national age requirement for handgun possession; required safety standards for gun storage; and pushback against concealed-carry laws. To fight gun crime and domestic violence, he wants to ban gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence in any relationship, as well as gun ownership for people subject to emergency restraining orders. He’ll also push a national firearms registry, mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms, and “microstamping”—a unique code stamped onto a cartridge case—for all guns, to help law enforcement trace weapons involved in crime. And like Clinton, he’d punish dealers who break the law and expand penalties for gun traffickers.

Almost all of that is done in California. Oh, and pipe bombs are plain illegal. Funny how criminals refuse to follow the law.

Read: Good News: Hillary And O’Malley Have Awesome Gun Control Plans That Wouldn’t Have Stopped San Bernardino »

If All You See…

…is carbon pollution created snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post noting Obama’s ISIS czar is a terrorist sympathizer.

Read: If All You See… »

Bummer: ‘Climate Change” Could Deprive Earth Of Oxygen

The last mega-scary fable from the Cult of Climastrology

Doomsday revisited: Will global warming deprive us of oxygen?

Global warming has triggered an array of apocalyptic scenarios for future generations, from worsening drought, storms and floods to melted icesheets and rising seas.

Now a new study, published on Tuesday and coinciding with the UN climate talks in Paris, adds to the grim tableau: the risk that warming at the far end of the scale could rob our planet of oxygen.

“We have identified another possible consequence of … global warming that can potentially be more dangerous than all others,” say a pair of scientists from Britain’s University of Leicester.

Their study, based in the peer-reviewed journal the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, is based on a computer model of phytoplankton, the microscopic sea plants which produce about two-thirds of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Do we even need to go further than “computer model”?

Average global warming of 6 C (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) would be a threshold at which the phytoplankton’s vital oxygen-generating abilities, determined by water temperature, would be impaired, they say.

“It would mean oxygen depletion not only in the water but also in the air,” said the team. “Should it happen, it would obviously kill most of life on Earth.”

How did these phytoplankton survive during previous epochs when the average global temperatures were warmer than these predictions (which aren’t happening except in computer models)? When did science become the same as looking in a crystal ball?

Their study was based on mathematical modelling, rather than observational research, and the authors acknowledged they did not factor in certain natural processes, such as ocean circulation, which could influence the outcome.

But, they said, if carbon emissions remain unchecked, deoxygenation is ultimately not a risk to be dismissed.

“The danger… is probably more real than to be drowned,” they wrote.

So, it is strictly carnival palm reading material, based on politics, rather than actual real world data, and didn’t even include natural processes. I really do not want to listen to any Warmist telling me this has anything whatsoever to do with science anymore.

Read: Bummer: ‘Climate Change” Could Deprive Earth Of Oxygen »

For Developing Nations, Climate Change Is All About “Show Me The Money”

In a goodly chunk of the 1st World, pushing climate change is primarily about seeking more governmental control over people, private entities, and economies, while also putting more tax/fee money in the pockets of the government, along with those who push the issue. Also, we can’t forget that this is a distraction issue from having to deal with real world issues that citizens care about. And a way to push to destroy capitalism. And so much more. Basically, everything that Progressives (nice fascism) have been pushing for almost a hundred years.

In the “developing world”? This is mostly about redistribution of wealth. They’re all about “show me the money”

Climate change reparations: What does the US owe?

The planet is on the edge of catastrophic climate change, a warming of the globe that is already creating a mind-boggling array of human suffering. The United States is leading an international effort to fix the problem, but no nation holds more historical responsibility for creating it.

We’re the top cause of global warming, the all-time leading source of the pollution that traps heat and drives extreme weather. So, as world leaders gather in Paris in hopes of striking a historic deal to curb that pollution, a large and uncomfortable question is bubbling up: Should the United States pay for the climate-related damage it’s already caused – and will cause in the future?

Personally, even if climate change is mostly/solely caused by Mankind (it isn’t), I won’t apologize for living a 1st World life in the greatest, most innovative nation in modern history. Warmists, of course, will apologize, they just won’t take steps in their own lives to atone for their actions.

Dozens of small, low-lying island nations think so, and on Tuesday they made their case to a sympathetic – but ultimately unmoved President Obama. His administration has fought hard against “loss and damage” payouts, as they’re known in the parlance of the United Nations, viewing them as a kind of unlimited liability for bad weather.

But such payouts could be a do-or-die component of the deal in Paris. The island nations show no signs of backing down, and their story is powerful. They’re often called “the moral voice” of climate change — because what they face is nothing less than national extinction.

They want money

Most of the developing world has already demanded that America – and other rich nations – pay for sea walls and solar panels and all the costs of mitigating climate change. And the richer nations have already agreed: At the last major climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, Obama himself brokered a deal to help cover these costs – a $100 billion annual fund.

In Paris, however, the demands have gone up. Developing nations are asking for money to help prepare for the ravages of climate change, but also compensation for the lost of lands, property and livelihoods that can’t be saved.

Mentioned, of course, is Kiribati, because they are supposedly doom. Yet, they have 23 airports. They push tourism heavily, which means people taking fossil fueled flights to the island nation, and using up resources. And, from the minimal data available (one would think that islands that are so concerned about sea rise would have better data), NOAA shows a measured rise of just .19 feet increase per century. Other data sources show the same minimal increase, which is much less than should be expected for a Holocene warm period. Reconstructions of various data points data shows just a .6mm a year rise, which matches the minimal NOAA data.

What all these countries want is money for nothing, taken from producers. Nations, especially the United States, have given developing nations money for a long, long time. But, climate change is a convenient way to demand money with no strings attached, of guilting productive nations into giving that money.

None of this is about science.

Read: For Developing Nations, Climate Change Is All About “Show Me The Money” »

Shockingly, Usual Suspects Call For More Gun Control

I’m sure you’re aware of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, in the People’s Republik Of California. So, of course, before the bodies had even cooled, the ghoulish left immediately jumped to their Typical Calls for gun control. We do no know the motives of Syed Farook and his wife Tasheen Malik. And the name of the supposed 3rd suspect, if there is one. Doesn’t matter. Liberals have a Narrative

(NY Times Editorial Board) Those who reject sensible gun controls will say anything to avoid implicating the growth in the civilian arsenal. The House speaker, Paul Ryan, for one, responded to the killings at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs with a call for better mental health care, and is supporting a new bill that sponsors said would expand services to provide earlier treatment so violent people might theoretically be intercepted. “For those with mental illness, what we ought to be doing is treating the mental illness instead of responding to the crime,” Representative Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican and a chief sponsor of the bill, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Tuesday.

This is the familiar line trotted out by Republican politicians after every massacre, as if unfettered access to high-powered weaponry — which they and the gun lobby have made possible — is not a factor in this national catastrophe. Congress’s Republican leaders are betting they can brazenly go through another election cycle without enacting gun safety laws.

Congress has allowed the domestic gun industry to use assorted loopholes to sell arsenals that are used against innocent Americans who cannot hide. Without firm action, violent criminals will keep terrorizing communities and the nation, inflicting mass death and damage across the land.

And, of course, you had Mr. Obama (who is surrounded by people carrying weapons, many of which are banned for ownership by American citizens) calling for more gun control, along with Hillary, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley. Many more newspapers and news outlets are doing the same, along with liberals galore on blogs and social media. Let’s consider a few things, though.

First, California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation

That the shooting took place in California is particularly remarkable, given that it has the most restrictive gun laws in the United States, thanks to a highly progressive legislature. Anyone who wishes to purchase a gun in California must produce a Firearm Safety Certificate, and must purchase a “California legal” gun which complies with stringent mandates on what can and cannot be sold within state borders. Sales include a waiting period, and must be conducted through a licensed dealer, and the state constitution doesn’t guarantee firearms rights, though federal suits are pending against the state on the grounds that some of its laws may violate the Second Amendment.

While I am sometimes loath to cite Wikipedia, they lay out many of the restrictions. Assault weapons? Banned for purchase, sale, and import. Magazines above 10 rounds? Banned. Private sales of any gun must go through a federally licensed dealer, eliminating the so-called gun show loophole. Concealed Carry is very restrictive, and many cities have “No Issue” policies in place. That Firearm Safety Certificate is a written test. All weapons must be registered with the state, and all buyers have their fingerprints recorded and placed on file.

This is almost everything that Liberals have been pushing regarding gun control, in a state pretty much run by Democrats for a long, long time.

Bombs? Bombs are restricted by state and federal law. Yet, there were supposedly pipe bombs left all over the place. Whether real or not, they are illegal. As a sidebar, whether real or not, leaving them around shows this was not just a spur of the moment crime of passion, but something that required planning. Whether this was terrorism based on ideology or something else, we will wait and see.

The basic fact is this: California is so restrictive that there’s not much more to do but ban private ownership of all firearms. Is that what the NY Times, Obama, Hillary, et all want? If so, speak up. Speak out. Tell us your plans.

Second, have you noticed that there only is concern from liberals when the shootings are large and/or involve White people? Rarely is there any concern from Liberals over Black people shooting each other in Democratic Party run cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore. There have been over 300 murders in Baltimore this year, with the majority of victims being Black, and the majority of the shooters being Black. Why so little concern from Liberals? Do they just really not like Black people?

BTW, the article I linked regarding restrictive gun laws isn’t Conservative and/or supportive of gun rights.

He wasn’t wrong. This shouldn’t be normal, and this shouldn’t be the face of America, domestically and for the world. But it is. Citizens of most of the West and a fair chunk of the Global South are shocked by how insufficient our gun laws are, and they should be. What private individual needs to own a long gun? A handgun kept anywhere other than a range for recreational shooting? Military-grade equipment? We aren’t living in an era in which we need a “well-regulated militia.” In fact, the organizations calling themselves “militias” today tend to land on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of known hate groups on a regular basis. These are precisely the people we don’twant carrying guns. Many of them are terrorists disrupting American society and inculcating us with a sense of deep fear of going about our daily business.

We can blame the gun lobby for all of this, and we should keep blaming the gun lobby until Congress cannot avoid this problem any longer. Even though we keep saying this after every mass shooting, it is apparently not enough. We must march on Congress, we must lean on our representatives, and we must vote for candidates who promise to take aggressive stances on gun control. We owe it to our dead, if not to ourselves.

So, yes, this is about taking away private ownership of guns as much as possible.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Shockingly, Usual Suspects Call For More Gun Control »

Snap! Warmists Come Up With New Way To Combat Hotcoldwetdry

Here it is

Crikey!

There’s a cheap, quick, dirty, and controversial way to combat global warming that isn’t on the agenda of the United Nations climate summit in Paris, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. It involves replicating the planet-cooling effect of a volcanic eruption. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew in 1991, its emissions briefly reversed most of the global warming that had occurred since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The idea is to mimic Pinatubo by using a fleet of modified business jets to inject fine droplets of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere, where they would combine with water vapor to form fine sulfate particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth. (snip)

Naturally, there’s a catch. Several, in fact. The sun shield would merely mask the rising concentration of greenhouse gases, like perfuming a skunk. It adds one pollutant to counteract another. It could reverse progress toward closing the hole in the ozone layer by ripping apart ozone molecules. Sulfate particles falling from the sky could cause air pollution deaths. It would leave fertile coral reefs exposed to deadly bleaching because it wouldn’t do anything about ocean acidification. It could even become a cause for war if one country decided it was harmed by another’s climate meddling. Even Keith allows that it’s a “brutally ugly technical fix.”

Gee, if only there was a clean energy source that would work, like nuclear.

Critics’ biggest worry: It would be perceived as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the planet. If pausing global warming is as easy as sending a fleet of modified Gulfstream G650s into the stratosphere with payloads of sulfuric acid, the weak pressure to cut back on emissions of greenhouse gases might get even weaker. That’s why you won’t find it mentioned on the agenda of the Paris summit, a major event that’s expected to draw 45,000 people from more than 190 countries.

Get out of jail free card? Isn’t that exactly what purchasing carbon offsets is? Especially when government employees, elected politicians, and government agencies are using taxpayer funds to purchase them, rather than their own money?

But, really, would Warmists want a fix (for their mostly made up issue)? Not likely, because ‘climate change’ allows them to push for more fascistic policies and higher taxes/fees. Don’t ever forget what the leftist Club For Rome stated

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that .. the threat of global warming.. would fit the bill…. the real enemy, then, is humanity itself….we believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is a real one or….one invented for the purpose.”

Read: Snap! Warmists Come Up With New Way To Combat Hotcoldwetdry »

If All You See…

…is an evil carbon pollution infused beer causing the seas to rise dozens of feet, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Doug Ross @ Journal, with a post on the idiocy of central planning in one chart.

Read: If All You See… »

What Do You Know, Race Threats At Kean U Were Fake

And, you’ll never, ever, ever possibly guess who was behind them

(NJ.com)  A recent Kean graduate has been charged with being responsible for a series of tweets threatening black students at the school two weeks ago, acting Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park announced Tuesday.

Kayla-Simone McKelvey, 24, of Union – a black alum who graduated in May – was charged by summons with third-degree creating a false public alarm.

Park said an investigation by the Union County Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Prosecutions Unit and Kean University police found that McKelvey, a self-proclaimed activist, participated in a student rally to raise awareness of racism on college campuses on Nov. 17, but left midway through and walked to a computer station in a university library.

Once there, McKelvey allegedly created an anonymous Twitter account – @keanuagainstblk – and began posting threats of violence against black Kean students.

As Jammie Wearing Fools notes

Imprisoning this bitch may well put a stop to these antics, but she’ll probably walk and become a hero among the frauds.

I’m anxiously awaiting statements from the Typical Special Snowflakes, like @ShaunKing and Deray McKesson (@deray), decrying this obvious race hoax meant to demonize White people.

Read: What Do You Know, Race Threats At Kean U Were Fake »

Obama Only Wants Tiny Part Of Any Climate Deal To Be Legally Binding

Mr. Obama took a long, massive fossil fueled trip to Paris for just a short 2 days, before jetting out. Any climate deal is supposed to be part of his “legacy”. Any deal is supposed to save the planet from certain doom. He thinks if we don’t Do Something fish will be swimming in the streets of Miami (which shows an utterly average .78 feet rise over 100 years trend). Strangely, he wants any deal to be mostly non-binding (like his Iran deal)

(UK Guardian) Barack Obama declared on Tuesday that some components to a global climate change agreement must carry legal force, easing one obstacle to a successful outcome at negotiations in Paris.

In an apparent compromise, Obama said the US would push for certain aspects of a climate change agreement to be legally binding – going some distance to meeting a key demand of the European Union and some developing countries.

However, Obama offered no change in the US position on the overall nature of the agreement sought at Paris.

The US has been clear from the outset that it will not sign on to a full-fledged climate change treaty because it would have virtually no chance of passage through a Republican-controlled Congress.

For someone who was supposed to be this super awesome communicator, and was going to do things differently in Washington, and bring everyone together, and who has a background in community organizing, Obama is not very good at convincing people to work together and do things, wouldn’t you say? Of course, back in 1998, even Democrats, including President Clinton, realized that joining any sort of international binding treaty on Hotcoldwetdry would be bad for the U.S. economy, hence, the Senate voted 95-0 against joining Kyoto.

On Tuesday, however, Obama said the US wanted one major component of the deal – the periodic review of emissions reductions targets – to be legally binding.

So, a mostly meaningless review. That’s what he wants to be legally binding. Of course, how can it be legally binding unless he submits it to the Legislative Branch?

[Obama] also said that his climate legacy would survive after he leaves the White House at the end of his presidency next year. “Whoever is the next president of the United States if they come in and they suggest somehow that that global consensus – not just 99.5% of scientists and experts but 99.5% of world leaders – think this is really important I think the president of the United States is going to think this is really important.”

Perhaps 99.5% of those attending the working vacation in the lovely lovers spot of Paris. And, certainly, world leaders who want more control of citizens think it’s important. Against real issues for voters, though? Last or next to last. At the same time Obama was yammering in Paris, in Washington something else happened

Hours after President Barack Obama pushed for an international agreement to combat climate change, the GOP-led House of Representatives voted to block that effort and demonstrate the President didn’t have support in his own country.

The House passed a pair of resolutions, largely along party lines, that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing rules the administration released earlier this year to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Both measures, already approved by the Senate in October, now go to the White House, which has already vowed to veto them. Democrats maintain Republicans don’t have the vote to override any veto so they denounced the debate as a waste of time.

The resolutions cited Congress’ power under the “Congressional Review Act” to weigh in on new regulations. The bills would prohibit EPA from enforcing limits on electric utilities and coal plants. Republicans on the floor said they deliberately held the votes the same day as the president’s remarks at an international climate change conference in Paris to show the president faced opposition back home.

Well, that’s strange. The people who are tasked with passing laws and reviewing Executive Branch rules need to reign in an out of control Executive.

(Examiner) Obama also took another swipe at Republicans, saying, “Sometimes it may be hard for Republicans to support something that I’m doing, but that’s more a matter of games Washington plays, and that’s why I think people should be confident that we’ll meet our commitments on this.” Based on recent polls, it’s not just Republicans opposed to the president dragging our economy into the dark ages. A November poll showed 97 percent of registered voters aren’t worried about global warming. More telling, 94 percent of Democrats aren’t concerned about global warming.

Obama’s supposed to be this great communicator, but, all he’s able to do is be divisive and nasty. Is it any wonder Republicans really don’t want to work with him on anything? Especially when it comes to a junk science issue that is all about implementing far left fascistic policies?

Read: Obama Only Wants Tiny Part Of Any Climate Deal To Be Legally Binding »

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