If All You See…

By William Teach September 2, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a wall worn down by climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Rhymes With Right, with a post wondering where Wendy Davis is.

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Global Warming Will Collapse Labor Or Somethin

By William Teach September 2, 2014 – 12:07 pm

What would Labor Day be without the always wacky Joe Romm chiming in?

(Climate Progress) Global warming is projected to have a serious negative impact on labor productivity this century. Here is a look at what we know.

In 2013, a NOAA study projected that “heat-stress related labor capacity losses will double globally by 2050 with a warming climate.” If we stay near our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway, then we face a potential 50 percent drop in labor capacity in peak months by century’s end.

Many recent studies project a collapse in labor productivity from business-as-usual carbon emissions and warming, with a cost to society that may well exceed that of all other costs of climate change combined. And, as one expert reviewing recent studies put it, “national output in several [non-agricultural] industries seemed to decline with temperature in a nonlinear way, declining more rapidly at very high daily temperatures.”

Good thing real world warming isn’t cooperating with Warmist doomsday, eh?

Of course, the reality is that human society does better during warm periods than cool ones. Also,  Warmist/Progressive policies do more to harm workers than a tiny increase in global temperatures.

Read: Global Warming Will Collapse Labor Or Somethin »

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Will GOP Push Populist Notion That Illegal Immigration Is Threat To Jobs?

By William Teach September 2, 2014 – 7:18 am

They’re thinking about it

(Washington Times) An effort is underway to push the Republican Party to rethink its close ties to business groups on immigration, with conservatives arguing that the way to fight immigration-reform proposals is to focus on how they would force Americans into a tougher competition for jobs.

Bolstered by recent polling that suggests voters are worried about the competition, some conservatives have argued the Republican Party should adopt a populist-style pro-worker message heading into the 2014 election, taking advantage of a renewed focus on immigration amid the surge of illegal immigrant children jumping the border.

“Jobs is the primary motivator for awakening action on immigration,” said Kellyanne Conway, founder of the Polling Company, as she presented her survey data last month at the Heritage Foundation. “Hispanics [and] even liberals pipe up [on the issue]. Independents, those making less than $40,000 a year and 85 percent of blue-collar workers agree with this. They believe that protecting American jobs is an incredibly important point of this immigration equation to them, even if it’s left out of the national conversation.”

It’s an issue that’s long divided the GOP, with then-President George W. Bush igniting a near civil war within his party over his push for immigration bills in 2006 and 2007. It reared its head again last year when a group of Senate Republicans joined with all the chamber’s Democrats to pass a bill, though it went nowhere in the House. (snip)

Usually immigration is framed as an issue of border security or a matter of morality, and in those areas it has been trending toward the legalization side. Ms. Conway’s polling, however, suggests voters could be made to see it as a jobs issue.

One of the best ways to increase wages is to reduce the labor pool. If companies want the best workers when the labor pool is small, they increase wages and benefits. Adding millions, if not tens of millions, of new and mostly unskilled workers will further keep wages low.

The question is, will the GOP do it? Entirely too many are all for amnesty, er, a pathway to citizenship. Many simply want to make the illegals “permanent residents”. Many say they are against illegal immigration but are really for it.

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Ricky Gervais Makes Common Sense Tweet On Hacked Celeb Nude Photos, People Mad

By William Teach September 2, 2014 – 7:07 am

You’ve heard about this, right?

(Buzzfeed) A leak that started as the latest round of personal pictures hacked from celebrities’ phones turned Monday into a vast invasion of the privacy of actress Jennifer Lawrence and a handful of others — and a kind of festival on Reddit, 4chan, and other online spaces — with continued release of pictures and videotape purporting to be taken from stars including Lawrence, Kate Upton, Lea Michele, and more.

The extent of the leak — with dozens of incredibly personal photos and a few short videos — was unanticipated even by some of the people at its center, hitting all corners of fame from athletes to American Idol contestants. One publicist told BuzzFeed Sunday she was hoping the leak would stop with one photograph of her client, only to see a half dozen more make the rounds the next night.

Beginning Sunday night, a massive quantity of nude and risqué photos that appeared to be of huge stars such as Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice, and Kate Upton leaked online, first appearing on the /b/ thread on 4chan (NSFW link).

Some celebs are saying it’s not them, some, like Jennifer Lawrence, confirm the pictures. They are very upset about this, and have their attorneys and law enforcement involved. The FBI is also looking in to the incident.

(Mediaite) Actor and comedian Ricky Gervais had a different take on the hacked nude celebrity photos today. While he made it absolutely clear he finds the release of such photos horrible, he did make a joke about how no one would be able to obtain naked photos of celebrities if said celebrities didn’t take naked photos of themselves in the first place.

Here’s the tweet in question, which has since been deleted:

That didn’t exactly go over well. And while Gervais did take down that tweet, he continued to defend himself on Twitter, arguing that it’s really not worth it to be outraged by a joke:

Sadly, he did delete a very simple common sense piece of advice. How many times has it happened that someone allowed risque pictures and/or vids of themselves to be taken, or taken by themselves, and they end up on the Internet? Not just celebs, but average citizens? Maybe a boyfriend or husband (or female friend) talked them into it. Maybe they were just taking a selfie. Next thing you know, they’re mortified by it being out there for the world to see. This has been going on since the 1990’s, with the Internet becoming accessible to everyone. Heck, even before then things happened. Remember Vanessa Williams?

In a case like this, taking nude photos, many which appear to be selfies, and putting them in the cloud is asking for problems. This is not to blame the celebs, who are the victims….well, yes, it is. Actions have consequences. This “taking pictures of yourself naked” meme is not limited to these celebs. It seems to be more and more common amongst the under 30 crowd. I’ll never get wanting to take a risque selfie in a public bathroom, but that’s a different story. If you take them, there’s always a possibility that someone will get their hands on them. Especially a Hollywood celebrity.

If you want to take them, don’t put them on the cloud. Don’t leave them on your phone. Put them on an external hard drive, with massive password protection. Better yet, if you do not want people to see them, don’t take them.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Warmist Juan Cole: Forget ISIS And Russia, Cause Climate Change Is The Real Threat

By William Teach September 1, 2014 – 3:46 pm

Juan Cole has long been a leading voice of Crazy within the Left-o-sphere (here’s an oldy but goody where he wants coal use criminalized). Here’s another example

U.S. Public Worried About ISIL and Putin but Climate Change Is the Real Challenge

This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s Web page.

In a new Pew/ USA Today poll, the American public shows itself alarmed by the rise of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Iraq and Syria as a threat to U.S. security, finding it more threatening even than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has risen on the villain scale quite a lot.  Iran is seen as less menacing, as is North Korea.  The Israel-Palestinian struggle is seen as a threat to the U.S. by a little over half.  More Americans still think the U.S. is doing too much as the world’s policeman, but those who think it is doing too little have greatly increased in number, especially among Republicans.

But almost no Republicans think Global Warming is a threat, and only slightly more than a majority of Democrats do.  In short, the US public is again being misled by its media and politicians as to the true shape of the world, and is likely to suffer pretty badly for this ignorance.

Except for that part about no warming for almost 18 years.

Americans’ concern about the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” is justified.  It is an extremely nasty and vicious organization, and it has made significant advances this summer in northern Iraq.  The public largely supports giving U.S. close air support to Kurdish and Iraqi military forces against it.

And, he proclaims that North Korea, Iran, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are not threats to the U.S.

But Global Warming (what experts call Climate Change) is a dire threat to the health and well-being of millions of Americans.  In the coming decades it will do trillions of dollars of damage to the American economy.  Imagine what the city of Miami is worth;  but much of it is doomed .  We have locked in a four foot sea level rise over the next 80 years or so.  But that is an average.  In some places it will be higher (the ocean is not smooth).  There will be episodes of rapid rise and storm surges leading to substantial coastal flooding for some towns and cities.

You are much more likely to die falling in the bathtub or being struck by lighting than to be killed by terrorists or by Vladimir Putin, much less by Hassan Rouhani of Iran.  But Americans’ health and well-being is directly and powerfully threatened by global warming.

Doooooooom!!!!!!

I will give him props for using the terms CO2 and carbon dioxide, rather than the silly Warmist talking points about carbon and carbon pollution. Yet, he wants to worry about something which is mostly natural, has always happened, was warmer during multiple points in the Holocene, while minimizing the stated threats from Islamic terrorists. Typical head in the sand Progressive.

Read: Warmist Juan Cole: Forget ISIS And Russia, Cause Climate Change Is The Real Threat »

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If All You See…

By William Teach September 1, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil plastic water bottle and several evil beer bottles causing seas to rise and temperatures to scorch, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the thought police.

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World Will Warm Faster Than Ever Over The Next Five Year

By William Teach September 1, 2014 – 11:04 am

Doom? Here’s Duncan Clark at the UK Guardian, a paper never known for reasonable discourse when it comes to “climate change”

World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns
New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics

The world faces record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a study.

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. But new research firmly rejects that argument.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity and the El Niño southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.

Interesting. They blame quite a bit on natural processes, and even claim that the world will quickly warm thanks mostly to natural factors. They claim that “temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the IPCC”.

There’s a little problem with all this: the article itself is from July 27, 2009. And since that time, the global temperatures have essentially flatlined, if not reduced. By all measures, land, sea surface, overall, upper atmosphere, tropics, etc, we did not see any massive skyrocketing of temperatures. After a brief uptick in 2010 of .3C, temps dropped per HADCRUT

We see the same with GIS, RSS, and all other measures. This is “climate change” prognostication” in a nutshell: lots of dire predictions based on computer models and wishful thinking. This doesn’t blow out the notion that the Earth is currently in a warm period: it just shows that the hyperventilating and insanity over anthropogenic global warming/climate change is absurd.

Via Climate Depot.

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Salon: Football Is Evil, And You Shouldn’t Watch It

By William Teach September 1, 2014 – 9:31 am

If you’re looking for bat guano insane on the web, Salon is a great place to start. Regarding a different article, Steven Hayward wrote about Salon

There are days when I wonder whether Salon is for real, or whether it’s an elaborate gag, similar to the theory that all of Paul Krugman’s and Tom Friedman’s columns are actually written by a bunch of madcap interns at the Heritage Foundation wondering how long it will take New York Times readers to figure out.

We get things like Why white men hate unions, How to argue with right-wing relatives: Labor Day BBQ edition!, I never should have followed my dreams, and

The NFL’s toxic lies: Here are the worst excuses fans use to justify watching football
As a recovering football addict, all I want is for fans to stop deluding themselves about the sport I used to love

With pro and college football set to kick off this week, the official Season of Rationalization is upon us again. This is that special time of year when millions upon millions of fans attempt to justify — to themselves and anyone who dares question them — why they watch a violent, commercialized sport that we now know can cause brain damage.

I know this firsthand because until recently I was a football addict. (Technically I’m still an addict, I just no longer use.) And thus I have spent years trotting out these shopworn justifications.

The sad truth is that they’re nonsense. Not one of them stands up to any sort of sustained ethical scrutiny. So allow me to channel my inner defensive fan, if only to set the record straight about how the Football Industrial Complex actually operates.

Personally, I do not attempt to rationalize in the least. I feel no need to justify or rationalize my love of football. I’m not a big fan of college, other than my ECU Pirates, but I’ll watch just about any NFL game. I guess this rationalization thing is a Liberal thing. Much like how they rationalize their failure to give up their own use of fossil fuels and go carbon neutral, along with using every method to avoid paying their full tax rate.

Now, Steve Almond provides a multitude of excuses and then the “reality”, and they all look oh-so-reasonable, but, then, that’s what Lefties do, in order to turn you against something. And we get to the last, #7

Hey, get off my back. I just watch a few games a year!

Reality:

Yeah, I know. I’ve said the same thing for years.

But the bottom line is that the NFL is the force driving the commercialization of the sport at all levels. It derives most of its profits from passive consumption (i.e., couch potatoes like you and me). We’re the reason the NFL can charge the networks billions for broadcast rights.

To reiterate: Without us, the NFL wouldn’t exist.

This is the essential truth that the Football Industrial Complex is forever trying to obscure. When we watch football, even casually, we’re supporting the entire system. If we don’t like the way football operates — the excessive violence, the greed, the dulling of our collective empathy — it is upon us to stop watching.

As a lifelong fan, I don’t say this casually. I’ve been in continuous state of withdrawal since I stopped watching last year. But I’d rather suffer that inconvenience than continue recycling the same lame excuses every season, knowing deep down how full of shit I’m being.

Of course, this is all about pimping his book, “Against Football” (no link for you!)

Suburban Sheepdog – This simply has to be a parody. No human body could contain this much sanctimony and sustain life.

Sadly, no, this is Liberal World. Going back to the Steven Hayward link

Today Salon outdoes itself with “Why Uber Must Be Stopped.” Be sure to take in the artwork nearby of how they understand the story pictured nearby, but also savor the indignation that Uber and Lyft might stoop to unscrupulous practices to gain a competitive edge over each other:

What is Uber? A paragon of free market efficiency and technological innovation serving the greater convenience and comfort of the general public? Or living proof for why capitalist societies require regulation?

You won’t really have much trouble guessing where Salon comes out on this last question will you? Anyway. . .

Yeah, Salon totally is against free markets and start ups. And would probably prefer that you spend your Saturdays and Sundays protesting instead of watching football.

Read: Salon: Football Is Evil, And You Shouldn’t Watch It »

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NY Times: Hey, Wages Stink In The Obameconomy, So Let’s Pass Laws

By William Teach September 1, 2014 – 9:08 am

It’s Labor Day 2014, so, obviously, media outlets across the country are writing opinion pieces and opinion pieces disguised as news articles calling for a minimum wage increase, along with things like women making 75% less than men (debunked. Except for the White House, of course, where women make less than men). And, here comes the NY Times Editorial Board

Labor Today
Wages and Salaries Still Lag as Corporate Profits Surge

In the months before Labor Day last year, job growth was so slow that economists said it would take until 2021 to replace the jobs that were lost or never created in the recession and its aftermath.

The pace has picked up since then; at the current rate, missing jobs will be recovered by 2018. Still, five years into an economic recovery that has been notable for resurging corporate profits, the number and quality of jobs are still lagging badly, as are wages and salaries.

Wait, the economy stinks for workers under the policies of the Obama administration? Who woulda thunk it?

In 2013, after-tax corporate profits as a share of the economy tied with their highest level on record (in 1965), while labor compensation as a share of the economy hit its lowest point since 1948. Wage growth since 1979 has not kept pace with productivity growth, resulting in falling or flat wages for most workers and big gains for corporate coffers, shareholders, executives and others at the top of the income ladder.

Sadly, but realistically, quite a bit of this is due to the expansion in the fast food industry, the service industry, citizens wanting lower price products (which are so often made off-shore), globalization, wage stickiness (not increasing wages to adjust for inflation), the use of migrant and illegal alien workers, and the use of more technology in the work place. This is what is called progress. The NY Times has a solution

Worse, the recent upturn in growth, even if sustained, will not necessarily lead to markedly improved living standards for most workers.

That’s because the economy’s lopsidedness is not mainly the result of market forces, but of the lack of policies to ensure broader prosperity. The imbalance will not change without labor and economic reforms.

Dictatorial Government is always the answer in Liberal World. Obviously, the Times is calling for a minimum wage increase.

Unionization is also associated with higher wages and benefits, especially for low-wage workers, which argues for greater legal enforcement of the right to organize without retaliation.

And they would prefer forced unionization.

The pay of middle-income workers has also been diminished. Decades of outsourcing government jobs to the private sector has undercut public employment, once a mainstay of middle-class life, even as evidence has mounted that outsourcing often does not save money or improve services.

Wait, working for the government is the mainstay of middle-class life? Since when?

What is still lacking [from Mr. Obama], however, is a full-employment agenda that regards labor, not corporations, as the center of the economy — a change that would be a reversal of the priorities of the last 35 years.

What’s missing is an actual economic agenda. When news outlets, including the NY Times, deride his “pivots” to the economy, they are simply noting that he has no real agenda. He is not sustaining an agenda on a constant basis.

At the end of the day, though, the Times does have a point: wages for the middle class are suffering. What can be done about that? Government raising the minimum wage will not help, because the people making that wage are not middle class. Raising taxes on companies and 1%ers and then redistributing it will not help. No one really has any solutions other than those. And they won’t work. However, removing so many of the restrictions, red tape, government interference, etc, on small businesses would certainly help. If you want to talk about the backbone of the middle class? Small business.

And, let’s be clear: the Obama recovery stinks.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: NY Times: Hey, Wages Stink In The Obameconomy, So Let’s Pass Laws »

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Good News: Warmist Naomi Klein Isn’t One Of Those Nasty, Mean, Self-Righteous Lefties

By William Teach August 31, 2014 – 2:00 pm

Naomi Klein is releasing her book This Changes Everything on September 16th, a tome about “climate change” which calls for a completely different economic system in order to fix Hotcoldwetdry. Though, of course, she’s using our current economic system to make some quick cash off the book sales. If this was so important, one would think she’d give the book away, instead of $22.39 for hardcover and $12.99 Kindle edition. Anyone, this paragraph in the Vogue article amused the heck out out of me

Because such words put Klein far to the left by American (if not global) standards, one might easily imagine her as some sort of cliché radical—earnest, smugly righteous, out of touch with ordinary people and their pleasures. Yet in person, she’s the opposite—warm, funny, down-to-earth, unobtrusively stylish. Although she may be the world’s most famous critic of consumerism, she understands the joys of shopping. At an appearance in London, somebody asked her to name one thing she liked about capitalism. She instantly replied, “The shoes.”

So, unlike most Lefties, she’s nice, rather than an asshole. Good to know.

BTW, for all her harping about fossil fuels and evil fossil fuel companies in the article, and elsewhere, we learn

Huh.

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