Crucial Lessons From Naomi Klein’s “Climate Change” Book For Warmists

By William Teach August 22, 2014 – 11:43 am

In These Times’ Ethan Corey and Jessica Corbett are really amped about Naomi Klein’s hyper-alarmist book on “climate change” and offer 5 crucial lessons. Let’s look at two which underscore what I and others have noticed about the Warmist movement (red bold by me)

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.

“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues.

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.” (WT-note: I have highlighted this passage from Klein’s book)

In The Shock Doctrine, Klein explained how corporations have exploited crises around the world for profit. In This Changes Everything, she argues that the climate change crisis can serve as a wake-up call for widespread democratic action. For instance, when a 2007 tornado destroyed most of Greensburg, Kansas, the town rejected top-down approaches to recovery in favor of community-based rebuilding efforts that increased democratic participation and created new, environmentally-friendly public buildings. Today, Greensburg is one of the greenest towns in the United States. To Klein, this example illustrates how people can use climate change to come together to build a greener society. It also can, and indeed must, spur a radical transformation of our economy: less consumption, less international trade (part of relocalizing our economies) and less private investment, and a lot more government spending to create the infrastructure we need for a green economy. “Implicit in all of this,” Klein writes, “is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity.”

This is exactly what we’ve been talking about: “climate change” is being used as a means to push far left Progressive (nice fascist) Big Government policies. Control of economies, control of people, restrictions on business, restrictions on private investment, government doing it all, taxing people out the ying yang, government owning businesses (particularly infrastructure and energy, which gives Government control over your life). Look back at that quote from Klein again

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it’s not (only) because they are paranoid. It’s also because they are paying attention.”

We are paying attention. To bad the average brain dead Liberal isn’t. They might see the reality, and understand that they will not be immune to the fascist tendencies of their Warmist leaders.

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Athiest Group Really Upset By Pizza Parlor’s Church Discount

By William Teach August 22, 2014 – 8:29 am

The owner of the pizza parlor wonders if they don’t have something better to do, like spending lawsuit money on the homeless. Here’s Todd Starnes

Steven Rose loves Jesus and pepperoni pizza.

But when the Searcy, Arkansas restaurateur decided to mix church and cheese it gave a group of out-of-town atheists a bad case of indigestion.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is threatening to sue Steven after he offered a discount to customers who bring in a church bulletin. They said Bailey’s Pizza is violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And the First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law denying the free practice of religion.

“The law requires places of public accommodation to offer their services to customers without regard to race, color, religion or national origin,” FFRF spokesperson Elizabeth Cavell told television station KTHV.

Steven, who opened the pizza parlor in July, told me there’s nothing nefarious about the church bulletin discount.

“It was a straight-up marketing tool to give a discount to people I love and care about – and have them come in and have lunch with me,” he said. “I thought it was a sweet idea. I didn’t say you had to go to church to get it. Go get a bulletin from your neighbor and come in and have a pizza.”

Of course, the hardcore atheists can’t just live and let live, they have to force their views on other people.

So is it really unconstitutional for restaurants to provide religious-themed discounts? Not at all, says Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute.

“In fact, if what FFRF is saying were true, restaurants and other businesses would be precluded from giving veterans and military members discounts because that would technically be discriminating based on veteran status,” Sasser tells me. “Is that what FFRF wants? Give me a break!”

This would mean that bars offering to let ladies in for free while charging men would be discrimination and against the Civil Rights Act. Senior citizen discounts. Businesses that cater only to women, such as gyms and hotels (in fact, while this incident may be in Copenhagen, a hotel there stopped it’s catering to women with a women only floor after being told that was discriminatory).

Steven tells me it’s really sad that the FFRF is spending their money attack his restaurant.

“The 75 cents that somebody saves when they bring in a church bulletin – is that really what they need to be spending their money on?” he asked. “How about spending that money helping the homeless?”

Good point.

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CNN Source Claims Officer Wilson Does Not Have Broken Eye Socket

By William Teach August 22, 2014 – 8:10 am

There are three interesting things in this

(The Blaze) CNN on Thursday, citing an anonymous source close to the investigation, reported that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson did not suffer a fractured eye socket prior to fatally shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown earlier this month. The report directly contradicts a recent Fox News story, which also cites an anonymous source “close to the [police] department’s top brass.”

CNN anchor Don Lemon reported on Thursday that Wilson did go to the hospital with swelling around his face and eyes, but an X-ray came back negative for a fracture to his orbital bone.

“That source says it is not true, at all, he did not have a torn eye socket,” Lemon said. “Unequivocally.”

Not quite sure what a “torn eye socket” is

Responding to Lemon’s reporting, Nancy Grace said her sources have been telling her from the “get-go” that there was a scuffle between Wilson and Brown.

“I really don’t know if we’re going to know what any of this is, or the truth of it, until it comes out in court,” she added.

So, let’s see: first, Officer Wilson might not have broken eye socket, but he apparently had been hit in the face. Which would still give credence that the “gentle giant” assaulted an officer of the law. Second, CNN has apparently known that there was some sort of violence perpetrated against Officer Wilson. Why were they waiting so long to let us know about this? Did they not think it relevant to let the people know that Michael Brown wasn’t quite the gentle giant they and others portrayed him as?

Third, Grace makes a great point: what for the info to come out in court. Which would, I assume, be from the Grand Jury. Unless she’s calling for Officer Wilson to be prosecuted?

Smitty pulls an interesting comment from Instapundit

Larry2 at Instapundit
There seems to be a pattern:

  1. unarmed young black guy is shot,
  2. there is a vast media outcry over the young “honor student’s” death,
  3. family provides photos of the dead guy taken when he was 11 years old, well before he had opted for the ghetto thug look,
  4. it comes out that the “honor student” has been committing felonies,
  5. witnesses say the honor student was beating the hell out of the person who shot him,
  6. Democrat politicians call for the shooter’s conviction, and
  7. prosecutors, fearing rioting, black voters, or what have you, prosecute the shooter anyway.

Have I missed anything?

Yes, he has missed something, namely, the part where Leftists use the issue as a political football, much as they’ve used other incidents. From the get go, most Conservatives have said “wait for the details to come out”. We weren’t taking the side of Brown or Wilson (the police going overboard in respect to the protests is a separate issue), but we did know that whenever the Left goes nuts on an issue like this, they are often proven wrong once the full information comes out. And, then, when the information does come out, the Left will ignore the issue, and stick with irrational, fact-free talking points, much like they did in the Zimmerman/Trayvon incident. They will use the incident to complain about some “wider problem in America”.

If there is a “wider problem in America”, it should be noted that these problems are the direct result of 50+ years of Liberal/Progressive/Democrat policies, particularly as they apply to urbanized areas and Blacks.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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New Republic: Officer Wilson Is Guilty Till Proven Innocent

By William Teach August 21, 2014 – 7:47 pm

This is Liberal World, per to Yishai Schwartz

Convicting Darren Wilson Will Be Basically Impossible

——

We may never know what actually happened during the violent encounter between teenager Michael Brown and policeman Darren Wilson. But legal judgments rarely happen with perfect knowledge and absolute certainty. In their place, we rely on presumptions and standards that guide our thinking and discipline our judgments. In general, we presume innocence. But when we know that a killing has occurred and can definitively identify who committed the act, traditional common law demanded that our presumptions shift. We are supposed to presume guilt, and it is the shooter who must prove that his actions were justified. Unless the shooter is a policeman. And unless the victim is a black male. And unless the shooting happens in a state with self-defense laws like Missouri.

As American Spectator’s Aaron Goldstein notes, this could have easily have the same affect regarding self defense in Massachusetts as Missouri.

Anyhow, Liberals immediately did presume guilt of Officer Wilson. They jumped to the conclusion, and as the days wear on, that kneejerk reaction is backfiring, as liberal kneejerks so often do. There are certain elements, groups, and people of which liberals will always think the worse. Why? Politics, pure and simple. Everything is viewed in the hardcore liberal/Progressive bubble. Imagine had Michael Brown been wearing a shirt with a Gadsden flag on it. Think there would be the same hullabaloo from liberals? Would they have immediately deemed the Black man at fault?

Justice is not blind with the Left.

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Climate Change Brings Darkness And Doom Or Something

By William Teach August 21, 2014 – 4:51 pm

Funny thing is, the darkness and doom came from cooling, but, of course, this is meant to highlight the Coming Doom from a slight increase in global temperatures from Someone Else driving a fossil fueled vehicle

Lord Byron’s ‘Darkness’: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Climate Change

In 1815, Indonesia’s Mount Tambora experienced a super-eruption, triggering global climate shifts that produced famine, riots, disease outbreak, and mass death.

The great Romantic poet Lord Byron, holed up in Geneva at the time, responded with a post-apocalyptic poem called “Darkness,” which portrayed a vision of an “icy Earth” full of desolation, burning cities, and global warfare. Nearly two centuries on, it remains a poignant portrait of a future marred by climate disaster.

Mount Tambora’s volcanic ash, ejected into the upper atmosphere, eventually fell back to Earth, bringing stasis once again to the planet. But in Byron’s post-apocalyptic landscape, climate change and its effects are permanent. It’s a bleak, bleak world; a Romantic-era precursor to the monochromatic desolation of Cormac McCarthy’sThe Road.

Of course, the entire poem is about doom from an icy world post-Tambora. Somehow, this means, in the fevered mind of a Warmist, doom from warming

Perhaps Byron might have privately felt that technological advancement and byproducts of manufacture and consumption could create unintended ecological effects, though the modern concept of ecology itself was still being refined. Nothing we have in existing letters or anecdotes suggests he commented on it. Regardless, “Darkness” exists as a future vision of how humanity might devolve in the face of climate change.

The author, DJ Pangburn, doesn’t seem to see the insanity of using natural cooling from a massive volcanic event, which brought on the poem, to whine about warming, which, in his fevered Warmist mind, is caused by Mankind.

  And what did Byron see after all humans and other creatures vanish from the Earth?

…The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Now that is darkness. Think upon it the next time you read about fluctuations in global climate. The Byronic post-apocalyptic Earth is extreme, but so are we as a species, and in the way we interact with the planet. In “Darkness,” Byron just held up the mirror.

Seriously, these people live in a very strange world. The darkness came from natural cooling. Somehow, again, we’re to see similar doom from a slight increase in global temperatures over 160+ years.

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 21, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is coffee that will skyrocket so that only super rich people can afford it because of climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Nice Deb, with a post on President Vineyard’s Big Day.

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People Who Work Less Hours Get Paid Less, So, Obviously, This Is Sexist

By William Teach August 21, 2014 – 8:54 am

Obviously

How a Part-Time Pay Penalty Hits Working Mothers

Women get paid less than men in almost all jobs, but when women in low-wage jobs need to take time off work to care for children, they are at an even greater disadvantage.

If all employees got paid the same hourly amount (assuming they’re equally productive on the job), it would go a long way toward closing the gender pay gap, according to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist who has analyzed income data across occupations, including a new set of unpublished data on hourly workers that she prepared for the White House Summit on Working Families in June.

Instead, she has found, people in professions like law and finance get paid disproportionately more when they work extra-long hours. At the other end of the spectrum, people in low-wage jobs do not benefit much from working more, but get paid disproportionately less per hour when they work fewer than 40 hours a week. The penalty is similar for men and women — but ends up hurting women more, because they are far more likely to take breaks during their careers or need shorter or predictable hours to handle child care.

Well, that is simply shocking! Who would think that working longer hours would mean more pay? Who would think that people who work less than 40 hours a week get paid a whole lot less? This just boggles the mind

While the challenges are different at high-income and low-income jobs, the bottom line is the same: Employees, particularly parents, need some measure of predictability and control over the hours they work; the workplace could be much more equal if they weren’t penalized for not working a straight 40-hour workweek.

Who wants to bet that those who work at the NY Times get paid more for working longer hours, and less for less than 40 hours a week? But, if you don’t agree that people who work less should get paid the same as those who work more you are a sexist, hate women, and are probably part of the evil patriarchy.

It’s like Liberals do not understand how the Adult Working World works. Because they don’t.

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Eric Holder Stokes Flames Of Racial Animosity In Ferguson

By William Teach August 21, 2014 – 8:29 am

Of course he does. He decided to go, as America’s Top Cop, and make things very personal

(USA Today) Attorney General Eric Holder flew to Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer leading an investigation into a police shooting.

He also arrived as an African-American who said he understands the racial tensions that have fueled days of protests that have been marred by violence and mass arrests since the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

“I am the Attorney General of the United States, but I am also a black man,” Holder told Ferguson residents at a community meeting. “I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding. Pulled over. … ‘Let me search your car’ … Go through the trunk of my car, look under the seats and all this kind of stuff. I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me.”

Well, obviously, this screams of racism. Right? American Thinker discusses this in terms of the NY Times article, which includes the same mention, and wonders if this could have anything to do with Holder participating in a 5 day occupation of the “abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.”

Or, it could just be coincidence, and have nothing to do with race or anything else. In fact, I had the same thing happen to me on I-195 by the Holmdel police, on the accusation that the officer couldn’t read the year sticker on my plate. He reached in an took a legal knife from the door pocket. Started searching the vehicle. For what? No clue. When he went to search the trunk without permission I told him to call a supervisor. Wasted two hours of time when I was trying to get back to college in NC. I know several other people who have had the same thing happen to them. The Holmdel PD was overstepping their bounds.

Or, it could be that Holder was *gasp* speeding and gave the officers reason to search the car.

“The eyes of the nation and the world are watching Ferguson right now,” Holder told a group of community leaders assembled at a local community college. “The world is watching because the issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. This is something that has a history to it, and the history simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.” (snip)

The Justice Department is conducting a parallel investigation into possible civil rights violations related to the shooting. In an extraordinary move, he also ordered a federal autopsy — the third forensic examination of the body, which was hit at least six times by gunfire.

How is it possible for Officer Wilson to obtain a fair shake in, at a minimum, the civil rights violations investigation when the US Attorney General is stoking the flames of racial animosity?

Meanwhile, Holder, again, the nation’s top cop, said nothing, at least that was reported, about citizens of Ferguson having their businesses looted and destroyed, about how Officer Wilson was apparently attacked and injured by Brown, about the people who were intimidated and assaulted by Brown when he robbed the convenience store. What the citizens of Ferguson heard was that everything is racist against them, and they have a right to loot and riot. Justice is not blind to Eric Holder during his time as AG.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Hysteric Air Officials Now Looking To Classify E-Cigs As Hazerdous Materials

By William Teach August 20, 2014 – 3:29 pm

Why?

(Yahoo Travel) There is new controversy over the use of electronic cigarettes on airplanes — but this time instead of it being about the health effects of the “vaping” on fellow passengers, it’s about fire safety. After an e-cigarette burned a hole in a passenger’s checked luggage at Logan International Airport in Boston, airport officials are calling for federal officials to classify the devices as hazardous materials, according to The New York Times.

On Saturday, August 9, passengers were evacuated from a JetBlue flight to Buffalo, New York, when baggage handlers smelled smoke. The smoldering bag was removed from the plane and put out with a fire extinguisher. But if the flight had actually taken off, things could have been very different, pointed out Ed Freni, director of aviation with the Massachusetts Port Authority.

The culprit seems to have been an e-cigarette. “The more you see these type of items sold out there, the more our industry has to take a closer look at them, as we’ve done with other hazardous materials,” Freni told The New York Times.

But, wait, there’s a rub

And though the Massachusetts Port Authority blames the e-cigarette for the incident, the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services said the cause had not yet been determined.

Huh. How about that.

Anyhow, let’s stipulate that it was an e-cig that caused this. This was one incident. This could also happen with any device that uses a rechargeable or regular battery. Laptops, phones, cameras, tablets. Flashlights. Electric razors. Adult toys. Everyone needs to relax, take a deep breath, and not over-react.

Remember, though, we still aren’t allowed to profile the people who are the most danger to commercial aviation.

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 20, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is super wonderful coffee under threat from climate catastrophe, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Power, with a post on anti-Semitism at a Code Pink rally.

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