Pilots Sue CDC Over Federal Mask Mandate

Of course, since most of the news media is biased for Democrats, this is less news and more hit piece

10 JetBlue, American Airlines, and Southwest pilots are suing the CDC over the federal mask mandate, saying it encourages unruly behavior but they’re citing flawed science

A small group of pilots who work for major US airlines are suing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the recently extended federal transportation mask mandate.

The 10 pilots work for commercial airlines including JetBlue, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, according to the lawsuit.

In the filing, the pilots alleged that the CDC acted “without providing public notice or soliciting comment.”

The federal mask mandate applies to public transportation, including commercial aircraft. On March 10 it was extended for 30 days, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The rule is set to remain in effect through at least April 18.

How many of the issues on planes revolve around masks?

The pilots say in the suit they have “serious concerns about the safety implications” of the mask mandate in relation to unruly-passenger incidents caused by mask policies.

The lawsuit says: “As pilots for major airlines, we have seen up close and personal the chaos in the sky created by the FTMM (Federal Transportation Mask Mandate), with thousands of reports to the Federal Aviation Administration of ‘unruly’ passenger behavior since the FTMM took effect Feb. 1, 2021.”

The pilots described 2021 as the “worst year on record for buffoonish behavior on planes” and blamed nearly all of the “chaos” on mask requirements.

The FAA has said 4,290 mask-related incidents were reported in 2021, accounting for more than 75% of the agency’s unruly-passenger reports. Since January of last year, the agency proposed fines of more than $682,000 against unruly passengers.

In fairness, people know the rules, and, wearing a mask for a couple hours or so is no big deal, at least in my opinion. Sure, it’s annoying, but, I’ll consider wearing one while flying simply to reduce the chance for a cold or flu. And, again, it is the rule, as stupid as it is. People knew the rule when booking the flight. Instead, some try to create problems, for whatever reason (social media fame, they want to make a point, etc), inconveniencing everyone else and getting themselves in trouble.

But the suit also claims, without good evidence, that the mask mandate “impairs pilots’ health.”

“Wearing a mask before and during flight causes us numerous medical deficiencies,” the pilots claim in their suit, saying that they’re suffering from “mask fatigue,” which is not a thing, and suggesting that “face masks are totally ineffective.” The reality is that face masks are effective at reducing COVID-19 transmission (and high-quality respirators do the job better than simple cloth coverings).

The pilots cite an article authored by Lucas Wall, a longtime opponent to the federal mask mandate, who has filed several lawsuits against the CDC and airlines. Wall, an avid world traveler and former newspaper journalist, has no scientific or public health background.

First, that’s funny because neither of the “journalists” writing this piece have a background in science or public health. The majority of climate crisis (scam) pieces in the news are written by people with no science background. Regardless, anyone who has been forced to wear a mask knows exactly what mask fatigue is. We’ve experienced it. We’ve felt it. All for masks that are, at best, 10% effective at stopping COVID19. And why do pilots, sitting in the cockpit behind closed doors, need to wear masks? They’re segregated from the “cattle” in the back.

Of course, it might be a bit late for this lawsuit, if the mask mandate does go away in April. But, since the Usual Suspects are fearmongering on a new surge from a sub-variant, they might keep it.

Read: Pilots Sue CDC Over Federal Mask Mandate »

New One: Astronomy Is Bad For ‘Climate Change’

In all my years of blogging on anthropogenic climate change, and watching it long before that, I don’t think I’ve ever run across this. It just goes to show that the Cult of Climastrology will blame/link everything to the doomy cult beliefs

Astronomy’s Environmental Toll Is Surprisingly High. But There Are Ways to Clean it Up

It’s hard not to love the Kepler Space Telescope. Launched in 2009, the venerable spacecraft discovered nearly 5,000 suspected or confirmed exoplanets—or worlds orbiting other stars—during its 11-year lifetime. Built and launched at a relative bargain price of $600 million, it generated 4,306 scientific papers written by 9,606 authors. So all good, right? Well, not entirely.

In that same 11 years, the telescope that discovered so many other worlds did no favors for our own, generating an annual total of 4,784 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or a hefty 52,620 tons over its lifetime, mostly as a result of the electricity and supercomputing power it took to keep it operating. That also comes out to 12 tons of CO2 per paper and five tons per author.

Astronomy, in some ways, seems like the cleanest of sciences. After all, it costs nothing to look at the sky. But both ground-based and space-based observatories extract a huge environmental toll—in terms of construction, launch, energy generation and consumption, and even, at least before the pandemic, in the air miles burned as the world’s estimated 30,000 astronomers flew from conference to conference around the globe.

Science is bad for ‘climate change’.

Now, a new paper in Nature Astronomy has taken the full measure of the greenhouse gas footprint of the skygazing discipline. For the study, researchers analyzed the total CO2 output of 46 space-based missions and 39 ground observatories, dating as far back as the the 62-year old Observatoire de Haute Provence, in southeastern France and as recently as the new InSight observatory in New Mexico, which went online in 2017. In that time, the researchers—affiliated with the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plane?tologie (IRAP), in Toulouse, France—concluded that the 85 observatories have generated a prodigious 20.3 million tons of CO2, or an average of 1.2 million tons per year.

Sigh. Anyway, there’s a lot of Concern from a few climate cultists over this footprint. All the fossil fuels and concrete used to construct the telescopes/observatories, how many are far from civilization, so must rely on fossil fuels for power.

The paper stresses that the astronomy community must take dramatic steps to address its carbon footprint and not simply consider it the cost of doing business. The 20.3 million tons of CO2 emitted overall by the 85 observatories is, after all, the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas output of entire countries such as Croatia, Bulgaria or Estonia. There are ways to bring those numbers down.

“The first step,” said IRAP astronomer and co-author Lyigi Tibaldo, “is that existing structures are decarbonized, by switching to renewable energy sources.” Sun is abundant in the Atacama, making solar power a viable option. And the more the overall energy grid, especially in Europe, comes to rely on renewables, the more the telescopes located there will be able to operate without so much of a greenhouse impact. Most space-based observatories already rely on solar panels to keep them going, but a cleaner grid means their observations can be conducted and their data analyzed with a smaller carbon footprint too.

So, the paper is an advocacy one, activist, not serious science. Is anyone surprised? I suppose some cultists brainstormed what they could drag into their little cult that hadn’t been already.

Another answer, the authors argue, is to slow down the current building boom in new observatories in the Atacama and elsewhere, relying more on the astronomical infrastructure that already exists. “The strong reduction of emissions that are required in the next decade will not be achieved if we continue building new infrastructure at the pace that is occurring now,” said Tibaldo. “That will also give us more time to perform more comprehensive exploration of the data we have from existing infrastructure.”

Stop doing science, people! The Cult has spoken.

Read: New One: Astronomy Is Bad For ‘Climate Change’ »

Poll: By A 4-1 Margin Americans Say They Are Not Better Off Than Last Year

Perhaps a lot of people should have thought more about their vote, what kinds of policies they were voting for, rather than losing their minds over mean tweets

I&I/TIPP Poll: Are You Better Off Today Than A Year Ago? By 4-To-1, Americans Say ‘No’

Are you better off today under President Joe Biden than you were a year earlier? And are you financially prepared for a downturn in the economy or a job loss? The March I&I/TIPP Poll suggests most Americans would answer “no” to both of those questions.

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, is your family better off today than it was one year ago, worse off than it was one year ago, or about the same as it was a year ago?”

Fewer than one in five (20%) said they were “better off.” while more than twice that number — 42% — said they were “worse off.” Another 36% said they were “about the same.”

Taken as a whole, that means 78% of Americans have seen no progress or improvement at all in their financial and economic lives since Biden took over in early 2020.

Despite this, Biden’s recent speeches have included references to the “best economic growth in the last four decades.”

Well, in fairness, you wouldn’t expect Biden to say that things are not good. That just doesn’t happen in politics anymore. Rarely will the party in power acknowledge the actual problems, especially in a mid-terms year. Unless it’s a problem the Democrats can fear-monger over, in order to spend lots of taxpayer money and take away freedom and liberty, like with the climate crisis scam. The GOP will tend to go after the border and national security. Regardless, they usually acknowledge the issue in private, and attempt to deal with the problem. Biden and the Democrats are in La La Land when it comes to the economy

In the same poll, I&I/TIPP also asked Americans, “How much does your household have in emergency savings — that is, money that is readily available in either a checking, savings or money-market account?”

Respondents were given eight possible responses: “No emergency savings,” “One month’s expenses,” “Two months’ expenses,” “Three months’ expenses,” “Four months’ expenses,” “Five months’ expenses,” “Six months’ expenses or more,” and “Not sure.”

Sadly, the biggest category by far was “No emergency savings,” at 34%. Both “One month’s” and “Two months’ ” garnered 11% each.

So 56% of all Americans, over half of the population, have either no savings or barely enough to last two months, should economic trouble occur. For most, that means they are one job loss or personal injury away from economic disaster.

#Let’sGoBrandon! Is it any wonder that Biden’s approval rating is under water badly? That people consistently say America is on the wrong track? That Biden polls horribly on the economy? Americans need to really start thinking about policies and results when voting, rather than personality.

Read: Poll: By A 4-1 Margin Americans Say They Are Not Better Off Than Last Year »

SEC Floats New Climate Scam Disclosure Rule

They just want to make business harder and more expensive

The S.E.C. moves closer to enacting a sweeping climate disclosure rule.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has said for the first time that public companies must tell their shareholders and the federal government how they affect the climate, a sweeping proposal long demanded by environmental advocates.

The nation’s top financial regulator gave initial approval to the much-anticipated climate disclosure rule at a meeting on Monday, moving forward with a measure that would bolster the Biden administration’s stalled environmental agenda.

The proposed rule — approved by a 3-1 vote — was a major step toward holding companies accountable for their role in climate change and giving investors more leverage in forcing changes to business practices that have contributed to rising global temperatures.

Ben Cushing, who leads the Sierra Club’s push for stronger climate disclosures, cheered what he called a “long-overdue step” and urged the commission to quickly finalize “the strongest rule possible.”

It still must go through the rule making process, but, does anyone think the climate cultists won’t make this happen?

The SEC’s Climate-Change Overreach

The Securities and Exchange Commission will propose sweeping new rules this week requiring publicly traded, and perhaps even private, companies to disclose extensive climate-related data and additional “climate risks.”

Setting climate policy is the job of lawmakers, not the SEC, whose role is to facilitate the investment decision-making process. Companies choose how best to comply and thrive under those polices, and investors decide which business strategies to back. That approach addresses many societal issues—think vaccines—and enhances global welfare. Taking a new, activist approach to climate policy—an area far outside the SEC’s authority, jurisdiction and expertise—will deservedly draw legal challenges. What’s worse, it puts our time-tested approach to capital allocation, as well as the agency’s independence and credibility, at risk.

That’s correct, the SEC shouldn’t be basing this on some tiny bit of language in another bill, possibly one that has little relation to ‘climate change’. Congress is responsible for this, not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Understanding and addressing global climate change is one of the most complex and significant issues of our time. Some predict we face inevitable catastrophe, while others say the costs of the transition to a “net-zero world” outweigh the benefits

We know four things for sure. First, implementing an economywide emissions-reduction policy will have a profound impact on the domestic energy, labor, transportation and housing markets, among others. Many jobs will be destroyed while others are created. Some businesses will close while others will flourish. Even if the long-term benefits outweigh the costs, near-term stresses on working Americans are inevitable and will be distributed unequally.

Government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers for a scam. Especially bureaucrats

Fourth, the body that the Constitution prescribes for weighing the relevant trade-offs in this area is Congress. Congress, duly elected by and responsible to the people, is precisely where climate policy, in all its complexities and consequences, should be resolved. Yet over decades, elected leaders have pushed hard policy questions to federal agencies staffed by unelected bureaucrats, whose decisions are reviewed only by unelected judges. This is at best bad for democracy and at worst unconstitutional.

Demanding that the SEC “act on climate change” allows politicians to say that they are working on their constituents’ behalf without accepting responsibility for the hard choices involved in crafting policy.

Exactly. And this will drive up costs, which are then passed on to consumers.

Read: SEC Floats New Climate Scam Disclosure Rule »

If All You See…

…is the land turning to desert from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Greenie Watch, with a post on the Dems radical climate agenda being a political albatross.

Read: If All You See… »

NY Times Is Super Excited By Things We’ll Keep In Post Pandemic Life

Post pandemic? From what? Do you see anything in the news about a pandemic? Oh, right, that Chinese coronavirus stuff, which mostly simply disappeared from the news when the polling became very inconvenient for Democrats, causing them to end most of their mandates toot-sweet, even though cases were higher than they were last summer. Do you see much about COVID? Vaccine mandates disappeared. I guess Brandon’s planned big employer mandate, set to kick in early January, was unnecessary. But, the NY Times really wants to keep certain aspects (you can also see it at WRAL, if the Times’ paywall gets you)

Six Things We’ll Keep From Pandemic Life

On Nov. 17, 1918, The New York Times published a lengthy interview with the city’s health commissioner, Royal Copeland, titled “Epidemic Lessons Against Next Time.” Copeland, who a few years later would become a United States senator, spoke about the city’s comparative success combating the Spanish flu, which at that point, although it had killed nearly 20,000 people, had caused considerably less devastation than in other major cities. Copeland credited this outcome in large part to systems and habits put in place during previous public health crises. Even a century earlier, there were, in other words, always takeaways.

Now, two years into the current pandemic, it seems like a good point to ask ourselves what changes — to our patterns, lifestyles and public spaces — might be with us for good, or at least for a very long time, given that the future will almost certainly bring new variants and disruption.

A mask will probably live in your pocket forever.

Mask-wearing, though popular in many countries around the world before the pandemic, especially where pollution is severe, was always regarded with suspicion in the United States — a sign of indulging unnecessary paranoia. Although masks became the subject of a lot of defiance in many states during the past two years, New Yorkers embraced them. Compliance with wearing masks on subways remains remarkable.

We have also learned that they have multiple uses — as face warmers, as shields against unpleasant street smells, as concealers of skin problems and, for women, as armor against men who pass you by on the street ordering you to “smile.” Their use is now normalized, and we’ll pull them out of the drawer every flu season.

I can see it to warm your face on a chilly, windy day. Smells? Not bloody likely. They do not stop smells, unless you’re dousing it in perfume/cologne. Armor? Please stop with this trope. I’m not carrying one with me, though, I still haven’t cleaned them out of my work bag or car center console. Will Mask Cultists continue to wear them incorrectly as they wear them voluntarily?

Remote school was a disaster. Remote work was fantastic.

I wouldn’t know, since my job can only be done in person at work. Some people love remote work, some don’t.

Everyone fell in love with biking.

If you didn’t already have a bike in the early phase of the pandemic, you soon learned that the bright idea to go buy one immediately was shared by many, many others. By the end of 2020, sales had nearly doubled nationwide, and waits for bikes could last months. Last year, Citi Bike was struggling to keep up with demand, and people complained that it was nearly impossible to dock bikes. The city responded by working to improve biking infrastructure, and a new cadre of bike advocates was born just as New York was plunging into the hard work of meeting its carbon targets.

They did fall in love, and, then quickly gave it up when things started reopening in Fall 2020. There’s a greenway behind my house. I rarely see bikers anymore, where there used to be a ton. Maybe NYC is different, but, I bet there are a lot of expensive, unused bikes sitting in people’s homes right now.

Everyone said ‘I love you’ to the urban wild.

The pandemic fundamentally changed our relationship to the outdoors. It wasn’t just eating out on a sidewalk under a heat lamp in January that became a thing; so many forms of social and professional life moved beyond the indoors — first out of necessity, then for the sheer pleasure of it. In 2020, attendance in New York state parks hit a record. In the city, people began exploring parks far from their own neighborhoods. (When a colleague told me about some hiking trails in Staten Island he had been to, I quickly corralled my son and our friends to check them out.) Walks with friends took the place of meeting up for drinks or coffee. And if you were lucky enough to live near some of the people you work with, you might get together to brainstorm on the Brooklyn piers, never missing the windowless conference room.

Do they still do that? Or, have they gone back to their old ways?

Workers rose up.

And now things are starting to go back to the way it was.

Forget Miami, the Catskills and every other place you thought you were going to live.

The real estate market in suburbs and rural towns and on beaches outside New York soared. Bidding wars were making headlines. But eventually, living on a goat farm in Sullivan County got tedious. The sump pump in the Morristown Colonial kept breaking. The “Ice Storm” scene in Connecticut appalled you, and just because you could play tennis on a public court every day didn’t mean that you ever got around to it. You missed the city. It’s true that in the city, you very rarely went to experimental theater or ate grasshopper tacos in Queens or had any real inclination to go to the Andrei Tarkovsky retrospective at Lincoln Center. But all those other people did. Above all, New York is the thrill of its human capital. The affair was over; you wanted the marriage back.

I’d say this shows the elitist urban liberal mentality, but, this was written for NYC folks, and most people think where they live is optimal. Missing is how all those New Yorkers escaped the city early in COVID for the suburbs and rural areas, spreading COVID around the country. And most of us in those areas are appreciated when the NYC liberals go home, bringing their uber-leftist ideas with them, their Elitist attitudes with them. There’s an old saying down here “your expensive BMW is great, but, our good old boys drive $250K combines two weeks a year.”

Read: NY Times Is Super Excited By Things We’ll Keep In Post Pandemic Life »

International (Climate Cult) Energy Agency Has Ideas For You To Reduce Your Energy Use

Not for them, of course. They’ll continue to burn lots of oil as they scoot around the world to climate meetings. This only applies to you peasants (via Climate Depot and Watts Up With That?)

Russia crisis spurs push to cut oil use

The International Energy Agency just unveiled ideas for quickly cutting oil demand at a time when Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine could bring substantial loss of Russian barrels from global markets.

Why it matters: The 10-point plan comes amid IEA warnings that the war could become the biggest supply crisis in decades as countries look to isolate Russia.

It’s part of a wider reckoning in Europe — Russia’s largest market — and elsewhere over how to curb reliance on Russia while keeping markets supplied and avoiding even greater economic shocks.

Zoom in: The plan says that “immediate actions” in advanced economies could reduce global oil demand by about 2.7 million barrels per day within four months.

The US uses almost 20 million a day itself. What does 2.7 million actually mean for the globe? And the ideas?

Reducing highway speed limits by about 6 miles per hour; more working from home; street changes to encourage walking and cycling; car-free Sundays in cities and restrictions on other days; cutting transit fares; policies that encourage more carpooling; cutting business air travel; and more.

They also want to reduce your air travel, forcing you onto trains and buses. When do the elites do this? And how is this accomplished?

“Governments have all the necessary tools at their disposal to put oil demand into decline in the coming years, which would support efforts to both strengthen energy security and achieve vital climate goals,” it states.

That’s right, Government elites forcing this down your throats. Marc Morano write

“COVID 2.0 has arrived?! The 2022 International Energy Agency’s (IEA) report sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns. Instead of opening America back up for domestic energy production, we are told to suffer and do with less and are prescribed the same failed lockdown-style policies we endured for COVID. It is odd how COVID ‘solutions’ also allegedly helped the climate and now the same solutions are being touted to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a bonus, IEA tells us these measures will also help ‘achieve vital climate goals.’ Let’s simplify this: The proposed ‘solutions’ to climate change, COVID, and now the Russian war are all exactly the same — hammer the poor and middle class with more restrictions on travel, less freedom, and even more surrendering of power to unelected government regulators.

This is what I’ve been saying since 2005: the entire climate crisis scam is simply a way to force their authoritarian policies down our throat, softening it as a way to “benefit” the peasants. It’s force politics. It’s Progressivism, ie, Nice Fascism. They aren’t nice, this is for your own good.

Read: International (Climate Cult) Energy Agency Has Ideas For You To Reduce Your Energy Use »

Reports Of US Funded Lab In Ukraine Are “Dangerous”

The modern news, folks, where certain subjects should be off limits. You know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop

Hvistendahl: Reports that U.S.-funded lab leaked COVID-19 are ‘dangerous’

Intercept reporter Mara Hvistendahl said reports that the National Institute of Health may have funded a grant for research that resulted in the release of COVID-19 from a lab are “dangerous.”

“There is absolutely no evidence to support that so I consider that a conspiracy theory,” Hvistendahl said on HillTV’s Rising.

This comes after Hvistendahl and Intercept reporter Sharon Lerner reported that Peter Daszak, who works for EcoHealth Alliance, which aims to understand and prevent infectious diseases, worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a partner on a 2014 NIH grant to research bat coronaviruses in China.

Daszak has also been tied to many debates about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic because of a research proposal that reportedly risked creating a more dangerous pathogen.

And that’s why they do not want it discussed, because it could precipitate more conversation the Wuhan lab thing, which is bad for His Majesty Fauci and others, along with all those trying to deflect away from China’s culpability and responsibility. Did Mara consider that she could do that whole Being A Reporter thing and prove or disprove it.

Project Veritas, a far right media company, has been criticized for its reporting that the NIH funded a grant into research into bat related coronavirus may have led to the pandemic, with Dr. Anthony Fauci calling the reporting, “distorted.”

Hvistendahl said Daszak maintain that research that could make coronavirus more transmissible was not funded.

Most in the media refuse to investigate.

Read: Reports Of US Funded Lab In Ukraine Are “Dangerous” »

If All You See…

…is a fast rising sea from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Real Climate Science, with a post on Pfizer/FDA hiding data on vaccine failure.

It’s wing-women week!

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Patriotic Pinup Maxine Stevens

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in the Once and Future Nation of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and Spring is in the air. This pinup is by Maxine Stevens, which is a pseudo-name for Edward Runci and his wife, Maxine, who helped him paint it and posed, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. neo-neocon discusses Ukraine and Biden family corruption
  2. Noisy Room wonders why the NY Times finally validated the Hunter Biden laptop story
  3. Outside The Beltway has an interesting post on daylight savings time
  4. Pacific Pundit covers NBC altering a photo on fake woman swimmer Lia Thomas
  5. The First Street Journal discusses Free Speech at the NY Times
  6. The Last Refuge features Lara Logan and the reality of Ukraine
  7. The OK Corral notes that a Texas robber chose poorly
  8. The Other McCain delves into the Jan 6 witch hunt committee
  9. The Right Scoop covers AOC doing the Biden whisper and being her usual dumb self
  10. This ain’t Hell… highlights fearmonger Fauci calling for more lockdowns
  11. Legal Insurrection discusses a UK hospital covering up rapes by a gender confused “woman”
  12. IOTW Report notes ESPN’s creepy moment of silence
  13. Geller Report covers a bill from Democrats that could allow killing a baby up to 28 days after birth
  14. GeeeZ discusses Tulsi Gabbard being censored for opinions on Ukraine
  15. And last, but, not least, Dissecting Leftism features 10 biggest COVID mistakes

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your Pinups for Vets calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me. I’ve also mostly alphabetized them, makes it easier scrolling the feedreader

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Two great sites for getting news links are Liberty Daily and Whatafinger.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

Pirate's Cove