U.S. To Impose Sanction Putin Directly

By William Teach February 26, 2022 – 6:45 am

Not quite sure why this wasn’t one of the first sanctions, but, at least Brandon is playing catchup quickly

U.S. joins EU and U.K. in sanctioning Putin directly

The U.S. imposed sanctions Friday on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other members of Russia’s Security Council.

Why it matters: It is extremely rare for the U.S. to sanction a sitting world leader, and the Kremlin had previously said it would consider sanctions on Putin himself to be a de facto severing of relations between the U.S. and Russia.

  • The move reflects Moscow’s new pariah status but is mostly symbolic, as it’s unclear what assets Putin and Lavrov actually hold in the West after years of escalating sanctions against Russia.
  • Putin in particular is believed to rely on his inner circle of Russian oligarchs to stash his vast wealth abroad.

Driving the news: The sanctions prohibit Putin and Lavrov from traveling to the U.S. and also target Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.

And therein lies one of the issues, what, exactly, will this mean to Putin? What holdings does he have in the U.S. and Europe, as the EU sanctions on him do the same as the U.S. ones.

And, of course, as expected, Russia vetoed the UN Security council resolution.

Double of course, you wouldn’t know any of this stuff if you tuned into the White House twitter feed, which doesn’t mention Ukraine at all today. It’s primarily about Brandon nomination Judge Jackson. The only mention at Whitehouse.gov is on Brandon’s call with Ukranian president Zelenskyy. Which is also the only thing mentioned in relation to Ukraine on the POTUS twitter account.

Now, he’s supposedly going to attend a funeral for his daughter-in-law’s mother, and work on his SOTU. Pretty bad optics to be out of Washington all weekend, though, and you know if Trump were president the media and Democrats would be wondering why he couldn’t go to the funeral then come back to D.C. Different rules, you know. And, really, this whole war thing is just so inconvenient for Joe.

Read: U.S. To Impose Sanction Putin Directly »

Posted in Joe Biden | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Fault: ‘Climate Change” Makes Some Feel Like Hostages

By William Teach February 25, 2022 – 3:19 pm

What is needed are more mental health professionals who won’t coddle these cultists, who will tell the politicians, news media folks, and those pushing climate crisis doom to just stop it

‘Climate hostages’: Overwhelming impacts of climate change have many feeling trapped

The original headline, “Ecopsychologist discusses how climate change makes many people feel like ‘hostages'”, but, King5 news in Seattle probably thought that was too over-the-top even for the unhinged leftists in the area. And very silly

Scientists have warned for years that the effects of climate change will impact our health, even beyond weather-related disasters.

In 2019, while the Natural Resources Defense Council released a study that showed 245 people died from 2012’s wildfire smoke, young activists like Jamie Margolin from Seattle were also pointing out another health issue: climate anxiety.

“It’s really hard to grow up on a planet full of ifs,” she told the Associated Press.

Margolin and a number of other mostly young people are what psychologist Dr. Thomas Doherty refers to as “climate hostages.”

Mentally, these imminent and long-term effects make some individuals feel trapped. Doherty uses the phrase “climate hostage” to explain this feeling. He told KING 5 the term is “meant to capture the pressure that people feel kind of trapped between their desires for a better world for themselves and their community in terms of sustainability.”

Doherty, who counsels and practices “ecopsychology” in Portland, believes nature has healing powers and helps his patients develop a stronger bond with the natural world while also working through the anxiety they might have over the harm humans have caused.

“A lot of these climate and environmental concerns just affect our nervous system, just like any other concern, like economic concerns or family concerns, so we get a stress reaction on our body,” he said.

Here’s an idea: practice what you preach. Or, better yet, stop preaching doom and gloom to people, scaring the crap out of them.

Read: Your Fault: ‘Climate Change” Makes Some Feel Like Hostages »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 25, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…are carbon pollution driven clouds, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Right Scoop, with a post on why Brandon said “no comment” to a question on China and the Ukraine.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

CDC To Update Their Mask Guidance Or Something

By William Teach February 25, 2022 – 10:30 am

At a time that most states, counties, and cities are getting rid of their mask mandates, even for schools, the CDC thinks they’re still relevant

CDC to release guidance Friday that would ease mask restrictions for many Americans

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release new and highly anticipated guidance on Friday that eases indoor masking recommendations in many parts of the U.S., officials told ABC News.

The new guidance is expected to outline how the country should move into the next phase of the pandemic, with a shifted focus from daily spread in a community to the more severe impacts of the virus, like hospitalizations and health care strain.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said publicly the agency was updating the guidance.

“Moving forward, our approach will advise enhanced prevention efforts in communities with a high volume of severe illness and will also focus on protecting our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” she tweeted late Thursday.

The new guidance will be intended to help states and counties decide what metrics should guide that decision at a local level. Omicron, which has substantially subsided across the country, left many Americans feeling eager to retain some normalcy during a potential lull in the pandemic.

Most states have been ignoring the CDC’s masking guidance for well over a year, because it has made little difference. You have lots of mask cultists stating that wearing masks brought down Delta and Omicron, yet, both variants rose while people were wearing masks. If masks work so well, why change the guidance? They didn’t after Delta cases crashed. And the infection rate right now is still higher nationally than it was before Omicron hit.

Though a majority of states went ahead and announced that they will drop mask mandates before the CDC’s guidance was ready, the new information could still aid local leaders and public health officials who are facing vastly different versions of the pandemic even within the same state.

Looks like the CDC is giving up on trying to influence states and, instead, target cities, getting them to listen to the CDC.

Walensky has cautioned, though, that there won’t be a “date certain” that ends the pandemic.

“I think we’re gonna tiptoe out of this and that we will very gradually, one day, realize in retrospect, we’re no longer in this anymore, or at least in it the way we have been for the last two years,” she said in a podcast interview on Tuesday.

In other words, they want to keep this going as long as possible, while most nations seem to be moving away from keeping this going. You know, this might have all turned out a lot better if it wasn’t so darned apparent that groups like the CDC weren’t using a pandemic for authoritarian power.

Read: CDC To Update Their Mask Guidance Or Something »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

Warmists Are Very Upset That War And Chinese Coronavirus Are Pushing ‘Climate Change’ Out Of The Spotlight

By William Teach February 25, 2022 – 8:14 am

This is just so inconvenient for the Cult of Climastrology activists

Climate change gets pushed out of the spotlight

Climate change is no longer at the top of the agenda for world leaders and many executives, having been shoved aside due to the Russian war in Ukraine as well as COVID-19 and inflation.

Why it matters: The recent developments come at a hinge point for climate action, with the most ambitious Paris Agreement temperature target perilously close to slipping out of reach. (snip)

Inflation has increasingly taken up political oxygen in Washington and other global capitals, along with the fast-spreading Omicron variant that’s only now ebbing.

Against this backdrop, the Ukraine war is occupying world leaders’ time, and the ongoing, large-scale Russian military action in Ukraine could knock climate much further down the priority list.

That’s so terrible for climate cultists!

Threat level: John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, warned last week that the crisis in Europe risks the world losing focus on the urgent tasks of driving emissions down and mobilizing financial resources from the private sector.

Yeah, I mentioned him yesterday, and lots of people excoriated him over his idiotic, divorced from reality, cult comments.

Zoom in: Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, said she is concerned the conflict in Europe will sap the momentum from climate action.

“The problem is that now is exactly the time that countries need to be converting their pledges in Glasgow into concrete actions and policies so that they can set their economies on a path toward net zero,” she told Axios via email.

Life is just so inconvenient for people trying to force Other People to comply

What’s next: On Monday, a major new U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability will be released. It is expected to contain new details of just how far behind we are in preventing the worst consequences of global warming.

Its message may be drowned out, though, this time by the sounds of artillery shells exploding in the heart of Europe.

All the cultists complaining about things like war getting in the way of implementing their Progressive (nice Fascism) seem to have no empathy for those going through war, COVID, high inflation. Yet, so few of the cultists change their own lives. Among most citizens Doing Something about ‘climate change’ is popular in theory, but, not in practice, and it almost always comes in low when a poll is taken on what’s important.

Read: Warmists Are Very Upset That War And Chinese Coronavirus Are Pushing ‘Climate Change’ Out Of The Spotlight »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: Most Severe Sanctions Ever Won’t Impact “Flow Of Energy From Russia”

By William Teach February 25, 2022 – 6:45 am

How is this not bigger news?

Come again?

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) Daleep Singh, national security adviser and National Economic Council director, described the package as potentially  “the most consequential ever levied in history.” Measures include freezing assets that touch the U.S. financial system at top Russian banks, restricting investors from financing for 13 Russian-owned companies and penalizing “Putin’s kleptocracy and their family members those who shared in the Kremlin’s corrupt games, and stored their wealth in yachts and luxury condos and fancy cars.”

“We’ve intentionally scoped our sanctions to deliver severe impact on the Russian economy, while minimizing the cost to the U.S. as well as our allies,” Mr. Singh said. “To be clear, our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world.”

See, now this creates an interesting issue: you really could have expected the EU to start ignoring/cancelling sanctions on Russia within a year, sooner if the Fall and Winter are cold, because they need that Russian energy. But, if sanctions are not hitting Russia’s energy sector, they’re mostly toothless. And pointless

Leaving their energy sector alone isn’t particularly severe. Further up in the article Senator Pat Toomey said

“While the sanctions announced today are a small step in the right direction, I fear they will be inadequate to deter Putin from further aggression. By failing to impose significant sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry, which accounts for the majority of all Russian exports, the administration is intentionally leaving the biggest industry in Russia’s economy virtually untouched,” Mr. Toomey said in a statement late Thursday.

But

That approach would disrupt global energy prices and inflict damage on both the American and European economies, argue energy and trade experts.

“It’s important to send a message to Russia, where we have to be careful though is that we don’t undermine ourselves by impacting what happens in the global oil market,” said Frank Maisano, of Bracewell LLC, a Washington-based firm that represents energy and utility clients.

They aren’t wrong. And the NY Times Editorial Board notes

Mr. Biden stopped short of two especially tough punishments — personal sanctions against Mr. Putin and excluding Russia from the SWIFT system of global money transfers. The latter in particular would do immediate and grave damage to the Russian economy. But it would also damage the countries with which it trades, including the European Union members and the United States. Mr. Biden said that all such sanctions remained on the table.

And, let’s be honest, sanctions won’t stop Putin, and this will all be forgotten about in a year or so, just like Crimea and Georgia.

You know what would help? Let America drill on our own soil, get our own damned energy.

Read: Good News: Most Severe Sanctions Ever Won’t Impact “Flow Of Energy From Russia” »

Posted in Current Affairs, Energy, Joe Biden | 22 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Envoy John Kerry Is Super Concerned About The Carbon Footprint Of Russia Invading Ukraine

By William Teach February 24, 2022 – 3:00 pm

These grand poobahs in the Cult of Climastrology are really divorced from reality

I saw this early this morning, but, had to take the time to see if it was real. It is. It’s not something from long ago

(MEMRI) In a February 23, 2022 interview on BBC Arabic (U.K.), former Secretary of State John Kerry, who currently serves as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, said that he is concerned about the Ukraine crisis because the war would have “massive emissions consequences” and because people’s attention – and big countries’ attention – would be diverted away from the climate crisis. He said he hopes that Putin will realize that most of northern Russia is on frozen land that is now thawing, putting Russia’s infrastructure and people at risk. Expressing hope that diplomacy will succeed, and that Putin will help people “stay on track” regarding the climate, Kerry also said that he is concerned about the Ukrainian people, international law, and Russian attempts to change its boundaries by force.

That’s right, yesterday.

John Kerry: “I’m very concerned about, I’m concerned about Ukraine because of the people of Ukraine and because of the principles that are at risk, in terms of international law and trying to change boundaries of international law by force. I thought we lived in a world that had said no to that kind of activity. And I hope diplomacy will win.

“But massive emissions consequences to the war but equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus, you’re going to lose big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact. So, you know hopefully President Putin would realize that in the Northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of the nation that was over frozen land.

“Now it’s thawing, and his infrastructure is at risk. And the people of Russia are at risk. And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”

Read: Climate Envoy John Kerry Is Super Concerned About The Carbon Footprint Of Russia Invading Ukraine »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming, Unhinged Tools | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 24, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the duke and duchess of trash.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

The GOP IS Authoritarian For Wanting Parents Involved With The Education Of Their Children Or Something

By William Teach February 24, 2022 – 10:30 am

The hard left just refuses to get the message from voters that Americans are not happy with what’s going on in schools. Yes, the majority of teachers and administrators are not the uber-crazy types, like we see all the time from Libs of Tiktok

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1496622496023334913

but, there are plenty of softly barking moonbats, and enough, including school boards, who want to hide what is being done and taught to the kids. Back in my day, late 70’s into 80’s, parents were involved. They knew what was being taught. They didn’t worry about their kids being taught crazy stuff in secret. Apparently, our parents being involved is authoritarian, per Sara Jones at NY Mag

Household Tyrants

To empower parents, Florida Republicans would put children in danger. If passed, their Parental Rights in Education legislation, known more commonly as the “don’t say gay” bills, would prevent public-school districts from “encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity,” CBS News reports. A proposed amendment would have required educators to report a child’s disclosure about their gender identity or sexual orientation to parents within six weeks.

Republicans haven’t been shy about their rationale. The text of the bills says they allegedly “reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children.” Last year, Senator Josh Hawley introduced a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights, which would include the right to review curricula and to visit children during school hours. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott announced his own Parental Bill of Rights last month. “Parents will be restored to their rightful place as the preeminent decision-maker for their children,” he said at a campaign event held, fittingly, at a charter school. On Wednesday, Abbott told Texas state agencies to investigate reports of gender-affirming care for transgender children.

Teaching that stuff is not the job of schools. Not K-12. Moonbats are not happy that parents will be legally able to be involved, and that schools have to actually teach subjects, not Woke crap

Parents don’t lack rights in the U.S. They already enjoy the wide freedom to educate their children as they wish, including at home or in private schools. They can raise their children to be Christians or witches or both; the state does not interfere. Liberals are generally satisfied with this state of affairs: There is no appetite to prohibit parents from raising their children in even the most hate-filled churches. Yet the right behaves as if parental rights were under sustained and serious attack, as if the parent has been dislodged from a high place and, as Abbott said, should be restored. The GOP’s position on parental rights isn’t entirely coherent. Any attempt to ban gender-confirming therapy for transgender children theoretically infringes on the rights of the parent, but this hasn’t dissuaded the party from its attacks on trans rights. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton had previously issued an opinion defining gender-affirming care as ‘child abuse.’ Trans children and their families must now fear the long arm of the state, which will reach into their most private and personal affairs

Got that? You parents can be involved unless you let your kids go to public schools. Many cannot afford to home-school or send to a private school, and the government requires that children go to school. In Liberal World, government is in charge of The People. We’re here to serve government, and, the government will do as it wants, and you peons will have no input. The old notion of “government for the people, by the people”, has been replaced with a Soviet style one.

This goes on for a few paragraphs more, and, in Liberal World, it is authoritarian for parents to have rights, and for kids to not be indoctrinated, groomed, and be taught crazy things. But, hey, Democrats should continue pushing this stuff: it’ll just help them lose more and more elections.

Read: The GOP IS Authoritarian For Wanting Parents Involved With The Education Of Their Children Or Something »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats | 25 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: Alabama Solar Panel To Close Due To Biden Removing Sanctions On China

By William Teach February 24, 2022 – 8:40 am

Here’s the thing: most ‘climate change’ Skeptics are not against energy like solar. On the contrary, we support them. We just don’t like the idea of replacing existing reliable, affordable, dependable energy sources with unreliable, expensive ones at this time, especially when it requires a massive footprint to have these solar farms (among others). One day this will work. It’s not today. Not yet. Also, those of us here in the U.S. are not particularly happy with the low cost garbage solar panels being brought in from China. Why not make them in America? That would be a good question for Brandon

Alabama Solar Factory to Close After Joe Biden Guts U.S. Tariffs on China

A Huntsville, Alabama, solar panel factory will close after President Joe Biden exempted foreign-made bifacial solar panels from United States tariffs earlier this month.

LG Electronics, a South Korea-based company, announced that it will be closing its Huntsville solar panel manufacturing operation, resulting in the layoffs of about 160 American employees and another 60 Americans who are employed as contract workers.

Executives said they hope to retain as many employees as they can by transitioning them into the company’s other business and manufacturing sectors at its Huntsville campus. Laid-off employees will receive severance packages.

The announcement comes just weeks after Biden decided to exempt foreign-made bifacial solar panels — the overwhelming majority of which come from China — from Section 201 tariffs on solar imports to the United States that were first imposed by former President Trump in January 2018 at a 30 percent rate.

Sure, a lot of the profits for the panels goes back to South Korea, but, at least they are not a hostile foreign government, and Americans make money working at the plant, and Huntsville made money off of taxes and such. Now? Nothing.

Why would Biden waive sanctions?

Shortly after Trump imposed the U.S. tariffs on solar imports, LG Electronics announced that they would expand their Huntsville campus to include manufacturing solar panels — a boon for the city’s local economy as every one factory job supports an additional 7.4 jobs.

Because Trump imposed them. Also, you have to wonder how much his family is making off of doing business with China, which helps out Biden. Joe talks a lot about “buying American”, then does what he can to replace American manufacturing with imports from China.

Further, regardless of the whole climate crisis (scam) issue, when the panels are built here in America we can do what we can to reduce the negative environmental impact from manufacturing. China’s operations will create lots and lots of environmental damage.

Read: Good News: Alabama Solar Panel To Close Due To Biden Removing Sanctions On China »

Posted in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Joe Biden | 2 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove