Surprise: Another Warmist Wants To Shut Down Debate

By William Teach May 1, 2014 – 9:19 am

But don’t say that Progressives hate free speech, because they’ll tell you to shut up

(Moscow-Pullman Daily News) You printed a letter to the editor titled “Not all the facts are in on climate change” (April 26). At the least, that headline should have read, “Reader still doubts evidence on climate change.” Better yet, climate change denial letters could be refused altogether. Then you could help move the conversation quickly to solutions in the face of overwhelming (international, national and local) evidence and scientific consensus climate change is happening now and will get much worse quickly without immediate action.

As a science and environment writer for almost 20 years, I’ve also confronted climate change denial. A related letter I wrote, in response to another climate change denial letter, was recently printed by the Lewiston Tribune. My letter concluded with a reminder that “leading newspapers now refuse to print letters of climate change denial and misinformation or, at the very least, have a clear editorial policy for how to deal with such letters and views.” See the Los Angeles Times decision to refuse letters from deniers (http://goo.gl/I9sfnq). Even Popular Science now refuses online comments – in part because people’s ill-informed comments dangerously skew conversations about scientific certainty into shadows of nonexistent doubt (http://goo.gl/dr4oS1). CBSNews further explains these crucial editorial decisions at this shortened link: http://goo.gl/QJ5VV0.

The rest is buried behind a paywall, but, I think we get the drift. No dissent is allowed.

(Note: the paper is from Washington State)

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Rush: Progressive Truth Squad’s Next Target Is Orlando Magic Owner

By William Teach May 1, 2014 – 8:06 am

Regardless of what your opinion of Rush Limbaugh is, when he makes pronouncements, he tends to be way more often than not. When he says “don’t doubt me on this”, he tends to be right. And said pronouncements aren’t usually the easy. common sense, “well, sure, of course” type ones. Here’s another

(The Blaze) Following the ouster of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, Rush Limbaugh speculated on Wednesday that Rich DeVos, the owner of the Orlando Magic, could be the next person targeted by the NBA because of his views on gay marriage.

Limbaugh cited a CNN report by Rachel Nichols in which she discusses some of the “very unpopular statements” DeVos has made on the issue of gay marriage.

“There are a lot of people in this country who think that that is a problem, and I think that there is gonna be more and more attention paid to what these owners think,” Nichols said in the report. “It’s not just the players in the spotlight now, it’s not just management. They’re accountable, too.”

Limbaugh argued that Nichols was “basically saying that the next target that they’re gonna try to take out is Rich DeVos.”

“So Rich DeVos, Mr. Amway — he happens to be one of the greatest patriots this country has ever seen. Rich DeVos happens to have donated and supported some of the greatest causes in this country, but it doesn’t matter ’cause he doesn’t have his mind right on gay marriage,” he added.

Audio available at The Blaze.

Is Rush right? Time will tell. Let’s remember what Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said a few days ago

“I think you’ve got to be very, very careful when you start making blanket statements about what people say and think, as opposed to what they do. It’s a very, very slippery slope.”

“If it’s about racism and we’re ready to kick people out of the league, OK? Then what about homophobia? What about somebody who doesn’t like a particular religion? What about somebody who’s anti-Semitic? What about a xenophobe?”

“In this country, people are allowed to be morons.”

“But regardless of your background, regardless of the history they have, if we’re taking something somebody said in their home and we’re trying to turn it into something that leads to you being forced to divest property in any way, shape or form, that’s not the United States of America. I don’t want to be part of that.”

It is a very dangerous, slippery slope. Cuban was right that Sterling’s comments where “abhorrent”. I think we can all agree with that (unless you are a racist). And, IMO, Sterling’s comments were racist, being based on hate, rather than just stupidity (like Cliven Bundy). But, are we going to ban people, take their businesses away, possibly jail them? How about “hunting them down”?

(Newsday) The Nassau County district attorney and Hempstead Town officials are investigating what they called a racial incident at a town facility in Levittown that may be considered a hate crime.

A picture of a monkey was displayed on a bulletin board at the town highway facility on Market Lane on Monday, apparently making reference to an African-American employee, officials said.

“We will not rest . . . until the perpetrator is found. We will move to terminate that employee,” Town Supervisor Kate Murray said at a news conference, adding the town will require diversity training for the 25 employees at the facility. “There is absolutely no tolerance for any kind of racial hatred, any kind of intolerance.”

There are many examples of this same thing. I ran across a story on Yahoo News Wednesday where a nice old Black lady, beloved within a diverse community, who had lived there for like 60 years, received a nasty racist letter. This was being investigated as a hate crime. NY City actually has a “Hate Crime Unit”. Thought and speech is being codified and restricted. Violent crime is often being prosecuted more on hate crime than on the actual violence. There are cases where the hate crime penalties are tougher than the actual crime. Democrats want the Justice Department to scour the Internet for “hate speech”.

People who support this should think really hard about that support, because they could be next. You never know when a casual thought and phrase could get you in trouble. People should be allowed to be morons.

Granted, the NBA is a private organization, and can enforce their own rules. The 1st Amendment is about Government not retaliating against speech, protest, or petitioning for redress of grievance (among others). In the private domain, hey, people can respond. And do. But, shutting it down certainly violates the spirit of the 1st.

Read: Rush: Progressive Truth Squad’s Next Target Is Orlando Magic Owner »

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Democrats Have A Love/Hate Relationship With Citizens United Ruling

By William Teach May 1, 2014 – 7:33 am

In the US Senate, Democrats are planning a push for a Constitutional amendment to overrule the Citizens United case (via Hot Air)

(The Hill) Senate Democrats will schedule a vote this year on a constitutional amendment to reform campaign finance as they face tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads from conservative groups.

The Senate will vote on an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that would overturn two recent court cases that have given corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals free rein to spend freely on federal races.

“The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop now,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who announced the plan.

“The only way to undo the damage the court has done is to pass Senator Udall’s amendment to the Constitution, and Senate Democrats are going to try to do that,” he said.

Schumer said the vote would take place by year’s end and called on Republican colleagues to join Democrats to ensure “the wealthy can’t drown out middle-class voices in our Democracy.”

Who wants to be that the vote comes right before the mid-term voting begins, in order to create a distraction issue? The whole thing is hilarious, the notion that rich Democrats who obtain huge amounts of funding from other rich Democrats have a problem with deep pocketed Democrats donating. What they have a problem with is Republicans receiving monetary backing from groups. Democrats will surely create a way for all the unions, trade groups, guilds, and other Dem leaning groups and corporations to fund Democrats.

This amendment would also violate the 1st Amendment, which begins “Congress shall pass no law…”, in regards to not just free speech, but protesting peaceably and redress of grievance. And possibly the religion and press portions, as well. I know, people are thinking “it’s not a law”. The Framers meant that Congress shall not pass anything, in either the Senate nor House.

Anyhow, while Dems are planning on pulling the above stunt

(Politico) A Democratic group with ties to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been quietly working to enforce the controversial Citizens United decision at the state level.

General Majority PAC, created last year by longtime Reid Senate chief of staff Susan McCue, has won legal challenges in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over the past year to enforce the Supreme Court ruling permitting unlimited corporate and union spending.

The successful lawsuits essentially have created the equivalent of super PACs at the state level and are part of a larger transformation of election law in the past few years as the dizzying changes at the federal level eventually creep down into state election law.

So, while Dems state that they hate Citizens United, and Harry Reid rails against the Kock Brothers on a seemingly daily basis, they’re working hard to implement Citizens United at the State level.

Really, Democrats, despite the caterwauling, have fully embraced Citizens United and are doing all they can to get the sweet, sweet money, and get outside groups to attack Republicans. Obama whines about it, yet his own supposedly separate Organizing For Action group is exactly what Obama rails against. No one should be surprised in the least by Democrat hypocrisy.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Syrian Islamists Now Crucifying Enemies

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 3:44 pm

But if you mention the brutality of islamists, you’re an Islamiphobe

(Daily Beast) Public crucifixions are mostly ceremonial these days, staged rituals that some Christian communities enact as part of their Easter observance. But the real thing may be returning to Syria. Two men were reportedly crucified in Raqqa on Tuesday, their bloody corpses displayed in the center of a town controlled by the most severe of Syria’s Islamist factions.

Among the forms of slaughter that have become commonplace in Syria’s civil war, crucifixion may be no more brutal than barrel bombs or sarin gas attacks. But the revival of an ancient form of torture is one sign of what life is like under the rule of one of Syria’s powerful Islamist factions. And it’s an indication that, despite years of public hand-wringing in the West over Syria’s bloody and rapid decline, the country is continuing to plummet into new depths of the abyss.

Below the photo of a crucified body, the message on a jihadist Twitter account reads,  “One of 7 people executed by ISIS in Raqqa today on charges of planting IEDs,” or improvised explosive devices. The person behind the account, which is not being linked here to prevent driving traffic to a jihadist site, claims to be a member of the Islamic State in Iraq and the ash-Sham (ISIS), an Islamist group that was repudiated by al Qaeda in early 2014, in part for being so extremist that they became a “liability to the al-Qaeda brand,”  according to Aaron Zelin, a jihadi-watcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Photo available at the link.

Read: Syrian Islamists Now Crucifying Enemies »

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If All You See…

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible Gaia killing dog, sucking up resources and causing the world to boil, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post on the EPA delaying a CO2 rule to help Democrats.

Read: If All You See… »

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Bummer: Polar Bears Endangered By Too Much Ice

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 12:18 pm

Well, it’s probably caused by climate change, too

(CNS News) Five meters of ice– about 16 feet thick – is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career.

That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com.

“Prompted by reports of the heaviest sea ice conditions on the East Coast ‘in decades’ and news that ice on the Great Lakes is, for mid-April, the worst it’s been since records began, I took a close look at the ice thickness charts for the Arctic,” Crockford noted in her Polar Bear Science blog on April 18th.

It’s almost like nature is doing nature things like nature always has.

Read: Bummer: Polar Bears Endangered By Too Much Ice »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

The Winner Of The “Let’s Blame Tornadoes On Climate Change” Pool Is…

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 10:00 am

…Lewis W. Diuguid of the Kansas City Star. Certainly, there are others who’ve gone bat guano insane in linking this season’s tornadoes to “climate change”, such as Soros monkey Joe Romm, yet, some in Kansas City should really know better

Tornado season tends to stretch from March to June in the Midwest, and this year the area is getting hit with violent storms.

Tornadoes this week hit in Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Alabama and Oklahoma killing several people and doing tens of millions of dollars in property damage. Areas that had been hit in years past are suffering storm damage again.

It is an indication of the effects of climate change. Fossil fuel consumption generates more greenhouse gas, which warms the planet, melts polar ice, increases sea levels and creates more moisture in the air.

That also happens to radicalize weather patterns making droughts more severe and storms more fierce and unpredictable. The calm may only return if fossil fuel consumption is greatly reduced worldwide and people turn to more green sources of energy.

Good grief. Does it even have to be noted that tornadoes happen every year? Lewis even mentioned this at the start of the screed, then delves into blaming “climate change” and fossil fuels for the tornadoes. Because, apparently, there is some sort of rule about tornadoes never hitting the same area more than once.

Read: The Winner Of The “Let’s Blame Tornadoes On Climate Change” Pool Is… »

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Good Grief: “Climate Change To Make Fargo As Hot As Phoenix”

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 8:14 am

Warmists just need their fix of saying incredibly insane things, much like crack addicts need a hit on a constant basis. Here’s Nation Editor-at-Large Chris Hayes (no one watches his MSNBC show) yammering on during a radio interview

Climate Change Will Make Fargo as Hot as Phoenix

“Are you the unluckiest reporter in America today?” WNYC’s Brian Lehrer asked Nation Editor-at-Large Chris Hayes on Monday morning. Hayes laughed. The day before, the third episode of Years of Living Dangerously had aired on Showtime, in which Republican Congressman Michael Grimm admitted, in an interview with Hayes, the existence of man-made climate change. The following morning, Hayes woke up to news that Grimm had been taken into federal custody for alleged fraudulent business practices. “Well, we got a Republican convert on climate change,” Hayes joked, “too bad he got indicted the next day.” Fraud or not, Grimm’s change of heart is a positive step for Republicans, who continue to diminish the severity of the climate crisis. “If we continue doing what we’re all collectively doing on this planet,” Hayes told Lehrer, “we will get to a point where Fargo is like Phoenix.” Which is to say, climate change doesn’t care whether conservatives believe it exists, it’s going to destroy the planet if we don’t act.

Really?

The top is Fargo, the bottom is Phoenix. Those are the average temperatures, via Weatherspark.com. Fargo would have to jump up pretty far to be like Phoenix, temperature wise. “Climate change” is not going to destroy the planet. It didn’t during the much warmer Medieval Warm Period, nor during all the time when it was much, much hotter.

Of course, Hayes is also the kind of climakook who compares fossil fuels usage to slavery.

Read: Good Grief: “Climate Change To Make Fargo As Hot As Phoenix” »

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New Benghazi Emails Show White House Collusion To Blame Video

By William Teach April 30, 2014 – 7:51 am

I’m not sure that this is quite the bombshell some are positioning it to be: let’s not forget that the US embassy in Egypt was apologizing for the video just hours before it was attacked and burned on September 11, 2012. However, it is quite damning

(Fox News) Newly released emails on the Benghazi terror attack suggest a senior White House aide played a central role in preparing former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice for her controversial Sunday show appearances — where she wrongly blamed protests over an Internet video.

More than 100 pages of documents were released to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Among them was a Sept. 14, 2012, email from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

The Rhodes email, with the subject line: “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET,” was sent to a dozen members of the administration’s inner circle, including key members of the White House communications team such as Press Secretary Jay Carney.

In the email, Rhodes specifically draws attention to the anti-Islam Internet video, without distinguishing whether the Benghazi attack was different from protests elsewhere.

The email lists the following two goals, among others:

“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

The video was simply an excuse for violent protests from hardcore Islamists. I’ve noted several times the large number of al Qaeda and Taliban styled posters, flags, and headbands present at the “protests”, which even occurred in Sydney, Australia, London, and Belgium. In Libya, though, they were concerned with the fallout of Obama’s policies, which left the country a mess, with hardcore Islamists moving in and taking over the northeastern part of the country, to the point that most media outlets avoided the area and the Brits had pulled out.

(The Blaze) Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Tuesday said the American people have the “smoking document” that proves the Obama administration took part in a cover up in the aftermath of the deadly Benghazi terrorist attacks.

“It is in conflict with what we’ve been told, with what Jay Carney has been saying,” Krauthammer said of the revelations. “And that is, their story has always been this stuff call came from the CIA, from intelligence so it was completely clean.”

Krauthammer noted that former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell testified that he had never brought up the video as a possible motivator for the Benghazi attacks.

“We now have the smoking document, which is the White House saying: ‘We’re pushing the video because we don’t want to blame it on the failure of our policies,’” he added. “This undermines the whole narrative, therefore they have to invent the video. So I think this is extremely important.”

Let’s also no forget that making the narrative about a stupid video that almost no one had seen, rather than hardcore Islamist terrorism, allowed Obama to hit the campaign trail immediately after September 11.

And we still don’t know what Obama was doing during the hours the attacks in Benghazi were occurring.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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That NC Gay Marriage Lawsuit Is Either “Incompetence Or Stupidity”

By William Teach April 29, 2014 – 6:58 pm

The NY Times is really pumped up over the lawsuit filed by a bunch of (fake) religious leaders here in North Carolina I mentioned Monday. Other lefties, like NPR and Slate are also thrilled. There’s something they missed within the pesky laws of NC, as National Review’s Matthew J. Frank notes. The suit deals with the “religious” leaders, who fail to follow the Bible, believing that they can get in legal trouble for performing a gay marriage

The denomination argues that a North Carolina law criminalizing the religious solemnization of weddings without a state-issued marriage license violates the First Amendment. Mr. Clark said that North Carolina allows clergy members to bless same-sex couples married in other states, but otherwise bars them from performing “religious blessings and marriage rites” for same-sex couples, and that “if they perform a religious blessing ceremony of a same-sex couple in their church, they are subject to prosecution and civil judgments.”

But

These claims are patently false.  The complaint itself, immediately after the last line above, quotes the relevant statutory language, but the authors of the complaint evidently do not understand it:

a. North Carolina General Statute § 51-6 states: “Solemnization without license unlawful. No minister, officer, or any other person authorized to solemnize a marriage under the laws of this State shall perform a ceremony of marriage between a man and woman, or shall declare them to be husband and wife, until there is delivered to that person a license for the marriage of the said persons, signed by the register of deeds of the county in which the marriage license was issued or by a lawful deputy or assistant.”

b. North Carolina General Statute § 51-7 states: “Every minister, officer, or any other person authorized to solemnize a marriage under the laws of this State, who marries any couple without a license being first delivered to that person, as required by law, or after the expiration of such license, or who fails to return such license to the register of deeds within 10 days after any marriage celebrated by virtue thereof, with the certificate appended thereto duly filled up and signed, shall forfeit and pay two hundred dollars ($200.00) to any person who sues therefore, and shall also be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.”

These two provisions must be read together, in the context of the state’s decision to recognize marriages only between a man and a woman.  § 51-6 requires authorized persons to act only on valid marriage licenses, if they are going to “declare” a couple “husband and wife” for civil legal purposes.  § 51-7 further tells these authorized persons that they are answerable in any case where they do not first get the license, or fail to act on it before it expires, or fail to return it properly finished to the register of deeds in ten days.

These non-Bible following religious leaders can marry gays to their hearts content. They just cannot file any marriage licenses, and no gay marriages will be recognized by the North Carolina government. As Heritage also notes, the law does not violate religious liberty, because they can perform a church service. It just won’t be recognized.

If they don’t like it, I-95 and I-85 go north and south. I-40 heads west. There are also a vast number of roads that head out of NC and towards the liberal states that allow gay marriage. States which liberals have ultimately ruined, hence they move out to ruin our states.

Read: That NC Gay Marriage Lawsuit Is Either “Incompetence Or Stupidity” »

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