…are super awesome trees helping to slow the rise of the oceans, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is The Camp Of The Saints, with a post wondering if Obama will go all “Captain Queeg”.
Any suggestions for a theme for next week?
Read: If All You See… »
As if there weren’t enough problems in California thanks to Obamacare, what with doctors retiring early, moving to other states, refusing to participate in the Ocare exchange, refusing to take new Medicare/Medicaid patients, the California government seems determined to drive doctors out
(Breitbart) Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a law requiring that California health care providers be trained to better understand the specific health needs of the LGBT community.
The law is meant to target inequities in medical treatment for LGBT patients who, according to the San Francisco Examiner, suffer from a lack of provider understanding of gay and transgendered health issues.
Assemblyman Richard Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who authored the original bill AB 496, contends that LGBT patients have a variety of negative experiences with doctors and other healthcare professionals.
Lesbian couples complain that they have difficulty finding OB-GYN doctors willing to counsel them with in vitro fertilization options. Gordon adds that gays and lesbians criticize hospital staff for not treating them with respect while visiting their hospitalized life partners.
Sensitivity training is just another word for “thought control”. The LGBT community constantly tells us that they are just like everyone else. If that’s the case, why do they need extra stuff?
Read: New California Law Requires Doctors To Undergo LGBT Re-education »
This is not the first time “climate scientists” and a compliant media attempted to Blamestorm the growth of Antarctic sea ice on Hotcoldwetdry, and probably won’t be the last.
Antarctic sea ice shows record growth, climate change likely cause
The growth of sea ice is not evidence against the effects of climate change, but rather the consequence of it.Antarctic sea ice is seeing a rapid period of growth this year, but that doesn’t mean the Poles are safe from climate change, says NASA.
NASA reported the ice measurements to be at 7.78 million square miles (20.14 million square kilometers), a day after it exceeded the extent of 20 million square kilometers (7.72 million square miles).
“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” said Claire Parkinson of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The growth of sea ice is not evidence against the effects of climate change but rather the consequence of it. This could be the result of the rapid melting of land ice which sends fresh water into the ocean making it freeze at higher decision. It could also be the result of changing wind patterns and other external factors.
Remember when all the “climate scientists” told us that global warming/climate change would cause Antarctic sea ice to increase? And, if the ice starts to decrease, this will be Blamed on climate change, as well. Because this is a cult, and everything validates their Beliefs.
Best comment
I heard that if nothing is doing as predicted, we’re to shut up because science.
Exactly. Because you’re anti-science if you dare question the reality of what’s occuring, and you’re nasty if you mention that Warmists rarely practice what they preach.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: Antarctic Sea Ice Sees Record Growth, Cause Climate Change »
This should make liberals happy
(WRAL) Nearly two years after North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment recognizing marriage only as a union between a man and a woman, a federal court judge in Asheville on Friday overturned the ban, allowing gay and lesbian couples across the state to marry immediately.
U.S. District Court Judge Max Cogburn’s ruling came five days after the nation’s top court declined to hear any appeal of a July decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond striking down Virginia’s ban. That court has jurisdiction over North Carolina.
Two points: first, Liberals are really, really like Direct Democracy. Except when they lose at the ballot box, then they sue to usurp the will of the People.
Second, when can bigamists and polygamists get married? Equality, right? If you support gay marriage, but not bigamy and polygamy, why not? Explain, you bigot.
Read: Federal Judge Nullifies Gay Marriage Law Which 60% Voted For »
…are wonderful trees overlooking a place where giant wind turbines should be erected, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Maggie’s Notebook, with a post noting that sometimes the Nobel committee gets it right.
Read: If All You See… »
Leftism continues to invade organized religion
(HuffPo) A group of evangelical Christians is taking to the airwaves in Florida to urge Republican Gov. Rick Scott to take action on climate change, arguing that it, too, is a “pro-life” issue.
“I’m pro-life, and I’m pro-family,” says one female voice featured in the ad, sponsored by the Evangelical Environmental Network. “And I do believe we should do all we can to protect our environment. It was given to us by God.”
“Climate change is real. It endangers the health of our children, worsens poverty throughout the world, and threatens our economy,” says a male voiceover. “Call Governor Rick Scott and tell him as pro-life Christians we believe care for God’s creation is one of the greatest moral challenges of our time. Tell Governor Scott now is the time to act to curb climate change.”
Well, true, remember this?
Darned Hotcoldwetdry! Killing off iguanas!
Read: Sigh: Evengelicals Want Rick Scott To Address “Climate Change” As A Pro-Life Issue »
Recently, Salon ran an article about fixing the Constitution. Of course, many of the ideas were meant to make the Constitution more Progressive (nice fascism), but there were a few good ideas that could help all Americans. As I noted, “The Constitution does guarantee (freedom, fairness, and equality). The politicians, the bureaucrats, and people don’t.”
The article recommended several ideas, such as 100% financing of elections by Government, to keep money out of politics. Three years terms for Representatives, with term limits capped at 12 years. Election day being three days, which would include the weekends. And a few others.
Now, a friend asked me what I would do to fix our political system. And I thought “is it really the system that is broken, or the people?” I’ll often write that the immigration system is not broken: it is the people running it that are broken. There are substantive problems within the way the political system works that can be fixed by dealing with the people involved. Here’s what I would do
1. Term limits for the House Of Representatives and Senate
As time goes on, elected Representatives respond less and less to constituents, and more and more to other interests, including simply keeping their party in power. Benjamin Franklin once wrote “In free governments, the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors . . . . For the former to return among the latter does not degrade, but promote them.†People seeking elected office so often look at serving in the House as a career, when they should serve some time then leave. They become divorced from The People over time. We cannot just “vote the bums out”, because that rarely works. Power corrupts. I recommend a limit of eight years. (a good article here)
For the Senate, I recommend two terms as the limit.
2. No post serving perks
Serving as an elected official is not a job: it is a responsibility and duty, and should come with no post-serving perks. No medical insurance for life, no retirement accounts, nothing. Zip. Nada. The only exception would be Secret Service protection for ex-presidents for as long as necessary.
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment
You’ll notice I made no mention above as to Senators losing focus on their Constituents. They certainly have the same problems as Representatives. However, the original intent of the Constitution was for Representatives to represent their Districts, and Senators to represent their State government. That was lost with the passage of the 17th Amendment, which took election of Senators out of the hands of State legislations and put it in the hands of citizens. Some might wonder why this is bad.
States now have no true representation to the federal government. When it was the General Assemblies electing Senators, it meant that those Senators were beholden to the their state, and its government. It meant that citizens needed to pay more attention to the doings of their state elected officials. It meant Senators did what was best for their state, not for their party, and not for the Federal government. The Founders acknowledged the correct idea that State governments were better equipped to deal with the needs of Citizens than the federal government. It was integral to the notion of federalism, to being a Constitutional Republic. Elected State officials live within our communities. They are not full timers. They have jobs. They have to live under the laws they pass. The minute the 17th was enacted, the massive expansion of the federal government started, shifting power away from states, where it belongs, to a far off government that is barely responsive. (read more here)
4. Restrict Money To “Local”
Liberals often complain about money in politics, despite doing exactly what they complain about. But, they are right: money is a problem in politics. It buys access. It buys “back-scratching”. It is essentially legalized bribery. There are many ideas to fix this. Liberals want to restrict “corporations” and “dark money” groups (while ignoring unions, their own groups, etc). They want to stop Big Moneyed individuals (while allowing their own). I’ve pushed the notion that restrictions should be on elected officials, not people. But, what if we made it “local only”?
What that means is that Representatives could only accept money from people, companies, and groups that are within their own Districts. No money can come from outside. It has long bothered me that candidates can take money from people, companies, and groups (PCG) which are not in their districts, and often not even within their own states. This also goes for campaigning, but it would be un-Constitutional to stop that. Representatives become beholden to PCGs that have nothing to do with their Districts. Why should money from some PCG in another state, or even district, effect the race in my district?
This would also apply to Governors and General Assemblies.
This is very much about “you mind your business, I’ll mind mine”.
5. Recall Elections
The rules to this would have to be very strict, to avoid frivolous recalls, but, there needs to be a way to recall federally elected officials who are Not Doing Their Jobs in representing their Districts. Likewise, General Assemblies could recall Senators who fail to represent their States. Again, there would need to be strict rules, so as to avoid frivolous recalls due to control changing hands.
This would put elected officials on notice that they best damned well represent their Districts/States above all else.
Government is supposed to be “by the People, for the People”. It has moved away from that. It’s time to take it back.
Read: Five Ideas To Help Fix U.S. Representative Democracy »
The NY Times is running a Room For Debate on how Muslims should respond to the threat of Muslim extremism entitled Do Muslims Need to Defend Their Faith Against Extremists? Many of the answers are interesting, no more than that of Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and the national advocacy director of the National Network for Arab American Communities.
Muslims Do Not Need to Justify Themselves in Face of Extremism
I am a New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. I am a civil rights activist. I am a mother. I also happen to be Muslim, a faith that represents a quarter of the world’s population. My faith unequivocally condemns groups like ISIS, and while I stand with every other American and 1.7 billion other Muslims in that condemnation, we must stop misrepresenting the problem with my faith.
I am horrified by these attacks, but not because I am Muslim. I am horrified because I am human. By constantly apologizing and denouncing these attacks, Muslims reinforce the misguided public perception that they are connected to ISIS through the same basic ideology, when in fact they have nothing in common at all.
We do not expect Buddhists to apologize as Buddhist extremists massacre Muslims in Burma or for their human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. I also don’t ask Christians to apologize for the genocide that Bosnian Muslims faced less than two decades ago at the hands of Christian Serbs, or for the Lord’s Resistance Army and Christian militias who have killed tens of thousands of civilians and ethnically cleansed Muslims throughout Uganda, the Congo and Central African Republic. Nor do I ask every white American to apologize for hate crimes committed by self-proclaimed White Christian supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan. All of us instead recognize that religious fanatics perpetuate violent acts for their own deranged reasons.
Why is an apology only expected of Muslims?
Well, now, those are very interesting comparisons. The problem is that this relies on a false premise, that Muslims who aren’t extremists need to provide an apology. Alas, no one is asking for an apology. What has been asked of the non-extremist Muslims is for them to repudiate the Muslims who practice an extremist form if Islam and stand up against the extremists, much like White Christians stood up against the KKK and repudiated them. How Buddhists stood up against those in Burma and Sri Lanka, saying “not in my Name”. Because, whether Muslims (and idiot Liberals with their diversity and multiculturalism) like it or not, extremism grows in the name of their religion, based on the writings within their holy book, the Koran, with passages such as
Quran (9:14) – “Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of a believing people.” Humiliating and hurting non-believers not only has the blessing of Allah, but it is ordered as a means of carrying out his punishment and even “healing” the hearts of Muslims.
One would think that so-called Moderate Muslims would be upset, since the extremists, who are known as “Islamists”, tend to kill more Muslims than people of other religions. And, let’s be clear: the extremists are not just those who practice violence in the name of Allah and Mohammed. They are those who push peacefully for Sharia law, for more hardcore Islam, who take advantage of the laws of nations to force their viewpoints and laws on citizens (such as the woman who is upset she wasn’t allowed to swim in a Muslim dress. The rules apparently shouldn’t apply to her). They do not use violence, but infiltration, lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, and our own rules of law and society against us.
So, no, Ms. Sarsour doesn’t have to apologize: if she had respect for her religion, she would, though, stand up against the hijacking of her religion. And it’s interesting that Ms. Sarsour would talk about “apologizing”. She herself has often downplayed Muslim extremist attacks. She claimed the underwear bomber was a CIA plant. She easily trots out the Islamophobe card to deflect from the doings of Islamists. She blows off “honor killings”, a practice of Islamists. She’s wondered if Osama Bin Laden ever did anything to deserve death. She was upset over Saddam Hussein’s death. And she attacks anyone concerned with the continued rise and threat from radical Islam, typically using ad hominum, personal, and non sequitur methods.
This is not to say she is an extremist. But, it is very interesting that her group receives quite a bit of funding from Qatar, a massive funder of radical Islam. She defends Islamic terrorism suspects. She has many anti-Israel statements. And likes to make hate crimes against Muslims up out of thin air.
There are many things done in the name of religion. There have been times when Christianity performed large scale terrible acts. This is discussed within the essay by Jonathan Wright, who notes
Every major religion has endured its share of violence and extremism. Christianity, for example, was intolerant of other faiths through most of its history and pursued dissent within its own ranks with indefatigable zeal. Wars were fought, heretics were burned and rival religions were pummeled in the name of the Christian God.
But such sorry episodes do not sum up Christianity any more than contemporary extremism within Islam encapsulates an ancient and beautiful faith. We deploy caricatures at our peril.
Christianity has mostly moved away from those sad episodes. Will Islam? One big difference is that the Koran pushes the extremism within its passages. The Bible has moved on to peace and love in the name of Jesus Christ.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: Do Muslims Need To Defend Their Faith From Extremists? »
In this case, the Huffington Post’s Katherine Boeher doesn’t use the un-scientific phrase “climate change”, but the old and bust “global warming”
What Do Global Warming And Sweaters Have In Common? This Climate Scientist Explains.
Climate scientist Adam Levy got sick of hearing all the usual arguments against the existence of climate change, so he decided to fight back with a clever and easy to understand YouTube channel.
His latest video explains global warming using a sweater analogy. “We’ve known for over a hundred years that the carbon dioxide that exists naturally in the earth’s atmosphere helps trap heat to keep the world warm, just like a sweater in winter.” By adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, Levy explains, we’re adding more hot clothes.
“When a sweater’s making you hot, you can just take it off,” Levy says. “Unfortunately for us, carbon dioxide doesn’t work like that. Once it’s in the atmosphere, it sticks around for hundreds of years, so if you want to stop the world getting warmer, we need to stop too much carbon dioxide getting in to the atmosphere in the first place.”
Of course, a big difference is that wearing a sweater can increase your feeling of warmth by many degrees. The Earth’s global temperature has only gone up a miniscule 1.4F since 1850. And, despite the bleating by Warmists, there really has been no statistically significant warming over the last 18+ years, in complete contradiction to the majority of their computer models.
Interestingly, making the video and having people watch it uses quite a bit of energy which creates CO2, meaning that Levy, Google, and the Huffington Post are Part Of The Problem, according to their Warmist religious tenants.
Speaking of computer models, The Hockey Schtick points to a comment by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. at Dr. Judith Curry’s site
This is a remarkable statement
“the warming of the upper ocean predicted by these models did not agree with observations; particularly in the southern hemisphere.They inferred from this that upper ocean warming rates in the southern hemisphere have been underestimated – that it was the previous observations that were inaccurate and that the models were correct.â€Â
When observations and models disagree, to accept the model is an inversion of the scientific process! This is a systemic problem with these studies.
That’s right, Warmists actually think that computer models are more important that real world observational data.
Read: Say, What Do Hotcoldwetdry And Sweaters Have In Common? »
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