AOC Makes Sense On Congressional Stock Trades

By William Teach February 3, 2022 – 6:45 am

I have zero problem agreeing with her. When someone is correct, they’re correct

AOC says it’s ‘not really a mystery’ why Congress hasn’t passed a stock trading ban for lawmakers given that ‘an enormous amount’ of them trade stocks

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York offered a blunt assessment of why members of Congress haven’t voted to ban themselves from trading stocks: because many of them hold lots of stock themselves.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance published on Wednesday, the progressive congresswoman said that it’s “not a mystery to me” why a stock trading ban is “difficult to pass” in Congress, given that “an enormous amount” of members hold stock.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the majority of members of Congress holding and trading and individual stock,” she said. “I don’t know the actual numbers, but it is a very large degree.”

Insider’s “Conflicted Congress” investigation found that 277 lawmakers did not report owning individual stock investments in 2020 — which would mean just under half of lawmakers do have such investments.

Insider also found that existing provisions to combat insider trading, particular the STOCK Act, are poorly enforced, and dozens of lawmakers and nearly 200 staffers have violated the law’s disclosure provisions.

And she’s part of legislation

The New York congresswoman is a co-sponsor of the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, one of several different bills that would ban lawmakers from trading stocks. Notably, the bill allows members to continue holding widely held investment funds.

However, the ban supported by Ocasio-Cortez does not include spouses, which some have identified as a potential “loophole” in any potential reforms, given that spouses presumably discuss personal finances with one another.

Realistically, no one working on Capitol Hill should be allowed to trade stock, from elected officials to their staff to high ranking appointed Executive Office officials, to those working directly for the President and VP. It’d be nice if spouses and family members were restricted, but, as “private” citizens, restricting them would probably be illegal. But, they can be investigated quite a bit.

(Market Watch) (the link goes to Pocket, since the article is behind a paywall) So who were the biggest traders? The table below, based on a Capitol Trades analysis, shows the 41 members of Congress who made stock buys or sells in 2021 with an estimated value of at least $500,000 — or had family members who made such trades.

At the top of the list of the biggest traders on Capitol Hill by dollar volume is Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, who disclosed an estimated $31 million in stock buys and $35 million in stock sales. He’s followed by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California with $34 million in estimated purchases and $19 million in sales, GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee with $26 million in estimated buys and $26 million in sells, and Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state with $15 million in estimated buys and $31 million in sells.

Pelosi, in case you’re wondering, had $12 million in transactions. It’s a nice little bipartisan list, and we see things like

(Ro) Khanna’s (D-Ca) biggest trades included purchases by his spouse of shares in Walgreens Boots Alliance WBA and Microsoft MSFT, along with purchases by a child of shares in Apple AAPL, communications company RingCentral RNG and Facebook parent Meta Platforms FB. The California congressman’s spokeswoman said he “does not own any individual stocks and complies fully with the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, which would prohibit lawmakers from buying or selling individual stocks.” That’s a reference to legislation that has attracted 35 co-sponsors in the House and three in the Senate.

“These are his wife’s assets prior to marriage and managed by an outside financial advisor. No trading is done through joint accounts,” Khanna’s spokeswoman also said.

Wink wink. He’s totally not involved, certainly not giving her info on legislation.

“I let a manager handle it,” Green said in that interview, when asked about efforts to ban lawmakers from trading in individual stocks. “I’ve written it into a letter: ‘Do not take any instructions from me. Don’t listen to me on television and make any decisions.’ And I let him make all of the decisions. I’m for people doing it that way.”

He also said “getting insider information is a crime,” and laws against it “should be enforced.”

That would be Mark Green (R-Tn). And he could be on the up and up, as could a lot of them. But, without serious enforcement, how are we to know.

Read: AOC Makes Sense On Congressional Stock Trades »

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Climate Cult Keeps Trying To Blame Snowstorms On Climate Crisis (scam)

By William Teach February 2, 2022 – 3:08 pm

This is the hallmark of a cult: they just keep repeating the same delirium that was invented to reinforce their cultish beliefs

What does climate change have to do with snowstorms?

(THE CONVERSATION) Bostonians may have grumbled about digging out from almost 2 feet of snow after a historic snowstorm clobbered the Northeast in late January 2022, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise. This part of the U.S. has been seeing a lot of storms like this in recent decades.

In fact, over a century of reliable weather records show many of the Northeast’s heaviest snowfalls have occurred since 1990 – including seven of the top 10 in both Boston and New York.

At the same time, winters in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have warmed by approximately 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.2 C) since the late 1800s.

How can the spate of big snowstorms be reconciled with our warming climate? I’m an atmospheric scientist. Let’s look at an important law of physics and some theories that can help explain the changes.

Warmer air, more moisture

First, warmer air can hold more moisture than cold air.

Think of the atmosphere like a sponge. Air holds about 4% more water vapor for each additional degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature (that’s about 7% per degree Celsius). The physical law that explains this relationship is known as the Clausius-Clapyron relation.

The worst storm in recorded Boston history was in 1717, which dumped around 5 feet, and caused 16 foot drifts. There were plenty of snowstorms during the 1600’s, 1700’s, and to mid-1800’s, during the Little Ice Age. How did that happen? Apparently it only snows heavy during a warm period? Do they ever listen to what they’re pushing? Do they believe that people with brains will listen and belief this?

Skipping to end

The sharp increase in high-impact Northeast winter storms is an expected manifestation of a warming climate. It’s another risk the U.S. will have to prepare for as extreme events become more common with climate change.

Read: Climate Cult Keeps Trying To Blame Snowstorms On Climate Crisis (scam) »

Posted in Climate Cult, Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach February 2, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful woods which will soon be decimated by too much CO2, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Gen Z Conservative, with a post on Brandon yelling randomly.

Read: If All You See… »

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Good News: As Biden Retreats From Middle East, ISIS Reasserts Itself

By William Teach February 2, 2022 – 10:30 am

Biden’s doing a hell of a job on the international front, eh?

Islamic State hits back, aided by power vacuum in Iraq and Syria

Joe Biden Ice Cream AfghanistanYousif Ibrahim no longer travels by night along the roads around his hometown of Jalawla in northeastern Iraq. He fears getting caught up in attacks by Islamic State.

“The police and army don’t come into our area much anymore. If they do, they get shot at by militants,” said the 25-year-old, who sells fish for a living in a nearby market.

Nearly three years after the group lost its final enclave, Islamic State fighters are re-emerging as a deadly threat, aided by the lack of central control in many areas, according to a dozen security officials, local leaders and residents in northern Iraq.

Islamic State is far from the formidable force it once was, but militant cells often operating independently have survived across a swathe of northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, and in recent months they have launched increasingly brazen attacks.

“Daesh (Islamic State) isn’t as powerful as it was in 2014,” said Jabar Yawar, a senior official in the Peshmerga forces of Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region.

“Its resources are limited and there’s no strong joint leadership,” he told Reuters in the city of Sulaimaniya. “But as long as political disputes aren’t solved, Daesh will come back.”

ISIS started during Obama’s time. Who was the Vice President then? They quickly went from the “JV team” to a dangerous and ultra violent Islamic group post Libyan adventure. President Trump helped wipe them out. But, Joe is incompetent, and has re-opened the door for them, especially as he kowtows to Iran and retreats from the Middle East

Officials and residents in northern Iraq and eastern Syria lay much of the blame on rivalries between armed groups. When Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian and U.S.-led forces declared Islamic State beaten, they faced off against each other across the territory it had ruled.

Now Iran-backed militias attack U.S. forces. Turkish forces bomb Kurdish separatist militants. A territorial dispute rumbles on between Baghdad and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

On one hand, do we really want to keep protecting the Middle East, expending American lives and money? On the other, we’ve seen what happens when the ME turns into a hell hole of Islamist extremism. Oh, and then this

Biden’s letting China in.

Read: Good News: As Biden Retreats From Middle East, ISIS Reasserts Itself »

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‘Climate Change’ Is Going To Soon Starve The Ocean Of Oxygen Or Something

By William Teach February 2, 2022 – 8:32 am

What happens if this does not happen? Who will be held responsible for their scaremongering prognostications? Oh, right, they made it 50 years out

Climate change has likely begun to suffocate the world’s fisheries

By 2080, around 70% of the world’s oceans could be suffocating from a lack of oxygen as a result of climate change, potentially impacting marine ecosystems worldwide, according to a new study. The new models find mid-ocean depths that support many fisheries worldwide are already losing oxygen at unnatural rates and passed a critical threshold of oxygen loss in 2021.

How do they know that it’s an unnatural rate? Do they have direct observations and data from previous Holocene warm periods, when there were no fossil fueled vehicles, no ice makers, no washing machines?

The new study is the first to use climate models to predict how and when deoxygenation, which is the reduction of dissolved oxygen content in water, will occur throughout the world’s oceans outside its natural variability.

Computer models again. Which give them exactly the doomy predictions they want.

It finds that significant, potentially irreversible deoxygenation of the ocean’s middle depths that support much of the world’s fished species began occurring in 2021, likely affecting fisheries worldwide. The new models predict that deoxygenation is expected to begin affecting all zones of the ocean by 2080.

We can solve this with a tax, you know. And taking away your freedom, liberty, and life choices.

“Humanity is currently changing the metabolic state of the largest ecosystem on the planet, with really unknown consequences for marine ecosystems,” he said. “That may manifest in significant impacts on the ocean’s ability to sustain important fisheries.”

Both the previous two warm periods were warmer than the current one: did this type of doom occur? It doesn’t appear as if the “study” even bothers.

“The oxygen minimum zones actually are spreading into high latitude areas, both to the north and the south. That’s something we need to pay more attention to,” she says. Even if global warming were to reverse, allowing concentrations of dissolved oxygen to increase, “whether dissolved oxygen would return to pre-industrial levels remains unknown.”

Do they have specific data on those pre-industrial levels, or, simply, computer models and guesses? This isn’t science, it’s a cult.

Read: ‘Climate Change’ Is Going To Soon Starve The Ocean Of Oxygen Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

How Much Did Lockdowns Contribute To Saving People From Chinese Coronavirus?

By William Teach February 2, 2022 – 8:19 am

Leftist leaders in the U.S. and around the world were in love with locking their citizens down. Remember “15 days to slow the spread”? How well did they work?

Lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2%, study finds: ‘Lockdowns should be rejected out of hand’

Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.

“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the researchers wrote. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen’s Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.

“We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.

The lockdowns and shelter in place orders were wonderful in destroying the economy, closing businesses, stopping people from getting the medical, dental health, and mental health support they needed. In fairness, I will say that you really have to think about the panic that citizens and government were experiencing, as Wuhan flu spread around the world. Think back to what was happening in late January and in February of 2020. Things were going south even before government started implementing restrictions. People were voluntarily staying home as much as possible.

Of course, many in government went way overboard

“[Shelter-in-place orders] may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness,” the researchers wrote.

“But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places.”

Remember the guy who was paddleboarding off Malibu, not a soul anywhere near him, and arrested for being out during the lockdown? Again, in fairness, that was not the fault of Gavin Newsome, who actually released orders allowing being outdoors exercising, it was on the cops. How about the guy in Spain walking along the beach all alone, and the cops chased him? He got away. The British cops were going nuts early in the lockdowns. Even on people in their own yards. And Australian cops were going Brownshirt last year.

If stay at home orders were so great, why did so many politicians blow them off themselves? Why were they blown off for the BLM/Antifa protests/riots?

Read: How Much Did Lockdowns Contribute To Saving People From Chinese Coronavirus? »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, Democrats | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

‘Climate Change’ Is Keeping Consumer Prices High Or Something

By William Teach February 1, 2022 – 3:00 pm

I thought this was a Bad Take

If the tweet fails to show (giving me some issues in the writing panel), here’s the headline

AOC: Corporate ‘price gouging’ is fueling inflation

How does someone with an economics degree not understand what’s’ going on? Oh, right, that’s why she was working as a bartender

The there’s CNN

Here’s another thing keeping prices high: Climate change

The pandemic economy is one of imbalances: supply chain woes and rising inflation have been with us for a while now, with few solutions in sight. But there’s another big shock to the global economy taking shape: climate change.

Although the pandemic will eventually end — whether it takes months or years — climate change is here to stay.

More severe weather events and shifting climate patterns will continue to create problems for people and businesses around the world. And the already battered global supply chains will be on the front lines.

That’s bad news for the rampant pandemic-era inflation that Americans have had to get used to during Covid.

Think unseasonably cold winters or hotter-than-normal summers increasing energy costs and prices for products like fans, AC units and generators. Meanwhile, fires, droughts, floods and storms can affect the food supply chain and drive prices up. And any extreme weather event can lead to property damages that then affect material and construction costs.

Got that? You ate a burger so you made it abnormally cold (say, do any of these climate cultists understand how averages work?) so prices are higher.

But thinking about it from the perspective of economic risk rather than pure politics changes the tone: “Climate is essentially an economic problem and it’s about how we manage the risk,” Dr. Sanjay Patnaik, director of the Center on Regulation and Markets at The Brookings Institution, told CNN Business.

And how do they want to do this? By massive government control of the economy, and, by extension, your life. Surprise?

Read: ‘Climate Change’ Is Keeping Consumer Prices High Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Democrats, Economy, Global Warming | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

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

…are leaves that are falling because trees are dying from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Dissecting Leftism, with a post on the COVID narrative falling apart in South Africa.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 10 Comments | Trackback URL

Majority Of Americans Say It’s Time To Accept Chinese Coronavirus And Get On With Our Lives

By William Teach February 1, 2022 – 10:30 am

Don’t expect Biden, Fauci, the people in his administration, Democratic Party governors and mayors, or leftist media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, to listen to Americans

70 percent of Americans say it’s time to accept COVID and ‘get on with our lives’

Seventy percent of Americans now agree with the statement “It’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives,” a new Monmouth University poll found.

Of those who report having had COVID-19, 78 percent agreed with the statement, while 65 percent who say they never got the virus also agree.

Among Republicans, 89 percent say it’s time to move on, compared to 71 percent of independents and 47 percent of Democrats.

Democrats are the ones rushing out to get a Chinese made KN95 and in-home COVID test that Biden’s providing. They’re the ones double masking in their cars, and going ballistic on videos because someone else isn’t wearing a mask. Unless it’s inconvenient for the Dem elites

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1488011633934802954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1488011633934802954%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fdougp-3137%2F2022%2F01%2F31%2Fgov-gavin-newsom-says-he-was-very-judicious-in-following-masking-rules-at-the-game-more-video-pics-say-otherwise%2F

Being that the Super Bowl is in Los Angeles, should be pretty interesting to see all the elites and celebs unmasked and partying

According to Patrick Murray, the director of Monmouth’s Polling Institute, “Americans’ worries about COVID haven’t gone away. It seems more to be a realization that we are not going to get this virus under control in a way that we thought was possible just last year.”

Monmouth also suggested that “faith in the ability of President Joe Biden and the federal government to get a handle on the pandemic continues to fade.”

Only 43 percent of Americans said Biden has done a good job handling COVID, the first time his approval rating on this issue has dropped below 50 percent since he took office.

Remember when Biden was yammering about shutting down the virus, not the economy? Constantly? Most other 1st world nations are moving towards reopening. Personally, we should reiterate some of the basics: wash your hands, be careful with personal contact, keep your distance if possible. But, it’s time to get things going again. Get rid of the stupid mask mandates where they have them. Stop requiring people to get a vaccine. It’s worth letting them know that getting a vaccine is worth it, because it means they will most likely have light symptoms if they get Wuhan flu. But, that’s their decision

They were loyal liberals who never dreamed of voting Republican but the damage done to kids by the Left’s Covid hysteria is driving a wave of moms away from the Democrats, writes BETHANY MANDEL

It’s a long piece, worth the read, which shows that a lot of Democrat voters who still hold Democrat values are voting Republican, like we saw in Virginia and NJ in the last governor elections, because they care about their children above all else, and the insanity happening in government schools with the masking, making kids eat outside in the cold, and so much more, is driving them to vote GOP at this time.

Read: Majority Of Americans Say It’s Time To Accept Chinese Coronavirus And Get On With Our Lives »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, Democrats | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Fault: Carbon Pollution Caused Bad Weather HeatSnow/Cold Means More Evil Generators

By William Teach February 1, 2022 – 7:00 am

Thanks, dude. You just had to take a trip to see grandma in your fossil fueled vehicle, didn’t you, instead of buying and EV

Home generator sales are booming with mass outages, climate change and COVID

Outside Christopher Glenn’s house in the small Oregon community of Melrose, a white metal box sits next to the garage. The home standby generator was installed after a long outage in 2019.

“We had a major snowstorm that brought about 3 feet of snow to our backyard, and we were without electricity for approximately a week,” says Glenn.

His spouse works remotely and couldn’t work without electricity. They also own an organic tea business that was shut down by the outage. (snip)

Beyond snowstorms, he’s also concerned about outages during the wildfire season. As in California, Oregon utilities sometimes turn off electricity so power lines don’t spark fires.

Around the U.S., climate change is bringing more intense and frequent extreme weather that often means mass power outages, including devastating, high-profile ones like that in Texas last year.

Yeah, that was a massive cold snap. Heat trapping gasses cause that, along with snow, in Climate Cult World. As for the fires, pretty much every single one can be traced back to someone intentionally or unintentionally causing them, and they tend to be worse thanks to stupid policies from Democrats

If you’re thinking about buying a home generator, Hope says another consideration is climate change. Generators are “actually horrible fossil fuel-burning polluters that, of course, contribute to man-made climate change.” And that, he says, fuels the same severe weather events that result in widespread power outages.

A cleaner but more expensive option is installing solar panels and batteries on a house. Those will keep the power on, like a generator, but only as long as there’s enough sun to charge the batteries.

Those are bit more than a top end generator, but, of course, aren’t as reliable. The genny will work when there’s no sun. Especially in a state that has a lot fewer sunny days.

Read: Your Fault: Carbon Pollution Caused Bad Weather HeatSnow/Cold Means More Evil Generators »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Energy, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL
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