Democrats Not Impressed By Obama’s “Trust Me” Approach To Trade Deal

By William Teach June 4, 2015 – 7:58 am

Huh. Democrats suddenly understand what Republicans have been dealing with for over six years, when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) legislation

(The Hill) President Obama’s argument that Democrats should trust his vision on trade is falling flat on Capitol Hill.

Democrats — even some of Obama’s closest allies — say it’s not enough for the president to pronounce his trade agenda the most progressive in history.

The lawmakers want assurances that the agreements under negotiation, particularly a huge deal being finalized with Pacific Rim nations, will protect U.S. jobs — assurances many say they simply haven’t gotten.

“I take the president at his word that he believes … the argument he’s making, but I think he’s wrong,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said Wednesday.

“The analysis I’ve done comes to a very different conclusion,” he added. “It’s clear that this will, in the long term, not result in the growth of American jobs and an increase in wages.”

There quite a few similar quotes from Democrats within the article, and have a long list of concerns. Legitimate concerns. More and more Democrats, particularly in the House, are leaning towards or saying specifically that they are a “Nay” vote. Republican House leaders are pushing the pact hard, but rank and file are not all falling in line.

Obama is offering his full support to Democrats who back him on trade and face blowback from unions and liberal groups in primary elections.

“Those who are concerned about it, I think, do take a lot of solace in knowing that they can count on the support of President Barack Obama in a Democratic primary if they need it,” Earnest said, noting that surveys show the president is “the most popular, influential and well-liked figure in Democratic politics.”

And that little bit of back scratching has many House Democrats upset, even livid. They’ve had his back on most things for over six years, and now he’s essentially doing a carrot and stick schtick. Back this, and I’ll help you. Don’t back me on this, and I’ll forget your name, and, hey, maybe I’ll back a Democrat to primary you.

The question is, is this a good trade bill? I’ll be the first to admit that I do not know enough to determine this. There are pros and cons, and an interesting con from Senator Bernie Sanders down in the links comments (hey, just because he’s a Socialist Democrat doesn’t mean he’s automatically wrong). There’s a long list of “wait a minutes” from Sanders, which should provide concern by all political/economic persuasions, while also noting that previous free trade pacts have seen American jobs and money flow out of the country. Put aside the name, Party, and political leanings of the Sanders, and read it as if a staunch Conservative wrote it, and see what you think.

Anyhow, it’s amusing that Democrats are finding out what Republicans have known for a long time: you can’t, and shouldn’t, simply take Obama’s word for it. Because he has broken that word time and time and time again.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Salon: We Totally Need To Continue NSA Program ‘Cause White Privilege

By William Teach June 3, 2015 – 4:22 pm

I’m typically loathe to like to any Alex Jones run website, in this case, InfoWars, but, they caught a good one

An article featured in leftist outlet Salon is calling for the continuation of illegal domestic bulk data collection in order to battle the “white privilege” of Rand Paul and other Americans.

Written by former FBI double agent Naveed Jamali, the article, entitled “What if Rand Paul were Muslim? The white, privileged assumptions behind his Patriot Act ‘principles,’” claims that Paul’s opposition to illegal spying is rooted in his skin color, not in his values and principles.

Arguing that bulk collection will deter the intelligence community from targeting people based on their “background or heritage,” Jamali suggests that only white Americans are concerned with domestic surveillance.

This is a new tactic. It used to be that Muslims, particularly those involved in the hardcore Islamist movement, wanted all surveillance ended, because they were upset that their hardcore movement was being uncovered. Now they want everyone under government surveillance, like in their hardcore Islamist nations, which will make it harder to see what the Islamists are doing. Using the silly Leftist “white privilege” mantra.

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If All You See…

By William Teach June 3, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful trees being choked by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Power, with a post on the coming Ocare price increases.

Read: If All You See… »

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Good News: EPA Looks To Increase Cost Of Airplane Tickets To Save Us From Climate Change

By William Teach June 3, 2015 – 10:23 am

Those who are taking long fossil fueled flights from the U.S. to Paris for this years Conference on the Parties hardest hit

(NY Times) The Obama administration is set to announce that it will require new rules to cut emissions from airplanes, expanding a quest to tackle climate change that has included a string of significant regulations on cars, trucks and power plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to report as early as Friday its conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes endanger human health because they significantly contribute to global warming, although people familiar with the agency’s plans said the announcement could slip into next week.

That announcement, known in legal parlance as an endangerment finding, will prompt a requirement under the Clean Air Act for the agency to issue new regulations to reduce airplane emissions. The agency is expected to limit the rule to commercial aircraft, leaving out small craft and military planes.

Nowhere is it mentioned within the article that this will artificially drive up the cost to the consumer. Will the definition of commercial aircraft include just passenger planes, or will it include planes used to ferry freight as well? If the latter, not only will the cost of taking a plane trip increase, it will increase virtually everything else that comes by plane. Shipping costs will increase, and this could mean that more packages will be sent via truck, putting more vehicles on the road. All for a fake issue pushed by a cult.

Warmists will say “hey, it’s just a tiny increase”. It always is. A tiny increase here, a tiny increase there, more tiny increases. Throw your pennies in a jar and pretty soon you have a nice chunk of change. But, all these tiny increases add as they flow through the entire economy, so those tiny increases become bigger increases, which add to all the increases from all the other “climate change” fees, rules, regs, and laws.

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Feminist Insanity Leads To Arrests For “Manspreading”

By William Teach June 3, 2015 – 8:20 am

Manspreading, ie, men sitting with their legs spread in a public setting, has become a Serious Issue to hardcore feminists, as explained over at National Review, which pulls the relevant complaints from feminists. If you manspread, you’re a part of the evil patriarchy, you’re exhibiting male dominance, blah blah blah. They always need something to complain about.

Manspreading arrests: the long arm of the law just invaded our personal space
As two men are arrested for ‘manspreading’ on the New York metro, Joel Snape argues that we should all take a bit of responsibility rather than making anti-social behaviour illegal

Bad news, tall men with a poor sense of boundaries: the NYPD have had enough of your nonsense. Yes, after op–eds in the New York Times (£), a popular crowdshaming Tumblr campaign and a series of public service ads from the Metropolitan Transport Authority, ‘manspreading’, or ‘sitting with your legs slightly too far apart’, as it used to be known, has apparently become a criminal offence.

According to a recent report from the Police Reform Organising Project, at least two men have been arrested and charged on grounds of the M–word, “presumably because they were taking up more than one seat and therefore inconveniencing other riders”. Rather than simply throwing out the charges, the judge issued an order that only guarantees that the men won’t suffer further repercussions if they avoid getting arrested again in the near future. It’s all part of a numbers driven crackdown on subway behaviour that’s also seen arrests for break dancing, walking between the cars and – collective air punch – people putting their feet on the seats. Nobody’s been arrested for playing dubstep on audio–leaking headphones yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time.

The two men were arrested in NYC. Think about that. Arrested for sitting with your legs spread out, taking up more than one seat. People can be fined $50 for taking up more than one seat if it interferes with the comfort of other passengers.

No, the main problem with arresting people for anti–social behaviour is that anti-social behaviour shouldn’t be illegal in the first place.

Criminal acts have clear boundaries, as in the case of murder, tax evasion, or torrenting episodes of Game Of Thrones; sitting with your legs too wide on a subway seat does not. Every commuter instinctively knows the difference between a man who’s tall enough to need a bit of extra room and someone who’s just being an arse, but in order to effectively prosecute it you’d need some sort of complex formula to determine guilt, which included variables like limb–length, testicular size, the number of other commuters on the train during the time of the offence and the always important willingness–to–be–accommodating–when–the–carriage–gets–crowded matrix.

What the feminists are attempting to do is make behaviour they do not like illegal. Men sit with their legs spread, when they aren’t crossed. Some sit with their legs spread more than others, and men will spread out when they can. It’s comfortable for us. That’s the way we roll. It’s not dominance, we aren’t trying to show how big are balls are, nor anything else the wacky feminists screech about.

That said, there is a time an place for everything. Going for the ultra-spread on the subway is a no no. But, there shouldn’t be any penalties, any more than people being on crowded public transportation taking up too much space.

There are lots of great comments at the article. Here’s my favorite

Manspreading will land you in jail but looting and rioting will gain you the respect of 47% of the American population. Makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense in Liberal World.

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NY Times: Say, What If Every Other Country Put A Tariff On Imports From Non “Climate Club” Countries?

By William Teach June 3, 2015 – 7:46 am

In a thinly veiled opinion piece, which appears in the business section, not the science section, writer Eduardo Porter is all about using a big stick on countries, especially the United States, which refuse to implement massive CO2 restrictions

Climate Deal Badly Needs a Big Stick

…..

Perhaps the word failure fits, however. More than a quarter-century of fruitless efforts to induce the world’s major greenhouse gas polluters like China and the United States to significantly cut their emissions suggests the entire approach may be fundamentally flawed.

Perhaps it does, considering that the majority of Kyoto Protocol signatories failed to meet their targets, all while implementing lots of restrictions and taxes/fees.

What if every other advanced nation, as a way to encourage energy efficiency and spur investments in alternatives to fossil fuels, agreed to put a price of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere? As a tax, that would add some 22 cents to the price of a gallon of gas, something few American politicians — fearing public anger — are yet ready to consider.

That would mean the price of almost everything, not just gasoline, would rise, causing lots of pain to lower and middle class Americans. This is what Eduardo is advocating, and you can bet that most other members of the Cult of Climastrology are right with him, not realizing that this would cause pain in their own lives. Eduardo probably hasn’t considered that the cost of doing business for the NY Times would rise, as they use fossil fueled vehicles to deliver their papers. Twenty two cents might not seem like much, but, it adds up for filling up your own vehicle, and for everyone else filling up theirs.

But if the other advanced nations had a stick — a tariff of 4 percent on the imports from countries not in the “climate club” — the cost-benefit calculation for the United States would flip. Not participating in the club would cost Americans $44 billion a year.

Here we have Eduard and the NY Times advocating for other countries (which will surely fail to meet their own goals) to harm the United States and its citizens, all for the mythical, un-scientific, and nonsensical cultish beliefs of Warmists.

This sort of approach offers perhaps the best chance of preventing a climatic upheaval.

How cute, a new term.

In an article published in April in The American Economic Review, Professor Nordhaus proposed just such a climate club, in which countries committed to reducing carbon emissions would impose a uniform tariff on imports from nonmembers.

Notice, countries that are committed, not ones which are actually succeeding.

“The issue is not whether we will have disastrous effects,” Professor Weitzman told me, “but when climate change will have disastrous effects.”

Given the dearth of alternatives, Professor Nordhaus’s scheme, draconian as it may sound, looks like the only game in town.

It’s interesting that virtually every “solution” from the Cult of Climastrology, a subset of the Progressive (nice fascist) political movement, involves taxation, fees, an artificial cost of living increase, and lots of pain, all based on prognostication that something might possibly maybe happen.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Posted in Carbon Credits, Economy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

We Need A “Radical Transition” Of Economy To Stop Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach June 2, 2015 – 3:39 pm

Otherwise we’re doom, or Warmists will run out of taxpayer money

‘Radical transition’ of economy needed to curb climate change: study

Harmful impacts of global warming such as heat waves and sea level rise are mounting and show a need for a “radical transition” to a greener economy, a study presented at U.N. climate talks said on Tuesday.

All sides at the presentation of the report, on the sidelines of June 1-11 talks on the Paris accord, said government promises so far for curbs on greenhouse gas emissions were too weak to stay below the 2C goal.

“Limiting global warming to below 2C necessitates a radical transition … not merely a fine tuning of current trends,” according to the report based on talks between experts and governments.

Such a transition would mean deep cuts in greenhouse gases, shifting from fossil fuels such as coal and oil to renewable energies such as wind, hydro and solar power, it said.

Yup, let’s transition to an economy based on energy sources that do not currently work and/or radical enviros won’t let be built. Really, what they mean is a transition to a hardcore Progressive economy, one run by The Government, and, since this is coming from the United Nations, an economy overseen by the UN.

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Posted in Global Warming, Progressive Goals | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach June 2, 2015 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful carbon friendly mode of transportation in a drying world, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is This ain’t Hell…, with a some Tuesday feel good stories.

Read: If All You See… »

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Security Mom: We Totally Need A War On Climate Change!!!!!!

By William Teach June 2, 2015 – 10:39 am

I’ve been telling you that the Cult of Climastrology movement to make climate change a big national security issue has been ramping up, and there are tons of hits in the news for this. Here’s one of them (note: this actually ran at CNN back on May 20th, and was pulled by WGBH)

Why We Need a War on Climate Change

We have a tendency to view certain public policy issues as wars. As in: The War On Drugs, Cancer, Poverty… fill in the blank. It is often a misleading analogy, but it is meant to get the public to respond to a dire need, just as they would in wartime.

The terminology, however, is entirely accurate — and literal — when it comes to our need to address the changing environment as “the war on climate change.”

Then we get standard Warmist whining, with an utter failure to provide rock solid proof that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible.

This administration should know. Now that the Arctic is relatively ice-free for several months each year, a new and lasting occurrence, the administration recently approved offshore drilling in the Arctic, bringing a new challenge to the Coast Guard’s response and recovery efforts. Having made the argument, the Administration might want to reconsider its recent budget for the Coast Guard, one that cuts acquisition spending by 17 percent.

No, the Arctic is not “relatively ice-free for several months a year. A blatant lie.

But it is not in error by calling out those who still deny the Earth’s climate instability. Skeptics of these global seismic shifts are not simply denying science, they are denying safety and security. Until we recognize — with the immediacy we would if a nation launched missiles against our cities — that climate change isn’t something that can be debated, but must be mitigated or, failing that, adapted to, we will not expend the effort or resources to prepare ourselves to the one phenomenon that we know is coming: simply, the waters are rising and this is a war.

In other words, the Cult of Climastrology actually wants to make this a war on those who disagree with the CoC’s doomy predictions and far left policy prescriptions. Let’s be clear: Skeptics are not “denying” climatic changes. We are denying that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for those changes.

Read: Security Mom: We Totally Need A War On Climate Change!!!!!! »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, AGW Scaremongering, Barking Moonbats, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Washington Post Editorial Board Is Very Upset That Rand Paul Dared To Filibuster NSA Spying

By William Teach June 2, 2015 – 7:13 am

So, we were sitting around at working, waiting for the customers, and had a discussion on NSA spying. Interestingly, a mix of Conservatives and Progressives all determined that the bulk collection of data was a Bad Thing, and a violation of our rights. Even the Muslims determined that the program should be targeted to the bad actors of their faith. Also agreed that the rewrite, where that data would be left in the hands of telecom companies for easy request by Los Federales is a Bad Thing. But, don’t tell the WPEB, which has a little hissy fit aimed at Rand Paul

Rand Paul should stop stalling the USA Freedom Act

LEGISLATION TO reform the National Security Agency’s surveillance of telephone metadata and put it on a firmer legal footing has passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority. President Obama backs it, as does a bipartisan majority in the Senate. The Senate would have passed the bill, too, but for the machinations of the majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who favored an ill-considered perpetuation of the status quo.

For the fact that even the current, debatable legal basis of the NSA program has lapsed, at least temporarily, we have Mr. McConnell to thank — along with Kentucky’s other Republican senator. When Mr. McConnell finally allowed the reform compromise, known as the USA Freedom Act, to move Sunday, Rand Paul used procedural maneuvers to block a vote on it until at least Tuesday.

Mr. McConnell accused Mr. Paul, who’s running for president, of playing politics, which is true — up to a point. For Mr. Paul, opposition to NSA “spying” is a matter of libertarian principle bordering on passion. Indeed, the matter excites him so much that he has aimed extreme, sloppy rhetoric at those who don’t share his views, suggesting, for example, that “some people are so fearful” of terrorism that they believe “ISIS will be in every drug store in America, in every house, if we don’t get rid of the Constitution.”

So this is Important to Senator Paul. It only seems to be the Political Class which are accusing him of playing politics, despite him having had a problem with this for a long, long time. Someone should tell the WPEB that We The People also have a big damned problem with this. Hey, remember when Bush was president and liberal media outlets and online presences had a big problem with the Patriot Act (yes, many libertarians had a big problem with it, as well).

Mr. Paul is the one misstating constitutional law. “[T]he phone records of law-abiding Americans are none of the government’s business!” his campaign Web site declares. Actually, the Supreme Court held 36 years ago that there is no constitutional right to privacy in phone records (as opposed to phone conversations). The court reasoned, realistically, that customers willingly convey numbers and times to the phone company each time they dial, knowing that the company retains the information for business purposes. Technology was more primitive in 1979; the justices may well decide that Fourth Amendment doctrine needs updating. Meanwhile, it is not tyrannical for government to rely on existing precedent.

Yes, it is legal for those companies to have the data, data which, per that court opinion, is held by those companies, which customers choose to sign up with, and are provided with their terms. Consumers can choose not to engage in commerce with these companies. However, the problem here is in the Government scooping it all up from the telecom companies, and, bigger, that the NSA is directly collecting it themselves, and they are apparently collecting way more than just phone numbers and times. They are collecting emails and online activity in bulk. And this has done what, exactly? They can’t say that it has stopped any threats.

Mr. Paul calls the NSA program “illegal,” which is somewhat more plausible, since the Bush and Obama administrations stretched the terms of the USA Patriot Act to win approval for it from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If so, the cure is a new law, such as the one Mr. Paul just gratuitously blocked. The USA Freedom Act leaves metadata collection to the private sector, subject to searches approved by the intelligence court, but Mr. Paul thinks anything short of a warrant from an ordinary federal court would be unconstitutional. Again, he’s entitled to his opinion; again, it’s contrary to current Fourth Amendment law, as the legislation’s authors, senior Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees, well understand.

So, the WPEB admits that it will still be pretty darned easy for the information to be taken from the telecom companies, when it comes to phone records. What of the rest? One has to wonder what the WPEB would be saying if Bush was President (or some Republican), or if the filibuster came from a Democrat Senator. The 4th gives Citizens a right to be secure in their personal effects, without a duly sworn, specific warrant.

Denouncing fear and paranoia about terrorism, Mr. Paul sows fear and paranoia about government. Today, as always, the Constitution calls on us to balance liberty and security democratically. This is what the USA Freedom Act will do, just as soon as Mr. Paul stops grandstanding and lets his colleagues vote on it.

I missed that part about balancing liberty and security in my copy of the Bill of Rights.

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Posted in Journalistic Malpractice, Wonky Media | 3 Comments | Trackback URL
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